You guys, I have a really important question. Did watching Rizzoli & Isles prompt anyone else into an expensive ghd purchasing decision? Seriously, this show and its hair porn - that shit should be illegal. I literally cannot leave the house without carefully arranged curls anymore. It's like a sickness.
Okay, I just had to get that confession off my shoulders. So to speak.
This one ended up so long, I split it into two, for the sake of your poor bleeding eyeballs.
XOXO and XXX
As the weeks wore by Jane began to experience pangs of desperate longing so painful she'd never have thought them possible. If anyone had ever tried to tell her that she'd one day feel this way about the medical examiner, she'd have told them in no uncertain terms that they were batshit crazy, but there you have it. Quiet, plain-spoken, droopy eyed Dr. Davis. God she missed him. He may have been set in his ways, moved at a snail's pace and been entirely unhelpful at least seventy-five percent of the time, but he was a gem, really, compared to Dr. Isles.
The new M.E was just as slow in her own way. Methodical to the point of mania and precise to the extent that Jane would have been convinced it was a farce if it wasn't for the steely glint in Maura's eyes. She flat out refused to make even the smallest of professional estimations or allow her support for any of Jane's hypotheses. I don't guess, Detective Rizzoli. You'll simply have to wait for my full report. Just now, Jane had entirely lost her cool with her, in the midst of a fully staffed crime scene. It's blood, for fuck's sake, Maura! If you're going to tell me you can't recognise blood when you see it, I swear to god I'm going to start spilling some myself! Maura simply jutted her chin at her and continued to poke swabs around the body. Jane felt a strong hand on her arm before Korsak jerked her away from where she stood, looming angrily over the silent medical examiner.
She tried to protest but he led her away past the crime scene tape and back down to the squad car, haphazardly parked in between the trees. "What the hell, Korsak?"
"You need to relax, Rizzoli. Everyone is antsy today. Everyone wants to catch this guy," he nodded back at the scene, crawling with cops and techs and EMT. "But the doc's not going to come up with any magic answers for you, just cos you bully her." Jane's voice cracked.
"Bully her? Me, bully her? What do you think she's doing to me?" she demanded. "If she's not refusing to help me establish cause of death in the middle of my own crime scene, she's showing me up with facts and figures and statistics and the entire history of every knife wound in Massachusetts! It's like I'm some big dumb detective she likes to poke at with sticks, just to watch me dance," she hissed.
"She likes you," shrugged Korsak. Jane stared at him.
"What?"
"She likes you," he repeated. "She doesn't bother doing that to anyone else. With me, she's all 'certainly Detective, I'll see what I can do,' but she doesn't waste any of her big words on me. I think you challenge her and she likes it. That's why she's always taking you on." Jane frowned, starting to feel uneasy at the direction of the conversation.
"Or maybe she's just one of those bitchy types, who only sees other women as a threat," she rolled her eyes. "This is why I hate working with them, for christ's sake. Everyone thinks men are the competitive ones, but they have no idea."
"Maybe you're the one who sees her as a threat," Korsak lobbed back at her. "Dr. Davis drove you nuts because he never challenged anything. Now Dr. Isles is challenging everything and you don't like that either, because she challenges you." Jane looked away, narrowing her eyes. "That doesn't make it personal though, Jane. Remember how nervous she was meeting you that first day?" he recalled. "I think she likes you because you're a worthy adversary for that big brain of hers. You're just too busy throwing tantrums to see it for what it is."
Jane opened her mouth to protest Korsak's highly inaccurate interpretation of events, but quickly thought better of it. He tsked at her.
"You're on the same side, Rizzoli. The two of you should be friends."
"She doesn't want to be my friend," Jane muttered, glaring at her feet. The older detective looked at her and cocked his head, his expression suddenly morphing into the one he'd make if she was a smelly bedraggled puppy he'd found in a dumpster.
"Awww, Janie doesn't know how to be friends with a girl!" he baby-voiced at her. "Buy her some chocolates, Rizzoli! Do some magazine quizzes together. Invite her for a mani-pedi. It's easy!" Jane went rigid, her face flushing with discomfort.
"Ugh, spare me the details about your dates with Frost," she turned and ducked back under the police tape. "Real helpful, Korsak. Screw you," she threw over her shoulder. Korsak's amused chuckle followed her as she stalked back up the hill.
In the end Jane took Korsak's advice, for all the good it did her. It had been over three months now, and the constant switching between dispassionate coolness and heated disagreements with Maura was starting to get to her. Co-workers could still be friendly without being friends, for christ's sake. It would make life a lot more pleasant for everyone if they could at least smile and trade casual conversation at times. Besides, any more animosity between them and people would start asking questions. So she tried.
First she began flashing her broadest, friendliest grin at Maura each time they met. Maura only responded as though Jane had bared her teeth at her, warily nodding in response, occasionally with a confused frown on her face. So Jane began to try and engage her in the things she remembered Maura was interested in. Er, that's a really nice dress, Dr. Isles. Great…uh, stitching. Maura merely thanked her disinterestedly and continued on her way. Jane bought her a coffee and delivered it to her office. Maura accepted it politely, but didn't so much as touch the damn thing. Once she walked into the morgue and caught the doctor gazing longingly at shoes online, and she tried awkwardly to join in. Oh, wow, the red ones, Maura…you should definitely- but Dr. Isles only looked as though she'd been caught looking at porn during work hours, abruptly closing the screen with a sharp click. The cause of death was a poly-pharmacy overdose, Detective. I'll ask my intern to send you up the full report as soon as possible. Jane sighed and walked back out again. The situation was impossible. The M.E was quite clearly prepared to throw Jane's own words back in her face forever. Not friends, just colleagues. Jane groaned to herself. Yeah Maura, I'm a jerk. Couldn't you just punch me in the face and be done with it? Jane wondered if Maura was indeed capable of politely and civilly punishing her until the end of her natural life. It certainly seemed that way. Ugh...women!
The realisation finally hit her like a ton of bricks three weeks later, as she stood shivering in the artificial light set up by the crime scene techs in the bottom of the dank grotto. Despite the heat outside, the cave threw out its own icy wet subterranean air, chilling her from the inside out. Frost stood beside her hugging himself, looking as uncomfortable as she felt.
"Creepy place to die," he commented, and Jane shivered despite herself.
"Hell yeah," she agreed. "Don't really know why we're here though. There's got to be a thousand reasons to die in a place like this, all of them way scarier than murder." Frost nodded, rocking back on his heels a little.
"Cavers keep a log book," he explained. "Seems our vic here signed in last night, and no one else. Rained last night, real heavy. Two sets of prints coming in, only one coming out. The other members of the caving society say Ozeki was an experienced caver, and he'd never have entered the caves without checking all his equipment extensively. Looked to them like his rope had been cut."
"Right. How long are we going to have to wait to get the body out though? These caves are supposed to go down for miles," she shivered again at the thought. "Should have brought some coffee at least, goddamnit," Jane grumbled, rubbing at her aching hands and ruefully eyeing up the motley group of cavers passing a large thermos between them.
"Reckon it's going to be a while," Frost rolled his shoulders back, looking almost as impatient as she was. "Apparently, with the rain, the streams down here are overflowing. Means they're going to have to climb down a hell of a ways first, swim through some of the deeper sections and crawl through half a mile of passages about the size of a large cat door," he winced. "Makes me feel claustrophobic just thinking about it." Jane shuddered, eyeing the small crack in the rock the recovery team had disappeared through more than two hours ago.
"We'll be lucky if we don't end up with more bodies," she proclaimed dolefully. "Maura's going to be cracking it," she predicted. "Be no forensic evidence left by the time they drag the dead guy back through the tunnels and through a freakin' stream." One of the cavers looked over in interest.
"Dr. Isles?" he asked, looking overly excited at the mention of the medical examiner. "She's already in there," he nodded over to the crack in the rock. "Said she wanted to see the body in situ." Jane gaped at him.
"You took the Chief Medical Examiner of the Boston Police down into some fucking sinkhole in the bottom of the earth?" she demanded, enraged. "Are you insane?"
"She wouldn't take no for an answer!" the tall rangy looking guy protested. "She showed up with her full Cave Diving Certificate and her own gear, then demanded to be shown where to get changed. She's kind of…awesome," he grinned, then coughed sheepishly and looked away as he caught Jane's expression.
"Damn," said Frost, obviously impressed. Jane wanted to punch someone. What the hell is she doing? Doesn't she know how dangerous this is? That's so like her - obsessive, stubborn, goddamn little-
"There they are!"
One by one, slowly scrambling out of the crack in the rocky floor, the search team emerged. A body bag, thoroughly duct taped up to make it more streamlined, was boosted up and deposited unceremoniously on the ground. EMT swooped in to load it onto a stretcher and it was only by watching who reached out to sign the release form that Jane figured out which of the helmet wearing cavers was the M.E - although as she marched closer, she reflected that only one of the wetsuit-clad bodies was adamantly feminine enough to mark it out as belonging to Maura Isles. The doctor pulled off her helmet and rubbed at the marks the dive mask had left on her face, reaching back to pull out her damp ponytail from the neck of her suit. Jane was three quarters of a second from berating her for the unnecessary danger she'd put herself in when she stopped short. Maura's face was glowing, a huge smile spread across her face. One of the cavers said something Jane couldn't hear, which made the M.E laugh, and - really? Did Dr. Maura Isles just high-five someone? That's extremely…awkward. Jane stood by with a surprised smirk, until Maura looked over and saw her. Excusing herself, she walked over to talk to the detective.
"You would tell me if you were spider-man, wouldn't you, Dr. Isles?" Jane couldn't quite cover her grin as she gazed at the damp and dishevelled woman before her. Maura Isles: chief medical examiner, clothes horse, giant nerd...and adventure sports nut? Maura seemed to be struggling to replace her gleeful expression with her usual Jane-related game-face, but she was failing.
"No, I don't think I would," she returned, an oddly familiar sparkle crossing her features. "I will however, admit to the occasional desire for some good, old fashioned spelunking," she looked Jane directly in the eye, making her flush in confusion.
"Uh…I-"
"Speleology, Jane," Maura looked way too pleased with herself. "The study of caves. Spelunking is a term for caving coined by the writer Clay Perry in the 1940's, although it lost favour as a term for serious cavers during the sixties due to its association with amateurs, many of whom-" Jane let her go, finding herself too lost in her enjoyment of Maura's obvious excitement to protest at her lecture. Gone was the impassive automaton of the last four months, and in its place was the Maura she'd first met. Flush-cheeked and a little breathless, glowing with enthusiasm and a hint of mischief in her eyes. Jane steadied herself. After months of being shut out in the cold, she felt a sense of relief flood her at the sudden thaw. She was damned if she was going to let Maura retreat again once her adrenaline wore off.
"And you, Maura Isles?" she interrupted, smiling down at the still rambling doctor. "When did you start indulging in activities that required the wearing of neoprene?" As Maura launched into another breathless spiel about Sardinia and the Nullabor, the Yucatan Peninsula, single rope techniques and vertical climbs, the detective just watched her, nodding and smiling like an idiot. It had only taken Jane one night of passion and months of constantly working together for it finally to become clear to her. The dorky cave dwelling guy was right: Maura Isles was awesome. Actually kind of fucking amazing in fact. Jane stood and marvelled at her as she truly considered the person before her for the first time. Ridiculously, immensely intelligent and yet flawlessly fashion-conscious. Born to be a rich idle princess yet working tirelessly up to her elbows in blood and gore every single day, fighting for justice. Fearsomely disciplined and yet raving like a club kid on amphetamines about her passions. Smart, complicated, annoying, beautiful, awkward, obsessive, elegant, tough, stubborn, refined, dorky - Jane paused, allowing her earlier memories of Maura to resurface briefly - passionate, wild, sweet, funny, bold, gorgeous, fucking sexy- she reined them in again quickly, pushing away the unbidden image of the doctor sweating and writhing beneath her, whispering fuck me in Jane's ear.
That was exactly where she'd gone wrong with Maura before, she decided. She'd never paused to see her as a whole, complex, real person. I objectified her, Jane realised. First as an object of lust, then of fear, then of pity. It was true, all of it - Maura was sexy, she was a kind of threat to Jane's precariously hard won sense of equilibrium, and she was a lonely, awkward figure as well. But none of that defined her. Maura Isles - sexy, scary, lonely, and everything else in between - taken as a whole, was every kind of amazing. Jane thought about her own life, her own battles, her own…loneliness. I want to understand her, Jane discovered in a rush. I want to be her friend. I want this person in my life. She's the thing I'm missing.
From that moment on, Jane was resolved. No more objectifying, she was done with that now. She would get to know Maura and Maura would get to know her, and they would become friends. She was adamant. And so the wooing of Dr. Isles began.
