A/N: Hey all! I'm back with a three-shot inspired by a prompt from thepriceisrizzoli, over at tumblr. It's fun to be back with these two :)

Normally Jane would no sooner strike up a conversation with a stranger than she would cheer for the Yankees, but there was something different about the woman she was watching. Watching? That made her sound like a creep. She'd just caught Jane's eye was all. Jane was getting a drink, and had noticed this woman pacing back and forth outside the establishment. She looked as though she might be on her way to a gala or something; very high-end and talking to herself. Not literally talking to herself, but Jane could see she was trying to reason something out.

Jane tried to decide what kind of fries she wanted, figuring she should be trying to make contact with someone else at the bar—but every time she thought about getting up to do that, this woman would walk back into her frame of view. After a couple of minutes she sat down at a bench by the bus stop, and Jane had a hard time imagining a woman like this getting onto a bus. Maybe she just needed to rest. More likely, maybe Jane was overthinking it.

But she knew she wasn't overthinking it when she saw a guy sit needlessly close to this woman, and the woman trying to shrink away. When he kept blathering on, Jane decided it was time to step in.

"Hey! Sorry, honey, I just noticed you were out here. I thought we were meeting in the bar," Jane said, hurrying over to the bench to address the woman. "It's kinda chilly to wait for the bus out here, wanna come inside for a minute?"

She'd thought the woman would be eager for an excuse to leave, but she looked confused. "I'm sorry?"

Jane shifted her glance to the man who was sitting way too close. "Hey, make a space there, would ya, cheese dick?"

The woman laughed so abruptly and intensely that it came out as more of a snort, which got Jane going as well and the man got up, looking affronted. "What did you call him?" the woman wheezed.

"A cheese dick. Been on a bit of an '90s movies binge recently and feel like that's an insult that really needs to make a comeback."

"'90s movies, hm? Have you been trying to get yourself in the proper mindset for the reunion?"

Jane furrowed her brow. "The what?"

Now the woman looked more confused than before. "The reunion? Goddard Academy, class of 1999?" When Jane did nothing but stare blankly, the woman went on, "I'm sorry, I've just thought maybe you were an old classmate I couldn't place. Do I know you at all?"

"You do now," Jane said, sticking out her hand. "Jane Rizzoli, St. Dominic's class of 1998."

"Maura Isles." Her hand was smooth, and she gave Jane's a firm shake. "So, you just came over here to help rid me of the…"

"Cheese dick." (That made Maura smile again, and God, what incredible dimples.) "Glad it worked. You all right? I hope you don't—I mean I don't mean this in a creepy way, but like, I was just in that bar right there and noticed you pacing right out front and uh, is everything okay? Anything a total stranger from a different high school can do?"

The addition got another chuckle out of Maura when she had been preparing to get somber again. "Oh, well. It's nothing, really. I-I mean, nothing to bother anyone about."

"Go on, bother me. I don't mind. Want to bother me over a drink?"

"Um." Um? You don't say "um." What's wrong with you? Maura glanced at the bar, which looked warm and inviting and full of nonjudgmental people. "You know, maybe just one would help calm my nerves."

The cabernet was chalky, but Maura figured she should've been prepared for that at a place called The Dirty Robber. Jane was sipping a beer, her legs spread out across the length of her side of the booth in a display of enviable coolness. And now, Maura felt weird about it—weird about letting a stranger know she wasn't in a great place, and then accepting that stranger's invitation to go inside and talk about it. But maybe a stranger was the right kind of person to talk with, someone with no preconceived notions about her. As far as Jane Rizzoli knew, Maura could be anyone she wanted.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Jane tried.

"Sorry," Maura said with a faint smile. "I'm over-thinking. It's just usually when I get a drink with a stranger, it's a ritualistic precursor to sex."

Jane choked on her beer and sat a little straighter. "Uh, well, to be clear that wasn't my intent in asking you in."

Maura screwed her eyes shut for a moment, as if that could rewind and erase the last few moments. "I know, sorry, that was rather forward. I…" She opened her eyes and saw Jane smiling gently at her, looking curious and not just out of politeness. "I'm a medical examiner in Hartford. I have degrees from BCU and Johns Hopkins. I love my job, I love my home, and I have a very fulfilling philanthropic life as well."

"All very impressive," Jane said with an attempt at a posh accent. She felt a little bad when that made Maura roll her eyes. "No, I mean, seriously. Uh, that's all kind of amazing."

"Yes, you know, I'm very proud of my accomplishments." And somehow the way she said it didn't make her sound vain. "So I should be confident, I should be fine. I should be able to just waltz in to that reunion without the slightest hang-up."

There was a short silence, in which Jane picked up the unspoken but: "You're not married. You don't have kids. And that's what a lot of people are going to care about. And so even though you've got this kickass life going on, being back around those creeps just puts you right back into that middle school mindset of feeling like you're not cool enough, you're not good enough, and it's illogical for you to think that way but you just can't help it when you're back around those people."

Maura tipped her glass to Jane. "That is amazingly perceptive."

Jane's laugh was sour. "Yeah, I've been there. A friend strong-armed me into going to our reunion last year, and I couldn't believe the marriage and family stuff was like the only thing that seemed to matter to a lot of people. My professional accomplishments didn't matter, my hobbies didn't matter, none of it mattered because I didn't have a husband and a brownstone and a couple of kids. It's bullshit."

"Okay, so wow me. What professional accomplishments are you proud of?"

Now having brought it up, Jane seemed embarrassed to talk about it. "I'm a homicide detective. Been decorated a couple times, no big deal."

"No big deal? That's amazing!" Maura gasped. "Congratulations."

Jane tried not to show how pleased she was by the praise. "C'mon, you're an M.E., you must work with some pretty impressive people, yeah?"

Maura shrugged. "If you mean cops, then, I guess by some sort of objective measure I must. But the ones I've worked with tend to be rather rude. Gruff, impatient, you know. None of them has ever made as good an impression as you have in just the last five minutes."

"Ha! Oh, man, who knew there were such cranks in Connecticut? To be fair, you'd probably find me pretty bossy in the workplace."

"Oh, I could handle just bossy. I've been called that myself."

Smirking, Jane stroked the neck of her bottle and said, "Yeah, but I bet you're soft and polite about it when you're bossing people around." It looked like Maura didn't know how to respond to that beyond blushing and giggling, so Jane decided the kind thing to do would be to steer away a bit. Just a bit. "Is that how they tagged you in high school? Bossy?"

That got a wistful sigh out of Maura very fast. "No, I was much too quiet in school for anything like that. In fact, they used to call me Maura the Bore-a."

"Aw. Always been a science nerd, huh?"

"Oh, my, yes."

Jane shook her head, taking in all she could about Maura while the woman averted her gaze for another drink. Seeing her so elegant, wearing a gold jacket that somehow didn't look cheap and sporting side bangs that somehow didn't look juvenile, Jane could not for the life of her picture this woman ever being thought of as a nerd. Maybe that was something Maura had hoped to prove by going to this reunion. Maybe it was the ultimate female fantasy, where geeky boys Jane had known in school had been assured they'd one day be the bosses of the jocks who bullied them—maybe Maura's mother had said one day she'd be prettier and classier than the girls who were mean to her? Showing up twenty years later as this regal, intelligent, gorgeous being…

Time to test the theory: "Okay, so let me ask. If you're this worked up about it, why did you want to go to your reunion in the first place?"

With a rueful laugh, Maura's pristine posture sagged. "It was an impulsive decision. I'm not on social media, and I got curious to know about how some of my old classmates and friends are doing. I've never been great at staying in touch, so I thought it could be a nice idea to see where everybody's at in their lives. This one friend in particular, I really liked her and I saw she was going and I got sentimental." She shrugged. "Maybe that was silly of me."

"Not silly at all."

"Well, what was silly was my other impulsive decision to get a plus-one ticket," Maura said, making a face. "I have a… close friend, an ex, who travels a lot for work but always comes to see me when he's stateside and I had this dumb idea that maybe he'd like to come with me, and I don't know, help me feel less alone. It'd be nice to go, but nicer to feel like someone was in my corner. Being single would be one less thing I'd have to worry about getting ...I don't even know, pitied for? Nagged for? It's not even something that bothers me when I'm on my own!" (And Jane had no problem believing this, because she couldn't imagine Maura having trouble getting dates if she wanted them.) "It's just something about this environment. I've struggled with social anxiety for most of my life, and immersion therapy has mostly helped with that, but —you're right, there's something about old classmates that's just really hard to beat. Your old insecurities can't help but float up to the surface. So, the notion of going with my ex, my friend, really helped a lot when I thought about attending."

Jane nodded. It was hard work deciding whether to match Maura's solemnity or try cheering her up. "I'm sorry he's a flake. It's hard to nail down a busy nerd, huh?"

"Oh, I'm sure Ian was much cooler than I was in high school," Maura laughed. "What about you, you probably weren't a science geek, were you?"

"Nope," Jane chuckled. "I was a jock, but kinda right before it became cool for girls to be tomboys, y'know? I still got picked on. There was this dude who liked to call me Roly Poly Rizzoli—which I realize sounds dumb now, but man, it sure was awful when I was a kid. That and Frog Face."

"That's terrible! You haven't got a frog face. In fact, I'd say you have one of the loveliest faces I think I have ever seen."

That Maura could say this without a hint of hesitation or embarrassment struck Jane as something rather incredible. "Wow! You are very forthcoming, and I gotta say, I kinda love it."

"Sorry," Maura said, though her smile didn't seem to indicate that she was at all. "I can't help calling things like I see them. I'm afraid that being forthcoming is an extension of the fact that I'm a bad liar."

"Bad liar, huh? That's gonna make my proposition difficult."

Maura straightened up again, intrigued. "Your proposition?"

It was hard to think of anyone looking so casually confident as Jane did in that moment. "Yeah. If you've still got that plus-one and nobody else is using it, I think you should take me as your date. I can break the ice, I can talk you up to all your snotty old classmates. Just so you won't be alone. I've gone undercover several times in my line of work, and it'd be both a breeze and a pleasure to accompany you to your high school reunion as your girlfriend."

At some point during this offer, Maura's jaw had dropped and she struggled to form a response as Jane shrugged and finished off her beer. "Are you serious?"

"Hell yeah, I'm serious. What d'you say? I won't be offended if you say no, I promise. Just wanted to make the offer."

Maura was still having a hard time articulating herself, but Jane was encouraged by the smile she was fighting. "I don't know what to say."

"Tell me your gut reaction."

"Well, typically I don't make a habit of listening to my intestines. Oh," Maura laughed. "The colloquialism, of course. Hm. Considering I've known you less than ten minutes, it's a surprisingly tempting offer."

Jane held out her arms in a grand gesture of openness. "Let's make up for lost time, then! Ask me anything you want."

It felt kind of like speed dating, only without the speed or the pressure. Still, Maura wasn't sure where to start. "Okay, why don't you tell me what made you want to be a cop?"

"Kindergarten Cop."

"An officer who came to speak to your kindergarten class? They must've left quite an impression."

"No, the movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger?"

Was that a super obvious pop culture reference that went over her head? Would Jane be turned off by that? Is that something I need to be concerned about? No, given that this is all theoretical... "Hm, I'm afraid I missed that one."

"Oh, it's great. He goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher to catch a gangster, but anyway, his partner is a woman and you'd think the movie would have them end up together, right? Or she'd like, suck at the job and he'd have to swoop in at the end of the day to help her? Nope! She's just as badass as he is and totally saves the day, and I was like damn, I wanna be like that. I wanna help kids and save the day, and I can do that without looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger."

Maura had to smile at her enthusiasm. "Not the answer I would've expected, although I don't know what I would have expected."

"I could tell you more. I could tell you about someone breaking into my best friend's house when I was in middle school, and how they were never caught, and that sent me down this kinda obnoxious path of thinking if I had the resources, I could've done better." Jane had to laugh at her own youthful arrogance. "I dunno. Comes with this need to prove myself, I guess, and hope that I'm helping people at the same time. How's that?"

"Very admirable." She could go on with more inane questions, but this felt like a time-is-of-the-essence situation. Maybe she couldn't impress Jane here, but she could at least get right to the point: "And what do you look for in a…"

Jane grinned, and Maura felt her heart rate drastically speed up. "A woman?"

Maura couldn't fight a blush, which felt stupid, given that this whole thing had been Jane's idea in the first place. "Yes, that. A woman."

"Y'know, the first woman I ever seriously dated was also on the force. We had a lot in common, and that's when I realized there was such a thing as too much compatibility," Jane mused. "I thought that being so much the same would mean we had a good time, just, like, all the time. But it was missing something. A spark. Having things in common is still important, of course, but I'm not as turned off by differences as I used to be. I like a woman who's going to challenge me. Challenge my brain, challenge my habits, in ways I hadn't considered. I like a woman who's going to take me to do things I've never done, places I've never been." She cleared her throat, noting that Maura looked totally mesmerized. "Seems like that's working for you, yeah? But I can play it different, if you want. Like, say, I like a woman who's a lady in the streets but a freak in the sheets?"

"Oh, God! Don't ruin it," Maura moaned, laughing almost to the point of hysterics because it was the only thing keeping her from fixating on the mental image of rolling around in bed with this ridiculously beautiful woman. "Ah. Go on, it's your turn. Ask me something."

It was hard not to be amused by how flustered Maura was, but Jane intuited that she was not one who'd respond well to light teasing, so she let it alone. "Okay, what about you? What do you look for in a…"

"A partner. Well, I suppose that depends on what it is I want in the given moment. Sometimes, a physical attraction is all I need. But if I'm on the cusp of considering a serious relationship with somebody, I need to ask myself three things: one, can I be vulnerable with this person? Two, can I enjoy quiet time with this person? And three, does this person respect me?"

Jane was solemn and silent for several long moments, getting to the point where Maura wondered if it was somehow still her turn to talk. But then, Jane said, "Sorry—I was just trying to see if I passed the 'quiet time' test, but it probably takes longer, yeah?" She smiled, high on the feeling it gave her to make Maura laugh. "But two out of three's not bad, right? I for sure respect you, and I feel like you've been pretty vulnerable tonight."

"That's true, that's very true," Maura admitted. "And there's something else I forgot to add. I've been told I'm not the best at detecting humor, so, I really appreciate it when I'm with somebody who can make me laugh. So I think we could say, to borrow a common phrase, you're batting a thousand."

"Ooh!" Jane crowed. "A baseball reference? A girl after my own heart!"

Maura beamed. "You know, the other useful thing is that because I was so quiet in high school, you could say anything about me and people wouldn't think it was out of character or a huge leap. So you wouldn't need to know too much about me to really make this work. Oh, gosh. Am I talking myself into this crazy idea?"

Jane leaned forward. "I think you are. I think it's a definite possibility. I am cool as a cucumber when it comes to undercover stuff, so really, I'd have your back if you'd like to go. I'll follow your lead."

Maura bit her lip, looking Jane over. "You're dressed very nicely. Would I be taking you away from something important?"

"Nope, I just left it." Jane was wearing a crisp white button-up, the top few buttons undone, and black slacks. "There was a fundraiser for after-school programs at my nephew's school. That's my blazer and tie on the hook there." She smirked when Maura all but salivated at the thought of her wearing them. "So is that a yes?"

"It's a yes."