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anthrofreshtodeath · 4 months ago

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Bleacher Creatures

Jane sips a beer, looking out the giant garage window of The Bleacher Bar toward center field. She’d never have paid the 13.99 this Sam Adams tall cost, not with her own money, and would never have picked this venue for a back door deal, but the amiable young man next to her has covered both of their tabs.

Cash of course. He picked the place, when she made the call on the burner phone she said she’d turned over to evidence. Jane was shocked not to hear Paddy Doyle’s voice establishing their rendezvous, but instead Jimmy Ryan’s, telling her in his twenty-eight year old timber, heard the Dodgers might be an interesting team to check out this season. You been to that new place yet? The one they converted the old batting cages into? Gets real packed on a Friday night. Got all kinds of people comin’ and goin’.

Jane had hung up without a word. A grunt, maybe. No phonemes for sure. She doesn’t get the whole gimmick bar thing, and she sure as shit doesn’t get interleague play, either. The National League is the Senior Circuit no more and at 41-28 on the season, the Sox playing the boys in blue is like swatting an obnoxious fly in the muggy summer heat. But, she saves her thoughts about new wave gangsters and new wave baseball fans going soft.

Because this isn’t a social call. And as much as she enjoyed watching the Sox hang up a crooked seven in the fifth, it isn’t a baseball call, either. She sets her glass on the bar in front of them, licks hoppy foam off her upper lip, and crosses her arms. Two drunk kids to her right bump into her, apologizing on their way to the bartender, that’s how crowded it is. They press her into her acquaintance, though no one would know he and Jane are here to see each other with the way they stare out at the game and say almost nothing to each other.

It’s Jimmy that speaks next. “What a game, huh?”

“I’ll say,” is all Jane says in reply.

A couple minutes pass, a routine grounder off the bat of Kevin Youkilis, and then Jimmy mirrors Jane’s stance. “Workin’ hard lately?”

“As always,” says Jane. His question rings in her head the same way her grandfather’s voice would when he’d bring up bisinis, in that glorious, affected accent - they are now speaking of things she is not really supposed to understand. But she does. “You know, it’s the weirdest thing. I got a brother named Tommy.”

He stiffens. He nods. He polishes off his drink, and leaves the glass on the bar. “Enjoy ya night,” he gruffs, and then he’s off.

How can Jane possibly enjoy her night when she’s just told Paddy Doyle’s goon who killed Colin Doyle? She just served Tommy O’Rourke up to Irish Boston’s bogeyman on a silver platter, and the worst part is she could give a fuck about the consequences, professional, legal, moral, whatever. Maura’s safer for it.

It’s just… The Dodgers?

What a shitty, shitty state of affairs.

___

A few hours later, and Jane nurses Irish whiskey while she tries to melt into her couch. She’d thought it fitting when she pulled the bottle down from the cupboard next to her microwave.

NESN postgame coverage drones on in the background; she hadn’t bothered to stay for the rest of the game - came straight home. She twirls the glass, watches amber waves slosh against it in between fiery gulps, pulls her lips tight against her teeth when it strips her throat of all the tears she thinks she might want to cry.

She doesn’t, of course; her drink wipes them clean, just like she wanted it to. She’s being a bitch about it - she’s got her badge on the coffee table in front of her and she frowns at it when it catches the light of the overhead fan. It’s right next to that damn phone.

How many badges throughout BPD history have sat next to phones like this, metaphorically speaking? Not only is she dirty, she’s not even special. The part that angers her the most, though, is that despite the liquor and the moping, the choice is the same. She runs the gambit in her head over and over, and she picks the same thing each time. She tells Paddy when she leans forward, elbows on knees, forcing herself into dizziness. She tells Paddy when she closes her eyes and knocks her head against the back of the sofa. She even tells Paddy when she huffs, stands up, and stomps on the phone with the heel of her boot, crushing it and all it signifies.

The night before, when she’d told Maura that at least Paddy got off his ass and did something for his kids, she was talking to herself. She subsequently got off her ass, stopped waiting for brass to swoop in and save the day, and did something. For Maura. So why does she feel like this?

Fuck it.

Fuck it all. She needs to sober up and exit this pity party.

She slams the glass on the counter, goes into her room to change into some shorts and a sports bra. It’s hot as hell out, even at midnight, but she needs to run.

___

Jane avoids the Dirty Robber the next evening because she refuses to tempt herself with more alcohol. Instead she’s at Johnny’s on Main, an old diner close to her place, close enough that she can walk. And she did, despite the humidity and bone weariness of the day’s work.

She doesn’t look up from her coffee, fingers wrapped around the mug, when the bell over the door rings again, too focused on the stinging punishment of heat against her hands.

That is, until an unmistakable pair of knees makes its way into her line of vision.

Maura.

Jane’s head shoots up; Maura’s been crying. And now, Jane knows why her chest has ached.

She’d actually known somewhere deep down, somewhere unconscious, from the time she let her brother’s name slip into the Fenway air, though she’d hoped that, when Maura wondered aloud at Tommy O’Rourke’s body dump, Korsak’s non-answer as to who alerted Doyle would satisfy.

Clearly it didn’t.

Jane tosses a nod in the direction of the other side of her booth, flattens a hand on the Formica tabletop to ground herself in reality again.

Maura almost doesn’t take the offer, but then she drops into the bench with such uncharacteristic force that the vinyl lets out a heavy whoosh. “I’ve been looking for you,” she finally says.

Jane rouses herself, looks at her phone. Four missed calls, a couple texts. Shit. “Well, you found me.” Her voice is extra rough, firm.

Maura rubs her lips together; Jane knows she’s trying not to cry. And even then Jane acts defensive, because she’s damaged and, hell. She knows what Maura’s going to say. Going to do.

Maura waits for more, but when Jane doesn’t give it, she sighs. “Only with the help of your brother. I didn’t want to believe you could do something like this,” she whispers, but so conspicuously she might as well have just stated it.

“Like what?” Jane looks into watery green eyes. Dares.

Maura, still dressed in her skirt and jacket from today, straightens her posture. Despite her upbringing, she’s a scrapper. Never backs down from a challenge. Jane has always liked this about her. “Helping… my father,” she spits out, the word itself apparently acrid on her pretty little tongue. Everything about Maura is pretty. Deserves to be protected.

Jane tells her so. “I was helpin’ you.”

Maura balks. “So… so that’s it? You just admit it?”

“Clearly you know,” Jane says, “why keep lyin’?”

“I…” Maura huffs. “You and Korsak are not as convincing as you think.” She fidgets with the ring on her finger, the newest thing she hates about herself. Jane hates that Maura hates anything about herself. And Jane has been so bummed because Maura likely now also hates her.

The price is almost too high to have paid. But at least this way, Maura is still alive, and even if she never speaks to Jane again, Jane gets to look at her every day. Safe and sound.

All thanks to that Irish gangster of a father Maura’s got.

“You don’t have to understand it,” Jane begins, “I don’t expect you to -“

“This isn’t you,” Maura cuts her off. “You’ve never wanted to… to hurt people.”

Jane sniffs. How is she going to put this? She wants to say that she admired the touch of Maura’s baby picture under the ice pick, that it pleased her, but she doesn’t. “You and I have been friends for awhile now, yes?”

“Yes,” answers Maura.

“You know a lot about me. But clearly you don’t know everything,” Jane counters. It sounds a little mean.

Maura’s brow furrows like she felt it. “What are you-“

“I want to hurt anyone who’s ever even come close to harming a hair on your head. That’s what I’m saying. I wanted to kill O’Rourke myself for thinking he could hurt you. I wanted to kill Doyle for allowing you to become collateral like that. And not in any kinda rhetorical sense, either,” Jane declares. She holds onto Maura’s stare with her own and refuses to let go. Refuses to let Maura look away from what Jane has just placed between them.

“Did I ever even know the real you?” Maura asks, and it’s so fucking clinical. Jane thinks maybe that’s worse than sounding wounded. Jane thinks maybe Maura knows that.

“You remember when you called, right after Doyle let you go?” Jane asks.

“Anything you want, I can get it,” Maura finally.

“That was the real me. Did it surprise you then?”

Maura takes time to think on it, and Jane allows it. Takes a long swig from her coffee. “Not at all,” says Maura.

“Then this shouldn’t either,” Jane replies.

After Maura nods in assent, a long, tense silence passes. Jane watches her wave off the waitress.

Jane’s next question, or rather the answer to it, may kill her. So, she gazes into the black expanse in her mug and hopes for the best. “So, you gonna turn me in?” She asks because Maura’s the most principled person she knows. Integrity for days and days. All Jane has is feral loyalty.

But, Maura surprises Jane. “I would never do that,” she says. Jane snaps to attention again. Maura is frowning; Maura is livid, but Maura is here. And then, Maura is reaching out her hand. Of course Jane takes it. “But don’t make me have to consider it again.”

Jane nods. She will have to get much, much better at lying, because Paddy Doyle and the men who hate him are going nowhere. And in that moment, she resolves to watch a thousand interleague games, to break Maura’s heart a thousand more times, if it means Maura stays alive.

If Maura holds her hand like this.

#rizzoli and isles #wow I wrote something #been thinking about s1 and I choose to believe it was Jane who made the call #I also love the absolute contempt east coast ⚾️ fans have for west coast teams #also Jane would indeed hate the bleacher bar

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