Fic: Use Your Illusion, Too (Dexter)
Jan. 1st, 2007 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosTitle: Use Your Illusion, Too
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Dexter
Rating: R
Pairing: None
Summary: Deb copes (or something kind of like it) following the events of the season finale.
Author's note: Spoilers for the season finale.
*****
Use Your Illusion, Too
*****
After everything with Rudy ends in far worse of a clusterfuck than all of her other relationships combined, Deb takes up knitting.
It’s only for a month but she needs something to do with her hands. At work they’re steady as stone by sheer force of will, but at home they tremble like crazy. She takes to eating sandwiches a lot because they can’t shake off a fork.
She’s never learned how to knit, though, and the first time he sees her with a pair of knitting needles in her hand Dexter asks, “Is it really a good idea for you to take up a hobby involving possible deadly weapons?”
She shrugs and pearls-one, knits-two or whatever the fuck it’s supposed to be. “My therapist says I need something to ‘occupy my time.’”
Her therapist suggested no new men for six months.
Deb suggested her therapist shove a large vibrator into a very uncomfortable bodily orifice and leave it there.
So, knitting.
For weeks she knits but never really bothers to learn how, dozens of sloppy knots of red yarn all over her goddamn apartment. She thinks about making a sweater or something before reminding herself she lives in Miami, then spends an hour extracting her knitting needles from a solid tangle of yarn that was supposed to be baby booties. Shit, she doesn’t even know anybody who has a baby, for fuck’s sake.
The knitting needles end up stuffed behind the couch cushions. Dexter’s polite enough never to ask why she flipped the cushions over, even though the holes aren‘t as large as you‘d think they‘d be.
*****
The average serial killer is male, white, and in his thirties or forties, her usual hunting ground when she’s looking to a relationship.
Deb spends weeks going to gay bars, where the guys don’t hit on her and the girls are turned off by the look in her eyes.
The bartender at one place seems to like her, though. Mike doesn’t want to fuck her -- he’s more interested in the hot blond guy who delivers the Corona. He just recognizes something in her, it looks like. He talks to her for a while about stupid everyday shit, about how well the Heat are playing and the Project Runway reruns he asks her to watch so she can see why he totally wants to fuck Robert from the second season. He keeps talking, a steady litany of this thick Brooklyn accent she can hear in her sleep.
Hear over screams and punches and that other goddamn voice, so she’ll take it.
He talks about his sister, and how he misses her. For the longest time Deb thinks she went away on a trip or something and just decided to never stop, to vacation forever, a lifetime on a beach in some tropical paradise with a daquiri in one hand.
Mike tells her his sister was murdered, and a ball of ice grows in her stomach like it’s rolling down a snowy hill and accumulating padding.
She doesn’t go to the bar again after he cautiously asks her if she’s heard of the Ice Truck Killer.
Can’t say I can’t figure shit out, she thinks, and throws up all night long.
*****
She takes up yoga and Dexter looks at her like she’s deranged.
“It’s calming,” she says to him as an excuse, stuffing the mat under her desk at work after one of the lab techs stops her to gush about this one yoga place three blocks over that has great atmosphere.
Deb does yoga on the roof of her apartment building with the honks and screeches of the highway ringing in her ears.
“If you say so,” Dexter says as he walks by, pretending not to care as he flips through a case file.
Dexter’s good at pretending not to care. Deb’s almost grateful.
After two weeks she leaves the yoga mat on the bathroom floor and never takes it out again.
*****
For a while she thinks about baking, but then she remembers she can’t cook for shit and starts buying out every bakery in a three-block radius.
For the sake of her hips and keeping them from expanding beyond state borders, she starts bringing in boxes of doughnuts to work, boxes of muffins to Dexter’s, platters of cookies to Rita’s. She turns into the baked goods fairy, passing out cakes and cookies and pies like Santa emptying his pantry. She thinks about finishing off a raspberry cheesecake by herself and settles for dropping it off the roof of the police station.
It’s possible she aims for Doakes’ car. It’s also possible she’s still bitter over that shit at the crime scene.
The crime scene. Jesus fuck.
*****
Rita calls her once and tells her that if she ever needs to talk to someone ...
Her voice trails off without filling in the blanks, but Deb knows. She also knows that Rita has two kids and a job, money troubles and a junkie ex-husband in prison. There are other people she can call and talk to who don’t have degrees in psychiatry on their walls or shields in their wallets, she thinks, but after flipping through her address book she can’t find a single one.
She thinks about buying a cat, if only to stop her from talking to herself.
*****
“How did I not know?” she asks. She’s in this Cuban restaurant with good music filtering through the speaker system and enough genuine Cubans eating there to highly recommend it, and she’s saying, “I’m a cop, damn it. I’m smart and I’m a cop and I’m supposed to know, how did I not know?”
She’s rambling, and maybe it doesn’t make any fucking sense, and her beer doesn’t have nearly enough alcohol in it.
“I mean, shit, I didn’t even know my own boyfriend was a fucking serial killer,” she says.
She pushes her papas rellenas around the plate with her fork, tempted to shove them off onto the table.
“Everybody must think I’m an idiot,” she mutters.
“Nobody thinks you’re an idiot,” Dexter says from the other side of the table. “Eat your potatoes.”
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Dexter
Rating: R
Pairing: None
Summary: Deb copes (or something kind of like it) following the events of the season finale.
Author's note: Spoilers for the season finale.
Use Your Illusion, Too
*****
After everything with Rudy ends in far worse of a clusterfuck than all of her other relationships combined, Deb takes up knitting.
It’s only for a month but she needs something to do with her hands. At work they’re steady as stone by sheer force of will, but at home they tremble like crazy. She takes to eating sandwiches a lot because they can’t shake off a fork.
She’s never learned how to knit, though, and the first time he sees her with a pair of knitting needles in her hand Dexter asks, “Is it really a good idea for you to take up a hobby involving possible deadly weapons?”
She shrugs and pearls-one, knits-two or whatever the fuck it’s supposed to be. “My therapist says I need something to ‘occupy my time.’”
Her therapist suggested no new men for six months.
Deb suggested her therapist shove a large vibrator into a very uncomfortable bodily orifice and leave it there.
So, knitting.
For weeks she knits but never really bothers to learn how, dozens of sloppy knots of red yarn all over her goddamn apartment. She thinks about making a sweater or something before reminding herself she lives in Miami, then spends an hour extracting her knitting needles from a solid tangle of yarn that was supposed to be baby booties. Shit, she doesn’t even know anybody who has a baby, for fuck’s sake.
The knitting needles end up stuffed behind the couch cushions. Dexter’s polite enough never to ask why she flipped the cushions over, even though the holes aren‘t as large as you‘d think they‘d be.
The average serial killer is male, white, and in his thirties or forties, her usual hunting ground when she’s looking to a relationship.
Deb spends weeks going to gay bars, where the guys don’t hit on her and the girls are turned off by the look in her eyes.
The bartender at one place seems to like her, though. Mike doesn’t want to fuck her -- he’s more interested in the hot blond guy who delivers the Corona. He just recognizes something in her, it looks like. He talks to her for a while about stupid everyday shit, about how well the Heat are playing and the Project Runway reruns he asks her to watch so she can see why he totally wants to fuck Robert from the second season. He keeps talking, a steady litany of this thick Brooklyn accent she can hear in her sleep.
Hear over screams and punches and that other goddamn voice, so she’ll take it.
He talks about his sister, and how he misses her. For the longest time Deb thinks she went away on a trip or something and just decided to never stop, to vacation forever, a lifetime on a beach in some tropical paradise with a daquiri in one hand.
Mike tells her his sister was murdered, and a ball of ice grows in her stomach like it’s rolling down a snowy hill and accumulating padding.
She doesn’t go to the bar again after he cautiously asks her if she’s heard of the Ice Truck Killer.
Can’t say I can’t figure shit out, she thinks, and throws up all night long.
She takes up yoga and Dexter looks at her like she’s deranged.
“It’s calming,” she says to him as an excuse, stuffing the mat under her desk at work after one of the lab techs stops her to gush about this one yoga place three blocks over that has great atmosphere.
Deb does yoga on the roof of her apartment building with the honks and screeches of the highway ringing in her ears.
“If you say so,” Dexter says as he walks by, pretending not to care as he flips through a case file.
Dexter’s good at pretending not to care. Deb’s almost grateful.
After two weeks she leaves the yoga mat on the bathroom floor and never takes it out again.
For a while she thinks about baking, but then she remembers she can’t cook for shit and starts buying out every bakery in a three-block radius.
For the sake of her hips and keeping them from expanding beyond state borders, she starts bringing in boxes of doughnuts to work, boxes of muffins to Dexter’s, platters of cookies to Rita’s. She turns into the baked goods fairy, passing out cakes and cookies and pies like Santa emptying his pantry. She thinks about finishing off a raspberry cheesecake by herself and settles for dropping it off the roof of the police station.
It’s possible she aims for Doakes’ car. It’s also possible she’s still bitter over that shit at the crime scene.
The crime scene. Jesus fuck.
Rita calls her once and tells her that if she ever needs to talk to someone ...
Her voice trails off without filling in the blanks, but Deb knows. She also knows that Rita has two kids and a job, money troubles and a junkie ex-husband in prison. There are other people she can call and talk to who don’t have degrees in psychiatry on their walls or shields in their wallets, she thinks, but after flipping through her address book she can’t find a single one.
She thinks about buying a cat, if only to stop her from talking to herself.
“How did I not know?” she asks. She’s in this Cuban restaurant with good music filtering through the speaker system and enough genuine Cubans eating there to highly recommend it, and she’s saying, “I’m a cop, damn it. I’m smart and I’m a cop and I’m supposed to know, how did I not know?”
She’s rambling, and maybe it doesn’t make any fucking sense, and her beer doesn’t have nearly enough alcohol in it.
“I mean, shit, I didn’t even know my own boyfriend was a fucking serial killer,” she says.
She pushes her papas rellenas around the plate with her fork, tempted to shove them off onto the table.
“Everybody must think I’m an idiot,” she mutters.
“Nobody thinks you’re an idiot,” Dexter says from the other side of the table. “Eat your potatoes.”
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Date: 2007-01-02 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-02 06:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-02 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-07 01:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-03 11:00 am (UTC)I loved this so much--so sad and sort of touching at the same time:
“If you say so,” Dexter says as he walks by, pretending not to care as he flips through a case file.
Dexter’s good at pretending not to care. Deb’s almost grateful.
I love the character so much--I'm glad he decided to keep her. ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 04:18 pm (UTC)good story =]
no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 11:25 pm (UTC)