I know it's been a while, and I'm so horribly sorry, but here is a filler chapter before we get real deep and gritty.
When they got down to lockup, they found Tommy pacing the small cell, confused and irritably defiant as he saw his siblings appear through the grills. His bright eyes settled on his big sister, blazing incredulously at the taller woman. "Janie, what the hell!?" he cried indignantly. "I didn't do nothin'!"
He couldn't understand why he was there – Frankie had all but hauled him by the scruff of his neck and tossed him into the patrol car like scum. All through the drive to the station he'd demanded an explanation from his older brother, but Frankie had merely glowered at him through the rearview mirror. It was crazy – first they were pointing fingers at him for fooling around with Lydia, and now they were treating him like the everyday crook they booked!
Jane was by the iron bars in an instant, seething through the bars as she jabbed a finger at the man viciously. "The hell you didn't," she snarled, and the vitriol from a sleepless weekend gleamed in her near-black eyes. From her side, Maura watched silently; the blonde ME eyeing the woman with thin-lipped apprehension. "You dragged us all into this mess of yours – all because you couldn't wear a goddamn rubber when you found a pair of legs to get between!"
"You don't even know if it's mine!" Tommy sputtered defensively. "Damn, Janie, you're acting like I knocked her up on purpose!"
The female detective laughed; such a sudden, booming bark in her throat that Maura jumped from behind her. Jane's thin mouth curved into a sneer as she stepped closer to the cell, almost pressing her face through the bars as her dark eyes burned at Tommy. "Well you might as well have, Tommy, because that little bimbo of yours dumped her baby on our doorstep and disappeared into the night." She nodded her head, stepping back as the youngest Rizzoli sibling gaped at her in disbelief.
"That's right, little brother – and the reason you're standing back on the inside of this here cell is because I needed something to stop me from puttin' my hands on you."
The tension between the two rose dangerously; Tommy sputtering for an excuse and Jane waiting for a reason to kill her brother. Maura stepped forward carefully, grasping Jane's arm gently. She recoiled almost immediately though when the taller woman snatched her arm away, a menacing growl in her throat. "Jane, don't."
Maura inhaled deeply, grounding herself. She too had spent the weekend weary and mildly irritable from the lack of proper sleep, but they couldn't allow themselves to react solely to their own selfish emotions. So she stood straighter in her heels, and with a stubborn set in her jaw, found her place by the taller woman's elbow again. She reached out with a slender hand and slid it over the material of Jane's blazer, grasping her bony elbow in a gentle but lingering squeeze. Her hazel eyes were low and serious when Jane spared her a glance. "Jane."
The tone in her voice is low, suggestive in most other circumstances, but then was a warning that the Boston detective seemed to take to heart.
There was a beat; the silent tension was stifling as Jane found Maura's gaze and held it for a long, speaking moment. Maura's fingers shifted on her elbow, squeezing again, and this time Jane felt an electric line jolt straight to the bone. She breathed a heavy sigh; her shoulders sagged with a weary defeat as she scrubbed a hand roughly over her face. "I can't even bring myself to waste my energy on beating your stupid head into the ground," Jane mumbled, as she raised her head to meet Tommy's eyes once more. "I want to so badly, Tommy – oh, you bet I do. But this isn't about your stupid mistakes – this is about Wy and seein' if we can't figure out if you're his father." She turned her back on her brother, reaching out instead to Maura and squeezing the blonde's hand in a weary grasp.
"Wy?" Tommy echoed, and suddenly he was there pressed against the bars, gripping them tight in his hands as he strained out to his sister. "It's a boy? Where is he? I want to see him." He cowered when Jane whirled back to him with a cold glare. "Come on, Jane, he could be mine."
Maura stepped closer to Jane as the Italian woman scowled, though Jane's temper seemed in check. She could see the vein in Jane's forehead beginning to appear and the hard set of the woman's sharp jaw that the temper she was holding back was colossal. It was clear on the woman's face that she held a vicious retort on the tip of her tongue, but Maura's low look had her reconsidering.
"It's not worth it, Jane," she soothed. "You're upset and listless from the lack of rest this weekend. Getting mad at Tommy for this won't solve anything." She glanced behind them, where she knew Frankie was most likely spying on them from around the corner with Wyatt. "You'll frighten Wyatt." Her delicate fingers trailed along the taller woman's wrist, stroking the skin there gently until she saw the tight line of Jane's jaw relax, and the detective sighed heavily once more.
Jane's dark eyes moved around the room, 'casing the joint', as Maura had learned to recognize that look on her face. Her eyes moved from Tommy to her shoes before settling on Maura, where they lingered with such unspoken intensity that Maura had to smother the urge to glance down at Jane's mouth.
She failed.
"Damn it," she heard Jane grunt, and then the brunette turned to where Frankie stood just outside the lockup, watching anxiously from around the corner. Tempted as he had been to step in closer to hear them; Wyatt had fussed and wriggled and threatened to wake, and he thought against it. Jane glanced at him, hard and speaking, and Frankie stepped forward in a rush with the baby carrier.
"Holy shit," Tommy whispered, as Maura bent down to scoop Wyatt into her arms. His eyes were wide in a flabbergasted disbelief; as if he'd never seen a baby in his life. "That's – that's a baby!"
Jane nearly rolled her eyes at his idiocy, but instead propped her hands onto her hips and scuffed her boots against the floor as she watched Maura cradle Wyatt close. "Yes, Tommy, he's a baby. But we like to call him by his name." Unable to keep the affectionate smile twitching at the corner of her mouth, Jane smiled warmly at Maura and the baby.
The blonde ME smiled down lovingly at the baby, stroking an elegant finger along Wyatt's soft cheek as he gurgled and mouthed at her trailing fingertip. "His name is Wyatt."
"Wyatt Rizzoli, huh," Tommy breathed. "He's a handsome fella, like his Pop."
Jane narrowed her eyes at her brother, scowling from the corner of her mouth. "For all we know, Tommy, is that his Pop could be our Pops," she uttered darkly, and turned to Maura with a quiet frown. "Come here, little man." Gently, she took Wyatt from the confused ME, but Jane glanced down at her sharply and rolled her eyes towards Tommy. "Don't you have some DNA to collect, Maur?" she mumbled pointedly; bouncing Wyatt in her arms like it was second nature. Mostly it was – she'd spent all night doing the exact same thing, trying to keep Wyatt from waking Maura.
The ME nodded obediently, producing a long cotton swab from her ever-present medical coroner's bag. "Open up, please."
A long while later, after a painful discussion with Cavanaugh which had ended with Jane and Maura getting the rest of the week off to 'settle things', as the man said, Jane found herself downstairs in Maura's office. Lounging languidly on the pretty ME's leather couch, the Italian woman stretched out gratefully in the cramped space, just barely conscious as she held a sleeping Wyatt to her chest. Close physical contact was imperative for his development, Maura had told her, and insisted that the boy kept as much contact with them as possible.
Presently the boy was pressed to Jane's tan chest, where she'd unbuttoned the first two buttons of her shirt to allow Wyatt some 'skin time' as he slept.
The detective was jolted awake though by the sharp clacking of heels on the linoleum floor, followed quickly by the scent of vanilla musk. "Jane, please keep your boots off the leather," came Maura's exasperated melodic voice. "You know it scuffs the hide," she chided the darker woman, who lowered her feet begrudgingly, all the while grumbling under her breath.
Jane stifled a massive yawn as she sat up slightly, turning to regard the blonde ME as Maura approached them with a file in hand. Blinking her bleary eyes, Jane used her free hand to push her thick sprawl of dark hair from her face and peered into Maura's face expectantly. "What'd the tests say, Maur?" she asked then, as her eyes narrowed when she saw the hesitant look on Maura's pretty face. "What is it, babe? What?" She reached out to Maura as the blonde floated down gracefully into the seat across from her, frowning at the troubled look on Maura's face as she stared at the sleeping infant still clinging to Jane's chest.
"Maura, what's wrong?" she probed gently, and reached out to grasp Maura's wrist in her hand. With a reassuring squeeze and a lopsided smile, Jane caught her gaze and held it. "Tell me."
With the corner of her lip caught between her teeth, Maura found her gaze darting almost guiltily from Wyatt to Jane; she wasn't sure why she was feeling what she felt, but there were many things that Maura couldn't explain about her feelings at the moment. Namely about the woman seated across her with the baby attached to her chest like it was second nature.
"I don't want to know who's the father," she blurted then, and Jane could do nothing more than blink. Maura's hands curled into her lap tightly; the file sat perched neatly beneath her hands away from Jane. "I don't want to find out."
It took several moments and a lot of blinking for Jane to find her voice once more, and when she did, it was hoarse and low and incredulous. "Wha – Maura, we have to!" she exclaimed, shooting upright then with one arm cradling Wyatt close to keep the boy from waking at the jostle. "Maura, we need to know," she reminded the blonde gently, lowering her head to keep Maura's gaze gently. "Hey? You know we need to know." Her brow rose on her forehead with a hopeful, gentle smile that lit up her dark eyes only ever with Maura, and she stroked her thumb along Maura's wrist soothingly. "We can't protect Wy if we don't have proof of right to him." She stared down at the beautiful little boy gurgling in his sleep, and Maura watched enamored at how soft Jane's expression was then.
"We can't keep our little boy safe if we don't make sure he's a Rizzoli."
Still it troubled Maura. "But that's the point, isn't it?" she told the detective, staring at Jane desperately as she pulled the file from her lap. "If Wyatt is Tommy's, or your father's -," she spared Jane an apologetic look when the Italian woman winced, "then Lydia would still have rights over Wyatt even if she abandoned him. Technically by law, she simply left him with relatives."
Jane's brow pulled together. She knew this; she just never liked it being at the forefront of her thoughts. "She could come back at any given time and take him, no questions asked." That was the silent truth that Maura wouldn't speak, and when the blonde nodded slowly, Jane's mouth pulled into a grim line.
"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, Maura. Let's just focus on figuring if I need to castrate my dad or my little brother."
With a heavy sigh of defeat, Maura slowly opened the file, scanning over the results with a frown that never left her face. It flickered only a moment. "Oh…."
Jane was alert in a breath. "What is it, Maura?"
"Wyatt is…."
We all know who father Wyatt by this point, honestly, I was just lazy.
