A/N: This started as an angsty giflet on Tumblr but ArcadiaArden msg'd me and very politely demanded a happy ending. Because she writes amazing things and I figure I can hold it over her head, here it is. Big thanks to Socks-Lost for finding all my screw ups...
Chapter 1 is the original giflet and chapter 2 is the fix. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy!
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Maura never held much stock in pop music, or rap, or country, or, quite honestly, with music that had lyrics. She always felt they distracted from the melody; she couldn't ever seem to focus on the music while the words were bouncing around in her mind. Disorganized. Discordant. Disordered.
She would sit in the front seat of the cruiser, inspecting her nails and frowning in slight disapproval, as Jane and Frost howled along with whatever song happened to be playing on the radio. The type of music would switch depending on who was in the car with them: Korsak insisted on the classic rock station, Barry and Frankie liked rap and R&B, and when it was just Jane and her, the top 40 station, with its ridiculously redundant playlist, ruled the speakers. Jane happily listened to it all, more often than not, singing at the top of her lungs. Maura was amazed at Jane's encyclopedic knowledge of the words to so many songs.
Despite her difficulty in sorting out the lyrics from the music, there were some words that leapt into her ear and sunk in. They would pop into her head at the strangest times and she could do nothing but think about them, and so many of them just didn't make any sense:
Lost in your eyes, drowning in blue. Are the person's eyes blue? Or is the lost person in the ocean? Or perhaps blue meant sad, but it's not possible to drown in an emotion.
They say count your blessings now before they're long gone. When should she have started counting? Is this something that should have been kept on a running total? Will they all be gone at once?
I will walk through the fire and let it burn. But why? Wouldn't it be faster and less painful to put it out or to just go around?
What's going on in that beautiful mind…
This one, Maura understood. She often wondered what went on in Jane's head, what these lyrics might mean to her, how she reconciled the sound with the fury. It was just such a mystery. Maura loved poetry and she loved music but both of them together was just sensory overload. So often they didn't match and that made her uncomfortable. Too often, the words belied the emotion of the music. Frequently, they were both so metaphoric that it hurt her head to try and translate them into a language she understood.
Maura relied on her ability to read faces, microexpressions, the lift of an eyebrow, the pinpoint of a pupil. There was no metaphor there. So after years of watching Jane, of feeling the velvetly softness of those eyes rake across her own body, Maura felt confident enough to ask if the feelings that she, herself, harbored were reciprocated.
Jane laughed. Thinking the question a joke, she then proceeded to ask if there were any results in that would offer insight on the case. The little whimper escaped before Maura could stop it. Suddenly another lyric became clear.
What you hear is the sound of my breaking heart...
After that little misunderstanding was cleared up, Maura started driving herself to crime scenes. Alone. It was just easier that way. Then she could listen to all the talk radio that she wanted…and no one would see her tears.