TITLE: Bread and Butter

AUTHOR: coolbyrne

RATING: Teen, with changes to be announced in future chapters

SUMMARY: Jane and Maura uncover more than they anticipated when they investigate the death of a hoarder.

DISCLAIMER: I normally don't put these, because it's pretty obvious I don't own the characters, nor am I making money from them. However, this fic includes the names of real people who were involved in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and as such, I must stress this is a work of fiction. No offense is intended and no claim is to be assumed.

A/N: I'll most likely speak more in-depth about this story as I post new chapters, so for now, let me just thank happycamper5, my beta reader and my chess piece. (She knows what it means, and as the story progresses, so will you.)

...

"Here she comes." Frost jerked his chin at the vehicle that was slowly coming to a stop.

Jane looked over her shoulder. "Okay, so we all know the ground rules: the clock starts the second she walks in the door."

"All bets are off if she doesn't go in," Korsak reminded everyone.

With a smirk and a swagger, Jane started towards the car. "Oh, she'll go in." She smiled at the attending officer and lifted the police tape for the approaching medical examiner.

"Sorry," the blonde apologized, "there was a small detour my GPS didn't seem to take into account."

"No problem," the detective replied. "We haven't been here long."

"No one's inside?"

"We've already taken a look." Seeing Maura's inquisitive expression, Jane coyly said, "As far as we could see."

The duo walked up to the house. "I don't understand."

Jane stopped at the base of the stairs and touched Maura's arm. "Listen, I'm not sure you really want to go in there."

"What do you mean?" She practically scoffed at the suggestion. "I can't imagine there's anything in there I haven't seen in one capacity or another."

"I gotta warn you - it's pretty bad."

Maura patted the detective's hand. "Thank you for your concern. But really, I think I'll be fine." With that, she ascended the steps and crossed the threshold.

Three detectives and two officers started their respective timers.

"Oh my!" came Maura's voice from the house, her tenor slightly higher than normal. Another "Oh my!" quickly followed, leaving nothing behind but a long stretch of silence. With as much grace as she could muster, the blonde stepped out of the house and pressed a hand to her chest. She inhaled deeply, collecting herself, and glanced back into the house before looking for answers from the group that stood off to the side.

"Who had less than 30 seconds?" Jane called out as she tapped her watch. "Oh, right, that would be me. Gentlemen?" She held out her hand as four officers of the law begrudgingly gave her their money.

"It's not fair," Frost grumbled. "You know her way better than we do."

She kissed the cash and squeezed it into her pocket. "Please. How long did we last in there?"

Frost shrugged, conceding the point.

"Et tu, Sergeant Korsak?" Maura asked, having composed herself enough to speak again.

"Sorry, Dr. Isles," the older man said. "If it means anything, I had you going in and not coming out."

Frost snorted. "Yeah, because she'd get avalanched by all the junk!"

Maura looked at the trio, the two uniformed cops having had the sense to slink away. "So you knew what it was like in there?"

"I told you we already had a look," Jane reminded her. "I just didn't say we only had a look at the entrance… then turned around and left."

"How am I going to process that crime scene?" Maura wondered aloud.

"CSRU have sent two brave souls in to take a boatload of pictures," Korsak told her.

"There was a small window in the back for one to squeeze through," Jane added. "They're going to get as much as they can in terms of trace evidence, but…"

"How will they be able to tell?" Frost finished for her. "The victim was clearly a hoarder."

Maura's face blanched. "Please tell me it's not Prader-Willi Syndrome."

"It's not," Korsak assured her. "I mean, I haven't seen the victim, but the hoarding doesn't seem to indicate it." Seeing Jane's raised eyebrow, he shrugged. "What? I watch a lot of TLC."

"It's a genetic disorder that often manifests itself in the hoarding of food," Maura explained to Jane and Frost.

"Nah," Frost said. "Whatever you smelled in there wasn't food." He brought the back of his hand up to his nose. "I'm about to make myself sick."

Maura glanced around the area, partly in an effort to forget what she saw inside. "The landscaping is immaculate. Such a dichotomy to what's inside."

Jane hummed. "If there's anything the job's taught me, it's never trust a first impression. How many times have we found a monster under the bed?"

"Has anyone seen the victim?" the blonde asked.

"Maura, at this point, we're not even sure where the victim is," Jane admitted. "The only reason we're here at all is because the smell of decomp is even worse than all of that-" she pointed to the house, "put together. The neighbour called it in to the borough police and they verified the smell."

"Passed it on to Homicide without even checking, lazy bastards," Frost complained.

Korsak chuckled. "Scared bastards, more like it."

"Speaking of neighbours," Jane said, "Frost, why don't you get Spearing's notes and revisit the neighbour who called it in? Me and Maura will go inside."

Frost beamed at being let off the hook. "And that's why you're the best partner ever, partner." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a disposable mask. "As a token of my appreciation, take this. You might want to double up."

"I have Tyvek suits in my car for all of us," Maura informed them, her tone brooking no argument.

Korsak shook his head. "I'm not going in there." Holding up his hands, he said, "I've seen too many of those shows. Too many flattened cats. I can't take it." Jane made a face but Maura touched his arm in sympathy. "I'll keep an eye on the CSRU guys in the back. Make sure they haven't gotten swallowed up by the hoard."

"C'mon, Mr. Clean," Jane turned to the medical examiner. "Let's get suited up."

Maura pressed a button on her keyfob and opened the trunk. "How much of it did you see?" she asked as she reached in for the suits.

"Just slightly more than you did," Jane replied. "And by 'slightly more' I mean 'holy crap, that's a lot of crap'."

"Did you know the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has only just recently accepted hoarding as a mental illness?" Maura slipped into the oversized outfit. "One of the first references to hoarding was in Dante's 'The Inferno', written in the 14th century." She pushed some disposable gloves into a pocket. "Approximately 2 to 5 percent of Americans suffer from a hoarding disorder. One of the most famous cases involved the Collyer brothers, who died within 3 weeks of each other in 1947. They were crushed by their own possessions, estimated to be over 140 tons in total. Is this your hypothesis for the victim?"

Jane reached for her hand. "Breathe, Maura. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Think yoga." She did the motions herself, and the second time, Maura dutifully followed along. "You're going to be fine. You're going to put on your boots and we're going to go inside together."

Maura nodded. "Okay. Okay." Another long breath was exhaled before she reached into the trunk and pulled out her boots. "Where are yours?"

Jane pointed down to her feet. "I'm wearing them."

Maura's eyes followed the brunette's fingers. Sure enough, rather than the standard Rizzoli black boots, the detective's feet were brandishing knee-high wellies. "How did I not notice you wearing those?"

"Uh, because mine aren't canary yellow?"

Withholding her comment, Maura used Jane's shoulder to keep her steady as she changed footwear. A CSRU member came out of the house and walked towards them.

"Detective Rizzoli," he said with a nod. "Dr. Isles. We did what we could in there." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Preserving the scene is basically out of the question; if you so much as think too hard, things fall over. But we blocked off the victim as much as we could. Took some blood samples and a shitload of pictures. We held off on bagging any kind of trace evidence, only because we didn't really know what might be considered important. I mean, I gotta be honest with you, Dr. Isles, the whole place could be important, or it might be nothing at all." Maura nodded her understanding and he continued, "If you need anything, Fitz is still in there. He'll collect whatever you need."

"Can you send me the photos?" Jane asked.

"Honestly, Detective, I'll drop you off a stick. I'm not kidding when I say we took a shitload. Again, we've got no idea what's important and what's just junk."

Now it was Jane's turn to nod. "Thanks, Jensen." The technician walked away and she looked at Maura. "Ready?"

With a grimace, she slipped a polypropylene mask over her mouth and nose and replied, "As I'll ever be."

…..

Jane volunteered to go in first, and Maura smiled in gratitude. Even with boots, the terrain was precarious, and she held on tightly to the brunette's hand. If Jensen had made any kind of path from the body to the door, it had long disappeared under minute avalanches of clothing and books and plastic bags.

"Where is the body?"

Jane paused to help Maura up a particularly hazardous pile. "In the kitchen." Realizing the whereabouts of the kitchen needed some clarification, she said, "Over Debris Mountain and around Garbage Corner."

"I've already seen five copies of the same book, Jane," was all Maura could think to say.

"Do you realize I've just hit my head on the ceiling? The ceiling?"

When Maura glanced up, Jane saw her look of distress and gave her hand a quick squeeze.

"It's… it's very high," Maura said.

Jane realized her indignant question had made Maura even more aware of their current predicament. "We're almost there. You're doing great."

"Did you know most mountain climbers will tell you it's not the ascension that's difficult - it's coming down that often causes the most problems?"

Jane didn't question the change of subject, well-versed in the pathologist's habit of injecting arcane information at any time. But, as her feet slowly gave way under her, she realized it wasn't just a random fact.

"Shiiiit!"

Her windmilling surfer pose only slowed her descent enough that when she fell at the bottom, it was fairly soft. Then Maura landed on top of her.

"Oof!" Jane grunted.

"Sorry!" Maura apologized, but made no effort to move. The fall had forced her to brace her hands on either side of Jane's head, but their lower bodies were pressed tightly together in the heap. Their eyes met, and each tried to read the other's expression.

Jane was glad the mask covered her mouth. It prevented the blonde from seeing her lick her bottom lip. As was her habit, she went for the humour. "Is this your way of making a move, Dr. Isles?"

With a smirk Jane couldn't see, Maura replied, "If I were to make a move on you, Detective, you'd know."

Jane wondered how there was any room here for that particular elephant. But it didn't stop her from asking, "Oh, really?"

"Jane," she whispered softly, her voice barely audible through the mask.

"Yeah?"

"Jane, I think there's a dead mouse under my hand."

With a speed that would have won a gold medal in an Olympic event called "Moving Your Ass at the Thought of a Dead Mouse Near Your Head", Jane bolted to her feet and pulled Maura up with her in one complete motion.

"Oh!" Maura shrieked with a laugh. "Musophobic?"

"If 'mouse-o-phobic' means 'not wanting to be laying beside a dead mouse', then yes. Musophobic." She brushed down her suit even though she knew the effort was in vain.

"At least you had the hood on."

Jane shuddered at the thought of her hair touching anything around her. "Let's go, Dr. Livingston," she said as she reached for the blonde's hand once more.

Gratefully taking it, she followed close behind. "You mean Henry Stanley," she corrected the detective. "Dr. Livingston is the man he was sent to find in Africa. Their meeting has been popularly remembered by the line, 'Dr. Livingston, I presume', though there has been no actual written documentation to support this greeting."

Jane kicked away some debris in an effort to make a path. She quickly gave up on the idea. "I don't know about that line, but I think 'The horror, the horror' is pretty apt here."

Maura stopped. "Explain."

"Marlon Brando," she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Apocalypse Now. Guy goes crazy in the jungle. Another guy is sent out to find him. Same idea."

"I thought that was based on Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'?"

Jane tilted her head in appreciation. "You watched the 'Making Of' when I wasn't there!"

Shrugging feebly, Maura conceded, "There may have been a day when I exhausted all my DVR'd shows…"

"Yes!" she made a victorious fist. She helped Maura over one more pile before turning the corner into what was called the kitchen, but bore little resemblance of one. "Hey, Fitz," she greeted the CSRU man.

"Rizzo," he greeted back, ignoring the glare at his use of the name. He acknowledged Maura with a welcoming tilt of the head. "You talk to Jensen?"

Jane nodded. "Said you guys took, and I quote, 'a shitload' of photos."

He held out his hands from his small perch that at one point may have been the sink. "You can see the problems we had."

"Difficult to determine what's important when it could all be important," Maura agreed.

"Or none of it," he said. "We did maintain the area around the body as much as we could, as you can see. White female. Hard to tell the age considering the state of decomp, but 80 if she was a day."

Maura looked to the left and saw the body in a semi-fetal position against a chair. Kneeling beside it, she asked, "This is how you found her?"

"Yep. Collected blood samples and some hair and fibers, but I gotta be honest- they were more token collections than anything. I mean, we could be here for days collecting samples."

Jane looked down at the doctor. "Heart attack? Hit her head? The hoard finally turned on her?" Seeing Maura's raised eyebrow, she waved her hands. "I know, I know. You don't guess."

"I know this has become part of our 'schtick'," she air-quoted, "but in this case, I wouldn't even want to venture I guess. If I did."

With her hands on her hips, Jane looked around. "Yeah, in this case, I don't blame you."

"What do you want us to do, Dr. Isles?" Fitz asked.

She sighed and stood. "What do you recommend we do in terms of removing the body, Mr. Fitzgerald?"

"Ooh, 'Mr. Fitzgerald'," Jane cooed.

He ignored her jibe and replied, "Through the window is probably the most feasible. I can get one of the guys in here with an angle grinder and enlarge the space. We should be able to transfer the body without too much trouble then."

"Sounds reasonable to me," Maura concurred. "I'll sign off on the transport once she's been properly tagged."

"All right," he said. "I'll meet you two outside."

They watched him wiggle out the kitchen window, then they looked at each other.

"We could do this one of two ways," Maura stated. "We could go out the way we came in, or we could go out the window."

Jane gave it some thought and put the image into words. "Is there a way to climb out a window without me falling on my ass?"

"Probably not," Maura admitted. "But I can't guarantee we won't fall on a mouse going the other way either."

The doctor barely got to the word 'mouse' before the detective was out the window.

…..

"See, that wasn't so hard," Maura said as the two brushed themselves off in the cool afternoon air.

"Right. Except for the fact that you somehow landed on me again."

"Somehow." Maura's face was one of perfect innocence.

Jane eyed her suspiciously as she stepped out of her Tyvek suit. Changing the subject, she said, "I get collecting things. I mean, who doesn't have a junk drawer?" She rolled her eyes. "Except you. But what I don't get is the garbage. How hard is it to throw out garbage?"

"Do you remember the state of your apartment in the months after you were shot?"

She guiltily shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "That was different," she protested weakly. "I fully intended on…" She saw Maura's look. "Getting my mother to clean it up?"

"Mmm-hmm."

Jane ignored the veiled accusation. "Go sign off on the body. I know it's hard to believe after all that, but I'm hungry. We'll swing by Chalupacabra and pick up those chiles don't gottas you like."

"Chiles en nogada," Maura corrected. "And did you know the restaurant's name is a play on 'chalupa' and 'chupacabra'? It's a Mexican dish amalgamated with a Mexican cryptid."

"Other well-known cryptids are the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, and Bigfoot."

Maura's eyes widened in delight, then narrowed. "I've told you this before, haven't I?"

"Every time we go there."

She coughed bashfully. "Yes, well. Those sound lovely. The chiles en nogadas. My treat."

"Oh, no," Jane waved away the offer. Pulling the folded bills out of her pocket, she held up her winnings between two fingers and said, "I just took candy from four babies."

...