A/N: Hey all! Thanks for sticking with me. I kept reworking this, so I hope you'll indulge me in a little post-Christmas cheer :)

Maura was just putting the final touches on her ensemble when the doorbell rang. She couldn't imagine who might be coming over at this hour, and was surprised to see Jane on her porch. Jane looked just as surprised to see her all dressed up, and Maura wondered if Jane was aware of how obvious she was being in checking her out. Moreover, she wondered if it would be impolite to point out that she noticed and was really into it.

"Hhhey," Jane finally got out. "Wow, sorry. Hi."

"Hello," Maura said, inviting her inside. "What brings you here?"

Jane shut the door, but even though she'd extensively prepped for coming over tonight, she was thrown off by the clear implication that Maura was on her way out. She'd been so busy psyching herself up for this that she hadn't paused to consider that even someone self-described as liking to spend cozy nights at home might be busy on a Thursday evening during the holidays. But Maura didn't seen to mind the unexpected visit; in fact, Jane's spirits were buoyed by the unrestrained joy in Maura's expression as she put on her earrings, patiently waiting for Jane's explanation of her sudden appearance.

"How d'you do that?" Jane found herself asking.

"Do what?" Maura asked, pausing with one hand still clasping her ear.

Suddenly Jane felt parched and she had to clear her throat before going on. "Put those on without a mirror. I got my ears pierced in middle school at my mother's insistence, but I went so long without wearing any earrings that they uh, the holes closed up. I could never put them in without getting as close to a mirror as physically possible. Although," she said with a weary laugh, "I guess I've seen you cut up dead bodies with ease while you're mid-conversation, so maybe my amazement should have a higher bar."

"Oh, it's all about practice and precision in either case," Maura said with a chuckle.

"They're pretty," Jane said. "The earrings, I mean. They really, um, bring out the gold in your eyes. And the green of your dress, it kinda does that, too. With the green in your eyes, I mean."

Geez. She was not usually this flustered when she was trying to flirt. But maybe that was it—she really wasn't trying to be flirtatious, she was just making observations which happened to betray things she found attractive about Maura. Granted that shared some of the basics of flirting, but flirting done with purpose was something Jane was good at and this just felt like it was all tumbling out of her without her control. Word vomit.

Fortunately for Jane, Maura found it charming. She asked, "did you come by just to compliment me?" because she lost the nerve to ask if Jane had come over to hit on her.

"No," Jane said, getting some of her own nerve back. "That just comes natural." Again she was encouraged by the pleased reaction this inspired. "I should have called, but, uh..." I was so excited about getting to share this with you that I didn't really stop to think. "I was feeling spontaneous. I was wondering if you might want to grab a coffee or cannoli, or something. But I didn't stop to think that on New Year's Eve's eve, you might be going out on a... a date?"

It was too obvious to even be called fishing, but Maura was still happy to report, "I'm not going on a date."

"Oh!" Jane said, smiling with relief and then immediately trying to play it down. "Ok, that's cool. Where are you off to, then?"

"My mother's got an exhibition opening at the ICA, and there's a reception for it tonight. I'd have planned it after New Year's Eve myself, but I guess they figure they'll be avoiding a conflict of interest the night before anyhow."

"Damn! Wow! That's awesome, I didn't know your mom was an artist. Good for her. She must be pretty good then, huh?"

"She's rather well-renowned in contemporary circles, yes," Maura said. "If you'd come a few minutes later, you might've missed me. I'm glad you didn't."

"Could I give you a ride?" Jane asked, knowing full well that Maura had a beautiful car but desperate to spend even a little time with her if Maura was up for it.

"You could," Maura said slowly, "and I guess I could get a Lyft home."

"Or I could pick you up," Jane suggested. "Whenever you'd be ready."

Maura raised an eyebrow, looking amused. "So you'd drop me off and then just wait around someplace, and pick me up?"

"Um...yeah," Jane said, realizing how sad that sounded as Maura said it.

"Here's a counter-offer," Maura said with a smile that made Jane's stomach flip over. "Would you like to come with me?"

The invitation was as thrilling as it was unexpected. Jane was pretty indifferent to art, but she'd have gone to a convention to watch paint dry if Maura had asked her there. "Wow! Really? I'd love to, if that's okay." She had to assume Maura had the go-ahead to bring someone, so she wasn't really worried about that, but the discrepancy between Maura's chic dress and her own long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans did give her pause. "Is there a dress code?"

Maura gave Jane a very pointed up-and-down look to communicate the fact that Jane's apparent attraction to her was reciprocated. She took a step closer, impulsively reaching out to straighten the hem of Jane's shirt.

"I think you look lovely," she said. "And anyone who passes muster with me will certainly be fine at the ICA."

Jane got the low-down on Maura's mother and a brief primer on contemporary art as they drove over. On their arrival, Jane was somewhat relieved to see that while there were stuffy academic types standing around hobnobbing, there were also small groups of hipster kids who at least made her feel old enough if not educated enough to be there. She went into her best outgoing mode, as there were a number of people Maura was excited to introduce her to, absolutely none of whom could convince Jane that what she was looking at was art.

"Come on," she groaned, nodding at a display of plastic bottles hung like a chandelier. "This is art? This is like an upside-down version of what my walkway looks like on recycling day."

"Ah, but see, you wouldn't think to arrange it as art," explained one fellow patron, who even Maura had to agree was a tad pretentious. "Constance is really making a statement by lending a certain..."

"Je ne sais quoi," Maura offered, and the man nodded. Maura tried not to laugh at the expression he missed on Jane's face, which was part total confusion and part total disgust.

When he wandered off shortly afterwards upon seeing a friend, Jane said, "Okay, even you have to admit that guy was full of it."

"Oh, I don't deny that," Maura chuckled, moving on to the next piece. "But I think it would be insufficient to divide the group here into stuffed-up posers and jaded, self-proclaimed outsiders like you. I think I'm somewhere in the middle. Look at this," she said, stopping in front of a mixed-media piece made with popsicle sticks and paint. "My mother had a very nice studio in our home when I was growing up, but I was never allowed inside. She took me to museums, but she never shared her creative process with me. Maybe she was afraid I would mess something up, I don't know. But look at how free this is. How carefree and whimsical, even."

"Or...messy?" Jane said, not able to relate to the awe in Maura's face.

"Messy, yes," she agreed. "But that's the point. In my line of work, we follow the 'cleanliness is next to godliness' rule. I could never be this devil-may-care. I wish I knew how. But I never learned how to be a color-outside-the-lines kind of person. I envy my mother that. I'd love to catch some of that free-wheeling sensation she must get from painting like this."

Jane, having grown up as sloppy as they come, was about to tell Maura it was never too late to learn when the guest of honor herself at last deigned to grace them with her presence. Having heard a bit about their restrained relationship, Jane was still surprised that Constance was greeting her daughter as if she were any other rando at this party. As if sensing her own errant behavior, Constance lightened up a little and said, "I'm so sorry, my dear. I've been trying to make my way over to you since I saw you come in, but I keep getting held up!"

"Oh, don't worry about us," Maura said, with the kind of sincere smile Jane knew she rarely gave her own mother—one that was a bid for approval. "We've been fine."

"I haven't even been able to so much as quench my thirst with all these eager people about."

"Can I get you something to drink?" Maura asked, with the air of someone desperate to impress. "Let me get you something. I'll be right back. Oh—Jane, this is my mother; mother, this is Jane."

With that brief introduction, she hurried off to find the nearest waiter, leaving Jane and Constance alone to size each other up.

"Maura didn't tell me she was bringing a date," Constance said, a smile on her lips but a calculating look in her eyes.

"Oh, uh, that's not what this is," Jane assured her. She instinctively glanced at Maura's retreating figure to make sure she wasn't in earshot. "No, we're just fr... friends. Good friends."

Constance could not be deterred, and raised an eyebrow at Jane's stammer and the longing look in her eye. "Good friends as in you used to sleep with her, or as in you still want to sleep with her?"

Even as the daughter of one of the most direct women on the planet, Jane was floored. She needed a moment to collect herself but didn't want to give Constance the satisfaction of thinking she'd ruffled her. "That seems like a pretty cynical take on an innocent comment."

"Maybe so, but I know a fellow cynic when I see one."

"What you saw was me being a jackass for side-eying a bunch of young people who're just trying to impress each other at an art opening."

Yes, and I also saw you sizing up my daughter. "And what are you doing at this art opening?" Constance asked, not in a rude way but nonetheless expressing she found it obvious upon immediate observation that this would not have been Jane's first place of choice for an evening out.

Jane recognized that she was about to answer in a defensive tone, and paused to give herself time to sound calm. "Your daughter asked me to come. That's all it is." Correctly sensing that Constance was the type of woman who would hate the word, she added, "Ma'am."

"Well, how nice of you. Tell me, how is it you and Maura know each other?"

"We work together. In fact, she was my Secret Santa this year and she got me rollerblades. So, that's the tier of friendship we're at, if you wanted me to be more precise."

Constance narrowed her eyes at the sarcasm and avoided commenting on it. "Ah. Fellow doctor?"

"Detective," Jane growled at the slight condescension of Constance's disbelief. "I may be too much of a dumbass to follow forensics or mdoern art, but I like to think I bring a certain... jenay... say... koi to our efforts." Constance looked rather baffled by Jane's butchered attempt at French, so it was perhaps fortunate that Maura reappeared just then with two champagne glasses in hand. "Well, don't those look good!" Jane said. "I think I'll go grab one myself."

"Oh, this one is for you," Maura said, holding one out to her.

"Nah, it's all right, you enjoy that. I'll be right back."

She strutted off in search of the farthest waiter she could find, and Constance and Maura watched her go together. "Your friend is very direct," Constance said, taking a sip of the champagne. "Almost as direct as me."

"Oh dear. What did she say?"

"Nothing. And yet, everything," Constance whispered, as if on the verge of unveiling her ultimate artistic discovery. Maura tried not to roll her eyes. Constance's voice lost its lofty essence as she remarked, "She's got a nice ass, too."

"Mother!"

"She said you two work together. Is that all?"

"Yes," Maura sighed, but she knew she couldn't hold up well under her mother's scrutinizing gaze. "For now. I think we might...well, I don't know. I think there's something there."

"She said you got her a pair of rollerblades. What size?"

"Oh, Lord, mother. Please don't—"

"Because you know what the kids are saying these days about big feet."

"I swear to God, if you say big di—"

"Big dick energy."

"Okay, you definitely lied about not having had anything to drink tonight."

Constance took another sip. "Maybe a teensy bit, darling." Before they could get into more inappropriate conversation, an employee of the art gallery whisked Constance away to meet with some VIPs and she smiled apologetically at Maura.

"So! Interesting person, your mother," Jane said, walking back a few moments later. She'd been half-finishing a text to Tommy and glanced up to see Maura looking uncomfortable. To be safe, Jane swiftly pivoted away from what she assumed was a tense subject matter. "Sorry for not giving the art its due. You have to understand that with my upbringing, the most art exposure I ever got came from picture books."

"A fine art form," Maura said.

Jane smiled at the sincerity of the remark. "Wanna educate me and show me some more? I promise I won't snark."

Maura thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. "No, I don't think so. There are other things I'd rather be doing to you. With you!" she corrected herself, but not in enough time to keep Jane's eyebrows from shooting up. "With... you. Want to get out of here?"

"God, yes," Jane said right away.

"I need to just ask you something first before I make a complete ass out of myself," Maura said. "When you showed up at my house earlier, I said I wasn't going on a date tonight. If I leave with you right now, will that still be true?"

Jane was surprised by this sudden overt acknowledgement of what was going on, and Maura was in agony for the few seconds it took before Jane broke into a smile. "Well," she said, holding out her hand. "I guess I can't turn down the invitation to make a renowned truth-teller into a liar."

It somehow felt a little too soon and yet also very right to be leaving the venue hand-in-hand. Jane was usually pretty good at rolling with the punches, but she was glad in this case to have a plan in place for where she wanted to take Maura. The doctor got increasingly confused as they headed further into a suburban area, but waited for Jane to share the plan rather than ask.

"So you don't have to tell me how much you spent, but would it be fair for me to guess that you may have gone over the budget on those rollerblades?" Jane asked.

"Oh, shoot," Maura said. "I was so excited about getting you that gift, I forgot. I'm not going to get a reprimand, am I?"

"No," Jane chuckled. "There's no official reprimand, and you're not the first person to over-spend. I'm sorry my gift was so lame in comparison."

"Your...oh! Oh my gosh, you got me that fudge and I was so rude about it! Right to your face!"

"You weren't rude," Jane assured her, sparing her a glance and a smile. "You were really sweet about it, actually, and I kind of like that you didn't know it was from me. That just showed me all the more what a nice person you are. You had some of it, and you shared it rather than throw it away. It was my bad for mis-remembering fudge clusters as fudge. Anyway, all of that is to say, I'm trying again and I hope I do better this time."

"Jane, you didn't have to."

"I know I didn't. I wanted to. You got me something very special, and I wanted to reciprocate. I'm just sorry it's coming so late!"

A short while later, they pulled over by a nice house. "Is this where you live?" Maura asked, following Jane's lead and getting out of the car.

"Nah, this is my folks' place. They've gone out of town for New Year's, and my mother is paranoid about the house looking unoccupied, so I've been staying here for them. I was looking for some firewood and checked the shed, only to find it surprisingly empty."

This did indeed seem surprising, as they'd reached the shed and a wheelbarrow was sitting outside it with an assortment of tools randomly thrown in. A plastic bag sat on top, but a tied knot kept Maura from being able to see what was inside. Jane paused by the bag and seemed to reconsider something. She picked it up and headed for the garage instead.

"You know what wasn't empty? This bad boy."

She opened the garage, whose walls were covered with shelves and had any number of tools leaning against them save for the wall attached to the house. Ratty drop sheets covered in splotches of paint had been laid out on the floor and taped to the empty wall. Large, styrofoam poster boards were also propped against this wall, and some spray paint bottles were lying on the floor.

"Are we tagging your parents' garage?" Maura asked.

Jane kicked the cans aside and opened the plastic bag. "Nope. We're just gonna show you how to color outside the lines a little bit. See if we can't get you some of that 'free-wheeling sensation' you so crave."

Inside the bag were some balloons, a box of push pins, and what appeared to be squeezable water bottles with paint in them. Jane grabbed an apron from one of the shelves, and got a large hoodie for Maura, but then it registered with her that a hoodie wouldn't be sufficient enough to cover what must've been a very expensive dress. Maura seemed to be having this same thought, and Jane went back to the shelf to grab a T-shirt and sweatpants.

"These are clean, I swear," she said. "They're just what I put on whenever I'm doing yard work or helping out around the house here. Even got some tube socks!"

"Should you be wearing them now, then?"

"Oh, nah, I'll be fine. You take those—go ahead into the house, turn left, and there's a bathroom if you want to change in there."

Maura resurfaced a few minutes later, adjusting the drawstring on the sweatpants with the cuffs rolled up several times. Jane glanced up from what she was doing, and from Maura's expression, could tell she was being dared to laugh.

"I think you look cute in my clothes," she said.

That earned her a small laugh as Maura walked over, saying, "I think you look cute in anything." Before Jane could try to top this compliment, Maura asked, "What are you doing?"

Jane was sitting next to a few filled balloons, and had another one secured over the tip of a paint-filled water bottle. "I'm getting our supplies ready," she said. "Come try." She got Maura set up with another one of the water bottles and a balloon. "I got this idea from a totally badass movie that I saw a while ago, which was badass and intense and not in any way a children's movie. Did I mention it was badass?"

"Which one?"

"The Princess Diaries."

This unexpected response made Maura burst out laughing, causing the balloon to get dislodged from the bottle, which promptly blurted a glob of paint on her shirt. That only made her laugh harder and got Jane going as well. By the time they finished filling up the balloons, they'd managed to get paint all over the drop sheets and their clothes. The next step was using push pins to secure the balloons to the boards, and once this was accomplished, Jane rushed into the house and came back with a dart board.

She held the board out to Maura and said, "Would you like to make the first throw?"

"At the balloons?" Maura clarified, and Jane nodded. "I don't know; my aim isn't always great when it comes to pitching. Could I just go up and prick one?"

"No!" Jane scoffed, taking one of the darts for herself. "We're painting outside the lines, remember? Take chances! Get messy! Make mistakes! And other things said by badass people!"

She took aim and threw the dart, hitting a balloon and causing the green paint inside to splatter out. Maura was quick to follow her lead, and they were soon both laughing again. The laughter made them often miss their targets, but collecting the darts to try again was far from a chore. For Maura, this was as freeing an exercise as the rollerblading had been for Jane, a similar opportunity to return to a childlike zone of uninhibited fun—a zone she hadn't ever gotten to enjoy much, even as an actual child.

When they'd gotten down to the final balloon, Jane said, "It's all yours. This is your gift, go for it."

"But you're so much better at it than I am."

"It's not a competition, Maura, it's just about having fun. I feel like I finally understand art, now. It's not necessarily the destination, it's the journey, right? Did I get it? Do I pass the modern art class?"

"With flying colors," Maura said, following up this statement with an open-mouthed grin.

"Was that a joke?"

Maura's expression turned earnest. "Only if it was funny."

Jane chuckled. "Good one."

Maura picked up a dart and positioned herself slightly in front of Jane. "It's a little late in the game to be asking, but could you show me how you aim?"

Jane couldn't suppress a grin at the open invitation, and stepped up right behind Maura. "You just need to relax a little," she murmured, her hands shifting up Maura's sides to rid them of tension. She then gently manipulated Maura's arm into a better position, explaining as she did so, "Lead with your elbow, and tilt the dart kinda up a bit, there you go. And bring it up to eye level. Okay?"

"So when you say I need to relax, do you mean I should be more... laid back?" Maura asked, leaning back into Jane.

"I dunno how much that'll affect your game, but I kinda like it," Jane said, resting her hands on Maura's hips.

Maura turned her head, bringing their faces very close together. The temptation to kiss Jane was strong, but a stronger and less mature urge inspired by their play overtook her: she reached over and ran her finger down Jane's nose, leaving a streak of hot pink paint. Jane was caught off guard but took it like a champ, chuckling as she gave Maura a gentle push away. She reached down into a small pool of neon blue paint on the drop sheet and came back up to stroke Maura's face.

"Is this how contouring works?" Jane asked.

"It's how flirting works," Maura countered.

A shiver went down Jane's spine that had nothing to do with the cold. "Ooh, man. I was about to say let's get cleaned up and go to phase two of your present, but I'm tempted to scrap it and just..."

Maura's eyes widened and the sultry tone of her voice dropped. "There's a phase two? You did more than organize this?"

The diversion from a kiss might've pained Jane, but she smiled at the enthusiasm in Maura's voice, knowing she'd get another chance soon. "Oh, yeah, this was just an improvisation based on your angsting at the art gallery," Jane said. "My brother works for a painting company, and recently he showed me some glow-in-the-dark paint he'd gotten in to do the trimming in a kid's bedroom or something, and he wanted to use it at his own place. When I texted him, he was watching The Princess Diaries with his girlfriend and kid and wasn't really feeling it and that's when I remembered the thing with the balloons, and he did me a solid by coming and dropping off this equipment here. So really, this was phase two, I guess, because the other part came first. And my brother also came through to help me with it. The uh, canvas for our new modern masterpieces are leftover from phase one, actually."

It was touching to think of Jane being able to reach out to family for help like this, and it only endeared her all the more to Maura. She tossed the final dart, a perfect throw that led to a satisfying burst of the hot pink. Jane applauded, and Maura gave her a little bow, then remembered, "Oh right. Didn't you say something about the shed?"

Jane was drying off her hands with a rag, and handed it to Maura before leading the way back to the shed. "When I was trying to think of what to get you that was better than fudge, and maybe even better than fudge clusters, I was thinking about the conversation we'd had where you learned about my history with the rollerblades. Like, how it'd come up because we were talking about unfulfilled childhood dreams and you'd mentioned wanting to see the Northern Lights. I didn't know whether you'd rather go to Alaska or Norway or Canada and didn't want to ruin the surprise by asking, so I hope this'll do instead."

She grasped the doorknob, but before opening the shed, held out her free hand for Maura to take. Maura gasped audibly when they stepped inside.

The walls of the shed had been covered with poster board, all propped or taped together to give the appearance of a continuous art project. In this case, a silhouetted mountain range took up the bottom half, while fluorescent spray paint had been used to mimic the northern lights along the top. To try and make it look a little less static, Jane had augmented the scene with an LED projector that bathed the walls and ceiling in a cloudy night sky of stars. She had also hooked up her mother's old iPod to a speaker, where it played not songs but the sound of a brisk winter wind.

Although Jane and her brothers had tested the full effect the previous night, she had worried it might seem juvenile to someone else, especially a someone else as sophisticated as Maura. The art exhibit hadn't done much to quell this concern, but Jane was grateful she'd given it a try anyway in light of Maura's reaction. She was speechless, gaping as she drank in every detail.

"The projector has two discs you can swap out," Jane said, the silence making her anxious even though she knew Maura was impressed. "The other disc actually has the Northern Lights on it, so I was just gonna get you that but I dunno, I just got this vision in my head when Tommy—my brother—was telling me about the glow-in-the-dark paint."

"You did this?" Maura asked hoarsely, her back to Jane as she was still slowly pivoting on the spot.

Her first reaction was to want to take credit for everything, but after all his help, it felt wrong to exclude Tommy. "Partly, yeah. My brother did the mountainscape, but I did the spray-painting of the lights. Your ex's issue hasn't come out in National Geographic yet, I noticed, but I did some googling to get an idea."

Maura had made it all the way back around so that she was facing Jane, and laughed at the bright pink stripe that was now glowing on her nose. "This is without question the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me. It's beautiful. And I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to insist on dismantling it later so I can transport it to my meditation room at home because I know it will give that room the perfect ambiance."

"Wow, really?" Jane asked, pleased that Maura would deem anything she'd done as good enough to display in her own house. "In that case, I guess there's only one thing that could make this all even better."

By way of response, Maura slipped her arms around Jane's neck. "I hope this is what you meant."

Her eyes were still adjusting to the dark, preventing Maura from jumping in as voraciously as she'd like to, but the pink on Jane's nose almost worked like a guidepost to her lips. The kiss was soft, but it swept through Jane, right to her bones. Maura broke it off, nuzzling Jane's nose as she repositioned herself just slightly, and Jane's arms wrapped around her before Jane initiated another, deeper kiss.

This hadn't been her plan, but it was too perfect to protest: Jane's comment had actually been about a box of fudge clusters she had planted on a nearby shelf, but she decided those could wait.