A/N: Hey! Just a housekeeping note to say that while I intend to finish posting the rest of this story on this website, after that I'm gonna be strictly available on the other one (you know which). There's already several one shots posted that I didn't post here. If you like what I'm putting down, you can come find me over there (or on tumblr: doomsday-dj).
The next sixty or so hours of Jane's life blurred together, broken up less by sleep than by the moments she spoke to or saw Maura, and it all started off in the most aggravating way possible—with Jane swallowing her pride.
Before Maura's influence on her could wear off, she left the morgue and hurried upstairs. After grabbing Frost from the bullpen, they proceeded together to the meeting room the feds had commandeered and told Agent Dean and his team all of the recent developments. For his part, Dean demonstrated an unexpected degree of humility in response to Jane extending the olive branch and as they jointly plotted out their plan of attack, Jane begrudgingly found herself appreciative of Maura's insistence that she play nice.
After a week and a half of dining on crumbs they found themselves with almost too much to chew on and the work was quickly split up between Homicide and the FBI. After a federal database search did not reveal any missing doctors that matched their first victim, Dean declared that it only meant no one had yet noticed he was gone. Like Jane, Agent Dean was convinced the initial victim had to be a doctor and he assigned one of his junior agents the unenviable task of going through every registered physician sixty or older, starting with Massachusetts and then gradually working outward if necessary, all in hopes of finding a match.
"Sir, there's forty thousand doctors in this state alone," the agent said, frowning.
Agent Dean shrugged. "Better get cracking, then."
After Cavanaugh approved the transfer of Crowe's poisoning victim to Jane and Frost, they had their four known victims: the first, John Doe, dead by exsanguination; then Gregory Pearson, liver resection; third and fourth were James Alberts, heart removal, and George Hammersmith, some yet-to-be-determined poisoning. Each subsequent doctor's specialty connected to the previous doctor's cause of death and they had a fifth missing doctor, Samantha Preston, who was an oncologist.
The team moved on to the part that never really got any easier: notifying the families of the deceased. Frost and Jane took the poisoning victim and Korsak took Frankie with him to notify the family of the heart resection victim.
Jane always felt like an asshole during these moments. She was never rude or insensitive—quite the contrary, this was one of the things she was really very good at. Her colleagues always liked to tell her how surprised they were by it, how unexpected it was to them that the cantankerous detective could be so warm and compassionate with the bereaved. Jane resented the implications of their shock but she was happy to provide comfort if she could. Still, there was something about meeting people on one of the worst days of their lives that made Jane feel like garbage, because for them their whole world was ending and for her it was just a Tuesday. They would weep and scream or go frozen in shock and Jane would just sit there, patiently trying to wait out the initial trauma response in hopes of extracting some useful information from a devastated spouse or parent or child.
Those first conversations were rarely productive, but they always had to try.
"Can you think of any reason someone would have to hurt your husband?" Jane asked Hammersmith's widow, pushing her voice into the richest and warmest part of her register.
"No," the woman sobbed. "Everyone loved him."
Jane nodded sympathetically, rubbed the grieving wife's back, and waited to try again.
In the end, she and Frost are able to at least sketch out a rough outline of the victim's weekly routine in hopes of finding some common link between him and the rest. Korsak and Frankie end up a little worse off, with the sheer horror of the gruesome cause of death entirely distracting the family from providing anything of use. Frost and Jane would have to give it another try the next day.
From there, Korsak took the job of obtaining a warrant to check each doctor's patient files to see if they had one in common. The connection was perhaps still a bit tenuous when it came to linking all four but if anyone could find a judge who'd sign, it was the veteran sergeant. Frost and Jane went to visit Samantha Preston's husband, who had reported his wife missing that morning, and they were warned ahead of time that it wouldn't be easy. Some still-green uniformed officer had hamfistedly questioned the husband in a way that made it clear the cop suspected he had killed his wife and the husband was incensed.
Together, Jane and Frost talked him down.
"I didn't kill my wife," the husband gritted out, eyes wild and scared.
"I believe you," Jane assured him. "Help us find her."
Results on what killed the overdose victim were pending and thus Doctor Preston's link to the murders was still entirely a hunch. This was another part of the job that Jane didn't really care for. Without knowing for sure, they couldn't let on that they feared the man's wife had been kidnapped by a serial killer, and while pretending they had no idea why she might have been taken felt a lot like lying it was probably for the best. The sincere hope of her safe return was the best motivation to provide complete and accurate information and the husband tried desperately to help.
After they'd finished the interview, Jane had a text from Maura indicating that she'd soon be ready to go home. Korsak, who had since returned with the news that the judge would consider the warrant request and give them a decision tomorrow, temporarily took Jane's place. He and Frost went to where CSRU were inspecting the hospital parking garage where Samantha Preston was last seen while Jane drove back to the precinct.
She spent the drive thinking about their most recent interview, but not in the way she wanted to. Jane wanted to go over their conversation with the frantic husband objectively, pick it apart for any subtle clues as to why this woman might have been targeted, any ways in which they could connect her to their murders, any reason to think her disappearance was unrelated. The husband had offered every detail about his wife, rambled out every single thing he could think of in his frantic eagerness to help, but despite all that, the only thing Jane could think about was how much he loved his wife. His beautiful, brilliant, successful doctor wife.
Maura was waiting for Jane in her office.
"You didn't have to come back, Jane. Anyone else could walk me to my car," Maura said softly.
Jane shook her head.
"No, they couldn't."
With a hand on the small of Maura's back, Jane guided her through the parking garage, eyes scanning the whole level carefully. She felt a little like she did that fateful day in the prison infirmary but almost backwards: in those moments with Hoyt the threat had been imminent, the fear intense and overpowering but her understanding of her feelings for Maura hazy. Things had flipped around since—the risk was a little murky but her feelings for Maura were crystal clear.
At Maura's car, Jane pressed her into the driver side door gently, brought their lips together hard. Maura wound her hands into Jane's hair, nails scratching at her scalp, drawing Jane down and prolonging the moment. It was going to be their first night apart since everything had changed.
"I ordered food for everyone," Maura said between kisses. "Promise you'll eat."
"I promise." Jane nosed in against Maura's temple, breathing in deep like she could take it with her.
"Promise you'll sleep," Maura tried.
"Make sure to text me," Jane said and stepped back.
Jane didn't even make it down to Maura's couch that night. She did sleep, though not in the way that Maura would have counted. She and Frost napped at their desks in alternating fits and starts and it was moments like these where Jane most appreciated her young partner.
Things had been different with Korsak. It wasn't that he couldn't pull all-nighters but it was hard not to worry about him when he did. His third coffee always gave him heartburn and when he started rubbing at his chest it was all Jane could do not to imagine him keeling over from a heart attack instead.
Barry Frost, however, could go as hard as Jane and possibly harder. At the very least he was better at getting some rest than Jane. She was never quite able to turn off her mind but Frost could fall asleep sitting up straight in his chair if he wanted and wake up ready to run laps if he had to. Finding out his dad was an Admiral had made a whole lot of sense and Jane never felt bad dragging Frost down with her. He loved it, just like she did.
At dawn, Jane went a few rounds with a precinct punching bag, showered and changed into spare clothes from her locker, then checked her texts to find one from Maura saying she was carpooling with Angela that day. Jane met her out on the steps of the precinct and Maura gave her a long, appraising look, surely noting her slightly bloodshot eyes but also the fresh t-shirt and damp hair, then handed Jane a bag of bagels and spreads for the team.
Wednesday presented a convincing illusion of progress with very little to show for it. Not fifteen minutes after heading downstairs, Maura was making the trip up to the bullpen with the toxicology report on Doctor Gregory Hammersmith. He had, in fact, been killed by a common chemotherapy cocktail, allowing them to pencil in their connecting line to the missing oncologist, Samantha Preston.
Jane spared a thought for her husband. Despite how desperate they were to make progress on this case, she'd found herself hoping her disappearance would be unrelated—the doctor's chances of turning up alive seemed much higher that way. Korsak called his judge to further motivate his argument for their warrant as well as ask to include her patients, then left shortly after to get it signed.
These were the things they learned that day: none of the doctors shared even one patient in common with another, let alone a patient that had seen all four. None of the doctors appeared to know each other—two of them both went to Brown but a decade apart and beyond that no other connection could be found. Jane pulled Frankie off patrol and put him on the task of finding any link between the four of them, no matter how tenuous.
"Do they have memberships at the same gym, who services their cars, what grocery store do they go to, maybe they all saw the same doctor, do they go to the same coffee shop…" Jane went on, ticking possible connections off on her fingers while Frankie set his jaw and took notes.
They visited the offices of all four doctors in hopes of uncovering any connection, stalked each time by the ever-watchful presence of a vigilant hospital administrator, always ready to clear their throat and loudly remind the detectives of HIPAA if they got within two feet of a filing cabinet. They found nothing.
"Who the fuck is this guy?" Frost fumed, as they travelled between hospitals.
"Who would do such a thing?" asked the broken-voiced mother of James Alberts, when they paid her a second visit.
Eleven hours into her day, thirteen days into their investigation, and Jane didn't have any answers for anyone.
Maura stayed late that evening. Jane tried to send her back with Angela, but when Frankie volunteered to drive her home later, she decided that was ultimately better. The official story was that Maura had stayed in order to offer her expertise during their debrief with the FBI team that evening, but when the squad's chinese food delivery arrived and Jane's usually barbecue pork chow mein was mysteriously replaced with an order of chicken and vegetables (extra vegetables), ulterior motives were revealed. Jane shot over a look which Maura steadfastly avoided, picking daintily at her own order of rice and steamed vegetables.
Agent Dean had been called back to Quantico for the day and the remaining agents were much more relaxed without him around. They begged Maura to tell them the story of Dean finding out that Jane had switched teams and Maura, unfamiliar with the expression and unaccustomed to popularity, flushed prettily under the weight of their attention. With a wink, Jane offered to tell the story on her behalf, insisting it would be better with a description of the look on Maura's face. The agents responded by regaling the Homicide team with a dramatic reenactment of the moment Dean found out who exactly Jane was dating.
If someone had told Jane that the best part of her day would be talking about her love life with the FBI, she would have drawn her weapon on them.
Just before Frankie and Maura left, the younger Rizzoli respectfully distracted himself with a careful examination of the notices pinned up on the department corkboard while Maura went up on tiptoes to press a kiss against Jane's lips.
"Please sleep," Maura said.
"Don't forget to text," Jane replied.
"Free couch," Frankie observed.
When Jane returned to her desk, Frost was staring at her with a soft, strange face. She narrowed her eyes and the younger detective grinned.
"What?" Jane snapped, already back in tunnel vision work mode.
"You know what." Frost shuffled some papers on his desk, still smiling. He clicked at a few things on his desktop computer before he looked at Jane once more. "She was always good for you, but now it's better."
Jane made a wordless noise, one meant to convey vague threat, and went back to work.
That night involved even less sleep than the one before. Jane, deeply frustrated that so much had happened over the last two days without producing any strong leads, couldn't have slept if she tried. Frost, out of a sense of camaraderie and a refusal to be outworked, chose not to sleep even though he could.
Thursday morning, Jane found a new set of clean clothes in her locker, all of which smelled just faintly of Maura's preferred detergent. Maura didn't say anything when Jane was waiting at her parking spot an hour later—she just got out of her car, pressed a palm to Jane's cheek, and rubbed her thumb against one of the dark circles under Jane's eyes.
Another day of running in place followed, with the only new piece of information being the one hundred percent certainty that there wasn't a registered physician in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or Connecticut that matched their first victim. Late Thursday night, Korsak finally sent Jane away after she started a small kitchen fire in the break room. She'd dozed off at the table and allowed a slice of pizza to burn in the dirty toaster oven she'd chosen over the even dirtier microwave, which was strike three after she'd finished the coffee without brewing another pot and snapped at one of the cleaners for emptying her trash. Frost had already been dismissed an hour earlier after he'd blanked on the password to his own email for a full two minutes.
You're no good like this," Korsak said. "Go home."
Jane did. She went home to Maura.
It was well past one in the morning when she arrived in Beacon Hill but the side door off the driveway was open before Jane had even put her cruiser in park. With considerable effort, Jane unfolded herself from the car, one foot heavy in front of the other as she made her way to the door. Jane knew she was tired but it wasn't until her body wanted to rush to Maura and couldn't that she understood the extent of her exhaustion.
When she was nearly at the door, Maura reached for her hand, drawing her inside like Jane might change her mind, or perhaps like Jane could lose her way over the last few steps. Maura was dressed in only a robe but her eyes were alert and her hair showed no evidence of spending any quality time with a pillow.
"You were still up?" Jane asked.
Maura shrugged, noncommittal. "Korsak might have let on that this was likely to happen."
"I was fine," Jane grumbled around a yawn and kicked off her boots.
"Of course you were," Maura agreed kindly before pushing Jane's jacket off her shoulders.
Jane's deeply ingrained resistance to being vulnerable still operated on a hair trigger and she stiffened under Maura's touch.
"I can do it myself."
Jane regretted the bite in her tone instantly. Maura's hands had gone still, holding the blazer halfway down Jane's arms. Jane watched as she kept her eyes focused on one of the lapels of Jane's jacket, lips pressing together into a thin line. "I know you can." Maura said softly. Back in motion, she finished removing Jane's jacket before looking up at Jane. "But let me?"
Maura's face was so open and guileless and something buried in Jane's chest screamed at her that she didn't deserve this, couldn't accept this. It was like a cold rock pressed between her lungs and her ribs, sometimes unnoticed but never more apparent than when she tried to take a deep and restorative breath, and then it would cut and crowd. Jane squeezed her eyes shut as her body tried to convince her care like this should be reserved for better people than her, that all she would do by accepting help is give proof that she wasn't strong enough to hold up anyone else.
This impulse had ruined more than one good thing in her life. Jane forced her eyes open and looked down at Maura, took that deep breath, kept filling her lungs until she felt the sharp edges of the rock digging in, kept breathing and breathing until it turned out it wasn't a rock, it was ice, and it shattered into pieces. She exhaled slowly.
"Yeah," Jane said, her voice clawing at her throat. "Okay."
Maura's look of relief was immediate. She placed a hand to Jane's cheek and encouraged her down for a deep, languorous kiss and it felt explicitly like a reward for not shutting down and shutting her out. Jane kissed back, her approach a little slow and sloppy from exhaustion, but not any less hungry. Maura hummed into the kiss and parted her lips at Jane's insistence. Jane congratulated herself for having the good sense to brush her teeth at the precinct.
The first to pull back, Maura dropped a hand to one of Jane's, threaded their fingers together and tugged her towards the stairs. Jane followed obediently.
In the bedroom, Maura brought Jane over to the bed. Jane made a move to begin undressing and Maura pressed Jane's hands down to her sides and Jane let her. Maura opened the keypad operated gun safe by the bed, the one that predated their romantic relationship and in retrospect should have been a dead giveaway, and unclipped Jane's gun, holster and all, from her belt. Her weapon was put away, then her badge went into the drawer on the nightstand. Her phone was next and she protested only weakly when Maura made a point of turning it on silent. Jane received another deep kiss for her troubles.
With Jane's belt unburdened of most of what made her who she was, Maura's deft fingers undid the buckle, the button of her slacks, then dragged open the zipper and travelled down with it, kneeling before Jane as she started to pull her pants to the ground. Jane watched, her knees weak from lack of sleep and something else.
Maura pressed kisses against Jane's thighs as she slid her hands down the back of Jane's legs, pushed her slacks all the way down and guided Jane out of her clothes one foot at a time. Lips brushed reverently against her thighs again before one firm kiss against the apex of her legs. When Maura exhaled hotly against the thin material of Jane's briefs, Jane became the second of the two of them to learn that she was already wet.
Maura was back on her feet in one smooth motion, her palms pressed against Jane's torso and sliding higher, rucking her shirt up with them. Jane lifted her arms dutifully as her shirt was removed, grinning drowsily as Maura stood on tiptoes to do so.
"Short," Jane said as she pressed a kiss to Maura's cheek and allowed her bra to be removed.
"Slightly above average for a North American woman, to be perfectly clear," Maura responded, then dealt most effectively with their height difference by pushing Jane's shoulders down until she was seated on the bed. The covers had already been drawn back. Jane tried to remember if she saw Maura do it or if had been that way when she walked in, then decided it didn't matter, her body already submitting to the magnetic pull of Maura's thousand dollar sheets. It helped that she was being guided down by Maura's soft and suddenly disrobed body climbing on top of her.
Jane exhaled gently, the welcome weight of Maura sinking her into the bed and into some liminal place between wakefulness and rest. Her limbs were becoming heavy and her mouth was filling with honey, every word becoming difficult to form and sticky to extract.
"I'm so tired," Jane said quietly, slowly, fingertips kneading at Maura's hips in a manner meant to convey apology. That unwelcome feeling was welling up again, the one that said she didn't deserve, that if she was too weak to give she certainly wasn't worthy of getting anything in return. It wasn't as strong as before.
"I know, darling," Maura soothed with words and also lips, placing a hot and open mouth against Jane's sternum before dragging it up along the column of her throat. Jane could feel Maura's nipples skimming along her torso as she drew up to look her in the eyes and despite the exhaustion it stoked the burning embers in Jane's lower abdomen into a small flame.
"But let me." Maura echoed her own words from earlier as a statement rather than a question. She searched Jane's expression and pulled her lower lip into her mouth, scraping her teeth against as it slipped back out. "If you'd like that," Maura murmured lowly. "Would you like that?"
Jane looked up into Maura's eyes, gold-green and nakedly wanting, and let all the bullshit go.
"Yeah," Jane admitted softly and lowered her defenses. "Please."
Maura pressed a heady kiss to Jane's lips, took a moment to sigh so contentedly into Jane's mouth and Jane drank it in. Maura's loose hair spilled down all around Jane's face and shoulders and she shivered in pleasure as Maura began to chart a course down her body.
Jane's exhaustion was such that it was difficult to pinpoint what exactly was happening to her, the sensation of Maura's lips on any part of her less a direct hit and more a shockwave that rippled out over her whole body and soul. Maura's hands were on her breasts, her hip, running up and down her thighs. She had her own hands in Maura's hair, she was pretty sure—something soft was between her fingers, in any case. The knowing was getting harder and harder.
She was distantly aware that Maura had settled between her legs, her mouth warm and welcome, and if Jane forced herself into alertness, focused hard enough, she knew she could hone in on what was happening exactly. It just seemed entirely unnecessary to do so and Jane let herself drift away instead.
The euphoria built everywhere, gentle, steady, yielding, absent any of the craven urgency that often accompanied her pleasure. Her mind was fuzzy and her body hummed all over, like it felt in her dreams. It very nearly was one, but in reverse. Jane had woken to pleasure before, roused out of a particularly good dream to find her body coming alive, but the sensation of fading away into an orgasm was an entirely new one. She was being pulled beneath the surface, the weight of her climax sinking her like a stone, encompassing and consuming and relentlessly warm, and it felt safe. So safe.