Blue Posey

Arguing is their foreplay 🌹❤️

Jane puts herself in a box she labels as 'straight'.

She puts you in another little box labelled 'straight' as well.

The kind of boxes that don't stack nicely. The kind that don't fit on top of each other.

But you and Jane fit together so nicely.

--

"Man, this is great, isn't it?" Jane enthuses. You've bought Fenway tickets for the playoff. Jane is in full cosplay, but she sulks when you call it that, even when you explain it's exactly like dressing like a character from a show. Jane doesn't like to be labelled as a 'nerd'. "The only way this could get any better is if this were a date."

Jane looks over, sheepishly. "Of course, not a date with just us. Just, like. If I had a date. And you had a date. And they were both men. That kind of date."

"A double date?" you suggest. And Jane nods thankfully.

--

"I wish somebody would pick me up," Jane grumbles when Frost elegantly seduces a woman at The Dirty Robber. You immediately put your arms around her and lift her. She's not heavy, not like this, and you lean back to steady against her extra weight.

"Not like that, Maura, c'mon!" Jane doesn't struggle, though, and her cheeks are pink when you put her down. "You know, like I wish a man would pick me up."

"For sex," you say, nodding and completely understanding the intricacies of what Jane is saying now that she's explained it.

Jane tosses her head and rolls her eyes but all of her overdramatic over reactions don't mean much when weighed against the cute little blush on her cheeks.

--

"This would be perfect, if you were a man," Jane says. She's sprawled across your lap, and you're rubbing your fingers through her hair and over her back. The game is on the tv but she's too relaxed to do more than cheer when a goal is scored. "You'd be perfect, if you were a man."

"I think I'm fine as I am, and I don't want to tailor any of my dresses. So I won't undergo a sex change for you, Jane. Not even if that's the only way I can get you to date me. I like being a woman, and I like that you're a woman, and until you said that I was thinking about how perfect this was, here and now, with both of us being women."

Jane is completely still. Even her breathing has stopped. You can feel her heart beat pounding crazily through her rib cage from where your hand rests on her back.

"I don't - I can't date women." Jane's voice is small and sad and full of regrets. Jane breathes in and rolls over in your lap, trying to sit up and move away from you like you've burned down her little box with the label on it. Like it hadn't been drenched with gasoline and torn to tinder already.

"Not 'women'. Just me."

"You are, though."

"I'm a woman, yes. But I'm also the person you come home to every night. I'm the person you call every day. I'm the person you being food to when they're sick, and I'd bet dollars to glazed doughnuts that I'm the only person who's actually seen you cry. But I will not sacrifice my wardrobe for you, Jane. I won't be a man for you, because I've never wanted to be a man. Not until I met you and thought it was the only way I can be with you."

"I don't want you to be a man."

"But you want to find a man 'just like me'. You say this is perfect, but it's not because I'm not a man. I think I'm perfect as I am, apart from the part of me that wants to change for you because you can't admit what we are to each other." You're upset now, and so is she, but not the angry kind of hurt, just deeply sad on your part, and she's lost and confused.

"But I'm straight," Jane argues helplessly. "Aren't I? Aren't I supposed to feel this way about men?"

"Feel what way?" you ask, seeing a splinter in her armour. You prod and push at it.

She kisses you. She's still half-across your lap and she melts into your arms like a soft serve frozen yoghurt swirled but you're touching, you're touching her and her mouth is so soft and generous and braver than Jane is because she can't pull away, she's lost, and she's running her hands over you like she's found the holy grail and it's under your dress.

--

"That was perfect," Jane tells you much, much later. Her fingers trail over your bare skin in your big bed, and her lips linger on the bones of your shoulder, on your collarbone, on the freckles you try to cover up on your throat. "Because you're you, and I wouldn't want you any other way."

Once upon a time, I used to believe that the reason I read Rizzoli and Isles' Dean arc as queer was the way he came up in the fight that Maura and Jane have in the first episode if season 3, wherlein Maura directs specific vitriol at Jane's "boyfriend" in her anger at feeling betrayed when Jane shoots Paddy. I've realized recently that it all starts much earlier. As in... the literal first episode. And it's actually, subconsciously, been one of the major reasons I ever interpreted Jane and Maura as potentially queer for each other.

In Jane and Maura's first scene on screen together, Dean makes an appearance that reveals a tension between the two women and plays off of their earlier intimacy.

First, Maura and Jane display their lose, intimate relationship as they survey the crime scene. Both Maura's immediate defence of Jane as she chastizes Korsak for not warning her it was a Hoyt-like crime, and Maura setting Jane's broken nose present them as intimate.

This is placed almost immediately next to their meeting Dean for the first time, reinforcing him as a stranger, even an interloper onto that scene of intimacy. Maura indicates her interest in Dean non-verbally (which reads as intimate too), and further, she reads the potential for Jane's territorial behaviour to emerge and both gives a little warning and phsyically steps between them.

When they'd first met, Maura had felt something inexplicable.

Irritation, sure.

But Jane found Maura in the morgue later, cutting up one of the Johns. Ate a whole Danish, propped in the doorway, robe draped over her skanky little skirt, makeup still plastered on her face, heels higher than Maura had ever worn. Her badge hung over the gown, and Maura didn't want to ask where she kept her gun.

But she did, and Detective Rizzoli had choked on her Danish and laughed, a sound so deep and pleasant that Maura let herself bathe in it for a moment, wondering if she would get an answer.

She never did, but instead she got the second Danish in the bag, sweet and glazed and full of complex carbohydrates.

She'd felt it then. A sense of being comfortable. She relaxed when Detective Rizzoli appeared for autopsies, and thanked her when she chased away that awful Crowe.

Jane always gave her a slanted grin, a raised eyebrow, and a promise that she'd ask the same of Maura one day.

--

I’m bawling my eyes out 😭😭😭😭😭 So tender ♥️♥️♥️♥️

When Jane said she'd be the man in a lesbian relationship, it was because Maura was so much not a man. Not mannish at all, yet Jane had insults and innuendo flung at her for daring to have the audacity to go hard at a male-oriented job, to like sports and be slightly taller than average.

She didn't think about the implication that she was putting herself next to Maura, or that the point of lesbians was that there were no men.

But when Maura asked Jane to dinner a few weeks later, and told her to wear a dress and flats, she didn't think much of it. Just went through her wardrobe, picking out the one dress she knew Maura liked.

And when she answered the door, Maura was there in a sleek suit with tall boots, hair tied back sharply, dress shirt decidedly a little too unbuttoned. Jane reached forward to do one more button up, and Maura's hands reached for her shoulders, pressed a hello kiss to her cheek as Jane's hands stuttered to a stop on Maura's chest.

"I thought we could switch it up tonight," Maura said by way of explanation as they went down the stairs. Even with Maura in heels and Jane in flats, Jane still felt like she was taller, and that gave her confidence.

"Switch what up?"

"Well, maybe I don't like always being the woman in our relationship. And you sounded a little... resigned to being typecast as the man, so," Maura held the door for Jane, and Jane watched her dapper best friend walk around the hood to get in the driver's seat.

"Our relationship?" Jane asked, pulling her dress down a little, watching Maura eye the exposed skin. Maura merely shrugged and focused on the traffic.

---

"How did you like it?" Maura asked, sitting on the couch, untying her hair from the severe ponytail it had been in, running her fingers over her scalp in relief. Jane hadn't bothered to get out of her dress, but she'd kicked her shoes off.

"It was nice. I don't always... when I go on dates with actual men, they don't... listen like you do. They try to impress me, and my batting average always beats theirs." Jane eyed Maura as she unbuttoned that top button again. "You make a handsome man," Jane said. "But I think I prefer you comfortable, and I think that means your fancy dresses and stilettos and hairdos." Jane leaned over and joined Maura in running her fingers through her hair.

"And I like you better when you're confident and comfortable, and you're not, in a dress."

"So, experiment failed?" Jane asked, and Maura cleared her throat.

"You invited me in for coffee," Maura said nervously. "Given that I was playing the man, that means I... you...."

"You're also my friend, Mau," Jane said affectionately, trying to brush away the moment, but Maura was focused.

"An invitation to a male partner to 'come in for coffee' after a date is usually a signifier of sexual intent from the female," Maura said in a small voice.

"But that wasn't a date," Jane said, looking confused. "Was it?" She asked belatedly, watching Maura's face fall. "Aw, no I'm sorry, I didn't realise. I thought you were just having fun in a new outfit." Maura brushed her face and got to her feet, turning away from Jane. "No, don't go," Jane said, sounding panicked. If Maura left, they'd never speak about it again and usually that was how she dealt with these little moments with Maura. But she'd seen Maura's face and she couldn't let her leave, not knowing that Jane had hurt her. Maura struggled with her boots, and Jane came over to hold her steady. When Maura looked up, hand on Jane's elbow, Jane leaned in and kissed her, quickly, abruptly, almost too fast for Maura to parse, and Maura stopped. She kicked off her boots and kissed Jane, pushing her back against the kitchen counter.

"That goddamn button," Jane said, tugging Maura's shirt from the pants, gasping as Maura kissed her neck.

---

When Jane woke up, she wasn't surprised that Maura was there; she hadn't been surprised at waking up to Maura in her bed for a while now. But they were considerably less dressed than usual, and Maura was curled up comfortably like a cat on Jane's chest.

"Told you I'd be the man," Jane chuckled.

---

Also I made a Rizzles discord but also I don't socialise much so uh I don't know.

https://discord.gg/X5tjrRCk

The first time Jane touched Maura, Maura flinched and looked away. Jane had meant it to be a comforting pat on the shoulder, but the intent had been lost in translation. She'd worked with skittish horses and victims of domestic violence, so she reworked the way she approached Maura. She always let Maura know she was there, always made sure Maura could see Jane's hands before they landed on her, and Maura slowly stopped flinching, stopped looking away. Slowly Maura started reaching out for Jane too, timid but determined. Soon Jane could even touch Maura from behind, because she made sure Maura could hear her gait. Anyone else, Maura flinched. But like a horse whisperer with a rescue, Jane made Maura feel comfortable and safe.

Jane never once questioned why the year-long journey meant so much to her, why it was so important that her new friend - who never minded when Jane touched her, who only ever flinched at the sudden shock of being touched - didn't find Jane's touch startling.

The first time Jane hugged Maura, Maura was sobbing. She'd been distraught, confiding in Jane about something personal, and it was the most natural thing in the world to bundle Maura into her arms. Maura appeared to agree, clinging to Jane. When Maura pulled away, wiping at her face, she looked up at Jane.

"I don't like to be touched. Especially when I'm very upset." Maura saw Jane's eyes widen with worry.

"I'm sorry, I won't..."

"I don't seem to mind if it's you," Maura added, stepping back into Jane to be held.

Susie sighed, putting her diorama back in her office. It had been a big hit at The Dirty Robber, and Doctor Isles had spoken to her nicely.

Doctor Isles always spoke to Susie nicely, but never as nicely as she spoke to Jane.

Susie picked up mini-Jane and put her hands up like she was arguing with Maura.

"How was I supposed to know that corrupting your best Senior Criminalist would have consequences for me, Maura,' Susie said in a guttural voice, the closest approximation to Jane's voice she could manage.

"It's very inconvenient for me to have you interfere with my staff," Susie said in a slightly more clipped voice than her own. She made the Jane doll waddle over to Maura and touch her face. "Oh, you know I can't stay mad at you," she imitated Maura again, and moved Maura's face to Jane's, making kissing noises.

"Okay, I do not sound like that, Chang, and are you making us make out over a dead body?"

Susie spun around to see the real, full scale Jane and Maura in the doorway to her office. She put the dolls down carefully with a wince.

"Uh, I can explain?"

Jane leaned her long frame against the doorway, her eyebrows arched. Susie longed to paint her. Them both. Together. She shook her head. "Okay, maybe I can't."

"If we were going to 'make out' as Jane says, we certainly wouldn't do it in the morgue," Maura said, looking offended. "It's disrespectful, let alone unhygienic."

Jane nodded, striding over to pick up the dolls. "Never liked Barbies," she mused, staring at Maura's chest. "And she is not to scale."

"You should know, Senior Criminalist Chang, that when we do 'make out' we use your office, not the morgue. So there."

Susie looked up to see Jane's startled face, then Maura covered her mouth in shock, realising what she'd said.

Susie looked at her desk, her chair, her walls. She had a UV light on her keychain but she was too scared to use it, or indeed, touch any surface.

"Okay, goodnight," Jane said, shoving the dolls into Susie's hands and grabbing Maura, pushing her out the door ahead of her.

Susie tilted her head, then pulled down the diorama of her office, putting Jane and Maura down carefully. She put them propped up against the desk, Jane's hands on Maura's hips, then put her to-scale Senior Criminalist Susie Chang in the chair. She smiled to herself, and started again.