The dinner had gone much smoother than Jane had expected. Maura did most of the talking. Whether or not her family now understood the difference between legumes and nuts, was still unclear but not for lack of information provided on Mauras part.
If only she had stuck to food-related facts. "Why you insist on telling everyone your disgusting fun facts over food I will never understand," Jane said as she walked Maura down the pathway toward her car.
It was well past ten already and the full moon was out behind the clouds.
"You're referring to when I pointed out that the Phallus Impudikus smells not dissimilar from a decomposing body?"
Jane looked up at the stars with a defeated look. "Thank you for informing us of this as we ate stuffed Portobellos. From the bottom of my gag reflex… thank you" Jane added.
"You're welcome" Maura stated. "I didn't mention that they are also notorious for their shape-"
"Oh, you didn't have to… it's right in the name" Jane stated awkwardly. "I'm…" Jane cleared her throat. "I'm glad you came tonight… Ma loves you." she reached for Maura's hand.
Maura opened her mouth to speak but Jane started rambling. "And Tommy likes you too… maybe a little too much" she added bitterly. "Frankie'll come around" she continued. Remembering how Frankie couldn't hide his glares.
He didn't say anything rude but he didn't have to. Maura is either too oblivious to social cues or not bothered enough to have noticed, but Jane did.
"I want to show you something," Maura said as she got her keys out of her purse.
Jane nodded wordlessly. They drove in silence for a few minutes before Jane's curiosity took hold and she had to know where they were heading because Maura was driving in the opposite direction of her home.
"Ok, we are either raiding a farmers market for pickles or you are taking me to a cemetery… in the middle of the night. Cause that's all that's out here" Jane said gesturing to the dimly lit road.
It was an eerie atmosphere and Maura's silence didn't help. Jane looked over to Maura and her theory was confirmed. "Bummer. Cause I… Like… Pickles". Maura parked the car and took of her seatbelt.
"This way, Jane" she stated and Jane could hear her stilettos make contact with the gravel below. Jane had become accustomed to being a few steps behind Maura. Always catching up. She let out a breath and unbuckled her seatbelt.
The fact that Maura was now the daughter of an infamous mob boss with many enemies was not lost on her. She clutched her sidearm cautiously as she followed the curvy figure leading the way with her cell phone in hand, lighting the way.
Even though she was off duty, with everything going on she kept her sidearm close at all times.
"Wait up Maur!" Jane was inwardly cursing at herself for following Maura to such an exposed area. Had this been anyone else under the same circumstances, Jane would never have let them come this far.
But this was Maura. Whether she liked it or not, she would follow Maura anywhere. Jane just prayed she didn't fall into an open grave chasing after this woman.
She finally caught up to where Maura had halted. The fog was thick, covering the beams of light from Maura's car in the distance. "If you're gonna kill me and dump me in an open grave, I'm on to you," she said waving her hands. "… but great thinkin, getting me out here before you kill me… I am heavier than I look-"
"Jane" Maura began softly and all the annoyance was whipped from Jane's face and her usually endless supply of snippy remarks and sarcasm had gone with it. Jane looked down at the dimly lit gravestone. It read Colin Doyle 1984-2010
"Oh Maur-"
"I didn't know what else to put on it… I don't even know why I did this- I-I didn't know him… I never will" Maura clutched her hands together. "I arranged a small service. It was earlier today… I don't even know whether or not he was religious" Maura giggled nervously and folded her arms.
"I didn't cry" she added. "And I don't know why I showed you this" Maura whispered.
Jane didn't say anything. Instead, she just slowly moved closer and brought her arms around the smaller woman.
"Jane I'm not a hugger" Maura stated but she didn't move out of the embrace.
"Neither am I. Just ask my mother" Jane stated and Maura let out a small huff that could have been mistaken for a stiffened laugh. She whipped at her eye and then leaned into Jane's embrace just a bit. "I wish you would've told me so I could've been there for you… and I put the fun in funeral" she added and shuddered at the feeling of Muara giggling against her.
"You would've been utterly bored. It was just me and the priest"
The sound of a branch cracking jolted them both out of their embrace and Jane immediately reached for her gun and moved Maura behind her.
"I'm not a threat to you detective. Either of you" Paddy Doyle said with his hands hanging calmly by his sides.
"Get your hands up right now!" Jane growled. Maura's hands released her where they were clutching at Jane's sides. She moved out from behind Jane. "Maura get back!"
"It's alright, Jane. He appears to be unarmed. And outnumbered."
"I just wanted to pay my respects" Paddy added.
"In the middle of the night? Conveniently when Maura got here?" Jane hissed. "You been following us? How many thugs do you have following Maura around?"
"We're on the same side. Everything I do is for her safety… I suspect you want the same thing" Paddy looked at Maura and then toward the gravestone. "I failed him," he added, moving closer and bending down. Jane kept her gun pointed at him.
"Jane please" Maura pleaded. Jane reluctantly put away her weapon and swallowed at Maura's words. Everything inside her was telling her to arrest him and call it in.
"We have to go, Maur"
"I won't fail you, Maura. I won't stop until they're all gone"
"Don't come near her again," Jane said in a raspy voice as she ushered Maura toward the car and took the keys from her. "If you really want to protect her, you'll stay away. You know that's how it has to be"...
Maura didn't get much sleep that night. Jane had brought her home and stayed until she was half asleep. She yawned softly as she came down the stairs toward her kitchen. A noise coming from her living room startled Maura.
She took the closest weapon she could reach and held it above her head. Her heart was racing as she pondered how she will combat her intruder.
"Oh!" Jane yelled as the rolled-up Vogue magazine come down on her head.
"Jane!? What are you doing on my couch? Did you even go home last night?" Maura asked breathlessly.
"I was sleeping until about three hundred pages changed that" Jane sat up and ruffled her curls.
"Closer to six hundred actually. What are you doing here?" Maura straightened out the magazine.
"I um.." Jane looked at Bass out of the corner of her eye. "You know… never let em know your next move. Coffee?" Jane got up and stretched lazily.
Maura gave her a look and moved to the kitchen. Jane was spending the night so she could protect her. Even though Maura could go on and on about the benefits of a good night's sleep in one's own bed with far more ergonomic properties than a couch, she opted to make the weary detective a cup of fine Italian roast instead.
"So about last night…" Maura bit her lip hearing Jane's words. Remembering that she had promised Jane a punishment… "You know I have to tell Cavenagh right?" Jane continued hurriedly.
Maura clutched her hand around the lever of the coffee machine. She knows that it's Jane's responsibility to tell her acting Lieutenant that Paddy had made contact. The fact that she found out that he's her biological father shouldn't matter.
Also, Jane has no more obligations toward her than she would toward another citizen of Boston. So why were things starting to feel complicated?
"I understand Jane." Maura turned and placed a steaming brew in front of Jane with one of her practiced polite smiles. "I need to get ready for work… I suggest you do the same"...
Jane had called a cab as soon as a unit had arrived outside Maura's home to take over for Jane. She got her cruiser at her mother's house and sighed in annoyance as she anticipated how she would likely have to answer her mother's ensemble of nosey questions about why her cruiser was there all night.
She doesn't know how much she should tell her mother about her and Maura. They didn't 'do it' the previous night but somehow going with her to her half brother's grave seemed even more intimate.
Her mother has no reason to suspect that she and Maura are anything more than just unlikely friends, right? "Focus Rizzoli!" she yelled in her empty cruiser as she made the turn onto her street.
There are many more pressing things to think about besides what her mother must be thinking. And Maura. She seemed a bit cold earlier. Well, colder.
She can't help the fact that she has to arrest Paddy the next time she sees him anymore than… Maura could help the fact that the man is her father. Jane banged her head against her apartment door softly a few times as she fumbled with her keys.
"Jane?" came a deeply haunting voice.
Jane jerked slightly and searched for the voice. "Scott?!"
They had worked together a few years earlier before he got a job with the FBI. They had started dating when he got promoted and things got "complicated" as he put it.
If someone had asked her before she met Maura, she probably would have told them that he was the first person she had ever been in love with. Now she questioned whether she had ever felt anything that compares to how she feels about a certain blonde know-it-all.
Though she did have undeniably strong feelings for him. He understood what her job meant to her. That it wasn't just a job, but who she is. He understood that she could handle herself and loathed being looked after or protected. She was the protector, the opposite of a damsel and he never challenged that like the men from her previous relationships.
He never tried to change her. Her family and coworkers all really liked him. Her mother whined about what could have been for months after he had already moved to Virginia. He's funny but not funnier than her of course. He ticked all the boxes and she was sure that if she was ever to marry anyone, it would have been him.
"Oh my god! What are you doing here?" Jane cringed inwardly at her sudden change in demeanor. Her voice had gone an octave higher on its own accord and an oh-so-familiar feminine giggle graced the end of her sentence.
She was actually in a hurry to get changed and head for work but before she knew it she had invited him inside and he was catching her up on the past few years through her bedroom door.
"You're still just as I remember you" he added randomly. Jane pulled her t-shirt over her head and paused, looking at the door. It was odd how the familiarity put her at ease to the point where she was talking to him through her half-closed bedroom door while getting dressed.
She wondered how Maura would feel about this little meet-cute. "You working a tough case? I remember you used to bang your head against your desk softly when something didn't fit with a case"
Observant check. Do I do that? Unironically? Jane cleared her throat.
"So you didn't say what brings you back to Boston," She said as she swung open the door with a little more force than was necessary. "Work?" she added with a smile as she flung her curls out from underneath her blazer.
He answered with little detail which answered her question. A high-profile case. "Well, I have to get to work," Jane said as she holstered her gun and checked her phone.
"Right…" he said and placed his hands in his pockets. "Well I'm not sorry that I showed up here unannounced" he ended with his most charming smile. "It was really good to see you" he added on his way out.
"Oh hi, Scott! It's really nice to see you, after all that time. You back in town huh?" She could practically hear her mother winking at Scott as he was leaving her apartment- on an early morning- OH GOD NO.
Angela knocked on the door and Jane stopped herself from banging her head against it before opening it. "We did not have sex ma" were the first words from Jane as Angela entered her apartment, looking in every direction like she was on a scavenger hunt.
"I didn't say anything… I am just happy for you hun" Angela added as she patted her cheek. "So how is he? Did he move back to Boston?!" she exclaimed excitedly.
"Good and no. I have to get to work, what are you doing here?" Jane asked as she closed her door and walked Angela out.
"I wanted to check on you. Your car was on the curb all night. I didn't know whether you and Maura got a work call. You never tell me anything" Jane rolled her eyes. "Have you eaten? I brought you breakfast" Angela handed her a small square cooler bag and Jane's face softened…
"Hey sis-" Frankie greeted when Jane walked in.
"If this day was a horse I would shoot it"
He frowned and looked at his watch. "It's only eight"
"Exactly"
Jane glanced over the slots for the interrogation rooms to ensure everything was in order. "What the f!"
"Crow." Jane practically growled but continued calmly when Crow made eye contact from his desk. His eyes were starting to get a yellow sheen as it was healing from the broken nose he sustained.
"Dju book this slot for eight forty-five?" Jane asked calmly.
"Yeah, so what?"
"So I had that slot. I already cleared it with admin and Cavenagh and I told everyone here including you"
"You can have the next one," he said as he rose to his feet, clearly enjoying having gotten under her skin.
Jane inhaled, trying to calm herself just like Maura taught her but it was doing very little to achieve that particular goal. "As I said repeatedly for the past week and a half. I need that slot because my witness is flying in from Portland and has another flight after the interview"
Jane rose to her feet and calmly handed the clipboard to Crow. "Book another slot"
"Make me"
Jane's phone rang and she barely heard it. All her focus was on Crowe's discolored nose and how it would feel under her fist if she broke it for a second time.
"Rizzoli" she answered reluctantly without breaking eye contact. It was Maura with results on a cold case…
"Detective"
"Susie" Jane greeted on her way through the lab.
"How would you describe my people skills?" Maura asked randomly.
"None existent. Otherwise excellent" Jane snapped.
"Your dilator naris and depressor septi are flexing"
"Sounds painful"
"Jane" Maura stepped in front of Jane as they came to a standstill in her office.
"Why you asking about your people skills?" Jane asked, trying to distract herself. She had started feeling less on edge about four seconds after entering the lab. Must have been the breathing she did earlier.
"Someone from the National Board of Medical Examiners is coming in in a few minutes to evaluate me and conduct a performance appraisal," she said with a worried look.
"Ok, so Maura-talk for a performance review?" Jane said mostly to herself earning a disapproving look from Maura "... why do you look like you're about to do that hyperventilating thing?" Jane asked, it was hard not to laugh at this point.
She has never seen the usually confident doctor so worried. "The last notations to my file mention the words "wordy" and "difficult to work with"... "borderline scary lady"" Jane grabbed Maura's unrelenting air quoting hands.
"Maur, you've come a long way since that was written in your file. Ok? Your gonna do great. Just be charming and smile… don't mention stinky dick-shaped fungus and you'll be fine" Jane added and struggled to stiffen her laugh earning a slap on her arm from a slightly less worried-looking doctor.
"So the results?" Jane asked even though she could bicker with Maura all day.
"Oh" Maura paused and a slight blush spread on her cheeks. "The stain on the vintage Mary Blair was indeed, red wine"
"Groundbreaking. So you called me down here…" Jane went quiet when she realized Maura was not lying. She did in fact have results on the case but not anything helpful enough in this century.
"Doctor Isles" a short man with glasses greeted as he entered Maua's office, briefcase in hand.
"Doctor Straus" Maura greeted back.
"I've heard your name before" he prompted and Jane saw that as her cue to leave and have them continue Maura's evaluation.
"Most people have. It's also a plural Noun" Maura stated. Jane was in the middle of giving her an encouraging thumbs up behind the man in the doorway and she just gave a last awkward smile and bolted for the elevator...
I feel like my muse is back yall! Thank you for all the kind reviews:)
So I brought in a new character in Dean's place (I never really liked him for her)
I am picturing Seeley Booth from Bones for Scott (not that it matters in the long run haha)
Please review!