"No, no, no," Brenda cried, dropping her pencil, leaping out of her chair and rushing to rap on the window glass. "Y'all put that down right now! I mean it!"
She sighed, nearly stamped her foot. "I'm warnin' you!"
There was a loud clatter and the sound of several small voices giggling merrily away.
Brenda groaned, pushed through the door of her little downtown office, just up the block from the clinic, and surveyed the damage.
Once again, the youth of Seabrook—a roving band of miscreants, Brenda often thought even as she reminded herself to give Laurel Kelly's mother the girl's homework once the deputy returned from her daily rounds—had tipped the large salmon sculpture that stood on the corner up onto its tail, a bright-orange bucket perched on top. "Shoot!" Brenda grumbled again; the sculpture was just a little too high for her to swat the bucket off. Honestly, she didn't even know how they did it; they were so small, even though they always traveled in a pack. She frowned and this time she did stamp her foot before going back inside to flip through the thin stack of monthly reports, mostly light vandalism related to the children and a few more substantial incidents from the teenagers; a report about the Kyles' dog killing a chicken.
"Bucket again, Chief?" her deputy Annie Kelly grinned, pushing back inside.
"How do they do it?" she cried, throwing her hands up. "I'm as tall as three of 'em put together and I can't get it down, let alone up there all perfect like that!"
"Kids are resourceful little maniacs," Annie shrugged.
"Speaking of," Brenda raised an eyebrow, pushed a folder across her desk. "Miss Marcia dropped by with these for Laurel, due on Thursday. How's she doin'? What's Dr. Isles say?"
"Just a bad bout of allergies, she thinks. And Laurel is willingly drinking nettle tea so I can't imagine she's faking."
"Well that's all right then," Brenda said, giving her a little smile. "Anything interestin' to report?"
"If you can call Martin Gutierrez and Joanne Bradley still engaged in a cold war over their property line interesting, then sure," Annie sighed, dropping into her chair.
"I regret to say that I cannot," Brenda sighed too, rolled her eyes. Martin and Joanne had established adjacent properties just outside of the town, and when a particularly bad winter storm had scattered their boundary markers a few years back the two had suddenly gone from cordial neighbors to what seemed like mortal enemies overnight.
"It's not like there's even anything there to argue over! Oh wow, more blackberry bushes." Annie closed her eyes, rubbed the bridge of their nose. "They're not even good blackberries! At least all they've got are birdshot cartridges, so it'll take a while for anybody to do too much damage to each other."
One of Brenda's earliest, least-popular reforms to the little town had been to carefully regulate ammunition. It wasn't that she didn't trust people—well, she didn't, especially—but she had argued tirelessly for conserving bullets, for ensuring the deadliest, and therefore most valuable, of their arsenal was locked up for food hunting and emergency use only. "I ain't tellin' anyone they can't defend themselves, but if you can't scare off a coyote with a shotgun blast we've all got bigger problems," she'd said to a chorus of jeers.
The battle had been a frustrating one, especially considering Maura had always made it clear, right from the start, that violence of any kind was unacceptable in their community. "I'm just puttin' pen to paper on that," Brenda had protested. "And besides, nobody's sayin' you can't have your weapons! Just that you can't shoot whatever you want out of 'em. Plus," she'd added over the loud boos, "how many bullets you think we got? You see a bullet factory around here? And we all know Roger and Adina have a shell press in their shed—I know you've got it, Adina, don't give me that look. I don't care! As long as we're not out here shootin' each others' fingers off. Or anything else," she'd added, shifting her stern glare from Martin to Joanne, fuming on opposite sides of the room.
"What about you, Chief?" someone had called. Brenda had frowned.
"You see a gun on me?" she'd replied sharply, lifting her little jacket. "I acknowledge I'll have access to one, and so will Deputy Kelly here when she's on duty—" she gestured to Annie, who had served in the Army Reserves and had been planning to attend the Academy, who Brenda had offered the job of deputy a few weeks into her tenure as Seabrook's Chief of Public Safety—"and so will Pierre and Liz and everyone you're used to seein' armed. But my sidearm, and Deputy Kelly's, stays in my office, all right? Seven in the clip, one in the chamber, all locked up tight, and that's how I plan to keep them both." There was a discontented murmur from the crowd, but it seemed to lessen just a little.
It had caused a little rift in their town, one that had almost spiraled into a divide, but once again Maura had swept in, had soothed, had cajoled, had listened, and after that even Brenda's fiercest opposition had once again nodded politely at her in the streets, and Brenda got her ammo locker, safely stowed in the back room of the little police station that had taken over a defunct tourist shop.
The months since her appointment had been peaceful, almost lazy; Brenda spending her days just being present. "It's all anyone needs from you," Maura had said, eminently reasonably, though Brenda had huffed and scowled as much as she could before resigning herself to her task. "All anyone wants is to know there's someone else looking out for them."
She still had trouble adjusting to her short days, her short weeks. Even though she'd spent nearly eight years doing nothing, the sweet, soft clicking-in of her new job had flipped her back to late nights, long hours, even though the worst they'd encountered in Seabrook since their ordeal with the Ivan Grozny had been a plague of graffiti about how much Seabrook sucked.
It does suck, Brenda had thought, staring at the thickly-painted letters adorning the walls next to Molly's little café. She missed the excitement, somehow, already. Missed the thrill. It had been so long without, but that one little taste—
"Bren-daa," Maura had groaned, flexing her fingers against Brenda's waist as Brenda grumbled again about there being too many hours in the day. "I refuse to invent drama for you." Maura's eyes had sparkled as Brenda had grumbled her regular apology. She'd sighed, dropping her book to the coffee table. "You seem bored," Maura had murmured, drawing closer to her, picking up Brenda's hands, twitching against her little blank notepad. Had sucked lightly on each of Brenda's fingers, had asked Brenda each time if that had been exciting enough, or if she needed more.
Brenda's hips had inched forward on the couch every time Maura had carefully drawn one of Brenda's fingers into her mouth, Brenda wishing she could just ignore Maura's patronizing little stare but also knowing there was no way she could ignore Maura looking that deeply into her eyes, no matter what the intended effect.
The hours of the day they spent tangled together certainly cut down on Brenda's boredom.
She wondered occasionally how long it could last, this teenage lust she felt for Maura every time she walked into the same room. Wondered about the day she'd stop feeling a little deep throb whenever the sun caught Maura's hair in just that way. Decided, every time Maura's tongue was probing somewhere on her still-overly sensitized, she assumed, body, that it didn't really matter, as long as she got to feel that.
She had realized, not too long after they'd started sleeping together again, that maybe she'd never get over it. That the hot jolt of arousal she felt whenever Maura tilted her head, smirked just right, made up for the endless dull days. Even if nothing happened at work, she supposed, gasping as Maura worked her fingers, her mouth against Brenda's pliant body, she always went home to this.
Maybe this is it, she'd thought more than once as Maura's fingers tickled along her thighs, worked sweetly at her core. Maybe this is what there is to live for.
Brenda knew for a certainty that she'd give up her life for Maura, so it made a weird kind of sense that whatever Maura wanted to give her was up for grabs, too. Their bodies slick, tangled, shuddering. Yes, she thought more than once, at more than one inopportune time, thinking of the pace, the pitch of Maura's light gasps, that could be all right.
If sex, if intimacy, what was she was meant to do with the rest of her life, she supposed—oh god, Maura's fingers pushing impossibly deeply—oh god, Maura's soft mouth on her skin—she would do it. It wouldn't even be a sacrifice.
"Oh god, honey," Brenda whimpered, "please don't stop."
Maura lifting her head for just a moment, causing Brenda to wriggle and whine at the loss of contact. "I won't," she'd murmured, lowering her mouth, and Brenda had shattered against her again, again.
So their days had drifted by in a haze of work and sex and lust and adoration. Months flitted past, Brenda barely noticing, spending her days bolstering Seabrook's public safety commission, her nights spent pressed against Maura's warm body, confirming each other, validating each other, reinforcing each other through the flex of fingers and thighs, the desperation of teeth and tongues.
Even the nights they didn't have sex were meaningful, Brenda realized. When they just held each other. The nights they slept back-to-back not because of arguments or discord but because they realized sometimes touch wasn't the key, that just being there, breathing in time, was enough.
"I love you, Maura," Brenda whispered against the damp hair of Maura's temple. "God, I love you."
Maura shivered in her arms. "I love you, Brenda Leigh," she breathed against the corner of Brenda's mouth, causing another jolt to shoot through her. "I love you."