Jane sees things.
She doesn't say them out loud, because she's not that kind of girl. She swore to herself long ago that she would never be the gossipy kind; she was always determined to be the furthest thing from her mother she could be, and she knows what it's like to have your personal business be Carla Talucci's and everybody in the neighborhood's business by the next day.
But she sees things; she sees people. It's what makes her a great detective, even if she doesn't always see the sense in disturbing sleeping dogs. They bite. Like the shit Hoyt did to her.
(And maybe she's been around Maura too long, that she actually uses metaphors sometimes. You can shut up.)
She saw the spark in Maura the first time she met her in the cafe; she saw the awkwardness, the lack of social awareness, she saw the impressive memory, she saw that innate generosity that would likely land the fashionista in trouble at some point, because you don't hand a hooker twenty bucks for a dollar cup of coffee and a one-fifty donut. At least the girl wasn't completely naive: still knew what a hooker looked like.
Medical examiners are a necessary weirdness in her line of work, and Dr. Maura Isles is no exception. She talks to the corpses sometimes, and she gets excited about the contents of some dead guy's stomach and the weight of someone's liver, and she can go on for ages about the layers of dirt on a shoe or the different stuff they make newspaper out of or some miniscule detail like that.
But she is exceptionally precise, exceptionally detailed, exceptionally professional. She shuts up about the details if you tell her to, and she isn't offended when you're bored, and she didn't seem surprised, when she first started working at the precinct, that she wasn't invited out for drinks (because nobody wants talk about rigor mortis when you're trying to enjoy a beer and unwind, and Criminalist Chang really seems to like talking about the physiology of floaters, so they're not in the habit of socializing with the morgue staff).
When Detective Rizzoli became Homicide Detective Rizzoli, and actually started to work a lot with the ME's office, Jane wondered why this gorgeous, intelligent, exceptional woman was used to sitting down and shutting up and being ignored—and then she wanted to kick herself and the rest of the world when she tilted her head and kind of got it—and then Maura would smile at her and she'd remember that she and the rest of the world were idiots.
She came close to beating up Crowe on one occasion, and she still grits her teeth whenever she remembers it: "Don't know how you can stand hanging out with the Queen of the Dead as much as you do, Frost. She's a frigid, stuck-up bitch." -"Don't you dare call her cold just because she's got more guts than you'll ever have and that scares the balls off of you, asshole." Frost hadn't even had time to open his mouth to respond to the comment that was originally directed at him, but Crowe had a retort ready for Jane: "Pissed because she's not putting out for you either, Rizzoli?"
She left for the day with a bruise on her jaw; she gave him a black eye and knocked a tooth out before Frost and Crowe's partner could pull her away. Later, Maura had frowned and given her ice to keep the swelling down, and Jane refused to tell her what had happened.
Jane knows Maura flirts. She knows they're a tad closer than "just friends", at least when she compares them to other "girlfriends". Their lives are almost completely intertwined.
She sometimes catches herself flirting back, unconsciously. She knows she could take Maura's head in her hands, comb her fingers through that smooth hair kept shiny with some exotic hair product that she'd never heard of before Maura, and splay her fingers over the small of Maura's back. (She has done that before. Actually, she has probably done all of that at one time or another.)
She would be willing to bet a month's salary that she could press her lips to Maura's, pull off her own shirt, and tongue down the medical examiner's neck to the cleavage she seems to love to display, and her best friend would just make some delicious noise in the back of her throat Jane hasn't had the privilege of hearing before, and press herself closer. (And Jane promises herself that if she ever did that, she would never let Maura leave her bed with that lost look in her eyes and the halfhearted smile Maura wears when she's taken one of her many dates back home at the evening before.)
But Jane Rizzoli doesn't trust herself to do that.
She isn't really into women—not like that, not that she's aware of, even if she felt more comfortable than she thought she would have in a lesbian bar. And it would feel weird if it was just Maura, dishonest somehow to give the impression she's into women, or awkward if she actually told her "I'm not really into this but I do it because it's you." Not that she doesn't say that enough, but yoga classes and dirt baths are not the same as hot lesbian sex.
Not to mention the whole really awkward "I'm not gay, you know, but maybe I'm a little gay for Maura... sure, Tommy, she's hot, but I was not jealous of you two way back when,"-because that's one of those dogs you leave asleep-"Now go be with the ditzy blond mother of your child. And no Ma, I'm not gay and it's none of your business who I sleep with and go bother Frankie about giving you more grandkids!" conversation that would come around eventually.
Besides, she doesn't think about her best friend that way. And she has very colorful things to say about where anyone with different opinions can shove them.
But that's not the main reason Jane doesn't do any of that.
She doesn't do any of that because it's already hard enough on the people she loves when Jane does something stupid.
When Maura sees her best friend jump off a bridge after some guy they've hardly known for a few days.
When Jane shoots the biological father Maura hates, but who was there to protect her, the guy Maura's probably dreamed of knowing ever since Arthur Isles shoved an expensive medical text at her and told her not to tell Constance about the lady next door (and dreams are stubborn little beasts; they don't like to die).
When Jane is shot at, or shoots herself even-best and worst decision she ever made-and feels the blood between her fingers and her heartbeat loud in her ears.
Jane Rizzoli is damn hard to love, and she knows that.
She also knows that Maura suffers enough, already.
Jane knows Maura looks at her like she's the sun after a bleak night, and her fists clench at the thought of how bleak that night must have been, that Jane Clementine Rizzoli is an improvement, and her stomach clenches at the thought of how Maura would look at her if they were lovers.
How Maura would look if they were lovers and Jane was being loaded into an ambulance.
Sometimes, she thinks Maura wouldn't look any different at all.
Author's Note: Inspired by a review saying I should write a companion piece to "The Imitation of Intimacy".
Gestir, look what you made me do. ;) I'm not sure this is quite what you had in mind, but I hope you like it anyways.