A/N: Here it is! The last chapter before a tiny little epilogue that I wrote just to tie things up a little bit. This is the meat of the ending. All your reviews and follows have been great; I'm always glad to see them, and I'm always glad to read what you think! Now, on with the show.
The ballgame ended up being on in the background anyway, because it could be heard from two doors down. Maura hadn't seemed to mind when Jane had built her up and then tore her down, and she didn't seem to mind now when its replay provided the muffled soundtrack to their lazy kisses.
Being under the covers, a body on top of her, slow presses of lips to lips, would have sounded positively banal to her a few months prior, but now she was beginning to see the merit in it. Besides, when the body belonged to Jane, the longest and handsomest not only of the Rizzolis, but of the people she had slept with, how could there be any room to complain?
"Was that so bad?" Jane asked, her voice rough from orgasm and a hefty dosage of 11PM. Her hair, still in a ponytail, touched her face in errant wisps, and Maura wiped at them with one hand. The other stayed on her side slick with sweat.
"It wasn't bad the first time," Maura said in response to the other woman's shit-eating grin. "That was the problem."
"Well, even though you liked it, you sure weren't too happy about it," Jane remarked, a far off hurt, almost too small to be discernable, pooled in her eyes.
The woman under her kissed her forehead. "Did we win?"
"Huh?"
"The Red Sox. Did they win their game?" Maura asked again.
"No clue," Jane answered truthfully. They both laughed, faces touching, until they were interrupted by the harsh vibration of a cellphone on the nightstand.
"No, no no no, no," the doctor whined, burrowing into the detective's shoulder. "When did you even bring that in here?"
"It was in my pocket when we came in," Jane explained, reaching for the phone, wincing when fingernails dug into the skin on her hip. "Ow, Maura! You know I'm on call. Rizzoli," she gruffed when she answered the phone. Dispatch notified her of the body's location, and then she made another call. "Hey. I got time to shower? Yeah, I'll be there in twenty, then. Thanks, Korsak."
"Is it close by?" Maura asked. Jane rose and shook her hair out of its tie; the sheet fell into her lap and her long legs caused her feet to plant squarely on the floor when she sat. The medical examiner wavered between continuing to lie down, and rising to join her. Ultimately she chose neither, opting for getting out of bed altogether and reaching for the robe on her window seat.
"Yeah, bout five minutes. Korsak bought me some time. What're you doing?" Jane asked back, watching Maura gather a towel from in the bathroom's linen closet.
"Grabbing a towel to put out for you. Start your shower or you're going to be late," she replied. As she began to turn on the soft lights in the bedroom, she caught the brunette staring at her. It gave her heart a jolt, and she moved back to kiss her.
"Just a couple hours into this and you're already nagging, huh?" Jane smirked good-naturedly. Maura blushed furiously.
"Well, I…"
"I'm kidding, Maura. Just kidding."
"Yes, well, I'll put out your suit for you. You only keep a dark gray one here, so I'm hoping that's alright."
"It'll do." The detective called behind her, and then closed the bathroom door.
Maura heard the shower jets spark to life. She admonished her previous willful ignorance when it came to her and Jane because she realized that despite her six-month relationship with Jack, Jane was the only other person besides her to bathe in the master bathroom. She'd held back Jane's hair as she vomited with the flu in her toilet; she'd watched her blood swirl down the shower drain after a fist-fight with a drunken, disrespectful Tommy. Jack had used the facilities a few times, of course; Jane inhabited the space as if it were her own.
Maura found herself glad that the last piece had slid into place. Jane should be able to move about her home freely, because she moved about Maura's heart freely. She reached into the first few feet of her closet and pulled out the tall woman's suit, grabbing one of the few colored t-shirts she left at the house for the express purpose of being able to stay long periods of time while on call. It started not long into their friendship, and had proved prudent more than once. When she laid the clothes out on the bed, leaving the duffel filled with other necessary items at the foot, she sighed. It was all too predictable that Jane would be called away on the first night of their breakthrough, but those were the parameters of the job. The job required attention at all hours, the interpersonal skills to deal with the gamut of human emotion, and caffeine. Lots of it. This is why she walked downstairs to the kitchen to fix a tumbler of coffee for the detective, and when she returned to the bedroom, she watched a barefoot Jane fix her firearm and badge to her belt.
"That for me?" Jane asked, looking up and smiling.
"Well, I certainly don't drink coffee this late," Maura chided, but all in good humor.
Jane rolled her eyes and mock-laughed.
"Take it, it's going to be a long night, and you're going to need the boost," the smaller woman entered doctor mode, but there was a softness to her voice that crawled up and down Jane's spine.
"Those doctor's orders?" Jane said. She smirked when the fingers holding the tumbler faltered just a little. She counted it as a good thing that she had started to grab it.
"Well, I happen to have first hand knowledge that you've had a very… athletic evening. That alone should make you more tired than not," Maura said as she winked.
Jane laughed, and sat on the edge of the bed to pull out socks and a pair of boots from her duffle. Maura sat next to her, rubbing her thigh, taking comfort in watching the routine of Jane's dressing. If one didn't know her all too well, they might have missed that Jane was meticulous and rigid in many minute aspects of her life. She followed plans, executed them. Maura suspected that it was a mechanism to cope with the chaos that her work and family life brought. It was another way that they were similar. Maura's habits spilled over into work and play as well, and they differed in that respect, but she reveled in their points of sameness. "I'm gonna turn off the radio real quick. Be right back," Jane said.
The light was still on in the guest room, as was the radio, when she entered, intent on turning them both off. The half-built dresser mocked her from the floor, finger-wagging her gut about something like unfinished business. She ignored it, turned the volume dial so that Joe Castiglione's masculine click faded further and further away until the little light on the radio disappeared. She then shut the window, tugging it with one hand to make sure it stayed that way, and when she walked to the threshold, she took one last look before catching the light. She would have to tackle the rest of the project tomorrow.
Her boots shuffled back into the hallway and into the master bedroom, where she saw Maura fixing her blouse from earlier onto a hanger.
"Alright. I'm off. Wish me luck?" Jane's brows wagged as she spoke, and she was rewarded with a kiss when she stood, now over seven inches taller than a barefoot Maura.
"Good luck. If for some reason you get off before the start of my work day, call me, please," the medical examiner said. She had her arms crossed over her chest.
"Yes ma'am," Jane replied, saluting. "Get some sleep," she offered in a much gentler tone, an ease infusing the hoarseness of her voice, and with that she walked out into the hall.
Jack had not planned what he was about to do; he only knew that he must. He and Maura had hit somewhat of a rough patch before his vacation. Perhaps distant described the situation more accurately than rough, and that was the problem. He would admit that his sudden runaway with Ally and her mother compounded the situation, having given her no real notice ahead of time. But, with his ex winning tickets to Six Flags in a work raffle, he didn't really have notice either.
He held the clafoutis in his hand as an extension of goodwill. Maura liked things like this – obscure, French, opulent. Maura specifically liked this thing – with its cherries and custard and unpronounceable name; she had gushed over it the first time they dined at Maison de la Mer. It smelled good, though, he admitted to himself when he shuffled through her courtyard.
The knocker on the door loomed over him, and he wasn't sure why he was nervous; maybe the late hour spooked him. Maybe the distance forming between he and Maura fostered his apprehension. Either way, at 11:30PM, he fished his key out of his pocket with his free hand, and walked into the main hallway.
One kitchen light was on, which struck him as odd so late, but he took it as a good omen. Grabbing a couple forks from the silverware drawer, he pumped a little pep in his step, and tried his best saunter toward the staircase.
It was short-lived, however, when he saw a figure emerge from the master bedroom. "Jane?" he called out.
"Jane?"
The half-sipped coffee in her mouth sputtered at the sound of her name coming from below. She peered down, one free hand darting to her firearm, but then she saw who was calling out. "Jack." She said.
He looked ghostly there in the dim light and bright polo shirt, out of place. His supposed mini-vacation didn't even have much to do with it. She moved her hand away from her gun and straightened her shoulders. She knew exactly what he had seen: her, stepping out of the master bedroom late at night, freshly showered and about to leave for work. Her, in a space he'd considered his own. She turned her head and called out. "Maura!"
With a latch click, said woman emerged, eyes only on Jane. "What's wrong? Did you forget something?" she asked, and put a hand on Jane's forearm, thumb rubbing back and forth.
Jane just cleared her throat and nodded to the foot of the stairs.
Maura actually jumped. "Jack! What are you doing here? I thought you and your family were gone until tomorrow!" To her credit, her blush was the only sign of impropriety on her.
"I got back early," He said, reaching back into his throat for a growl, and pulling out more of a rustle. "What's she doing here?"
Jane's eyes snapped open wide and her head whipped back towards him. "Excuse me?"
"What are you doing here?" He reiterated, this time addressing her directly.
"Don't you forget I've been here since before you were even a thought in her head," the detective pointed in his direction.
"Jane," Maura warned.
"We need to talk, Maura," Jack bristled. He climbed up at few steps.
Jane started to meet him halfway. "What you say to her you can say to me," she said, giving him a proper growl to observe.
"Absolutely not, Jane," Maura put her foot down. "You have to go to work, and this is not your relationship. It's mine."
Jane was a mixture of hurt and confused until she saw the glint in her eyes. A glint that said I'll call you to come back when this is over.
She left, brushing Jack on her way out.
"What crawled up your ass, Detective Rizzoli?" Frankie Jr. barked when his sister showed up to the scene, blowing past her coworkers.
"Update me," Jane barked back. She marched toward the overhead crime scene lights, and Frankie came up behind her.
"Terra Richards. Caucasian female, late 20s, out for a run," He said in an utterly professional tone. "Looks like she was strangled."
"Out here?" Jane asked rhetorically. "Beacon Hill ain't exactly the North End, you know." When her brother went to put a hand on her shoulder, she shifted and pulled out some purple latex to shove onto her hands.
"Yeah, it certainly ain't common out here. Coroners're thinkin' she was moved. Somethin' about lividity. Seriously, what's goin' on with you?" he whined; Jane hadn't really brought her wrath down on him in awhile.
"Quit askin' and tell me who's workin' the body," she snapped when they stooped under the yellow scene tap.
"It's Ramirez," he offered, "but hell no, I'm not quittin'. What's up? You walked in with a stick so far up your ass that you had a limp."
"Why you wanna know so bad, huh?" She bit back, stopping in her tracks.
"I'm your brother. And I like you. And last time you were like this, Casey was acting an ass," Frankie countered.
They both shuddered visibly, and then there was a barely audible Rizzoli chuckle. It could have come from either, or both.
"God dammit. Well, if we're really gonna talk about this here, I better start by confessing something."
"Sit down, Jack. We'll talk at the table," Maura sighed, starting to descend the staircase.
"I don't want to sit, Maura. I'm fine right here," said Jack. He stood one foot on the second step, one foot on the third, looking entirely unfine at that moment.
"Alright, suit yourself. But I am sitting because I am tired," Maura said, walking down and toward the sofa. She found herself annoyed by his petulance, and yet refrained from adding "and sore" after her statement. The least she owed him was to spare his pride.
He moved anyway, and followed her. He took his usual seat in the armchair nearby and huffed. "What was she doing here, Maura?"
"Jane is allowed to be in my home, Jack," she answered, perturbed at the insinuation that she was to be monopolized by him, whether that insinuation was intentional or not.
"Oh that's a bunch of bullshit and you know it," he said in equal parts embarrassment and anger. And, Maura was about to concede that to him, tell him that he more than deserved to feel those feelings, until he opened his mouth again. "She is not allowed in my bed, where I am supposed to be, with my girlfriend!"
"Stop. Just stop there for a second," Maura snipped, an air of regality, detached authority, possessing her. She straightened the front of her silk robe before continuing. "That is not your bed. It is my bed-"
"You know damn well what I meant Maura-" Jack cut her off, and she returned the favor.
"Yes I do know damn well what you meant. You still mean it. You mean to possess me. That is not your bedroom, it has never been your bedroom, and it will never be your bedroom. Your pride has always been at the forefront of the way you speak to me, the way you act with me, and it is entirely inappropriate. You do not get to own me simply because you are insecure," Maura said in a tone of voice just a few notches too loud to be considered calm.
Jack was silent for a few beats before responding. "Did she fuck you? Is she why I haven't been fucking you?" He asked with disdain, moving from the chair to the couch, crouching close to her.
It was the final straw. Maura nearly whispered her next words. "No, Jack. We fucked each other. See, that's the main difference with Jane; with you, I practically fucked myself."
The hurt pride flooded over his face. He played multiple sexual encounters that they had had in his head, and the realization stunned him. He moved from his position of cornering her, and sat down next to her, dazed.
This did not extinguish Maura's anger, but it tempered it. "It was wrong of me, to cheat on you."
Still staring off into space, he responded. "It was wrong of you to go out with me in the first place."
"That's probably true," she conceded. "It hurts me that I hurt you, and I'm sorry. But you cannot say those things to me, or to any woman. You don't own me, Jack. Jane doesn't own me."
He scoffed.
She waited.
"Is this because I've been spending so much time with Ally and Lorraine?" He asked, after a few minutes.
"What? Of course not. I admire that you and your ex try so hard to make things work for the sake of your daughter. It's truly a great trait of yours," Maura said truthfully. The overwhelming feeling in her brain was that of awkwardness. That guilt, shame, love, and remorse were lower than it on the list told her that they had been done for awhile. "Jane and I… we were on a course that I don't think could have been altered by much of anything. But that doesn't excuse the fact that I devalued our relationship by sleeping with someone else."
"And to think, I've been feeling guilty for wanting to hang out with Lorraine more," he laughed, without any humor. It was more like a pained breath leaving his lungs in a puff.
Maura smiled sadly. The truly fucked up part was that she probably should have spent time being jealous of their rekindled friendship if she hadn't been so preoccupied with someone else.
"I liked you," he said simply, as though letting go of the thought for one last time.
"I liked you, too, Jack. I still do. You're a good person," she responded.
He said nothing, but nodded, and sat still for a few moments. Finally, he got up. "I'm gonna go now," he stated. "Maybe we can talk when I'm not so pissed off."
Maura waited until he was out the door to say, "I think that would be a good idea." Then she exhaled and trudged back upstairs.
"You're sleepin' with Maura," Frankie said.
"What? How in the hell did you figure that out? You can't even tell if a body's been moved or not," Jane whispered harshly, looking out for anybody who might overhear their conversation.
"Janie, c'mon. You look at her like she's God's gift to mankind and she looks at you like you're an oak and she's back in French grade school," he snickered. Immediately Jane's mind went back to Maura's story about winning a tree-climbing competition in boarding school, and her face turned red enough to be seen even in the dark.
"Jesus, you gotta be so graphic?" she asked.
"Don't act like it's a trait unique to just this Rizzoli," he countered, and they walked back up to the body together.
"I'm gonna have some techs come over and take the decedent back to the lab, where she'll be autopsied in the morning. Would you like a few minutes to look it over?" Araceli Ramirez, a tall, dark-skinned Dominicana, asked the two detectives before she left to sign off on some paperwork.
"That'd be great, Ramirez," Jane nodded to her. Frankie smiled at her.
"Ok, no problem, Rizzolis," she smiled at the both of them, a twinkle reaching her eye at the sight of both of them together. Then she was off to her van.
"So… you're sleepin' with Maura," Frankie began again.
"Yeah," Jane said, "and today, Jack came by her house, pretty late."
"So?" he asked.
"I was there."
"Oh! Shit. He catch you, you know, in the act?"
"God no. But he did see me as I was walking out of her room, gettin' ready to come here."
"Well, that's worse, Janie."
"Yeah. I know. And Maura didn't want me to stay while they talked. I guess I just got a bug up my ass about them being alone together, I don't know," as Jane spoke, she was intent on the details in front of her: chipped nail polish, mismatched jacket around Terra's waist.
"I understand. But like I said, sis, Maura really loves you," Frankie said as he patted his sister on her shoulder.
"You said she wanted to climb me like a tree, Frankie. Jesus. That's hardly equatable to love," Jane replied.
"All I know is I haven't seen her look at any of her boyfriends like that. Ever."
Their processing had gone pretty quickly. Jane had shown Frankie the ropes of some of the more forensic aspects of their job in homicide; he had listened to her dilemma and comforted her. She walked back to her car, intent on being present for the autopsy first thing in the morning, and when she slumped into her squad car, she pulled out her phone to call the doctor in charge of that autopsy.
"Jane?" there was a sleepy voice on the other line, and for a moment Jane felt guilt at waking it.
"Yeah. I'm done here; me and Frankie are workin' it and we'll pick it back up at the autopsy," said the detective. She fidgeted with the red and blue B keychain hanging off the ignition. Was Jack still there? Would she be able to go back, sleep in Maura's bed? Or would she be relegated to her condo?
"I got a call from Ramirez," Maura said, and her friend imagined her rubbing the sleep from her eyes, "I'll get started first thing in the morning. She said the two of you were in rare form this evening."
"Well we were talkin' about some pretty personal stuff; it might have gotten a little loud," Jane winced when she spoke, thinking back to the more… vocal comments she and Frankie Jr. had made.
"I think she is more interested in how you look," Maura jibed. In her bubbled a little bit of jealousy, both for Frankie and Jane, her Rizzolis. She pictured the two of them, in their element, and her blood ran slightly hot.
Jane ran slightly cold in fear and anticipation. "Maura. Is Jack there? What happened?"
"Come home and I'll tell you all about it."
Fear and anticipation were the last things she felt after Maura's husky beckoning. Home.