A/N: I'm depositing all of my one shots here in one place. Think of my other stories as albums, and this as my mixtape. Something fun without the burden of a continuing plot.

This one was inspired by an anonymous tumblr prompt. Hope you all enjoy!

"What do you mean you've never done this before?!" Jane shouted over the pop music blaring through the arcade. This wing of the bowling alley, along with all its other parts, had no lights but the sporadic neon strobes pulsating against the floor and walls. She sipped on the cocktail Maura had made her order, just so the other woman wouldn't be drinking alone, and winced when she got only the taste of sugary syrup.

Cosmic bowling had been Frankie's idea, a way to wind down after a particularly stressful work week, but Maura had been the one to latch onto the plan with the most fervor. Which perplexed the detective, because her friend had led her away from all that bowling and toward the crappy arcade with cheap plastic prizes and 1990s shooting games. A few teenagers loitered around the place, assumedly still in an awkward too-cool-for-bowling stage of life, a phase Jane would readily admit that she went through.

Maura, apparently, had gone through none of this, though. "Jane, while you were galavanting around Boston's arcades, winning prizes from claw machines nigh and far, I was nowhere near the states," the doctor said with a chuckle that rattled in Jane's chest, they were so close. "So please, humor me." The smell of stale popcorn and spilled soda that had long dried did little to mask the chanel perfume wafting its way through the brunette's nostrils and into her lubricated capillaries.

"Well, we're here now, right? Pop a quarter in and take a crack, Dr. Isles," Jane cleared her throat, and moved so that Maura could face the machine herself. "See if you can beat my old record of three stuffed animals in a row." She looked to their reflection in the glass, the stark white of the fluorescent inside painting them in full contrast against the dark backdrop of the room. She admitted in the furthest depths of herself that she liked the view of herself behind Maura, close enough to smell the shampoo that lingered in her hair.

"You're not going to show me first? No trial run from the Master?" Maura asked with a curled eyebrow, looking not behind her to Jane, but at the taller woman's reflection.

"Nah, this is more of a feel it type of thing, Maura. You just gotta go for it," Jane replied, shaking her head and letting a laugh crinkle her face. The top 40 playlist buzzed in her ear and the smoky makeup on Maura's face caused her to chug the rest of her drink, hoping what little vodka was in it would numb her nerves a little. She nodded her head towards the clunky machine full of stuffed teddy bears and gave its side a tap for good measure.

"Ok then, let's do it!" the medical examiner yipped with a clap of her hands. she reached into her clutch for a quarter, put it in, and then grasped the joystick - Jane's chest ballooned on the inhale with affection. Maura's look of concentration, a look she had seen countless times in the throes of case or during a challenge in the autopsy suite, was too adorable NOT to swoon at.

The doctor maneuvered the claw with surgical precision. She inched it towards her target, a blue bear with the Red Sox logo emblazoned on his chest, and lurched back when she felt she needed more composure, more control. Finally, after what seemed like minutes, she grasped it, and inched it again, this time toward the prize door. Home free in 3… 2…. 1…. "Dammit!" she cursed when the bear fell just short of its destination.

"It's ok, Maur. No one does it on their first try," Jane offered, still too amused to push any heart behind her encouragement. Maura even scowled at her giggle. "What? Go ahead, do it again."

Maura did. Seven times. Almost an hour had passed, and Nina had sent her several where are you kids? texts. The woman needed no encouragement to assume about the relationship between the two of them, and yet here they were, serving it to her on a silver platter. "It's so infuriating, but I can't stop!"

"Is it cause you've never failed at anything before?" Jane snarked. Maura bit her lip to hide a smirk and elbowed the woman still close behind her in the ribs. "Ow!"

"Teach me, Jane," Maura whined, turning to face her friend, who rolled her eyes. The doctor placed her drink on the game, and rubbed her hands over Jane's leather jacket, from shoulder to chest and back again.

"Didn't I say this was a learn on your own game?" Jane asked, a coy smile hiding some of the perspiration that gathered at her temples.

"Well yes, but clearly that's not working for me," the shorter woman laughed again, and caught Jane's gaze in her own, despite the darkness around them. The clatter of bowling pins rattling into the collector caused a rhythmic lull in their conversation, punctuating each statement.

"Maybe you're just not cut out for the claw, Maura, not everyone is," the detective shrugged, her nonchalance in juxtaposition with her tense trapezii muscles. Maura later swore she would have noticed if she hadn't had that third drink.

"But you are! And I want to see you do it, at least," she pleaded.

"Meh. I'm rusty. I haven't done this in at least five years," Jane offered, and she was ready to walk away, until Maura begged one last time, a pout in her flushed face.

"Please?"

There was a beat or two of silence, when the song had switched and the pins were all being changed, and then she acquiesced. "Alright," Jane answered softly, in a tone that only could be heard because of that silence, and then, when she rummaged her jeans for a quarter, the bowling alley roared to life again. She resisted the urge from her nervous system to set her hands to shaking, and she breathed in and out with a roll of the neck before grasping the joystick and watching the game light up.

She moved easily enough toward the Red Sox bear that had eluded her friend for so long, and it traveled quickly along its intended trajectory. Maura turned her attention from the prize to Jane's hands, intent on studying the technique and sure that the bear would be theirs in a few moments.

Then it dropped.

"Shit," said Jane clucking her tongue and turning. "Told ya, I'm rusty." she sighed, pushed her palm through her wild hair, and leaned her head against the glass behind her.

Maura had stood beside her, however, had watched her fingers as they manipulated the controls. She saw that at the last millisecond, the one that required a minute flick of the stick in the direction of the hole, Jane's hand could not complete the task. Most likely from reduced range of movement.

Most likely from the scalpel that had been driven into its palm over five years ago and that had caused intense nerve damage, some of it lasting. It was a range of movement the detective would never get back. "Hey."

Jane opened her eyes and looked toward the source of the voice, only to see the medical examiner nearly flush against her. "Uh, hey yourself…" she managed.

"I'm sorry," Maura began, and when Jane moved to talk over her, she held a finger to those Italian lips. "I didn't realize."

"Hey, I didn't exactly explain, either. My hands are just a little fucked up is all. And they will be for, well, forever. I don't really miss doin' this goofy stuff," the brunette said. She nodded her head toward the claw. " I am sorry I couldn't get you that bear though, real shame."

Maura shook her head both in humor and to keep a sudden crying jag at bay. "You want to know something?"

"What?" asked Jane.

"Your hands are never 'fucked up' when they're on me," Maura stated. When Jane's eyes shot open and she swallowed what looked like a brick in her throat, the other woman elaborated. "You're right. You'll always have a motion impediment, however slight it may be. But your hands are not impaired when they usher me through a crowded room, or when they embrace me after heartbreak, or when they shield me from slipping on the ice…. or when they touch me simply because you like to touch. The message is always clear, always masterful, and always welcome."

The hands in question flexed in indecision.

"Jane?"

"Yeah?"

"That means that you should put them on me now," Maura looked down to her hips, and when scarred palms splayed themselves there, she looked back up into her friend's face.

"Lips too?" Jane asked with a devilish smirk.

"Lips too," Maura confirmed.

"This the booze talkin'?" before she obliged, however, the master interrogator had one last question.

"If it is, make sure you do it again in the morning," her suspect offered, and with that, the deal was sealed, the point proven - some people just weren't cut out for the claw. And that was more than ok.