A/N: It's my birthday weekend and I have been sitting on this project for months, so I decided to release it as a birthday gift to myself! I never do this, meaning, release a fic before I have completely finished it. However, this thing has become such a behemoth of a work in progress that I figured the waiting should be over. I am still typing away furiously at later chapters as we speak. I also never really tie a fic to canon plot so heavily, but this is based entirely within the events of the show. Dialogue is borrowed from lots of episodes in seasons 2 and 3, and woven into the story. With that said, I don't own Rizzoli & Isles in any way - the characters belong to Tess Gerritsen and Janet Tamaro. I also don't profit from any of this work. I hope you all enjoy, and thank you in advance for all your feedback and interaction with the story.


"I shouldn't be letting you do this," Jane smirked when she spotted Maura threading her mic through her blouse with shaky fingers. They sat in Jane's cruiser, engine cut off just outside the back entrance of the Whistler factory.

Fire still hovered in the air like a ghost, no orange-red in sight, but the smoky smell of it overwhelming. The sun shone bright in midday, made the cab warm, and the crisp breeze outside brushed against the hood in what would have been a wistful reminder of fall, Jane's favorite type of sweet melancholy, but they each were too absorbed in the immediate moment to notice. "But you're going to," Maura said, savoring how her thumb felt rubbing against the bony lines of Jane's fingers. Jane's hand rested on the console and Maura reached out for it because she liked the way the veins popped under its skin. "Because this is the most likely avenue of success. He wants me dead, remember?"

Jane shivered. "I don't need reminding. I don't like using you as bait, Maura," she said. Maura watched a rickety breath tumble into her nose and rattle down her trachea. Jane's ribs expanded as though she were in pain, but her eyes were alight with affection.

"We should go in now," was all that Maura could muster. "Before he walks in to find it empty."

Jane just nodded. She unbuckled and got out, and Maura knew to stay put until she came around to the passenger side. When her door swung open, Jane's outstretched hand replacing it at her side, her heart rate sped up. She took the hand, squeezed it, swung around and stepped out with her left foot first.

The peppery smack of charred wood hit them both as they stood facing each other. There was the crunch of Korsak's tires against the loose gravel of the alleyway, too, but neither of them paid it much mind.

Jane was too busy trying to read Maura's green eyes. They were cloudy, there was depth to them, but there was also this addicting warmth. And that always threw Jane off, because even though she could decipher most people's feelings with just a little bit of eye contact, Maura's eyes always had so much love for her in them that it tended to muddle everything else.

Jane's gaze usually loved her right back, but Maura had been through hell the past twenty-four hours. She needed to know the state of her. "C'mon - I'll straighten you up over here," she settled for that, pointed to the little enclave that led into the main warehouse, led Maura over to it.

"What do you mean, straighten me up?" Maura teased. She let herself be guided and smiled in encouragement when Jane smoothed the shoulders of her blazer.

"Your mic's all tangled," Jane teased right back. They both accepted the lie because it gave Jane license to be close.

"How was last night?" Maura asked, wanting to lighten the mood when she saw Jane retreating into herself. And when Maura threw out a line, Jane could never ignore it; she needed to chase.

"Pretty good," Jane said through a throat clear, "but this morning was a different story. Take off your jacket."

"You have to ask me out to dinner first," Maura said, and it made Jane laugh.

"I might if we all get out of this alive," she replied. She adjusted the mic wire from the clip on Maura's skirt through her blouse.

Maura blushed at Jane's comfortable audacity. "What made this morning a different story?" Again, distinctly male voices entered the periphery, but their eyes danced in response to each other's mischief enough to drown it out. She wanted Jane to know, even mired in the tragedy that her mother's accident had brought, that she was there for her. She would listen.

Also, Maura did not particularly like Gabriel Dean. She had said that he made a good match for Jane, and this was because they both were too married to their jobs to ever marry each other. And selfishly, Maura liked that she was a part of the job that Jane was so married to. So she bristled with a mixture of petty enthusiasm and easy sadness for her friend.

"I told him… about Paddy," confessed Jane, and Maura stiffened under her fingers. "He told me he wouldn't do anything about it. That he was just listening as my… man."

"Is he?" Maura raised her eyebrow in miffed confusion. She looked down at Jane's scars to ground herself - whenever she studied them, a heady amalgam of love, longing, and goodwill surged through her and any annoyance toward Jane would fade.

"Is he what?" Jane asked. Maura jumped when she slipped her thumb between her skirt and skin.

"Your man," Maura pushed. Tension emerged, but Maura couldn't tell if it was between the two of them or between their warring situations.

"No, he's not," said Jane through twitching lips. She stepped back and surveyed her work on Maura's mic. It was still showing through the neckline just a bit. "I'm kinda rethinkin' that whole thing."

"Why are you rethinking him?" Maura asked in what sounded like a refined indifference, but really was a masked hope.

"Because I asked him if he would just listen, if he would keep it to himself, and he was just… wishy-washy about it. Couldn't commit. I can't really be with a man that doesn't at least give me his confidence when I ask for it. That's not really a man."

Maura smirked because this always happened. Jane looked for things in men that she freely gave everyone else: loyalty, time, attention, unconditional love. She'd never found it. Maura wondered if she knew that she was a better man than all the ones she'd found combined; that finding a man as good as her was a statistical longshot. "But he eventually said he would, right? That has to be what counts," she goaded. She absolutely knew that it was not what counted with Jane, but to hear her best friend pontificate on virtue was one of Maura's favorite pastimes.

"No. It's not what counts. What counts is the sentiment behind it. And he didn't sound very convicted, you know what I mean? He and I… we're just not gonna work, I don't think," Jane said, as though she put the final touches on convincing herself. To top it all off, she had almost finished Maura's mic, too.

"You know, this is my first undercover assignment," said Maura, switching subjects to hide her pleasure. "Wait. I'm doin' a UC." She joked, waited for Jane's smile. When it came, she continued. "I feel like Donnie Brasco."

"Well you don't look like him," chuckled Jane, shoulders heavy with the burden of what Maura just said. She shouldn't have had any undercover operations, let alone a first. Jane let the wave of protective fear pass over like nausea. "Can you keep it down please? A'right, we're gonna tuck this wire right here and we should be done."

"The microphone doesn't make me look like I have three breasts, does it?" Maura asked, and Jane, for a moment, regretted modeling humor as a coping mechanism so much over the life of their friendship. Clearly Maura had caught on more than anticipated.

However, Jane still refused to be bested in the area she perfected. "Well, some people are into that," she shrugged. She shuddered when Maura's elegant laughter tickled her nose. They were very close.

"Is this what you'd wear to an undercover operation? I feel a little dressy," Maura confided, and she narrowed her eyes at the way Jane looked almost lost. An urge to take her into her arms overwhelmed Maura, but something in the way Jane's biceps turned hard and her legs spread open as she worked said that it would be the wrong thing to do.

"Nah. I'd wear a flak jacket," answered Jane, in the handsome way she usually talked about tactical gear – with a twinkle in her pupils and a lopsided, close-mouthed little grin.

"Oh you know, I know this sounds vain-"

"You, vain?" Jane retorted immediately, and her grin was a full-blown smile in milliseconds.

"But I couldn't be a cop," Maura finished almost at the same time as Jane's tease and then she turned red. "Well, admit it. Even you, with all your unfair musculature, look a little chunky in a flak jacket."

Jane liked this, the back and forth. It made her feel a little more normal about the very non-normal, very dangerous, situation unfolding before them. "Wow, really? Ok. Even with my long bones? Thank you very much. And you know what? I think your little Medical Examiner get-ups make you look like a trash collector."

"You do? So do I!" Maura gasped in revelation, "I always feel a little dumpy."

Jane melted at her sincerity. She thought about what could happen once they crossed the threshold of the warehouse and she burned with protection and possession. She watched Maura straighten the front of her blouse and resolved to do anything to make sure she could watch her chase away the wrinkles on designer clothes until they were both in the grave. "Put your jacket on."

To Maura this sounded a lot like I love you, so she complied, even if her arms were a little shaky. "Ok."

Jane seemed tortured for a moment when she stood up straight, her lips coming together in a hard line before she spoke. "You wanna know what's truly odd about you?" she asked, and the whoosh of air displaced by Maura's hair as she pulled it from her collar smelled like gardenia. Jane tried to swallow the smell up.

"Ah, I'm not sure," Maura said, shaking her head.

"You're the dumbest genius I know," Jane stated anyway.

Maura knew she should be offended, but there was light bouncing around the moisture in Jane's eyes. "'I'm not sure' means 'pause,' means 'do not blurt your subconscious thoughts,'" she settled for instead, with a glare for good measure.

"Oh right, sorry," Jane sighed, a mixture of put out and amused.

"Is this displaced aggression because I get to go undercover and you have to be my backup?" Maura asked with both index fingers pointed at Jane, nearly touching her belly.

Jane stepped a little closer, and the smile left her. "Yes." Her words continued their play, but sadness overtook her tone, her walk, her stance, everything. It weighed on her. "We should get in there."

"Ok, let's go," Maura said, finally taking Jane's arms and holding them, caressing them with her thumbs.

"Listen to me, a'right? This is serious," Jane warned. She put her forehead against Maura's. "Somebody is trying to kill you to stop you from investigating a murder."

"You don't have to tell me that, Jane," said Maura, knowing that Jane loved it when she said her name that way, low, comforting. "I was there when he nearly drove over my mother."

Jane opened her eyes with difficulty. "You know we're only letting you do this because we're hoping that whoever this guy is, he is desperate enough to follow you into that warehouse and try again?"

"Yes," Maura nodded as she whispered. She wanted Jane to understand that she understood, that she took Jane's pain, her gamble, seriously.

"But we're gonna be there this time," Jane said. She sounded as though she were telling herself as much as Maura. "I got you."

Maura bit her lower lip and anticipated what would come next. Jane was so impossibly close and burrowing into her heart with all her unruly loyalty and unwavering protection. "I'm ready," she said, more than just to their plan. When Jane only stood there, only closed her eyes and tried to take all of Maura in through the breath in her nostrils, Maura panicked. "Wait, what do you guys say to each other right before you pull the string?"

Humor was her parachute. It removed her from putting herself on the line.

Jane was taken aback. She made a face like she had eaten something sour. "It's called a sting, Maura."

"Sting," Maura echoed. She thought about the word, swished it around in her mouth for the feel.

Jane sighed, supposing playing along couldn't hurt. "We say, "don't get made."

"I like that, 'don't get made,'" replied Maura. When she saw the nervousness play out against Jane's irises, all the way down to her mouth, she said, "Don't look so worried. What could go wrong?"