Under Cover of Night

Rating: T, to be safe. It's a little dark.

Pairing: Rizzles

Disclaimer: Do not own them. Wish I did. Really. Will trade for body parts.

A/N: This started off as a bit of a tumblr experiment, short little things to keep me writing through epic writers block...until I realised it was a pain in the butt to trawl through old blogs to find other chapters so, hope it is okay I decided to compile it all in here.

AU to books I am sure, I always wanted to explore a perspective of how the first 'interaction' of J/M happened, and how it evolved. So... if you're here, thanks for reading, really. Yes, I'm talking to you. I can't even begin to explain what it means.

T

Under Cover of Night - Part 1: The Night

"Hi…"

A raspy voice, edgy and familiar carves the still air of her bedroom, settling into her ear.

Maura presses the phone closer to her cheek, glancing at the clock beside her bed. Blinking the sleep from her eyes she watches the red LEDs swim across her vision into numbers oriented into a time… 1:37am.

"Hello." She smiles into the phone. "It is nice to hear from you."

Five nights along and it has become a strange ritual – one that neither woman speaks about or indeed acknowledges, outside the space of these hours. In fact, it has only been by chance their numbers were exchanged at all – courtesy of a last-minute crime scene earlier in the week and a flustered detective trying to locate her phone to get hold of her partner.

"Would you like me to dial it?."

It was wedged between the console and the passenger's seat. The detective's gloved hands were too thick to fit into the space.

She wouldn't remove the gloves.

So Maura retrieved the phone instead. And they spoke for the first time, that night.

A clumsy start, involving stuttered thanks for the assistance with the phone, but somehow tripped over awkwardness into interest and by the end of the conversation Maura knew the Red Sox, and the rules of basketball, and the detective heard about the anthropological evolution of competitive sport.

….And the crime scene from that day – with all its horrors – had faded, just a fraction, away from them both.

…Five nights ago.

"..Did- did I wake you?" Crackles through static, drawing Maura's mind to the present.

She ponders the question, the option of answering truthfully or for deflecting to something different ever-present in her mind. She swipes a hand over her forehead and tucks errant strands of hair behind her ears.

"I'm sorry if I-" The voice on the other end trails off. She realises she hasn't answered.

She responds swiftly.

"It's no trouble." She says, "-You are welcome to call."

It is the truth, despite the hour. Only five nights and these calls have settled as a routine in Maura's life – dissolving into it now – a comfort. An evolving constant. One month ago nobody would be calling her, not in this way. Not for anything.

Not that she can define what this is, precisely. By day their relationship is… simple. Professional. Two colleagues – two women – thrust together in positions of authority in a male dominated workplace. They work together, but they work equally with many other people as well.

Of course, Maura knew of her. There wasn't a person who worked within a mile of the BPD who didn't – who didn't know what she had endured, what she had fought against, just to return. She had only been back at work a month, after five away on leave. On medical leave.

There had been no particular reason for them to connect, beyond trying to find her phone, five days ago …

"I read there was… a meteorite.. shower.. tonight." The words trip over themselves slightly.

She stretches, pulling at the edging of her sheets with pinched fingers, settling herself in, allowing the smile to linger on her lips – indulgently.

"The Perseid Meteor shower – yes-" She answers, pressing her head further down into her pillow, preparing to happily forgo the next hour to discuss the detail, and any other details the woman on the other end of the line sees fit to . "I saw it." She says, then corrects herself. "-Part of it. The cloud cover made it difficult."

"Cloud cover?" The voice sounds genuinely perplexed. "I thought… you of all people would have one of those….telescopes that can.. see through that-"

The words 'of' and 'those, 'see' and 'through', blend together in a barely perceptible slur. Maura's fingers pause on the edge of her night shirt.

She is tired.

In their third conversation, Maura learned that the detective could simply and suddenly be hit with a bone-crushing weariness, after surviving on four hours sleep a night for days– her body would out of nowhere decide that then, there and then was when it would call surrender.

"Jane?" She asks gently, "Are… you alright?"

"Yeah.." The thickness of fatigue now plainly evident in her voice. "We found him."