disclaimers: characters not mine, blah blah.
A/N: scientist nerd pretending to be able to write. let me know if my writing veers too close to being purple prose. feedback/criticism/whatever always welcome. thanks!
Whenever Jane claimed it started with that sneeze, Maura refused to believe her.
It – this thing between them – had been building up for eons; a gradual crescendo all those years they had been work colleagues, and then multiplying several fold in amplitude the past few years that they had fallen into being best friends.
For Maura, as cliché as she knew she sounded even when playing out the events in her head, it had started the moment she had met Jane. She had been called to a crime scene, a murder in a hotel room, the day before her official start date as Medical Examiner at the Boston Police Department. The dispatcher had been apologetic enough for bothering her since she was technically not even employed there yet, but murders don't pay heed to convenience and there hadn't been anyone else available. She was the last one there, already angry at her relaxing evening plans being cut short, when she saw someone standing dangerously close to the dead body. Her body.
"Excuse me, can you please move away from the body. Now." Maura hadn't meant her tone to be so clipped, but it was her first crime scene and it was important to set precedence, be authoritative.
The someone turned around; it was a woman. A strikingly beautiful woman who pulled herself up to her full height haughtily before retorting, "Who the hell are you?"
"Dr. Maura Isles. I'm the new Medical Examiner and I believe that is my dead body that you are dangerously close to touching right now. I suggest you back off right now before you contaminate the evidence and make my job harder."
There was snickering in the background. "Looks like you just got told off, Jane," someone piped up helpfully.
Maura watched this woman bristle, could almost see the waves of anger that radiated off her and commanded the entire room into silence just by turning around to look at the other officers. When she turned to Maura, however, the anger had dissipated and all that was left was the beginning of a smirk and a smoldering gaze. "I'm Detective Jane Rizzoli. She's all yours, doctor. "
It was the smirk that did it.
But Maura was learning slowly that sometimes accuracy could wasn't as important as being a good girlfriend, so she let Jane have her own version of the story. A story that started with that sneeze.