I'm pretty sure Maura would never walk to work but it's a plot device okay? Okay!

Well, no fun to tease you any longer...


Wednesday morning

It is the first true day of fall.

Yes, technically autumn and the turning of the seasons had already begun. But this is the very first day where the subtle changes are suddenly so vulgar and stark. They seem to have happened overnight.

And so Maura, slinging her beige coat over her arm as she locks her front door, decides that the hint of chill on the breeze and the kaleidoscope of flaming colours on the sidewalk are too good not to fully appreciate.

She has left early enough so that she has time to walk to the precinct, which is quite a journey. With the case coming to a probable close after Jane's simple text last night, she expects to have a lighter day of work.

That being said, evil never sleeps. She could get a call at any moment informing her that a murder was committed as she lay asleep last night, cocooned in her duvet and dreaming of a lover.

Jane.

Her fist tightens on her briefcase handle. One name sparks a chain reaction inside. Her stomach squeezes as she recalls her latest lustful fantasy. It was nothing more elegant than a teenage wet dream. The poem throws a new dynamic into this tumultuous mix.

She wonders if the fruit is ripe.

If this is finally the perfect time to take action.

Two children, both around nine years old, wave goodbye to their parents. They skip their down their driveway to where they'll wait for the school bus. On closer inspection, Maura realises that they're twins. They seem delightful as they hold hands and swing their lunchboxes.

Innocence.

The world holds ugly connotations for Maura, as if the very idea of innocence is a foul, ironic joke. Some devious delusion of satirical wit. Working as a coroner, and before that as an aid worker in war ravaged Africa, as long as she had, she has become frightfully disillusioned with the notion that the world is a safe place for innocence to live.

In the end, all innocence will become something lost.

She frowns. The breeze has picked up and the morning sun provides only a pale, watered down form of warmth. Pausing to set her briefcase down and slip on the coat she had been carrying, Maura longs to know when she became so cynical.

Not wishing to dwell on such depressing thoughts, Maura listens out for the bird calls which twinkle above her head with every tree she passes. She picks out the distinct sounds, identifying each of the birds that she hears.

But soon she can think only of the way, once again, she has a fascination with the idiom about killing two birds with one stone. When she thought of it yesterday in the morgue, it reminded her of Jane, and today it is no different.

Smiling like a girl doting on her high school crush, Maura reflects on the influence that Jane has had, and continues to have, on her life. She is happier.

She feels freer.

No longer alone in this world.

Last night, as she stood sweating and shaking under the blinding, boiling stage lights, she could have sworn that poem was written specifically about the two of them.

That day in the rain. When she had wanted so badly to wrap a hand around the back of Jane's neck and jerk her down into the most passionate kiss she had ever been prepared to give. As she pressed Jane to the Prius, as she felt the heated skin trapped beneath wet clothing...

But she didn't.

She respected the invisible boundaries erected from years of friendship.

Still, while the worlds of the poem revolve inside of her skull, Maura can't help but fantasise and hypothesise; Could Jane sense that impulse from me that day? That need I had to have her? The urge I still have?

Maura can't be sure. She isn't certain she wants to be.

The concept of Jane knowing the full extent of her feelings makes her head spin.

Something has got to give. This bucketlist run has been peppered with moments of the two women creeping closer to the line that lies between safe and something else entirely.

Leaving Beacon Hill and entering the sluggish morning gridlock which stretches right into the heart of the city, Maura is struck by gratitude, (to any deity willing to listen), that she didn't take her car today.

The congestion and the blaring of agitated horns is too much for her to deal with.

She crosses a few streets before letting her natural train of thought return to Jane. Her complex infatuation with the detective is tumbling out of control.

Because that is what this is.

An infatuation.

Hot and wild and horribly inappropriate. Touching on voyeuristic. But is isn't Maura's fault that her body wants her to straddle Jane's body and work her until her luxuriously made bed breaks. Maybe she'll get on all fours and...

No.

Have Jane get on all fours while she...

Maura's head shakes in exasperation at herself. She shivers in self disgust as rolls of desire attempt to scupper her plans to have this be a day of cool, calm concentration. She has never experienced desire as crude and unwavering as this.

The crimson, amber and mucky brown leaves that flutter in the breeze and crunch under her graceful strides remind her of the changes in the seasons.

Such a dramatic shift from the vibrant, electric charge of a hot summer to the crisp, pre-winter air of fall. Yet no matter how many changes there are, how many difference seem to appear in the space of a mere few weeks, it is always perfect. Like the next part of the year is the next section of a dance; the tempo changes but the steps are all the same.

It makes Maura wonder if she needs to change something else in her own life. With the heat increasing in regards to how she feels about Jane, she is falling out of rhythm. This dance she performs is now at the stage where, to Maura, it is unrecognisable.

Rounding the avenue, she spots Jane on the steps of BPD with Korsak. The pair are laughing. They appear celebratory. Jane's beaming expression can be seen even from as far away as Maura is.

If it were possible that she accidentally took stimulant drugs with her breakfast earlier, Maura would believe it. Because all of a sudden every cell in her body is jumping.

The poem was the catalyst.

Someday, something's got to give. Shift. Change.

That day may just be today.


The first storm of the fall; the electric lightshow as summer meets the beginning of its demise.

It frightens Jo Friday, who cowers around Jane's ankles. The apartment is pitch dark, lit up in flashes of lightning. All power is out.

Jane and Maura are content to sit on the couch and stare straight out of the window. They listen to the howling wind and battering rain, and desperately long to know what the other is thinking. Because if Jane's apartment was anywhere near big enough, it would be evident that there is an elephant in the room.

They had come to Jane's apartment to hang out, watch some TV. Destress after the tough case this week had spat at their feet. But the storm came and the power was cut and here they are.

Visibility is all dull shadows and black shadows, dark grey filters with not much in between. Still, Jane catches a glimpse of Maura's profile every time the lightning strikes. It makes the roar of the storm outside seem like a glorious symphony. The soundtrack to her fantasies.

"Jane...?"

"Hmmm...?" Jane hums absently, and then sees Maura trying to get her attention. "Sorry, what?"

Maura smiles wanly. Jane grins wryly back. The detective bottles up too much, and Maura has experienced this many times before. Still she hopes Maura also understands that she must let Jane come to her gradually. If she feels pressured she'll pull away completely.

"I was asking if you could teach me something on the piano?" she asks.

Lightening invades the room in a burst, and Maura receives a snapshot of unease and distress before the curtain of darkness falls back down again. Jane's face feels twisted.

"Oh jeez. I haven't played since..."

Since Hoyt.

Maura regroups herself easily, so as not to alarm her friend. By her sour expression, Jane can tell she is cursing her ignorance.

"I'm sorry," Maura edges, hands fidgeting in her lap.

Jane doesn't reply, but ducks her head in response.

"Well I... Actually I have been practising something. You remember that learning a musical instrument is part of the criteria for my bucketlist?" she says, standing and smoothing down her skirt.

Thunder rattles the window frame. Jo Friday curls further around Jane's feet and whines. Her body quivers with terror at the ruckus of the storm outside. Absently, Jane reaches down to scratch behind her ears.

Jane's brow furrows as Maura pads her way over to the piano, usually hidden under paperwork. "What? Practising? When?"

Maura pulls out the piano bench, gracefully settling herself on it and giving a half shrug. "An hour here and there before or after work. And as for where, well I have an old acquaintance who used to handcraft pianos with his father. He has a workshop just outside of Chestnut Hill."

You never cease to fucking amaze me, Maura Isles.

Jane flexes her shoulders, eyes carefully keeping to Maura's hands which alight on the ivory keys. Though her eyes do wish to stray. To roam down the form fitting blue dress. The one that even in the pitch black darkness makes the wearer a total goddess.

There is rain splashing on the window pane and the sound of twin breathing.

And then a melody.

Jane doesn't recognise it, but it doesn't matter one bit. The twinkling high pitch tune and the smoother middle register chords warm her face like the ray of the morning sun. Even with the storm rambling outside of the window.

The sounds of Maura's unsure but precise finger patterns float around the room like the early spring breeze. Covering everything in a cloud of pleasantry and light.

Jane feels like her body is becoming lighter. Like this music is freeing her from so many bonds and chains that she never even realised she had. She takes a long breath in between the rumbling of thunder and Maura's fingers performing a perfect cadence.

She feels euphoria soaking through her skin and settling into her bones.

Like a spiritual experience.

And then it's over. The light goes away and the heaviness returns and there is thunder and rain and cold and darkness.

Maura turns around in her chair, nervousness scrawled across her face in the flash of lightning. "Was that okay?"

"Okay?" Jane chokes, rubbing her palms against her thighs. She doesn't know when her hands started shaking. Her scars are starting to ache with the chill and the weather. "Jeez, Maura, it was like the twilight zone in here."

Maura sniffs nonchalantly, looking away into the distance of the unlit apartment before refocusing on Jane. "I'll ignore the cultural reference which I'm sure I've completely misunderstood and ask you in layman's terms; was I any good?"

"Maura...how come you're so perfect at everything you do?" Jane blurts, the hands on her thighs digging their nails in. Damn, she did not mean to let that burst through.

"Jane, I'm hardly anywhere near perfect at everything," Maura dismisses. "In fact, it's statistically impossible to be-"

"Lemme play you something."

The words are out before she can stop them. She wants to grab them out from between them and cram them back inside of her again. Her scars are starting to ache. And she hasn't played the piano since her ordeal with Hoyt. Yet she would do anything for this woman.

Maura Isles is always the exception.

"Really?" Maura chirps, her already proper posture being bolstered up further as she practically bounces on the piano bench. "Oh Jane, you don't have to..."

Jane smiles, though she isn't sure Maura can see her features through the thicket of black shadows.

Of course I have to.

Heaving herself up off of the sofa, Jane disrupts Jo Friday, who yelps and scampers away. Jane will pet her and apologise later. Now she feels her feet moving of their own violation towards Maura on the bench. She doesn't fully understand the implications of what she wants to do.

"Shimmy forward there, Maur," Jane prompts.

Maura does what she's told. Throwing every shred of integrity and self control out of the window, Jane swings her legs on either side of Maura. The doctor's back is nestled tightly against her front. It takes every fibre of Jane's common sense to bite back a gasp.

Jane rests her chin on Maura's shoulder, ignoring the desire to nuzzle her nose into soft blonde curls. Or move them to the side so she can place her lips on Maura's slender neck. They are so close that they can feel each other breathing.

Jane slips her hands forward on either side of Maura's waist, and places her hands on the piano. "Ready?" she whispers.

Maura nods shyly. Jane hums, adjusting herself on the piano bench and clearing her throat. Possibly unconsciously, Maura pushes her hips slightly backwards into Jane's.

They don't utter a word about it but their minds are screaming at them.

Outside, the rain is the heaviest it has been all night. It batters the windows relentlessly.

"Okay," Jane says, her low voice making Maura sink back into her unintended embrace. They are undeniably comfortable with each other. Even when this level of intimacy should be too overwhelming for them.

Jane begins to play.

Maura, for the most part, seems to marvel at the movements of her hands. Jane is playing a melody she hasn't heard since she was in Vice. How she used to practise through the night, softly stroking the chords, to get her through the tough cases. And then Hoyt happened, and she was reduced to vaccuming.

Jane feels tentative hands at her elbows. A touch no more than a pressure, and then it is shyly retracted. A second time, and then palms are being slid up her tensing forearms. They come to rest on her hands. She continues to play, Maura's hands atop hers.

Their fingers fit perfectly together. Just like they do in every aspect of their lives together.

Jane is being hollowed out. Every dark place or bad memory or humiliating experience is being washed out from inside of her. She is drenched in a new passion.

And Maura is filtering it into her through this moment. This bond. This music.

With the rising of the storm outside and the crescendos in the music playing out in front of her, Jane finds a new clarity that she's never had before.

She will not let Maura leave this apartment tonight without kissing her.

If indeed she leaves at all with this storm. Jane is just sure that she will not lie awake one single night more. Not without knowing the taste and feel of the doctor's lips pressed against her own.

Jane closes her eyes and lets muscle memory do the work while she takes a backseat. The music lulls her away, and she is thinking about a time when she was a little less damaged, a little purer. She thinks of Hoyt, of Marino, of questions of morality and Maura.

God, Maura.

She thinks of all of the men and women who have come before her and shared a bed with the love of her life. She envies people she has never met, despises faces she wouldn't recognise on the street.

She wonders if she will ever divulge in their luxury. Their knowledge of how Maura arches from the bedsheets and clenches her eyes closed.

Does she gasp or groan with pleasure?

Does she moan so loud it reverberates in her chest or does she scream when she comes?

These lovers have tasted her in places that make Jane break out in a hot, sticky sweat. They have felt with their fingertips every curved rib, lock of damp, sweat-slicked hair and ridge of vertebrae that Maura has to give them.

And still the music plays on.

And when it ends, it dies away into the air which settles around them. They're both so still, and still so close.

Thunder rattles the windows and Jane thinks the glass will blow inwards. Shatter on the floor. But it doesn't.

Clearing her throat and moving away from the body she craves, Jane stands awkwardly and brushes her hands down her front. Maura doesn't turn to face her, but shifts to the left, leaving the invitation open.

Jane, against her internal warnings and common sense, takes it, sitting beside Maura this time.

The air feels thick. Maybe it's the static caused by the raging storm outside. But it also feels familiar.

It reminds her of when she was a teenager anticipating her first kiss. She wonders if she forgot about doing a line of cocaine in the bathroom. Every inch of her skin is prickling with anxiety but her head is spinning with delirious joy.

Here is this woman that she is in love with, sitting right here. So close that their elbows brush. Their thighs pressed together. Jane can feel Maura breathe.

And as for Maura, she plays with hem of her skirt. Jane is glad; it helps her to avoid putting her hands on either side of Maura's face and pulling their lips together.

The lack of talking between them is becoming frightfully awkward, something that it has never been. It scares Jane so, that her attraction could go so unnoticed by Maura and yet cause such a rift.

Yet that is the problem. It is not unnoticed anymore, at least it shouldn't be.

The poem is the most obvious thing that Jane could have thought og.

Maura appears to wiggles her shoulders slightly. And then her voice, timid and quiet, fits in the charged space between each thunder roll;

"You think I'm making this up because I'm invited to dinner and have to be nice," she says, talking more to the hem of her skirt than Jane.

After a moment's hesitancy, Jane's head turns towards her. "What?"

Maura raises her head, a strange, sad smile on her face. As if she's looking at a picture of a lost relative. "Oh, I could do that! I could put on an act for you, Laura, and say lots of things without being very sincere. But this time I am. I'm talking to you sincerely."

Jane's eyes widen as another round of thunder makes her whole apartment building creak and shudder. The rain batters a little harder. She sees the way Maura has sunken into her own world, and starts to panic, thinking that the doctor has somehow completely lost her sanity in the space of thirty seconds.

But then, after wracking her brain, she reminds the bucket lists. Wasn't there something about...?

"I happened to notice you had this inferiority complex that keeps you from feeling comfortable with people," Maura explains, waving her hand in the air. "Somebody needs to build your confidence up and make you proud instead of shy and turning away and – blushing. Somebody -ought to-"

Her breath catches in her throat, and she turns her face, finally, to face Jane. Her voice is so tiny and shy, Jane strains to hear her over the rain lashing against the window, despite being right beside her. "Ought to - kiss you, Jane."

The name slips past. Jane knows that isn't in the original monologue but damn if it isn't the sweetest thing she's ever heard. Maura says her name like it's honey melting in her mouth on a bright spring morning.

No thunder clouds here.

"You learned your monologue," Jane appraises, but in a husky tone which has nothing to do with the monologue itself and all to do with the subtext.

A flash of lightning lights the air between them. It shows just how dark Maura's eyes have grown. And then darkness once more.

"I did," comes the reply.

Jane swallows. "Cool. I mean, that's impressive. So...uh..."

Jo Friday timidly whimpers form under the coffee table as another burst of thunder makes everything in Jane's apartment quake. Jane thinks she blinks a few times, but she is vaguely aware that she stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence and now there aren't any more words coming to her.

But Maura Isles has had enough. "Oh for heaven's sake, Jane. I'm tired of this charade."

And Maura lunges forward, pressing her lips to Jane's.

They move together, kissing haphazardly for a moment; Jane realising what was happening too late and Maura realising what she had just done too late. They ease back, eyes wide and unfocused.

It was unplanned, imperfect, uncoordinated.

It may have been the best damn kiss Jane Rizzoli has ever had.

The lightning crashes outside. Jo whimpers and huddles down deeper under the coffee table.

"Maura..." A gasp.

"Shhh, don't speak." Maura's voice trembles, denial and shock at her own off the cuff action.

"Maura-"

"Jane, I'm sorry, I don't know what I-"

And lips are on hers again. Softer this time, but also confident. The kiss reassures with I want this.

It asks why now?

But it murmurs I think I fucking love you.

Whenever the haze of kissing the woman she's in love with clears for a second, Jane feels the softness of Maura's cheek under one of her palms, and the bite of the wooden piano stool under the other from where she leans her weight. She pulls back.

Something inside of both of them kicks in; something that makes them both think that they're dreaming.

Jane thinks about the stars, about what Maura told her once. How some of them are already dead and some of them aren't. It takes so long for their light to travel to earth, she remembers, that at any given time when we crane back our necks and glare up at the sparkling darkness, we could just be looking at ruptured galaxies and dead stars.

It is a semblance.

Is this a semblance too? Is this real or is this something we believe to be real because we have only the theory in our head to proof it, and no evidence?

"Jane, what is this?" Fear.

Jane licks her lips. She can taste her. She can't tear her eyes away from where she thinks Maura's are in the dark.

"Maura Isles," she whispers, shaking her head in wonder as if that could answer Maura's question. "Maura Isles. Maura Isles. Dr. Maura Dorthea Isles."

Maura shifts on the piano stool to face Jane more. She does it carefully, afraid to break the boundaries of their dream. Almost like if she moves too fast or doesn't answer quick enough, she'll wake up alone in her bed again. Jane understands.

"Jane-"

"Maura Isles," Jane laughs.

It is the kind of sound that only occurs when Jane is elated. When she's cracked a terrible case, or her sports teams have won an impossible match, or Maura has said something that gifts her voice a rich, delighted tone.

It makes the dark room swirl with colour for a moment.

Perhaps I've lost my mind, she considers.

"Maura Isles," Jane whispers, her voice lower as she blindly reaches for Maura's hand in the dark. After two unsuccessful gropes, she catches a wrist, and hold onto it like a lifeline in the storm.

The thunder sounds like a nuclear bomb blasting just outside in the miserable Boston street.

And words come pouring forth at last.

"I've fallen in love with out so disastrously hard that sometimes, when I'm with you, I can't tell what's up or down, or left or right or anything. Who or what's around me just kinda melts away, until it's just the two of us," Jane admits.

There is something about feeling a pulse underneath her fingertips that makes her mouth speak the truth and all filters nonexistent.

Maura sits in silence, her face obscured by shadow.

Jo Friday whines the coffee table.

Say something, Jane's mind screams. Please, I'm desperate. God Dammit, say something please, Maura, please. Fuck I love you.

"Jane," Maura utters, "Loss of space and depth awareness as well as higher cognitive functions are very dangerous.

Jane splutters and coughs, hacking out her surprise as once again, Maura manages to yank the rug from beneath her feet. "It makes me feels so dizzy when my heart squeezes so damn hard in my chest."

There isn't anything stopping this flood gates have opened and now Jane Rizzoli is taking a plunge in the deepest waters imaginable.

"But I wouldn't have it any other way, Maura."

Jane's minds flashes with a warm, bright, sepia image; the day she got the dogtags. The ones which hang in her car. First chance she gets, she'll give them to Maura. She can wear them and remember forever that she captured Jane Rizzoli's heart.

Because the dogtags belong to someone worthy.

Who is more worthy than Maura Isles?

A car honks outside, and there's a screech of tires, and then it too becomes lost in the never ending downpour. Jane wonders if she'll ever see the sun again.

Of course not; all of the sun is right here in this apartment. She can't see Maura's face very well, she can't make much out except basic shapes and the occasional fleeting detail, but this is the warmest, brightest interaction Jane's ever lived through and she never wants it to end.

"Jane?" Maura manages, her voice thick. Jane's heart thumps with the desire to kiss her again.

"Uh huh?" If Maura didn't know any better, she'd think Jane sounded drunk.

But when you profess your love for someone after it being pent up for so long, the relief can be downright euphoric.

"I've fallen in love with you too," Maura murmurs, leaning forward to brush her lips against the detective's. Her words tickle sensitive skin. "Perhaps we can share these symptoms of dizziness, confusion and lust together?"

The hand around Maura's wrist squeezes in the darkness.

Downright euphoric.