Chapter Text
Title: Term Limits
Char: Brenda/Sharon
Rating: M (ratings will definitely go up later)
Summary: Brenda Leigh Johnson learned a valuable lesson in the CIA. You can only pretend to be someone you are not for so long. There are term limits.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of the Closer, I'm just borrowing their dynamic characters to take them on a spin.
Term Limits
Brenda Leigh Johnson woke before the alarm went off. Peering towards the blinds, she could see that it was barely sunrise, but the loud banging noise in the kitchen, followed by the shrieking din of the sink disposal penetrated her foggy brain like an icepick. Just as she rose from her pillow, scooping her hand through her mass of blonde hair in her face, the sound stopped. She blearily looked at the clock, wiping sleep out of her eyes to see it was 5:45. That was AM. Her body naturally started to careen over and fall back into the pillow because she still had 30 minutes before her usual 6:15 wake up time hit when she was jarred by a worse sound.
Fritz was obviously in the kitchen. He made it incredibly clear with enough banging around to make a construction crew at a rock concert sound quiet. For a blessed moment it was silent again. Remembering how she was caught off guard before, she passed a hand down her sleepy face and paused, floating between getting into the shower or laying back down.
A blaring, tooth rattling, fingernails on a chalkboard whine lit up their home like the smell of a skunk, the searing of sunlight too bright to see through, and a bitter taste like ashes in her mouth. It was physical pain. He was vacuuming at 5 … she tried to restrain her thoughts to not use the word she would like to use, 5 fudging 49am. Slamming her palm down on the comforter and sheets, Brenda Leigh fled to the bathroom. She couldn't stand the shrill screech of the vacuum cleaner at her best, and at 5:49 – AM – she sure as hell didn't want to hear it.
Stripping her sleep shirt off as she went, then plugging her ears to escape the horrid blare of the torture device that was cleaning the kitchen floor, she jumped into the shower and closed the door. At least through the cascade of hot water, buffered by the bathroom door and the sliding glass of the shower, the offending sound was blocked.
As the hot water cascaded down her body, Brenda Leigh Johnson realized that she was actively waiting for Fritz to leave for work. She couldn't particularly call it an epiphany that she was done living like this, considering that she had spent more nights than not in their guest bedroom. It was quickly becoming Brenda's bedroom, like the two of them were nothing more than room mates.
Brenda Leigh thought about all of the reasons she had for marrying Fritz. Thinking about their early days together, how he could make her laugh, and his easy-going manner made her smile for a few moments under the hot spray. Her positive mood lasted through the conditioner she worked through her hair, and rinsed it. She was nearly smiling as she shut off the water, finding peace enough to start the day in a right frame of mind.
She wrapped her body in a towel and vigorously dried her hair in another. Relaxed, sauntering back to the closet to dress, she turned on the radio show that she always liked to listen to in the morning. She dressed, had her make up on and poured herself a travel mug full of coffee. Even her hair looked nice today, if she said so herself. Fluffing it, she grabbed her big handbag and headed out the door, humming the tune from the radio.
She was halfway to the office before she remembered that her husband was angry with her, had woken her up with aggressively loud chores, and she was still in a good mood. A pang of guilt streaked through her. Shouldn't she feel guilty that she was in a good mood this morning, and he wasn't? Surely she shouldn't feel relieved that she made it out of the door without getting into another row with him about how much he hated that she put herself in danger on the job, and how he would love for them to start a family together with children.
Brenda Leigh Johnson could lie with the best of them. When it came to herself, though, she tried to be brutally honest, despite the fact that it usually made her wonder how short she was coming up. She was in a good mood this morning. She didn't want to quit her job, or alter the way she performed it. She didn't want children.
A bald, blunt fact careened through her mind and it was so staggering that she swerved on the road a little bit and nearly got run down by a pickup truck that dwarfed her tank of an unmarked squad car. Getting herself under control and taking sharp, deep breaths to counter the striking realization, she paid close attention to the road.
She could drive all day long on the highway. She could pass right by the Parker Building and keep going until she ran out of road or gas. One thing she couldn't outrun, though, was herself. She had learned that lesson hard in the CIA. She could be someone else for as long as she had to be to interrogate the suspect, as long as she needed to crack the case and break the suspect, but Brenda Leigh Johnson had learned that there were term limits to being somebody else.
She had reached hers. Wife of Fritz Howard was a ruse that was coming to a close.