Jane woke up with a start. Nothing in particular had awoken her, except for that gut feeling that she wasn't supposed to be sleeping. She blinked, slowly lifted her arm, and angled her wrist so that the moonlight spilling into the room could illuminate the face of her watch. 3:13am. She glanced to the body next to her, observing the rise and fall of steady breathing that indicated sleep, and then surveyed the room. There was her jacket and boots on the ground by the door and her shirt was crumpled on the floor next to her side of the bed. Her pants were still on, her belt had been removed and tossed aside. Her bra was... where was her bra?
She sat up slowly, performing a more careful inspection of the room. She finally spotted a dark grey strap sticking out from underneath the stomach of her companion.
Jane slithered out of bed and stood, quietly doing up her pants. She retrieved her belt and threaded it through the loops as she kept her eyes on the sleeping figure. She put her shirt on and grabbed her jacket, then came over to the other side of the bed and ever so gently pulled her bra free from underneath the sleeping woman, who stirred and opened her eyes. Jane shoved the bra into her back pocket and crouched down by the side of the bed.
"Hey," she murmured quietly. "I had a great time. I'll see you around."
There was a sleepy sound of assent, and Jane figured it was fifty-fifty on whether the woman would remember Jane leaving. She crept out of the room, closing the door quietly behind her, and tried to remember the layout of the apartment. They hadn't spent too much time in the non-bedroom part of it the night before. Moving through the dark hallway, she made a wrong turn into the kitchen before eventually finding the front door, and she stopped when she saw some mail on the side table in the hallway, she peered at it carefully, just barely able to make it out from the faint light from the living room windows. Samantha. Good to know. Jane wasn't actually sure if names had come up the night before.
She opened the front door and kneeled down to lift the welcome mat, both pleased and dismayed to find a spare apartment key. She stepped out and locked the door behind herself, then fed the key through the mail slot, hoping that finding it on the other side of the door in the morning would effectively communicate to Samantha that she should find a much better spot for her emergency key. Jane pulled on her boots in the hallway and shrugged into her jacket before heading down the stairs and out of the building. It was a still and serene night. Jane let her thoughts drift as she walked back in the direction of the bar where she'd left her car parked.
It had been a few weeks since the night with Amy. When they'd woken up the next morning, it was unclear which of the two women was more surprised when Jane did not immediately have a crisis of identity. But for all her years of avoidance and denial leading up to the moment, Jane was adept at recognizing irrefutable evidence, and the previous night had broken the case wide open, so to speak. It was an absolute slam dunk for the district attorney inside her brain: ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Jane Rizzoli was pretty fucking gay.
Knowing that for certain had made her feel pretty relaxed. Rather than experiencing a crisis, she felt unburdened by it. What was there to freak out about? Of course, she had some anxiety about it getting around at work and any bullshit she might have to deal with from the Detective Crowes of the world, but as far as what it meant to her personally, she felt settled. The only thing that had bothered her was when Amy had started the morning off by asking her what she was going to do about Maura now that she knew, and Jane continued to insist that their friendship had been platonic. Jane had said if she really had romantic or sexual feelings for Maura, she would have figured this whole thing out a lot sooner. Amy had said that was the stupidest fucking thing she'd ever heard, and then they had sex again.
They had done that a lot lately. Amy had also practically pushed Jane into the arms of other women, insisting that she liked Jane, but being immediately monogamous after coming out was a recipe for disaster. She told Jane about at least seven different messy break ups as evidence. Jane had thought maybe it was a weird way to let her down easy and get rid of her, but they had continued to see each other while seeing other people. It wasn't how Jane ever could have imagined her romantic life before, but surprisingly it was suiting her just fine.
Callously, one could say Jane was making up for lost time. To her it mostly felt like she was trying to work something out of her system, perhaps the newness of it.
After about a week, she'd told the important people in her life: her brothers, her mother, Frost and Korsak. To a one, they had been supportive. Frost had confided in Jane that he was pretty certain his mother and her roommate were an item, and he was just waiting for them to finally tell him. Tommy and Frankie had rolled their eyes like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Angela had burst into tears, not because she was upset, but because she immediately worried that she'd done something in Jane's childhood that held her back from figuring this out sooner. Korsak had punched her lightly in the shoulder and called her 'slugger' which Jane had found to be the weirdest reaction of them all.
They also, to a one, had a single question to ask her afterwards: what about Maura?
Jane grimaced in recollection as she unlocked her car and slide into the driver's seat. What about Maura? Not everything had to do with Maura. She told them the same things she'd told Amy, and they all pretty much dropped it, even if she could tell they didn't quite believe her. Jane resented the implication that because she was gay, she must have been in love with her best friend. Two women couldn't just be close friends?
Beyond all that, Jane could truthfully say she had not thought that much about Maura since that day at the garden. Partly that could have been because she hadn't really seen her — between a lull in dead bodies, Maura delegating more cases to Dr. Pike, and, most recently, a medical examiners convention in Nevada, they simply hadn't crossed paths in a while. Jane had no complaints. Not even about Pike.
She parked in front of her building and slowly trudged up the steps, suddenly exhausted. Figuring this all out in her twenties sure would have left her with a lot more energy, but Jane wasn't dwelling on that. Once she was finally inside her apartment, she shrugged out of her jacket, kicked off her boots, and collapsed on her bed. She might have been asleep before she even hit the pillow.
For the second time in three hours, Jane woke with a start. This time it was her phone, not her gut, that had woken her. She sucked in a sharp breath through her nose as she lifted her head from where she face-planted what felt like just seconds before, looking helplessly for her phone. She located it at the foot of her bed and answered with a strangled Rizzoli. Rolling over on her back, she listened to the dispatch voice on the other end: a body had just been pulled out of the harbour. Jane flicked her wrist to get the face of her watch to twist into the right place, and looked at the time. 5:43am. She hadn't looked at the time before she fell asleep, but she figured it had been two hours if she was lucky. Jane confirmed she was about a half hour out from the scene and, with a laborious sigh, dragged herself back out of bed.
She left her jacket where it was on the floor and slipped back into her boots, then spared a moment to catch her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her riotous hair was worse than usual and the bags under her eyes stood out. Not the best she'd ever looked, but definitely not the worst. Good enough for a dead body, in any case. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and splashed some cold water on her face to help wake up. She very nearly left the house without putting a bra back on, but remembered when she found her bra still stuffed into her back pocket. Afterwards, she quickly took Jo Friday out to her most reliable pee spot, deposited her back in the apartment, and was off to the harbour by way of the closest Boston Joe's.
Twenty-seven minutes from the phone call, she was somewhat caffeinated and being lead to the body laid out on a tarp on the dock by the first officer on the scene. She snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves as she walked. On average, harbour bodies were her least favourite kind. Not very much got to her — she wasn't like Frost, gruesome didn't really faze her. But gross, bloated, water-logged human flesh was just not really a favourite. She wrinkled her nose as she surveyed the scene. On the topic of Frost, where was he? Jane checked her cellphone and saw an expletive-laden text about being behind an accident on the 90.
And then she felt her before she saw her, like a sudden drop in air pressure. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she turned her head just in time to see Maura breeze right past her on the way to the body. Jane's mouth dropped open just slightly as the warm light from the sunrise ricochetted off Maura's golden hair and burned her image directly into Jane's retinas. The faintest whiff of her familiar perfume was carried to Jane by the breeze and immediately scrambled her senses. Maura didn't even entertain a glance in her direction, and thank god, because if she had she would have caught Jane's glazed eyes traversing Maura's body like she was trying to read a long putt, evaluating every dip and curve along the way. She looked incredible. 6:15am, Maura Isles was fucking perfection, and Jane Rizzoli looked like an oversexed bridge troll.
Jane realized she'd stopped breathing and she resumed that task with a loud and laboured inhale. Maura twitched slightly, alerting Jane to the fact that she'd heard, but the doctor still didn't turn around. Jane desperately wanted her to turn around.
Oh no. Amy was right. All of them were right. This whole time. She had come out and suddenly she could see Maura like she'd never allowed herself to see her. Jane had finally landed in Oz and everything was in colour and Maura was awash in sunlight, sparkling in front of her like Glinda the Good Witch and Jane definitely wasn't in Kansas anymore.
Jane ripped her eyes away from Maura and focused on the water. She gave serious thought to throwing herself into the harbour. Maybe she'd drown and end up on Maura's table, sliced open by the doctor, all her insides exposed. Cause of death: a terminal case of the hots for her ex-best friend. Jane grasped a hand right over her heart and looked down to be certain her chest wasn't actually already cracked open for an autopsy. To her great surprise she was still intact.
"Detective?"
Jane flicked her eyes up and over at Maura without lifting her head, which was still inclined down at her own chest. Maura was kneeling next to the body, looking at Jane. Her expression was unreadable. Jane tried not to think too much about how weird she clearly looked. She dropped her hand away from where it had fisted a handful of her t-shirt, and lifted her head. She had to play this cool. She had to find a way to be aloof and get through this and back to the precinct and then into the nearest lockable bathroom to have a little meltdown.
"Doctor." She choked on the word only a little.
Maura appraised her a moment longer, before pointing down to the body, indicating to a spot on the hip and then the chest. Jane blinked the sun out of her eyes and tried to focus, and realized Maura was pointing to two New England Patriots logos.
"American football," Maura stated.
"You can just say football," Jane mumbled, and crouched down on the other side of the body. She could feel Maura appraising her curiously, clearly surprised to find Jane acting so oddly. Jane kept her eyes on the body and tried to calm her racing heart.
"But then it's unclear."
"I think around here, in America, it's pretty clear," Jane mused, her words absent any bite. She refused to look anywhere but the gross, water-logged body. "Looks like maybe a team-issued tracksuit." She pushed away the collar of the zip up jacket to reveal a lanyard, and slipped a gloved finger underneath it. She pulled gingerly and revealed an identification holder. Jane leaned in closer to read the name.
"Any guesses on how long…" She squinted, "…Gary here has been in the water?"
"No, I have zero guesses on how long Gary here has been in the water," Maura replied tartly.
Jane bit the inside of her cheek. She badly wanted to snap back at Maura, but she was terrified that if she allowed herself to get riled up in their usual heated back-and-forth she'd end up saying something she regretted, like 'what are you doing after this' or 'I love you' or 'I think I'd let you spit in my mouth if you wanted to, is that weird'. Jane squeezed her eyes shut for a moment to try and still her spiralling thoughts. She fixed her expression as neutrally as she could, and finally looked up at the medical examiner.
"I apologize, Doctor Isles," she said impassively. "Do you have an informed opinion on how long the body has been in the water?"
Maura looked taken aback, and then perhaps a little shamed. Her comportment shifted into a more professional demeanour, as if taking a cue from Jane. She launched into a spiel about how decomposition is slowed down by cold water, and science this and science that. Jane tuned most of it out, and just stared at Maura while she spoke. She was stunning. Just a real fucking knockout. Did Jane really just used to spend nearly all her time with this woman and not realize she had it bad for her? How was that even possible? Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard Maura give a timeline and returned back to the conversation. She blinked, willing her brain to process what she only half-heard.
"So four to six days?" Jane asked.
"Yes, that's the best I can do without getting the body back to the lab." Maura stood up, removing one glove, balling it up in her still-gloved hand, and then using her fingertips to hook under the opening of the remaining glove, and pulled it off. Jane had seen her do this a hundred times, and was stunned to realize she suddenly found it erotic.
"That's very helpful," she stammered, then mustered up the most polite and distant tone she could muster. "Somewhere to start. Thank you, Doctor."
Maura was staring at her, visibly perplexed. Jane had to get out of here. Her phone vibrated in that moment and she almost fumbled it into the harbour with how eager she was to retrieve it from her belt.
"Rizzoli."
It was Frost, finally in the parking lot. Jane stood up and turned her back to Maura. "Hey. Not sure if we're dealing with a murder here yet, but we've got a name and a forty-eight hour window where he probably ended up in the drink. I'm sorry you booked it over here but I figure you won't mind skipping the scene." She glanced over her shoulder at Maura, who was giving transportation instructions to the personnel on site. She looked away and quickly realized she'd missed what her partner said entirely while staring. "…Uh. You're breaking up a bit. I'll meet you back at the precinct in twenty."
Jane ended the call and stared down at her phone a moment, taking a deep breath to collect herself before she turned back to Maura.
"Detective." Maura's voice was suddenly coming from right beside her, and Jane stiffened, turning her head just slightly to find Maura beside her. She kept her expression stony, and waited silently for whatever the doctor needed to say. Maura pursed her lips for a moment, then continued in an almost conciliatory tone. "I'll have whatever I can get for you by the end of the day."
Jane could sense that her own weirdness and formality had resulted in Maura dropping her defences just slightly, mostly in confusion. A few weeks ago, Jane would have taken this opportunity and run with it, tried to ease things back into friendlier territory. Right now, the idea of being friendly with Maura was terrifying. Maura's eyes met hers and Jane felt utterly exposed. She looked away immediately.
"Thank you. I know you don't like to rush your work, so I…appreciate it." Jane stood still for a moment longer then added abruptly, "I gotta go." Before she even realized it she was halfway to the parking lot, and she could tell she was walking normally, but it felt like she was running for her life.
