Disclaimer: I don't own Rizzoli and Isles.

She and Maura have been close friends for a while when Maura approaches her after work one day, looking anxious.

"Jane, can I talk to you about something?" she says, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

Concerned, Jane touches her on the arm. "Of course." She grabs her blazer off of the back of a chair and together they head to their usual bar.

Jane orders a beer and Maura orders some wine whose name Jane couldn't pronounce if she tried a hundred times. She's trying to relax—it's been a long day—but the tension in Maura's posture has her on edge.

"What's up?" she prompts at last, when it becomes clear that Maura doesn't know how to begin.

Maura's eyes narrow in determination. She takes a deep breath. "Jane, you know that I—that is to say, you're aware that I try to be flexible." She takes a sip of wine and smiles hopefully at Jane, as if believing she's conveyed some deeper meaning.

"Uh, yeah," Jane says. "I think the weekly yoga torture you've been putting me through for the past five months proves that."

Maura sighs. "I'm not talking about physical flexibility. I'm talking about flexibility in, well, life."

"Life?"

Maura taps her finger against the edge of her wine glass. "Our relationship," she clarifies.

Jane blinks. "Our relationship?" she repeats, feeling stupid and wondering why this conversation seems to be taking place in another language.

Maura rolls her eyes. "You refuse to make this easy for me, don't you? Fine, I'll spell it out for you. I don't think we should see other people anymore."

In hindsight, Jane will be grateful to her temporary burst of stupidity for preventing her from bursting out laughing or saying something inadvertently damaging, like, "You're joking."

Instead she just stares at Maura, her mouth opening and closing several times, before saying, "Huh."

Apparently that's the right thing to say, because Maura's cheeks color and she hurriedly continues. "I know that it was our mutual decision, in the beginning—that we'd both see men on the side, I mean. And I—well, I'll understand if you want things to continue that way, I guess. But—it would mean a lot to me if we could decide, together, to be exclusive."

She refuses to meet Jane's eyes, as if embarrassed or ashamed by her request. Baffled as she is, Jane doesn't like seeing Maura that way, so she reaches across the table to capture the other woman's hand in hers. "Hey," she says, and waits for Maura to look at her before smiling encouragingly. She's not entirely sure what's going on, but whatever it is, it's not going to lose her the best friend she's ever had. "Just to clarify," she goes on carefully, rubbing her thumb over Maura's smooth skin, "you think we should stop seeing men and just see each other."

Maura beams at her. Not the patronizing oh-you-finally-get-it-do-you? grin that too many male forensic scientists have directed toward her in the past, but the relieved and pleased oh-thank-God-someone-understands-me grin that drew her to Maura when they first met. "Yes."

"I see," Jane says. She's kind of horrified by the fact that she's not horrified about the idea. What really surprises her about this whole situation is that she and Maura are usually on the same wavelength—it's what makes them such a good team in the field. It's a shock to find out that they've been misreading each other for so long.

Or have they?

"I know how hard you've been working to overcome your reluctance about physical intimacy with another woman," Maura adds. Only then does Jane realize that she's still holding Maura's hand, and her first instinct is to pull away, which pretty much proves Maura's point. Overcoming that instinct, she grimly hangs on. "If it's…not enough, though—I mean, if you need a man for the physical side of things—I understand." Maura smiles bravely. "The connection we have is enough for me."

Now Jane does pull her hand away, but only so she can get up, walk around the table, and slide onto Maura's side of the booth. She lets her head fall to rest on Maura's shoulder, feels Maura's arm tentatively move around her shoulders.

She thinks back over the past few months, the past year. She thinks about how much happier she's been since Maura entered her life—so much happier, in fact, that her life seems to be strictly divided into two parts, before Maura and after Maura. That's not all because of Maura—Jane really has grown as a person lately, though she's still a bit of a mess and probably always will be—but a large part of it is.

She and Maura have dinner together almost every night. Joe Friday has met Bass the tortoise and they get on like a house on fire. Maura's the one she turns to for comfort when a case goes badly or when her mother is driving her nuts. At least one night a week—usually more—either Jane will crash at Maura's house or Maura will crash at Jane's, and when that happens they always end up falling asleep on the same bed after staying up late, giggling together like school girls. (Though Jane never actually giggled with other girls when she was a school girl.)

Jane begins to wonder why nobody ever bothered to point out to her that she and Maura have been dating all this time.

It's not the easiest idea for Jane to come to terms with. She has never, to her knowledge, been attracted to another woman. She didn't even experiment in her youth. And when she thinks about Maura, she doesn't think, That could be good for a while, the way she has about all of the men she's dated. Instead she thinks, I couldn't bear to lose her.

Oh. It's love, then.

"I think we should try it," Jane decides, her head still resting on Maura's shoulder. Maura smells good, much better than someone who spends most of her time in a morgue should smell.

"Really?" The delight in Maura's voice is enough to convince Jane that she's made the right call.

"Yeah."

Maura twines the fingers of her free hand with Jane's and brings Jane's hand to her lips. Jane can feel Maura's smile against her knuckles.

She could be attracted to this woman, she knows, suddenly and with utter certainty.