Title: Bonnie and Clyde Ain't Got Nothin' On Us
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/Timeline: Up to "Hop a Freighter" (only in the vaguest sense)
Disclaimer: Someone else's sandbox. I just play here because other people have all the best toys.
Author's Notes: I never thought I'd be writing Dexter fanfic, but these two have taken over all my creative impulses. I''m writing and posting this now because I expect the possibilities explored in this piece to be blown straight to hell by the finale, and these two are too compelling not to have a couple of pieces of fanfic for them. The next part will be up some time in the next day or two. In the meantime I hope you enjoy and would love to know what you think.
"What now?"
Dexter asks her the question with blood still fresh on his hands, Jordan's body not yet cold.
"I . . ." she trails off, realizing that for the first time there's no answer, no one left to hunt, no clear next step to take. Her life is her own again, and Lumen doesn't have the slightest clue what to do with it. The prospect is exhilarating and terrifying all at once, "I don't know."
The words come out on a hiccup of giddy laughter that curves her mouth in a smile Dexter doesn't manage to match. He tries, attempts the facsimile, but there's something in his face, something utterly lost and maybe the tiniest bit hopeful.
The sight of it, of this man who's always been so certain, so sure, looking to her for guidance makes her reach out and swipe at the blood on the inside of his wrist with her thumb. "What should we do with the body?"
It's a question he can answer.
She knew it would be.
It turns out the hard part comes after. Later, when the aftermath has dissipated and she's supposed to start doing healthy, ordinary things, start picking up the pieces. This is the denoument, isn't it? Conflicts resolved, catharsis achieved, fade out on a peaceful life, someplace quiet and beautiful with newly found love.
Except she's in Miami which is about the least quiet place she's ever been. She's in Miami and Dexter is no one's idea of a romantic lead (except maybe hers) and she doesn't even know what her new peaceful life is supposed to look like.
She jangles a set of colorful plastic keys in front of Harrison, smiling as he latches on to them and whispers, "Strong grip. Like your dad."
Dexter flicks his eyes briefly away from the man he's been watching (the one he hasn't mentioned and she's not supposed to notice) and gives her a pained smile that means she's said exactly the wrong thing.
It's probably not supposed to look like this.
When you get down to it, the problem is she doesn't fit. Not here, not with him, not anymore. She can see it on his sister's face, feel it in Astor's cold shoulder. 'You don't belong here. Go away.' She's the interloper, the rebound girl, the other woman.
"He still loves my mom." Astor tells her frankly over lazy Sunday pancakes when Dexter gets up from the booth to go change Harrison. Her words obstinate, insistent, as if she's trying to make it so. "He's always going to love my mom. You should know that."
Lumen thinks of the bite of Dexter's wedding ring between her fingers, the cool clink of it along her spine.
"I know."
Mercifully, Dexter slides back beside her before the conversation can go any further, reaching out as he does so to deftly remove the sugar packet she has between her fingers.
She didn't even realize she had it.
"Everything all right?"
"Fine. Everything's fine."
The little pile of raw sugar crystals in front of her tells a different story, but Dexter just brushes them into his hand and drops them in his coffee without a word.
All her hard-won progress dismantled by a twelve year-old girl and a dead woman she barely knows.
It takes her three days of trying to figure out how to bring up the subject and failing, before she finally gives up and stupidly does it anyway.
"You never talk about her."
Dexter stops gutting the fish Cody caught this morning mid-stroke. Some might say her timing could have been better, but Astor and Cody are down playing in the pool and when dinner's over he'll go back with them to the bungalow he and Deb are splitting for the summer so there's room for the kids and Dexter's never calmer than when he's working with knives.
"What do you want to know?" he finally asks, voice low and flat in a way she recognizes all too well.
She watches him run the filet knife between the skin and flesh with a fluid artistry she shouldn't find as beautiful as she does and gets up from her perch beside the counter. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. It's none of my business."
And that's really the problem, isn't it?
"It was my fault. That she died. It was all my fault."
Lumen turns around and shuts the door, leaning back against it as she does, trying to keep the rest of the world out, just for a moment. She doesn't say anything, can't say anything, can't even breathe. Just stands there, waiting, scared of what he might say, scared he won't say anything else.
"The man who did it. The Trinity Killer. I'd been-" he gropes for a word, "hunting him. I made a mistake, got too close."
"Oh god." It's barely a whisper, a hushed exhale of breath she can't stop.
Dexter braces himself against the counter, muscles taught, face contorted in grief and rage and self-loathing and something she's not sure has a name. "She wasn't supposed to be there. She was supposed to be in the Keys. Only she'd forgotten her I.D. . . ." He shakes his head. "I didn't know. I had him on my table. And I didn't fucking know."
"I'm so sorry." It's totally inadequate, but there aren't words for this.
"She never even knew . . . why she died . . . what she'd done . . . marrying me." A thought seems to cross his mind. "Maybe she did. Maybe he told her what kind of monster she'd married."
She's beside him without even realizing she'd moved. Reaching out a hand to cover the one he still has wrapped around the filet knife, she whispers reassurance anyone else would say he doesn't deserve, "You're not."
"I lied to her. Every day."
"No." She puts her other hand to his cheek, "You forget I've seen you. With Astor and Cody. With Harrison. The way you are with them . . . with me. She knew the important part."
His grip on the blade slackens ever so slightly and he lets her slip her fingers between his to draw it away. "Tell me something good about her. Tell me about her smile or her laugh or how she made you feel. Anything. Any other memory."
She doesn't know whether she's grossly overstepped her bounds, but she needs to know . . . something, anything, about this woman other than how she died.
And it might be a selfish impulse, but it also seems to be the right one because after a minute the corners of Dexter's mouth flicker in the echo of a smile.
"She made me propose three times. I couldn't get it right. Couldn't give her the right reasons."
"What were the wrong reasons?"
"Health insurance, tax liability."
She winces in sympathy. "Tell me you didn't."
"She threw up."
"Ouch."
"Morning sickness."
"You must have gotten it right eventually."
"I stole the confession of a stalker." He looks sideways at her, waiting for her to be appalled.
She isn't. Owen borrowed Byron. Not exactly a role model of marital fidelity.
It didn't make the words mean less.
"Was it what you wanted to say?"
A flicker of something crosses his face too quickly for her to grasp and he nods.
She nods back, "Okay then." Presses a brief kiss to his lips because she doesn't know what else to say, then rests her forehead against his, and exhales. "Okay."
"I miss her."
Lumen closes her eyes against the start of tears, uncertain who she'd be crying for, afraid it might be for herself.
"I know."
That night, long after Dexter's taken the kids back to the bungalow, Lumen goes rummaging through the still packed boxes he brought over from the house until she finds a photograph of Rita. Stays up late into the night staring at it, trying to decide if she hates this woman, this seemingly perfect ghost who had the life she never wanted, and now she'd do anything to keep.
Deb, Astor, Cody, they've all made it clear. Rita was an angel.
Dexter's angel.
Lumen doesn't know what she is anymore, but she knows it's not that.
In the end, after one too many glasses of wine, she decides on 'No'. She can't hate Rita, can't even resent her really. At first she thinks it's because she got the other half, the part Rita never touched. But that's a lie.
She wants all of him, the full spectrum and everything in between. And if Rita had anything to do with making Dexter into that man, well, how is Lumen supposed to hate her for that?
She puts the picture up on the shelf near the playpen, angling it so Harrison can see it and she won't have to.
The universe, it turns out, has a twisted sense of humor.
When she ran from her wedding day, she thought she was running away from her mother's hopes, from her father's expectations, and Owen's dreams, because they weren't hers, because she'd been stumbling blindly forward to the next thing for so long she'd never stopped to ask herself if she wanted any of it. And when she finally did the answer was no.
So she ran to the place least like Minneapolis she could think of. Without thinking, without pause, without ever asking herself what she did want if she didn't want Owen, she ran.
She ran headlong into hell, got broken and melted down and reforged into something new. Something that feels harder, stronger . . .
Colder.
Lumen doesn't recognize the woman in the mirror anymore. Can't find that girl who ran away. It's like someone else, some other woman with her name and her face, died in that room, and then her life started.
Yet here she is, back at square one. Holding a baby at a Sunday barbeque.
Someone, somewhere, is fucking with her.
For a moment she can't breathe, feels like she's drowning, like she's being pulled under by the weight of a life she didn't choose.
Run. It flashes through her mind, an impulse that feels like a need. Just run.
This isn't her. None of this is her. This ordinary, provincial, thoroughly normal existence. Isn't this what she ran from? Babies and barbeques and matching dinnerware? Owen was going to take her to see the world. Why is she in Miami holding a child that isn't hers?
Just then, as if in answer, she catches a glimpse of Dexter over by the bar, and suddenly she doesn't want to be anywhere else. Just here, just right here with this man who makes her glitter and flash. Who warms the blade of her in his hand and finds her edges beautiful.
Idly she follows the direction of his gaze, and finds she's unsurprised to recognize the man from the café four weeks ago.
Hums softly-
Bye bye baby bunting
Daddy's gone a-hunting.
Its Harrison's favorite song and he reaches up to tug at her hair in response, "Da."
"You want your daddy, huh?" she smiles, looks back at him across the lawn, and chooses.
"Me too."
tbc
