Tamsin's gut had rumbled as soon as Bo informed her of her plan to stake out the Talucci house on her own. Now it was in full uproar mode – the hotel room, cheap but serviceable, chilled her with its unstable air conditioning. If she hadn't been pacing, frantic in thought, she might have grumbled about Americans and their need to control the temperature that bordered on pathological.
However, pacing exactly fit the description of her current state, and she had no time to snark. She hadn't seen Bo since they all had left Maura's home that afternoon, which in and of itself would not have been so odd. No, what was odd was that she had called Bo seven times now, all with no answer.
Old scenes of carnage hurled themselves, unbidden, to the fore of her thoughts. She knew that such irrationality had no place on the battlefield, and if the burgeoning fight or flight response in her chest was any indication, Bo was on a battlefield and needed help. As a Valkyrie, she knew to trust it even if it turned out to be nothing, because often, it wasn't.
It was during these times that she cursed her partner, Dyson, and his super tracking abilities. As a shifter, he could smell his loved ones from far away – she wanted nothing more than to be a she-wolf in that moment, to be like him; all she had was a phone and a truck. She glanced at her keys on the nightstand, putting off the inevitable until now, afraid of what she might find at the Talucci house.
Maura had no real interest in the computer screen that sat in front of her. As soon as she had a moment alone, as soon as Jane had broken the news that they would not be spending the evening together, she had pulled out her laptop and done a search on all the unfamiliar terms she'd heard in the last twenty four hours.
Much to her chagrin, not a lot existed by way of research on Italian ghosts that was more than just a superficial retelling of the tales. There was nothing on fae, of course, that would have been too good to be true. She was still unconvinced that she hadn't suffered a psychotic break due to Jane's death and subsequent resurrection. Her only redeeming search proved to be on Dr. Lauren Lewis, who had done rather inspired work on free radicals. At least she existed; at least there was evidence of her.
However, any fruitful information had passed hours ago. She thought of Jane, of her hot vitality, so welcome in the face of her cold death. She thought of Bo, a creature of sex, her biology so different than everything she had seen. That creature of sex wanted Jane. More than anything, it made Maura angry. Why, she couldn't really say, except that she should not be able to just swoop in and experience intimacy with Detective Rizzoli when she knew nothing about her. Someone who made love to Jane should have spent weeks, months, years learning her details, breathing in her footnotes.
Bo barely saw the broad strokes, and yet that had been enough to move her to action. Just the first glimpse of Jane clearly set her aflame. Maybe there was a part of her that envied Bo's action, despite her own need for introspection and calculation. Of course Jane was worthy of all the fire in the other woman's touch, eyes, words – she was worthy of it from anyone, but Maura felt rooted to her spot, especially now with such a powerful… rival entering the fray. If she couldn't speak her feelings aloud before, what would make them come out now? What would-
Pound-pound-tap. A frenzied knock on the door sent her computer crashing to the carpet as a result of her surprise and broken reverie.
Tamsin's Silverado peeled through the streets of the North End; darkness loomed over them despite the brightness that seemed so permanent twelve hours ago. It was hard to distinguish the Talucci house among all the rectangular shadows spawned by the sickly orange street lights scattered about. When she did find it, it was because the stench of death and violence had crept beyond the front door and spilled out onto the sidewalk.
That front door hung open in the cool air of the spring nighttime. Shit.
She grabbed a gun from the backseat, crept up to the threshold, and cursed again at the sight. Blood smeared in several different places, droplets at her feet. She went in, performed a cursory search, and ran out.
Bo was missing.
"Tamsin?" Maura said, pulling her front door open. The Valkyrie's ice blue eyes pierced through her, wild in a way that she had not seen before. She was glad that she had not yet changed into pajamas, or she would have felt exposed under the scrutiny.
"Bo's not answering her phone," The blonde said and barged in. Maura chilled when she walked past and began to pace again. She vaguely remembered the freezing sensation as something she experienced years ago, in the Swiss Alps in the dead of winter.
"Ok…" the doctor said in caution. She was unsure of why the Valkyrie would appear here if that were the case.
"I went to the Talucci house. She wasn't there, but quite a bit of her blood was. I need two things from you," though she demanded, Tamsin paused, and looked to Maura for permission to continue. The pathologist nodded.
"One, call Jane; I don't have her number. See if she's seen Bo. Two, when we do find her, she might need stitching up. Judging by the scene, she's too fucked up to go on a hunt."
"Of course, Jane said she was going to go home and get some sleep, so she should be available," said Maura, grabbing her cellphone from the coffee table, picking up her computer and placing it there instead. She speed-dialed Jane, suddenly a little concerned about Bo and her injuries.
That worry turned to dread when she got Jane's voicemail. She looked up to Tamsin, green-brown meeting blue in a search for solidarity, but only finding twin desperation. She called three more times, each time resulting in the same, and she thought she might cry there and then.
Tamsin spoke with authority. "We're getting in your car and you're driving us to Jane's. She and I are connected, and if anything's happened to her, I'll be able to tell."
"You're connected?" Maura asked as she ran to grab her keys, jealousy and confusion lacing her voice.
"Don't worry about it now, Maura! Just drive!"
"Honey, I'm saying she killed him with one of them."
"You're kidding. You know how many times I got the malocchio put on me by other kids in school? Hell, I probably tried it myself a couple times."
"Kids have no idea what they're doing, or how to use the malocchio. I wouldn't really say it's safe, but usually it's harmless horseplay, Jane. This was, as far as I can tell, old and a little more calculated. The curse she used probably marked Tom for a stajaga, a deceased soul that turns violent in its need for revenge. It seeks out people that others have cursed. Tom died from fear."
Jane snatched her fourth beer from her coffee table. 11:39 PM, the time on the cable box read. All of her childhood nightmares came barreling into reality today, so she sighed when the alcohol finally started to work in chasing them away. Three shots from the ancient bottle of vodka in her cabinet, still half full, had been enough for a pleasant little buzz, the six pack a force of habit, but neither was enough to discard the remnants of that morning's conversation with Mrs. Messina. It angered her, this sudden expansion of her universe, because it wasn't truly an expansion: just an ugly affirmation of the things her mother had so vehemently assured her were untrue.
She hated being lied to.
"So we're looking at two different entities, then?"
"No, succubus, with Tom dead, the stajaga is long gone now, most likely onto another target, unless someone has exorcised it. But La Sposa will not leave until Maria does. If Maria is trying to communicate with you all, chances are La Sposa is still hovering where she last saw Tom with Maria."
"Is that… like, a, um… I'm sorry. All of this is still so new to me. I have to confess that I'm not even sure that I believe any of it, let alone have the language to talk about it. Is it permanent? The… spirit remaining here, in Jane's old neighborhood."
"Scientists usually are the hardest to convince. I'm assuming you fall into that category; you smell like latex and chemicals."
Needless to say, she and Maura did not hang out, as the doctor insinuated that she might like to that morning. The detective simply felt too tired. So, she sat here, TV off, dog sleeping in the kitchen, black boy shorts and a ratty t shirt the only clothes that remained in the wake of a hurricane of a day. Her thoughts had turned dark, something Maura should not have to witness. Often she shielded her best friend from this Jane, though it was impossible to do 100 percent of the time. But, whenever she could, she did. They had walked out of Mrs. Messina's home slowly, minds heavy with what they now knew, not quite ready for the type of battle they had never encountered before. She noticed the encroaching foul mood then, acknowledging it before it even settled around her. She offered a lame excuse later, something like tiredness, or an upset stomach; she couldn't remember. In reality, it was the weight of everything. Maura did not pry, Maura just squeezed her hand, nodded, a "call if you need me" sheen in her eyes. Her mother had looked at her in sympathy and love, and in unspoken gratefulness that she was alive. Clearly Jane had been missing her mother's deep spirituality all these years, or she had written it off as paranoia and superstition. Angela accepted Jane's healing gracefully: not as a miracle, but as something that something someone had done that suffused her with joy. They then told her the story that they planned to tell others once the weekend was over: the bullet miraculously missed anything vital, and they only kept her to monitor her for infection. Nevermind that she had seen Jane on the brink of death, Maura on the same, dying with worry, nevermind that she looked at Bo with fervor and the fragility of thanks for a debt she could never repay.
And Bo, Bo had met her mood head on.
"I know who you are and what you have been through. I've been to hell and back too." She said, stopping Jane with a pull of a belt loop. The sun felt good against their skin after having been in the darkness of Mrs. Messina's old home.
Jane had intended to turn with force to show annoyance, but that particular feeling was absent - there was only the deflating one of need in its place. For what, she did not know. She guessed it had something to do with the honesty of Bo's statement, and she didn't move when she felt a palm flatten against her hip, half on her badge, half dangerously close to skin. "You mean that literally, don't you?"
"Yes. I have literally been to hell. And when you come back from there, you can't shut yourself away from everyone, trust me."
"I'm here, talking to you now."
"Yeah, but you're a runner, and I see it in your eyes. You want to get the fuck away from it. Badly. Don't do it."
Jesus. Jane knew what it was like to be read, Maura did it every time they were together. But, the doctor was much more introspective, much more quiet. Bo blew through and laid everything on the table. It erased any doubt that she was known, intimately. It was frightening and heady that it was by someone whom she'd barely met. It was frightening and heady that it was by someone that knew what she had experienced. The image of Tamsin towering over her as she collapsed on murky shores tattooed itself against her eyelids. She wondered if that was how Bo and Tamsin met. "What do you suggest, then, Succubus?" The last word was foreign on her lips, especially when she meant it literally, for the first time in her life.
"That we get this over with as soon as possible, and then we go out for a drink or three. All of us."
Looks like I beat you to the punch a little bit, Bo, Jane thought. She twirled the neck of the Blue Moon bottle in her hand, reflexes impeccable despite her drunkenness. Was she plastered, near oblivion? No, not close, but she was beyond the flutter of discarded inhibition. She hoped to find forgetfulness in the next bottle, so she rose to grab it out of her fridge. She wanted so badly to tell Maura what had happened to her while she died, how she knew Tamsin, but it would have to wait, because before she could reach the refrigerator, there was an erratic pound-pound-tap on her door.
Her drunkenness was to the point of not caring if people saw her in her underwear, so she eyed her gun on the counter, taking inventory, and then went to answer the knock. Her eye caught a glimpse of a familiar face in the peephole; she pulled the door open in a defeated sigh. The condition of the body opposite her, however, upon closer inspection, was startling. "Bo…"
She barely stood on her own two feet. A gash on her arm dripped onto the floor below, one eye swelled shut in the telltale early stages of a shiner. Before now, she had worn a closed up leather jacket, and the fact that there was only a tattered black tank top in its place scared the detective. Jane recognized the hunch, too – clearly she had at least one broken rib. She had not yet seen so much of Bo's skin, and it scared her that her ghastly injuries were apparently the reason. It scared her that she had entertained another reason altogether before this moment. Last she saw the other woman, she was the picture of vitality. What in the fuck happened between now and then?
"I need to heal." The succubus choked out – and it was the last innocent moment between them, for before Jane could ask how to help, Bo showed her.
Their lips met, and the succubus cried into the hot mouth against hers when she straightened against Jane's height to reach. Her ribs protested mightily, singing with pain and need when they rubbed against the Boston-Italian's warm torso. The two stood there, in the doorway of condominium 12, Bo latching onto Jane, kissing her with all the fury of survival, Jane holding her up in fear that if she didn't, Bo would crumple to the ground.
Jane's heart thumped in discord when a tongue pierced its way between her closed lips – it was happening so fast and she was so inebriated, it could not have been a good idea, what they were doing, what she was doing, all but grinding on a woman who was apparently beaten within an inch of her life. "How-", though, was all that she managed before the kiss turned so wet and raw that her chest sagged with desire.
Bo's mouth lit up blue; a fog descended from Jane's mouth to the succubus' in a winding that she swore was the exact image of the two of them tangled and naked. "You fuck me, that's how," Bo croaked, her eyes morphing again.
The words, the stare, the fucking kiss, it all crashed together to short circuit the detective's brain. The fog, as soon as it had been sucked from her lungs and dragged through her lips, ignited every bare nerve ending along her skin. Her thoughts clouded, and then turned off. She yanked Bo in from the hall, slammed the door, and shoved her up against it. The kiss she started was so bruising that she would have broken it in guilt, if it had not seared so hot in her belly that she hissed from the burn. Bo took and took, more of that fog from Jane's throat to hers, and the taste of it crossed Jane's eyes in arousal.
Scarred hands conquered hills and valleys of velvet curves, until they reached the hem of that ruined, blood-smelling tank top, and yanked it away. The same work was made of black jeans and boots, until Bo's body was exposed to the stale air of the room, and then picked up, Italian palms flat against full thighs, and carried to the bedroom.
"Agh," Jane grunted when she dropped the other woman to the bed, fully from memory in the darkness of the room. Their kiss was broken, and the exchange of blue stopped, and her thoughts sharpened. "What is that?" she asked as she tore at her clothes, body still throbbing with the aftershocks of whatever flowed between them.
"Don't worry about it, Handsome, just keep doing what you're doing," Bo panted, shrugging out of her underwear, dragging Jane with renewed vigor under the covers. The detective slid into place on top of her, Bo wrapped her legs around a thin waist and squeezed, and it sent a bolt of agony and pleasure through her ribcage. Their frantic kisses began again, doubled when below-the-belt wetness collided.
Jane swore she had never done this before, but somehow knew exactly what to do when she opened her mouth against Bo's. Life force left her, and sex pummeled into her in repayment, at once clearer than it had been in her first 36 years of life, despite her emotional conflict.
Bo moaned at the frantic rhythms, fingers, and lips that found her. She fed from the other woman shamelessly, surveying their connected bodies, watching them writhe and melt together, licking at the infant sweat on Jane's neck, catching black hair against her tongue.
That neck pulsed with carotid energy; its owner marveling at the rebirth under her hands. Jane had moved from grasping at a breast and begun the travel of her fingers down south, but stopped when, with every wet dance of their lips, bone fused, and Bo's bruises faded. The power that filled her heart and her head was as orgasmic as the grinding at her pelvis. Is this what sex should be? Is it me that's making her brand new again? She let her thoughts dance away when she grabbed her headboard for leverage.
"You can kill her, and you will have to. If she is this far from Palermu and she hasn't gone back, she has suffered a break from her resting place. Make no mistake: she has a corporeal form and she can attack you. But with the element of surprise and some of my protection at your disposal, you can behead her."
"We have to behead her? Is that the only way?"
"Yes. But first, I advise you to disarm her from behind. I will need you to go to the house, procure something that she has touched so that I have her essence. Then I will give you all a protection cantu. It will help against some of the more superficial wounds she can inflict."
"You all are crazy. You do realize you're talking about a ghost story, right?"
"Janie, you don't need to raise your voice. That 'ghost story' killed Maria. She was like a sister to me! So, if you want to walk out and forget this whole thing, not be a part of it, that's fine with me. Just go now so that we don't waste any time on trying to convince you."
"Ma-"
"You three don't need to worry about it. This is the reason you paid me! To get rid of this problem, and so, I'm gonna do it. Tonight, I will go back to the house and take a look around. Most underfae like to lurk at night, and so maybe I'll catch her in the act. If I don't, I can at least pick up something that she's touched for Mrs. Messina."
"From what she just said, that sounds dangerous, to go alone."
"I'm a big girl, Maura. I do this stuff all the time. I can take care of myself. Let's all meet at your house to regroup. I'll tell Tamsin and then meet you guys there?"
There was a vague buzzing as Bo came back to life. She at first thought it was the groaning of the mattress springs, or the sliding of bedposts against hardwood floor. It definitely was not the husky pant in her ear, or the thrilling slap of fingers inside of her, or the guttural rumblings of orgasm number three in her mouth, passing into Jane's hair. All of those sounds settled like honey in her lumbar vertebrae and trickled down to her pubic bone, but the buzz threatened to kill it all.
The only saving grace of hers was that Jane was none the wiser to it, wrapped up in her clutches and the sheets, grinding against her thigh. In about five minutes, the detective had it down to a science – the rocking, the biting, the elicitation of an inhuman, fae-only moan that titillated the both of them endlessly. In ten minutes, Bo correctly predicted that Jane would decimate her.
In twenty minutes, she was one hundred percent healthy.
In thirty minutes, she stopped pretending to feel guilty about the sex, about the fact that she had healed almost ten minutes before. She let it happen.
In an hour, here they were, with that incessant buzzing, that cellphone vibration that neither seemed to really care about, even when it started to echo, dividing and becoming two. They kissed, Jane drunk from her earlier libations, Bo drunk on her energy.
She could not lose Jane again. Not so soon – she would make damn sure. She would go to hell and back to find her, she would make Tamsin take her. That made no sense to Maura's mind, but she felt it with conviction. She vowed to make them help, silently as her Prius lurched into park and the two of them poured out onto the street.
She would not be afraid to speak these growing feelings into existence when she did find Jane, she told herself, even though she didn't quite know what they were. All of these people who knew her in ways that she did not, after only meeting her in the past two days? It was inexcusable – only she saw all of Jane's contours and edges. How she let herself slip she didn't know, but she would get their intimacy back.
She could not keep up with Tamsin's super-human run up the stairs of the complex, but she never lost sight of her back. The new determination in her peaked when she pounded on Jane's door, to no avail.
It shattered when her key turned in the lock and the two of them pushed the door open – when she heard a faint pounding in the back of the condo, and a succubus voice cry-moaning in unmistakable and stomach-twisting pleasure.
She turned to leave before Tamsin, red-faced, could grab her wrist and try to stop her.
A/N: Rizzles shit is about to happen. Thank you for your feedback, reading, and time. I'll be a little MIA in the next week because I have exams.
