#also speech sound disorders and ADHD have a weak correlation

[anthrofreshtodeath]

Primogeniture + 89

@themarbledfox bruh this was supposed to be a cute OTP prompt challenge for the month and somehow I ended up tackling neurodiversity, internalized ableism, and trauma response? Idk 😂 Those things are touched upon, so most of this snippet is under a read more cut.

Jane exits the district office for Newton Public Schools on a drab March morning, pushing out of the rusting green door and past the red-orange brick to the parking lot. Maura has already left, in a huff with Chiarina in tow after a hushed argument with Jane just outside the conference room provided for their meeting. This has left Jane to depart the Special Education department on the third floor all on her own. She had thanked the specialists for their time and their thorough assessments, just like Maura did, and then bowed out as quickly as possible.

It isn’t that Maura was rude, in fact, being rude isn’t in Maura’s nature. At least, not to strangers. Rather, Jane usually bears the brunt of it, when Maura is sure that her Brahmin veneer won’t be tarnished and she can lay into her wife as quickly and as privately as possible. And this time, Jane can’t really blame Maura, considering it’s her Rizzoli genes that have got three-year old Chiarina leaving the consonants off the ends of some words, putting the t sound where her k should go, and chattering so fast sometimes syllables get thrown by the wayside for the sake of saying what she needs to say now. Not to mention her flags become fads, her ideal pet is a dod, and every night, she climbs up high so she can leap onto the nearest soft surface. Sometimes she misses - ok, a lot of times she misses - and the thuds, the whooshes, and the schwacks petrify Maura, all while Jane barely registers it for how normal it all seems to her: the unfinished meals, half-done puzzles, the wild array of toys strewn about the bedroom.

So, Maura had, quite un-rudely, complimented the pathologist’s findings, asked what the next steps were, and waited for the response with an uncharacteristic bounce in her knee, one so novel that even Chiarina, buried in the toy box left out to occupy her while the adults talked, froze when she took notice. Then, once they were dismissed with a phone number to set up services through the local school with the pathologist there, Maura had all but dragged Jane and Chiarina out, fidgeting like she’d die if she spent another minute with those very nice, very professional people.

So, Jane did what Jane does. “It’s not that bad, Maura,” she had said, instead of waiting for Maura to start. “She’ll get some speech and she’ll pull it together; she’s just like me when I was a kid,” then, she had paused and grimaced. “Actually, just like Tommy, too. Maybe you should be worried.”

The joke was the opposite of what Maura needed. Maura had glared and took Jane by the lapel, Chiarina by the hand, to the nearest dark corner by the restroom. “You think this is funny? You think it’s a laughing matter that this is happening to us? And that it’s your family’s fault?”

“I-” Jane had opened her mouth, but Maura silenced it.

“I’m taking her to your mother’s so I can get back to my autopsy. I’ll see you at home,” she had said.

That’s the image that Jane carries with her when she finally drops into the unmarked and starts up the engine. Again, she doesn’t blame Maura. Tried to warn her, maybe, a couple of times when Maura had been enchanted by the idea of giving Jane an heir and Jane was left having to explain that this is what having a Rizzoli heir meant. Funny, smart, dangerous, impulsive chaos. Frankie was the outlier, but she and Tommy? Chiarina could be their carbon copy.

Thus, before she returns to the precinct, Jane decides she has time to stop by the flower shop by the house. It’s the least she could do.

___

The morgue is quiet; even the classical music that Maura usually plays in the background is shut off today. Jane had gotten held up by a disturbance call related to their open double homicide, so it’s nearly two pm when she finally enters through the double door with a bouquet of many colored roses, already in a vase. Maura works, with her goggles and her face shield on so that she can bend close to the open chest cavity and inspect a nick on a rib. Jane sets the flowers carefully on the adjacent table. She makes sure the ping of glass against metal is soft, but loud enough to get Maura’s attention.

It works, and Maura looks up, startled. When she sees the flowers, she scrunches her face to keep herself from crying.

Jane takes this as a sign that she should probably speak first. “Sorry you yet again got saddled with Rizzoli family drama,” she says. “And sorry that our kid’s diff-”

Maura cuts her off for the second time that day. “Stop. Stop. I should be apologizing to you. I… I panicked. I got scared for her and then I lashed out.”

Jane smirks, puts her hands behind her back. “I noticed,” she replies with affection.

“I just… I went down the rabbit hole, Jane. When that nice woman was talking, and she was naming back to me all the patterns she saw in Rina’s speech, naming all the difficulties she has, putting on paper what I already knew, all I could think about was comorbidity of language impairment, reading problems, sensory integration issues, with ADHD. I started reciting studies to myself, thinking back to all the things she does and I…”

“Panicked. Like you said. I realize it probably wasn’t helpful when I said she was exactly like Tommy,” Jane approaches slowly. When Maura doesn’t turn away, she puts her hand out. Maura takes it. “But truth is, she’s not. Language was an issue with Tommy. He talked late, he had problems with remembering things and with word order and stuff. You been in a room with Rina lately? That girl has too much word order. She uses longer sentences than you.”

Maura chuckles once to herself, allowing one last tear to fall before she sniffles her life back together. “She does, that’s true.”

“So don’t catastrophize, babe,” says Jane. “In that meeting, no one said language disorder. No one said ADHD. Don’t push somethin’ on her that hasn’t been put out there. If we find that stuff out down the road, we deal with it then.”

Maura looks up at Jane, her unruly black curls with just a smattering of gray at her temples, her expressive eyes that follow Maura’s every movement and memorize everything about her. She decides not to belabor the point, to name all the ways that Tommy and Jane are alike, how bashing in a cafeteria window with your foot when you’re seven, or half-scrawled notes and unfinished projects around the house point to an intelligent, disorganized, adaptive, different brain just like their daughter’s. Kind of like Maura’s. She’ll save that for another day. “Ok. But you have to keep me in check.” That, Jane is very good at.

“You start to fall, I’ll pull you back,” Jane says, knowing Maura wants to say more, but also knowing not to push it. “I always got you. I always got that kid, too. Even though I know today was just the first of a hundred meetings at the school, if she’s anything like me.”

“She’s everything like you,” Maura replies, making her way into Jane’s arms, and this time she means it with affection, and not hostility. “And that’s all I wanted.”