Maura woke up pleasantly warm, her head resting on something surprisingly hard. She nuzzled in until she found a soft spot.

Then she realised what the soft spot was, realised she could hear the little noises Jane made when she woke up.

She also realised she wasn't in her pyjamas, or anything else, for that matter, and the body she was trying to use as a pillow with limited success was similarly unclad.

Jane's hands tightened on her back for a moment before she came to the same conclusion, when Jane's hands froze, as though she was trying too hard to process the situation to remember to continue to stroke her fingers along Maura's spine the way she'd been doing.

Maura did a quick audit; no memories of anything last night that would have led to this situation, and a mild arousal that was usual when she woke with Jane. She didn't have any morning-after soreness, any aching joints from unfamiliar positions. She couldn't smell the sweet, cloying scent of sex in the air. No dried sweat, no bruised lips. If she'd kissed Jane, no matter what else happened she knew she'd never be able to forget it.

Everything seemed normal.

As normal as everything could be while cuddled up to a naked Jane while in a similar state of nudity. Her head was definitely on Jane's bare breast, her palm on Jane's boney hip, Jane's hands soft on her back.

Maura blinked her eyes open, coming face to face with the reality of her position. Jane was still frozen, her hands completely stilled on Maura's bare back.

It didn't feel like she'd had a one-night-stand, but she'd never had one with a woman before. Even so, she was sure she'd be able to tell. She only remembered getting home so late last night and staggering up the stairs, Jane behind her with a hand to steady Maura's ascent.

The spare bedroom. The green room. The one Jane always stayed in. She didn't even remember coming in here. She breathed in again, but there was no smell of decomp. She must have showered at some point, but still she had no memory of it.

Jane. Jane was here. Jane might know why this was happening.

"Do you have any idea what happened last night?" Maura asked, yawning but making no move to get up. Her watch - the only thing she wore - said it was time to get up, but it also said it was only three hours after they'd left the station last night. How did she know when they'd left, when she remembered so little else? There had been a body. And something had happened. A gaseous explosion? That would explain why they both smelled the same - a clean tea tree smell.

Jane was still frozen, and Maura lifted her head to look at her.

Jane looked terrified. She looked afraid and uncertain and worried and -

- and gorgeous in the dawn light spilling through the window, giving her dark hair russet highlights. Her skin had uneven tan lines, but it just highlighted certain areas of interest to Maura. Maura couldn't tear her gaze away, didn't even try. In lifting her head, she'd exposed a little of her chest, and Jane's eyes had slid down to where they were pressed together as well, the contrast of their skin tones complimentary. They looked so good together, like this.

"No," Jane said finally, her voice a strangled whisper. She cleared her throat, looking embarassed. "No, no idea. It was a late night. I don't think - I wouldn't have had the energy - I'd have remembered -"

Maura nodded and let her head drop back to Jane's chest. She was due a few more hours of sleep. She let her fingers trace over the sharp bone of Jane's hip, the movement comforting to her. Jane's hands resumed their path alongside Maura's spinal column, and she hummed with relaxed satisfaction in how warm and comfortable and safe and sleepy she felt.

Maura woke again to the sound of one of her 'Rizzoli' mugs crashing down onto the carpet. She ordered stoneware from Target for this very reason. She looked over at the doorway, blinking sleepily at Angela, who had one hand over her mouth, the other still held out as though the coffee cup was in it.

"Ma! It's not what it looks like," Jane said quickly, pulling the sheets up to cover them.

"I saw your car, and you hadn't come home when I got back from work at one. I didn't - I did knock - I -"

Jane groaned, covering her face, and Maura lifted her head.

"I could use a coffee."

Angela, startled, looked down at the mess on the bedroom floor.

"I can deal with that later. Coffee, please," Maura's voice was firm and insistent and a dismissal, and Angela left quietly, subdued.

"What. The. Hell." Jane reached out, still covered with Maura, groping through the sheets for something - anything to wear. If she took the sheet to find clothes, Maura would be exposed, and if she left the sheet covering Maura, Jane would be exposed. "Why are you in my bed?"

"It's my house, so technically it's my bed, and we often fall asleep in the same bed. I think the question you mean to ask is why we're not dressed at all, and to that I have no answer. Just exhaustion." With that, Maura reluctantly relinquished her place on Jane's bony chest, rolling over and stretching, sitting up to assess the situation again.

Still no clothes. Jane was averting her gaze from Maura's bared torso with a vivid blush, which was interesting. She also hadn't clutched the sheets to her chest the way Maura had expected her to, so she assumed she was welcome to look Jane over too.

"You know I don't guess, so it's up to you to come up with a hypothesis."

Jane kept her gaze fixed on the corner of the room as Maura got up slowly, shuffling to the dresser to pull out the pyjamas she stocked for Jane, throwing over a second pair, which Jane gratefully struggled into.

They got dressed in the car together. They showered in the gym together. They were no strangers to casual nudity or each other's bodies.

But they didn't wake up together without any clothes, or any possible explanation as to why they'd woken that way.

Maura opened the bathroom door and audited the room with interest. There was a pile of white clothing in a puddle on the floor, but there were no further clues, other than a mild headache and an ache in her back. Jane groaned, getting to her feet, and Maura collected the wet clothes and towels, running into Angela on the stairs.

"I'll take that if you'll take the coffee," Angela offered, and Maura nodded, handing over the laundry and taking the coffee. Back in the green room, she propped herself in the doorway, sipping her coffee, waiting for Jane to be done in the bathroom. Jane took the second coffee, rubbing her face.

"Phone?" Jane asked, and Maura scanned the bedside tables quickly. Hers wasn't here either.

Something unusual must have happened last night, but not so unusual that either of them remembered anything as being remarkable. Nothing so unusual that they'd taken each other in a fit of passion, but unusual enough that they'd forgone clothing.

Maura shrugged and went downstairs. Her phone was on the counter, as was Jane's. Not charged. She plugged them both into the console power board, sipping absently at her coffee.

"We didn't - we didn't do anything, right?" Jane asked, her voice low and gravelly. Her eyes were sunken and her skin was pale. Maura knew she looked no better. She could go back to bed for another 12 hours and still feel bone-tired. Her legs were like jelly.

"Would it matter if we did?" Maura asked, too tired to keep whatever façade they'd rendered over their relationship from cracking. They were practically married anyway. It did matter to her because she'd want to remember her first time with Jane, but both of them falling into bed together wasn't new. The discarded clothes were new. The cuddling in bed wasn't new. The amount of skin that had been involved was new. She was aware her question implied that she didn't care, one way or the other, if they'd had sex with each other, but the way she phrased it was to reassure Jane that she didn't mind if they had sex. That it wouldn't be a big deal to her, because sex was sex and Jane wasn't a serial killer. But it would be a big deal, because Jane was a big deal, and the way Maura felt about her was also a big deal.

"I guess not," Jane mumbled, putting her coffee down and running her hands through her hair. "Just seems sudden, is all."

"Why are there clothes dissolving in the sink? And why did you give me paper jumpsuits to wash?" Angela asked, her earlier fragility forgotten as she came back into the kitchen.

Dissolving.

A vague memory pricked at the edge of Maura's mind. Seeing 4% on her phone, she turned it on and flicked through her work emails.

Oh.

Acid. The body had burst open and spat acid at them. They'd cleaned up at the office, but Maura had insisted they shower again at home, and on checking that Jane hadn't been burned, and on having Jane check her skin as well. She vaguely remembered saying something about letting the mild burns they had breathe, and positioning herself on Jane without a sheet on her back since she'd shielded Jane from the worst of the explosion. They'd both suffered mild head injuries from the force of the blast, and now that Maura knew what to look for she could see the bruise at Jane's temple.

"Acid," Maura said, and Jane nodded. Maura had remembered the event, the acid, the anxiety and burning. But she'd forgotten getting home, the adrenaline long worn off, and stripping down again, pulling Jane into the shower because she was too tired to bother with seperate showers when they'd already showered together in the lab. She'd forgotten how carefully Jane had tended to her wounds, her hesitant fingers as she applied adhesive to the worst of Maura's burns. Maura sighed. "Please wash your hands thoroughly, Angela. I shouldn't have let you touch anything."

Maura joined her at the sink since she'd also handled the clothes. "Yesterday's outfits are a write-off, Jane."

"You were in front of me when it went off. Your back -"

"They gave us a sedative, didn't they?" Maura asked. "And someone dropped us home."

"Frankie, and got patrol to drop him back at the station, so he could check how it had been planted in the body," Jane said, skimming through her phone, playing catch-up as well. "Is your back okay?"

Maura slid her hand beneath the jacket of the pyjamas, finding a small bandage over her lower back. She'd shielded Jane with her body without thinking as soon as she'd heard the noise.

"I don't know," Maura said honestly, and Jane gave an impatient grunt and tugged up the jacket, examining Maura's back. She peeled back the adhesive carefully, almost tenderly, then pulled in a breath through her teeth.

"Looks painful," Jane said, her voice soft. "I could have got out of the way on my own. You don't need to protect me. It's not your job."

"You are my business," Maura said, blinking again.

"Go back to bed. You're still doped up, aren't you?" Jane cupped Maura's face and peered into her eyes.

"Stairs," Maura complained, but Jane merely slid an arm around her waist to help her with them.

"You know, I thought for a moment," Angela said, pouring Jane another coffee. "Just for a moment, that I was finally going to get the daughter-in-law I always wanted." Jane lifted her head with difficulty and stared at Angela, clearly not processing. "You should go back to bed too. It sounds like they dosed you as well."

"Nah, I'm fine. Not cleared for work, but fine."

"Maura's all alone up there," Angela pointed out, and Jane's face softened, the way it always did when someone said Maura's name. She nodded and stumbled up the stairs.

"It would matter."

Maura blinked awake. Jane was holding her carefully, clothing between them this time. Maura's mind felt less clouded, and she yawned. Jane's hands were soft and careful as they stroked her back.

"What would matter?" She felt Jane startle beneath her. "Jane? What would matter?"

"If we'd done anything. It would matter because I didn't remember it, and that feels like a - like a waste. I've never been with a woman before, and if I had, I'd have liked to at least remember it."

"Me too, Jane," Maura said softly, surprised by how vulnerable Jane was letting herself be about a topic they often skirted around. Attraction to women. Maura felt the same pull as she had that morning, the same latent, background arousal she typically felt when Jane held her so tenderly. She remembered Jane helping her back into bed, but she also remembered Jane leaving her alone, here in the spare bedroom she'd earmarked as Jane's. She nuzzled back into Jane's chest, one of Jane's hands resting protectively over the bandage on her back. Jane had never admitted she'd consider sex with a woman, and saying she'd want to remember it made it sound like she hoped she'd enjoy sex with women. It sounded like she'd want to remember having sex with Maura in particular, as well as women in general

"Especially if it was you," Jane added, and Maura could feel the coiled tension in the body beneath hers, could feel the bated breath of Jane. Maura could push it, could extend the conversation into a confession from Jane, but she was still dozy from whatever they'd been dosed with for shock, and she didn't want to poke at what she knew Jane would consider a weakness. She hadn't mentioned attraction, but that she would consider Maura specifically had to mean she felt at least some of the same tug between them that Maura did.

"Especially if it was you," Maura agreed, closing her eyes again. She felt Jane's sigh of relief, felt Jane relax beneath her, soft and comfortable again.

It took a few weeks for Maura's back to heal, and Jane took pointers from Hope on how to clean the wound and check for infection and how to position the bandage. Maura didn't need to remove her entire shirt each time, but she did without shame, something glimmering in her eyes. A dare, a challenge. Jane made eye contact without blushing, without her eyes slipping down, and Maura felt disappointed. It had felt like they'd been on the cusp of something new, something impossibly intimate, and Jane had pulled away again. She wished now that she'd said something when Jane had been so honest and vulnerable about being glad they hadn't slept together because she'd want to remember. Even sedated, Maura could remember the way her palm curled perfectly around the curve of Jane's hip, the softness of Jane's breast against her cheek, the tenderness of Jane's fingers on her back. It had made her feel so treasured and loved. If just holding each other felt that way, if they ever did have sex, Maura knew it would be unforgettable.

"It's healed wonderfully," Hope told Maura, and Jane smiled. "You're an excellent nurse, Jane."

"Only when it's Maura that needs nursing," Jane demurred. Hope chuckled and joined Angela on the couch.

"Do you want to go do something that matters?" Jane asked, her voice low, and Maura had half-forgotten that semi-conscious drugged conversation so she crinkled her face, trying to remember.

"What we do matters," Maura informed Jane, wondering why she was so down on their jobs all of a sudden. Jane rolled her eyes.

"I meant me," Jane whispered, and Maura stared at her, eyes squinting as she processed, widening suddenly as she caught Jane's drift.

"I'M VERY TIRED," Maura said loudly into the living room.

"I'd better help you up the stairs," Jane said normally, like a normal person would. "Goodnight," she added awkwardly, scampering up the stairs after Maura, two at a time.

"Do you think they think they're fooling anyone?" Hope asked with a chuckle.

"They don't have our years of experience," Angela boasted, sliding her arm around Hope and kissing her.

Notes:

Hope and Angela is not something I typically ship although if you're on discord you'll see that I ship just about everyone. But yeah, they had a moment and they chose it.

So this one came before yesterday's. I wanted to do an amnesia/waking up naked and confused fic, but also Maura not wanting to hurt Jane's feelings about not enjoying sex with her, so they ended up being different and I think better for it. Neither of them is still quite what I was trying to write.