A/N One-shot. Another fic that's been sitting in my folder for quite some time, just waiting to be reviewed for the hundredth time. Hope you enjoy! Don't forget to review :)
Prompt: We all know Jane and Maura met while Jane was still in vice. Let's pretend that Jane has already been in homicide for a year or two before Maura arrives. So, slightly AU.
Susie looked up from her microscope, and across the hall to see a sight she hadn't seen in many moons. Jane Rizzoli, arms crossed, eyes squinted in critique, eyeing the temporary/fill-in Medical Examiner. The detective had a thing with Medical Examiners: either she hated them, or loved them. And she was very loyal to those that she loved.
Ten years previous.
Newly hired Susie Change, Intern to the Senior Criminalist, stood at her assigned work-station of the day, hovering over dozens of germ cultures when she heard the familiar footfalls of Detective Jane Rizzoli come down the hall. Her head popped up to see her idol, her role-model and her inspiration for going into criminology, swing open the lab doors, holding a ball of toilet-paper to her forehead.
"Sup Chang." Jane smiled.
"Detective, are you alright?"
"Yeah, just caught a stray elbow from a perp. Where's the doc?"
The shorter woman pointed down the hall, "Bone room. Would you like me to page her?"
The detective smiled, "Yes please. Tell her I'm in the autopsy suite." the detective left and Susie picked up the morgue phone to page down her boss, Dr. Elizabeth Morgans.
Within minutes, Susie looked up once again from her microscope to see the ME berating the detective while applying stitches to yet another wound. Susie had once heard that Dr. Morgans started as ME around the time Jane first started as a rookie, and the two had hit it off from the start. Susie pegged it as mutual support between two women working in a male-dominated profession. And now that Jane Rizzoli was in homicide, they were even closer.
A year later
Jane arrives in the lab once again, her nose starting to slightly bruise due to a slight break, "Susie!" she called out
The criminalist, now hired on full time upon graduation, looked up from scanning fingerprints.
"The doc in?"
"Yes, but…" she was unable to finish her statement as Jane turned and walked out abruptly. Susie jumped off her stool and dropped the scanner to follow the detective down the hall, "Detective!" she called behind Jane, but Jane had already stepped into the Medical Examiner's office. She followed none the less, "Jane! She's not who you think…" she followed Jane through the office into the morgue and ran straight into the detective as she stood staring at the woman behind the autopsy table. The woman dressed in a chic Chanel skirt and high heals. The woman whose hair was perfectly coifed and beautiful. The woman who was most definitely not Dr. Morgans, the recently transferred to Cambridge Dr. Morgans, but in fact, the new ME, Dr. Maura Isles.
Susie knocked Jane forward a little, bringing her from her confused stupor, turning back to Susie, "Where's Dr. Morgans?" she asked, jabbing a thumb in the doctor's direction.
The woman spoke before Susie had a chance to, "Dr. Morgans has been transferred to another district."
Jane turned to the woman with an angry look, "Who the hell are you?"
The woman seemed taken aback, "I'm Dr. Maura Isles, Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I'm the new Medical Examiner here, and I transferred Dr. Morgans to another district because the mayor asked for me to be placed here."
"Since when do the Chief Medical Examiners actually do the dirty work of autopsies? I always thought it was a desk job." Jane's arms crossed and her shoulders rolled back. Susie knew that stance. She was preparing for a fight.
"I'm not like other Chief Medical Examiners." the doctor firmly stood her ground, "The change is permanent as long as I hold this position. I'd get used to it if I were you."
"Change is stupid." Jane spit back
The doctor scoffed, then her eyes traveled to the criminalist who was peaking out from behind the rude detective. "And who may I ask, are you?"
"Susie Chang." Jane responded for her, "One of your brilliant criminalists. But you must be too high and mighty as Chief Medical Examiner to know that."
Isles gritted her teeth, "I know who she is, though I'm not familiar with faces yet. I've read the files of all my employees. Junior Criminalist Chang, please return to you duties."
"No, Susie, stay." Jane spoke, staring down the doctor.
"Criminalist Chang, please do as I say."
"No, Susie."
Susie felt like a ping pong ball. She didn't know whether to stay or go. She looked up into the fiery brown eyes of the detective then across to the ME, who was giving her a very commanding look and decided she liked her job better, "Sorry Jane." and she fled out the morgue doors and across the hall, yelling back a "Sorry Doctor Isles!" behind her
Jane shook her head at Susie, but knew she was right in her decision. She turned back to the doctor.
"Since now you know who I am." the doctor started, "and you've disrupted my morgue, would you kindly tell me who you are and why you're here."
Jane stared at her for a minute, then opened her mouth, "Detective Jane Rizzoli, Homicide."
Maura looked away for a minute in thought, "You're Detective Vince Korsak's partner, am I correct?"
Jane just stared at her.
The Doctor's eyebrows raised, "You still haven't told me why you're here." she took a few steps towards the detective.
"I came to see Dr. Morgans, to help me with something. But I guess that won't be happening any time soon."
Maura saw the forming bruise and her eyebrows furrowed in concern, "Detective, did you realize you have a broken nose."
Jane rolled her eyes, "No, I didn't know. Thank you for pointing it out, captain obvious."
Maura sighed, "By the inflection and tone of your words, I can infer that you are using sarcasm, yet, I'm not familiar in the type of speech, so therefore I can't fully understand your need for it in this instance."
Jane huffed, "Could you just pop it out for me?"
"Pop what out?"
"My nose."
"What?" Maura seemed horrified, "No, of course not!"
Jane's arms waved, gesturing towards the room, "That's why I came down here. Morgans always fixed me when I got hurt."
"No, you need a hospital, Detective."
Jane watched Maura pull out forceps from a drawer in a rolling cabinet and her eyebrows furrowed, "That's not where Morgans kept the forceps."
The doctor looked up, seemingly startled at Jane's presence. She hadn't heard her come in, "I know, I've moved things around to facilitate convenience."
Later that day, Maura used her fingers to pull a bullet out of a victim, instead of an instrument.
"That's definitely not how Morgans did that."
The doctor didn't even look up, "There's been a study recently published that dictates the use of fingers rather than an instrument to retrieve a bullet because the instrument often leaves marks when not properly used, and can mess with the overall identification of the bullet's original owner."
Jane didn't respond, unwillingly agreeing with the point.
Jane watched Maura assess a scene, taking her time before examining the body. In her frustration, she grunted, "Will you just get to it?" Maura just gave her a steely look and went on with her process.
Vince, her partner, elbowed her, "Stop." he whispered
"But she's taking so long."
He elbowed her again, "I know you miss Morgans, but she's not coming back, and this is how it is now, just accept it."
And she did. Over the next few months, as the doctor and the detective started to work more and more closely, Jane saw that Maura was actually making the system much more efficient. Cases were moving along a little faster because Maura took so much care in her examinations and her reports, making it easier for the detectives to catch the bad guys. And not long after that, the two actually became best friends. And Maura became more and more willing to stitch up the detective whenever she was injured.
Which brings us to today.
Susie could not see the detective's face through her mane of wild hair, but knew by her stance that she was aggravated. An older gentleman, an ME from upstate, was leaning over the body of their most recent victim, while Jane stood off to the side, seething, as the old man took his sweet ol' time. Susie, in her few run-ins with the doctor, had noticed that he talked out loud to himself, telling odd stories about the weirdest things, even if no one was in the room. Getting information from him about an autopsy was difficult to say the least. What would take Maura ten minutes to figure out, took him about an hour or more.
Brunette hair shifted as Jane looked across the hall to Susie, rolling her eyes with a grimace. Susie gave a reassuring smile back and giggled to herself as Jane threw her head back, mock falling asleep.
The door to the Beacon Hill house swung open as Jane entered her home, arms laden with a plastic sack of take-out and a new bag of dog food. She spotted her very pregnant wife lounging on their sofa, a bowl of ice-cream sitting precariously on her belly.
Maura smiled, "Hi honey."
"Maur, you need to come back to work quick. I'm about to kill the new ME." Jane dropped her armload of things onto the counter.
"Jane," Maura laughed, "Today is my first day on leave. You've been without me for…" she looked at her watch, "nine hours."
"But honey, he does things all screwy. He's messed up your whole system."
Maura just smiled.
"How are you not upset with this? He's completely rearranged your morgue. Susie is going nuts."
Maura put the last spoonful of ice cream in her mouth and placed the bowl on the coffee table, her hands returning to her belly, "I have more important things to worry about. Plus, Susie is more than capable of running the lab and taking charge. I have no worry that she'll keep everything in order while I'm gone."
Jane just smiled, as she bent over to give quick attention to her Jo Friday, who was jumping up and down at her feet. She stood back up and tore into the bags.
"Ahem." Maura cleared her throat.
Jane turned with a confused expression, "What?"
Maura gestured towards her body, "Aren't you forgetting something?"
Jane lunged towards the couch and kissed her wife softly, "Hi baby." she murmured against Maura's lips with a smile. She leaned down farther and kissed the protruding belly, "Hi baby."
Maura grabbed her wife's chin and brought her in for another, more heated kiss, "You know what I want right now? Maura whispered, breathily
Jane smiled into the kiss, "What's that?"
"To dig into whatever amazing food you've brought home, is that Italian?"
Jane laughed, pulling away, "Yes. I got you some gnocchi. Let me just dish it up."
Maura waved her hand, "No, let's just eat it out of the containers."
Jane's eyebrows raised, "What? Dr. Isles? Eating from the plastic containers?" she asked in mock incredulity
"Oh shut up and give me the food."
After grabbing wine for herself and water for Maura, the food and the utensils, Jane plopped onto the couch next to her wife.
Jane's phone vibrated. She pulled it out to see a text from Susie telling her of the ME's findings and her most recent update of his moving things around in Maura's office.
"Maur, he's moving things in your office. It's bad enough he's reorganized the morgue, but now your office."
The honey-blond sighed, "Jane, just take it in strides. Remember how much you disliked me when I first started. You've just got to get used to him like you did me. Just do what you did with me."
Jane looked off to the distance in thought, "Become his best friend, secretly date him for a year, marry him and then… wait. He's a man. I can't knock him up."
Maura shook her head at her wife's antics, "Oh Jane."
"Don't worry." the brunette kissed her wife's cheek, "He's got nothing on you, baby."
