Lunch with culture, which today is Slowly, slowly by coolbyrne who also walks among us as @the-last-rat-standing. 2915 words with a possible entrée of 1814 words for the person who wants it all.

The recommendation I intended to publish today got disqualified as it suddenly grew another chapter. Thus “Slowly, slowly” got bumped up. :-) Complications continue as this is technically a sequel to another one-shot but imho it stands so well on its own and I like it so much that I will go ahead anyway. If you don’t like that, sue Tom Cruise.

“Slowly, slowly” starts with the ominous concept of Jane Rizzoli trying to be clever. She is, but in a very limited span of activities. Wedding offers are not her forte. She ignores the wisdom of producers everywhere (”do not work with children or animals”) and tries to propose by proxy using Bass to deliver the ring. Can you spot the many errors of judgement in that single paragraph?

Maura starts questioning her mental state when she sits vibrating from stress in front of a Sox game that she is obviously not watching. Bass has vanished with the ring, and Jane goes hunting. “Find that damn turtle, her heart told her. Tortoise, her brain corrected.“ And thus I squee. Then she immediately starts tangling herself up in evasions and lies as Maura gets increasingly curious and you’d think Jane would know from interrogation that once you start fudging things you will fall on your face. In my mind she is aware of this but love simply makes her that dim and she can’t help herself. I don’t know if this is what the author intended but this is what I’m going with.

Jane leaves minus ring, with Maura still unproposed (unpropositioned? I’ll never master this language) and with Bass in the wind. As she arrives at work the next morning Maura is there. So is the ring...

Lunch with culture, which today is Split seams by Alias424. Also available to cultured readers as @alias424 on this very site.

Split seams starts with a mystery. Maura is ducking under crime tape and feels the slit of her skirt tear. That is mildly odd, but the mystery is that the skirt is whole. Later, her scrub pants start falling off and they keep doing it, or at least it feels like they are.

Clothes do not usually become possessed, and Maura - being logical - devises a test based on a theory that is very illogical. The results point in one predictable direction.

Her inner description of Jane is spot on “Jane is stubborn and so damn confusing that it would be easier to dissect a cadaver blindfolded than to get her to have an actual conversation—and Maura has had quite enough of the innuendo-laced wisecracks from that (oh-to-tempting) mouth.“ and she tries to start a serious conversation with the Queen of Evasion:

'Jane? A word.' 'Freckle.'

Jane bravely attempts to outwit and/or derail Maura from her line of questioning but it’s a fight she is ill equipped for. Outthinking the Boston scum is no problem but the resident genius is an apex predator mind-wise. The struggle is brief but highly amusing.

In contrast to yesterday’s meaty and solid lunch story this is very light and fluffy, like a very high-class pastry. I love it. The 4221 words fly by and Alias424 does her wonderful trick of writing one thing and demonstrating that what’s actually happening (or being said) is a bit deeper and more intense.

Lunch with culture, which today is the Missing detail by RileysHell. It’s a one-shot but it’s long-ish at 6989 words.

This starts out with a surprise as Jane is wrapped in a pair of loving arms after a long and tiring workday. What’s surprising is not the arms but who they belong to. Emily.

It seems like domestic bliss for a short while, until reality seeps through. Emily has a Problem with Jane being a cop. Considering that canon Jane is 85% cop and 15% human being, this is not a good sign. When Jane has been going on autopilot and forgetting to pick up stuff for Emily, things go from bad to worse in a hurry. Emily vents some frustrations and Jane tries to do damage control in the worst possible way: by attempting to call on that woman to help Emily out of the jam Jane put her in. Anyone who has ever been in a relationship knows what “that woman” sounds like. The exact words may vary, the icicles under them do not. Invoking Maura does not calm Emily at all - no surprise - and she leaves in a cloud of frustration.

Here I take a break to say that it is very good description of a messy triangle where people do love each other but crap gets in the way. This is not a clean and fun cartoon of a relationship, this has lots of realistic gray shading and dust bunnies in the corners and old baggage carried by all. To quote the poet Gore: It’s a lot like life. I’ve actually been involved in two messes like these and they are tiring but unavoidable.

Back to the story; Jane sends a text to Maura to do some venting on her own, “Why are relationships so difficult? The whole night went straight to hell. I've messed up, again. Emily is mad at me.” and then she makes a tiny, stupid, wonderful mistake that pulls the rug out from under Maura. The dominoes begin to fall, and what looked complicated from the start becomes tangled in that horrible way that human interaction does.

It would be easy to dismiss Emily as some evil witch who wants to keep Jane out of spite, but she actually comes across as pretty reasonable. She’s not bad and she sort-of works with Jane, except that Jane is pretty abrasive in many ways and so is Emily. It’s all nuanced and complicated, and that is one reason I really like RileysHells writing. Not every day (I’m a sucker for bright comedy and happy smut) but sometimes this is just right. It’s a reminder of the messy real world.

Lunch with culture, which today is Jane, Maura and the trunk of a car by Alucino. 6004 words, mostly in total darkness.

There is a stupid bet, totally in character for Jane. Frost and Korsak are betting against her, and she calls Maura away from actual work to climb into the trunk of a car with Jane to see if they fit.

What could possibly go right? Frost and Korsak promply close the lid and go for lunch.

As Jane and Maura make themselves marginally comfortable in the trunk, there is a bit of conversation about if (and how) this was a sensible idea. Maura is running out of patience fast and Jane tries to be her usual ‘charming’ self to defuse the situation.

"God Maur," she sighed, her hand clumsily dropping to land on Maura's shoulder. "Can you be more of a pessimist?" "Oh, yes," Maura replied matter-of-factly. "I definitely could."

There is a series of minor wrestling moves as they try to switch places in the darkness, and some accidental (hm) groping while searching for locks etc. As the grope-fest continues Jane gets less and less interested in actually opening the lock to leave and more focused on matters at hand.

Storywise this is a tiny after-dinner pastry, light and fluffy and sweet. It feels shorter than it actually is, for some reason. I’m a fan of “bottle episodes” on TV where producers make an episode with a minimum of scenery changes etc so save money for other more lavish episodes. It takes a lot of skill to pull it off on TV without the cheapness being glaringly obvious. This is written fiction so money is no objection (except when Maura is offended by the indignity suffered for ONE DOLLAR) but it is still the purest form of bottle episode, taking place in one tiny space and in inky blackness. In a way, it reads like a radio episode of a detective serial from the Olden Days. Note that this is praise, nothing else.

Lunch with culture, which today is Advance and retreat by coolbyrne. 2493 words in constant motion.

This is a one-shot about dynamics and fencing. J and M:s peculiar relationship on one hand, and Maura attempting to teach Jane how to hit someone with a blade on the other. It’s also incidentally about who is bossy (should that be “whom”?) and who pays for lunch.

We start out with a mental image of Jane Rizzoli in fencing gear complete with Ponytail of Righteous Smiting and I can’t say I’m immune to this thought even if Jane, in classic Jane fashion, whines about it. Then Maura enters wearing her set of fencing gear and we all take a collective pause, meditating over the image of Maura squeezed into that.

Hmmm.

There is a brief argument about who is leading who (whom?) astray... “I do yoga once a week. I get up at the ass-crack of dawn almost every day to go for a run. I eat kale. I eat sweet potato fries. Sometimes at the same time! That’s all on you.” which does not go down well with m’selle Maura who parries with style: “68 baseball games, four of which didn’t even involve the Red Sox. 46 Bruins games. 10 Celtic games. Two National Lacrosse matches; one to see if you were interested, the second to make sure you really weren’t. And the entire Patriots season.”  and with the verbal part finished, the physical fencing starts.

I don’t know much about fencing but I do actually have friends who fence, and I know that it is not easy and I know that a newcomer is basically a skewered kebab waiting to happen. Jane is doomed. Maura, being helpful and gentle and not at all devious and cunning (i checked that word twice) decides to help Jane find her proper form. “Jane couldn’t focus on anything other than the heat of Maura’s hands, burning imprints on her stomach and right hip. Their bodies were melded together from back to front, and even through the Kevlar of the protective gear, she could feel every movement of the woman behind her.”

It gets intense. It gets hot. You know Jane, of course there is finally a bet because everything has to be a competition. It could have ended very unwholesome, but it actually doesn’t. As this single chapter wraps, I think it’s up to the reader to imagine what happens in the showers after this dance/fight.

Lunch with culture, which today is the Long and short of it by Alias424 who also hangs out here as @alias424​. 4179 words of opulence and fun. And a measure of hot. Witness:

It's back. (You're going to see nothing but that exact shade of navy when you close your eyes for the next week-and-a-half.) Holy fuck, it's back, and you feel a little unprepared and a whole-lot light-headed.

And you know what she’s writing about, don’t you. Note that I won’t even bother with a question mark, I’m making a flat statement. If you’ve seen the series you know, and she did that by using ONE word - navy - and you still got it. Your head is now filled with navy blue in curved shapes (only curved shapes!), and it took her one second and one key word. How’s that for precision and skill in writing?

It’s written in the stream-of-consciousness mode that I love so much, and with little details that make me squee. Like “she rises like royalty, standing tall and strong before you and folding her arms“ for instance. I can see that in my head. I know the eyebrow wrinkle that’s never mentioned.

Other things are just as spot on, but with a humor that I really miss in the show. Like Jane reacting to the leather jacket; “the string of endless narration in your head is half expletives and half dying whale noises“. I know they couldn’t film that, but still the text is better than the show. This is the kind of writing that keeps me from fretting about the show ending.

Lunch with culture, which today is the Seduction of Jane Rizzoli by lears_daughter.

Maura gets an unexpected case, this time of rodents. As mice make themselves comfortable in her house she grabs tortoise and shoes and migrates to the apartment of Jane while exterminators start to de-pest her house. She decides to sleep on the couch but after it realigns her spine she abandons that plan and joins Jane in bed instead. "I warned you about the couch." "You didn't warn me enough" It’s chaste and organized and everything is fine. Until Maura has time to think about it at work. “She's never felt as comfortable with anyone—friend or lover—as she does with Jane.“ Then the penny drops and she makes the discovery of a lifetime. It worries her a lot, because “If Maura falls in love with Jane, it'll be forever.”

Now Maura has a problem, because Jane can derail her with just one smile when she needs to stay focused. Another major complication is that the exterminators are busy exterminating, so there is a very literal deadline. In one week Maura is moving out again, unless she can convey her discovery to Jane and get her onboard with this. Maura is nothing if not determined: “there is no obstacle she will allow to stand in her way—not even Jane herself”.