The next morning Angela opens breakfast conversation by mentioning flippantly that she's decided to move in with Tommy.

Jane spits out part of her omelet, much to her mother's obvious disgust, and stares at her until she decides to elaborate. "He's doing so well, sweetheart, and I just feel like maybe if I go and keep him company he'll stay out of trouble."

"So, what, you're gonna live with him the rest of his life to keep him out of jail? This is why he never grew the fu-"
"Jane!"
"God, Ma, do you even hear yourself?"
"I know what I'm doing."

Jane watches the foam on the surface of her coffee swirl and rise against the sides of the mug. She remembers vividly Maura saying, once, that the youngest member of the family is often coddled. The thought of Maura gets her thinking, and her next realization comes as suddenly as a punch to the gut, knocking her just as breathless.

"This isn't even about Tommy, is it?"
"What?"

It's ridiculous, because it's not like she even wanted her mother to live with her in the first place, but the reason behind her changing her mind is what makes it feel like a betrayal. "This is about Maura. You're taking her side."

"There are no sides," Angela says, suddenly taking a diplomatic stance but refusing stubbornly to meet her daughter's gaze, "this isn't a war, Janie. And I'm not….agreeing with her. It's just difficult." Jane snorts derisively, pushing her plate away and dropping her head into her hands. "Sure. Supporting your daughter is difficult. I get it."

"I do support you. You were doing your job, you were just…doing what you knew you were supposed to do. But that doesn't change how Maura feels about it, you know."

"I didn't know that, tell me more."

"You know what, don't be a smart aleck. I'm still…on good terms with Doctor Isles, I shared a living space with her for quite some time and I don't think it's fair to take sides, and Tommy's the neutral option."
"God forbid it should look like you're siding with me. And- actually, you said there weren't any sides," Jane looks up accusingly, having caught the loophole Angela left out, "if there weren't any sides then you wouldn't even have thought about leaving."

"You're a grown woman. You need your privacy."
"And Tommy doesn't."
"Don't make this harder than it has to be, babe. I'm just trying to make things easier for both of you."

Breakfast forgotten, Jane rises from her chair and grabs her blazer from the other end of the counter, holstering her gun and turning away so Angela won't see the angry, defiant tears gathering at the corners of her eyes.

"Whatever."

.,.

Maura's still not back, not that anyone expects any differently of her. And because it's day two, Jane gets enough space that she feels like she can breathe, especially when a call comes in about a woman found stuffed beneath her bed in a garment bag and the scene is devoid of prints. Having something to focus on other than Maura makes things so much easier for her. Having someone else's hurt to tend to, and a puzzle to put back together, almost makes her forget who's missing until Pike shows up and makes a mess of the whole thing, the way Maura never would have.

He even sneezes on the goddamn corpse.

The day gets progressively worse. The murder isn't exactly challenging, and for the most part the most difficult part of her day is tracking down the husband, who immediately caves under pressure and admits that he didn't mean to kill her, only to 'teach her a lesson'. With a frying pan. Because apparently that's what you do when you really, really love somebody.

The formalities take forever, and Jane finds no joy in them, because they fail to distract her and Pike keeps reminding her whenever she manages to forget. She wonders, before she can stop herself, if Maura's ever going to come back.

.,.

For the sake of keeping herself sane, the first thing she does when she gets to her empty apartment, after she feeds her dog, is open a beer. She doesn't do anything else. Doesn't touch the remote, the phone, anything, until that beer is finished. Usually she changes out of her work clothes, but she's afraid if she gets up she'll go right to the phone and call either Maura or Ma, neither of which is a good idea.

She contemplates whether or not punching the punching bag for an hour will help but can't tear herself away from her own self-pity long enough to do it. Jo retreats to her bedroom, as she often does nowadays, because she seems to prefer Jane's bed to the dog bed. Actually, she seems to like Jane's bed a hell of a lot more than Jane likes it nowadays, which is to say that Jane isn't sure when the last time was that she actually slept.

The phone rings and she answers it before she even checks to see who it is, with her standard, gruff "Rizzoli", expecting that she'll have to go back to work any minute. When Frankie's voice is the voice that answers her, she knows what he's going to say before he says it.

"Janie, it's me."
"Frankie-"
"It's Doyle."
"Please don't."
"He's dead."
"I didn't want to know," she tells him, realizing the moment it's out of her mouth how true it is.

"You would have found out anyway, I figured I'd tell you before anyone else did."
"You mean before Maura did."
"I'm not sure that she knows yet. Korsak was just there and he's the one who told me."
"Who's going to call her?"
"I dunno. Him, I guess."

She sighs, resting her head in one hand and squeezing her eyes shut. This isn't the first time she's killed a man. This won't be the last time she kills a man.

But it still feels like the end of something.

"Thanks."

.,.

Fifteen minutes after she hangs up the phone, an hour and a half after she leaves BPD, there are three sharp raps on her door. She knows before she even gets up that it's Maura. She doesn't know, even after she gets up, why Maura would even bother coming straight to her, Jane has no intention of letting the whole 'kiss but don't tell' thing go, even now, when Doyle's just been pronounced. Maura more than likely knew he was going to die the moment he fell, and Jane's too confused and betrayed to feel too sorry for her. The second she thinks it she regrets it.

And then she opens the door. Maura has a look in her eyes that Jane's never seen before, something bright and wild and angry. Not angry in the way she's seen Mara angry before, but in a new way, in a way that she knows instinctively has no relationship to facts or thoughts or anything but feelings. And the feeling she's sure drove Maura to her apartment was hate. "I'm sorry," she says, before Maura literally pushes her back into the apartment and follows her inside. She's apologizing more for what she's been thinking than for what she's done. "I'm…what are you doing?"

"Locking the door," is the only answer she gets. While Maura's back is briefly to her it registers that Maura's not here to yell at her and she's certainly not here to cry on her shoulder. She doesn't even have time to be shocked again before Maura turns around and practically jumps her. It's not like the first kiss, which had been too quick and confusing for both of them. It's lips and teeth and tongues and Maura pushing, pushing until Jane feels her back hit the wall and is so disoriented that she's not sure anymore where she is in her own apartment.

Jane's fingers curl into the blonde's jacket at the waist, but her grip is nothing compared to the grip Maura has on the collar of her shirt. As much as Jane wants this, as much as she wants Maura, she can't help but feel like this is wrong. Mostly because Maura still hates her. "Maura, stop. Maur-" she's cut off by another searing kiss that's too hard to pull away from. Maura pushes forward again and Jane can feel all of her body with each breath they take, each shallow pant. "Stop talking."

She'd be lying if she said that Maura's sudden bossiness didn't turn her on. She's used to having control, but she doesn't mind not having it, not really. Not when Maura's undoing her buttons with deft little hands and has her shirt off before she can think twice about it. She wants to talk. She wants to know what Maura's going to do if she talks. She doesn't have the guts to actually do it yet. Maura's fingernails dig into her lower back and she gasps, pulling at Maura's jacket until she's rid of it, but there's still too much clothing between them.

She doesn't get the chance to do anything else, because Maura slams her wrists back into the wall and bites down on her lower lip. She doesn't dare move her hands until after Maura's gotten her own shirt off, and even then she's hesitant, because she's not sure how far Maura's willing to go. She's fairly sure that Maura's only doing this so that she feels something, and she knows she shouldn't let herself be used like that, but considering how badly she wants this, and how recently she's realized it, there's no way she's going to say anything about it.

Maura doesn't protest when Jane's hands find her waist, but it's probably only because she's too busy unbuttoning Jane's slacks and pushing them down off her hips. Jane kicks her boots off, then pulls Maura's hips back into hers. The medical examiner's moan mirrors her own, but it doesn't seem to be her job to get Maura's skirt off. The second she tries to reach for her zipper she gets another lip-biting, wrist-smashing thing, and this time she fights back.

She pushes Maura's hands away and switches their positions, catching on to the animalistic rage that's taken over her best friend, using her frustration with Dean's betrayal to channel it into the passion that's growing between them. She manages to get Maura's skirt off without too much trouble, or at least without anything that feels like trouble at the time. After a second, though, she realizes that Maura has nimbly undone her bra while she wasn't paying attention, and it's off of her shoulders and on the floor before she can register it. She refuses to be outdone. She presses a leg between Maura's and is delighted by the frustrated little whine she gets in response.

Maura's urging her on with every move she makes, dragging her nails down Jane's back and rocking her hips forward, seeking friction and coming in contact with Jane's thigh. Jane has other plans. One hand splays out on the wall beside Maura to balance and brace her, and the other slips under the waistband of Maura's panties to tease her.

Still, control is only an illusion when it comes to this sort of thing, and Jane knows, some way or another, that she's not really in control of anything. She's doing this for Maura, and she's doing it because Maura has all but commanded her to do it. The fact that she wants to has almost nothing to do with it at this point, and strangely enough, that's okay with her. She already regrets just about everything that's happened in the last couple of days, and none of those things felt nearly as good as this when she did them.

The second her fingers find their destination Maura arches forward off the wall, her nails digging in so far into Jane's lower back that she's about 80% sure she's bleeding. Jane's hand moves forward at the same time Maura's hips do, and just like that, as if it had been practiced, they're entirely in sync. It's not as if Jane usually has any sense of rhythm, so the fact that their bodies match up so perfectly like that in only a few seconds in is baffling.

And Maura, who is usually so demure with her language, seems to be holding back a few choice words as her hips come forward again and again. What she does say, over and over, is Jane's name. And even though Jane knows she still hates her, the way she says it ranges from frustrated to affectionate to breathless to…God help them, even tender.

The situation is clearly even more fucked up than Jane initially thought it was, and she cares even less now about that than she did before. It occurs to Jane that what she really wants is to savor this, is to be able to kiss every inch of the wonderfully warm, toned, writhing expanse of Maura's body. The fact that she's never done anything like this with a woman before means almost nothing to her. She resents Maura using her and she resents herself for giving in without a fight and her resentment boils over into anger and that anger surges forward into passion and that passion is what drives her on.

.,.

Maura came to Jane expecting all of this.

She knows that later she'll hate herself for admitting it, but she knows exactly how to play Jane, the way a skilled musician knows every quirk and tone of the instrument they've learned so well. She knows, has always known, that Jane does everything she does with an exhausting amount of passion. She knows that Jane is prone to frustration. She knows that Jane has the biggest heart, figuratively speaking, of anyone she's ever met, and she knows without a shadow of a doubt that Jane will never deny her anything.

And she needs to feel. She needs someone to hurt her or at least do something that will make her feel a fraction of what she should feel, now that Doyle's dead. She needs a lot of things that Jane isn't giving her, and she keeps hoping that the more violent she is, the more Jane will reciprocate, but she knows that won't work. Jane cares too much to do any real harm. That's the irony, actually, that Maura loves Jane so much that it's taken over everything in her life and yet she's the one that doesn't have a problem hurting her lover. Physically and emotionally.

If it's going to bother her that Jane refused to hurt her back, it's taking a hell of a long time to get to that point. And around the time she has any of these thoughts is the same time that Jane renders her mostly incoherent and half-conscious, her entire body consumed with arousal and hunger and the power she holds, none of which is enough to satisfy her. So she stops thinking.

She rocks her hips forward and her head hits the wall behind her and she doesn't even hear Jane's name as it tumbles from her lips.

.,.

She leaves.

After she comes apart with a shuddering cry pinned against Jane's living room wall, after she catches her breath and lets go of Jane's hips, after she slips wordlessly back into her clothes, she leaves. All the frustration has drained out of Jane and left her empty and shaking with the realization that she was never actually angry to begin with. Maura, for her own part, is almost satisfied, slipping out into the tepid night. She even makes it all the way back to her apartment before the guilt sets in.

.,.