Archive of Our Own

The sound of the rolling pin clacking noisily against marble countertops is driving Maura crazy. She's grateful for the help, preparing for her mother's visit with Angela in the kitchen, but Angela isn't careful grace and quiet, practiced movements with a rolling pin in hand. She's boisterous, lively, and wonderful, but Maura's heart is beating too hard in her chest to fully appreciate that about her right now. She might even work faster if Angela would just sit, like Jane. But the cost of Maura letting Angela stay in her guesthouse is a few concessions of privacy and quiet to let Angela try to make herself feel useful. She'll always feel like there's something she owes, even if Maura expects nothing at all from her. And she does most of her repayment in the kitchen.

There's a certain domesticity, watching Angela let her rolling pin clatter to the marble tabletop beside her thick square of croissant dough to swat at Jane with a dirty tea towel, encouraging her to help, to contribute, clean something. Maura doesn't know how to say that one person more in her kitchen right now would probably put her into a spiral of panic. But something warm blooms in her chest at Jane's posture, as if she's one with the couch cushions, as if she owns them, yelling at the TV while Maura watches from the kitchen, laughing because it's not like her words could reach across the space-time continuum. That warmth entirely engulfs her when Jane whines, "come on Ma, I'm trying to relax."

Maura pauses her work at her dough to watch Jane, to let this scene become part of her chemical construction. Jane at home in her Beacon Hill house, Jane comfortable in her space, possessive of it. It's almost enough to stay the anxiety in her until, with an internal jerk, she remembers. Constance Isles is coming here and Maura has to summon that old self, someone that could never mesh with Jane without it hurting, who could never deserve… no, Maura shakes her head at herself, realizing at once that she's tapping her fingers in some facsimile of piano scales against the kitchen island. She places her hand flat against the cold surface as if in punishment. Her mother had always hated it when she fidgeted, would cluck her tongue with a narrowed gaze until she stopped.

Stims. She internally corrects the terminology and the word comforts her, the knowledge that there's a reason, that it's not just some personal flaw but some essential human behaviour. Everyone stims, so why does it matter if she wants to do it at a frequency beyond average, if she has to find socially acceptable replacements that make her look less anxious and more… affectionate, brushing her hand back and forth against Jane's arm or shoulder, adjusting the sleeves of her oxfords and jackets so they sit just right against her wrists, making sure to thumb circles against the prominent vein that parallels her palmaris longus, a blue-green beacon under skin?

The thing is Jane's acting like a husband, a whole slob of one only begrudgingly getting up to help and for some reason that's accelerating Maura's heartbeat, especially because she knows all the reluctance comes from the fact it was her mother asking. If Maura had asked Jane, well, she'd complain just as much but with a playful grin instead of a scowl.

"Come on Maura, you'll give yourself an ulcer," Jane says as she nears the kitchen. "It's not royalty, it's your mom."

Maura frowns thoughtfully. She's learned to snark Jane with a pleasant enough tone to garner nothing more unpleasant than an eye roll. She quips, "Ulcers are caused by H. Pylori, a bacteria."

"Or critical mothers," Jane says.

"I'm not critical," Angela interrupts. As if she's suddenly seeing herself differently, she asks, "Am I?"

"She's never been to my house before," Maura admits, busying herself once again with preparations. Keeping her hands moving in some version of productivity makes it feel less like there's an incessant itch under her skin, something that can't be relieved.

"Never?" Angela asks, disbelief lacing her tone.

"Usually, we just go to one of my parents' homes in Europe," Maura confesses, eyes lowered in such a layered shame. When she looks up again, she notices, "Those tulips are wilting already!"

"Yes, I can see why you're so ashamed of this hideous place," Jane teases. "And forcing her to stay in that disgusting guesthouse."

Maura resists the urge to roll her eyes, feeds the crawling anxiety inside of her instead as Jane and Angela's conversation slips by her. Her mother, in her guesthouse. She tries to remember where she'd put that nice sheet set, in the linen closet or her own. If she can be anything her mother would approve of, it'd be the ideal hostess, compiling all the skills she'd been learning since she was small. It was much easier than being the perfect daughter.

Maura jumps at the shrill ring of a cell phone, hearing the familiar lilt of one of the dispatch operators.

"I haven't even had a chance to pre-order the organic pigs trotters," Maura says as she hangs up.

"Are those feet?" Jane says. "I'm not eating feet!"

Maura pointedly ignores her, looking to Angela. "I'm going to leave you the butcher's number."

Maura undoes her apron, giving one backwards glance at the half-laminated slab of croissant dough, such a tedious process to probably have to repeat later.

Jane taps her hip. "Come on."

"You should change," Maura objects lightly.

"Alright, I'll change in the car."

"Then I'm driving," Maura insists.

"Aw, come on, I hate it when you drive."

Usually, Maura'd hate it when people whined. But not when it makes her and Jane sound like bickering spouses. Instead it gives her a pleasurable shiver.

"I hate it more when you undress and drive," Maura says.

Maura gets her way, drives while Jane changes in the passenger seat. Her fingers drum on the steering wheel at stoplights, like Jane's in her endless urge for forward momentum. But Jane doesn't notice, as she undresses in the passenger seat, flashes of bare skin Maura ignores in her peripheral vision. They're safe places, the flat planes of abdominals, calf as she brings her knee up to switch pants, but even those aren't safe for Maura's overactive imagination, especially not when there's something she's trying to ignore.

Everything's already going wrong in her preparation for her mother's arrival and she doesn't know how she's going to be able to take the look on her mother's face, seeking as it sometimes is, probably searching for where she went so wrong in raising her.

A crime scene, though it takes away some of her time to get ready, also brings her familiar routines, comfort in crouching by the body as Jane and Korsak and Frost talk about the victim. There's rhythm to it, relief. She examines the corpse methodically, rucking up period clothes to look for additional wounds beyond the obvious, taking a careful glance for fibres out of place.

"He was a garbageman. Maybe it wasn't an accident. Maybe somebody wanted him dead," Jane says.

"Perhaps it was someone who didn't like to recycle," Maura says, looking up for a moment.

"Was that a joke?" Jane asks.

"Only if it's funny," Maura says, noting the lack of response with a glance at the detectives gathered around her.

Jane bends next to her to take a glance at the body and the scent of her overwhelms Maura in a way it never used to. And she wants to say it, she wants to so badly make that domestic scene in her kitchen an everyday occurrence. But how does she risk it? How is she supposed to believe herself worthy?

"Fascinating. He was a smithy. Blacksmith."

"Maura, it's pretend," Jane says.

And Maura looks down, the smile dropping from her face. It's a reminder that she's not outgrown the things that keep her mother so distant, the things her mother'd thought of as deficiencies, wanted to believe so much that it was nothing more than social anxiety that she somehow expected Maura to conquer the essentials of her own personhood.

Maura has information now that she didn't before, advancements of science and psychology that can finally say there's nothing wrong with her, but it isn't so easy to overcome a lifetime of socialization that taught her differently. Science has advanced but it doesn't mean her mother can look at her now as someone who has suddenly become something she can love more easily, it doesn't mean she'll think of her as someone she doesn't have to ignore on most of her circuits through Boston's art scene, making the excuse that she just knows Maura must be so very busy, naturally. The excuses her father doesn't even bother with anymore. He isn't coming to see her, won't, not even after everything she'd done because he asked. Or maybe because of that.

Maura grits her jaw and refocuses on her task, losing herself to the rhythm of work until the calm of her crime scene is interrupted by the man attempting to move heavy artillery. Jane stops him as Maura gets to her feet. She recognizes him and follows Jane over.

"Professor Cravitz is the leading expert on colonialism. I'm a huge fan," Maura says, extending her hand.

"You're a fan of colonialism?" Jane asks, her tone either sarcastic or incredulous.

"No, of course not," Maura insists, unable to fight that incessant need to explain herself, to be entirely and perfectly clear as some measure of self-protection from all the ways people fail to offer the benefit of the doubt. She knows better of Jane and yet still can't escape the instinct.

An old, familiar stone once again finds its home in the pit of Maura's stomach.

When Maura's autopsy is complete and the identification for the substance on the recovered bullet identified, Jane brings her back to the scene of the crime to match it. It's obvious there, with how readily Maura climbs into that tree, that conventionality isn't something that belongs to her. And it doesn't need to, with Frost giving her a boost and her evidence collection giving results to the detectives who need it. How can they fault her for getting them what they need? And with Jane, everything feels opposite. They drink tea with Professor Cravitz to get answers on where the men were stationed. And to Jane, Maura is where to look for how to behave in a more formal environment. She'll ignore half of the rules, it wouldn't be her if she didn't, but she still looks to Maura for them.

She tries not to think about whether her mother would like Jane, her frequent lack of tact and social etiquette. If Jane looked to Maura, things weren't looking very good in that department.

Leaving the campus, she gets a call that makes her jump. Jane cradles her elbow as she picks it up, like she's calming a spooked animal or trembling victim and Maura pushes down the flush of shame she wouldn't feel any other time. Jane's intuitive affection, her reading of Maura's anxiety, those are things Maura loves about her, things that make her feel safe and loved. She has to remember that.

But then her mother is telling her she's coming a day early and she can feel the dread creep up her spine. She knows it's only cortisol, but that doesn't stop the accompanying emotions. "What would Dr. Webber say?" Maura's already thinking, already cringing, breathing loud, counting in her head as she tries to bring her body back to equilibrium so her mind can follow. What would Dr. Webber say? She flexes both hands once, and lets them be still. She pulls herself together, limb by limb, then settles her expression neutral. And she'll be fine. Like she always has been. At the very least, she's stopped sweating.

Jane leads her into the cafe, asking her mother if she'll make a three-course meal.

"Eleven," Maura interrupts.

"Eleven?" Jane shoots back incredulously.

Maura starts listing courses in sequence, trying to imagine which dish is most suitable for each in the time period she has to prepare.

"Sandwiches, peanut butter and fluff, or takeout," Jane lists in response.

Maura stares at her for a shocked beat before the horror clears. "Chef Renault from Maison de la Mer. He will help. You just tell him that it's for me," Maura says, handing over a card that Angela takes, seeming somewhat grateful to be spared.

But she's in low grade panic until it nears the time of her mother's arrival at her Beacon Hill home. She looks over the table for any imperfections as she waits for Jane and her mother to show up.

"My mother is famous for her dinner parties," Maura says to Angela as she inspects a wine glass for smudges. Her mother always had noticed fingerprints.

"The apple didn't fall far from the tree," Angela responds.

"Oh no, I couldn't possibly live up to her," Maura says. "She'll spot takeout in a second."

"Stop worrying, you're the perfect daughter," Angela says. At Jane's entry, Angela jabs a finger at her. "And you're late."

"I'm not perfect, darn. Cannolis," Jane says, holding up a paper box.

"What are you doing?" Angela chastises. "We already have dessert. Besides, cannolis aren't sophisticated."

"Well neither are we. I got them for you."

"You got them for me? You're the perfect daughter."

Maura smiles at the exchange, then winces at the ring of the doorbell, her gaze instantly turning to Jane as she smooths down her skirt.

Jane pats her arm reassuringly as she passes on her way to the door and says, "You look beautiful."

And that approval is almost enough. Almost. At the very least, it makes her flush warmer, take a little backward glance at Jane to see if she's looking and remember she has someone here tonight who has her back and thinks fondly of her. Especially fond because it doesn't even sound like a platitude. It sounds like something genuine Jane's noticed an opportunity to let slip out without it having to mean anything but comfort, like the majority of the times they touch or say borderline romantic things to each other. It's something in her eyes and the little tilt of her head, something soft and just for her. She almost wants to leave her mother shut out of her home altogether just to have Jane alone with her in it. But she can't. She squares her shoulders and takes a deep breath.

Her mother greets her with perfunctory cheek kisses and a compliment on her appearance, something she'd taught Maura was the correct greeting in formal and semi-formal environments. It's a practiced routine rather than an expression of emotion. Maura knows too well how to hold the well of it back behind teeth in a smile and measured movements of her face.

It's predictive of how dinner goes, a familiar song and dance that leaves Maura wanting. If Constance could just say something personal and emotive, like that she misses her or something, anything, real. But it's Maura's last appearance on the news channel and Constance's art installation and then, without warning, her father.

"Did I tell you that your father is going to join me in Zagreb for the German expressionist festival?" Constance asks.

Maura brings her wine glass to her mouth to stall the need for a response. She smiles artificially. "Let's have dessert."

Maura should've known. Constance slips into familiar French and excuses herself with tiredness instead of staying for the dessert Maura had prepared specifically for her. She holds that tray in her hand and tries to find some way to curb her disappointment, to just be okay with stilted dinners cut short being the best she gets from her mother. Maura watches her mother stand, and deflated, it takes her a moment to remember she should see her out.

Constance's expression reminds Maura of childhood afternoons spent in a chilled psychologist's office, clip art pictures of expressions Dr. Webber would show her. But dissatisfaction is one she never needed a crude depiction of. It was so pungent she could taste it, could feel it cloud her larynx, her trachea so she couldn't talk at all, couldn't even breathe. She'd replaced those rudimentary images of facial expressions with a FACS manual, and gave herself the tools to categorize every microexpression on a face in a numerical system of minute muscle contractions. But it never saves her from how that expression cuts, how it makes her desperate too.

"I thought you were staying. I prepared the guest house," Maura says carefully.

But her mother's eyebrows knit together in an answer Maura's all too used to receiving.

"Darling, didn't I tell you," she begins, her tone seconding the message.

It's a rejection, turned soft in pity and justified with emotionally distant but socially acceptable excuses. Maura forces her face to smile, doesn't bother to even attempt to make it look real by engaging muscles out of practice.

"Of course," Maura says gracefully, politely, wishing she could find that emotional distance herself and maybe a layer of self-protection with it.

"But I will see you tomorrow evening for the welcoming dinner. And you'll be my date."

She takes it as an olive branch, knowing it's much more truly a consolation prize. It isn't the first time Maura's been invited to some dinner with Constance. It had been kid's tables out of the way when she was young, when all she wanted was to be near her mother but instead she would sit with children who were mean to her and didn't care about the artistic movements their parents were participating in. As an adult, it was deference. It was allowing Constance to be professional and staying quiet to make room for her, to not eclipse her with rambling historical context of one art movement or another. The only people her intellectual rambling ever impressed were academics and professional men who thought it precocious or attractively quirky.

"Sounds lovely."

With another round of cheek kisses that touch no part of her emotionally, she lets her mother go. There's not much they can share anymore, not even a plot of land under the same deed.

She misses stolen moments at galleries when she was young enough that Constance would tell her about the movements each piece belonged to as if she were one of the university students she taught and not just a small, insignificant child. The ballets they'd see, only ever Russian or French ballet, where Constance would watch her enraptured face and every once in a while, meet her with a reserved smile. What she'd give even for that wordless affection, that joy echoing hers.

Maura has never had to face the despair that Constance opens in her in front of company before. She avoids the urge to rub her sternum in comfort. An aching heart was generally a metaphor anyway, so the method of comfort was overall ineffective.

Maura starts cleaning up as Jane defends her by poking at her mother.

"She's hard to get to know," Maura says wistfully.

"Well I think I've got a pretty good idea," Jane snarks.

Maura looks up at her through lashes with equal parts doubt and affection. Jane had distrusted wealthy people in the past. Who's to say it's not just that instinct repeating itself? It doesn't have to be about her at all.

But it must be. Jane chides her mother in the kitchen, banging around pots and pans in an effort to clean them and swinging an arm out to point.

"See, you could have that for a mother," Jane says. "Nosy and loud."

And Maura can't help admitting that she wants that, that mild annoyance is a small price to pay for, "Warm, involved."

Maura rubs a hand over her face and hair in frustration, disappointment, pressing fingertips into her brow bone to erase the blooming pressure headache from held-back tears.

"The grass is always greener," Jane says.

Maura musters half a smile and gives up. Her eyes glaze over as she looks past Jane.

"Maur? You okay?"

"Hm?" Maura says. "It's fine. I just… expected. What's that saying about assumptions?"

"They make an ass out of you and me?"

"I'd never heard that one," Maura says softly.

"Maura, I'm sorry. It sucks. What can I do?"

Maura shakes her head. "You can pass me a cannoli."

Jane laughs and holds the glass dish out to her. Maura takes one, feeling Jane's eyes on her as she takes a bite just to stop herself thinking. She'd never really known comfort food, it was something the Rizzolis gave her. It's a piece of them they let her have.

"I don't know what more I could do," Maura says softly, dabbing flakes of pastry from her mouth with a napkin. "Did I try too hard? Put too much pressure on the evening?"

"You showed how much you care," Jane says. "Ma woulda been thrilled if I did half as much for her."

Maura sighs. She turns the rest of the cannoli in her hands instead of eating it, finding that oil collects against her fingertips and yet somehow she doesn't care.

"Well, you'll see her again. At that dinner and the installation. Maybe it'll go better."

"Maybe."

"You, uh, seemed to go straight for the alcohol when she mentioned your father. Is there a story there?"

Maura's silent for a long time. And the revolt in her stomach has her putting the rest of that cannoli down and delicately wiping the tips of her fingers on a cloth napkin.

Her father bypasses her these days. Guilt or disinterest, Maura never knows. But she'd only ever tried to earn his love, his respect. She'd spent her childhood afternoons, when the other kids were out in the parks and each other's playrooms, watching anthropological documentaries on the Rosetta stone or Mesopotamian politics, some of the only times she was granted permission to look at the TV. It was always half fascination and half longing. For closeness. Acceptance. Adults always had been better at accepting her than the kids her age if only she could prove herself academically competent, someone willing to try to understand what they were talking about when even other adults didn't want to pay attention to them.

Her father used to give her copies of his academic journals as he was done with them. She'd read them with dictionaries and reference encyclopedias to assist her, trying to puzzle out the secret of gaining her father's affection by making meaning of the scrawled notes he'd make in the margins, trying to find something she could say to him that'd impress him with her depth of knowledge, that'd make him pat her shoulder and look at her like she was something he could be proud of.

"He broke my heart," Maura says, her voice half-strangled.

"How?" Jane asks. Then her phone rings. "Damn, I'm sorry Maura."

Maura listens to Jane's one-sided conversation, quick and efficient enough that it is most probably a work call. Another body, it turns out. Someone with a family to miss them.

"Oh god," Maura says, gathering herself emotionally to go do her job, Jane's hand once again squeezing her shoulder. The affection she never really gets from anyone else nearly burns.

Maura gets through the next morning's autopsy with a heavy hand at jokes and puns. The tiny jolts of joy and pride they give her serve to mitigate last night's failures. Jane seems not to find her funny, eventually responding to pun with a clipped tone.

"You do your job so I can do mine," Jane says.

Maura swallows hard.

"Yes, of course detective," she says stiltedly.

Jane steps forward. "Maura, I'm sorry."

She shakes her head. "It's not you.

"Is it your mother?" Jane hedges.

"It's just hard having her here and not seeing her. When I was little, I wanted to be with her all the time."

It pangs. How her mother doesn't seem to want her presence as much as she wants hers.

Both of their phones ring in chorus. Maura answers her phone and that pang multiplies, her mother politely cancelling on her, apologizing, excusing, all with a gentle even-toned voice.

"My mother's having a bird emergency," Jane says.

"Mine's changing dinner plans," Maura says, trying to pass off the sinking feeling in her that she's not wanted.

Jane lets Maura go up with her to the cafe to see how Angela needs help with a bird. Angela hands the pink cake box of dying bird directly to Maura and part of her is honoured. Angela trusts her with the care of the sick bird, trusts her to be a good doctor to the animal, and trusts her to save her from her shenanigans.

Maura wants to protect the little bird just because Angela's asking. Angela, who is the epitome of the kind of mother Maura has always wished for. Who cut the crusts off of sandwiches, like that peanut butter and fluff sandwich cut into crustless triangles that Jane had shared with her once that had made her feel almost fixed, closer to whole. When Jane and her family treated Maura so kindly, Maura could almost forget the dull reflection of herself in that dying bird, having someone wonderful around to take care of it and still succumbing to needs unmet, having been vulnerable and saved and still ending up wanting.

This can be a family to her too, maybe. Angela in this kitchen accepting her in on the virtue of the bird dying of avian flu she tucks into her pocket to "take care of." Right? Sometimes it feels like it, so much so she has to actively remind herself that she does not belong to them, the Rizzolis. Since she's not one of them, they could forget her, leave her behind, turn away. She doesn't warrant a place by biology or title or… anything. They've just been kind. And sometimes kindness ends.

But Maura offers a kindness of her own, not letting Angela see the bird die.

Jane's friends have somehow become friends to her, Korsak showing up in the cafe looking for that bird and offended on her behalf at the expression on her face that somehow tells every detective in the room that her mother's cancelled on her if she's offering history buff contacts to get them period costumes to be allowed entry into the smithy's wake.

"It's not her fault. The dinner was a private affair. No guests." Maura shrugs.

"You're not a guest. You're her daughter," Korsak says indignantly, closing his mouth as soon as Jane looks at him.

Maura wonders why it's so easy for some people to look at a face and know what sits behind it, whether it's some intuitive understanding of those very microexpressions she's put in so much time to learn and has to expend so much energy to employ a reading of or something else. Or maybe Maura's forgotten how to make herself expressionless stone so no one could feel so sorry for her anymore. Maybe her expressions aren't micro at all.

She pats her pocket, wondering if that bird is dead or still dying. And heads down to her office to drop the bird off and call her contacts so she can find them period appropriate costuming.

Maura and Jane end up in one small room full of women's clothing. Maura gives Jane advice on fabric and cut, both for historical accuracy and comfort, excitedly running her hands along the clothing as she rambles about the hallmarks of traditional colonial American traditions of dress.

"Why did your mom really say you can't go?" Jane redirects as she pulls down a dress for herself and starts unbuttoning her top.

Maura sighs, pulling on a petticoat underneath the dress she's already wearing. "I'm not always an ideal guest."

"You're the most well-mannered person I know," Jane says. "I don't know what a fish knife is."

"The rules, I know," Maura says. "It's the talking part. You know. You just... I don't know, you give a lot of benefit of the doubt. You trust me not to mean the worst."

"I do trust you," Jane says. "Your own mother should know how kind you are. She should stick up for you instead of doing that same... bullying other people do."

"Jane," Maura chastises. "She means well."

"But—"

Maura breaks the tension that claims her spine by turning her back on Jane, ducking from the scrutiny of her expression, and indicating her zipper, "Unzip me."

Jane shuts up and lowers the zipper.

Maura pulls an unlaced corset around her, grabbing the ribbon that goes with it and weaving it through the grommets.

Jane attempts to put on the period dress as if it's attacking her, swatting at fabric and fighting with sleeves, fabric flapping loudly in chorus.

"It's so complicated," she huffs. "Why's it gotta be so hard to put on a stupid dress?"

"You don't have to," Maura says. "I know you only took me with you to make me feel better. But it's okay. I'm used to it. I'm used to being alone with it."

Jane pauses, half dressed, "Maur."

It sounds sad, sounds pitiful. Maura busies herself with her own silk and whalebone stay, lacing herself perhaps too tightly with jerky pulls of silk ribbon. Tightlacing wasn't really all that common in the era but she pardons for herself the lack of authenticity. She hasn't remembered a shift under her petticoat anyway.

"Get used to me instead," Jane says, stepping close in a way that makes Maura's bones feel liquid.

She stands close enough that it impedes Maura's progress with her corset and stalls her breath too. Jane's expression is soft as her gaze acts like a caress, grazing over cheeks and lips before Jane bends closer and Maura shuts her eyes. It's like her skin cells are singing at the potential of touch, and the anticipation almost fades to disappointment before she finally feels soft lips on hers, a strong hand curled around her hip.

Maura stumbles in her push forward, closer, as if kissing could be sustenance and she's suddenly ravenous. At the slightest indication that Jane's about to pull this life raft from under her, Maura reaches for her chin, not even bothering to untangle her fingers from the silk ribbon lacing her corset. She holds her there lightly as she gulps in a breath, so lightly as if trying to keep from scaring her away, fingertips against her jaw and her own mouth tingling. And when she refits her mouth to hers, she's rewarded with a few gentle strokes of fingers over the edge of the corset, almost reverent, before they dig just under it and into the flesh of her hip.

Maura pulls back breathless, eyes searching Jane's face for answers. Her heart thumping is so distracting she can't remember how human emotion is catalogued, can't actually see a single thing other than Jane and Jane and Jane.

"Anyone that doesn't love you exactly the way you are is a fool," Jane whispers roughly, like she'd lost not only her breath to kisses, but her voice.

Mauras eyelids flutter at the implication that Jane could… did she mean it to sound that way? Like she loves her?

The soft, exposed part of her wars with the part that's lived longer, safer in concealment. It's a rebellious part of her, continually coming to her mother's defence no matter how much she was hurt by her, because isolation was also a shield. It had somehow protected her, right? It had to have.

"She does love me," Maura says. "She tries to."

Maura swallows the rest of the words on her tongue, the acknowledgement she wasn't an easy child to love, that she isn't even Constance's in that pure, biological possessive way so maybe she already got as much as she deserved. More, even.

"Funny way of showing it," Jane says. "But you know better'n me. I don't know her at all."

"She's trying to protect me. She's always tried," Maura says. "That world… I don't entirely fit there. It's not necessarily wrong of her to merely notice and try to spare me."

"From what?"

"Judgement? Ridicule?" Maura says. "Shame on the family name, I don't know. She tells me she doesn't want me to struggle. And it'd be easier if I just..."

"Hid? Maura, please don't listen to that," Jane begs. "You're not the same when she's here. You're all anxious and weird. It makes you different."

"I've always been weird," Maura says. "You say it all the time."

Jane turns sad eyes on her. "I don't mean that you should change. I'm not insulting you when I say that. You know that, right?"

"No, I know. I know, just." Maura waves a hand noncommittally. "I'm unconventional. You're allowed to say the truth. I think I just don't know how to be myself with her. And she'd hate it if I was anyway."

At her pause, Jane puts a hand against her bare arm.

"I have a lot of challenges," Maura says. "Maybe it would be easier if…"

"There's nothing wrong with you," Jane says.

"My mother would disagree. As would the child psychologist I saw when I was young," Maura says. "I wasnt just a weird kid. I had a diagnosis."

Jane's touch grounds her, opens up her mouth and lets her spill.

"So what?"

"So, autism spectrum disorder is still highly stigmatized. People tend to distrust what they can't understand and when brains are wired differently from the norm, there's a lot of… disappointment."

"Well, you've never been a disappointment to me," Jane says. "You would tell me if I ever did something that disappointed you, right?"

Maura looks up, wide wet eyes, nods wearily. Jane kisses her cheek and helps her finish with her corset, taking a moment to loosen some of the previous loops before continuing to lace up the rest. Maura tries very hard not to hold her breath, to allow the corset to be loose enough, she tells herself. But mostly it's so as not to betray to Jane what her nearness does to her, not to hand over the burden of her want.

"I'm not helping you with the devil dress, though," Jane says as she lets go of the ribbons.

Maura tries to laugh.

It calms her, Jane's expected grousing over the garment the whole evening through. She tugs and shoves at it, screwing up her face in disgust.

"Can't believe you talked me into wearing this," Jane says. "I don't think this thing's been washed since 1776."

"You're just not used to the Linsey Woolsey fabric. I told you to wear the silk polonaise," Maura says.

"Oh yeah the whalebones digging into my boobs would be much more comfortable," Jane snarks.

Maura grins and leans closer. "Well, you seemed to like it just fine on me."

Jane spits a little beer, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth. "Did you just tell a joke?"

Maura laughs.

Jane is really something, even if she only thinks Maura's funny when she's not trying to be. And Maura wants to kiss her over and over. If Jane could want her half as much as she does.

If Jane wasn't with her, not being on the list for her own mother's gallery opening would've been enough to make Maura turn around and go home. She never stayed in places she wasn't wanted. As soon as she found out she wasn't wanted, that was. It wasn't always this easy to tell.

She swallows the lump in her throat when Jane badges them through, suddenly a lot more nervous to see her mother. Jane doesn't really want to be here, she can tell now that perhaps Frost and Korsak were teasing earlier and Jane probably hadn't come around to modern art at all. But she's come around for her, the hard line of her jaw angry on her behalf.

There's something wide-eyed about her mother when Maura sees her that makes her want to protect her from Jane, who's already making sharp comments while Maura compliments the exhibit as a good daughter should. Then Jane's asking to be left alone with her mother and Maura falters.

She goes reluctantly, knowing Jane's not actually asking for a drink, and tries not to stray too far so she can intervene before any commotion could occur. She can only catch snippets.

"I don't like seeing my best friend hurt," Jane says.

Her mother's voice sounds affronted, "You think I hurt her?"

With that Maura steps away. She knows she's obvious in her hurt, but she doesn't want to hear any pity. She doesn't want to hear Jane, of all people, pity her. She takes a cruise around the gallery, taking in each exhibit before circling back to the pair clearly disagreeing in the centre of a gallery full of patrons.

"I was never any good at it," her mother says.

"At what?" Jane responds.

"At being her mother," Constance says. "I made so many mistakes. And I missed so much."

"Why don't you just tell her that?"

"It's my fault. I asked her to be different. How can I…?"

"You need to suck it up and love her the way she deserves," Jane says. "She deserves you in her life if she wants that. She deserves to be the one that decides if you deserve forgiveness or not, not you. And you should at least tell her to stop worrying about impressing you. She's your kid, your only one."

Maura steps forward, blinking heavily. She grips Jane's elbow, a contradictory mix of chagrin and delight in Jane's defence of her.

"Jane," Maura says. "Excuse us, Mother, we have a crime scene."

She leads Jane steadily towards the exit, not letting go of her arm. "Thank you," she whispers.

Jane mumbles something unintelligible in response, but she flushes pink and ducks her head.

Maura wants to kiss her or burst into tears but does neither and drives them home instead. When they turn towards the residential area, Jane asks about the crime scene.

"I said we had a crime scene," Maura says. "Not that we had to go to it."

"You're actually a little devious," Jane says.

Maura grins as she pulls into her driveway. "Do you want to stay? I can make dinner."

Maura tries to fight the way her body warms at the low-toned intimacy she finds in her own voice.

"Okay," Jane says. "As long as you're not gonna try and feed me pig feet."

"No pigs trotters," Maura says. "It'd take days anyway. And you wouldn't even appreciate it."

"You're still gonna try to make me eat something green, aren't you?" Jane scrunches her nose.

"You should be more concerned with your health, Jane."

Maura grins, butterflies at the domesticity of the way they talk to each other.

"I still can't believe you told my mother to suck it up," Maura says.

"How much did you hear?" Jane cringes, slinging herself into one of the stools at Maura's kitchen island. Something pulls in Maura watching her fill that space where, before Jane, Maura used to eat most of her meals alone. Her dining table has never gotten more use.

"I don't know? What did you say?"

"I just told her to love you better." Jane shrugs.

"It was sweet of you. Even if your delivery didn't suit the venue."

"True though," Jane says. "Parents never do it right, huh?"

"What's right?" Maura says.

Jane nods at that, and Maura busies herself preparing a simple meal.

"Your dad anything like mine?" Jane asks after a few minutes of comfortable silence.

"My father and I just disagree, that's all," Maura says softly. "We put different value in certain things."

"Hives, Maura," Jane says.

Maura touches her throat. She isn't lying, per se, more trying to diminish, trying to convince herself that's all it was because it's easier.

"Did I ever tell you I used to do ballet?" Maura asks. "My mother was a purist. Russian ballet was the only dance she'd let me do."

"I did too," Jane says. "Not Russian, I don't think. Four years. Wanted to be a ballerina before I wanted to be a cop."

Maura smiles, turning and leaning against her kitchen counter so she can see Jane.

"I was good at it. All the rules and precision, it suited me," Maura says. "A healthy dose of physics too. And the floor was… it was a safe space. I didn't have to be someone else there."

Jane's expression is encouraging, so Maura scrounges the courage to say the rest.

Ballet was her safe space, her comfort. She'd taught her body to conform to poses and moves, trained muscles into memory of how to hold themselves perfectly, how to move with grace. She didn't need to consider the social, didn't need to be part of the whispers and giggles that only ever earned chastisement and the plea to take it seriously, to respect the art of the dance.

Her mother had been proud. And her instructor had taken her under her wing, thought she could really be someone. Her lack of social connection had been an asset, something that only pushed her closer to success.

"It was when I was finishing high school," Maura says softly. "I was dancing seriously. My instructor was already talking with me about which ballet company I might want to dance with as a career. My father disapproved."

"Aw, Maur, is that what you really wanted to do?"

"No," Maura says. "I don't know. I probably would've chosen not to dance professionally. I wanted to work with the dead for a very long time. But there was something about performing. People look at you like they're in awe of what you've done and they want to be close to it. I think I wanted that part."

"But your dad?"

"He felt it was a waste of my intelligence," Maura says. "He told me it would be a disservice if I didn't go into science. He devalued the arts, and with that, disrespected my mother."

"And you."

"And then he asked me not to tell her," Maura admits. "He didn't want to be blamed for my choice not to continue dancing because he knew mother would be disappointed. And if I told her why I didn't want to dance anymore, she'd learn her husband didn't respect what she'd done with her life. It was… disappointing."

"He told you to lie?"

"I did," Maura says. "I lied. I told her I just didn't want to anymore. I wouldn't go to see ballets with her anymore because it made me so sad. I don't know if she's ever forgiven that. I think it was the only place we ever understood each other."

"Maybe by now she has," Jane says. "She didn't know why."

"No," Maura says. "She didn't."

"Come here," Jane says. And holds her. And Maura's not even thinking of whether or not Jane'll ever kiss her again anymore, not when she feels so loved and so whole in the lavender-scented crook of Jane's neck.

With a case closed, Maura goes home alone. It's hard for her not to think of how easy it was for the mother of the killer to protect him, to try to take his place. The thing is Maura doesn't know what her mother would sacrifice for her. She just has no idea at all. But she'd give up a lot of herself for even a slight increase in the chance her mother would adore her, be proud of her, love her wholly and effusively. But it starts to make her stomach hurt to think about.

A knock has Maura opening her front door to her mother's face.

"I hope I'm not intruding," she says, offering an out.

"No," Maura says. "Of course not."

Her mother steps carefully into the entrance of the house.

"Come sit, Mother," Maura insists, leading Constance into her living room.

Constance sits stiffly, crossing her legs at the ankle with the grace of a politician.

"Maura, darling, your father's told me something that's unsettled me recently."

Maura's stomach drops. She knows. "Father told you?"

Maura swallows heavily, unable to meet her mother's eyes.

"Maura, I'm not upset with you. He asked a horrible thing of you. And I'm starting to realize that I did too."

Something cavernous expands in Maura's chest: lungs, esophagus, diaphragm. She wonders if emotional pain, despondency, truly owns the limbic system or the circulatory… or if it's just everywhere, every cell, some kind of total system metastatic spread. "Mother, I—"

"—I apologize, Maura. I am so sorry." There are tears on her face that Maura brushes away. It startles her, the lack of boundaries, that instinct to soothe instead of reaching for social rules, looking for a tissue to offer as she was taught. But Constance grabs her hand before she can remove it in the flush of shame that settles in, pulling it closer into place against her cheek with well-moisturized fingers. Constance's hand cups Maura's over her own cheek and Maura hasn't ever had much affection from the woman, none so unrefined.

"If you could ever forgive me," Constance says, "well, I do love the woman you've become. Not in spite of those things I… the behaviours I had taught out of you. They only help you to be the lovely woman that you are. And I do hope you're happy. That you don't resent..."

"I have a life I love," Maura says. "And people..."

"Jane," Constance says with a heaviness that implies she knows exactly how she loves her. Maura flushes.

"Well," Maura starts, stops to clear her throat.

"I approve," Constance says.

"What?"

"I had never meant to give you the impression that there were things you could do that would make me stop loving you," Constance says, "You have more of my love and respect than you know. I could have done a better job at sharing it with you."

"You've never been so sentimental," Maura says softly. "I don't know what to do with it."

"But you needed it, didn't you?"

Maura nods, suddenly tearful and fighting a new lump expanding so wide in her trachea she fears asphyxia. She wraps her arms carefully around herself, a self-comforting gesture that only ever emerges when she's upset and alone. The Rizzolis, they would just hug her, or give reassuring pats to any extremity they could reach if she attempted to duck away.

"Can I hug you?"

Maura fights every instinct to say no, the tightening of muscles, locking of joints. She nods again and reaches for her mother and this time she's there to hold her, only slightly awkward in the gentle patting of her back, that turns to careful circles as Maura starts to sob against her.

"I'm sorry," she says hoarsely when she pulls away.

"Well, if I get my way, we'll soon have it that you stop apologizing."

Maura sniffs, mildly horrified. "You're in designer."

The small burst of laughter that leaves Constance mingles with the beginning of Maura's ringtone. She doesn't know which one it is that makes her jump.

"It's Jane," she says, blushing. "She'll get worried if I don't answer."

"By all means," Constance says, raising her hands in deference.

"Jane, hi," Maura says into her phone, hand cupped around the receiver like a teenager with nosy siblings or parents. "Okay. I… okay. Bye."

She has a new appreciation for Jane and her response to a lack of privacy. She's never known the mild embarrassment.

"Everything alright?"

"Yes, I was just invited to a celebration of a case closed at The Dirty Robber," Maura says.

"Oh, you should go. I should leave you to it."

"No." She places a firm hand on her mother's arm. "I don't mean this to sound like an ultimatum at all, but I don't want to go if you're not coming."

"I wouldn't embarrass you with your co-workers?"

"Of course not," Maura says. "But if you'd rather stay here, I'll make us some tea."

Constance watches her carefully. "I don't know what I did to end up with such a gracious and kind daughter. I'm, well, I've never been so ashamed of how I've treated you."

Maura finds herself squeezing her shoulder, the way Jane had gotten her accustomed to receiving comfort.

"It's okay," Maura says. "Well, it's not. But I can forgive you."

Constance offers a grateful smile. "I would very much like to attend this… Dirty Robber with you."

"Alright," Maura says, giggling. "It's not very upscale, to warn you. I'm still not quite over the peanuts, myself."

Maura doesn't know what she expects, but it isn't her mother eating a greasy hamburger and a milkshake and not even caring about the peanuts. It isn't the jokes that somehow escape her or how she manages to hold her own with the Rizzolis with only a few clarifications by Maura to tell her that they're the kind to kid around. It isn't the way her heart clenches hard when her mother has to go, to collect her bags and meet a flight. Or the way Jane fills in the gaps her mother left, fitting her hand into hers and squeezing once in a way that instantly stops the brimming of tears.

Jane drives her home, having had only part of a beer to Maura's two glasses of wine. They get all the way to her living room before Maura pauses, turning to look at her friend.

"Are you okay?" Jane asks her, reaching her arms around to hold her.

"Yes, I'm just," Maura says, pressing herself closer. "It's never been like this."

Jane holds her tighter, finds that place against her hip again with cruising fingers and traces patterns as Maura presses her face into her neck. .

She loses the thread on her doubt with Jane's hands on her, brings her mouth up to meet hers in tiny grateful smacks until she just can't help but press them deeper, letting them turn towards the loving she feels swell in her chest. It's a replacement for the words she can't find to tell Jane she's changed her life, that she's become something like home and safety and everything she'd silently yearned for since she was so small but never knew how to ask for, never needed to with Jane because she just gave it, like it was easy, like it was nothing.

Jane brushes a hand so carefully over Maura's cheek when she pulls back that Maura doesn't have to ask if it was alright of her to do that, she doesn't have to question anything with that tenderness turned directly onto her. Jane tilts her forehead to press against Maura's as she catches her breath.

"I bought you a present," she says.

"Why?" Maura asks. "Wait, when?"

"After you made me dinner," Jane says, somewhat shyly. "I just wanted to do something nice for you. You want it or not?"

"Yes. Please," Maura says.

Jane pulls a folded sheet of paper from her pocket, handing it to Maura with a dip of her head so Maura can't look too closely at her. Maura unfolds it and attempts to smooth out the crease before reading it.

"You don't have to give up on it even though you chose a different career path," Jane says slowly. "But you don't have to go if it…"

"Jane," Maura says. "I love it. Thank you. I can't believe you bought me adult ballet lessons."

Jane beams. "It's good?"

Maura can't swallow the words that rise in her, not if she even wanted to try. "I love you."

Maura doesn't even grow doubtful in Jane's silence, lets her process the words without looking at her. How she knows Jane, has learned to keep her from running away, it's only proof of the depth of connection between them, how they can bend to make space for each other without ever erasing themselves.

"I love you too," Jane says after a beat.

"I know," Maura says, eyes creasing with her smile. "Nobody else ever would've done what you did for me. I can't thank you enough."

"You don't have to thank me at all."

"I know," Maura says. "But you made me see what I could deserve. I want to."