Jane watched suspiciously from her post leaning over Maura's kitchen island and sipping on coffee as her mother and best friend moved about in their morning routine quietly. Maura was wearing a professional red dress today with a black blazer and heels that clicked softly as she moved from her leather briefcase to the island where a small stack of manila folders with the county's Medical Examiner's seal on them sat. Her mother was humming something familiar to the detective but unrecognizable and washing her coffee mug off. Jane took another sip of her coffee but made sure to keep an eye on them as she did so.

Since when did they have a rhythm?

"Oh Angela, I'll get those." Maura clicked over to where her mother stood at the sink and they fought politely over who would wash out the breakfast plates a moment before Maura was cast away to continue getting ready for work. Jane tossed her a smirk to which Maura frowned at in response.

If she thought she was getting in the way of Angela Rizzoli and her morning putzing around she was wrong.

"Now Jane I want you to know that I won't be washing your dish." Angela announced.

Jane's smirk fell as she looked away from Maura who had just tossed her a smirk of her own. "What? What'd I do?"

"Nothing, that's the problem."

Jane took a sip from her mug and motioned to the sink confidently. "I fixed the sink that one time, I take out the garbage every week, and I just sprayed a bunch of bedbugs just a few days ago!"

Maura shook her head quickly. "There were no bedbugs."

Angela turned back to her daughter. "You come over and you make a mess all over the place, you're lucky Maura is so kind, this isn't your house you know."

Jane shook her head. "It's not your house either, Ma."

"Wipe up will you?" She tossed Jane a sponge. "You have crumbs all over that counter. It'll attract…." Angela looked to Maura.

Maura closed her briefcase and smiled. "Under the Kingdom Animalia, cockroaches belong to the Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta, and Order Blattodea. The Order name is derived from the Greek blatta. Which is fascinating because it also means—"

"Maura." Jane cut off.

Maura continued her smile. "A little wipe up wouldn't hurt, hurry though. We'll be late." She had a busy day today.

Jane just looked at her in disbelief. "I'm getting chores now, really?"

"Maybe it will Impart some responsibility." Maura smirked behind her Angela's back.

"Exactly!" Angela agreed from her spot at the sink.

Jane glared at the shorter woman across the room and put the sponge and her mug down. "You better go ahead of me, this may take a while." Maura chuckled and brought her briefcase over to the island and watched as Jane wiped up her toast crumbs into her hand. "Plus I'm riding in with Frankie today." Jane's tone was hushed.

Maura leaned in a little. "Is it the case?" She whispered back.

Jane shook her head and motioned it to her mother. "No. Some other Rizzoli thing."

"What are you two always whispering about?" Angela asked.

"Case stuff, Ma." Jane looked back at Maura. "We'll be taking a personal morning." She whispered before tossing the rest of her crumbs in the garbage.

Maura nodded slowly. "Do you think that's wise?"

"No, but you know what? Not thinking must be in our genes or something, because he sure as hell wasn't thinking when he snuck into the morgue." She whispered back determined.

Maura watched her for a moment but then nodded. "Goodbye Angela." She called.

"You girls coming to the bar tonight? It's bingo night."

"Oh how fun." Maura nodded and then looked to Jane. "Call me."

Jane nodded. "I will." They hesitated a moment. "Drive safe." Jane added. Maura smiled and turned to leave. After polishing off the pint of gelato last night the two separated to their respective spaces and when Jane came down for breakfast that morning clad in her grey slacks and a white button down her mother and Maura were already chit-chatting over expresso and biscotti. Jane wasn't sure if it was right but she felt a little annoyed at her mother's presence. She wanted to ask Maura where she wanted to go on this experimental date, ask if she wanted to go this coming Friday, or maybe in a few months? Jane groaned quietly as Maura waved before closing the front door behind her. How were they playing this? Why? The idea of it all sounded all fuzzy and amusing last night but now in the light of day Jane was left wondering if she could actually afford to date Maura, experimental or otherwise, and then what did that mean? Were they dating? Experimenting? Was she going to kiss her again? That part wasn't such a bad thought but what did that mean if they started kissing each other? What if Maura still wanted to date men too? Was she gay? Was Maura gay? Did it even really matter? She was filled with an anxiety she hadn't known since wearing her first bra and honestly the only person she trusted to help her adjust her straps without leaving her lopsided was Maura.

But Maura was the reason she were putting the damn thing on in the first place!

Jane shook her head at herself.

"What's wrong sweetheart? You have that look about you."

The homicide detective had forgotten she wasn't alone. To buy some time she took a big gulp of her coffee and then wondered briefly if she could confide in her mother before chasing that idea straight out the window and into oncoming traffic.

"Frankie's late."

Angela dried off a dish. "It's love, Jane. Be patient with him."

Jane snorted. "Love?"

"You soon forget all your responsibilities until suddenly you remember a bill that needs to be paid or laundry."

"We have thing to do, I have things to do."

"You can't be so fast all the time you know. Sometimes in life you have to take your time and enjoy yourself." She reached for another wet dish and began to dry it. "You'll miss something. Have some more biscotti."

Jane shifted her weight. She didn't feel like eating anything. "What if I just catch it?'

Angela looked up. "Hm?"

She turned to her mother and rested her mug down on the island. "Like what if I almost missed it but then I realize that I almost missed it and… now I'm in it, but I've never gone this way before, this route… So I don't really know how to…enjoy it. How to go fast…or slow."

Angela stopped drying. "What are we talking about, Janie?"

Jane brought her mug to her mouth quickly. "Nothing, Ma."

"Are you sure?" She crossed her arms and tilted her head.

"Yeah."

Angela resumed her drying. "Well I would say." She looked over at her pointedly. "To this thing you won't tell your only mother-"

"For the love of—"

"—I would say that you take your time and start to learn how to enjoy yourself on this route… Smell the flowers; maybe take a day off from work. La vita non è una gara a una pista." She nodded.

Just outside a motorcycle engine could be heard roaring up the street. Jane grabbed her keys before moving to kiss her mother goodbye. "Thanks Ma."

"For what? My wisdom or breakfast?" She held her daughters shoulders lovingly.

Jane smirked. "Breakfast."

Angela laughed and released her. "Go, get outta here before you make more of a mess." Jane tugged her ponytail affectionately. "Go!"

Frankie was backing his bike up to park in front of Maura's home when Jane finally stepped outside. She contemplated going back inside and getting a coat but decided against it. The mooring breeze would soon warm and right now it felt more invigorating than uncomfortable.

"Hey!" Frankie called over the hum the engine before cutting it off.

Jane stopped on the sidewalk and examined him in his suit and leather jacket. "You look like a biker gigolo." Not to mention he'd probably smell like oil all day.

Frankie chuckled as he got off the bike and tucked his helmet under his arm. "Maura and I are going to a road show this weekend. Thought I'd leave this here till then."

"Road show? When?"

"On Sunday." He began to take off his riding gloves. "Ma in there? She cook?" He darted his head around Jane to see if he could spot their mother at the door.

"Yes, but not for you, c'mon we'll grab something on the way." Frankie frowned. "Really?"

"Hey I didn't have breakfast okay?"

"Why because you're in love?"

"Wha?"

"Don't you think it's a little wrong that the only reason you want to see our mother is because you didn't eat breakfast?" They made their way over to Jane's unmarked.

"No…"

Jane shook her head in amusement. "Where's this thing on Sunday?" How come Maura never mentioned it?

"Cambridge, we planned it a little while ago, we usually end up doing something when you and Nina are on call together."

Jane furrowed her brows a bit before nodding slowly. "Holiday and I are on-call." She remembered. She had remembered Frankie and Maura going to a few games or hanging with her mother, but why did this information of a standing thing surprise her? Maybe she was just being sensitive.

"Yup, no way I'm hanging around here. Ma and her wedding planning, Tommy freaking out cause Lidia's coming to town and Pop—"

Jane stopped him physically and verbally. "Lidia and our father are going to be in the same city… "

Frankie looked as if he were going to correct her but then shook his head and threw his hand up in surrender. "You can't write this stuff!"

Jane opened her car and jumped into the driver's seat. "Add it to the agenda."

##

Nina Holiday had a favorite, Frank Rizzoli Jr, he was funny, sweet, had a great smile, and had the unmissable feeling of home. It was how she knew she could not only marry him, but be his partner in crime-fighting for a long long time. He didn't look half bad shirtless either.

It hadn't taken her long at BPD to realize that Maura had a favorite too.

Jane.

Though their conversations together on those early mornings when she and the detective hadn't carpooled seldom revolved around the lean woman, Nina could tell they cared for one another a great deal more than their title as besties permitted, maybe not in the scandalized version in her head that had them being secret lovers, but there was an honest to goodness magnetic charge between them that anyone worth their badge could see.

Frankie never indulged her theories, but he never denied them either.

"There is just something about the smell of motor oil—"

Nina laughed. "You two are a match made in heaven."

Maura grew confused. "Has Frankie said something similar?" The two were seated in the bullpen's tiny windowless breakroom. The small room smelt lightly of burnt coffee and worn plastic but the detectives had all chipped in for a new coffee maker that made a mean latte if Maura did say so herself.

She'd never admit it aloud though. At least not to Jane anyway.

"The exact same thing, Maura. He even had that far off look in his eye, more power to the both of you." She shook her head. "While you guys are inhaling noxious fumes and joining motorcycle gangs Jane and I will be sitting here staring at the phones waiting for a cat to get stuck in a tree."

Maura chuckled and brought her latte to her lips before pulling it away. "Will you take Rizzoli as a surname?" She wondered aloud.

Nina laughed at the random topic. "Nina Holiday Rizzoli sounds like a cheap steakhouse somewhere." Maura laughed. "Yeah, I'm pretty attached to it."

"I've always found the idea of taking another name to be so archaic, but…"

"But also a little fun right?"

Maura began to smile and leaned forward. "Yes, absolutely. You can create an entirely different identity."

Nina chuckled before taking a sip of her coffee. The breakroom fell quiet and the beginning rumblings of a waking police precinct began to sound. "They never take off. I think Frankie will want to work up until the last hour before the ceremony."

Maura nodded slowly. "Jane has a gross amount of paid leave."

"They went to see their father right? Frank Sr.?"

"Yes, it was the only thing Jane would say about the whole thing." She didn't regret telling her, but she didn't like to see her friend worry herself like this.

"Frankie won't talk about him much either…"

"It's a sore subject for them."

"Do you think wanting to meet him on my part will be a bad idea?"

"No." Maura said simply.

"Frankie won't say it but I know he's against it… I can't help but wonder why."

Maura shook her head. "Oh Nina I don't think it's because of you."

Nina smiled at the ME. "I'm just so nervous-excited!" They laughed at her animation. "After Chicago I never thought I'd find someone, hell I knew I wasn't looking but here this man is and I just want to know everything about him, I can't help it. Even the bad." She leaned on her elbow and regarded Maura carefully. "Do you ever feel that way about someone? You just want to know them, want…more for them, from them?"

Maura hesitated before nodding. "I can understand the feeling. It's mm, a fascinating human emotion; there haven't been many studies in the field of emotions like that." She took a sip of her coffee. "Unfortunately." She smiled almost shyly.

Nina nodded. "An enchantment."

Maura tilted her head suddenly. "Yes." She nodded as if the word were the only word in the world and she had somehow forgotten it until now.

Nina bit her lip before smiling back, she had just been gifted with a window to ask about Jane but something in her gut told her to wait. Maybe it was the concentrated look in the doctor's features, or the knowledge that soon they would have to wait in line for a coffee, but she were fairly certain it was something more. Nina stood from her seat and motioned to the new caffine-o-matic. "It also makes a really good matcha, do you want to split one?"

She stood as well. "We've had enough caffeine for a small army."

Nina moved her hand from hovering over the small paper cups to the larger ones. "So a large then?"

Maura chuckled. "Count me in."

##

Frank opened the door to his hotel and couldn't decide if he wanted to smile or frown. "You two look like undertakers." He moved aside so his two adult children could enter the room he had rented in a hotel not too far from the docks. The smell of the pier reminded him of growing up in a poorer area nearby.

Frankie looked about the messy hotel room and looked over to Jane who was doing her own surveying of the land. No liquor bottles, but old take-out containers and piles of clothes were strewn about as if he had decided to organize them only to give up half way. Jane felt a pang of guilt in her chest but then crossed her arms over it to keep it from slipping away when she noticed something. On the flat panel tv in the corner the news played on low volume.

He still watched the news.

Her father had said once that the second she told him she wanted to go to the police academy he turned on the news and seldom watched anything but it, it was his way of looking out for her, for them.

"Where's your brother?" Frank asked as he closed the door behind him. He saw the look on his daughter's face. "What happened to him?"

"Nothing happened to him, Pop." Frankie pushed aside some clothes off of a chair and took a seat.

"What happened to this place? You don't have some woman to clean up after you now?" Jane asked with her arms still crossed.

Frank Sr. shook his head. "You two obviously have something to say, so just say it."

Jane nodded. "Leave Maura out of our crap, okay?"

Frank gave her an odd look then. "This is about Maura? You two coming in here ready to take me to my hanging is about that woman?"

"That woman?" Jane growled.

Frankie stood quickly and unconsciously put himself between his father and older sister. "Listen Pop you can't just show up at our job, wasted, and somehow weasel your way into the morgue during a live autopsy and take up her time, she doesn't have to deal with this alright. If you want to talk to us, call us."

"I made a mistake—"

"—That's not an excuse." Frankie cut in.

Jane's nodded, her temper still climbing steadily. "Normally you'd be arrested."

"If that's what you two are here to do then just do it already. I made a mistake!" Frank Sr. threw up his hands. He had just gotten a rather unpleasant phone call and wasn't in the mood to be lectured by the only two people whose asses he had literally wiped.

"How many times are you going to use that as an excuse?" Jane asked. "How many times are we going to have to cover for you, how many times are other people going to have to cover for you?"

"Cover for me? Who's covering for me?"

Jane flung an arm out pointing in the general direction of the precinct. "That woman, wasn't even going to tell me you were drunk—"

Frank shook his head. "Janie, I wasn't drunk, and if she told you that she was lying. I came to talk to you, we had coffee. Is that what she said?"

"She can't lie!"

Frankie side stepped so Jane couldn't move around him. "Pop are you saying right now that Maura is lying?"

Frank shrugged. He hadn't really meant to say it, but hell, if it was getting him out of this rapidly deteriorating situation then sure, she lied. "Yeah, saying I was drunk, why would she say that huh?" He pointed at Jane. "Maybe to drive a wedge between this family, you ever consider that?"

Jane had finally made it around her brother. Her jaw was locked and her eyes ablaze. She never thought she would look at her father with such an intense feeling of hatred but here she was. Staring him down, feeling everything: all the confusing feelings for Maura, her love for her mother, for their family and what it was and what it now became. The guilt, the anger, the pain of it all swelled in her belly and Jane Rizzoli knew she could only do one thing, and that was leave, because she knew if she were to stay tempering this feeling into action it would only bring negative consequences. ""The only person driving a wedge between this family is you, and your bullshit, Pop, and if you come near that woman again I will arrest you." She rasped before storming out of the room.

For a half beat both men stood there listening to Jane's boots down the hall.

"Frank—"

"Save it." Frankie exhaled and shook his head at his father before following after Jane. He paused at the door. "Oh, I'm getting married." He announced before slamming the door behind him.

##

Jane stormed into the morgue fifty two minutes later.

"Well hello." Kent chuckled into his microphone. He was standing over a body of a balding man mid autopsy. He switched the microphone off and stood up straight. "You're looking very determined today, Detective."

His presence threw her off. "Uh, where's Mau—Dr. Isles?"

"The locker room." He motioned with his clipboard down a hall. It's what they called the tall and unbelievably impersonal room where they kept the dead bodies in their rolling shelf lockers.

Jane was losing courage fast, she could feel it seeping out of her pours spilling all over her clothes and boots making her feel embarrassed at her own internal image of herself. With a quick nod in thanks to the Scottish man Jane took a step forward and then another and then another until she were in the hall.

Maura looked up quickly from the body she was returning when she heard the door to the locker room grant access to someone.

"Jane."

"I need to talk to you." She made sure the door was closed behind her before lingering there and then stepping fully into the tight space and up to the shorter woman in her lab coat as far as the dead body between them would permit. Jane braced herself against one of the lockers with an outstretched right arm and opened palm. She hoped the action made her look confident.

Maura noted the slight bit of moisture at Jane's neck and wondered then if she had run here or if she were simply perspiring out of a nervous system response to a mental stressor.

"You're worrying me." She decided.

"I don't mean to."

Maura examined her a moment longer. "So what do you mean to do?" It was less of a question more of something else.

"You're not just some woman. To my family, to me, you know that right?" Maura nodded slowly. "I just wanted to make sure you knew that."

The ME carefully pushed the body of Beatrice Dowdy back into her temperature controlled tomb thus clearing the obstructed space between them. She slipped her hands into her deep lab coat pockets and took a step closer to the taller woman. "Has something happened?" Jane took a small step back.

"No... I don't know."

"No, you don't know?"

Jane let her left hand run through her hair before returning it to her side; her right remained planting her firmly onto the wall. "I just wanted to tell you that."

"Right this moment?"

"Yes, Maura." Jane groaned and the shorter woman smiled. "Alright? We good here?"

Maura let out a small augh as Jane began to try and leave the room. "Jane. That hardly seems like a conversation."

"What?"

"You said you needed to talk to me, are you sure there is nothing else on your mind?"

Jane turned back with one hand on the door. "There's plenty of stuff on my mind." She shrugged. "But we're at work." She shrugged again. "Bad guys first, then—" She waved at the space between them. "Our um—"

"Our date."

"Experiment."

Maura nodded, she wanted to chuckle but decided to hold it. If there wasn't a door in the room she was sure Jane would start climbing the wall. "Yes."

Jane nodded more to herself before swinging her body around to leave. "Alright I'll let you get back to your dead people."

When Jane finally sat down at her own desk a wave of exhaustion hit her. She reclined in her seat and drummed a hand on the wooden surface making sure to avoid the stack of paperwork waiting in front of her. Korsak and Frankie were processing the last location of Knowles victim for more of Frankie's field work evaluation and since Frankie was a Rizzoli Jane had to sit the training out and begin to tackle their work here. With a puff of air signifying her resignation to the task the detective leaned forward and opened the manila folder on her desk to begin.

Eight minutes had passed before the Medical Examiner came up.

She sighed thoughtfully at Maura signature at the bottom of a medical note on one of the victim's autopsy. Without even knowing what the shorter woman looked like Jane was certain you could gather all that was Maura in her signature. The curl of her "L's" and the neat tucked in "S" tails.

All I could think about on the flight back was seeing you.

Maura had said it last night.

Jane flicked her pen against the base of her computer keyboard. It was funny wasn't it? Maura not being able to think about a romp with a sexy pilot because she was thinking of her. It was almost just as funny as Jane losing all real ability to focus on anything but the ME when she was away.

And now.

It didn't feel like a crush, no, Jane knew what it felt like to be engulfed in the flurry of infatuation that came with a crush. This was not that, this was…bazar and familiar, both exhilarating and frightening.

Maura was her best friend, but Jane had stormed into her workspace just now with the full intent to kiss her.

What did that mean?

She had been reactive after seeing her father; maybe she was just transcribing that height to something else.

Jane huffed at herself as she continued to flick her pen on her desk and turn to another page that needed her notes. She had filled out these reports so many times before that the task was almost automatic, just a different scene of the crime, a different offender, a different victim, different officers on scene, lead investigator was always she or Korsak, secondary investigator was always she or Korsak…

So was that gay? Was she gay?

Jane ran a hand through her hair.

Did she want to touch Maura? if she wanted to kiss her, if she had had that urge surely she wanted more right? Anyone would right? Maura was a beautiful woman, gorgeous really….

Holding her too?

Jane nodded a little to herself at the safer footing. She had held Maura close before, not romantically or anything but even then she could recall feeling a sense of calm and purpose.

Of course Jane would want to hold her if she needed it.

She'd do anything for her.

Including arresting her own father.

The work day worked much like that until around five. Jane focusing on a detail one moment, another question or thought popping in the next. It wasn't the most productive work day but for once Jane was glad to be sitting at the desk for it. There was no way she would be able to do this in the field, this back and forth or lack of attentions, it could get someone hurt. She needed to get a handle on things, take a mental inventory, reassess, because this thought process and work pattern couldn't continue.

"Alright good, I'll make sure they get to the lab." Jane spoke into her cellphone as she made her way down the hall and to the elevator that evening.

"Perfect, we'll be done here in another twenty or so. Will we see you at bingo?" Korsak asked.

"Um." Jane pressed the call button and shifted her weight. "I think I'm going to the gym and then home tonight. Get some rest."

"Are you sick?"

Jane chuckled. "No, but I know tomorrow when this whole thing breaks we're going to have channel seven news so far up our asses they'll be able to see the bags under my eyes from the inside." She stepped into the elevator.

Vince laughed a big laugh. It made Jane smile. "Good point."

They hung up just in time for the elevator doors to close and start the questionably hasty trip down to the sub-basement level of the building where the BPD basketball court and gym was. After her two hour long work out Jane was feeling better. She was sure there was some scientific explanation that Maura had probably shared with her on several occasions but Jane didn't really mind not knowing right now. What she did know was that she had feelings for her best friend that toppled the normal every day misconnection, she had to stop putting off filling out the human resources profile online for the FBI, and unless he was ill again Jane saw no reason to speak to her father about anything. Lying about Maura had been the last straw.

If he were desperate enough to lie like that she probably would only be setting herself up for more disappointment.

##

Jane unceremoniously tossed her suit and dress shirt on the ground of her apartment when she finally got home from the precinct later that night. She had had just enough time to work out and then receive the findings report from Kent from the eighth victim's resting place in a grocery store ventilation system closet before calling it a night.

Jane placed the findings report on her dark wooden table before showering and changing into plaid pajama bottoms and a loose tank top and returning to it with a beer. She scanned the report and leaned back in her kitchen chair as she thought. How was it possible that no one smelled the decomposing body? Had they really not needed anything from that utility closet? She re-read the report twice and scratched the back of her head before reaching for her cell phone.

Maura's breath came over slightly ragged. "Dr. Isles."

Jane chuckled. "Am I interrupting something?" She sounded far away.

Maura took another slow breath before finishing her sun salutation. "Hot Yoga."

Jane checked the time. "At ten at night? You still having sleeping problems?"

"With the introduction of heat to meditative practices—"

"You scramble your brain so it passes you out to recover?"

Maura smiled as she moved into another stretch. "Something along those lines."

"Alright well here is another one for you; I thought cell phones weren't allowed in the dojo?"

"Wensa."

"Wha?"

"A dojo is dedicated to the practice of martial art forms; a Wensa is a quiet meditation space away from society and constant busyness…." Maura blinked a bead of sweat away from her eye.

"Alright well why are electronics in your Wednesday?"

Maura smirked. "Wensa." She reaped in a calm and drawn out way as if chiming.

Jane nodded. "Wennnssaaa."

Maura exhaled shortly, Jane had officially broken her meditation with her goofiness. The doctor leaned forward and took the other woman off of speaker phone and then brought the phone to her ear before lying on her back in a modified corpse pose. "You said you would call and you hadn't yet."

'You go to bingo?" She took a sip of her beer.

"After my book club."

"How was that?"

Maura rolled her eyes. "They voted on another fiction novel by Noel Porter. I don't think I could choke down another one of her books."

Jane shook her head in amusement. "I meant bingo."

"Oh." Maura smiled a little at her own expense. "Lovely, you were missed." She could hear the subtle slosh of liquid, probably a beer. "Where were you?"

"Gym."

"How is that helping with the depre—?"

"Maura,"

"—Mild agitation?"

"Well it was more like full agitation really, with my Pop… anyway that's not why I called."

"I specifically remembered agreeing to speak about just that."

Jane narrowed her eyes. "You could be specifically wrong."

Maura shrugged. "I don't think I am."

"Well I don't want to talk about him…" Jane looked at the folder open in front of her and played with a folded tab.

"Okay." Maura turned her head and looked at Jane's tennis shoes on the rack in the corner beside her own. She ran her free hand up her side thoughtfully. "What do you want to talk about, Jane?"

Jane looked at her folder and the eight symbol word she had used as her initial excuse. She closed it and took a small breath. "Find anything cool inside a body today?"

Maura fought her smile. "A paperclip."

Jane played with the string of her pajamas. "No way."

"Not the COD but fascinating regardless, the body's trace metals altered it some. Did you know you could live a perfectly normal life with about twenty eight cents hidden in compacted stool?"

Jane snorted suddenly mid swig resulting in a thin spill on her tank top. "See the problem is you don't even know you're being gross." She dabbed at it with a dry portion of her shirt.

"Stool can be very telling."

Two Hours Later…

"I don't know what that will be like for TJ…."

"They don't have much of a relationship as is." Jane had moved to lie on her back on the ground of her living room floor a half hour ago when Maura explained its posture correcting faculties. Their voices had hushed with the deepening of the night to mere murmurings.

"I think you're doing the right thing, Jane."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

A long moment of comfortable silence passed them before Maura spoke quietly into the phone.

"Are you fearful that it is a mistake?"

Jane had her eyes closed, and even though Maura wasn't beside her for sight to matter or lend visual ques she knew they were not talking about TJ and her father anymore. "You're my best friend, Maura." She felt her cheeks warm. "…I wanted to kiss you today."

"I know."

"You knew?"

"I don't want to push you in a direction, Jane." Maura pursed her lips in thought. "I can't help how I feel, I've tried."

"What does the science say?"

Maura chuckled quietly. "Very little."

"So we're both flying blind."

Maura exhaled. "It's terrifying… I feel so unorganized about you." She blushed then. "Which is ironic because you are my best friend and I've never had an affinity so… close." She touched her chest only to realize sleepily that Jane couldn't see her.

Jane nodded. "If we ignore it, make a decision to ignore it?"

"It would work."

Jane frowned at how certain she sounded and then the reality of it set in. "It would." Maura would marry, move, maybe start a different career. Jane would do the same. They couldn't hold the other so close for long without choosing a direction.

"I don't know which is best… I know it would devastate me to lose you in any regard. You know that."

"Me too, Maura."

"What do we do?" It was barely a whisper.

Jane wished she were with her suddenly. "It's okay." She whispered back. In the dark of her living room Jane felt herself shake as if hit with a cold breeze, her words caught in her throat as if they had come up and refused to go back down without sound. Maura's question made her sound so far away and she didn't like it. "Let's try…." She nodded. "Let's try, Maura."

"Shall we?"

Jane smiled a little. "Yeah."

There was a long pause on Maura's end.

"Should we… say anything to someone?"

"God no."

Maura silently chuckled. "Okay." She yawned.

"So next Friday? We can um, leave from work together…" Jane scratched the back of her head. "Get a bite to eat or— because really I need time to spill my savings, something tells me you're not a cheap date."

The pathologist smiled sleepily at her ceiling. "It's true."

"So Friday?"

"What should I wear?"

Jane shrugged. "Clothes, I don't know, we literally just decided on a day."

"What are your expectations though?"

"Expectations?" Jane made a face. "Maura."

"Should we write them down, hypothesis maybe?"

Jane paused. "You want me to get a pen?"

Maura looked about her in home Wensa and yawned. "I think I'm falling asleep, Jane."

Jane noted the relief in her voice. "Alright, Maur, sleep, we can hypothesis later."

Maura waited to respond to confirm that the drowsiness she felt was in fact somniferous. When it passed she sighed in frustration. "And paper?"

Jane sat herself up tiredly. "Yeah, hold on."