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Jane and Maura are yelling at each other, in the way they sometimes do, in Maura’s kitchen where they spent the night alternately endearing each other and annoying each other, which they always do.
The fight has moved into the living room, just right of the couch, with Maura physically maneuvering Jane into place with her presence, and whenever that failed, her chest, right up against Jane’s.
They’re angry and they’re out of breath and Jane isn’t even sure what they’re doing any more. She’s listened to enough of Maura’s mini-lectures to know this is sexual tension they’re stoking. She’s spent enough nights in her own bed with and without her rosary to make her own peace with breaking it.
But everything just keeps escalating and she doesn’t know why. She’s given Maura as many signals, verbal and non-verbal, she could in the past few weeks. And she’s probably bad at it because she’s never done this before, with a woman; but Maura has, so Maura should know.
But Maura knows how to push her buttons more than even her brothers or her mother. More than even her father who only ever does it unintentionally.
As so Maura is baiting her and Jane is yelling back and Jane is confused, and Jane is frustrated in more ways than one.
They’re giving and getting in the way they always do, as Maura backs her up into the right arm of the couch and then, after a few seconds, springs back as though she’s been burned. And in the split seconds before she does, Jane recognizes an expression she’s seen thousands of times, in hundreds of perps. Maura is afraid. She’s terrified.
Jane always assumed Maura would make the first move, but her expression now is even more damning - resignation, defeat. Maura is scared. And Maura isn’t going to try to overcome that feeling.
She’s never considered this, a Maura who’s afraid. She’s seen Maura dissect bodies and jump into dumpsters and climb trees. She’s seen Maura stand up to mobsters and serial killers and a dozen misogynistic detectives. She watched Maura follow her into a building minutes from collapsing. She watched Maura carry their nephew out of it.
She knows Maura has gone into war zones and she knows Maura has survived boarding school alone and she watched Maura do a C-section on a dead woman and then resuscitate the baby.
The Maura she knows isn’t afraid of anything.
Except this, apparently.
“Maura”
Her voice is soft, acquiescing, in the way it is with victims, with her brothers, with Maura when her eyes get big and brown.
Maura deflates and Jane knows the ball is in her court.
She’s terrified. But somehow less so than she was a few minutes ago. Certainly less than Maura is. And that calms her.
When Maura is scared, Jane knows how to be calm.
“I love you.”
She’s calm, but she’s still not subtle.
Maura freezes for a minute and then automatically replies “I love you too, Jane.”
“No” Jane reaches out her right hand, and Maura steps back, and Jane stands still but doesn’t defer eye contact.
“I love you. I love you, Maura. I’m in love with you. I always have been.”
Maura gasps and Jane moves her dominant hand, which was clutching her own ribs, so that both hands are ready in case Maura faints.
“Wha…?”
“I love you. That’s what we’re doing, right? Not saying it?”
13-years–of-Catholic-school and 37-years-of Catholic-life Jane is an expert in not saying things. But she’s an expert in Maura too. So even though Maura looks taken aback, and unsure, Jane knows exactly what she’s saying.
She moves slowly but surely and soon Maura is wrapped up in her arms.
Maura’s arms wrap around her neck of their own accord even though she remains silent. But she’s looking at Jane more intently than she ever has. More intently than the half a dozen or so times they’ve faced death together.
Jane feels her staccato heartbeat in her own chest and under the fingertips resting just under Maura’s left breast.
“I love you Maura. I love you. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
Maura lets out a sound Jane’s only ever heard from the loved ones of vics. Some combination of an exhale and a sob. Drops a forehead against her neck.
But then after one deep breath, Maura is staring right into Jane’s eyes, as determined as Jane’s ever seen, and then before her brain can even process anything else, Maura is kissing her, deliberate and deep.
Maura’s always been the braver of the two of them.