A/N: Okay, guys. This is a two-shot, the second part is already halfway written. I'm messing around with it while I work on my hunger games crossover and the sequel to playing house. Yes, it's depressing. No, I'm not sorry. Yes, I'm a sucker for a happy ending. Kind of. Sort of. But not yet. Leave me reviews! I love them!

"Jane."
"Mmmbusy."

"You're sleeping."
"That's busy."

Maura drops her purse onto the foot of the bed and that's the exact moment that Jane knows she's in trouble. That is such a foreign thing for Maura to do- it's like she's turned into a brand new person and Jane knows it's got to do with her bruised sides and two broken ribs. It could have been worse. She's learned not to think about it.

She sits up too quickly and the sudden pain flashes spots across her vision. She gasps and winces before she can remember that Maura's already pissed at her and that won't make it better. Maura is beside her within seconds, all concerned eyes and fluttering hands. Jane shoos her away, shaking her head. "I'm fine. I'm fine," and Maura recoils like she's been physically shocked.

"No. You're not fine. You could have died." That argument does nothing for Jane, even coming from Maura. Even coming from her own mother. "Yeah, sure. Just like every other day of my life. It's my job. I've seen worse."

Maura gets up and disappears into the closet- their closet, as of three weeks ago- to put her shoes away and undress. Because it's part of the territory that comes with a stable relationship (not that she would have needed permission anyway) Jane rolls painfully onto her stomach and watches.

Maura's body is her favorite body. Not that she's seen a lot of naked bodies, exactly, but she knows with real conviction that Maura is the most beautiful woman in the world. She follows with her eyes the graceful curve of Maura's neck to where it meets her shoulder and finds the line of her spine when Maura unbuttons and slips out of her shirt. Then she realizes watching really isn't enough, and, at the risk of Maura telling her she needs to be confined to bed rest for the remainder of her life, she follows.

Her hand starts at the back of Maura's neck. She pushes the hair out of her way and trails it along Maura's back, down to her hips. The ME stills in her arms but doesn't lean into Jane's touch like she has so many times before. To fix that, Jane winds her arms around Maura's waist and pulls her back so that Maura's back presses against her chest. Her lips find the place below Maura's ear that she knows is sensitive and she expects the smaller woman to give up and fall pliant in her arms.

Not tonight.

"You can't keep doing this," she says instead. The comment goes ignored because Jane is too busy tasting Maura's skin, stroking her hipbones with her thumbs. She's hoping that's an empty sentence, but as it turns out, tonight isn't exactly going as on point as she'd like it to go.

"Jane."
"Fine, okay, I'll bite. Doing what?"

Finally, gloriously, Maura leans back and rests all her weight against Jane. It's only for a moment. Only long enough that Jane misses the contact once it's gone. What she misses even more, though, is the skin bared to her, because Maura's next move is to slip into a loose shirt and brush past her into the bedroom.

Jane follows but stops in her tracks when Maura turns around, arms crossed. "Every choice you made yesterday was monumentally stupid." Ouch. "Okay, that's…you're exaggerating."

"I'm not. You made horrible decisions and you put yourself in danger when waiting for backup would have been the safer choice."
"I caught him."
"He caught youand you were lucky that he didn't kill you."

Jane can feel herself getting more and more indignant every moment. It's not like her to be like this, but it's not like Maura to come right out and attack her, either, and her defensive side is not a pretty side. She knows she's heading there and she makes a conscious effort to check herself. It doesn't entirely work. "Lucky? It's my job to do what I did." Maura makes a frustrated noise and actually throws her hands into the air like some kind of cartoon, which would have been funny under other circumstances but instead makes things worse. "It's not your job to make rash and dangerous decisions! Your job is already high-risk," Jane scoffs and crosses her arms, but something in Maura's eyes is so bright and potent that she has to look away, "you don't need to be upping the chances that you'll get killed because you refuse to wait for backup. You're not invincible."

"I'm also not stupid," is Jane's immediate reply. Heat is prickling up her neck and arms and she's not sure she's been this angry with Maura since Tommy was arrested for Polk's murder. "Well, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were."

There's a pause then, and Jane wonders if that's really it. Something tells her that Maura's real point is yet to be made. She gets back into bed because she feels miserable and standing for so long is hurting her ribs anyway. They fight like this, sometimes, arguing over stupid things. Stupid things like what's appropriate at work and what's a good choice for dinner. In fact, the more Jane thinks about it….at least half of the time, lately, they've been arguing. It's not that she doesn't love living with Maura, because she does. Maura is home. But it's not easy, either, and she can't figure out why it didn't work out as perfectly as they planned it to.

It's like Maura visibly deflates. Her shoulders drop and she looks away. She looks exhausted- she looks worried- and Jane feels so disgustingly guilty about it that she wants to throw up. The thing is, though…she still doesn't agree. Jane leans against the headboard, and this time, when Maura sits on the edge of the bed, she doesn't even move.

"It's not just you that you're risking when you do things like that. Not anymore."

Now Jane looks and wishes that she hadn't. Maura's not on the brink of tears, exactly, but Jane can see the sadness in her eyes, and she doesn't understand it. "It's me, too. Every time you disappear and someone tells me you're in pursuit, it's like…I can't breathe again until I know for sure that you're safe."

Jane opens her mouth to speak, but Maura glances at her and the look in her eyes gives a resounding don't. "I almost lost you, once. All you remember is shooting yourself through your stomach to save the day, but I remember everything. I held my hands over your stomach and I couldn't do anything to stop the bleeding. The ambulances were coming but I had no way of knowing how much time you had- how much time I had. I already knew I was in love with you. And I already knew that losing you would kill me."

It's not like Maura to be so overdramatic. Jane can see that she means it, too, which is even scarier, really. She's vividly reminded of when Doyle kidnapped Maura and they all thought they were going to be too late to save her. She's even more vividly reminded of being trapped in a room with Hoyt, bound, and knowing he was seconds from taking away everything she loved in the world. From taking away Maura.

Against all odds they found each other. And it occurs to Jane that if they were plucked out of time and dropped somewhere entirely different, sometime entirely different, they would still find each other. So why does it feel like they're fighting on the same side of a losing battle? What's this third party that's driving them apart?

It's the job. It has always been the job.

And Jane will always choose the job.

She chooses the job because it's safe, because she knows it inside and out. She chooses the job because she's afraid of the implications of choosing anything else. Because she's spent so many years building her idea of who she is around being a detective that without it she's not sure what she'd do.

"I told you once that I dated two kinds of people," she says slowly, avoiding Maura's gaze. Maura agrees, moving closer, as if that's going to make things any easier. "Yes. And I always thought I was the second kind, but I'm not." She's the kind that hates that I'm a cop. The only people worth anything are.

Jane gets up off the bed and makes it less than a foot before Maura's got her by the wrist. She takes the hint and sits again, and then, before she has time to avoid it, Maura's kissing her.

It's a relief. Maybe if they just keep doing this they'll forget this stupid argument and not have it ever again. Jane's ready to accept that, even though she's hurt, even though she's frustrated. Maura pulls away, though, and looks up with such intensity, such love in her eyes that Jane's afraid she might actually be feeling something on a visceral level. It's like her whole body reacts to the look in Maura's eyes- she jumps and moves back a little, out of Maura's space, scared of this new realm of emotional intimacy.

"I love you. I love the reasons why you're a cop. I love that you're brave and kind and strong, that you care about what happens to other people and that you want to change the world. But I don't love your job. I don't love that you could die any minute of any day. And I don't love that you make it so easy." I don't, Jane almost says, or would have said, if she thought it would do any good. But in a way she knows it wouldn't. Instead she says, "I can't stop doing my job, Maura. This is who I am. You know that; you knew that from the start."

Maura turns away, hands clasped in her lap. Jane can see the tension gather in the curve of her knotted fingers, can see it travel up her arms and settle in her shoulders. "I know," is Maura's reply, "and I'd never forgive myself if I made you choose."

Something snaps in Jane. It's not a shift, it's a fucking snap, like two halves of her broke apart and she can feel them pushing at her skin. She's off the bed again within seconds, ignoring the pain, ignoring the look on Maura's face, ignoring everything but her frustration. "Then don't. I'm a big girl. I can choose." She grabbed her jacket from where it was hanging on the closet door and moved to stand in the doorway of the bedroom. Maura was clearly shocked; her body was rigid and her mouth had fallen open. "You don't have to make decisions for me. You don't get to make decisions for me. I've been doing this job a lot longer than we've been together- I know what I'm doing- and you don't get to choose this either. This is me leaving. You don't even have to work for a second to let me go, because I'm leaving."

God, what is she even doing? How is she thinking she'll be able to sleep through another night with this vision of Maura burned onto the backs of her eyelids? She sees a tear fall free from Maura's eye and she swallows past a lump in her throat. A large part of her wants more than anything for Maura to stop her. For Maura to grab her and kiss her and fuck her and make her forget this whole argument, these past two days. Make her forget that she's a coward who will run from love as long as her job is there to distract her. She says it again, shakily, her own tears coming fast and hard now. "I'm leaving."

.,.

She drives for a half hour until she realizes that she's got no idea where she's going and is still sobbing like a maniac. She pulls over into an empty gas station parking lot and tries to calm down- the tears have stopped, but the sobbing hasn't. She's essentially hysterical. She can't think anything except that Maura would know how to fix this. She digs a water bottle out of the shit pile in the backseat and downs half of it before she can breathe normally again.

Her hands are still shaking by the time she manages to pick up the phone. For whatever reason, Tommy is the one she calls. And he picks up on the first ring, which is quickly enough that Jane has to take a moment before she speaks. When she does speak, it all comes out in a rush.

"Tommy, I need a place to stay. Maura and I had a fight, it was bad, I left, and I just need some place to…"
"Janie?"
"I fucked up, Tommy." Her hand is sweating and shaking so hard she's afraid she's going to drop her phone. The other hand comes up so she can press the heel of it into her forehead. "Can I stay with you?" There's a long stretch of silence where Jane's sure Tommy's weighing his options. "Of course, yeah," he says eventually. She croaks a thank you and hangs up the phone before she can start crying again.

.,.

A month goes by.

Somehow Maura reconciles herself with the fact that Jane left her. She gets up in the morning, gets dressed, goes to work, does her job, and avoids contact with Jane. They work together- it's not easy. Some days the best she can do it refuse to make eye contact. Some days she can make eye contact. Those days she usually goes home and tries not to cry about it.

Even losing Ian hadn't been this hard, and she had been in love with Ian for years. The few short months she's been with Jane have changed her so much, and with Jane ripped away from her, her life has fallen into shambles. After that month marker has passed, she resigns herself to the idea that Jane is never coming back.

What this means to her is that she starts accepting offers, little by little. She lets a clean-cut young exec buy her a drink, takes his number, throws it out (he's too young for her anyway, and too blonde). She goes on a date with a lawyer who she met on a previous case that runs into her in Starbucks. Men are easier to come by for her- or maybe she refuses to think about the alternative because it would be too much.

Nothing comes close to comparing to Jane.

.,.

Jane, for her part, learns very quickly that living with Tommy now is not much different than when they had been teenagers at home.

He doesn't clean. Even she cleans more than he does. She gets used to it, but for a while she absolutely aches for cleanliness and order. Maura has made a monster out of her. She's not stupid. She can see that Maura is trying to move on. Working together isn't as fun as it used to be. It's business and only business now, though the discomfort of the first few weeks has passed. That all comes roaring back when Jane realizes that Maura is seeing people.

How does she know?

Well, she knows Maura. And she knows what Maura looks like after a late night. Maura is having late nights again- coming to work just that little bit more tired than the day before. It feels like getting punched in the stomach when Jane thinks about it. If Maura's not with her…then who is Maura with? Who's getting to touch her? Because Jane sure as hell knows that nobody could ever be as careful as her, as reverent as her, as good as her.

Nobody will ever love Maura the way she does. She knows that for a fact. Because the love she has for Maura isn't going away, instead it's getting stronger until Jane has to contain herself from grabbing Maura and kissing her whenever they're in a room together. It's been a little over two months when she snaps.

She's sitting on the couch with Tommy when it happens, watching the Celtics lose miserably to the Giants. Her feet are in his lap, and each of them has a beer in hand. It's nice, really- that's one thing about this situation that turned out okay. They're closer now. She's starting to understand him a little better. He's not a bad kid, he's just a little confused, a little too easily provoked. But isn't she, too? She wonders if Maura would tell her that two similar people go different ways depending on their situations. She wonders a lot of things about Maura, including but not limited to thoughts about whose sheets Maura's tangled up in these mornings, whose name she says in the middle of the night. It's enough to know that it's not her name, not their sheets.

.,.

Tommy puts his plan into action halfway through the third quarter. He's been on and off texting Maura this week anyway, so it's not out of character for him to text her and ask if she's holding up okay. She has no way of knowing that Jane's living with him, anyway.

TEXT FROM MAURA:

I'm alright.

He taps out a reply immediately, ignoring the announcers on the TV and Jane's ensuing protests. Need a distraction? Her answer is almost spontaneous. I'd like that. Maybe what I need is a good game of chess. She couldn't have set it up any better for him. He hesitates, though, remembering that this is more than likely going to end with Jane's fist in his face. It's going to have to be worth it. Maybe a little more than a game of chess, he answers.

And then he goes to the bathroom to wait for all hell to break loose.

.,.

Jane's not a snoopy person by nature. She's really not. It's just that it's Tommy, and he's been texting this whole night, and she's worried about him.

So when he gets up to leave and his phone buzzes, she only hesitates guiltily for a few seconds before grabbing it and almost dropping it in shock.

TEXT FROM MAURA:

maybe.

She scrolls frantically through the conversation and almost blacks out with indescribable rage. Whatever trouble she had been worried about, this is worse. Much worse.

.,.

It works.

He's barely out of the bathroom before Jane's fist connectss with his jaw.