DISCLAIMER: Still no. Any piece that someone is giving away for free I'll take. Even the P.U.K.E. running leotard thing.

Maura Isles, loathe as she was to admit it, was getting antsy.

Her kissing Jane, Jane kissing her back, Jane looking at her with that look, that infuriating look that she could never decipher but trusted in absolutely... Jane's almost non-existent appearances in her lab the last four and a half days.

A litany of images, of thought and emotion and gut-wrenching terror wound around and around her head and her heart and all it did was produce another worry; that this was the final proof that she couldn't separate her head and her heart when it came to Jane. That if Jane went she'd be missing a necessary part of herself.

She'd read the studies on phantom limbs while she and Jane weren't speaking. A disquieting sense of familiarity with the symptoms had been in the back of her mind ever since.

Jane was running scared, she was sure of it. The irritating thing was Maura couldn't seem to pull on her usual mask of smooth professionalism, couldn't stop the fear and the questions becoming the backdrop to her daily routine.

Because, everything, everything came back to Jane. She couldn't stand how vulnerable that made her feel.

Maura took a huge gulp of the coffee she'd made herself. Jane hadn't picked one up for her like she normally did –

"-Stop it!" She snapped it, raking her hair back so that it fell back out of place. Everything was out of place.

"Stop what?" An amused voice enquired.

Jane stood in her office doorway, two coffee cups in hand, giving her that look Maura knew meant she'd figured something out about Maura but wasn't going to let Maura in on the secret.

She wasn't up for banter. She couldn't face anything but the truth today. "Where have you been?"

Jane raised a brow, strolled forward to place a coffee cup on her desk. "Playing basketball with Frost, Mom."

Irked, she ignored Jane's offering and took another deliberate sip of her own. "How nice for you."

Jane's mouth twitched even as her eyes narrowed to focus on hers. "What? Didn't I fill out one of your three hundred page lab request forms incorrectly? Did I not grovel appropriately to Senior Criminalist Chang or one of your other minions? Was I supposed to babysit for Bass? Which, by the way, is not much more fun than watching Frost style his buzz cut." She paused, considered. "Or bra shopping with my Mother."

You haven't been here. I kissed you and you kissed me back and then you ran away. She looked away. "Nothing."

Jane eyed the space between them, then took a step forward. "Yes. Something, Maur."

She raised her chin mulishly, then stood up. "Nope. I need to go and go herd my minions. Have a nice day."

Jane caught her arm as she strode past her. "Maura."

She met Jane's concerned look. Struggled between staying anxious and confused, hurt and angry, and taking that easy step to their old routine. She took a slight step away, steeling herself as she saw Jane register the movement. The old routine won't work until we both acknowledge that something has changed.

"Jane, for four and a half days straight I've waited for you to come down here and acknowledge that the other night happened. And for four and a half days straight you've been down here a grand total of three times looked like a deer caught in the headlights for the entire duration of the visit and refused to have any kind of conversation with me, and then run away again. I've emailed you twice asking you to lunch, which you haven't responded to. You clearly are having...issues, and while I'm trying to understand that I also am having ...issues."

She glared at Jane, who was biting the inside of her lip, which meant that Maura sounded like an idiot. "And said issues don't make me amenable to being in the same room as you right now."She pulled her arm out of Jane's grasp, yanked futilely when the grip tightened. "Let me go, Jane."

"In a second." Jane said quietly, keeping her hand steady on Maura's arm. "You need to hear a couple of things, and I need to say a couple of things...and then you can go herd cats, people, cows, Ma, Frankie, whatever, okay?" She gave her a hopeful grin.

Maura tried to stop the smile, failed, and then pinned Jane with a glare. "I don't herd cats, Detective. Or your Mother for that matter."

Jane nodded seriously. "Duly noted, Doctor." She shook Maura's arm. "Come on, Maur. Hear me out. Don't be mad." She gave Maura her patented puppy dog look. The one which generally caused her to do all manner of things just to get Jane to stop it.

"I'll hear you out, Jane. You can't tell me not to be mad." She warned, already trying to hold on to anger which didn't seem so important, anymore.

Jane held her gaze. "Okay. For the past four days I've been wandering around with you in my head, and I've been trying to reconcile Best Friend Maura with Scary Hot Maura, and both Mauras, to be honest, are freaking me the hell out. Because I don't want to lose one at the expense of the other...and because I don't know how to deal with both of you, anymore." She sighed. "And I'm sorry. I'm being an idiot and we all know how much tolerance I have for those."

Maura frowned, trying to hear what Jane was saying. "You think I'm different people?"

"No, Maur, you're the same person, but..." Jane hesitated, then snapped her fingers in Maura's face. "Okay yesterday, I came down, and you were wearing that freaking blue dress with the belt that makes you look really curvy and I was supposed to be hounding you for lab results and all I could think about was how much I wanted to touch you."

She couldn't help it. She smirked. "Really, Jane." She batted her eyes. "Tell me more about how irresistible I am."

Jane's eyes widened, and she huffed out a laugh, shaking her head. "I should have just told you then."

Maura shook her head, still smirking. "No, you shouldn't have."

Jane tilted her head. "Why?"

"Because I was very busy thinking about the fact that when you leave your hair down my brain seems to start automatically calculating ways to touch you when it should in fact be occupied with your lab results." She shrugged. "We're both up the same creek in the same canoe, Jane. But we need to deal with it. We can't run away." She met Jane's eyes, tried to keep her voice light. "We ran away from each other not too long ago. I don't want to go back to that, do you?"

Jane flinched. "No."

Maura nodded as something that was wound up tight inside her relaxed. "Well, then you need to deal with the fact you clearly want to jump my skeleton and then figure out how you're going to do it."

She waited nervously as Jane blinked in surprise, then met her eyes sheepishly. "You have a good point, Doctor." She casually punched Maura in the arm. "We okay?"

Maura smiled, squelching her disappointment in the casual gesture in favour of feeling less off-kilter with her friend. "We are. But I still need to herd my minions."

A hand on her arm stopped her. "Hang on, you have a tag."

She paused obediently. Caught her breath as Jane's finger trailed slowly down the nape of her neck, skimmed under the collar of her dress. A nail dragged slowly once, twice over her skin before sliding free.

"You have goosebumps."

She opened her eyes, looked over her shoulder to see Jane staring at her intently.

She managed a nonchalant shrug. "It's cold in here."

"Really." Jane gave her a slow smile, tinged with something darker. "In order to get goosebumps due to cold your body has to be actively working to reduce heat loss, Ms I-Keep-My-Office-Balmy-Twenty-Four-Seven. However, in order to get goosebumps due to intense emotion, up to and including sexual arousal, extreme temperature doesn't have to be a factor."

She blinked at Jane, nonplussed. "I...have absolutely no idea if that's factually accurate."

Jane smirked. "Welcome to my world."

Still shocked, making a mental note to do some research later, she frowned. "Why on earth would you know that about goosebumps?"

Jane smiled again, this time a bit sheepishly. "See, there's this girl I'm seeing. She's pretty much got all the Google on anything to do with sex so I thought I'd better catch up." She held up her coffee cup in a toast to herself. "In between freaking the hell out, of course."

Maura nodded seriously. "Of course."

"I figured I'd better start at the beginning. Which, I guess, is goosebumps." Jane reached out again, tucking back the loose strands of hair that had fallen around her face. Eyes on her task, she hesitated, asked again. "Are we okay, Maur?"

She considered Jane and the look on her face. Considered that the fear and the desire, the concern and affection, and love she'd seen there probably matched her expression fairly accurately.

She took a couple of steps back to her desk and retrieved the coffee Jane had brought her.

"To the beginning."

Jane clunked their cups together. "To the beginning."

A/N: I think I rushed that last chapter. I know, I know, suspense of disbelief and all but I'm not a huge fan of:

"I love you."

"Really? Okay, let's totally make out!"

Then I totally wrote that. So I've been trying to get my head around my own writing, which happens most hours. Cue: Maura freaking out. Jane freaking out. All freaking out, all the time. Have a great week, all, and thanks Oh So Much as always for all reads/reviews, I very much appreciate that you take the time to do so:)