When the fluttering in her diaphragm finally settled, Maura felt like she was waking from a heavy sleep. Perhaps I was unconscious for a time. She didn't quite remember. After a while she lost all awareness of time and her surroundings. The only sensations she could remember were those of her own distress and Jane's constant presence. Jane's arms around her. The shudders of intense grief passing in breathtaking waves between them.
Her heart seemed to flinch within her when she realized she could hear Jane's pulse directly beneath her ear.
Jane, at some point in the past hour, had leaned them both back against the couch, Maura pressed against her. Maura lifted her head carefully to look at Jane. The other woman's breathing had also slowed and evened out, though her heart still beat slightly quicker than normal. Jane was staring at the ceiling, expression inscrutable, face pale with exhaustion. Maura could but barely make out the tear tracks that were just now beginning to dry on her cheeks. It appeared that the last set had fallen quite recently from her eyes, whereas Maura's ducts seemed to have ceased production some time ago. Yet there remained what felt like a hardened core of internalized stress, pent-up and tense, crowding her internal organs. She knew there was no physical mass to speak of in the midst of her digestive tract, yet the sensation was palpable and latent within her. All her tears were not yet spent.
Jane's eyes roamed down to meet hers. The medical examiner felt a subsequent squeeze at her shoulder. "Mind if I get up? I need another beer."
In reply, Maura shifted and pulled back so Jane could leave the couch. Hearing the refrigerator pop open in the kitchen behind her, she leaned forward and finished the last of the Carignan in her glass. As she swallowed, she vaguely regretted letting it sit so long in the open. A very slight harshness had crept into its bouquet. It was far from becoming vinegar, but it was clear this glass was well past "needing to breathe."
Jane returned with another Blue Moon – freshly opened – in her right hand, and the bottle of Maura's Carignan in her left. She poured a generous serving into Maura's glass – far fuller than would have been deemed socially appropriate in a formal setting – and resumed her position next to Maura.
"Thank you," Maura murmured as she took a sip. She watched Jane over the rim of her glass as the detective took two deep swallows before setting the bottle down on the end table behind her. Both their eyelids were growing heavy, but they remained awake, each secretly breathing the other in.
Numbness and apathy beckoned to them both, and they gave in, responding to the promise of release with eager swallows. Occasionally, Jane would close her eyes and just shake her head, unable to find words even in her own mind to force some sense on the situation. She unconsciously pressed her hand to Maura's leg and left it there, heavy and relaxed. Though the wine had naturally slowed her reaction time and lowered her inhibitions, she still felt tension gathering gradually within her, starting at the point of contact between herself and Jane.
"What is it?" Jane whispered. "You…flushed all of a sudden." She seemed to struggle with the urge to press the back of her hand to Maura's forehead.
Maura shook her head. "It's hard. I'm just…still trying to process." She looked Jane in the eye, feeling brave. "I can't help but keep thinking…"
"What?"
"No," Maura muttered, averting her gaze. Hating her cowardice all over again. "I don't even have the right to think it."
"You're not making sense, Maur. Just tell me what's going on in there." She gestured vaguely to Maura's head, and then lowered her hand to tuck a strand of warm blonde hair behind her ear.
Maura ducked her head. Here came the tears that had been threatening since Jane sat back down. "I keep seeing Frost's face. I keep seeing him on the autopsy table. I keep seeing the blood." She looked at her free hand - the one not in Jane's lap. Took a long, deep breath. "And I can't help but keep thinking…that could just as easily have been you on my table, Jane." She wept without sobbing this time, the words coming out clear and steady, but a mere whisper. Tears dripped from her chin.
Jane reflexively brushed them from her face and shifted closer.
Maura's insides stirred and grew uncomfortably warm. I need to not want her. Just for once.
"But it wasn't me, Maura." She swiped more tears away with soft, easy strokes. "Honey, it wasn't me. I'm right here." She grabbed Maura's hand and pressed it to her own heart with both scarred palms.
Maura closed her eyes. Felt Jane's pulse. Reveled in it, just for a moment.
"Jane," she began, voice shaking, eyes still closed. "I need you to understand something."
Her friend remained silent. She could feel those probing dark eyes on her, searching desperately for something – she couldn't possibly know what. Jane kept Maura's hand clasped in both of hers, but lowered the tangle of fingers to her lap.
It was all Maura could do not to pull away. "I couldn't have survived if it had been you that day."
"I know, Maur. It would've been hard no matter –"
Maura's eyes snapped up to Jane's. "Do you, Jane? Know? Sometimes it baffles me. How much – how much you've come to mean to me." She looked down at her lap. "Too much, I think."
Concerned etched her best friend's features. "Maura you've lost me."
She thinks it's the wine talking. Maybe it is. But Maura knew that tonight's alcohol consumption had merely freed up the truths she had been tamping down for weeks, months. Years, even. "I just don't want there to be any regrets. Nothing left unsaid between us." She pivoted on the couch cushion, facing Jane straight on. "I love you, Jane."
Jane seemed to freeze, her fingers gripping Maura's hand just a little tighter. "I love you, too, Maura."
She's wondering where this is coming from.
"No, Jane. Again, you're not hearing me. You can't mean this much to me. I can't allow it anymore." Jane looked more confused by the second but Maura had to press forward before she lost her nerve. Before the wave she was riding crested and broke beneath her. "I am in love with you, Jane." And here the tears came again. God, I've waited too long to say this aloud. "But I can't – that is, it is a moot point, as you've given every indication that it is…you chose Casey, I was your maid of honor…clearly all the signs point to the irrevocable, irrefutable truth that my feelings are, in fact, not returned, and I –"
"They are returned, Maura." Jane's eyes were zeroed in blankly on an indistinct point somewhere on the coffee table.
Maura's entire body seized into absolute stock stillness as the words registered.
Jane sounded stricken as she repeated herself. "Your feelings are returned." She pulled back abruptly, left hand shooting straight to her temple, fingers raking back through dark, tousled locks. Her expression grew tight, but the emotion it was registering was one that Maura was not adept at interpreting. The emotion was too complex, but Maura feared she understood it – on what Jane would call a "gut" level.
Jane fairly sprang from the couch, sweeping her bottle up and beginning to pace erratically in tiny, irregular circles. She slugged back several more swallows, face growing more pained by the breath. Finally she set the near-empty bottle down and leveled those impenetrably dark eyes straight at Maura.
"Why?" Her typical husk had been reduced to a hoarse rasp. "Why did you never tell me, Maura?" She sounded like a woman falling apart at the seams, and it rent Maura's heart in two.
Maura's jaw worked, mouth opening and closing. She breathed, but could find no words. "I…I had no idea…"
"Maura, why did you think it was so hard for me to ask you to be my maid of honor? Why did you think I felt so awkward?"
What's she's really asking me is, "Why did I let her go through with all this when the signs should have been clear as day?"
"There were so many times you could have said something! Why didn't you?"
Maura rose then. She had to - for at least this once - meet Jane on something that resembled an equal footing. "When would it have made sense? When would it have been convenient for you, Jane?"
"Don't put this on me, Maura. You can't dump a confession of this...this magnitude on someone and then turn around and -"
"Answer my question, Jane. Would you have listened?" She flashed again on their exchange in the park about Jane's ankle injury - and her maddening obstinacy. "When would you have been prepared to hear me say this to you? When - prior to now - would you have been ready and able and willing to take my words - and the feelings behind them - into account, and to admit that you returned them?"
It was clear by Jane's expression that she had no retort for that. Maura had soundly stumped her again. Through her frustration, she felt vindicated. Jane confirmed by her uncharacteristic silence that Maura was right. That she knew Jane better than Jane knew herself.
The confirmation made this conversation no easier, did not lessen the pain of the circumstances. In fact, it infuriated Maura that she was correct, yet again. She had never thought she would ever resent her own powers of deduction. And though she had clearly missed the signs that her affections were requited, every other conjecture she had ever formed on Jane's personality and behavioral patterns was perfectly on point.
As she thought all this, she never stopped watching Jane. She was forever trying to take as much of this woman in as she possibly could. Jane's expression was changing, and her pacing had come to a restless stop. She swallowed, exhaled heavily through her nose. That tiny cluster of muscles in the corner of her jaw quivered. Maura wondered if Jane was even aware of that.
She looked on the verge of something. She was tilting, leaning over the precipice. Looking down, losing her balance. For the first time, Maura found herself wanting to see Jane fall. To see her come tumbling after, the same way Maura had come - no means of stopping, head over heels.
Then Jane turned, raking slender fingers through her hair again, shaking the wild curls loose into a black mane. Stepped around the coffee table. Maura stiffened as she approached, closing the distance between them to a few mere inches. Warm brown eyes darkened and bored into hazel.
"What're you doing?" Maura whispered, her own voice ragged from drinking and crying. There was a woman - at once all hard, sharp angles and sleek, graceful curves - standing in front of her, and Maura wondered angrily how either of them could've successfully denied their mutual attraction for so long. But this woman was married to a man who loved her, and whom she loved in return. Their relationship clearly had its flaws, but theirs was a bond already sealed in body and law. What hope could Maura possibly have now for her relationship with Jane? Hers was a lost cause, was it not?
"I have to know. Now. What...could've been. If we both hadn't been so stupid." Maura had never heard Jane's voice sound like this before. She shivered, fearful and inexplicably excited. Jane drew impossibly closer. The left hand once more roamed its way into that tangle of raven hair.
Then both hands were unexpectedly at Maura's waist, fingertips coaxing her closer of their own volition. This was Jane acting on instinct.
Maura stood her ground as Jane pressed in. As their lips met. Something undefined sealed itself inexorably between them. To Maura, it felt like an irreparable rift had spread, jagged between them. And it felt like the last few threads that had been intertwining gradually over the years finally bound themselves together in an unbreakable link. It was a falling away and a falling together.
Slender, eloquent hands moved from waist to shoulders. She felt a single shudder pass through Jane as she took control, something Maura hadn't predicted. She had anticipated hesitancy, apprehension. Not this desperate boldness. But then what about this interaction could realistically have gone according to plan? There were too many variables to account for.
And all of them were Jane.
Maura trembled as their mouths repeatedly came together. She was tasting Jane. Feeling Jane like she never had before.
Jane felt hands on her upper arms, and for the briefest of heady seconds, she felt them soften, clinging. But then their grip strengthened and pressed. Resisting.
Just as quickly as she had moved in, Jane drove back. Her hands released Maura's shoulders. The darkness left her eyes and the rush of blood drained from her face, leaving her once again pale, grief-stricken, and utterly exhausted. But there was something new there, as well. Maura could see it.
Dissatisfaction. Frustration. Jane turned from her and stalked off toward the hall.
"Where are you going?" Maura croaked.
"To bed, Maura." But Maura could see she was walking not to the master bedroom like she normally would, but to the guest room at the end of the hall. She intended to sleep alone.
All at once, Maura's knees buckled and she sank to the couch, shaking. She buried her face in her hands.
"There is no going back," she whispered brokenly. And the last of that toughened, quivering core of tension somewhere in her abdomen gave way, stealing her breath in same merciless way that Jane had inadvertently stolen her heart.
And Maura wept the hardest she had in perhaps her entire life.