Oh, I've let things languish. Ah well. A short Closer ficlet, featuring Brenda and her (in my veiw of the show) perpetual arch-nemises. Or the other side of her coin.
He worked her last nerve, every time, and it wasn't just the smugness.
Not to say that the smugness itself wasn't infuriating; that on its own was bound to send her barking mad sooner or later.
No, it was more- and less- than that. It was like something crawling just under her skin. The sense that he knew her; that he was laughing up his sleeve at her. It was the sense that he told her as little as he could and that most of it was just what he thought she wanted to hear. The nagging sensation that he was more interested in observing her than anything else their "little chats," as she'd come to think of them, might involve.
It was the nagging feeling of there being something not quite there. She wasn't used to not being able to put her finger on a suspect's nature. It was a squirming feeling in the pit of her stomach.
It was the way that her desire to hang him for something- anything- had given him a direct line into her life. It was the way that she knew with certainty that deaths in the right part of town, or in the right company, would bring him to her yet again. It was the way that she was slowly starting to mind his presence less and less. It was the way that she felt the need to question him herself at every possible turn.
It was the way they'd almost, by this point, developed a comfortable rapport.
It was the idea that he cared what she thought of him. It was the idea that she was starting to care, or at least wonder, what he thought of her. It was the way she found herself seeing him places he wasn't.
It was the way she was starting to catch herself comparing him to the other people in her life. The way she'd just yesterday started comparing his usual way of speaking to her with Fritz's… And the way she found herself preferring his.
It was the way he didn't whine at her. It was the way the way his temper rose to meet hers; always on the offense, never retreating, never defending. It was the way she enjoyed his anger. It was the way he relished hers.
It was the way she was beginning to doubt everything about him that she'd been so sure of at the start. It was the way she was beginning to doubt his guilt.
It was the way she'd eventually taken home and starting using his horrid, morbid gift. It was the way she'd not told Fritz where she'd got it; the way she'd sidestepped the question when he asked. The way after five years of marriage, Fritz still didn't know.
It was the way he'd managed, only once, to make her smile. The way that once was enough to stay with her for two years.
It was the way he had no trouble getting her to converse in French, in front of God and everyone.
There were a lot of reasons that Dennis Dutton worked her last nerve merely by drifting through her thoughts. It was the fact that he drifted her through her thoughts at all.
But right now, it was the fact that he'd told her that he liked her earrings.
It was the fact that she'd found herself liking that he liked them.
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