A/N: An anon on Tumblr wanted a fic about 'the gradual progression from The Whore to Norma to eventually Mom in Dylan's phone', so this is my take on that. It's not as clean as my usual style, but the tone kind of fits Dylan's mental state. This is more a study of his relationship with Norma, and to a certain extent of him, than it is a fic. But there is a happy-ish ending!
Warnings for: dark tone and imagery, references to past child abuse (physical abuse and emotional neglect), self-worth and related issues as a result of said abuse, language, mental instability, misogyny, canon violence, slightly implied alcoholism, and general Bates-Massett family madness. Please note that Dylan uses sexist language in this, and I really don't agree with it.
This is set loosely over the entire season. Title comes from a line in 'Jesus of Suburbia' by Green Day.
Dylan saves her number in his phone as 'The Whore' because he's angry and bitter and very, very drunk.
Of course, he's always angry and bitter, especially when it comes to Norma. (He's not always drunk, but sometimes it feels that way.) But he calls her that, a whore, and gets a sick, savage sense of triumph from it. Might as well call a spade a spade, he figures, and if there's anything he's good at, it's keeping things real. At the time, he doesn't think that he'll ever regret labeling his mother a slut, because at the time, he thinks it's true. Norma is a whore and he knows it, and she probably does, too. Norma might be the woman who gave birth to him, but she's not his mother. She gave birth to him and after that, she was as good as lost to him – moved on from his father to Sam, and god-damn if that wasn't the root of all Dylan's problems. Norma's so-called love for Sam tore Dylan's father neatly out of the picture, and while John Massett wasn't a saint, anybody was better than Sam Bates.
In his deepest, darkest thoughts, Dylan thinks that the devil himself might have been better than Sam Bates.
Okay, so he can't blame Norma for everything. She never beat him, though he can't say she's never smacked him. She never held him down and choked him, though, or grabbed him by the back of the neck and dragged him kicking and screaming down a hallway. But he still dreams of her when he dreams of Sam – he remembers her standing by quietly, sometimes tugging Norman away from the scene, while the whole world fell apart around him. He thinks of Norma when cheap whiskey burns his throat, and the echoing soreness when he swallows reminds him of the ache he'd felt for years and years, waiting for just an ounce of her attention, her affection.
But Norma never gives him anything, not one shred of what she gives Norman. So he lashes at her the only way he knows how – he demeans her, degrades her, reduces her to a common whore. He tells himself that she isn't worthy of him; she isn't worthy of anything. But deep down he knows he doesn't deserve anything at all – Norma and Sam taught him that – and that's part of why he's so god-damned angry. It hurts like a bitch, and all the booze in the world won't drown the part of him that needs her.
But things change, if only slightly, when he loses his job. He works dead end jobs for the three years after he turns eighteen and gets the hell out of dodge, but the last one – it's the straw that breaks the camel's back. He's starving, for Christ's sake. There is no money and no food – and barely any cigarettes and booze left. He swallows his pride and a shot of whiskey, and he makes some calls. A lot of calls, actually. Tracking someone down when they don't want to be found is every bit as hard as it sounds.
He thinks about giving up. He's not above mooching off some of his friends – if you could call them friends. He's not above stealing, or selling drugs, or hurting others for his own gain. Clearly, Norma is the same. He's convinced she killed Sam and fled with Norman in tow. She's not just a tramp, now – she's a murderer, too. He wants to see the look on her face when he tells her that he knows. He knows her far better than she thinks he does.
The deepest part of him says that he would have done it, too, but he pushes that part deeper still and keeps making calls.
He finds her in the middle of nowhere. He's barely cooled his heels in White Pine Bay before several things happen: some local guy gets set on fire, Dylan gets a job, Norman tries to brain him with a god-damn meat tenderizer, and he lets Norma know that he knows. Not in so many words, of course, but she knows. They both do.
The thing that keeps him up that night, though, is that shit with Norman. Dylan's been weird about people approaching him from behind ever since he was a child; one of Sam's favorite moves was to grab you, by your hair or by your neck, and hold you like that. Dylan's never quite been able to shake the fear that someone's going to get him like that again. It works out in his favor in this situation, because he jerks out of the way a second before Norman can hit him with the meat tenderizer. But the hot panic that rises in him afterwards tells him to fight back, and he does, and Norman hits the ground, bruised and defeated. Dylan leaves the room quickly, swallowing down shame and leftover fear, because if there's anything he hates more than feeling like Sam's after him – it's feeling like Sam.
But that's not even the crux of the matter. The shadowy parts of him wonder what it's like to be close to someone like Norman is to Norma. He can't fathom trying to kill someone just because of a cruel little joke. He doesn't know what it's like to love that fiercely, or to be loved fiercely in return. Maybe it's not healthy, but maybe it feels better than hating and being hated.
Nothing here is healthy, he decides, and if he can't change Norma, he'll save Norman.
That's the mentality he adopts for the next several weeks, at least. He tries to coax Norman to see the light. To see the toxicity of all this. To get out now while he's still young, to let Norma take the fall for her own actions, and to dig the claws out of himself while he still can. Their absence will leave scars, but scars can heal.
But Norman is resistant, and Dylan can see that the only way to get Norman out is to make him feel less bad about leaving Norma. That's part of why he helps Norma cover up her crime. The other part of it is because Dylan has an ability that they don't have – he can see the trees and the forest at the same time. Norman doesn't seem to realize that covering up for Norma can get him into a whole lot of trouble, too – and Dylan is trying to be a good brother here, okay.
That old part of him says that he's helping because he doesn't want to see Norma take the fall for this – not for this, she's sinned but she won't go down for this – but Dylan has gotten so good at pretending he doesn't care that it's almost easy now.
Then he kills Shelby, and the whole world spins off its axis.
He doesn't even think about the repercussions of this – the stories they'll have to tell, the truths that they'll have to reveal if they survive this. Some primal part of him takes over as soon as he picks up the gun and aims for Shelby. Shelby will kill Norma if given the chance – that much is certain. Then he'll kill Norman. Dylan highly doubts that Shelby will hesitate to take that double-homicide to a triple. These three things are all that Dylan knows while gunfire rains around him. He has to protect the three of them, even if he's not entirely sure when they became a them.
So he puts a bullet in Shelby. Then another. Finally Shelby falls in a pool of his own blood on the stairs (much to Norma's chagrin) and doesn't get back up.
He's not expecting Norma to hug him afterwards, but she does. She throws herself at him and just holds him for a second, trembling and terrified and – grateful.
She holds him, though, and the whole game changes.
Well, maybe not the whole game. They're still Dylan and Norma, still eternally butting heads over the smallest things. But they do have one thing in common, and that's Norman now. And now that Dylan knows what Norman's capable of – he figures it's better if he doesn't piss Norman off again.
At least, that's what he tells himself while he changes Norma's name in his contacts to 'Norma'. Just 'Norma'; he's been calling her that for years now, so it's only logical. He's going to be the bigger man here. He's going to make his distrust of her, his dislike for her, less obvious, because Dylan might be crazy – sometimes he thinks that it must run in the family – but he's not crazy enough to mess with Norman. Not anymore.
That's what he tells himself until the shit with Abernathy. That's another game-changer.
He doesn't want to get Norma a gun – he really doesn't. She's already stabbed a man to death, after all; she's not the type of person you want to trust with a loaded gun. (Then he remembers that he ran over someone with a truck, and he has to smoke a cigarette to stop his hands from shaking.)
But he thinks about it for a couple of hours – really thinks about it. Dylan wants to trust that Sheriff Romero's enough of a dirty dealer to pull some strings and get Norma out of this. He really wants to. But Dylan knows that's a variable he can't count on, and Norma's life depends on this.
He gets her a gun, and he teaches her how to use it. The word 'Mom' isn't something he intentionally uses – not this time. It just comes out. It's genuine, frighteningly so, and Norma actually picks up on it. The incident leaves Dylan scrambling to cover his ass, blurting out, "Well, you've got a loaded gun in your hands, Norma."
He doesn't call her 'Mom' again during their practice session, because she isn't his mom – she's Norma. 'Mom' implies something deeper, something meaningful. He never thought he wanted anything meaningful with Norma. But he doesn't want her to die and he called her 'Mom', so that must mean something.
Norma lives through the night, and he comes into the kitchen early the next morning – much earlier than normal. He tells himself it's not on purpose; he just couldn't sleep. But he knows why he couldn't sleep. He'd been awake all night, waiting for the telltale sounds of someone breaking into the house, waiting for gunfire, waiting for Norma's screams. Those sounds never came, and if Dylan was a religious man, he would have thanked God. Instead, he comes into the kitchen at the crack of dawn to get coffee, and is silently relieved to see Norma standing at the kitchen counter, quietly drumming her fingers on the counter.
She turns almost as soon as he steps into the room, and she looks vaguely surprised to see him, but not unpleasantly so.
"Abernathy's dead," she says quietly, without preamble.
Dylan stops. He hadn't expected that. It solves a big problem, yeah, but how many new ones does it create? "Norma," he says, slowly.
"Romero killed him," she says. "I was there. I went to the docks last night and I – I watched. Romero had the money, but he didn't give it to Abernathy. He shot him, Dylan. The body's in the bay."
Once upon a time, Dylan would have made a comment about Abernathy's body resting next to Keith Summers's – but things have changed. Everything has changed.
"I would have killed him, Dylan," Norma says abruptly. She's wide-eyed, brimming with energy. Not good energy – just energy. He wants to put his hands on her shoulders, sit her down at the kitchen table, and just sit with her until she calms down. He doesn't do that, of course, but he thinks about it and it's the thought that counts. "I had my gun and – if Romero hadn't done it, I –,"
Her voice is shaking, and she's suddenly overcome, her face crumpling with emotion. Her nerves are clearly beyond frayed, and yet she's still whispering. Norman must still be asleep; that's probably the only thing keeping Norma from flying apart right now.
"Mom," he says, and he doesn't even register the word as it comes out of his mouth. It just happens, again. "Mom, it's over."
She hesitates, and for a second there's no noise in the kitchen except the sound of her shaky breathing. She just looks at him until she finally goes still, all her nervous energy and fear and pent-up emotion leaving her body in stages. Then she says, "It's over."
He nods, unsure of how to proceed, but she moves for him. She reaches up, the motion sudden yet smooth; he doesn't even have time to flinch. But she doesn't slap him. She cups his cheek, her smooth palm brushing his stubbly jaw with all the gentleness in the world. "It's over," she repeats, and she smiles at him like he's the one who saved the day. She smiles at him, and maybe she doesn't love him, but there's something in that smile. It's not like the smiles she gives Norman; it's a different smile. Maybe this one is reserved for Dylan.
Her hand moves from his cheek then, and she pats his shoulder once before saying, "You want coffee, don't you?"
He blinks once, to clear his head, and nods. "Yeah."
She moves to the coffeemaker, and then looks at him again. "Sit," she says, jerking her head slightly in the direction of the kitchen table.
He sits, and a moment later she sits a mug of coffee down in front of him. Ten minutes after that, and there's a heaping plate of pancakes on the table. They eat in silence, but it's a comfortable silence. Mother and son, eating breakfast together while the sun slowly rises outside. It's cheesy, but Dylan won't forget this moment – not til the day he dies.
Norma's not perfect. No, she might not even be good. There's still a gap between them, one that might never be bridged completely. But Dylan changes her name in his phone again that day – he does it quickly, before he changes his mind. He changes it to Mom, and thinks privately that this whole shit-show with Abernathy might be over – but maybe something else is just beginning.