"The doc knows, Jane."

Jane looked up from a crime scene photograph to focus her eyes on Frost, first furrowing both eyebrows, then raising one.

"She knows…?" Jane trailed off, waiting for her partner to be more specific.

"She knows." Frost looked at her meaningfully, and then shot a pointed glance at Korsak, who was coming up behind him. The older man had a regretful expression on his face.

"I'm sorry, Janie. She overheard us—"

"You," Frost interjected.

"…me talking about it at the cafe. She was behind us and I didn't realize." Korsak fidgeted in place. Jane frowned as she leaned back in her chair, observing the two men. Frost looked apologetic, though she was certain he was blameless. Korsak looked like he was standing in detention, despite the fact that he was Jane's direct superior.

Jane sighed. "Thanks a lot, Vince. Now I owe Frankie fifty bucks."

Both Frost and Korsak looked from Jane to each other, then back to Jane. Their uncomfortableness replaced with confusion. Jane kept her expression stony for a moment longer, before putting the two of them at ease with a light smirk.

"He and I had a bet on who would be the one to let her know. He gave me five to one odds and I took Ma, and he got the field. I can't believe you cost me 250 dollars." She leaned forward in her seat, pointing a finger at Korsak. "All my drinks are on you at the Robber tonight."

"You're not mad?" Korsak settled down into his chair with relief.

"Well I'm a little cheesed you girls are gossiping about me in line for coffee. But that she found out?" Jane shrugged. "It was going to happen eventually. It's not a secret. It's not supposed to be a topic of conversation either," Jane looked at the two men pointedly, "but it's not a secret. Now can we get to work? We've been on such a hot streak lately but now we've caught three more cases this week and we've still barely moved on the Arthur Hill murder. I can't remember the last time I had this many open cases."

"One down, actually." Frost tossed a folder onto Jane's desk. "I swung by the morgue. The robbery victim from the alley died of a heart attack. Probably had his watch and wallet nicked after he died."

"Oh, you swung by the morgue." Jane repeated his words and hoped it sounded as aloof as she wanted it to. She reached across her desk, flicking open the folder with one deft sweep of her index finger. She peered across Maura's precise and elegant writing. She'd never really thought about it, but it was kind of unusual how legibly Maura wrote. She definitely skipped whatever class in pre-med teaches physicians how to write like psychopaths. Before she realized what she was doing, Jane ran her fingertips across Maura's signature at the bottom of the page. Frost cleared his throat, which snapped Jane out of her thoughts, and she swiftly shut the folder, leaning back with feigned casualness.

"Well, that's good. Still a crime, but not our kind. Pass it off to some boot, they can try and figure out who this guy was and alert next of kin."

"Already on it." Frost settled behind his computer, looking at Jane across his monitor, who was still looking down at the closed folder. He glanced back down to his screen. "It was afterwards." Jane blinked and looked up from the folder.

"What?"

Frost kept looking at his screen, keeping it real casual. "I know you're trying to figure out when I went, and it was right after she overheard. She seemed fine."

"Great. I don't care." Yes she did.

"Yes you do. Why don't—"

"Jesus, Frost. Are you a homicide detective or my mother? I doubt your lasagna is nearly good enough for you to be the latter. Let's just get everything ready for the Arthur Hill all-hands."

Frost leaned forward on one elbow, offering an accusatory point with the index finger of that same arm. His eyes narrowed just slightly.

"Okay, Rizzoli." Frost had lowered his voice, both out of courtesy and in seriousness. "If you want to sit right there and tell me that you don't care that your ex-best friend knows about this big ol' revelation you had, I'll go along with it. But I know you're dying to ask me questions. You want to know exactly what Korsak said. You want to know exactly what she said." He leaned forward, eyes narrowing even further. "And, just so we're clear, I make an excellent fucking lasagna. You'd be lucky to have me as a mother." Frost grinned. Jane gave him a withering look and pointed at his computer monitor.

"Work. Now."

Frost lifted both his hands in mock surrender, and settled them back down on his keyboard without another word. Jane glared, mad that he had brought this up, and somehow even more mad that he had followed her orders to drop it. Fortunately for the people of Boston, and unfortunately for her right then, Barry Frost was not a half-bad detective, and he was dead right that she wanted badly to know every exact word that was said. But to admit as much would just reopen the floodgates on his and everyone else's demands that Jane fix this situation with Maura. So no dice, Jane would sooner die not knowing, because she wasn't going to ask.

Jane stared at her monitor. She exhaled forcefully upwards, which did exactly nothing to move her hair out of her eyes. She followed it up with a jerky swipe of her hand, which worked almost as well. She stared at her monitor some more. She shifted her position in her chair, adjusted the pneumatic cylinder to drop the seat slightly, then leaned forward to raise it all the way back up to full height. Finally, she stood up, a small grunt of exasperation escaping.

"I need a coffee." She could feel Frost's eyes on her but she didn't look back at him. "Not the shitty stuff in here, either. I'll be back."

Out in the halls of the precinct, she exhaled sharply. This was so stupid. She hadn't been bothered this much by thoughts of Maura in weeks. Obviously this whole dissolution of their friendship had been incredibly difficult, but with time it had gotten to be a dull ache, and some days she truly didn't think about it all that much. She was pretty good at adjusting to a new reality. But something about the fact that Maura knew that Jane was dating women brought it bubbling to the surface again. Jane wasn't really interested in interrogating why. No one needed to go there. What was that weird Latin expression Maura had taught her? Hic something dracones? Something like that. Whatever. Fuck dragons. She would just label that part of her mental map as a no fly zone.

Suddenly, her cell phone buzzed, and she looked down to a text from Frost.

F: She heard Korsak mention meeting "Jane's girl" at the game

Jane muttered some incoherent swears and went to stuff her phone back in her pocket, but another message came through before she could.

F: She was shook but she recovered okay

Jane didn't even have a chance to try at putting her phone away before it vibrated one more time.

F: YOU'RE WELCOME

Jane blinked hard and felt eyes on her. She threw a glance over her shoulders. Frost was standing at the entrance to the bullpen, phone in hand, staring at Jane. He offered a smug grin and disappeared back through the doorway.

Jane rolled her eyes, and stalked off down the hallway towards the cafe. It didn't matter if it surprised Maura or didn't. It didn't matter if she was angry or ambivalent or anything else. They weren't friends, and at this point it was really starting to look like they never would be. And maybe that was fine. Maybe it was even for the best.

"She definitely saw something, right?"

"Who did?"

"Screw you, Frost. You know who. She saw something in those photos. Could be helpful."

"Oh, by 'she' do you mean Maura?"

Jane stared at Frost, who continued.

"Doctor Maura Isles?"

Jane looked around the room, where plenty of officers and detectives were still milling about in the room. She glared at Frost, who was undeterred.

"Doctor Maura Isles, Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, your form—"

"Yes," Jane hissed. Her partner restrained a smile and shrugged.

"Yeah, she probably did notice something. She's very perceptive, and has helped us countless times." Frost spoke matter-of-factly.

"...Right, great. So next time you're down there, get it out of her."

"Nope," he shook his head. "I've gone down there seven times for you this week. That's it. I'm tapped out. I saw two different hearts and at least ten feet of small intestines by accident. You want to know, you go talk to her."

"Man, come on. It's for the case."

"Yeah, Rizzoli, it is." Frost had already gathered all his materials from the table. He had them under his arm and was heading for the door. "So grow a pair and go work your case. You spoke to her just fine in there. No one would ever think you were being such a fucking baby about it. You have a job to do and so do I." He gave her one last stern look, and Jane was frozen in place, a little in shock, as she watched Frost turn and walk away.

"It's our case," she muttered petulantly, but Frost was already out of earshot, across the room giving direction to some officers. She sighed. Maura had really booked it out of that meeting and it was absolutely in order to avoid Jane. Jane would have loved to give her the courtesy of avoiding the face-to-face. But it was one of those especially irritating days where Frost was batting a thousand. Maura had helped them with countless investigations. Despite how often she demurred about speculating, how often she insisted she was a doctor and not an architect or a botanist or whatever else, nearly every time she went outside the bounds of her job description it provided valuable information or context to their investigations.

Jane had been doing a good job without her. Scratch that, a great job. After all, she'd had the highest clearance rate in the division even before Maura showed up as the medical examiner. But it was, admittedly, a little less fun than it used to be. And this case in particular seemed to call for throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck. Jane screwed up her courage and headed for the elevators.