DISCLAIMER: All things Rizzoli and Isles belong to Tess Gerritsen and... actually I still don't know who else. Not me though, in case anyone thought they might. Set during episode 2:12, "He ain't heavy, he's my brother", and borrows some dialogue from there.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Like everything else I've written this story is also available at my own fic site, http://ryufic.blogspot.se/
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
FEEDBACK: To rosmari.karlssonfaltin[at]telia.com
Communication
By Carola "Ryûchan" Eriksson
Maura: Unlike electrons, human beings can't be in two places at once. Physical laws of quantum mechanics.
Jane: I kind of love that you know that.
It started with electrons, amazingly enough.
As hurt, angry and torn as Jane felt, hearing Maura go into googlemouth mode just melted something inside. Honestly, she didn't want to be angry with her best friend in the first place, but she felt so utterly betrayed when Frost had told her what was going on.
She shouldn't have had to hear it from him.
But as her inner 'mother bear' - a trait inherited directly from her mother - calmed just enough to allow her to see reason, she knew that Maura had been backed into a corner and not given the chance to think herself out of it. Also, sometimes Jane forgot just how socially inept her best friend was. She, like her family, Frost and Korsak, saw her awkwardness as an endearing quirk and didn't always remember what lay behind it.
Maura wouldn't know what to do in a situation like this. Maura didn't have an innate understanding of the best friend code, or how it allowed you to work around rules in certain situations. Maura had not had a best friend before Jane.
So, electrons. It tugged at Jane's heart, and while not entirely meaning to, she had let something slip.
"I kind of love how you know that."
Maura's response had been so fragile, so wounded yet hopeful, that Jane had wanted more than anything else to simply round that table and take Maura into her arms. Her heart had ached so badly to make all these bad things go away, to be alright with Maura again.
To be the one that protected this fragile part of Maura again.
It wasn't that easy though. Her own pain would not let her, nor would that old, ingrained family loyalty. This was about her brother. Jane had an obligation there which she couldn't ignore even if she had wanted to.
A reluctant joke, a mere shade of their usual banter and completely bereft of the sarcasm Jane would normally use, but it would have to do. She hoped that even now, even like this, Maura would know her well enough, deeply enough, to know the words Jane could not say.
Something shifted, something small but important.
Jane's mind shifted gears, and suddenly they had hope, something to grasp at to prove Tommy's innocence - if Maura would work with her. Despite the unlikely odds, Maura agreed, and before Jane fully realized it, she had trusted Maura again.
Trusted her like no-one else, not Frost, not Korsak, no-one. Trusted her with family.
"I kind of love that you can do that."
A small statement, gingerly spoken and rather out of context as Jane doubted Maura really admired her ability to walk the streets of Boston if she needed to. It mirrored Jane's own statement earlier, and meant the same thing... it came down to love.
"Well..." She said awkwardly, while trying hard to keep her eyes from tearing up. "Then I hate you a little less."
What it meant was, I'm sorry, I love you, please let me make this right. Please help me make this right.
They remained staring, vulnerable and longing, at one another for a moment, wavering as the pull towards each other was too strong to resist.
Jane could never recall moving, but even so she and Maura met halfway as they should.
The kissing was deep and needy, not in the sense of wanting to tear the clothes off the other, but in how it carried the desperate plea for absolution. I'm sorry, please forgive me, please take me back. Jane had Maura crushed against her, both arms wrapped so tight that the lab coat should have been permanently imprinted with their shape. I love you, I'm lost without you, please stay with me. Maura's hands locked deep into Jane's hair, holding Jane down towards her with the same kind of fierce strength.
As the kissing continued and deepened, it gradually changed into the other kind of needy. Maura Isles moaned in the back of her throat.
Time froze.
Jane's eyes snapped open. Staring, cross-eyed and unfocused, at the face closer than she had ever thought it would be, it took a moment to catch on to what had happened. Maura stared right back.
With a tiny noise that might be considered a whimper, Jane realized that her tongue was still inside Maura's mouth.
Blushing badly she extracted herself and moved back, the furthest she could considering her arms would not release the other woman, which was barely half a step. Emotions stormed behind Maura's eyes, fittingly matching what Jane felt going on inside of herself at the moment. She could feel her lips move as she tried to find the words, any words at all, to say.
A noise from somewhere outside the morgue filtered through their thoughts and brought them both back to their surroundings.
"I, I..." Jane stammered a bit, still blushing, as she let go of Maura and stepped back for real this time. "I mean, I, um..." With a blink of near-black eyes the cop in Jane came back into focus, a little shocked at herself for forgetting what she was doing. Tommy.
Jane's head snapped up to give Maura a wide-eyed look. "We still have two bank robbers out there! I, I have to go."
She spun towards the exit but stopped with her hand on the door's handle, looking back at Maura. She wanted desperately to say something, but the words did not come and they didn't have the time.
Her eyes met Maura's and, after a moment, found understanding there. A slight nod cemented the unspoken agreement of 'later', and then Jane was gone.
Maura closed her eyes and tried to control her breathing. On unsteady legs she made her way over to sit down, unusually ungracefully, in the chair in front of her computer. She held one hand to her chest, over her wildly beating heart.
In the whirlwind of events that followed, Maura and Jane never had the opportunity to talk. The situation with the robbers and their hostages was solved, with an act of personal heroism on Jane's part no less, and Tommy was exonerated.
The Rizzoli family, sans the father that a small, deeply hurt and even more deeply hidden part of Jane was beginning to resent for never being present when he was needed anymore, gathered for Tommy's release and rounds of hugs and tears. Although now that everything was settled and done with Jane wanted nothing more than to go find Maura, she was obliged to follow her mother and her siblings back to Tommy's new apartment.
She was thankful to find that none of them, not even Frankie, knew of Maura's unwilling involvement in Tommy's arrest, considering it a complication they didn't need to know about. It made her feel a little ashamed to hear how Maura had in fact tried to warn Tommy directly before the FBI had showed up to arrest him, and that the other woman had struggled and protested the treatment of him as much as she was able to.
Knowing that her mother would most likely spend the night with her baby, whether intentionally or not, and thus would not need to be driven over to Maura's, Jane made her excuses to leave as soon as she could without it being too obvious. Frankie took the opportunity to do the same, and so the three Rizzoli siblings found themselves in the hallway while their mother disappeared into the bathroom to clean up after another session of tears.
Having already said her goodbyes, Jane still hugged each of her brothers one more time before she meant to go. Something stopped her, and with a little frown she turned back towards her youngest brother.
"Tommy..." She began, not quite believing that she was about to say what she was thinking of, and a part of her terrified at what the reaction would be. "I've told you before, and now I'm going to ask... please don't hit on Maura." She turned honest and open eyes on her brother, knowing her emotions would show in them. "Not Maura."
Both brothers blinked back at her, but Jane kept her gaze on Tommy's, trying to convey that she was absolutely serious about this.
The embarrassment of the youngest Rizzoli was plain to see. "She told you, huh?"
"Okay, what did you do?" Frankie demanded, arms crossing in front of him in what was his best intimidating stance. He wasn't nearly as patient with Tommy's misdeeds as Jane was, and his own strong protective streak had come to permanently include Maura ever since the woman had personally saved his life.
Sensing the will to rebel in Tommy and the impending clash of Rizzoli tempers that was building, Jane quickly muttered out in a low voice as if to keep their mother from hearing her. "He tried to kiss her."
Yeah, Tommy had tried to kiss Maura, a voice in the back of Jane's mind said, but Jane actually did.
She hid the slight blush by letting her hair fall into her face, and missed the disbelief that quickly turned into anger on Frankie's face.
She didn't miss the sound of the hard slap on the back of Tommy's head though.
"Are you stupid or something?" Frankie hissed. "After everything Maura and Jane have done for you?" He waved his hands about in agitated little gestures, another thing all Angela Rizzoli's children inherited from their mother. "You go and hit on Janie's girl?"
The eldest and youngest Rizzoli sibling matched one another for blushing and stunned, wide-eyed stares at Frankie's outburst.
On one hand Jane wanted to run. On the other she wanted to hug Frankie, for both his acceptance and his protectiveness, and she had never loved her younger brother more than she did at that moment. A more rational part of her said that she should probably explain things, clear up the misunderstanding, because Maura wasn't really Jane's girl... but her heart rebelled.
Jane didn't want to explain that it wasn't true, that Maura wasn't her girlfriend. Jane desperately wanted it to be the truth.
An awkward and silent staring contest ensued, until Frankie finally cleared his throat and clapped Jane on the shoulder.
"You go on home to Maura, Jane." Frankie smiled reassuringly and a bit disarmingly, as if he in retrospect thought he might be in trouble for outing Jane. "I'll go too in a bit, after I've had a little talk with clueless here."
Unable to take any more blushing or awkwardness, Jane, with a smile and a smack at Frankie's arm, did as suggested and fled out into the night.
As she drove down the street in the direction of her apartment her hand unconsciously found her phone. Going home to Maura? Jane couldn't help the smile that the thought brought on. That sounded just wonderful.
"I really like Tommy. A lot." A pause and a pair of eyes that did absolutely nothing to hide the emotions in them. "But I love you."
And that was the moment when nothing else mattered. Not the obviously cheap wine swindled to a naïve buyer in an expensive bottle, not the grilled cheese that was the only sad excuse of a meal Jane's protesting stomach had the hope of having that day, not the world at large and certainly not the angry and hurt emotions of before.
Maura Isles, the woman who could not outright lie, had just said she loved Jane. Loved her.
There was just enough time for Maura to unsteadily put her wineglass down on the counter before Jane had rounded it and, for the second time that day, crushed Maura to her. This time Jane buried her face in Maura's hair, not quite sobbing but still shaking and breathing harshly enough that she might as well have.
Just as the genius woman that was tenderly if still slightly awkwardly holding her began to feel doubts regarding Jane's reaction, a deep and husky voice choked out words as honest and as deeply felt as could be. Words that changed the world.
"I love you too, Maura."
The End