'A Drop in the Ocean, A Change in the Weather' [Jane Rizzoli/Maura Isles]
Title: "A Drop in the Ocean, A Change in the Weather"
Author: that_1_incident
Fandom: Criminal Minds/Rizzoli & Isles
Pairing: Jane Rizzoli/Maura Isles (plus background Derek Morgan/Penelope Garcia)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~10,200
Summary: Jane's already pissed that the Behavioral Analysis Unit took over one of her cases, but Maura's flirtation with an agent escalates her annoyance to a whole new level.
Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me. I use them respectfully but without permission. Title from Ron Pope's "A Drop in the Ocean."
Author's Notes: Also posted here on FF.net. More R&I fic here.
---<---<---@
It was a bad one.
Jane Rizzoli knew as soon as she stepped out of her car, pretty much. Saw one patrolman doubled over, heaving his guts out, his partner standing beside him, face ashen, and she knew. She looked up at the house itself and caught sight of her brother, Frankie, standing by the front door of the brownstone and leaning against the frame. The paint, once white, had faded to a dingy gray over time, thanks to a barrage of inclement New England weather - with a little help, no doubt, from the exhaust fumes of passing cars. Frankie looked pale, but was managing to keep his lunch down, and irrationally, she felt a flush of pride. Last time a Rizzoli threw up at a crime scene was never, and she was glad he was keeping the tradition going, lowly beat cop or not.
"What've we got?" she asked brusquely, taking the handful of stone steps two at a time. They were in the Bay Village - one of the city's smallest neighborhoods, it spanned just a few blocks and was characterized by its brick sidewalks, gas streetlamps, and quaint, Beacon Hill-esque structures. Hardly the expected setting for a grisly murder.
Frankie shook his head. "It's bad, Jane."
"And there I was thinking Officer Upchuck just had too much to drink last night," she said dryly, motioning over her shoulder to the still-heaving patrolman.
Normally, Frankie would've cracked a smile, but his expression remained somber. A tight, sick knot made itself known in the pit of Jane's stomach.
"I gotta see this for myself," she murmured, ducking under the bright yellow crime scene tape that criss-crossed the open front door. She paused for a moment to collect herself, then strode up the winding staircase.
--
Maura was already at the scene, which didn't come as a surprise to Jane, given that the doc came straight from headquarters while Jane had to hightail it from the other side of town. Frost was still over there, and by the expressions on the faces of the patrolmen, that was probably a good thing. He wasn't exactly known for his strong stomach.
"Jane!"
As usual, Maura looked immaculate, even decked out in blue rubber gloves and matching plastic booties.
"Hey, Maura." Jane pulled her hair back into a ponytail before donning the same garb, the motions second nature to her by now. "What've we got?" she asked, bracing herself for a multisyllabic explanation that was almost certain to include Latin.
"An artist," Maura said simply, and Jane blinked.
"An... artist?" the detective repeated slowly. Maura had spoken clearly, yet Jane still doubted whether she'd heard the other woman correctly.
"A rather accomplished one, at that," Maura elaborated, beckoning Jane toward the back of the apartment. "The real crime scene's in the bedroom."
--
Jane stepped into the room and glanced around. It was nothing special - minimally decorated, with a few moving boxes in one corner. Although she didn't immediately see anything amiss, that all changed when she turned to regard the wall pierced by the archway through which she'd entered.
"Jesus Christ," she breathed. "What the hell is that?"
"That would be a portrait of the victim painted in blood," Maura piped up helpfully from beside her. "And quite a good likeness, too, especially considering the rudimentary materials that were -"
"Maura."
The medical examiner fell silent.
"What the hell..." Jane repeated, more to herself than her colleague. "Where's the body?"
Maura pointed to a door on the other side of the room that had crime techs buzzing around it like bees to a honey pot.
"OK, stupid question."
--
The victim, Nicole Butcher, lay dead in her bathtub, throat savagely cut. Jane couldn't help but notice that even in her current condition, the woman bore a startling resemblance to the image painted in blood on the wall in the other room.
"Butcher?" she said aloud. "Really?"
Nobody responded.
"Hey, how long are you guys gonna be in here?"
One of the CSU techs looked up at her. "Almost done, then we'll be able to hand the body over to Dr. Isles." He looked grimly over his shoulder at the bedroom. "Looks like we've got a long night ahead of us."
Jane let out a slow, measured breath. "Yeah, you and me both."
--
Frost, as predicted, couldn't take the heat. It was actually interesting, Jane thought, to watch his face as he stepped into the bedroom with Korsak, clapped his hand over his mouth and rushed out again. He'd made a lot of progress with his aversion to dead bodies since joining Homicide, but this crime scene was enough to turn anyone's stomach. To make things worse, the blood was starting to smell by that time, courtesy of the ninety-degree day and the close quarters, and Jane was beginning to feel a little lightheaded herself - not that she'd admit it.
Korsak, who was made of much stronger stuff and had been on the force since her partner was in diapers, appeared barely fazed by the gruesome scene before him. He shook his head from beside her.
"What the hell do we have here?" he murmured.
She was beginning to think that was the refrain of the day.
"Jane, I'll be honest, I don't know where to start with this one," he continued. "I ran the vic through the system, and this woman had no friends in Boston, no family. She's a Chicago transplant who moved here two weeks ago and was supposed to be starting a new job on Monday."
Jane tilted her head. Well, that explained the boxes. "Doing what?"
"Working under an assistant professor of aerosol physics at the Harvard School of Public Health."
"Aerosol physics?"
Korsak pulled a notebook out of his shirt pocket and flipped back a page. "That's what it says."
"Aerosol as in deodorant?"
"As in airborne particles," Maura chipped in from across the room. "Specifically, pollutants in the built environment."
Jane sighed. "Thank you, Maura." She turned her attention back to Korsak. "Airborne particles don't exactly sound like something to kill over."
Korsak shook his head. "When you've been doing this job as long as I have, you realize that anything can be something to kill over."
--
Jane's boss, Lieutenant Cavanaugh, was a man of few facial expressions. There was the default sternness that Jane was most used to, the grave seriousness she saw only on occasion, the softness which manifested itself whenever he visited the Division 1 Café while Jane's mother was working, and the vague trepidation that meant he was about to say something he knew the team wasn't going to like.
When she, Korsak and Frost got back from the crime scene, Cavanaugh was waiting for them with that last look on his face, and she knew before he even opened his mouth that she was about to get extremely pissed off.
"Detectives," he said by way of a greeting, nodding at them solemnly as he clasped his hands in front of him.
"Lieutenant," Jane responded cautiously. "What's going on?"
Cavanaugh took a measured breath. "I got a call from Washington."
Well, shit.
--
It turned out that because of the Chicago connection, the case qualified as crossing state lines, which meant the fibbies could have at it if they wanted to - and apparently, they did. Jane could hardly blame the FBI, she supposed. A portrait rendered in blood on a murdered woman's bedroom wall was hardly your run-of-the-mill kind of crime, but at the same time, she'd caught the case, damn it. It was hers.
She scowled as she recalled how Agent Gabriel Dean had muscled himself into the Surgeon case. The apprentice working under her nemesis, Hoyt, was a rogue Green Beret working for the CIA - a detail Dean had chosen not to share until she made such a pain in the ass of herself that he figured if he couldn't beat her, he might as well have her join him.
"Is it gonna be Dean again?" was her first question.
Cavanaugh blinked. "Agent Dean won't be assisting us with this investigation, no."
She sensed a but coming.
"However," (close enough) "a team from the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico will be arriving in two hours to go over our findings and build a profile of the perp, or as they call him, the unsub."
"The Behavioral Analysis Unit?" Jane echoed, ignoring the way Frost's eyes lit up at the news. "So they're sending a team of shrinks?"
"The members of the BAU aren't shrinks, Jane, they're profilers," Frost said patiently, but she was having none of it.
"Psychological profiles don't offer anything that can't be determined by traditional police work," she responded mulishly, and Frost glanced at Korsak for support.
"Sorry, kid," Korsak told him with a shrug. "I'm with Rizzoli on this one."
Cavanaugh cleared his throat, obviously frustrated that the conversation had been derailed.
"As I said, they'll be arriving in two hours, and I expect you all to fully cooperate with them," he said sternly, and Jane got the sense that he was speaking more to her than either of the others. "Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, sir!" Frost said enthusiastically, before Jane and Korsak followed suit with their own less spirited agreements.
One thing was for sure - this case was getting more interesting by the hour.
--
Jane took an instant dislike to the first profiler who walked into the squad room, a tall, dark, muscular man who was decently attractive and probably thought he was hot shit. When Frost bounded up to him like a puppy and the ever-affable Korsak ambled over to shake hands, she remained by her desk, folding her arms standoffishly.
"And you must be Detective Rizzoli."
The man smiled as he walked over to her, his straight, white teeth a stark contrast to his mocha skin. Yeah, he definitely thought he was hot shit.
"The one and only," she said icily, wanting to make it quite clear what she thought of him and his buddies invading her turf.
"That may not be true for much longer if Frankie continues his upward trajectory within the department," Maura chipped in from the chair next to Jane's desk, and why was she there again? Jane really should've gone down to the morgue to discuss the case with her, rather than suggesting the M.E. come up to Homicide. She didn't dignify her friend with a response.
Throughout all this, the agent's smile never faltered. Instead, he extended his hand warmly, and when Jane didn't take it, Maura stood up and stepped forward in her place.
"Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan," he said with just a hint of cockiness, as if Maura should be glad to make his acquaintance.
"Dr. Maura Isles," Maura replied, curtseying a little as she did so. "I'm the chief medical examiner."
"Wow, beauty and brains," Morgan parried smoothly, and, just... really?
"Well, now that we've all had a chance to get to know each other..." Jane began, barely restraining herself from rolling her eyes. "Where's the rest of your band of merry men? We were told your entire team would be coming."
"My boss, Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner, went straight to the crime scene with SSA David Rossi. They'll be back soon to help us put together the profile. Our communications liaison, Jennifer Jareau - we call her JJ - is speaking with Lieutenant Cavanaugh, and SSA Prentiss and Dr. Reid should be joining us shortly."
Morgan rattled off the names with a certain smugness that irritated Jane. It seemed he was flaunting the fact that his people could just come in and turn the entire BPD upside-down, and there was nothing she could do about it. She scowled harder, but all he did was smile.
--
As annoyed as Jane was by SSA Morgan, her animosity toward him paled in comparison to the disdain she felt for Dr. Reid. Reid, who looked impossibly young, was scarecrow-thin, with large, serious eyes and a series of awkward personality quirks that Jane would only find endearing if they were Maura's. Worst of all, Maura seemed charmed by him.
Jane wasn't exactly enamored of Reid and Morgan's colleague, SSA Emily Prentiss, either. Prentiss was solid and broad-shouldered, with dark hair and an aloof demeanor. Jane noticed a couple of her BPD colleagues glancing between the two of them as they stood near each other, waiting for everyone to shuffle in so the BAU could give a preliminary profile of the killer, and she resented the similarities everyone probably thought they saw. As a female cop, it was already hard for her not to be reduced to a stereotype by even the most well-meaning of her male counterparts, and Prentiss' presence wasn't helping.
By the time the last person arrived and the doors to the briefing room were closed, Jane was quietly fuming.
--
"The question is, what would motivate our unsub to do something like this?" began a tall, unsmiling man who had introduced himself as Unit Chief Hotchner. He was every inch FBI, from his stiffly parted hair to his wingtip shoes, and Jane knew she was resorting to the same stereotyping she'd fought so hard against, but damn, sometimes generalizations just fit.
"The need to make a point," Morgan answered Hotchner immediately, as if they'd rehearsed the exchange, and Jane made an incredulous noise from the first row of seats.
"Really?" she whispered to Korsak, who was sitting to her left. "This is what we brought these guys in for?"
"Rizzoli!" Cavanaugh hissed from the other side of Korsak, and Jane cringed. "SSA Morgan and the others are here to help us out. If you're not gonna play nice, I can easily reassign this case."
It wouldn't be easy, per se, but she knew the lieutenant didn't tend to make idle threats, so she held up her hands in surrender and turned back to the front of the room. Morgan looked at them with interest, and it took her a second to realize that he was staring at her scars. Hastily, she crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes at him for good measure.
"Please continue, SSA Morgan," Cavanaugh said deferentially, and Morgan cleared his throat.
"As I was saying, this guy wants to make a point," Morgan reiterated. "He's flashy, he's bold, he's looking to make a statement. The fact that he expresses this side of himself to such a degree when he kills suggests something's preventing him from doing so in his daily life."
"This external constraining force is extremely frustrating to him," piped up Reid, the brainiac in whom Maura had shown such an interest. "It's probable he lives at home with his parents, or is married. There are a number of circumstances that would fit, but the point is, he feels restricted from expressing what he sees as his true self and thus turns to killing to do so."
Jane raised her hand and hated herself for it, feeling as if she were back in high school. "So, what, this rage just builds up inside him for however many years and then something makes him snap?"
"It's possible," Prentiss stepped in, and Jane resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The way one member of the BAU team smoothly took over from another felt so... scripted. "But the crime scene photos indicate that he was extremely meticulous, which is unusual for a first-timer. It could be that our unsub's been killing under the radar for quite a while, but then something in his life changed that made him alter his M.O. in order to gain recognition. Alternatively, he could be new to the area, or simply comfortable enough with the process of creating portraits that he was unfazed by the idea of working with a new medium so soon after his first kill."
"OK, fine, but if he recently moved to Boston, he'd've left a trail of similar crimes in other jurisdictions," Jane spoke up, trying to ignore the shiver that went down her spine at the idea of the murdered woman's blood being the killer's new medium. "You don't think the BPD checked for that already?"
Prentiss stared her down. "I'm sure you did, but you don't have our resources," she said coolly.
Jane squared her jaw and bit back a retort, resolving to stay silent for the rest of the profile, no matter how much Prentiss or the others made her hackles rise. It was like dealing with Dean all over again. God, she hated fibbies.
--
Jane would've liked the chance to get to know the comparatively jovial SSA Rossi a little more, or interact with the seemingly pleasant if briskly efficient JJ, but it stood to reason that two of the three BAU members whom Jane disliked the most would be the ones attending the autopsy. Reid and Morgan watched silently as Maura incised the scalp behind the ears, folding it down to expose the skull. The former looked even more like a twelve-year-old boy in the scrubs that had been provided, while the latter's sizable biceps bulged formidably underneath his identical garb. Jane rolled her eyes at the pair, but they seemed too focused on the procedure to notice.
Maura kept a tub of Vicks nearby for infrequent visitors, Frost, and whomever else needed something to mask the unmistakable smell of blood and cells breaking down in order to avoid breaking down themselves, but today, nobody dabbed any menthol under their noses. Jane didn't expect Morgan to use it, had him pegged as far too seasoned and macho, but harbored doubts about Reid. She studied his face for a moment, looking for any trace of revulsion or discomfort, and concluded he was tougher than she'd initially assumed. As she watched, he glanced shyly at Maura, the hint of a smile on his lips, and Jane clenched her teeth.
It wasn't until Maura had conducted a thorough examination of the body that she felt able to determine the victim had died as a result of her throat being cut - something that seemed like a no-brainer to Jane, but she knew Maura liked to be thorough. She let her mind wander as Maura performed a final overview of the fatal wound, internally debating whether she wanted to get a beer at the Robber that night or duck out and head home for some quality time with her television, her couch, and her dog, but then, Maura said, "Hm."
It was a well-known fact around Homicide that Dr. Isles' Hm-ing could make or break a case. The noise was an indicator that Maura had found something unusual, surprising and often very important during the course of an autopsy, and this time was no exception.
"What is it, Maura?" Jane asked after a beat.
"I can't quite..."
The M.E. reached for her movable overhead lamp, and Reid sprang forward to help her position it. Jane would have rolled her eyes again if she hadn't been so interested in Maura's discovery. She watched as the other woman reached into the gaping maw of the victim's slashed throat, gave a gentle tug and came away with a small, gold object clasped in her tweezers.
"It was wedged behind the epiglottis, which explains why I didn't see it sooner," Maura said calmly, placing the foreign body on a steel tray. "It appears to be a pendant of some sort."
Jane, Morgan and Reid gathered around it.
"Looks like there's something carved on there," Morgan commented.
"Good eye, Supervisory Special Agent!" Maura complimented him, reaching for her magnifier.
"All the better to see you with," he shot back, winking, and Jane barely refrained from blurting out a Really? She noticed Reid looking a little annoyed as well, and felt irrationally vindicated.
Maura, oblivious to the trio's strained dynamic, carefully dabbed at the pendant until the letters were revealed. "N.B.," she read slowly, too focused on the task to notice Morgan take out his smartphone and snap a photo of the object.
"An abbreviation for the Latin phrase Nota bene, meaning Note well," Reid chipped in. "It first appeared in writing -"
"In the early 18th century," Maura finished, glancing up at him with a small smile that caused him to blush.
Jane looked at Morgan, who raised his eyebrows at her.
"Oh, great, now there's two of him," he murmured under his breath, and Jane laughed in spite of herself.
"Just throwing this out there, but I think the victim might have been more likely to wear a necklace like that because those are her initials, rather than the abbreviation for the Latin phrase Noteimus wellimus," Jane pointed out.
"Nota bene," Maura and Reid said at the same time, without a trace of humor, and Morgan backed away from the table, chuckling.
"I'm gonna go call our tech analyst and see if she can track down how our vic might've come into possession of that pendant," he told the group, raising his phone to his ear as he exited the room.
Jane gazed longingly at the tray, not wanting to step away from where the action was - or leave Maura and Reid alone - but she knew her boss would want to hear about the latest development in the case.
"I'll go brief Cavanaugh," she said reluctantly, following Morgan out.
--
Sharing an elevator with SSA Derek Morgan hadn't exactly been at the top of Jane's to-do list for the day, but as he was already holding the door for her, she would've felt awkward taking the stairs.
"Hey, baby girl, I need you to do something for me."
She thought he was talking to her for a second, but before her rage could build too far, she realized he was speaking into his phone.
"Maybe later, sugar, but right now, let's stick to the case," he continued playfully, and Jane raised an eyebrow. "I just sent you a picture of a pendant, and I want you to find out everything you can about it." Pause. "Thank you, sweetheart." Another pause. "Love you like a love song too, Garcia."
He hung up and gazed calmly at the interior of the elevator for a few moments before becoming aware of Jane's incredulous stare. "What?"
"Who was that?"
"Our tech analyst, Penelope Garcia. She's going to run the photo I sent her, and hopefully track down the pendant's origins, which could give us a clue to the unsub's identity."
"Is she your girlfriend?"
Jane thought she detected a brief hint of wistfulness in Morgan's eyes before he furrowed his brow at her. "Garcia? She's taken. Is Dr. Isles yours?"
Jane barked out a laugh. "No!"
"Coulda fooled me, with the way you've been glaring at my man Reid all afternoon," Morgan said, shrugging, as the elevator doors parted with a Ping! that sounded entirely too genial for their line of work.
The two of them stepped out.
"I'll let you know what Garcia finds," Morgan told her, then strode off toward the spare office that had become the BAU's makeshift headquarters, leaving Jane boggling behind him.
--
The conversation Jane had with Morgan was puzzling, to be sure, but the fact that they were in the thick of a case enabled her to pretty easily write off the whole thing and move on with the investigation. It wasn't until she walked into the Division 1 Café later that day and saw Maura at a table, talking and laughing with Reid, that she began to question the jealousy knotting tightly in her stomach.
Reid came alive when he was around Maura, gesturing gracefully with his hands as they spoke. His fingers were long, thin, oddly delicate for a man's, and Jane found herself wondering whether he'd ever played the piano, or if he didn't think music was a noble enough pursuit for an academian. Maura's eyes shone as she listened to him, laughing too much at things he said that probably weren't particularly funny, judging by his pleasantly bemused smile every time she burst into a fresh peal of giggles.
Jane's mother was in the middle of it, as always, which made the whole situation even worse somehow. She was taken with him, too - Jane could tell. She had other customers to attend to, of course, but would keep drifting back to their table when she could, as if she couldn't seem to help being pulled in on their collective tide. The whole thing reminded Jane of the way her ma acted when she and Maura stopped by - calling them you girls like they were twelve and on a playdate, judiciously refilling their iced teas, and making bunny pancakes that Maura cooed over while Jane flushed with embarrassment. Jane had always wished her mother would give them some space, but now that she was watching the familiar ritual happen from the outside, she wanted back in. And she wanted it badly.
--
Suffice to say the case wasn't moving along as quickly as anybody hoped. The pendant, according to the BAU's tech analyst, wasn't gold but gold plated - a cheap piece of jewelry purchased with cash and engraved by a kiosk at a mall just outside Chicago. The last Jane heard, Garcia was poring over days of security camera footage, enhancing the image quality and matching a face to every pendant purchase logged at the kiosk, then identifying each person and adding their names to a list. It sounded impossibly tedious to Jane - the kind of task she'd usually fob off on Frost - but if Morgan's description of Garcia was anything to go by, she relished her work and was also extremely good at it.
"If there's anything to find, she'll find it," was how Morgan phrased it, although Jane sensed he wasn't exactly the most objective person in the world when it came to Garcia. Still, she appreciated the FBI's help when it came to this facet of the case. God only knew how long it would've taken for the BPD to cut through all the jurisdictional red tape.
Maura, meanwhile, was back in the morgue, going over the body again to see if she'd missed anything, and Jane was quite happy for her to stay there - provided, of course, that Reid wasn't assisting her.
--
Over the ensuing days, just the thought of Reid became enough to put Jane on edge, but she explained away her jealousy as nothing at first. She was good at denial, familiar with it; in fact, you could say it was a family trait. Both of her parents embraced it when her younger brother Tommy exhibited the early signs of alcoholism that would eventually culminate in him running over a priest at a crosswalk, her pop sought its comfort when it became apparent that none of his three children was interested in going into the family plumbing business, and her ma happily welcomed it every time Jane rebuffed her efforts to set her daughter up with a new guy.
That said, the fact that Jane was around Maura so much significantly inhibited her efforts. Denial, she thought, was like bubble wrap. She cocooned it around herself like a blanket and felt utterly invincible, but that only lasted until Maura came along and started popping the pockets of air, one by one, just by virtue of existing - and the worst part was that there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it.
If she were going to be entirely honest, she'd had more than platonic feelings for Maura for a while - stray, nameless spikes of inappropriate emotion that she'd quashed as soon as she became aware of them. They'd never really troubled her because she'd never paid them any real attention, but Reid being around had brought everything to the surface, and try as she might, she couldn't quite seem to tuck them back into the recesses of her mind this time. Case or no case, there they were, tapping against the edges of her consciousness, demanding to be seen.
--
Jane had two brothers, but she'd always been closer with Frankie than Tommy. Perhaps it was because the age difference wasn't as large, so they were thick as thieves once they'd reached their teenage years and got past the stage of squabbling over toys. Whatever the reason, within the Rizzoli family, they were each other's confidants, so nobody was particularly surprised when Frankie followed in Jane's footsteps by joining the police department. Tommy, on the other hand, seemed to prefer the wrong side of the law, which only deepened the schism between the two elder siblings and their younger brother. They weren't estranged by any means, but when the chips were down, Frankie went to Jane and vice versa - all of which explained why, when the Rizzoli children gathered at Maura's house for Sunday dinner cooked by their mother, it was Frankie whom Jane chose to pull aside when Angela's latest inquiry about boyfriends or the lack thereof made something snap inside her.
Frankie followed her out to Maura's lush, manicured garden without protest, and although there were questions in his eyes, he knew better than to push.
"Frankie, can I..." Jane trailed off, painfully aware of the rawness in her voice. The bad thing about Frankie not being forward enough to question her was that she had to broach the subject herself. "You wanna go sit on the porch swing?"
"...Sure," Frankie said slowly, evenly - too evenly, like he was trying to cover his suspicion.
The swing - a transplant from the house their parents had shared prior to the dissolution of their marriage - was old and rickety, and its metal frame had been rusting at the edges for years, something their mother tried to belie with the cheerful, flowery cushions she placed on it every summer. Jane had no idea why her mother insisted on bringing it along when she moved into Maura's guest house, but Maura was too polite to protest and thus, there it sat. She perched gingerly on the edge of it, half expecting it to collapse under her weight, but it held.
Frankie, who seemed to have no such qualms, sat down heavily. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs, clasping his hands together.
"So, what's up, Janie?"
The forced casualness of the inquiry did little to offset the flicker of worry in his eyes.
"You know how I... never really was good with guys?"
Frankie blinked. "That wasn't where I was expecting this conversation to go, but, OK. Uh, I guess?"
"Did that ever, um." She was being hesitant, and she hated herself for it. She disliked showing people her vulnerability, the cracks in her armor, and the feeling that she was exposing too much of herself made her feel irritated. "Did you ever wonder about that?" she asked brusquely, trying to pull herself together.
"Wonder?" Frankie repeated, looking blank. "Like about why that was?"
"Yeah."
"Uh... because they were either douchebags or you were workin' too hard to really make a go of things? I mean, you're my sister. I don't really think about that stuff."
"Frankie..." The words were right there on the tip of her tongue, and she could feel her throat closing in panic.
Her brother looked outright alarmed now, his dark eyes bright with worry. "Jesus, Janie, what is it?"
She was really regretting not writing this down beforehand.
"Y'know those stereotypes about how all female cops date other women?"
"...Yeah?"
Frankie was clearly waiting for her to continue, but she couldn't. She wasn't going to spell it out for him. It had taken everything in her to verbalize that sentence without her voice quavering, and she could feel her heart hammering against her ribcage as she waited for him to make the connection.
"Wait, are...?"
She felt her lips start to quiver and clamped her mouth shut.
"Wait, for real? You think you're...?"
"I'm not saying that, I'm just saying it's something I've been...." She trailed off, trying to back herself down from sounding so defensive. She knew there was an edge in her voice, but the question of identifying herself like that was something she was way not prepared to do. "I'm not saying that," she repeated definitively.
"OK..." Frankie echoed, sounding confused. "I'll be honest here, Janie, I have no idea what you're trying to tell me right now if you're not coming out of the -"
"There's nothing to come out of," Jane interrupted, skirting the word she'd quickly cut him off from saying. "I'm just telling you what I've been feeling, all right? That's all this is. I just thought I needed to talk it out with someone, but now I'm thinking that wasn't such a good idea."
"So you're not, like... dating anyone?" Frankie asked tentatively, no doubt wondering if he was going to get his head bitten off.
"No," Jane told him flatly. "Nothing like that."
"Does Ma know?"
"Yeah, she knows and she cooked us all Sunday dinner like the bottom didn't just fall out of her life," Jane retorted sarcastically. "Of course she doesn't know."
"Hey, OK." Frankie raised a hand placatingly. "I don't care, by the way. It's just... crazy."
Jane slowly exhaled through her nose, trying to get her heart to stop racing.
"Does Maura know?"
She froze. "Why?"
"...Because you guys are close?" Frankie ventured, with a look on his face like he was trying to figure out where he went wrong in making the inquiry.
"No," she said with finality, standing up from the porch swing.
"Hey." Frankie stood too, and Jane detected a softer note in his voice. "You told me before you told her?" he asked, sounding almost touched.
"I'm never going to tell her."
"But -" he protested, his voice getting louder with incredulity.
"Frankie," Jane hissed, intensely aware that her mother and Maura were just beyond the door to the kitchen. "I'm not telling anyone else, OK? Not Ma, not Maura, nobody. This isn't, like, the beginning of a thing. This is the thing. I just needed -" She cut herself off, mentally chastising herself for her wording. "I just wanted someone else to know."
Frankie sat back down on the porch swing with a stunned look on his face. She hovered by him for a few moments, feeling there was more to discuss but unsure what it was and who should be the one to say it. Finally, she turned toward the back door, pulled it open and resolutely stepped into the house, leaving some of the weight of her secret behind.
--
When Jane couldn't sleep, she vacuumed. The guy who used to live below her always hated it, would bang on his ceiling with a broom handle until she stopped, but her new neighbor, Marissa, was more tolerant - something Jane found herself feeling immensely grateful for every time she caught a tough case. Marissa was in law school, up all hours and studying constantly, but that night, Jane feared that even she might reach her breaking point as the clock on the living room wall struck twelve and the vacuuming continued. As Jane pushed the machine back and forth for the umpteenth time, she wondered whether her relentless cleaning was a ploy to get Marissa to come up and knock on the door as she sometimes had before, providing an excuse to talk things out with someone who might be more understanding. Not that Frankie hadn't been, exactly, but the whole exchange had left Jane feeling unfulfilled somehow, and she wasn't sure what to do about it. She wondered if getting another woman's perspective would be different, if talking to someone less close to her wouldn't be as nerve-wracking, but the knock at her door never came, so she never got to find out.
--
The next morning, Jane was at work before seven, relieved to be free of a night filled with bad dreams and the image of Maura's face rendered in blood on her own apartment wall. By nine, she was nursing her third cup of coffee and staring ferociously at the crime scene photos spread across her desk, hoping she might find something she missed if she could only glare hard enough. Her focus was so intense that it took a few moments before she became aware of a presence in front of her.
"Frankie, what's up?" she asked, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear and crossing her fingers for some good news about the case.
"I know why you didn't tell Maura."
Jane jumped up from her desk as if she'd been electrocuted, then marched Frankie out of the room and into the deserted corridor.
"What were you thinking, announcing that in front of people?!" she hissed.
Frankie's eyes were huge. "Jesus, Janie, it's not like I was specific. I didn't think you were gonna react like that."
Jane frowned at him as she tried to get her hammering heart under control after the unexpected spike of adrenaline. "I don't want you talking about that kind of stuff on the job, OK? Cops never mind their own business. You should know that."
He rolled his eyes. "Fine. So, do you wanna know what I figured out?"
"No," Jane said grumpily, but she knew Frankie didn't believe her.
Frankie grinned. "You didn't tell Maura because you have feelings for her!" he announced triumphantly.
Jane stared at him wordlessly.
"Am I right?" Frankie looked disappointed by her underwhelming reaction. "I'm totally right! ...Right?"
"Wrong," Jane said abruptly, doing her best to ignore the searching look on Frankie's face as he attempted to gauge whether she was telling the truth. "Now, get your ass back to working on this case so we can show up those fibbies, OK?"
"Aw, man, for real?" Frankie had gone from mere disappointment to seeming positively bummed. "You guys would be good together. Are you sure you never -"
"Frankie."
"OK."
--
Jane may have been able to throw Frankie off the scent, but distracting herself was a whole different story. She immersed herself in the case with new vigor, rationalizing that as soon as they collared the guy and the BAU went back to Quantico, everything would return to normal. In the meantime, however, she was struggling. She never realized how much time she spent with Maura until she started looking at her colleague in a new light. It was painfully teenage of her, but her continued close proximity to the M.E. was making the butterflies in her stomach go crazy, and she had no idea what to do about it.
The fact that Reid was around made things about a hundred times worse - Spencer, as Maura called him, which didn't make any damn sense to Jane because even his BAU colleagues called him by his surname, as far as she could tell. At least he had the sense to skitter away whenever Jane approached, so she never had to speak with him directly, but Maura was a different story. Since Jane had realized the depth of her feelings, talking to Maura had become excruciating, to the point where she could barely look the other woman in the eye. She caught Maura watching her curiously a couple of times and did her best to laugh things off and carry on as usual, but she knew the dam would break eventually and was terrified about what that would mean for her friendship with the other woman. Even if Maura weren't repulsed or at least unnerved by the idea of her closest friend harboring feelings for her that were more than platonic, the dynamic between them was bound to change, and the thought of that made Jane want to cry.
--
It all came to a head when Maura touched her arm. It was an odd breaking point, considering Maura had done the same thing countless times before, had hugged Jane tightly, had opened her home to Jane in the middle of the night and lain by her side in bed on several occasions, but it was a simple, feather-light touch on Jane's arm that caused something inside the detective to snap. She wasn't loud about it, wasn't dramatic or expressive, just very swiftly, very suddenly stood up and walked out of the squad room, mid-conversation.
She didn't dare look back as she left, but she could picture the scene she was leaving behind - or, more specifically, the confused, hurt expression on Maura's face. Sometimes, Maura wasn't the best with social cues, and the M.E. was no doubt replaying the words and actions that had preceded Jane's exit, trying to identify what she'd done wrong when in fact, the problem was all Jane's.
Jane thought she heard a snatch of Frost's voice, then Frankie's, and then hurried footsteps too heavy to be Maura's. Not in the mood to wait for the elevator, she elected to take the stairs two at a time, already thinking of ways to explain her behavior that didn't involve the words My best friend touched me and it felt like my skin was on fire.
She was one-and-a-half floors down when she heard the metal door clang shut from above her and nearly jumped out of said skin.
"Jesus, Frankie."
Her brother was peering over the railing, and she was simultaneously annoyed by his presence and relieved he wasn't someone else. She waited for him to catch up to her, then resumed her descent, albeit at a slower pace.
"Maura wanted to come after you, so I told her I'd take care of it. You OK, Janie? What was all that about?"
She exhaled, trying not to sound irritated. "Nothing. Let it go."
"Didn't look like nothing."
There was a dark smudge on the sign marking the fifth floor, and it had always annoyed the hell out of Jane. She glowered at it as they passed.
"Well, things aren't always what they seem, all right?"
Frankie frowned. "Wait, what are we talkin' about here? Is this related to what you told me at Sunday dinner?"
"No," Jane responded flatly, fighting to keep her inflection even.
"Is it about you and Maura?"
"Frankie."
She hadn't heard anyone come after them, and someone able to open and close one of the massive doors without causing a racket would be the friggin' Door Whisperer, but they couldn't risk talking about this at work. Not again.
"It's fuckin' Reid," she said quietly, attempting to minimize the way her voice echoed off the concrete walls. "I was fine before he got here and started..." She trailed off, then threw up her hands. "Mooning over her. I had it under control."
"Had what under control?"
She gave him a look that clearly communicated, Don't make me spell it out.
Frankie whistled under his breath. "I knew I wasn't off-base before. Maura has no idea how you feel?"
"I hope not." She sighed. "I just have to keep it together until we solve this case and the BAU goes back to Quantico."
"You can really put those feelings away like that?"
"I have before," she answered with a shrug. "I just need Dr. Dorky to go away and stop pissing me off."
"God, Janie."
"What?"
"I just... I think it's sad. There's no chance she feels the same way?"
Jane stared at him as if he were crazy.
"...Gonna take that as a no." Frankie stopped by the door to the ground floor exit. "This is where I get off, but you should go down and talk to her. I'm sure she'll be back soon, if she isn't already. You know her, Jane. She's gonna think she did something wrong."
Jane bit her lip and internally chastised herself for being a horrible person. "I know. Hey..."
She wanted to thank her brother, maybe hug him or something, but she settled for a light punch to the bicep and hoped he got the message.
"No problem," he said, tugging open the enormous door, and really, did they need to be so big? This was the BPD, not a prison. She heard the screech of the metal reverberate around the walls. "Seriously, good luck with Maura." He grinned. "I'd tell you to confess your feelings so the two of you can go have hot make-up sex, but then you'd punch me in the face."
Jane rolled her eyes and managed to get in a "Shut up, Frankie" just before the door swung shut. With a deep sigh, she moved further down the stairway, and as she rounded the last corner, she saw Maura standing in the doorway below. The noise from before hadn't been an echo, after all.
--
Jane attempted to frantically replay the conversation with her brother in her mind, getting no further back than Frankie's parting sentence before she realized how screwed she truly was. There was no way to pass this off as a conversation about someone else, and besides, Maura was too smart to buy any kind of alternative explanation she managed to come up with. She settled for saying Maura's name and trying not to sound breathless with panic, and Maura looked wordlessly back at her with an expression on her face that Jane had never seen before.
"Sorry for storming outta there like that," Jane added lamely, desperate to fill the silence. She could feel herself already slipping into denial over the fact that the entire conversation with Frankie had even happened, let alone that Maura had heard it. All she could hope for at this point was that Maura would go along with her delusion. "I just remembered I needed to go talk to Sam at the front desk, and I accidentally, uh, went one floor too far. But I was gonna come talk to you too, because I realized it was rude to hightail it outta there like that, and how did you get down here so fast, anyway?"
"I took the elevator," Maura said slowly, "as you would have done if you were truly going to talk to Sam."
"It was -" Jane hesitated, preventing herself from becoming ensnared in a lie. It obviously hadn't been out of order, as Maura had ridden down in it immediately after she'd stormed out of Homicide. In fact, Jane hadn't even glanced at it as she'd hurried to the stairs, in no mood for someone to catch up to her while she was waiting for the elevator doors to open. "I wasn't thinking straight."
Maura folded her arms. "In light of the conversational snippet I overheard between you and Frankie, I'm inclined to believe at least that part is true."
Jane stared. "Did you just make a joke?"
"Straight is still considered an informal term for being heterosexual, correct?" Maura asked, frowning.
"...Oh my God, you made a joke about - oh my God."
Jane felt her balance sway and sat down on one of the cold, hard concrete steps that separated her from Maura.
"Jane?"
Her head was in her hands now, and Maura sounded alarmed.
"Whatever you think you heard, Maura, forget it, OK?" she pleaded, hoping her voice didn't sound too muffled. "I know how it must've sounded, but, trust me, you're wrong."
She heard Maura's heels click against the concrete, but it was still a surprise to feel the medical examiner's small, warm hand cover one of her own.
"Come sit in my office, Jane," Maura said kindly. "I know you hate my designer chairs, but they're surely preferable to these steps."
She had a point. Jane acquiesced.
--
The chairs were as uncomfortable as Jane remembered, but she was far too preoccupied by the staccato heartbeats pounding within her chest to really notice or care. Maura allowed the two of them to sit in silence for a few moments before gently beginning, "Do you recall that I am an expert in body language?"
"Uh-huh."
Maura had contributed kinesic analyses during several BPD investigations, and Jane frowned as she realized her colleague's background in the study probably gave her something else to bond over with Reid.
"Did you really think I wouldn't have picked up on your recent change in behavior and engaged in conjecture about what it meant?"
"...You knew?" Jane asked stupidly after a beat.
"I not only knew, but I also shared your feelings."
You could've knocked Jane over with a feather. She opened her mouth, closed it again, got angry with Maura when she realized the other woman was probably kidding, then turned that anger on herself for thinking Maura would ever make fun of her like that. It was only after that cavalcade of emotions that something else occurred to her.
"Wait, shared?"
"Share," Maura corrected. "I didn't enact the appropriate tense shift."
Her expression was sincere and earnest, betraying no trace of mirth, but Jane still couldn't process that she was being serious.
"Are you kidding me right now? You share my - for real?"
With a shy grin, Maura nodded.
"And you knew how I - and you - why didn't you tell me?!" Jane spluttered.
"I didn't want to impede the effortless camaraderie that typically characterizes our interpersonal professional relations," Maura responded calmly.
Jane blinked. "You didn't want to fuck things up because we work together," she translated.
"If you must put it so crassly."
"I must." Jane leaned back in her chair. "Jesus, Maura, I thought this was - I thought it was just me."
"It isn't," Maura confirmed succinctly.
"But... Reid?"
"Spencer is a quite brilliant young man, and although I'll admit I was quite taken with him at first, he and I lack a certain chemistry."
"And we don't," Jane said in a tone that was midway between asking a question and stating a fact.
Maura's lips quirked into a smile. "We have it in spades, Detective."
Jane was silent for a few seconds. She felt there were appropriate things to do or say in these situations, but between the off-balance sensation of being completely out of her element, the stress of unexpectedly baring her soul, and the surprise of finding out Maura felt the same way, she was at a loss as to what these were.
"Should I, like, ask you out on a date now?" she queried finally.
Maura grinned as if she'd said something funny. "If you really want to, but I believe our relationship has evolved sufficiently beyond that stage by now. You should feel quite comfortable in advancing straight to the point of trying to kiss me, without fear of seeming too forward."
"Uh..." Jane blinked again, barely believing what she was hearing. Haltingly, she stood up and stepped forward, and Maura stood also, abandoning her perch on the edge of her desk and smoothing the back of her dress. Feeling silly and somehow sheepish, Jane took the other woman's hand, buoyed by the warmth she saw in Maura's eyes.
As Maura waited expectantly, Jane was half ready for Frankie to jump out and yell "CUT!" before submitting the footage to America's Funniest Home Videos. When that didn't happen, she briefly closed her eyes, took a deep breath, said "OK," and pressed her lips to Maura's.
--
Maura's lips tasted faintly of the strawberry Chapstick she used to offset the effects of the cool temperatures in the morgue, and the familiarity put Jane at ease, instantly calming her. After all, it was Maura she was kissing - same old Maura, just her friend, the M.E. - except now, Maura's tongue was nudging at the seam of her mouth, hinting for access in a decidedly un-friend-like capacity, and Jane was hit by a heady rush of reality. Once she parted her lips, she knew there would be no turning back from this.
She did it anyway.
--
They were just getting to the stage where Jane, who had initially been reluctant to run her fingers through Maura's hair, was beginning to muss it to a dangerous degree when, in an impossible moment of cliché, Jane's cellphone began to ring. She ignored it at first - truth be told, it took a few seconds for the sound to break through her kiss-induced daze in the first place - and it was Maura who eventually pulled away and shook her back to her senses.
"You should answer that," Maura told her a little breathlessly, face flushed, hair uncoiffed, and all Jane could do was stare at her, her face and her eyes and her lips, the same lips she'd just been kissing. Everything felt like a dream too complex to process. "Jane, really, it might be important."
"Huh? Oh, right." Jane put her phone to her ear. "Rizzoli."
"We got something." Frost didn't bother to say hello, nor make reference to her earlier abrupt exit. "You'd better get up here."
"I'm coming," Jane said tersely, matching his tone.
"Was that Frost?" Maura asked after she hung up. It was a routine inquiry that sounded completely normal, to the point where Jane wondered whether she'd imagined what had happened between them a minute before. "Jane?"
"Maura, I..." Jane didn't know where to begin. Was this glorious breach of reality a one-time thing, the start of something, the end of something else, or somehow all of the above? The open-endedness of the whole situation thrilled and terrified her. What would Frost say when he found out, or Korsak, or her mother, oh, God, and would it be all right to ask if Maura minded keeping it quiet, at least for a while, if it was even enough of a thing to merit eventually telling other people about at all?
"I daresay we'll be able to do that again sometime soon, if that's what you're trying to inquire," Maura said whimsically, derailing Jane's panicked train of thought. Jane found her attitude immensely endearing.
"I, uh. I kinda guess it was." Jane fidgeted like a schoolgirl for a second, feeling her cheeks heat up. "Can we keep all this, like, off the radar for now? Or for, you know, a while. Or whatever?"
Maura tilted her head. "Of course, Jane. The only person in whom I confide regarding romantic dalliances is you, anyway." She paused. "Did you need to go upstairs for something?"
"Shit." Jane ran to the door, turned around, grinned happily at Maura - who beamed back and made a shooing motion with her hands - then made a mad dash for the elevator.
--
Jane got to the briefing room just in time, taking a seat toward the back in order to minimize disturbance. Morgan glanced in her direction and did a double take, looking at her carefully for a few seconds before returning his attention to the front of the room, where Hotchner was about to speak. Morgan's behavior unsettled her - she knew he profiled people for a living, but wondered if he could truly tell what had just happened with her best friend simply by looking at her.
"We just got word from the Chicago office that the murderer of Nicole Butcher is in custody," the unit chief announced without fanfare, and Jane forced herself to pay attention. "Wesley Durling, 31, is married with a baby on the way, and is a frustrated artist who paints houses to pay the bills. As far as we've been able to discern, he met Butcher while painting her parents' house six months ago, and the two embarked on an affair shortly after."
Prentiss stepped forward, picking up where Hotchner left off in that scripted-for-TV way Jane hated.
"The impending birth of his child and the realization that he would most likely never attain his goal of becoming a world-renowned artist acted as twin stressors, and Butcher became his release," she told the room. "When Butcher announced she was moving to Boston and gave back the necklace he bought her, this represented the loss of his outlet - his freedom, if you will. He did everything he could think of to change her mind, but nothing worked. By now, his love for her had turned to hate, so he followed her to Boston and waited for his chance to take revenge."
"Our tech analyst, Penelope Garcia, was able to isolate his face on the security footage from the mall, then used facial recognition software to discern his identity," Morgan continued, and Jane couldn't help but smile at the fact that he was the one to give the BAU's absent colleague credit where it was due. "It's definitely the guy. Chicago PD found an airline ticket stub and a map of Boston with the victim's street circled in red."
"Nice," Frost whispered from his seat in front of Jane.
"Needless to say," Hotchner concluded dryly, "he was taken into custody immediately."
Cavanaugh stepped forward to shake Hotchner's hand, bringing an air of finality to the proceedings. "On behalf of all at the BPD, I'd like to thank you and your team for your assistance in this case."
He turned to the room at large and began clapping magnanimously. Frost burst into enthusiastic applause, and Jane rolled her eyes at the back of his head but nevertheless joined him, albeit in a more subdued fashion. Hotchner looked tickled, and Jane got the sense that he was used to dealing with a lot more resistance when he and his team swooped in from nowhere to assist municipal investigators. Morgan grinned like a Cheshire cat at all the positive attention, while Prentiss remained as impassive as ever, and Reid seemed outright embarrassed.
Once the claps petered out, Hotchner cleared his throat. "In the interests of not overstaying our welcome..." (Jane thought she heard Korsak snort derisively from somewhere near her) "my team and I will be heading back to Quantico as soon as Lieutenant Cavanaugh and I have dotted all our I's and crossed our T's, and the team has cleared out the temporary command post you so kindly assigned to us. Thank you all for your cooperation and hospitality."
As the others shuffled out, Jane caught up with Morgan. "You want some help moving stuff? I used to spend a lotta time in that office you've been using - it'll be easy for me to figure out where to put everything back."
"Wow, you're this excited to see us go, huh?" Morgan asked, but there was a lightness to his tone that Jane took to mean he was teasing. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.
--
"Well, that's the last of it." Jane piled the final box outside the door of the temporarily repurposed office that had served as the BAU's base of operations.
Morgan glanced down at his phone. "Perfect timing. We're heading to the airport in five, wheels up at the top of the hour, so I gotta get going."
"Ugh," Jane said in mock disgust. "I hate that you guys have a jet."
"Perks of bein' in the BAU, baby," Morgan said with a chuckle, heaving his bag onto his shoulder. God, he was an asshole, but as Jane walked him to the elevator, she admitted to herself that she had kinda grown to like him. "Look, I know you weren't thrilled when we showed up, but thanks for playin' ball."
Jane shrugged. "Thanks for coordinating stuff with Chicago. Multi-jurisdictional shit can get messy."
As the elevator cheerfully chimed its arrival, Morgan rolled his eyes. "Tell me about it. And, hey..." He waited until they'd both boarded and the doors slid closed. "Congrats on finally figuring stuff out with Dr. Isles."
He was trained to analyze human behavior, so she shouldn't have been surprised that he'd picked up on what was going on between herself and Maura. The way Jane saw it, she had two courses of action here - deny, deny, deny, or own it and be proud of it. In this instance, she opted for the latter.
"Thanks, Morgan," she said simply.
"Call me Derek." His eyes were twinkling, and she couldn't help but grin as the doors parted at the ground floor and they both disembarked. The guy was shameless. To him, flirting with women came as easily as breathing. She saw the other members of the BAU waiting by the front entrance and hung back, because she had one last thing to say.
"Derek..." She lowered her voice to be sure that the rest of his team wouldn't hear her. "Good luck with Garcia, OK?"
Any changes in his expression were imperceptible to Jane - as she suspected they would have been to anyone who wasn't a trained profiler - but she saw a flash of something in his eyes that confirmed the undercurrent she'd picked up on earlier in the case. She expected him to shrug her off with a flippant remark, but he surprised her by offering a short, serious nod that bore no trace of his trademark lighthearted attitude.
"Thanks, Rizzoli," he said sincerely.
She smiled. "Call me Jane."
---<---<---@
Author: that_1_incident
Fandom: Criminal Minds/Rizzoli & Isles
Pairing: Jane Rizzoli/Maura Isles (plus background Derek Morgan/Penelope Garcia)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~10,200
Summary: Jane's already pissed that the Behavioral Analysis Unit took over one of her cases, but Maura's flirtation with an agent escalates her annoyance to a whole new level.
Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me. I use them respectfully but without permission. Title from Ron Pope's "A Drop in the Ocean."
Author's Notes: Also posted here on FF.net. More R&I fic here.
---<---<---@
It was a bad one.
Jane Rizzoli knew as soon as she stepped out of her car, pretty much. Saw one patrolman doubled over, heaving his guts out, his partner standing beside him, face ashen, and she knew. She looked up at the house itself and caught sight of her brother, Frankie, standing by the front door of the brownstone and leaning against the frame. The paint, once white, had faded to a dingy gray over time, thanks to a barrage of inclement New England weather - with a little help, no doubt, from the exhaust fumes of passing cars. Frankie looked pale, but was managing to keep his lunch down, and irrationally, she felt a flush of pride. Last time a Rizzoli threw up at a crime scene was never, and she was glad he was keeping the tradition going, lowly beat cop or not.
"What've we got?" she asked brusquely, taking the handful of stone steps two at a time. They were in the Bay Village - one of the city's smallest neighborhoods, it spanned just a few blocks and was characterized by its brick sidewalks, gas streetlamps, and quaint, Beacon Hill-esque structures. Hardly the expected setting for a grisly murder.
Frankie shook his head. "It's bad, Jane."
"And there I was thinking Officer Upchuck just had too much to drink last night," she said dryly, motioning over her shoulder to the still-heaving patrolman.
Normally, Frankie would've cracked a smile, but his expression remained somber. A tight, sick knot made itself known in the pit of Jane's stomach.
"I gotta see this for myself," she murmured, ducking under the bright yellow crime scene tape that criss-crossed the open front door. She paused for a moment to collect herself, then strode up the winding staircase.
--
Maura was already at the scene, which didn't come as a surprise to Jane, given that the doc came straight from headquarters while Jane had to hightail it from the other side of town. Frost was still over there, and by the expressions on the faces of the patrolmen, that was probably a good thing. He wasn't exactly known for his strong stomach.
"Jane!"
As usual, Maura looked immaculate, even decked out in blue rubber gloves and matching plastic booties.
"Hey, Maura." Jane pulled her hair back into a ponytail before donning the same garb, the motions second nature to her by now. "What've we got?" she asked, bracing herself for a multisyllabic explanation that was almost certain to include Latin.
"An artist," Maura said simply, and Jane blinked.
"An... artist?" the detective repeated slowly. Maura had spoken clearly, yet Jane still doubted whether she'd heard the other woman correctly.
"A rather accomplished one, at that," Maura elaborated, beckoning Jane toward the back of the apartment. "The real crime scene's in the bedroom."
--
Jane stepped into the room and glanced around. It was nothing special - minimally decorated, with a few moving boxes in one corner. Although she didn't immediately see anything amiss, that all changed when she turned to regard the wall pierced by the archway through which she'd entered.
"Jesus Christ," she breathed. "What the hell is that?"
"That would be a portrait of the victim painted in blood," Maura piped up helpfully from beside her. "And quite a good likeness, too, especially considering the rudimentary materials that were -"
"Maura."
The medical examiner fell silent.
"What the hell..." Jane repeated, more to herself than her colleague. "Where's the body?"
Maura pointed to a door on the other side of the room that had crime techs buzzing around it like bees to a honey pot.
"OK, stupid question."
--
The victim, Nicole Butcher, lay dead in her bathtub, throat savagely cut. Jane couldn't help but notice that even in her current condition, the woman bore a startling resemblance to the image painted in blood on the wall in the other room.
"Butcher?" she said aloud. "Really?"
Nobody responded.
"Hey, how long are you guys gonna be in here?"
One of the CSU techs looked up at her. "Almost done, then we'll be able to hand the body over to Dr. Isles." He looked grimly over his shoulder at the bedroom. "Looks like we've got a long night ahead of us."
Jane let out a slow, measured breath. "Yeah, you and me both."
--
Frost, as predicted, couldn't take the heat. It was actually interesting, Jane thought, to watch his face as he stepped into the bedroom with Korsak, clapped his hand over his mouth and rushed out again. He'd made a lot of progress with his aversion to dead bodies since joining Homicide, but this crime scene was enough to turn anyone's stomach. To make things worse, the blood was starting to smell by that time, courtesy of the ninety-degree day and the close quarters, and Jane was beginning to feel a little lightheaded herself - not that she'd admit it.
Korsak, who was made of much stronger stuff and had been on the force since her partner was in diapers, appeared barely fazed by the gruesome scene before him. He shook his head from beside her.
"What the hell do we have here?" he murmured.
She was beginning to think that was the refrain of the day.
"Jane, I'll be honest, I don't know where to start with this one," he continued. "I ran the vic through the system, and this woman had no friends in Boston, no family. She's a Chicago transplant who moved here two weeks ago and was supposed to be starting a new job on Monday."
Jane tilted her head. Well, that explained the boxes. "Doing what?"
"Working under an assistant professor of aerosol physics at the Harvard School of Public Health."
"Aerosol physics?"
Korsak pulled a notebook out of his shirt pocket and flipped back a page. "That's what it says."
"Aerosol as in deodorant?"
"As in airborne particles," Maura chipped in from across the room. "Specifically, pollutants in the built environment."
Jane sighed. "Thank you, Maura." She turned her attention back to Korsak. "Airborne particles don't exactly sound like something to kill over."
Korsak shook his head. "When you've been doing this job as long as I have, you realize that anything can be something to kill over."
--
Jane's boss, Lieutenant Cavanaugh, was a man of few facial expressions. There was the default sternness that Jane was most used to, the grave seriousness she saw only on occasion, the softness which manifested itself whenever he visited the Division 1 Café while Jane's mother was working, and the vague trepidation that meant he was about to say something he knew the team wasn't going to like.
When she, Korsak and Frost got back from the crime scene, Cavanaugh was waiting for them with that last look on his face, and she knew before he even opened his mouth that she was about to get extremely pissed off.
"Detectives," he said by way of a greeting, nodding at them solemnly as he clasped his hands in front of him.
"Lieutenant," Jane responded cautiously. "What's going on?"
Cavanaugh took a measured breath. "I got a call from Washington."
Well, shit.
--
It turned out that because of the Chicago connection, the case qualified as crossing state lines, which meant the fibbies could have at it if they wanted to - and apparently, they did. Jane could hardly blame the FBI, she supposed. A portrait rendered in blood on a murdered woman's bedroom wall was hardly your run-of-the-mill kind of crime, but at the same time, she'd caught the case, damn it. It was hers.
She scowled as she recalled how Agent Gabriel Dean had muscled himself into the Surgeon case. The apprentice working under her nemesis, Hoyt, was a rogue Green Beret working for the CIA - a detail Dean had chosen not to share until she made such a pain in the ass of herself that he figured if he couldn't beat her, he might as well have her join him.
"Is it gonna be Dean again?" was her first question.
Cavanaugh blinked. "Agent Dean won't be assisting us with this investigation, no."
She sensed a but coming.
"However," (close enough) "a team from the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico will be arriving in two hours to go over our findings and build a profile of the perp, or as they call him, the unsub."
"The Behavioral Analysis Unit?" Jane echoed, ignoring the way Frost's eyes lit up at the news. "So they're sending a team of shrinks?"
"The members of the BAU aren't shrinks, Jane, they're profilers," Frost said patiently, but she was having none of it.
"Psychological profiles don't offer anything that can't be determined by traditional police work," she responded mulishly, and Frost glanced at Korsak for support.
"Sorry, kid," Korsak told him with a shrug. "I'm with Rizzoli on this one."
Cavanaugh cleared his throat, obviously frustrated that the conversation had been derailed.
"As I said, they'll be arriving in two hours, and I expect you all to fully cooperate with them," he said sternly, and Jane got the sense that he was speaking more to her than either of the others. "Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, sir!" Frost said enthusiastically, before Jane and Korsak followed suit with their own less spirited agreements.
One thing was for sure - this case was getting more interesting by the hour.
--
Jane took an instant dislike to the first profiler who walked into the squad room, a tall, dark, muscular man who was decently attractive and probably thought he was hot shit. When Frost bounded up to him like a puppy and the ever-affable Korsak ambled over to shake hands, she remained by her desk, folding her arms standoffishly.
"And you must be Detective Rizzoli."
The man smiled as he walked over to her, his straight, white teeth a stark contrast to his mocha skin. Yeah, he definitely thought he was hot shit.
"The one and only," she said icily, wanting to make it quite clear what she thought of him and his buddies invading her turf.
"That may not be true for much longer if Frankie continues his upward trajectory within the department," Maura chipped in from the chair next to Jane's desk, and why was she there again? Jane really should've gone down to the morgue to discuss the case with her, rather than suggesting the M.E. come up to Homicide. She didn't dignify her friend with a response.
Throughout all this, the agent's smile never faltered. Instead, he extended his hand warmly, and when Jane didn't take it, Maura stood up and stepped forward in her place.
"Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan," he said with just a hint of cockiness, as if Maura should be glad to make his acquaintance.
"Dr. Maura Isles," Maura replied, curtseying a little as she did so. "I'm the chief medical examiner."
"Wow, beauty and brains," Morgan parried smoothly, and, just... really?
"Well, now that we've all had a chance to get to know each other..." Jane began, barely restraining herself from rolling her eyes. "Where's the rest of your band of merry men? We were told your entire team would be coming."
"My boss, Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner, went straight to the crime scene with SSA David Rossi. They'll be back soon to help us put together the profile. Our communications liaison, Jennifer Jareau - we call her JJ - is speaking with Lieutenant Cavanaugh, and SSA Prentiss and Dr. Reid should be joining us shortly."
Morgan rattled off the names with a certain smugness that irritated Jane. It seemed he was flaunting the fact that his people could just come in and turn the entire BPD upside-down, and there was nothing she could do about it. She scowled harder, but all he did was smile.
--
As annoyed as Jane was by SSA Morgan, her animosity toward him paled in comparison to the disdain she felt for Dr. Reid. Reid, who looked impossibly young, was scarecrow-thin, with large, serious eyes and a series of awkward personality quirks that Jane would only find endearing if they were Maura's. Worst of all, Maura seemed charmed by him.
Jane wasn't exactly enamored of Reid and Morgan's colleague, SSA Emily Prentiss, either. Prentiss was solid and broad-shouldered, with dark hair and an aloof demeanor. Jane noticed a couple of her BPD colleagues glancing between the two of them as they stood near each other, waiting for everyone to shuffle in so the BAU could give a preliminary profile of the killer, and she resented the similarities everyone probably thought they saw. As a female cop, it was already hard for her not to be reduced to a stereotype by even the most well-meaning of her male counterparts, and Prentiss' presence wasn't helping.
By the time the last person arrived and the doors to the briefing room were closed, Jane was quietly fuming.
--
"The question is, what would motivate our unsub to do something like this?" began a tall, unsmiling man who had introduced himself as Unit Chief Hotchner. He was every inch FBI, from his stiffly parted hair to his wingtip shoes, and Jane knew she was resorting to the same stereotyping she'd fought so hard against, but damn, sometimes generalizations just fit.
"The need to make a point," Morgan answered Hotchner immediately, as if they'd rehearsed the exchange, and Jane made an incredulous noise from the first row of seats.
"Really?" she whispered to Korsak, who was sitting to her left. "This is what we brought these guys in for?"
"Rizzoli!" Cavanaugh hissed from the other side of Korsak, and Jane cringed. "SSA Morgan and the others are here to help us out. If you're not gonna play nice, I can easily reassign this case."
It wouldn't be easy, per se, but she knew the lieutenant didn't tend to make idle threats, so she held up her hands in surrender and turned back to the front of the room. Morgan looked at them with interest, and it took her a second to realize that he was staring at her scars. Hastily, she crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes at him for good measure.
"Please continue, SSA Morgan," Cavanaugh said deferentially, and Morgan cleared his throat.
"As I was saying, this guy wants to make a point," Morgan reiterated. "He's flashy, he's bold, he's looking to make a statement. The fact that he expresses this side of himself to such a degree when he kills suggests something's preventing him from doing so in his daily life."
"This external constraining force is extremely frustrating to him," piped up Reid, the brainiac in whom Maura had shown such an interest. "It's probable he lives at home with his parents, or is married. There are a number of circumstances that would fit, but the point is, he feels restricted from expressing what he sees as his true self and thus turns to killing to do so."
Jane raised her hand and hated herself for it, feeling as if she were back in high school. "So, what, this rage just builds up inside him for however many years and then something makes him snap?"
"It's possible," Prentiss stepped in, and Jane resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The way one member of the BAU team smoothly took over from another felt so... scripted. "But the crime scene photos indicate that he was extremely meticulous, which is unusual for a first-timer. It could be that our unsub's been killing under the radar for quite a while, but then something in his life changed that made him alter his M.O. in order to gain recognition. Alternatively, he could be new to the area, or simply comfortable enough with the process of creating portraits that he was unfazed by the idea of working with a new medium so soon after his first kill."
"OK, fine, but if he recently moved to Boston, he'd've left a trail of similar crimes in other jurisdictions," Jane spoke up, trying to ignore the shiver that went down her spine at the idea of the murdered woman's blood being the killer's new medium. "You don't think the BPD checked for that already?"
Prentiss stared her down. "I'm sure you did, but you don't have our resources," she said coolly.
Jane squared her jaw and bit back a retort, resolving to stay silent for the rest of the profile, no matter how much Prentiss or the others made her hackles rise. It was like dealing with Dean all over again. God, she hated fibbies.
--
Jane would've liked the chance to get to know the comparatively jovial SSA Rossi a little more, or interact with the seemingly pleasant if briskly efficient JJ, but it stood to reason that two of the three BAU members whom Jane disliked the most would be the ones attending the autopsy. Reid and Morgan watched silently as Maura incised the scalp behind the ears, folding it down to expose the skull. The former looked even more like a twelve-year-old boy in the scrubs that had been provided, while the latter's sizable biceps bulged formidably underneath his identical garb. Jane rolled her eyes at the pair, but they seemed too focused on the procedure to notice.
Maura kept a tub of Vicks nearby for infrequent visitors, Frost, and whomever else needed something to mask the unmistakable smell of blood and cells breaking down in order to avoid breaking down themselves, but today, nobody dabbed any menthol under their noses. Jane didn't expect Morgan to use it, had him pegged as far too seasoned and macho, but harbored doubts about Reid. She studied his face for a moment, looking for any trace of revulsion or discomfort, and concluded he was tougher than she'd initially assumed. As she watched, he glanced shyly at Maura, the hint of a smile on his lips, and Jane clenched her teeth.
It wasn't until Maura had conducted a thorough examination of the body that she felt able to determine the victim had died as a result of her throat being cut - something that seemed like a no-brainer to Jane, but she knew Maura liked to be thorough. She let her mind wander as Maura performed a final overview of the fatal wound, internally debating whether she wanted to get a beer at the Robber that night or duck out and head home for some quality time with her television, her couch, and her dog, but then, Maura said, "Hm."
It was a well-known fact around Homicide that Dr. Isles' Hm-ing could make or break a case. The noise was an indicator that Maura had found something unusual, surprising and often very important during the course of an autopsy, and this time was no exception.
"What is it, Maura?" Jane asked after a beat.
"I can't quite..."
The M.E. reached for her movable overhead lamp, and Reid sprang forward to help her position it. Jane would have rolled her eyes again if she hadn't been so interested in Maura's discovery. She watched as the other woman reached into the gaping maw of the victim's slashed throat, gave a gentle tug and came away with a small, gold object clasped in her tweezers.
"It was wedged behind the epiglottis, which explains why I didn't see it sooner," Maura said calmly, placing the foreign body on a steel tray. "It appears to be a pendant of some sort."
Jane, Morgan and Reid gathered around it.
"Looks like there's something carved on there," Morgan commented.
"Good eye, Supervisory Special Agent!" Maura complimented him, reaching for her magnifier.
"All the better to see you with," he shot back, winking, and Jane barely refrained from blurting out a Really? She noticed Reid looking a little annoyed as well, and felt irrationally vindicated.
Maura, oblivious to the trio's strained dynamic, carefully dabbed at the pendant until the letters were revealed. "N.B.," she read slowly, too focused on the task to notice Morgan take out his smartphone and snap a photo of the object.
"An abbreviation for the Latin phrase Nota bene, meaning Note well," Reid chipped in. "It first appeared in writing -"
"In the early 18th century," Maura finished, glancing up at him with a small smile that caused him to blush.
Jane looked at Morgan, who raised his eyebrows at her.
"Oh, great, now there's two of him," he murmured under his breath, and Jane laughed in spite of herself.
"Just throwing this out there, but I think the victim might have been more likely to wear a necklace like that because those are her initials, rather than the abbreviation for the Latin phrase Noteimus wellimus," Jane pointed out.
"Nota bene," Maura and Reid said at the same time, without a trace of humor, and Morgan backed away from the table, chuckling.
"I'm gonna go call our tech analyst and see if she can track down how our vic might've come into possession of that pendant," he told the group, raising his phone to his ear as he exited the room.
Jane gazed longingly at the tray, not wanting to step away from where the action was - or leave Maura and Reid alone - but she knew her boss would want to hear about the latest development in the case.
"I'll go brief Cavanaugh," she said reluctantly, following Morgan out.
--
Sharing an elevator with SSA Derek Morgan hadn't exactly been at the top of Jane's to-do list for the day, but as he was already holding the door for her, she would've felt awkward taking the stairs.
"Hey, baby girl, I need you to do something for me."
She thought he was talking to her for a second, but before her rage could build too far, she realized he was speaking into his phone.
"Maybe later, sugar, but right now, let's stick to the case," he continued playfully, and Jane raised an eyebrow. "I just sent you a picture of a pendant, and I want you to find out everything you can about it." Pause. "Thank you, sweetheart." Another pause. "Love you like a love song too, Garcia."
He hung up and gazed calmly at the interior of the elevator for a few moments before becoming aware of Jane's incredulous stare. "What?"
"Who was that?"
"Our tech analyst, Penelope Garcia. She's going to run the photo I sent her, and hopefully track down the pendant's origins, which could give us a clue to the unsub's identity."
"Is she your girlfriend?"
Jane thought she detected a brief hint of wistfulness in Morgan's eyes before he furrowed his brow at her. "Garcia? She's taken. Is Dr. Isles yours?"
Jane barked out a laugh. "No!"
"Coulda fooled me, with the way you've been glaring at my man Reid all afternoon," Morgan said, shrugging, as the elevator doors parted with a Ping! that sounded entirely too genial for their line of work.
The two of them stepped out.
"I'll let you know what Garcia finds," Morgan told her, then strode off toward the spare office that had become the BAU's makeshift headquarters, leaving Jane boggling behind him.
--
The conversation Jane had with Morgan was puzzling, to be sure, but the fact that they were in the thick of a case enabled her to pretty easily write off the whole thing and move on with the investigation. It wasn't until she walked into the Division 1 Café later that day and saw Maura at a table, talking and laughing with Reid, that she began to question the jealousy knotting tightly in her stomach.
Reid came alive when he was around Maura, gesturing gracefully with his hands as they spoke. His fingers were long, thin, oddly delicate for a man's, and Jane found herself wondering whether he'd ever played the piano, or if he didn't think music was a noble enough pursuit for an academian. Maura's eyes shone as she listened to him, laughing too much at things he said that probably weren't particularly funny, judging by his pleasantly bemused smile every time she burst into a fresh peal of giggles.
Jane's mother was in the middle of it, as always, which made the whole situation even worse somehow. She was taken with him, too - Jane could tell. She had other customers to attend to, of course, but would keep drifting back to their table when she could, as if she couldn't seem to help being pulled in on their collective tide. The whole thing reminded Jane of the way her ma acted when she and Maura stopped by - calling them you girls like they were twelve and on a playdate, judiciously refilling their iced teas, and making bunny pancakes that Maura cooed over while Jane flushed with embarrassment. Jane had always wished her mother would give them some space, but now that she was watching the familiar ritual happen from the outside, she wanted back in. And she wanted it badly.
--
Suffice to say the case wasn't moving along as quickly as anybody hoped. The pendant, according to the BAU's tech analyst, wasn't gold but gold plated - a cheap piece of jewelry purchased with cash and engraved by a kiosk at a mall just outside Chicago. The last Jane heard, Garcia was poring over days of security camera footage, enhancing the image quality and matching a face to every pendant purchase logged at the kiosk, then identifying each person and adding their names to a list. It sounded impossibly tedious to Jane - the kind of task she'd usually fob off on Frost - but if Morgan's description of Garcia was anything to go by, she relished her work and was also extremely good at it.
"If there's anything to find, she'll find it," was how Morgan phrased it, although Jane sensed he wasn't exactly the most objective person in the world when it came to Garcia. Still, she appreciated the FBI's help when it came to this facet of the case. God only knew how long it would've taken for the BPD to cut through all the jurisdictional red tape.
Maura, meanwhile, was back in the morgue, going over the body again to see if she'd missed anything, and Jane was quite happy for her to stay there - provided, of course, that Reid wasn't assisting her.
--
Over the ensuing days, just the thought of Reid became enough to put Jane on edge, but she explained away her jealousy as nothing at first. She was good at denial, familiar with it; in fact, you could say it was a family trait. Both of her parents embraced it when her younger brother Tommy exhibited the early signs of alcoholism that would eventually culminate in him running over a priest at a crosswalk, her pop sought its comfort when it became apparent that none of his three children was interested in going into the family plumbing business, and her ma happily welcomed it every time Jane rebuffed her efforts to set her daughter up with a new guy.
That said, the fact that Jane was around Maura so much significantly inhibited her efforts. Denial, she thought, was like bubble wrap. She cocooned it around herself like a blanket and felt utterly invincible, but that only lasted until Maura came along and started popping the pockets of air, one by one, just by virtue of existing - and the worst part was that there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it.
If she were going to be entirely honest, she'd had more than platonic feelings for Maura for a while - stray, nameless spikes of inappropriate emotion that she'd quashed as soon as she became aware of them. They'd never really troubled her because she'd never paid them any real attention, but Reid being around had brought everything to the surface, and try as she might, she couldn't quite seem to tuck them back into the recesses of her mind this time. Case or no case, there they were, tapping against the edges of her consciousness, demanding to be seen.
--
Jane had two brothers, but she'd always been closer with Frankie than Tommy. Perhaps it was because the age difference wasn't as large, so they were thick as thieves once they'd reached their teenage years and got past the stage of squabbling over toys. Whatever the reason, within the Rizzoli family, they were each other's confidants, so nobody was particularly surprised when Frankie followed in Jane's footsteps by joining the police department. Tommy, on the other hand, seemed to prefer the wrong side of the law, which only deepened the schism between the two elder siblings and their younger brother. They weren't estranged by any means, but when the chips were down, Frankie went to Jane and vice versa - all of which explained why, when the Rizzoli children gathered at Maura's house for Sunday dinner cooked by their mother, it was Frankie whom Jane chose to pull aside when Angela's latest inquiry about boyfriends or the lack thereof made something snap inside her.
Frankie followed her out to Maura's lush, manicured garden without protest, and although there were questions in his eyes, he knew better than to push.
"Frankie, can I..." Jane trailed off, painfully aware of the rawness in her voice. The bad thing about Frankie not being forward enough to question her was that she had to broach the subject herself. "You wanna go sit on the porch swing?"
"...Sure," Frankie said slowly, evenly - too evenly, like he was trying to cover his suspicion.
The swing - a transplant from the house their parents had shared prior to the dissolution of their marriage - was old and rickety, and its metal frame had been rusting at the edges for years, something their mother tried to belie with the cheerful, flowery cushions she placed on it every summer. Jane had no idea why her mother insisted on bringing it along when she moved into Maura's guest house, but Maura was too polite to protest and thus, there it sat. She perched gingerly on the edge of it, half expecting it to collapse under her weight, but it held.
Frankie, who seemed to have no such qualms, sat down heavily. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs, clasping his hands together.
"So, what's up, Janie?"
The forced casualness of the inquiry did little to offset the flicker of worry in his eyes.
"You know how I... never really was good with guys?"
Frankie blinked. "That wasn't where I was expecting this conversation to go, but, OK. Uh, I guess?"
"Did that ever, um." She was being hesitant, and she hated herself for it. She disliked showing people her vulnerability, the cracks in her armor, and the feeling that she was exposing too much of herself made her feel irritated. "Did you ever wonder about that?" she asked brusquely, trying to pull herself together.
"Wonder?" Frankie repeated, looking blank. "Like about why that was?"
"Yeah."
"Uh... because they were either douchebags or you were workin' too hard to really make a go of things? I mean, you're my sister. I don't really think about that stuff."
"Frankie..." The words were right there on the tip of her tongue, and she could feel her throat closing in panic.
Her brother looked outright alarmed now, his dark eyes bright with worry. "Jesus, Janie, what is it?"
She was really regretting not writing this down beforehand.
"Y'know those stereotypes about how all female cops date other women?"
"...Yeah?"
Frankie was clearly waiting for her to continue, but she couldn't. She wasn't going to spell it out for him. It had taken everything in her to verbalize that sentence without her voice quavering, and she could feel her heart hammering against her ribcage as she waited for him to make the connection.
"Wait, are...?"
She felt her lips start to quiver and clamped her mouth shut.
"Wait, for real? You think you're...?"
"I'm not saying that, I'm just saying it's something I've been...." She trailed off, trying to back herself down from sounding so defensive. She knew there was an edge in her voice, but the question of identifying herself like that was something she was way not prepared to do. "I'm not saying that," she repeated definitively.
"OK..." Frankie echoed, sounding confused. "I'll be honest here, Janie, I have no idea what you're trying to tell me right now if you're not coming out of the -"
"There's nothing to come out of," Jane interrupted, skirting the word she'd quickly cut him off from saying. "I'm just telling you what I've been feeling, all right? That's all this is. I just thought I needed to talk it out with someone, but now I'm thinking that wasn't such a good idea."
"So you're not, like... dating anyone?" Frankie asked tentatively, no doubt wondering if he was going to get his head bitten off.
"No," Jane told him flatly. "Nothing like that."
"Does Ma know?"
"Yeah, she knows and she cooked us all Sunday dinner like the bottom didn't just fall out of her life," Jane retorted sarcastically. "Of course she doesn't know."
"Hey, OK." Frankie raised a hand placatingly. "I don't care, by the way. It's just... crazy."
Jane slowly exhaled through her nose, trying to get her heart to stop racing.
"Does Maura know?"
She froze. "Why?"
"...Because you guys are close?" Frankie ventured, with a look on his face like he was trying to figure out where he went wrong in making the inquiry.
"No," she said with finality, standing up from the porch swing.
"Hey." Frankie stood too, and Jane detected a softer note in his voice. "You told me before you told her?" he asked, sounding almost touched.
"I'm never going to tell her."
"But -" he protested, his voice getting louder with incredulity.
"Frankie," Jane hissed, intensely aware that her mother and Maura were just beyond the door to the kitchen. "I'm not telling anyone else, OK? Not Ma, not Maura, nobody. This isn't, like, the beginning of a thing. This is the thing. I just needed -" She cut herself off, mentally chastising herself for her wording. "I just wanted someone else to know."
Frankie sat back down on the porch swing with a stunned look on his face. She hovered by him for a few moments, feeling there was more to discuss but unsure what it was and who should be the one to say it. Finally, she turned toward the back door, pulled it open and resolutely stepped into the house, leaving some of the weight of her secret behind.
--
When Jane couldn't sleep, she vacuumed. The guy who used to live below her always hated it, would bang on his ceiling with a broom handle until she stopped, but her new neighbor, Marissa, was more tolerant - something Jane found herself feeling immensely grateful for every time she caught a tough case. Marissa was in law school, up all hours and studying constantly, but that night, Jane feared that even she might reach her breaking point as the clock on the living room wall struck twelve and the vacuuming continued. As Jane pushed the machine back and forth for the umpteenth time, she wondered whether her relentless cleaning was a ploy to get Marissa to come up and knock on the door as she sometimes had before, providing an excuse to talk things out with someone who might be more understanding. Not that Frankie hadn't been, exactly, but the whole exchange had left Jane feeling unfulfilled somehow, and she wasn't sure what to do about it. She wondered if getting another woman's perspective would be different, if talking to someone less close to her wouldn't be as nerve-wracking, but the knock at her door never came, so she never got to find out.
--
The next morning, Jane was at work before seven, relieved to be free of a night filled with bad dreams and the image of Maura's face rendered in blood on her own apartment wall. By nine, she was nursing her third cup of coffee and staring ferociously at the crime scene photos spread across her desk, hoping she might find something she missed if she could only glare hard enough. Her focus was so intense that it took a few moments before she became aware of a presence in front of her.
"Frankie, what's up?" she asked, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear and crossing her fingers for some good news about the case.
"I know why you didn't tell Maura."
Jane jumped up from her desk as if she'd been electrocuted, then marched Frankie out of the room and into the deserted corridor.
"What were you thinking, announcing that in front of people?!" she hissed.
Frankie's eyes were huge. "Jesus, Janie, it's not like I was specific. I didn't think you were gonna react like that."
Jane frowned at him as she tried to get her hammering heart under control after the unexpected spike of adrenaline. "I don't want you talking about that kind of stuff on the job, OK? Cops never mind their own business. You should know that."
He rolled his eyes. "Fine. So, do you wanna know what I figured out?"
"No," Jane said grumpily, but she knew Frankie didn't believe her.
Frankie grinned. "You didn't tell Maura because you have feelings for her!" he announced triumphantly.
Jane stared at him wordlessly.
"Am I right?" Frankie looked disappointed by her underwhelming reaction. "I'm totally right! ...Right?"
"Wrong," Jane said abruptly, doing her best to ignore the searching look on Frankie's face as he attempted to gauge whether she was telling the truth. "Now, get your ass back to working on this case so we can show up those fibbies, OK?"
"Aw, man, for real?" Frankie had gone from mere disappointment to seeming positively bummed. "You guys would be good together. Are you sure you never -"
"Frankie."
"OK."
--
Jane may have been able to throw Frankie off the scent, but distracting herself was a whole different story. She immersed herself in the case with new vigor, rationalizing that as soon as they collared the guy and the BAU went back to Quantico, everything would return to normal. In the meantime, however, she was struggling. She never realized how much time she spent with Maura until she started looking at her colleague in a new light. It was painfully teenage of her, but her continued close proximity to the M.E. was making the butterflies in her stomach go crazy, and she had no idea what to do about it.
The fact that Reid was around made things about a hundred times worse - Spencer, as Maura called him, which didn't make any damn sense to Jane because even his BAU colleagues called him by his surname, as far as she could tell. At least he had the sense to skitter away whenever Jane approached, so she never had to speak with him directly, but Maura was a different story. Since Jane had realized the depth of her feelings, talking to Maura had become excruciating, to the point where she could barely look the other woman in the eye. She caught Maura watching her curiously a couple of times and did her best to laugh things off and carry on as usual, but she knew the dam would break eventually and was terrified about what that would mean for her friendship with the other woman. Even if Maura weren't repulsed or at least unnerved by the idea of her closest friend harboring feelings for her that were more than platonic, the dynamic between them was bound to change, and the thought of that made Jane want to cry.
--
It all came to a head when Maura touched her arm. It was an odd breaking point, considering Maura had done the same thing countless times before, had hugged Jane tightly, had opened her home to Jane in the middle of the night and lain by her side in bed on several occasions, but it was a simple, feather-light touch on Jane's arm that caused something inside the detective to snap. She wasn't loud about it, wasn't dramatic or expressive, just very swiftly, very suddenly stood up and walked out of the squad room, mid-conversation.
She didn't dare look back as she left, but she could picture the scene she was leaving behind - or, more specifically, the confused, hurt expression on Maura's face. Sometimes, Maura wasn't the best with social cues, and the M.E. was no doubt replaying the words and actions that had preceded Jane's exit, trying to identify what she'd done wrong when in fact, the problem was all Jane's.
Jane thought she heard a snatch of Frost's voice, then Frankie's, and then hurried footsteps too heavy to be Maura's. Not in the mood to wait for the elevator, she elected to take the stairs two at a time, already thinking of ways to explain her behavior that didn't involve the words My best friend touched me and it felt like my skin was on fire.
She was one-and-a-half floors down when she heard the metal door clang shut from above her and nearly jumped out of said skin.
"Jesus, Frankie."
Her brother was peering over the railing, and she was simultaneously annoyed by his presence and relieved he wasn't someone else. She waited for him to catch up to her, then resumed her descent, albeit at a slower pace.
"Maura wanted to come after you, so I told her I'd take care of it. You OK, Janie? What was all that about?"
She exhaled, trying not to sound irritated. "Nothing. Let it go."
"Didn't look like nothing."
There was a dark smudge on the sign marking the fifth floor, and it had always annoyed the hell out of Jane. She glowered at it as they passed.
"Well, things aren't always what they seem, all right?"
Frankie frowned. "Wait, what are we talkin' about here? Is this related to what you told me at Sunday dinner?"
"No," Jane responded flatly, fighting to keep her inflection even.
"Is it about you and Maura?"
"Frankie."
She hadn't heard anyone come after them, and someone able to open and close one of the massive doors without causing a racket would be the friggin' Door Whisperer, but they couldn't risk talking about this at work. Not again.
"It's fuckin' Reid," she said quietly, attempting to minimize the way her voice echoed off the concrete walls. "I was fine before he got here and started..." She trailed off, then threw up her hands. "Mooning over her. I had it under control."
"Had what under control?"
She gave him a look that clearly communicated, Don't make me spell it out.
Frankie whistled under his breath. "I knew I wasn't off-base before. Maura has no idea how you feel?"
"I hope not." She sighed. "I just have to keep it together until we solve this case and the BAU goes back to Quantico."
"You can really put those feelings away like that?"
"I have before," she answered with a shrug. "I just need Dr. Dorky to go away and stop pissing me off."
"God, Janie."
"What?"
"I just... I think it's sad. There's no chance she feels the same way?"
Jane stared at him as if he were crazy.
"...Gonna take that as a no." Frankie stopped by the door to the ground floor exit. "This is where I get off, but you should go down and talk to her. I'm sure she'll be back soon, if she isn't already. You know her, Jane. She's gonna think she did something wrong."
Jane bit her lip and internally chastised herself for being a horrible person. "I know. Hey..."
She wanted to thank her brother, maybe hug him or something, but she settled for a light punch to the bicep and hoped he got the message.
"No problem," he said, tugging open the enormous door, and really, did they need to be so big? This was the BPD, not a prison. She heard the screech of the metal reverberate around the walls. "Seriously, good luck with Maura." He grinned. "I'd tell you to confess your feelings so the two of you can go have hot make-up sex, but then you'd punch me in the face."
Jane rolled her eyes and managed to get in a "Shut up, Frankie" just before the door swung shut. With a deep sigh, she moved further down the stairway, and as she rounded the last corner, she saw Maura standing in the doorway below. The noise from before hadn't been an echo, after all.
--
Jane attempted to frantically replay the conversation with her brother in her mind, getting no further back than Frankie's parting sentence before she realized how screwed she truly was. There was no way to pass this off as a conversation about someone else, and besides, Maura was too smart to buy any kind of alternative explanation she managed to come up with. She settled for saying Maura's name and trying not to sound breathless with panic, and Maura looked wordlessly back at her with an expression on her face that Jane had never seen before.
"Sorry for storming outta there like that," Jane added lamely, desperate to fill the silence. She could feel herself already slipping into denial over the fact that the entire conversation with Frankie had even happened, let alone that Maura had heard it. All she could hope for at this point was that Maura would go along with her delusion. "I just remembered I needed to go talk to Sam at the front desk, and I accidentally, uh, went one floor too far. But I was gonna come talk to you too, because I realized it was rude to hightail it outta there like that, and how did you get down here so fast, anyway?"
"I took the elevator," Maura said slowly, "as you would have done if you were truly going to talk to Sam."
"It was -" Jane hesitated, preventing herself from becoming ensnared in a lie. It obviously hadn't been out of order, as Maura had ridden down in it immediately after she'd stormed out of Homicide. In fact, Jane hadn't even glanced at it as she'd hurried to the stairs, in no mood for someone to catch up to her while she was waiting for the elevator doors to open. "I wasn't thinking straight."
Maura folded her arms. "In light of the conversational snippet I overheard between you and Frankie, I'm inclined to believe at least that part is true."
Jane stared. "Did you just make a joke?"
"Straight is still considered an informal term for being heterosexual, correct?" Maura asked, frowning.
"...Oh my God, you made a joke about - oh my God."
Jane felt her balance sway and sat down on one of the cold, hard concrete steps that separated her from Maura.
"Jane?"
Her head was in her hands now, and Maura sounded alarmed.
"Whatever you think you heard, Maura, forget it, OK?" she pleaded, hoping her voice didn't sound too muffled. "I know how it must've sounded, but, trust me, you're wrong."
She heard Maura's heels click against the concrete, but it was still a surprise to feel the medical examiner's small, warm hand cover one of her own.
"Come sit in my office, Jane," Maura said kindly. "I know you hate my designer chairs, but they're surely preferable to these steps."
She had a point. Jane acquiesced.
--
The chairs were as uncomfortable as Jane remembered, but she was far too preoccupied by the staccato heartbeats pounding within her chest to really notice or care. Maura allowed the two of them to sit in silence for a few moments before gently beginning, "Do you recall that I am an expert in body language?"
"Uh-huh."
Maura had contributed kinesic analyses during several BPD investigations, and Jane frowned as she realized her colleague's background in the study probably gave her something else to bond over with Reid.
"Did you really think I wouldn't have picked up on your recent change in behavior and engaged in conjecture about what it meant?"
"...You knew?" Jane asked stupidly after a beat.
"I not only knew, but I also shared your feelings."
You could've knocked Jane over with a feather. She opened her mouth, closed it again, got angry with Maura when she realized the other woman was probably kidding, then turned that anger on herself for thinking Maura would ever make fun of her like that. It was only after that cavalcade of emotions that something else occurred to her.
"Wait, shared?"
"Share," Maura corrected. "I didn't enact the appropriate tense shift."
Her expression was sincere and earnest, betraying no trace of mirth, but Jane still couldn't process that she was being serious.
"Are you kidding me right now? You share my - for real?"
With a shy grin, Maura nodded.
"And you knew how I - and you - why didn't you tell me?!" Jane spluttered.
"I didn't want to impede the effortless camaraderie that typically characterizes our interpersonal professional relations," Maura responded calmly.
Jane blinked. "You didn't want to fuck things up because we work together," she translated.
"If you must put it so crassly."
"I must." Jane leaned back in her chair. "Jesus, Maura, I thought this was - I thought it was just me."
"It isn't," Maura confirmed succinctly.
"But... Reid?"
"Spencer is a quite brilliant young man, and although I'll admit I was quite taken with him at first, he and I lack a certain chemistry."
"And we don't," Jane said in a tone that was midway between asking a question and stating a fact.
Maura's lips quirked into a smile. "We have it in spades, Detective."
Jane was silent for a few seconds. She felt there were appropriate things to do or say in these situations, but between the off-balance sensation of being completely out of her element, the stress of unexpectedly baring her soul, and the surprise of finding out Maura felt the same way, she was at a loss as to what these were.
"Should I, like, ask you out on a date now?" she queried finally.
Maura grinned as if she'd said something funny. "If you really want to, but I believe our relationship has evolved sufficiently beyond that stage by now. You should feel quite comfortable in advancing straight to the point of trying to kiss me, without fear of seeming too forward."
"Uh..." Jane blinked again, barely believing what she was hearing. Haltingly, she stood up and stepped forward, and Maura stood also, abandoning her perch on the edge of her desk and smoothing the back of her dress. Feeling silly and somehow sheepish, Jane took the other woman's hand, buoyed by the warmth she saw in Maura's eyes.
As Maura waited expectantly, Jane was half ready for Frankie to jump out and yell "CUT!" before submitting the footage to America's Funniest Home Videos. When that didn't happen, she briefly closed her eyes, took a deep breath, said "OK," and pressed her lips to Maura's.
--
Maura's lips tasted faintly of the strawberry Chapstick she used to offset the effects of the cool temperatures in the morgue, and the familiarity put Jane at ease, instantly calming her. After all, it was Maura she was kissing - same old Maura, just her friend, the M.E. - except now, Maura's tongue was nudging at the seam of her mouth, hinting for access in a decidedly un-friend-like capacity, and Jane was hit by a heady rush of reality. Once she parted her lips, she knew there would be no turning back from this.
She did it anyway.
--
They were just getting to the stage where Jane, who had initially been reluctant to run her fingers through Maura's hair, was beginning to muss it to a dangerous degree when, in an impossible moment of cliché, Jane's cellphone began to ring. She ignored it at first - truth be told, it took a few seconds for the sound to break through her kiss-induced daze in the first place - and it was Maura who eventually pulled away and shook her back to her senses.
"You should answer that," Maura told her a little breathlessly, face flushed, hair uncoiffed, and all Jane could do was stare at her, her face and her eyes and her lips, the same lips she'd just been kissing. Everything felt like a dream too complex to process. "Jane, really, it might be important."
"Huh? Oh, right." Jane put her phone to her ear. "Rizzoli."
"We got something." Frost didn't bother to say hello, nor make reference to her earlier abrupt exit. "You'd better get up here."
"I'm coming," Jane said tersely, matching his tone.
"Was that Frost?" Maura asked after she hung up. It was a routine inquiry that sounded completely normal, to the point where Jane wondered whether she'd imagined what had happened between them a minute before. "Jane?"
"Maura, I..." Jane didn't know where to begin. Was this glorious breach of reality a one-time thing, the start of something, the end of something else, or somehow all of the above? The open-endedness of the whole situation thrilled and terrified her. What would Frost say when he found out, or Korsak, or her mother, oh, God, and would it be all right to ask if Maura minded keeping it quiet, at least for a while, if it was even enough of a thing to merit eventually telling other people about at all?
"I daresay we'll be able to do that again sometime soon, if that's what you're trying to inquire," Maura said whimsically, derailing Jane's panicked train of thought. Jane found her attitude immensely endearing.
"I, uh. I kinda guess it was." Jane fidgeted like a schoolgirl for a second, feeling her cheeks heat up. "Can we keep all this, like, off the radar for now? Or for, you know, a while. Or whatever?"
Maura tilted her head. "Of course, Jane. The only person in whom I confide regarding romantic dalliances is you, anyway." She paused. "Did you need to go upstairs for something?"
"Shit." Jane ran to the door, turned around, grinned happily at Maura - who beamed back and made a shooing motion with her hands - then made a mad dash for the elevator.
--
Jane got to the briefing room just in time, taking a seat toward the back in order to minimize disturbance. Morgan glanced in her direction and did a double take, looking at her carefully for a few seconds before returning his attention to the front of the room, where Hotchner was about to speak. Morgan's behavior unsettled her - she knew he profiled people for a living, but wondered if he could truly tell what had just happened with her best friend simply by looking at her.
"We just got word from the Chicago office that the murderer of Nicole Butcher is in custody," the unit chief announced without fanfare, and Jane forced herself to pay attention. "Wesley Durling, 31, is married with a baby on the way, and is a frustrated artist who paints houses to pay the bills. As far as we've been able to discern, he met Butcher while painting her parents' house six months ago, and the two embarked on an affair shortly after."
Prentiss stepped forward, picking up where Hotchner left off in that scripted-for-TV way Jane hated.
"The impending birth of his child and the realization that he would most likely never attain his goal of becoming a world-renowned artist acted as twin stressors, and Butcher became his release," she told the room. "When Butcher announced she was moving to Boston and gave back the necklace he bought her, this represented the loss of his outlet - his freedom, if you will. He did everything he could think of to change her mind, but nothing worked. By now, his love for her had turned to hate, so he followed her to Boston and waited for his chance to take revenge."
"Our tech analyst, Penelope Garcia, was able to isolate his face on the security footage from the mall, then used facial recognition software to discern his identity," Morgan continued, and Jane couldn't help but smile at the fact that he was the one to give the BAU's absent colleague credit where it was due. "It's definitely the guy. Chicago PD found an airline ticket stub and a map of Boston with the victim's street circled in red."
"Nice," Frost whispered from his seat in front of Jane.
"Needless to say," Hotchner concluded dryly, "he was taken into custody immediately."
Cavanaugh stepped forward to shake Hotchner's hand, bringing an air of finality to the proceedings. "On behalf of all at the BPD, I'd like to thank you and your team for your assistance in this case."
He turned to the room at large and began clapping magnanimously. Frost burst into enthusiastic applause, and Jane rolled her eyes at the back of his head but nevertheless joined him, albeit in a more subdued fashion. Hotchner looked tickled, and Jane got the sense that he was used to dealing with a lot more resistance when he and his team swooped in from nowhere to assist municipal investigators. Morgan grinned like a Cheshire cat at all the positive attention, while Prentiss remained as impassive as ever, and Reid seemed outright embarrassed.
Once the claps petered out, Hotchner cleared his throat. "In the interests of not overstaying our welcome..." (Jane thought she heard Korsak snort derisively from somewhere near her) "my team and I will be heading back to Quantico as soon as Lieutenant Cavanaugh and I have dotted all our I's and crossed our T's, and the team has cleared out the temporary command post you so kindly assigned to us. Thank you all for your cooperation and hospitality."
As the others shuffled out, Jane caught up with Morgan. "You want some help moving stuff? I used to spend a lotta time in that office you've been using - it'll be easy for me to figure out where to put everything back."
"Wow, you're this excited to see us go, huh?" Morgan asked, but there was a lightness to his tone that Jane took to mean he was teasing. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.
--
"Well, that's the last of it." Jane piled the final box outside the door of the temporarily repurposed office that had served as the BAU's base of operations.
Morgan glanced down at his phone. "Perfect timing. We're heading to the airport in five, wheels up at the top of the hour, so I gotta get going."
"Ugh," Jane said in mock disgust. "I hate that you guys have a jet."
"Perks of bein' in the BAU, baby," Morgan said with a chuckle, heaving his bag onto his shoulder. God, he was an asshole, but as Jane walked him to the elevator, she admitted to herself that she had kinda grown to like him. "Look, I know you weren't thrilled when we showed up, but thanks for playin' ball."
Jane shrugged. "Thanks for coordinating stuff with Chicago. Multi-jurisdictional shit can get messy."
As the elevator cheerfully chimed its arrival, Morgan rolled his eyes. "Tell me about it. And, hey..." He waited until they'd both boarded and the doors slid closed. "Congrats on finally figuring stuff out with Dr. Isles."
He was trained to analyze human behavior, so she shouldn't have been surprised that he'd picked up on what was going on between herself and Maura. The way Jane saw it, she had two courses of action here - deny, deny, deny, or own it and be proud of it. In this instance, she opted for the latter.
"Thanks, Morgan," she said simply.
"Call me Derek." His eyes were twinkling, and she couldn't help but grin as the doors parted at the ground floor and they both disembarked. The guy was shameless. To him, flirting with women came as easily as breathing. She saw the other members of the BAU waiting by the front entrance and hung back, because she had one last thing to say.
"Derek..." She lowered her voice to be sure that the rest of his team wouldn't hear her. "Good luck with Garcia, OK?"
Any changes in his expression were imperceptible to Jane - as she suspected they would have been to anyone who wasn't a trained profiler - but she saw a flash of something in his eyes that confirmed the undercurrent she'd picked up on earlier in the case. She expected him to shrug her off with a flippant remark, but he surprised her by offering a short, serious nod that bore no trace of his trademark lighthearted attitude.
"Thanks, Rizzoli," he said sincerely.
She smiled. "Call me Jane."
---<---<---@