Been a few chapters since I earned the M rating. Also maybe a small warning for ptsd stuff? Sorry it's long but I wanted it all in one go.


"Maura."

It's the morgue, but you aren't its doctor. Its doctor will be returning at any moment.

She's saying your name, and you have to get to her. You're trying to stumble off your table when a bright light comes on, illuminating Jane, lying flat on hers. You touch her, and she's cold. Too cold.

Dead. But still asking you for help because the doctor is going to come with his scalpel and slice her apart.

And then you.

"Maura... Here."

You're spinning to the floor.

"I'm here. Maura. Wake up, honey."

"Nhh,"

"Come here, baby, you're safe. You're safe, it's okay. You're home."

The reason you can't move your arms is because you're wrapped in Jane's. Warm and alive and tight enough to secure your shaking.

The reason your throat hurts is because that loud noise just now was you screaming.

"Jane?" you squeak, digging your fingers into her back.

"I'm here, sweetheart. I've got you."

Both of you are on the floor against your side of the bed, where she's rocking you gently, cradling your head, murmuring protective kisses into your hair. Her voice is gravelly with sleep and yet the most soothing thing imaginable.

Even though this is a faux pas... she comforts you.

"Jane." You curl into her warmth.

"I love you."


The fourth stair squeaks. You step on it intentionally, adding two soft knocks on the rail. Just me. You instated this system yourself, undiscussed, after that night when you accidentally startled her terribly by appearing silently in the basement.

She's slouched on her couch, one socked foot up on the table.

"Guy with the glasses is the killer," she mumbles.

"Who?" you frown. "What case?"

She points at the TV where Murder, She Wrote is just going to commercial.

"You goin' to bed?"

She's asking because she doesn't want you sleeping alone. In case.

"In a while." You come around the couch to sit, peering by the fickle light, trying to make sense of where her arms are. One is pushed up underneath her T shirt from the bottom.

She heaves up for a big silent breath. "My heart's beating."

"Good."

"Beating like it wants out. I wish you could just.. poke a hole and let it out. Let it run around so I can get some sleep."

This reminds you of that fascinating article you read about archaeological evidence of trepanning in the Neolithic period, but now isn't the time to mention it.

"How much coffee have you been having?"

"Don't tell me I have to give up coffee. They won't let me drink hard liquor at work."

"Switching to decaf would help..."

"Cold day in hell."

You smile. "Our morning coffee has been decaf for the past four days. You didn't even notice."

Her mouth opens, then closes. "I made the coffee today. And yester- did you switch the beans in the thing?"

"I switched the beans."

"She switched the beans," she whispers to herself. "Diabolical."

You go to feel her heartbeat, and recoil with a gasp.

"Why are you cold?!"

There's a crinkle, and she pulls a bag of melting ice cubes out from the bottom of her shirt.

You huff, tossing it on the table. Topical ice won't help acid in the esophagus, but you don't say that in case she thinks it does.

Heartburn is just one of many symptoms popping up.

You knew this season had begun two weeks ago, when she froze under you like she hadn't in ages.

It's a throwback to the old days. Reminding her to eat. Holding her so she'll sleep. Not initiating sex. Comforting her when she wakes up shaking, cooling her sweaty skin with a washcloth. Putting your arms around her when she's a pinprick away from bursting into tears.

This time of year always brings extra difficulties. Extra short fuses, extra sorrys and thank yous, extra quiet. But even when she seems irritable and distant, there'll be a little I love you somewhere. Your favorite dinner. Flowers delivered at work. Yesterday, you found a single pistachio shell on your desk with a heart drawn on it. You stared at it for a full minute. Frowned. Laughed. Held it in your hand. Put it in your drawer with a teary smile.

You give her space, but she's there when you need her.

Like last night. Her exact anniversary, and yet you were the one to wake up screaming. It was embarrassing that your sympathy nightmare should be more dramatic than any of hers, but guilt is something you're both supposed to be letting go of, so you did. You let her comfort you, and it was wonderful.

"Eight years." She sighs her entire lung capacity. "I hate that this is a thing on the calendar we have to plan around. All our lives."

"We don't kno-"

"We know, Maura. If there's eight years of this shit, there'll be ten. Twenty. It might fade but I'll never be totally free. And neither will you. You know it, and I know it." Sometimes you can see a silent brawl in her head. She's learning which insecurities are just the PTSD talking. "I'm really sorry that's the life I come with."

You smile. Not because of what she said, but because of what she didn't.

"I hope that every coming year is better than the previous one." You pick up her hand, the one that will be stiff from the ice. The one with your ring on it. "But no matter how they are, there's nowhere else I'd want to spend them."

She watches you massage the knot in her palm, with that look of I don't deserve you gratitude you've been seeing a lot of lately.

"You don't have to do that."

"Hush. We like it."

A weak smile tugs the corner of her mouth, and a shiny stripe runs down her cheek. "We do."


It's not a good time for mating season.

Jane isn't in too bad a mood to touch you. It's just not a good time. And that dulls it.. a little.

Besides PSTD, it's been a bad stretch at work. They pursued a wrong lead. The media twisted it into a snafu, painting the department as incompetent. A killer is still at large, and from a few of the headlines, you'd almost think they were rooting for him.

The more frustrated she is, the harder she works. She stays up late poring over the same evidence. Many conversations dissolve because her mind is elsewhere, and what evenings you have together are mostly spent talking shop.

When she isn't working, she's working out. She's at the gym, the range, or trying to outrun her problems in laps around Beacon Hill. As always, a stressed Jane starts looking extra lean and muscular very quickly. She's running herself ragged, and you feel a little guilty for finding the results attractive.

From downstairs you hear the muffled drumbeat of fists beating out day's tensions on her punching bag. Trying to exchange fear for anger. Helplessness for strength.

You want her to use that strength on you.

It's been twenty-six days since you touched her, and eight since she touched you. The air in your bedroom feels unbearably still and empty.

All you can do is lie there and listen, wanting and restless. When you close your eyes, you imagine her hands on you. Frenzied with need, pushing you into bed and mercilessly pounding her frustrations into you. Not at all for your pleasure, but her own, although at the moment nothing could arouse you more.

Your eyes open to the ceiling, and you're still alone, warm and breathing heavy in wet underwear.

Touching yourself isn't enough. You open your nightstand drawer, but falter before you grasp what you were reaching for.

After all this time, you'd unboxed it only two nights ago. It was the same as tonight; you'd lain in bed, lonely and worried and aroused at the distant sounds of her brutal workout at the other end of the house. You remembered buying it in case you ever wanted to do it on your own... and, well, you were on your own.

You slid it in and out to the sound of her fists, and when you turned it on, your toes curled. But a second later, you were left feeling ten times more alone than before. Your customary two tears still slipped from your eyes, and it was the first time Jane hadn't been there to brush them away and kiss your forehead, and that left you horribly melancholy.

She isn't neglecting you. She wouldn't want you to feel alone. She would tell you to ask her for what you need - and it might be what she needs, too. You want to give her the control she can get nowhere else lately.

Tonight, you choose Jane's harness instead.

Her back is to you, ponytail all but fallen apart, sharp shoulder blades and sport bra soaking through with sweat as she throws hooks into the bag. Careful not to startle her, you come around to where she can see you, just watching.

"You're looking stronger than ever," you observe, allowing your face to show everything.

She pauses, panting. The bag swings on its chain.

"I have this fantasy," you say, reaching out and touching it, your hand failing to still its heavy momentum. "Where you give all that to me instead."

Her eyes find what's in your other hand.

"You wouldn't want that." You haven't heard her voice for hours, and the depth of it nearly makes you shiver. The way her eyes flick darkly up to yours does.

She's much stronger than you, and the reserves of stress that fuel her are virtually bottomless. It could be dangerous if she lost control, but there isn't one worry of that in your mind.

"Don't tell me what I want."

"What do you want?"

You don't think you're mistaking the invitation.

Getting close to her ear, you run your hands down her abs. "I want you to show me how strong you are. I want you to remind me I'm yours. I want you to use me as hard as you want," you press your finger to her lips when she parts them, "and let me draw the line."

You leave a sucking kiss on her earlobe, and without looking at her again, you leave her harness on the table and go back upstairs.

If she follows, you know how you want it tonight. You've only tried it that way once before. It wasn't Jane's favorite because she missed seeing your face, and you agreed, but you liked how it felt.

You're finishing undressing when you sense her arrival in the bedroom doorway, and you let her take in the sight of you from behind. Leaning forward a little over the bed, spreading out your legs. Bare and ripe for the taking.

Seconds pass and you start to wonder whether your arousal has made you inconsiderate. Whether she's in the right frame of mind. Your heart pounds waiting for the verdict.

Her palm runs down your spine. You shut your eyes, anticipation liquefying inside you.

Hands slide around to knead your breasts. You can smell her sweat and hear her breathing and feel the heat and energy radiating from her body.

Kisses trail down your back. You move onto your hands and knees and hold your breath, waiting for the moment when she finds just how badly you need her. You might actually go insane for the few seconds that you don't hear or feel her doing anything, in fact you aren't even sure where she is, until you feel the slightest breath flow over you, and you know she's just... there. Taking in your scent. Sampling you, like a glass of wine, before she buys the bottle. Her tongue has never felt hotter, and it makes you suck in a breath.

Just when you're about to beg, the bed shifts. You arch, impatient, pushing into her pressure until you give way with a moan.

She still intends to start like she always does. Carefully. You love her for it, but it's not what you want right now. You're giving yourself to her, and you want to be taken.

"Don't be gentle."

There's a pause before her hands slide up to your waist.

She gives you the rest in one steady motion that makes your mouth open. You wince silently at the intrusion, because you know if you cry out she'll panic that she's hurting you. And she almost is, a little, but it's exactly what you wanted.

She begins. Slow.. but hard. Each impact rippling through your flesh and jolting an uncertain-sounding breath from your mouth.

Her palm slides up your back. Gentle. Checking.

"Faster-"

And that's what you get. Fingers locked on your hipbones and pulling you onto her. So good and primal and different, and you come so easily it doesn't even count.

You sink, face in the sheets. She stills, leaning over you so her lips brush your shoulder blade, panting and kissing.

"Next time," you get your breath, "don't stop for me."

It might be even better like this. With her hands planted just behind yours and the heat of her body on your back.

Your moans are guttural and you can't seem to get her name into them. Other times it's all you can say, but you put it there on purpose now and it just doesn't seem to go. And you don't hear yours in hers, either. She isn't saying a word.

Right now you're not Maura and Jane. You're just animals in heat, letting your mate take what's hers.

You breathe a jagged pleading of yes yes and so deep and so strong.

You love the sound of her dangerously low panting together with your own whimpering. And instead of that punching bag, the sound of her rhythm against you. Reverberating through the silent upstairs, claiming you and the house at once.

Hers. Hers. Hers.

You wouldn't want it any other way.

The tireder she gets, the more selfish, with angles not optimized for you anymore. This is exactly what you wanted, that feels the best even though it doesn't.

You whine and come hard, viciously hard, breath muffled hot in the sheets, your fists pulling them off the corners of the mattress. Exhausted but relentlessly chasing release, she doesn't slow for you, and it makes your orgasm sharp and overwhelming.

She goes still, pressing hard into you, and you brace yourself because Jane is about to be just as much at the mercy of her hips as you are. And those hips are excitingly, furiously powerful.. especially together with her hoarse groans of release.

She slumps onto your back, her full weight hot and crushingly heavy. Exhausted breaths come in bursts on your sweaty skin.

When she turns you over, her touch is gentle. You know she needs to see that this was okay, and hopefully the stupidly sated look on your face answers her question. She brushes away the hair that's stuck to your face, and oh there's something you like very much about that ever-tender forehead kiss delivered while she's still breathing hard and shivering from exertion. You smile even more stupidly.

She wants to kiss down your body, but you push her off to the side instead. "Rest."

You catch your breath side by side in silence, cuddling with your fingers because your bodies are too tired and sweaty.

It must be later when you're half-aware of sheets sliding over your shivering skin.

...

It happens the next evening.

Jane's sitting on the bed, taking off her boots. You're undressing to shower, talking about your day, but you look right at her for the first time in a minute, and stop mid sentence. She's pale, either furious or terrified.

"What?" you ask, alarmed.

She buries her face in her hands and heaves with silent sobs.

"What's the matt-" you look down, and it takes you a second, but.. oh. Peeking above the lace of your underwear. Faint bruising around your iliac crest. And the other side, to match.

"Oh. Oh, Jane," you say, trying to get a small laugh into it, but it isn't going to work on her. "It's okay."

But it isn't. Not while she's thinking of all the bruises on all the bodies that cross your table. Of the first time she saw her own bruises in the mirror after Hoyt and vomited.

"I'm not hurt. I didn't even know."

"I know," she manages, hugging you around the middle when you sit next to her, crying no less hard. Not knowing what else to say, you just let her.

"Really. It's fine," you stroke at the back of her head. "It's okay."

"I need.. I just need you to know I-" she sobs, small and pleading. "I love you so much and I would never hu-hurt you. Oh God I'd never hurt you ever, ever-"

"What? Of course you wouldn't, darling," you quiet her, near tears yourself at the way her voice sounds. "I know that."

She gulps, finally righting herself and resting her hand over her eyes, trying to breathe her way out of it. "I know I shouldn-n't feel like a fucking monster but I don't like what that looks like."

"You are not a monster. You didn't hurt me."

"What if I did?"

"What?"

"Maura, promise me. If I ever... I don't know, lose my mind, and somehow.. I hurt you. Or make you wonder if you're safe in our bed, even once-"

"I -"

"No second chance," she lifts her head to interrupt you. "Throw me out. Annihilate me. Tell Frost. Frankie. They'd help you. Promise me." Her eyes are pink-rimmed and wet-lashed and dead serious.

"But you'd nev-"

"Promise."

"Fine," you sigh. "But honestly. We've both had a bruise before and laughed, this isn't so-"

"Not from my hands. Not... Maura.. what if what you were kinda pretending last night.. what if it really got like that? Where I just wanted to come home every night and take it all out on you. And you were too nice to say stop, and convinced yourself it was okay if it hurt a little. If you felt trapped. Would that be sexy?"

You frown. "I wouldn't let-"

"You never said stop!" she cuts you off. "You said you'd stop me when it was too much and you never did."

"You never did anything that was too much." You soften, realizing that you have made some mistakes. "Did I make you do something you didn't want to?"

"We didn't kiss." She stands up to pace. "I hate that I didn't kiss you. I hated not seeing your face so I couldn't tell if... I hate that I wanted to check on you more and I was able not to. I hate that I didn't say I loved you. I didn't even think of it. By the time I said it you were asleep."

You're about to apologize until she finishes with a quieter, "I hate that I still liked it."

"There's nothing wrong with anything you did, Jane. I liked it too."

"But - I just... hate feeling like.." she scratches through her hair. "I don't want you to ever feel powerless or used or like I care about getting off more than I care about you, even for two seconds. I know I made you feel like that, even if you meant to let me, it feels... ugly."

"Honey, we don't have to do that again. But please understand.. being a little harder than usual doesn't make me feel unloved, or disrespected, or..." you sigh, seeing that it isn't sinking in. "I think I have to explain something."

She slips her hand into yours when you reach for it.

"You won't identify... actually, you'll probably hate it. But you should know how it is for me."

You have her attention.

"I know you hate to feel... overpowered. I completely respect that. But that doesn't mean I feel the same."

"You like? To feel overpowered?"

You pat her hand, figuring out how you're going to try to sell something resembling her worst nightmare as a turn-on.

"You love me. Very much. You touch me with the utmost respect. You would never hurt me. You'd walk through fire to save me from getting a paper cut."

She nods.

"You're also strong. Stronger than me. You know I love that. It comforts and arouses me. You're strong enough.. that I couldn't stop you." Her eyes widen and you hold your hand up like hear me out, "Not with my own strength. But I do have complete, complete trust in you to stop the second I asked you. It isn't a fantasy of force... it's that that trust feels so good. I have felt overpowered by you, and it's exciting, because it's you, and I'm completely safe.

"See.. at work I have to be in control all day long. People work under me.. anything that goes wrong in my office is my responsibility, so I have to be perfect. And... with you," you realize slowly. "Especially... before. It was my responsibility to make sure you felt safe, make sure everything felt good.. make sure everything you wouldn't ask for was easy to get, but also make sure nothing was too much. I couldn't fail you, it would break both our hearts... I had to be in control every second. Even in my youth..." you blink. "Come to think of it, I've been in control all my life.

"But my point is, once in a while, it just feels so good to feel a little out of control with you. To feel like you to want me so badly you just have to have me, like an animal.. hard, right now, just because I feel so good to you... it's hot, to me. To not have to worry that you're worrying... because you know I like it and I can trust you to just... take over.. and trust me to trust you..."

That's probably enough. You can't figure out the look on her face.

Until she rushes out, "That's how I meant it." She begins to ramble as if she's the one selling you, and you smile, pleasantly surprised. "I wanted to impress you. I wanted to go harder than you thought I could. But even more I wanted to show you how I'd still obey you, how you could trust me. You could tell me to stop and go like you had a remote control, Maur, no matter how we're being or how close I am, I'd always stop for you. I thought that's what we were doing."

"It was. I know you would. That's why it feels good." You brush your fingers through her curls, wondering why she doesn't look relieved. "So what's wrong?"

She fidgets with her ring. "Being real soft with you... makes me feel sure I'm not... a little like..." Her eyes sneak to yours for half an instant, pleading for reassurance.

"No," you realize suddenly. "No. Darling. You're the whole universe apart. The absolute antithesis." You cup her cheek, kissing the corner of her mouth. "You are good and honorable, trustworthy, loving, noble... and you don't have to be strictly soft to be all those things. They're what make you so incredibly sexy when you aren't. And they're what make you the woman I want to share my life with - not just my bed."

She smiles a bit sheepishly, and you hug.

"So this is what mating season is about? You like to feel a little...?"

You nod. She thinks for a long time.

"Next time," she says, and your eyes flick up to hers. "You have to tell me to stop, at least once. Just to show I will."

You nod.

"And you have to let me be soft to you after. I can't treat you that way and just leave it at that."

You nod. "This isn't something I want often. I love the everyday. When it's fun and we laugh." You lie back on the bed, looking up at her. "When it's beautiful and we cry together. That's the real us."

She grins, settling next to you and delicately kissing your eyebrow.

Quiet for a while, she touches your bruise feather-light.

"So would it ruin the mood if I plowed you wearing oven mitts?"

The most unbecoming wheeze explodes from your lungs, and she watches you shake with laughter like it's her proudest accomplishment.

She sighs, sounding lighter. "Sorry for overreacting."

You dismiss it with a shake of your head.

"I think I'll take a bath. Will you be my big spoon?"

Grinning, she wriggles closer to kiss you.

"And then," you ask, lips brushing hers, "will you show me how soft you can be?"

"Mmmmmmhmm."