Notes: Thanks to everyone who has been reading along and as always, reviews are always welcome and appreciated!

CH 10: Insecurity

Jane sat cross-legged in the floor of Maura's living room surrounded by enough packing paraphernalia that it looked like a bomb had gone off on the receiving dock of a UPS warehouse. Every officer at BPD had brought their daily Heralds in for the past couple of weeks to contribute to the packing supply collection. Korsak had contributed the lion's share, apparently he had a buddy at the paper that procured him extra copies for his critters, when he had more than he could use he dropped off the excess at the Humane Society, but for the last two weeks he'd brought them by Jane or Maura's instead.

Jane reached up and popped a square of the bubble wrap scarf that she had adorned her neck with and smirked at the familiar sound, never too old to molest some bubble wrap, she mused to herself.

"Jane, you really should double wrap those, they're very fragile…" Maura was standing over her shoulder…again.

It was…Jane had lost count, but she estimated perhaps the umpteenth time Maura had backseat packed…and she was really over it.

She set the breakable knick knack down and stood, hands on her hips, "Maur, you know, I've been packing your shit for hours! You're more than welcome to get down on the floor and do it yourself if you think you can do it better," Jane growled in exasperation.

Maura stood, mouth agape, momentarily taken aback by Jane's tone until she felt her own frustration creeping in a reddened fury up her chest, "You act like I haven't been doing anything!"

"Oh no, you've been doing plenty, standing over my shoulder supervising me packing your stuff for the past three hours!" Jane stiffened as the confrontation grew.

"Jane that is absolutely unfair! I have only offered suggestions when you lapsed into your usual laissez-faire attitude, which potentially threatens the structural integrity of my breakables in transit!"

Jane threw her hands up in frustration, "Don't googletalk me about packing Maur! If you wanna say I'm a shitty packer just say it, which I find endlessly hilarious considering how many times I've actually packed people's stuff and helped them move. When have you ever gotten down in the dirt to pack a house, huh!"

An unusual feeling of bravado swept through Maura as she stepped forward towards Jane rather than stepping away despite her trembling lower lip and the tears that were forming behind her eyes, "Screw you, Jane!"

Maura attempted to push past Jane in a dramatic display but Jane quickly grabbed her arm spinning her around, "Screw me? Really, Maura!"

"Let go of my arm," Maura huffed straining to pull away. At the moment of tension when she was leaning the farthest back on her heels Jane released her arm sending Maura teetering off balance into a stack of packed and half-packed boxes.

Jane winced as the stack toppled over, an antique porcelain doll, which had been resting on the top box landed with a shattering thud on the floor as the tower of laden cardboard cubes crashed down on top of it.

Fuck, Jane muttered, Maura's grandmother's favorite doll…please don't be broken, please don't be broken…

The tears Maura had tried so hard to restrain during the argument began flowing through the violent sniffles and gasping breaths she shook with as she gingerly removed the boxes until she came to the doll, her porcelain face painfully broken in several large pieces. She eased down to the floor folding her legs to the side as the picked up the pieces one by one and placed them in the palm of her hand.

Jane ran a hand through her hair and spun around and then back again nervously; she knelt next to Maura reaching for the doll's body, "I…I can fix it, I can glue it back together or something…" she stammered.

"Don't touch it," Maura choked out between sobs, grabbing the doll and holding it tightly to her chest with the hand not clutching the broken facial pieces.

"Maur…I…"

"Just go away, just leave me alone," Maura didn't look up as she said it, another volley of tears streaking down her face.

She closed her eyes, as her memory was flooded with images of her grandmother's house, and of being a young child and standing wide-eyed in the doll room admiring her Nanny's collection. Her eyes always fell on Isabelle, the thin red lips and brightly rouged cheeks with her black porcelain coiffeur molded into a tight bun save the single ringlets that were painted to curl in front of each delicate ear. Most of the dolls had brown or blue eyes, but Isabelle's were green and over her cloth body she wore an off the shoulder evening gown made of silk, hand stitched including the ruching; it was a curious color of evergreen so dark it was almost black and little crimson roses that adorned the hip. Around her shoulders the doll sported a miniature stole of red fox fur. She ran a finger over the stole much as she had done as a little girl when her Nanny would take Isabelle out of the cabinet and let her hold the doll for a moment. But only a moment, Isabelle was Nanny's favorite and had been kept in pristine condition since her own grandmother had passed the doll down. Nanny had given Maura a porcelain doll every year for her birthday, sometimes it was a doll from her collection, one Maura had admired, and sometimes it was a doll her grandmother bought for the occasion. When she passed away the remaining collection was divvied up amongst the grandchildren and cousins, but Isabelle had explicitly been bequeathed to Maura.

The sound of the front door slamming shut interrupted the memory and Maura looked up to see that Jane had left.

Traffic was scarce and in record time Jane found herself parked in front of her apartment, but loathe to go in, she opted for a walk instead. The muggy June air billowed around her as she trudged down the dimly lit nighttime street. She was just about to thank God for the coolish breeze when a gust blew an errant low hanging tree branch into her face. Swatting at it spastically, she stopped and glanced around to see if anyone had seen her in the embarrassingly humorous klutz-tastic fit of divine retribution.

"You're right, I'm an asshole, and since Maura wouldn't slap me someone might as well…and now I'm talking to a tree branch, which makes me a certifiable nutjob asshole who just picked a fight with her girlfriend for no good reason and topped it all off by causing her to break her Nanny's generations old antique doll…Congratulations Rizzoli, Queen of the Assholes," Jane plucked a leaf from the branch that she was still holding onto, "and I'm still talking to the tree, Jesus Christ."

Her feet carried her in a direction unplotted by conscious thought, step after step on pavement that seemed familiar but not at the same time, building after building that she'd long since stopped paying attention to after she turned the corner at the end of her own block. When she stopped she looked up into a street lamp, letting its light burn into her eyes as the white glow expanded in her field of vision until she finally looked away, blinking rapidly as yellow orbs speckled the blackness of the neighborhood around her. She clenched her eyes shut, wrinkling her nose before opening them again, repeating the act several times until the floaters faded away.

The house…mine and Maura's house. Asshole. Jane climbed the stairs and sat down leaning against the polished heavy wood door. Everything was changing, but it had been slowly changing all along ever since that kiss in the hospital when she woke up out of the coma. First step. Finally growing a pair and showing up at her house to tell Maura she felt the same way. Second step. And all the other steps after that. Making love for the first time and every time after was a reminder of the connection she had with Maura that she'd never had with anyone else. The entire coming out process, especially the struggles with Maura's family. Then there was Kearns, a blight that would always have a small toe hold in both of them. The discovery of Maura's sister and the accompanying sadness of her biological mother's murder. All of those moments bounced around Jane's head, several were tinged with grief or sadness but as she reflected on them she realized all had brought a new strength and abiding trust to their relationship in ways that had not existed before those trials.

Maura mulled over the last line of her journal entry in her head before letting her hand guide the pen effortlessly across the page. She paused, waiting a few seconds to allow the ink to dry and then closing the red leather bound pages, her finger tracing the Celtic knot design on the cover as the memories of Christmas with the Rizzolis brought a fleeting smile to her tear-stained face. Joe Friday leapt from the bed, hearing the key turn in the front door long before Maura heard the familiar footsteps gingerly making their way back to the bedroom.

Jane walked in, her eyes and Maura's holding each other's gaze without the exchange of words. Her skin glistened with a light sheen of sweat as she changed into a tank top and boxer shorts. Maura pulled her legs tightly to her chest and watched silently, her eyes never leaving Jane even as she made her way nervously to sit on the edge of the bed, staring at her palms as the massaged the scars.

"You broke our promise," Maura stated, her voice was soft in volume, but rough from crying and heavy with a hurt Jane knew she had caused.

It wasn't what Jane expected her to say and she looked up questioningly, her mouth open but no response forthcoming.

"You left…you left and we promised we'd never leave during a fight after what happened with Donegal."

Jane nodded, she had broken the promise, the promise they'd made the night Maura had been rescued from Declan Donegal's basement after almost three days in captivity in Donegal's attempt to seek vengeance for the death of his brother and son at the hands of Patrick Doyle.

"I'm sorry, for breaking our promise and for everything before it. I was a real bitch tonight, for lack of a better word, and I didn't mean it…"

"Yes you did," Maura stated sadly, "sometimes we're at our most truthful uninhibited by anger."

Jane's heart sank, "I…I…don't know what to say to that."

Maura's forehead slowly dropped to rest on her knees, her arms tightening further around her legs in a futile attempt to try and comfort herself.

"Maur…" Jane reached out to run a hand through her wavy honey brown hair.

"Please don't," Maura turned her head brushing Jane's hand away, "if you don't want to move in together I think you should tell me now."

It hit her, like the proverbial and clichéd ton of bricks, right in the face accompanied with a sack of wet sand to the gut. The words knocked her breath out and before she knew it the stoic brunette reached up to feel uncharacteristic tears falling in a steady stream down her own cheeks. This is what it was all about, and it wasn't about not wrapping the breakables correctly, or who had packed the most boxes or even the shattered doll on the table in the living room. It was about insecurity, and the realization that she hadn't been feeling it alone but rather that they'd both been suffering in silence.

"Not moving in with you…that is absolutely and unequivocally not what I want," Jane paused and replayed her own mangled sentence in her head, "that was a lot of nots so you know grammatically or whatever I'm not sure if that meant what I meant it to mean, dammit," she buried her face in her hands mumbling, "earlier I was talking to a tree and now I'm not making any sense at all."

Jane looked up, pausing in an attempt to collect her thoughts, "I want to move in with you, at this very moment there is nothing I want more in this world…except for maybe this whole night to never have happened. I want to create this home with you, I want to go to the hardware store like the stereotypical lesbian that I am and pick out paint samples with you and I want you to drag me to the fabric store or wherever to pick out curtains even though I'm going to complain about that one, and I'm telling you now I'm going to complain about it so don't say I didn't warn you…"

"Why did you yell at me tonight?" Maura's voice quivered, her pain still evident.

Jane sighed, her usual strategy of using humor to alleviate tension having seemingly failed, "Because I was frustrated…with myself, for feeling so insecure throughout this whole process even though it's absolutely what I want. And I should have talked to you about how I was feeling, but I didn't, I kept it all inside and then it just all bubbled over tonight and I took it out on you and it really wasn't about you at all it was about me being mad at me. I wish I would have told you how I was feeling sooner, because I think you've been feeling just as insecure as me, even though I think our mutual insecurity is completely irrational…at least, I know mine is, it's just my old habit of torturing and second guessing myself on shit…"

She paused, the silence horrifying and deafening as Maura stared back at her, "You can jump in anytime Maur…" Jane laughed, the black fog of insecurity creeping back in.

"I…I'm just spent, I can't even think. I know how I feel and I can't even express it right now…I think I just need to sleep. Can we…continue this conversation in the morning?" Maura looked up with pleading eyes.

Jane nodded, reaching around Maura to grab a pillow she rose and walked to the doorway, pausing she turned around, "Maura…I love you."

Maura had rested her forehead once again on her knees but tilted her face towards Jane, "I love you too, Jane."

Jane awoke to the stifling sensation of her nose pressed tightly into the back cushion of the living room sofa. She stirred, moving her face to find a position conducive to breathing more freely as she continued to awaken, becoming more cognizant of the sensation of restraint that was confining her movement. As she processed the feeling of being held down she snapped into full consciousness with a gasp.

The panic dissipated as she glanced down to see the restraints were actually a pair of familiar arms, one wrapped around her waist and the other threaded under her neck and a smooth and creamy pair of legs tangled in her own. She felt a warm and rhythmic breath pulse across the back of her neck as her head relaxed back down to the pillow.

Maura's leg stirred and nearly slid off the sofa, Jane watched with a smile as the sleep controlled foot burrowed it's way back between her own legs. Lifting herself on her elbow Jane slowly and carefully turned herself, slowly rolling over through her entanglement in Maura's limbs to face the woman that was lying behind her. Despite her best effort, the maneuvering woke Maura; her eyes fluttering open to a soft brown gaze looking back at her. Jane brushed a honey brown strand of hair from her cheek and wrapped her arm around Maura's back, pulling her tight into her body and a few safer inches from the edge of the sofa.

"Hey," Jane whispered, her fingers stroking light circles on Maura's upper back.

"Hey," Maura answered with an apologetic smile, "I couldn't sleep without you. So I came in here and you were already asleep and I didn't want to wake you but you were having a bad dream and crying so I just decided to sleep here with you."

"Did I stop crying?"

"Yes."

"I sleep better with you, I always have, ever since that night when Hoyt was on the loose," Jane pressed her lips to Maura's.

"Do we need to continue our conversation from last night?" Maura reached up and rested her hand on Jane's cheek.

"You can tell me anything you need to say, but really all I need to hear is that you want us to move in together."

"Jane, I can't wait to move in with you and do all the things you talked about last night. Especially anything that involves you working with power tools."

Jane raised one eyebrow, "Has anyone ever told you that you have a bit of a kinky streak?"

"You might have mentioned it when we were rolling around naked in paint on a dropcloth in your living room," Maura laughed, "I was under the impression you liked my kinky side though."

"Oh…very much," Jane concluded with a wink.