Ficlet: Song for whoever (Rizzoli and Isles, Jane/Maura)

[thegirl20]

TITLE: Song for whoever
AUTHOR: the_girl_20
FANDOM: Rizzoli and Isles
PAIRING: Jane/Maura
SUMMARY: Maura's never been much of a writer
RATING: PG-13 
WORD COUNT: ~800
DISCLAIMER: Don't own 'em. 
SPOILERS: None.
AUTHORS' NOTES: So, gilligankane suggested that I write some Rizzoli and Isles.  I informed her of my sad inability to write.  But then, bizarrely, a song came on about writing songs and this happened.  It’s quite therapeutic to write about someone being unable to write when you are unable to write.  And then faithinthepoor demanded that I post it here instead of tumblr so that she can comment.

Maura’s never been much of a writer.  Oh, she can turn out an academic paper or journal article with the best of them.  But those are full of facts and figures.  She is not required to talk about how she feels or use imagery or literary constructs.  But Jane.  Oh, Jane. 

Somewhat surprisingly, Jane has a way with the written word.  Maura wonders if it’s because she is sometimes ‘creative’ with the language she uses in her police reports. When they were ‘just friends’, Jane would send her funny e-mails to make her laugh when she was frustrated on a case, or silly texts to coax a smile out of her after bad date.  She’d had to google the combinations of punctuation marks that littered those e-mails and texts.  She is now proficient in emoticons and abbreviations and is pleased when she uses one that Jane hasn’t heard of. 

Since embarking on their romantic relationship, Jane’s literary pursuits have only increased in frequency and fervour.  Maura now routinely finds post-it notes on her fridge door with declarations of love, or silly rhymes or drawings of hearts on them.  She receives cards in the intra-office mail with limericks in them that make her blush.  She once found an envelope in her underwear drawer, which held a single piece of paper.  On it, in Jane’s untidy scrawl, were some of the most beautiful sentiments Maura had ever read.  Everything Jane felt about her, captured in cheap blue ink and recorded on BPD headed notepaper.  It was perfect.

Her attempts to reciprocate are somewhat less flowery and generally quite to the point.  She’s not bad at the basics.  ‘I love you’ and ‘You’re beautiful’ flow naturally from her pen or her fingers. Those things are not in question.  But when it comes to similes and metaphors, Maura is lost.  Jane had once caught her extracting strands of hair from a hairbrush. Due to her damned inability to lie, it hadn’t take Jane long to find out her intentions for those strands of hair.  She had planned to analyse them to determine the exact shade; to ensure that any comparisons she may draw to Jane’s hair would be both accurate and effective.  Well, to say that Jane found it hilarious would be an understatement.  Maura had been embarrassed until Jane had kissed her reddened cheeks and told her not to worry ; that every time Maura looked at her, she could read poetry in her eyes.  Of course, that had just made Maura more determined to write something worthy of her feelings for Jane.

She’d never been much of a letter writer.  Even as a child at school, her letters home had been mostly filled with descriptions of activities or lessons, with very few words dedicated to her feelings about being in a foreign country alone.  Most of her past lovers hadn’t lasted long enough to warrant a love letter.  With Ian she remembers sitting down and attempting to write love letters, fancying herself as a Byron or a Hemingway.  In reality, she ended up writing accounts of the latest procedures she’d carried out, or seeking his opinion on a new medical technique she’d read about.  She could manage the ‘letter’ part, but the ‘love’ always eluded her.  She’s determined to find it.  For Jane.

With a fountain pen and monogrammed writing paper, she sits at her desk and thinks about how Jane makes her feel.  It frustrates her, to know so very definitely that she loves this woman beyond what she thought possible, and yet be unable to quantify it.

Words feel clunky and inadequate in the face of the warmth that spreads out in her chest whenever Jane smiles at her, or the sensation that shoots through her every time Jane touches her.  How is it possible to document something that changes every second of every day?  

Romantic literature tends to focus on the heart as the source of love, but Maura finds it difficult to associate a lump of myogenic muscular tissue with the pure joy she feels just from being in Jane’s presence.  She knows that her feelings, as indescribable as they may be, come from one place and one place only, and that it belongs to Jane.  So she writes the most romantic thing she can think of.

I love you with all of my brain.