A/N-I love that everyone was looking forward to this part of the story as much as I was, and I especially love that so many of you took the time to give your honest opinion on the last chapter :)

I'm working 20-30 hours a week and getting my graduate degree in English. Kinda goes without saying that I don't have the cash to own the rights to a hit TV series like R&I...

Jane blinked a few times. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, but she was still there. The woman Jane thought that she would probably never see again was standing in front of her, looking equally confused and disoriented. Jane couldn't find her voice for a second, and when she did, it wasn't exactly brilliantly smooth stuff that came out of her mouth.

"What are you doing here?"

Shit. With the rudness yet again. But seriously, what the hell was a doctor from California doing in Boston PD morgue?

No…surely it couldn't be. It would be way too obvious and way too awkward if her vacation sex friend was…

"I am the new medical examiner," Maura said as she looked at Jane with a mixture of annoyance and confusion. "I could ask you the same question."

Had Jane been able to speak actual words at that point, she probably would have put together a string of swears that would make Korsak blush.

Only then did it strike Jane that Maura didn't know what Jane did for a living. They had been far too busy with other, more pleasant things to talk about mundane crap like the specifics of their day jobs. As far as Maura knew, Jane could have been a florist or some ridiculous crap like that.

"I work here," Jane said shortly, then realized what a royal bitch she was being and added hastily, "as a detective. In homicide. I'm a homicide detective."

"Oh," Maura said, then after another pause, her face shifted. "Oh."

A look of realization had dawned on Maura's face that Jane could not quite read. Sure there was some surprise, shock even, that her vacations sex friend was now ex-vacation-sex-friend-turned-coworker. There was something else there in the normally composed doctor that Jane couldn't quite pick up on with the ease that she could usually read people. Maura was about to say something more when she was interrupted. Rather rudely, Jane might add.

"Hey, Rizzoli, you already down here waiting to kiss ass with the new ME," Crowe said before seeing that the ME was standing right there, looking as gorgeous as the first time Jane had seen her, with perfectly done hair and makeup and an obviously expensive, custom tailored blouse-skirt combo.

Before Maura could correct Crowe and say that Jane had, in fact, already literally kissed Maura's fabulous ass, Jane turned around and stood instinctively between Crowe and Maura.

"Just introducing myself," Jane said folding her arms over her chest and standing with her head cocked to the side.

"Yeah," Crowe said, rolling his eyes as if he didn't believe a word that came out of Jane's mouth. Though Jane at least tolerated most of the guys in her division, Crowe was one smarmy bastard that Jane had a difficult time putting up with.

"Anyway," Crowe said, edging his way around Jane so that he could lean in the doorway and speak to Maura. He flashed what was probably suppose to be a charming grin. He stuck out his hand. "I'm Detective Crowe."

"Doctor Isles," Maura said, shaking Crowe's hand and smiling politely. "I'm the new medical examiner."

"I had gathered as much, you know, detective and all," Crowe said, with that stupid smile as he gestured to his badge. "I was actually hoping that you might be able to help me out on a case."

"I would be happy to," Maura said, glancing at Jane, then back at Crowe. "But I am not officially instated yet and it would be against protocol to do case work. Any conviction resulting from my work could be overturned by the right judge."

"C'mon, all I really need is a—

"Crowe, I think she was pretty clear," Jane interrupted. "There's nothing that you need right now. And if there were, the state has other pathologists that you can call."

Jane noticed that Maura looked decidedly uncomfortable with how close Crowe remained standing. Either that or she still hadn't adjusted to Jane's sudden appearance. Whatever the reason, Maura had taken to glancing at Jane more often than she looked at Crowe, and Jane felt a sudden, compelling urge to get Crowe out of the room.

Crowe raised his eyebrows and looked to Maura as if he were waiting for Maura to correct Jane.

"I really do apologize," Maura said. "I can give you the phone number of a very competent local pathologist if you would like."

"No, thanks, I'm good," Crowe said taking a step back from the doorway and shooting Jane a nasty look. "See you around, doc."

Crowe walked quickly across the morgue and closed the door behind him. After hearing the heavy thud, Jane wondered why it was she had been so desperate to get alone with Maura again. There was no end to this encounter that Jane could see working out in her favor.

"Thank you," Maura said. She looked down at the floor, then back up. "I didn't need the help, but thank you regardless."

"Yeah, no, no problem," Jane said, doing her best to stick to generalities. "That guy's kind of an ass, just gotta keep an eye out, you know."

"I will, thank you," Maura said. There was a long, epically long it seemed, pause before Maura spoke again, abruptly, as if the thought had just occurred to her. "Would you like to have some coffee? Get to know each other, as coworkers of course."

"No," Jane said immediately and abruptly before her filter could go into effect. It was like her body's fight or flight response had kicked into high gear and screamed into her ear to get the hell out. "I mean, I'm just kinda busy with overdue paperwork and stuff right now. It's not that I don't want, you know, I just have—

"Of course, yes, I understand," Maura said, smiling politely, the same detached smile she had given Crowe. "I have a lot of work myself to get done by the end of the week."

"Yeah, well, maybe another time though," Jane offered weakly as she took a step back.

"Oh, yes, definitely," Maura said, smiling once more, resting her hand on the door while waiting for Jane's response. "I should really get back to work now."

"Oh, yeah, of course," Jane said, suddenly startled by the fact that she had just been staring at Maura unashamedly while the doctor stood there looking back. Jane moved quickly, taking to steps back. "Yeah, see you later."

"Bye," Maura said, waving with one hand as she closed the door with the other.

After closing the door, Maura turned around and stared straight ahead at the half empty bookshelf behind her desk. Of all of the medical examiner posts in the entire country and all of the police divisions, not to mentions all the bars in all of the cruise ships going out of Boston, what were the chances? What was the probability that Jane and Maura would ever meet each other, let alone meet each other yet again as coworkers in Boston PD? Maura couldn't think of any feasible way to determine the exact odds, but they seemed staggeringly low.

She leaned up against the door, closing her eyes as she took a deep, calming breath. Maura did not deal especially well with surprises and difficult social situations, and Jane's sudden presence in her office had presented her with both. Maura decided that she would just have to uncomplicate things.

Facts, she need facts, not these confusing, unexpectedly complicated feelings. Not that Maura had any romantic attachement to Jane. No, Jane hadn't crossed Maura's mind that much in the time since vacation. Even then, Maura didn't dwell on Jane. She, like any other person, liked to use positive sexual and social experiences to elevate her mood. And there had been no risk of it being anything more complex than that. Not until she'd opened that door.

Yes, Maura convinced herself, she just needed cold, hard objective fact to re-simplify this thing. First she would distill the situation into its key components, boil it down to the very basics.

Though the details of their circumstance were rather unusual, a basic summary of their relationship wasn't exactly groundbreaking territory. They were two adult women who'd engaged in casual sex. And now they were coworkers. That type thing happened all the time. Maura knew it did because she'd read several sociological and psychological studies on the matter.

Those studies had also indicated that clear communication on the status of the relationship was often key to having a fruitful working relationship.

It seemed then that the only course of action would be to clarify the status of the relationship with Jane. Maura would first broach the subject indirectly to gauge Jane's willingness to have that discussion. If Jane resisted, ignored, or otherwise overlooked Maura's indirect references, then Maura would eventually confront the situation by questioning Jane directly.

She knew it might generate awkward conversation, but Maura could deal with that, had dealt with awkward conversations all her life. The thing she couldn't put up with for any length of time was guessing, and that's what she'd have to do if she didn't clarify the status of the relationship with Jane. The longer she let herself and Jane avoid, the longer she would have to guess at how Jane percieved their relationship.

There were no two ways about it, Maura thought as she took a deep breath and stepped away from her door. They needed to get to the bottom of this sooner rather than later.

The second time that Jane saw Maura did not got much better than their first meeting. It was just profoundly strange to have this person that Jane so closely associated with vacation showing up in her work life. Then there was the part where Jane was also more accustomed to seeing Maura naked than clothed. It was distracting and monumentally awkward, and just not something Jane felt like dealing with on top of a grueling double murder that she and Frost were working on.

"Frost, call the morgue see if they've found the caliber gun," Jane said without looking up from her report.

"Why?" Frost asked. The frustration in his voice was understandable, since it was the third time Jane was asking him to make a call like this one. She'd pulled the seniority card the first two times, but that only worked so many times in one day and Jane was nearing her limit.

"Because it looks like the first vic's girlfriend owns a .45," Jane replied.

"No, I mean why won't you call down. New ME's going to think I'm a pain in the ass," Frost said.

"Because I said so, junior. Last time I promise. I'm just on a roll here," Jane said. She feigned intense interest in the photographs of ex's bedroom, which had nothing to offer and had only been taken as a matter of procedure.

Frost rolled his eyes, but picked up his desk phone to dial the morgue extension.

"Hi, Doctor Isles, so sorry to bother you again," Frost said. "Detective Rizzoli was just wondering if you have any idea on the bullet caliber."

Jane wished that Frost hadn't added the completely irrelevant piece of information. But the alternative would have been speaking to Maura when it wasn't strictly necessary, and Jane had decided to make as little conversation as possible with Maura.

Jane wouldn't always be a chickenshit about the situation. She only needed a little time to get use to it, to adjust her perception of Maura, and that meant she'd have to take Maura in the smallest possible doses. Jane needed to build up a tolerance, a resistence to the impulse to kiss and grope Maura.

"Well, she would, but she says she's extremely busy," Frost said. He listened for a few seconds before nodding and responding. "Ok, I'll tell her."

"What've they got?" Jane asked.

"Bullet from the first vic was too mangled for any tests," Frost said. "She's gonna take a look at the second vic now."

Jane sighed and leaned back in her chair.

"Oh, and she wants you down there to observe the autopsy," Frost added as he ducked back behind his computer screen.

"Why can't you go?" Jane asked. Really, it more closely resembled a whine, but Jane Rizzoli didn't whine, so she refused to think of it that way.

Frost shrugged.

"She asked for you. Besides, I hate autopsy and you used up all your favors on phone calls today," Frost said. "Better hurry. She'll be opening him up any time now."

Jane pushed back forcefully from her desk, groaning for emphasis as she stood.

"Have fun," Frost said, grinning.

As Jane she passed Frost's desk, she gave him the dirtiest look she could muster. Absolutely nothing about the autopsy was going to lead to anything fun. Autopsies were never fun. Tolerble, yeah. Ocassionally even interesting and fruitful, but never fun.

And this one had the added bonus of being a kid in his early twenties with a bullet wound to the chest.

And then, the jackpot of all jackpots, it would be a good chunk of time spent alone with Maura. Jane had never, ever been alone with Maura without at least kissing her. She'd hoped to work her way up to this level of alone time, but there Jane was, in autopsy with Maura roughly 48 hours after learning they'd be working together. Instead of building a tolerance, Jane was being forced into Maura immersion therapy.

Jane managed to take long enough getting to the morgue that Maura had just begun her work. She was apparently in the zone, because she didn't notice Jane's presence until Jane was all suited up and ready.

"Hello, Jane," Maura said, glancing up from her work as Jane approached the table.

"Hey, um, hey there, you," Jane said. She felt weird using Maura's first name because she never did that with the ME, but she felt equally strange about addressing the woman she'd only ever known casually in such a formal way.

"You may call me by my first name if that's what you're more comfortable with," Maura said, keeping her eyes down and focused on the body. "I believe you've earned that."

So that had to be Maura's way of trying to talk about their precarious situation. Jane should have taken the opportunity, and a part of her really wanted to, but another, larger part of her was determined to avoid, at least until she knew what the hell to say.

"Ok...Maura. Anything interesting so far?" Jane asked.

"No more than there was when Detective Frost last called on your behalf," Maura said. "Why didn't you call?"

"Huh?" was the only semi-coherent sound Jane could make as she swallowed hard to push down the nervous energy the question had created.

"The morgue. Why didn't you call the morgue yourself?" Maura said in the easiest, most conversational way as she tilted her head at a weird, uncomfortable angle to get a better look at what appeared to be the contents of the man's stomach.

"Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, I was busy," Jane said, eager to move the conversation in another direction. "And Frost's younger, so he does all the stuff I can't or don't wanna do," Jane said.

"I see. That's actually a fairly common hierarchical distribution of duties. It dates back to ancient times during which the eldest member of certain tribal groups was appointed unilateral leader of the group, and therefore allowed to choose which tasks he would partake in," Maura said without pausing or even hesitating as she did what looked like some very delicate work with the scalpel. "Why did you come to the morgue then?"

"Huh?" Jane replied. The sudden question after that odd litle info dump apparently had the ability to rendered Jane incapable of actual words.

"If you are the leader of your two person unit, then why did you choose to come here even though Detective Frost said you were very busy?" Maura asked.

"Ran out of favors," Jane said. She moved from her spot leaning against the table and took a step towards the open body. "What are you looking at now?"

Maura stopped what she was doing and looked up at Jane, like she was trying to diagnose her or something. It was this odd expression where she tilted her head to the side, squinted her eyes and pressed her lips into a thin line. Jane hadn't seen that look on vacation, so it seemed out of place on the doctor. Not unpleasant, just out of place. Out of place enough that Jane felt it necessary to avoid direct eye contact.

"The lungs show signs that he was a casual smoker, though the condition of his heart is unremarkable," Maura said.

"Good, I guess. What about the bullet though?" Jane asked.

"It doesn't appear as though the bullet hit any major arteries or vital organs. Given the proper treatment, he would likely have survived," Maura said. Her head was bent close to the body as she worked around the area where the bullet appeared to have lodged. After a few minutes of careful work, she held up the bullet which looked to be in decent shape before dropping it into the metal dish.

"The wound and bullet are consistent with an injury caused by a .45 millimeter handgun," Maura said. She stopped her work for a moment, took the bowl with the bullet and held it out for Jane to see. She managed to make direct, extended eye contact with Jane for the first time in the visit, partly because Jane hadn't been expecting it.

Jane held eye contact for the few seconds it took her to take the bowl and even for a second after. It was kind of hard not to look at Maura, even when she was pretty well covered by autopsy gear. The woman seemed made to be looked at.

Then, to make matters worse, Maura's hand brushed Jane's fingers, which brought back all kinds of good memories of simpler, sexier times with Maura.

And that was why Jane had wanted to stay away for these alone time situations. If a cut open dead body and the fact that one of them was wearing bloody latex golves didn't kill the sexy vibe they had going, then Jane wasn't sure what could.

"Thanks," Jane said, looking down at the bullet, which did appear to be a .45. "That's, um, helpful."

"Is it?" Maura asked, sincerely curious, probably hoping for a way to start conversation.

Jane wanted to be friendly and cordial and polite and all those things, but she couldn't be that way when her mind was stuck on a loop that only played images of Maura looking good naked. This wasn't working, the Maura immersion therapy wasn't work, and Jane needed to get out before she said or did something stupid.

"Yeah, it is. I gotta go check something on it," Jane said, taking a step back towards the door as she quickly removed her gloves. "Gotta go, sorry."

Before Maura could say any more, Jane was out the door and heading for the elevator.

"Frost," Jane said as she walked briskly by his desk. He glanced up from his file then back down again when he saw Jane was looking at him like he'd done something wrong. She spoke again as she took her seat and flipped open her copy of the file. "Bullet was a .45. I'm gonna bring the ex-girlfriend in, see what she has to say."

"Okay," Frost said. Though what she was saying was good news and their first legit lead, Jane looked so tense and tightly wound that she might attack the next person to glance in her direction without permission. She usually only looked that way when they'd hit a few major roadblocks in a row. "You want me to, um, get her for you?"

"No," Jane said as she leafed through the file, probably looking for the right contact info. "But you can do me a favor in the future."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, you get to do all the talking with the new M.E. For the next few cases," Jane said.

"Why? She bugging you or something? 'Cuz I mean she's a little different, I guess, but nicer than the last guy," Frost said.

"Yeah, I just, she's, I don't have a problem with her as a person. She's really nice and all. I just I need a little adjusting period is all. You know me. It took awhile to get settled in with you," Jane said. "I don't do well with change."

Frost might have bought that excuse if Jane hadn't tacked on that last bit. Jane was, indeed, very slow to trust any new coworkers, but she was never one to balk at change. She was one of the best at dealing with sudden, radical shifts in the case, a change in suspect, a rapidly changing and escalating situation in interrogation. Frost contemplated calling Jane out on it, but could not see it ending well, not with the way Jane was acting like she was about to jump out of her own skin.

Now was not the time to push his partner. Whatever Jane's bizarre reason for avoiding Dr. Isles, Frost would find out soon enough.

A/N-What do you think? Should Frost become a Rizzles shipper, or you want all Jane's coworkers to stay in the dark? I hadn't meant that last part to be Frost POV, but it refused to be written any other way. Don't worry though...this is still gonna be a Jane/Maura POV fic :)

Thoughts on the chapter in general? What do you think about how Jane and Maura are handling (or not handling) the situation?

Big finale coming up on Tuesday, and it appears we're gonna have to put up with Dennis Rockmond (zombie penis guy) again... since that episode's murderer hides the body in a sculpture, my thought is that he's a murderer and that hand sculpture he gave Maura is an actual human hand that he bronzed for her. In case that's not the case and Rockmond is a legit, multi-episode Maura boyfriend, please leave a little review love to soften the blow :) Even if I guessed right, I'd loves some reviews as reward for predicting that twist :)