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In the fall, we circle through the leaves, and talk about the little ones –
and we smile, and never say too much, the moment always vanishing.
— Vienna Teng, Antebellum
The word that Jane thinks about Maura the most is brilliant.
It’s also the one she says the most, when pressed, when speaking to someone she doesn’t know all that well – but sometimes when talking to her mom, too, because Jane might be great at talking to Maura, but she hardly ever talks about her.
“I see her every day, ma, you think I’d choose to see her outside work if she wasn’t great?” Jane had said once. Angela reacted as if she’d been insulted.
“She’s brilliant, Jane,” her mother scolded, wiping up a mess on the countertop, and Jane bristled at being corrected and even more at the idea she might have undersold her best friend. So she changed what she said the next time someone asked.
When others hear “Brilliant”, they think she’s saying Maura’s clever, inspiring, talented, handles a difficult job well. That’s all true, of course, but what really springs into Jane’s mind is the technical version of the term.
Maura is brilliant, each facet of her sparkling as it catches the light, every little bit precisely shaped to reflect the light of a world full of people as vibrant as lumps of coal. Flawless.
That’s why she stands out. That’s why she is, sometimes, so alone.
But that’s also why she’s better than everyone else, and why Jane is never, ever tired of her.
“You’re a diamond,” Jane says one day, when Maura’s elbow-deep in a dead guy’s entrails and searching for the loot their suspect is claiming this kid swallowed.
“What?” Maura’s doing her ‘I’m so sorry, body parts take up more of my brain than social engagements’ face, and even that, Jane thinks, is brilliant.
“You. You’re here, doing this, on a Friday night, because I asked you to, because I had a hunch. You’re a great medical examiner, Maura, but you’re an even better friend.”
Maura looks deeply touched – a phrase Jane wishes her internal monologue hadn’t supplied, since Maura’s currently deeply touching the intestine of someone who had once been a living person. “People say I’m crazy,” she says, but when she smiles, it lights up the room like a chandelier.
For the rest of the case Jane has Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes running through her head: People say she’s crazy, she’s got diamonds on the soles of her shoes, she sings as she makes coffee. Well, that’s one way to lose these walking blues...
In the car, at her desk, it twists around and around like the curls falling in front of her face.
I could say oooh, as if everybody knows what I’m talking about, and every time she catches herself singing it, the thought of it makes her warm all the way down to her toes.
*
The word that springs to mind when Maura thinks of Jane is ferocious.
She doesn’t say it aloud – no, if she’s asked about her best friend, she says brave, clever, dedicated, these words that mean so many things but do not touch on love.
Devoted is more accurate than dedicated. Jane is tough as old boots, born a fighter, but she cares so damn much about everyone she lets past the walls of her inner fortress. If Jane Rizzoli cares about you, you’ve done something to deserve it.
If she likes you as well, that’s a very rare thing indeed.
Brave, well, Jane’s brave, sure, soldiers going into battle are brave, but Jane doesn’t think she deserves it because she’s just doing her job. But she does it anyway, every day, and she does it better than almost anyone else. And of course Jane is clever.
She fought her way up with brains and brawn and has always been blind to her beauty.
“You’re a lioness,” Maura says, one night, when they’re drunk, because who can’t get drunk with her best friend at the end of a long, long case when another bad guy is behind bars?
“What?” Jane laughs, but Maura’s come a little unfocused and doesn’t want to go into it further. “You saying I need a haircut?”
“You heard me,” she murmurs, and she curls up on the couch and doesn’t fall asleep, she wouldn’t do that, she’d get up and go to bed and probably do some yoga stretches first to make sure her muscles are properly relaxed, to facilitate rest.
She definitely doesn’t wait until Jane’s sprawled back with her head tipped up to the ceiling, breathing like a newborn, and scoot a little closer, curl her arm around a cushion and feel secretly pleased that her fingertips are just teasing the ends of Jane’s curls.
She barely notices when Jane’s arm comes down from the sofa back and a warm hand runs along her shoulder, along her side. She’s already mostly asleep.
“Maura?” she hears Jane ask as she falls even further. She closes her eyes against Jane’s quiet grumbling that she’s gonna have to stay on the sofa all night now, and she smiles because they both know perfectly well that Jane does not, in fact, have to stay on the sofa at all. And neither does she.
But they’re both going to, just like they always do.
And the moment will slip away again, back into the rest of their lives, flicking its tail and disappearing into the swirling waters.
*
Every day, Maura wonders if she should say something.
Every day, Jane wonders if she should, just once, say “C’mon, not the sofa, Maura,” and see what happens next.
The fragile, quiet moments between them always seem to tremble on the edge of something else, never quite tipping over.
Yeah, everybody knows what I’m talking about – everybody would know exactly what I’m talking about.
It’s not diamonds, or lionesses, or any metaphor for anything other than a love that exists in the spaces between family, and identity, and work, and friendship.
*
Maura wakes on the sofa in the pre-dawn darkness to find herself curled against Jane’s side, and that Jane tucked a blanket over her in the night.
It’s barely light in the room, but somehow Maura knows that Jane isn’t sleeping. She can feel Jane’s stillness and knows it’s the conscious restraint of someone restless trying not to move so that they don’t disturb the person next to them.
Every single other person that Jane has ever slept next to has complained about her sharp elbows and relentless nighttime flailing.
“Jane?”
“Ssh, Maur.” Jane runs a hand down Maura’s side. “Go back to sleep.”
Before she’s really awake, before she’s really worked out what’s right or wrong or yes or no, Maura leans up and runs her fingers through Jane’s hair. “You’re so beautiful.”
Jane is still under her fingertips, staring at her with those dark, dark eyes. “Maur,” she says, and it’s barely a breath in. “Maura.”
And Maura knows her moment has arrived. “We shouldn’t be sleeping on the sofa,” she says, and she slides away from Jane, climbing to her feet while hanging on to Jane’s forearm, pulling her up.
It’s just bright enough for Maura to see the tangle of conflicted expressions that flicker across Jane’s face as she stands. “You go to bed if you want to.”
Maura knew Jane wouldn’t make this easy, but at this hour, Maura has no time for the Rizzoli self-denial and all that obscure Catholic guilt. “I want you to come with me.”
She begins to turn away, pulling Jane gently away from the sofa, when Jane does that thing where everything about her tenses up. “Maura…”
Maura doesn’t bother saying anything else. She’s the one person in all the world who’s out-stared Jane Rizzoli more than once, and she is seizing the moment.
“I should let you sleep in peace,” Jane protests at the foot of the stairs. “C’mon, you know you’ll be more comfortable if I stay down here.”
But she moves with Maura anyway, up to the first floor.
“I’ll just flail around and you’ll be cranky that you haven’t had enough REM sleep,” Jane tries as they reach the bedroom door.
Maura doesn’t even bother looking at her. If Jane didn’t want to be here, she wouldn’t be here. She’s never been pushed into doing something she doesn’t want to do in her entire life.
Ergo, Jane is in denial. And Maura has had enough of denial. She wants snuggles.
“In,” Maura says, steering Jane toward the bed.
“Maura,” Jane tries again, the puppy eyes. “You’ll be annoyed at me in the morning.”
“I’ll be annoyed at you if you don’t get in.” Because Maura’s decided how she’s going to play this one now: she climbs in next to Jane, who makes a great show of plumping the pillows and flapping around until she’s comfortable.
Maura waits.
“Happy now?” Jane asks, as soon as silence has finally fallen.
Maura knew that was coming.
“No, actually,” she says, and before Jane can protest, she cuddles right up and wraps her arms around Jane’s waist. “Now I’m happy.”
“Hey, koala bear, get off,” Jane protests.
“Koalas aren’t bears, actually,” Maura corrects her. “That’s a common misconception – the koala is actually a marsupial, a kind of mammal indigenous to Australia which carries its young in a pouch.”
“Yes, well done, it’s 4am and you’re still completely brilliant,” Jane complains. “Can I have my arms back?”
But when Maura frees Jane’s arms, one sneaks down around her. Maura chooses not to comment.
“This is better,” she says, and makes a point of sighing happily, partly because it will annoy Jane a little bit, but mostly because, Maura knows, it’ll secretly please her a lot more.
“Yeah,” she hears Jane say, very quietly. “Yeah. It is.”
And there’s the moment, and it hasn’t vanished. It’s slipped into the space between them and now it’s not just Jane that’s keeping Maura warm.
“I knew it wasn’t a placental mammal.” Jane sounds like she’s sulking, but she shifts so that her cheek is resting on the top of Maura’s head.
Maura smothers a laugh. “I finally got you to listen to me!”
“Go to sleep, marsupial Maura.”
And it’s not a first kiss, or a date, or a promise that it’ll all end in white dresses and fireworks and with Jane finally giving up, doing the pragmatic thing, and moving in to the townhouse.
But tonight – well, this morning – Maura is going to sleep knowing that she caught the moment, this time. And a future that might just have a little of all those things has finally edged closer to being real.