Hi all. I haven't posted anything on the site for a while. I've left like three stories unattended for a couple years… which I feel guilty about. But I just recently got into Rizzoli and Isles and this story was practically begging to be written.

Some of the stories I read where Jane and Maura finally get together strike me as unrealistic. Like when the author jumps into the nitty-gritty right after declarations are made, or the characters come to terms with their feelings for one another a little too quickly. Of course I'm not saying I don't enjoy those stories—I definitely do. I just think that Jane and Maura are a little more complex than that, and I wanted to write something that explored the actual difficulty involved with discovering a part of yourself you never thought you would.

Hence, this. Comments, questions, concerns, and critiques are always welcome.

Most importantly, enjoy!

So, without further ado, Rizzles with a twist!

…

Chapter 1: What About You and I

…

Jane didn't know whether she feared more for her life or her sanity. She expected to fear the former, but her mind was completely preoccupied with something ludicrous. No, beyond ludicrous. This certainly wasn't how she pictured her life ending. She wasn't particularly frightened, full of regrets, or hoping for some kind of rescue. She was just frustrated, and confused. Maura was turned away toward the other side of the trunk, but Jane suspected she might be in the same boat… or the same trunk of a deranged perp's car, so to speak. Thinking back on it, Jane couldn't really figure out where things had turned so… so weird.

Maura's place. Last night. Jane shut her eyes tightly, trying to remember. In the back of her mind, she noted the irony. Her last bit of detective work might be figuring out herself.

Maura's own thoughts were not far off. She was reliving that conversation as well, in hopes of stumbling over whatever it was that had so quickly changed everything.

…

Jane remembered Matthew Macfayden's face frozen with a somewhat unflattering, twisted expression. The DVD had been paused for half an hour now, its three-and-a-half star contents the last thing on the minds of detective and coroner. This happened a lot on their movie nights. One would make a comment regarding a case, friend, or a date, the other would respond, and a conversation would begin.

If the movie was good or one of Jane's particular favorites, she would resist the lure of these comfortable conversations, often trying to wrest the remote from Maura's hands to no avail. After laughter subsided or a short tussle tired them both out, the conversation would begin anyway. Not that Jane ever really minded. The movies would always be the same. These conversations, though, were unique every time, and priceless. Jane treasured each one she had with her best friend. She would never admit that to Maura though. Instead, she teasingly accused the doctor of selecting horrible movies for the sole purpose of forcing a dialogue out of sheer boredom. Maura rarely denied it.

Last night, about twenty minutes into the movie, a conversation did start, this time about the current case. A teenage girl named Trisha was found hanging dead in her apartment. Initially, it appeared to be a suicide, but further analysis of the scene revealed one partial fingerprint on the chair kicked out from beneath the dead body that didn't belong to the victim or family, as well as tiny bits of skin left in the coarse fibers of the homemade noose that belonged to a male. Of course, Jane's first thought was a boyfriend. But the teenager was lesbian.

Trisha's ex, Amy Welsh, 18, had broken up with her two weeks earlier. Trisha had allegedly made out with a boy at a party. Someone put a picture up on the internet, and Amy found out and broke it off. But her alibi was solid. Trisha had been desperate to win Amy back, the ex said. She said it was a misunderstanding, but it's hard to argue with photographic evidence, you know? she'd muttered during the interrogation. The teen, well, really a young woman, looked ashen and defeated. I told her I needed space. I told her that I just couldn't forgive her, not then.

Jane had studied her suspect's face carefully before asking, Weren't you angry that she had kissed someone else?

Angry? There was no denying the hurt and guilt in her eyes. I was heartbroken. We'd been together since… like the end of middle school. We came out together. We practically lived together. We were each other's purpose. With us, it was just like, we knew. We really knew.

You knew, Jane had repeated, trying to decipher her words. …That you were lesbian?

It's not like that, the girl had said into a sigh. It's not like we were anti-labels or anything, but we didn't think about it that way. We knew that we were right for each other. I mean, the attraction was there but it wasn't about both of us being girls, it was just about us. She has dragged her tired, bloodshot eyes up from the table to meet Jane's dark ones. I didn't kill her. I needed her—I need her now. I just wanted time to cool off. I never thought she would kill herself! I would do anything to get her back…

Jane heard her name and was wrenched from her memories, back on Maura's couch. There was Matthew's face on the big plasma screen TV. Jane glanced over at her friend who was watching her with one eyebrow lifted in curiosity.

"Are you thinking about the case?" Maura asked politely.

Jane flashed her a quick smile. "Yeah." She pushed back into the couch and threw her arms up in a stretch, adding with a smirk "Good guess."

Maura hmphed and raised her chin indignantly. "That was a question, not a guess. And I do not guess, Jane." She paused, waiting for the usual rebuttal, but none came. She glanced back at her dark haired friend to find that her expression had turned serious again. She waited, but Jane's eyes were so focused, it was as if she were trying to burn holes through Maura's newly purchased antique French cherrywood coffee table. That wouldn't do. "What's bothering you?" she pressed when Jane remained silent.

"I just don't get it," Jane muttered. "Two weeks apart from your lover and you're ready to fake committing suicide to win her back?"

"Mm." Maura thought for a moment. "There could be many explanations for that kind of behavior. She may have a history of mental illness. Or perhaps this traumatic event triggered a latent anxiety disorder, which lapsed into a depression that led to the suicide attempt."

Jane made a face. "Maybe, but I believe Amy's account of her mental stability. I think she said Trisha could be a little dramatic, 'but she was never—like, ever—depressed!'" Jane imitated the young woman's valley girl accent, rolling her eyes. But the detective's expression lit up as she replayed Maura's words in her head. "Wait, you said 'attempt'… not just suicide, but suicide attempt. So you do think a buddy of hers maybe helped her out a little!"

"I think no such thing," Maura said decidedly. "I have to do more testing on the skin before I can draw that kind of conclusion, and all we can determine about the partial print without a new suspect's print is that it wasn't Amy's, Trisha's, or any immediate family. As it stands, everything was in place, with her prints where they would be expected, for her to have committed suicide by herself."

Jane sighed. "Maybe that's true. But the owner of that print killed her, Maura, I know it. If Frost could just get into her computer, we could figure out if what her mother said is true, about the websites." Trisha's mother said she had caught her daughter surfing some kind of sites about how to win an ex back just two days before she was found dead, but she couldn't remember the name of the page and there were thousands of win-them-back sites out there. If they could just find out which pages she visited, who she came into contact with… But after her mother found out, the information stored on her computer was encrypted, either by Trisha or someone else. Whoever it was added password protection overkill. "I can't believe it's been this long and still no new leads… ugh!"

Maura reached over and gave Jane's shoulder a quick pat. "Frost is working on it as fast as he can."

Jane shook her head. "Not fast enough. This bastard is going to get away."

Maura opened her mouth with another attempt to reassure Jane, but something in the detective's expression gave her pause and she changed course. "If I can ask, Jane, why is this case in particular getting to you?"

"What?" The detective gave Maura a dismissive look. "It's not… getting to me."

"Oh? It isn't?"

"No."

"Jane."

Jane released an aggravated breath and threw Maura a glare. "Why you always gotta do that?"

"Do what, exactly?" Maura asked innocently, returning Jane's gaze evenly.

It quickly became a staring contest, but Maura's concerned, curious expression was unrelenting and Jane's heavy glare gradually subsided into a pensive, frustrated frown. "See right through me…" she finally mumbled. She crossed her arms and glanced back at the coffee table.

"It's what I do," Maura said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "So what about it is really bothering you?"

"It's just…" Jane looked stubbornly at Maura hoping to further deflect, then threw her arms up in defeat. "Fine. It's just I don't get the intensity of the feelings behind this case. It's like a case of teenage drama gone horribly wrong. I mean, these guys are kids!"

"Well they are, or were, technically adults. Boston law states that people over the age of 18 are to be considered—"

"I know, I know Maur," Jane cut her off. "But when they were both in middle school, when their primary concerns should have been math homework and summer camps, and-and slumber parties and cartoons, these girls were already together! They were making grown-up decisions about their lives, they were…"

"Figuring themselves out?" Maura supplied.

"I guess."

"What's so upsetting about that?"

Jane struggled to find words for her feelings. "How are they, how is anyone supposed to know what they want at 12 or 13 years? They're just babies and they were already committed. Committed to the point that a break up meant measures as drastic as setting up a fake suicide to… to what? Scare poor Amy into getting back together with her again?"

"Well," Maura considered, adjusting her position and resting her arms in her lap, "You are interpreting her methods as illogical—"

"Just plain stupid, is more like it," Jane inserted.

"'Stupid, then, but, though we will never know for sure, she might have interpreted her own methods as a display of what Amy meant to her. Sending a message like, 'I can't live without you' or, 'my life is meaningless like this.' If the message had been delivered the way she had intended, Amy might have understood an entirely different meaning. That's the beauty of human language. We only have so many phonemes to compose the morphemes that code our language, but combine that with body language, symbolism, and the individual human experience and you get almost an infinite amount of interpretations…" Maura trailed off when she caught the look on Jane's face, suppressing a smile. "I'm just saying that your interpretation is valid, but not necessarily applicable to Trisha and Amy's situation."

Jane sniffed in response. The room was quiet for a minute or so while the detective thought about what Maura had said. Maura folded her legs onto the couch as she studied the changing emotions on Jane's face. The silence stretched on until Jane, almost under her breath, murmured, "I've lived my whole life, twice as long as the victim and her ex, and… I've never had a boyfriend who I was that attached to."

Maura rounded her mouth into an 'O' with understanding. She gave it some thought before suggesting, "Well, that's okay… perhaps you haven't met that guy yet."

"Gee, maybe," Jane began sarcastically, "You're absolutely right! One day Mr. Perfect is going to waltz into my life. He's going to love me and what I do and he's going to know how to function with Ma in the picture. And he won't ever get on my nerves. But that'll be easy because none of the guys I've dated ever get on my nerves, right Maura? You know that from all the griping I don't do about them."

Maura was taken aback by the venom in Jane's response, but she decided that the anger was just a way for Jane to vent. The doctor chose not to take it personally and tried a different approach. "Okay, I understand why that might seem dubious. But those kinds of feelings don't have to apply to a man. What about your family? The feeling might be slightly different, but it comes from a very similar place."

Jane shrugged. "I would be sad, sure, if they wanted to cut off ties, but lose my purpose?"

"What about you and I?"

Jane snapped her mouth shut, staring at Maura for just a second before turning away. Now it looked like she was trying to blow the coffee table up, her averted gaze was so intense. Maura's words hung around thickly in the room like a fog. The doctor had no idea where they had come from—they had slipped out of her mouth before she'd had time to process them. But they had been said. Now Jane's discomfort made Maura tense and nervous. Even after realizing what she'd said, Maura hadn't thought the words were such a big deal. But the distress radiating from Jane's side of the couch made her realize yes, they were a big deal. Why?

What about you and I? Jane swallowed audibly in the thick quiet of the room and let out a nervous laugh. The silenced stretched on so thinly that Jane couldn't take it. She stood quickly. "Hey Maur, I'm pretty tired. I think I'm going to hit the sack." As an afterthought, she added a quiet, "Sorry."

"Oh… okay." Maura watched her friend pad towards the hallway. "Well, goodnight…"

"Night," came Jane's quick reply. Her footsteps faded, and then the guestroom door closed.

Maura stared absently at Matthew's face. How did I upset her? She felt suddenly hollow and her throat went dry when a new thought came to her. Have I… ruined our relationship? She was boggled. How could she have possibly ruined the relationship by asking that question? She felt a sudden rush of gamma aminobutyric acid flood her system—anxiety.

Hitting a mental roadblock, Maura stood, She cleared away some dishes and tidied up the kitchen and living room. She was hoping Jane might come back out, might offer some sort of explanation to help Maura figure out just what went wrong. But she didn't. Eventually, Maura wandered into her room and changed into silk pajamas, brushed her teeth and her hair, and crawled into her bed.

What about you and I?

Maura had posed the question, but only in the darkness of her room did she consider answering it. What about Maura and Jane? Well, they were best friends, certainly. They relied on each other to varying degrees for all kinds of things. Did Maura need Jane the way Amy needed Trisha? Maura stared at the ceiling, dumbfounded that she wasn't able to produce a simple yes or no. But after another mental roadblock, her brain produced a stark no. My body functions independently from Jane's, Maura reasoned. My metabolism is regulated with sustenance, exercise, and sleep. I do not need Jane for these things. She bears no weight on the healthy continuation of my life. Maura frowned at the ceiling, dissatisfied with her own explanation. It seemed logically true, but she knew it was false.

She knew from experience that the thought of being without Jane made her physically ill. Maura quickly directed her memory away from that awful day, the gun, the gunshot echoing in the street and echoing in Maura's head for so much longer. No, it wouldn't do her any good to remember. But yes, the thought that Jane's life might end did affect her, both mentally and physically. It's been shown in studies that humans suffer from lack of social interaction, she reasoned in this new direction. Seeing as I am an outlier in terms of levels of comfort around people, the fact that I can maintain a healthy, stable relationship with Jane has added a level of social stability to my life that reduced much of the damage done during my childhood when… when I had no friends at all. Even halfway through the thought, Maura knew it wasn't accurate. Or, it was only partly accurate.

Jane isn't just a 'stable relationship' that provides me with social stimuli! Maura chastised herself angrily. She's… she's… Maura shut her eyes tight when a new memory clawed its way out from the darkest recesses of her mind. She couldn't decide which had been worse; the pain from the taser, or the knowledge that Hoyt was about to destroy Jane. Maura nearly gagged, shoving the memory back where it came from. It had made its point, but left her feeling terrified, and alone. It had been a long time since Maura had let an image from that day surface in her mind. She swallowed hard. Jane. She needed… to talk to Jane.

…

Continued in chapter 2, A Complicatedly Simple Animal