Cupcakes For Dinner

Alex looked down the side of the seaside cliff at the wrecked Tesla, wedged between two large trees about halfway down. He knew whose car it was, and judging by what the coroner had told him, Christine Heldens had, in fact, been driving when the accident occurred. No one else was in the car, so thankfully the loss of life was minor. Still, Alex knew he would have to tell Norma. The two women had been friends – enough for Christine to arrange for Norma to get a seat on the town council – and she deserved to be told face to face, instead of reading about it in the paper the next morning. It was the least he could do.

A few hours later, his shift over, he arrived back at the Bates Motel. As he'd hoped, the motel office light was still on. This late on a school night, he knew Norma would be keeping watch instead of Emma or Norman. He walked into the office, frowning when the woman he sought wasn't at the front desk.

"Norma?"

"Back here," a familiar voice called a few seconds later. He followed it into the back room, to find Norma sitting placidly on top of the large wooden desk. He knew he must have caught her by surprise, because her shoes were off, lying on the floor next to the desk. She sat with her legs curled underneath her, and in her hands she held the scant remains of a cupcake. A pastry box sat next to her on the desktop.

"Hey, sorry to bother you," he started, realizing that Norma had yet to even look at him.

"That's ok. I'm not busy," Norma said with what he could only define as a giggle.

'Since when does Norma Bates giggle?'

He hated to be the one to ruin her good mood, but it still had to be done.

"Norma, I've got some bad news."

At that, she finally stared up at him, her eyes almost comically wide in concern.

"What's the matter?"

"Christine Heldens died in a car crash this evening."

For a long moment, Norma just stared at him. She blinked. Then again. To Alex's profound discomfort, a smirk appeared in the corner of her mouth. Then she threw back her head and laughed. She laughed so hard she dropped the cupcake on the floor, pressing her now-empty hand against her stomach as if to hold herself together.

"You're kidding, right?" she managed to ask while still laughing.

Alex was dumbfounded. She thought this was a joke?

He took a step closer to her, a pacifying hand extended out towards her.

"No, Norma. I'm not. She's dead."

Norma only laughed louder.

"Why are you laughing?" Alex asked in total confusion, having to raise his voice to be heard over her.

"Because I hated that bitch!" Norma yelled amidst the laughing. Slowly, her laughter died down to small bursts of giggles.

Alex's eyes narrowed, his eyes scanning the room, looking for the culprit.

"Norma… have you been drinking?"

"Drinking?! Pfft, nooo," she said, waving a hand at the very idea.

"Are you sure?" Alex asked, raising his eyebrows. There was no way Norma was sober.

She sighed dramatically at him.

"Of course I'm sure," she said, making a face. "I haven't even had dinner yet. All I've had are cupcakes."

Then she giggled again.

Alex's gaze snapped over to the box on the desk. Then the many empty cupcake wrappers in the trash can next to the desk.

"Would you like a cupcake?" she chirped before laughing again.

"Did you make them?" He pointed to the box.

"Oh nooooo, no. No they were on the desk out front when I came in today," she replied dreamily. "It must have been that friend of Emma's, down in Room 4. He's always bringing her things – cupcakes, brownies. He has a weird name, though. Gunther, maybe?"

"Gunner," Alex automatically corrected, putting the pieces together.

"Gunner! Yes!" Norma cried enthusiastically. "That's it. What a funny name. Gunner. Emma calls him Cupcake Boy…. Cupcake. Cupcake is a funny word, isn't it?" Her eyes lit up suddenly, and she looked at Alex with a grin. "I should call you that. Cupcake. No, no, Sheriff Cupcake." She dissolved into giggles again.

Alex groaned aloud, rubbing a hand over his face as he tried to figure out what to do with a very high Norma Bates.

"Ok, ok, sorry," Norma apologized, seeing his expression. She slid off the desk and walked towards him. "I promise I won't call you Sheriff Cupcake. Well, at least, not in front of anyone," she added with a grin.

"Thanks," he deadpanned, looking down at her with a carefully neutral expression.

"You're welcome," she whispered, leaning closer to him.

He suddenly became very aware of how close she was standing to him, and that the top few buttons on her blouse were undone. If he chose to look, he could see right down her blouse. He all but nailed his eyes in place to keep from looking.

It didn't help that Norma was now running her hands along Alex's uppers arms.

"Why are you always so tense?" she asked seriously. "You need to relax."

"I'll try," he assured her, trying to think of anything but what her hands were doing. Because they definitely weren't making him relax.

She didn't say anything else, just kept moving her hands up and down his arms, staring intently at them as though they were the most fascinating things she'd ever seen. He found her attention disconcerting.

"Norma?" She looked up at him when he spoke. "Why don't I walk you up to the house? I think we should get you to bed."

Her mouth dropped open, and her eyes widened, for reasons Alex couldn't possibly fathom. But then her lips twisted into a devilish smile, and she raised a sultry eyebrow at him. Her hands ceased their movement, coming to rest on his shoulders. The way she was looking at him was positively feral. And wrong. Oh so wrong.

Alex realized much too late how Norma had chosen to interpret his recommendation. She cut him off before he could speak.

"And whose bed should I be getting into, hmmm?"

"Norma-"

"Yours?" she purred, her voice low and raspy. Her breath brushed along the side of his neck, and for a moment he stood helplessly before her, unable to step away. Her lips grazed his neck, and he winced with the effort of not grabbing her right then and there.

"I think I'd like that. So go ahead. Take me away, Sheriff," she invited, and he turned his head to look at her. She had her bottom lip pinned between her teeth as she looked at him through her eyelashes. One of her hands had dropped from his shoulder, and now rested at his waist. Her fingertips dug in slightly, as if to encourage him to move closer.

Without waiting for him to reply, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. He remained frozen in place, needing to stop her, and yet desperately wanting this to continue. He couldn't even stop himself from kissing back. As he felt her tongue flick across his own, he was all too aware of how much he would love to drag her off to his room and do wonderful, wonderful things to her. Hell, at the rate things were going, the desk would even do.

But he was also keenly aware that she was not in her right mind. This simply couldn't happen.

A point which became even more apparent as the hand Norma had at his waist drifted somewhere lower, and much more sensitive, pressing gently. He took a sharp breath in and stepped back, but she only followed as he retreated, as though she were his dance partner. As she kissed him again, he took a gentle hold of the offending hand, which pressed more insistently against him for a moment before she allowed him to pull it aside. She moaned in protest, breaking the kiss to pout at him. He brought her hand up, placing it firmly back on his shoulder while giving her a stern look – or the sternest look he could manage, anyway. She looked disappointed, and compromised by moving her hand down to his chest, fingering the buttons of his uniform shirt.

"Norma," he whispered, trying to focus on his mission instead of his lust.

"Yes, Sheriff," was her soft, undeniably sexy response.

"I need you to do me a favor, ok?" He used his most persuasive tone, hoping like hell this worked.

"Ok," she said, excitedly.

"I want you to go up to the house. Get changed for bed. Put on something nice, get into bed, and turn out the light. I'll be up soon, ok? I just have to grab a few things from my room."

"What kind of things?" she asked in a scandalous tone.

"It's a surprise," he whispered in her ear. "But you have to be ready when I get there, so you better hurry."

Her eyes went wide again, and without another moment wasted, she yanked away from him, grabbing her shoes off the floor and darting out of the office.

Alex put out his arm to brace himself against the wall of the back room, taking several deep breaths and slowly letting them out. He waited there for a few minutes while his blood flow corrected itself to a more appropriate path. He prayed fervently that Norma would fall asleep without realizing that he'd never joined her, and that she wouldn't come back down to fetch him.

He wasn't sure if he could resist her twice.

A loud, harsh knocking woke Gunner. Someone was practically pounding on his door. Wondering what the emergency was, he pulled himself out of bed and padded to the door in his bare feet.

He opened it to find Sheriff Romero standing there.

And man, he looked pissed.

"Sheriff?"

The man in question brought his head close to Gunner's, as if to make damned sure Gunner was listening.

"No. More. Cupcakes," Romero ordered in a low, dangerous voice.

Gunner nodded feverishly.

"No more cupcakes," he agreed at once.

Without another word, the Sheriff turned and walked away, letting out an angry huff of breath as he did.

Closing the door, Gunner wondered what had happened that the Sheriff himself would get involved. Then he decided he didn't want to know. He didn't have to; Romero's anger was plenty good enough of a reason for him to do as he was told. There would be no more cupcakes.

He wasn't suicidal, after all.

Norma sat bolt upright in bed, breathing hard. She looked around her room, then to the bed, making sure she was alone.

In her dreams, she hadn't been.

Brow wrinkling in confusion, she wondered how she'd come to have such vivid, intense dreams. She'd been attracted to Alex for a while now, to be sure, and she'd have occasional dreams of him. But nothing, nothing like what she'd just experienced. She could still feel his hands moving over her skin, and his mouth on her-

Norma shook her head, trying to clear the mental image. They were only dreams, she told herself; they weren't real.

The first one had seemed awfully real, though. The one in the motel office, where she had essentially seduced him. He'd been fighting it, trying not to give in to his desire, but eventually she'd won him over. He'd told her to go up to the house and be ready for him. It had all seemed so real, right down to how she could feel his gasp of breath when she touched him.

But her bed was definitely empty. She still wore the sexy lingerie she'd changed into last night, though she still couldn't figure out why she'd bothered. He hadn't actually been there.

She felt almost disappointed.

Hearing the distant noises from Norman's room, she jumped out of bed and snatched up her robe, throwing it on before Norman walked by her room and saw what she was wearing.

She went over to her vanity table, glancing out the window as she did. She Sheriff's SUV was right where it always was, parked in front of Room 11. She wondered to herself if he'd ever dreamed about her.

She shook her head once again, and vowed to keep a better handle on her subconscious from now on.

This was getting ridiculous.

Alex opened his eyes, glaring daggers at his alarm clock. It had just interrupted the most sublime dream. He dreamt of Norma often, but this one was particularly good. She'd been underneath him, her legs wrapped tightly around his waist as she moved in time with him. His tongue had been running along the side of her neck as she moaned his name, and then-

Well, and then his damned alarm went off.

Still cursing internally, Alex went through his morning routine, showering and getting dressed before leaving the room, seeking his first cup of coffee. It wasn't until he stood before the door of the motel office that the events of the previous evening came rushing back to him. He took a deep breath, and hoped Norman was keeping shop this morning.

He opened the door and stepped inside, only to find the desk empty. A curious sense of déjà vu struck him, but he tried to ignore it, pouring himself some coffee. In his peripheral vision, he saw a familiar silhouette appear from the back room. A small knot of unease formed in his stomach.

He looked over to see Norma standing there, looking… uncertain.

"Morning, Norma," he greeted, as per usual.

"Good morning, Alex."

She watched him in silence, and he tilted his head in question.

"Something wrong?" he asked innocently, glad his voice did not betray him.

She opened and closed her mouth several times before managing to get words out.

"Did anything... odd happen last night?" She tried to look casual in asking, but Norma had never been good at lying.

"What do you mean?" He decided to make this difficult on her, the way she'd made things difficult for him the previous night. He almost felt bad doing it.

Almost.

"Well, I know I was down here most of the night," she explained. "Did you see me at all?"

He shrugged offhandedly.

"Yeah, I saw you."

"And nothing strange happened?"

He pretended to be confused.

"Norma, how about you just ask me whatever it is you want to know," he suggested.

"I think I may have said, or even done, some things that were... less than appropriate," she said, staring at the floor.

"Oh, you mean when you were high?" He said with a blank expression.

She stared at him in shock.

"What?!"

"You'd been eating cupcakes that Gunner had left in the office. They had pot in them, although," he added in afterthought, "I'm pretty sure you didn't know that."

"I ate pot cupcakes?"

"Yeah," he said, still keeping his expression flat. He was secretly enjoying this whole conversation, and the dawning fear on Norma's face.

"Oh, God. That… that would explain it," she said to herself.

"Explain what?"

Her eyes snapped up to his, as though she hadn't meant to say anything out loud.

"Nothing. I just… had funny dreams last night."

"That does happen when you're high," he allowed, trying very hard to keep a straight face.

He turned to leave, intending to let her stew for a while.

"Alex?" Her almost timid voice brought him back.

"Yeah?"

She glanced at the office door, ensuring no one was around but the two o them.

"I really didn't do anything stupid, did I?" she asked in a low voice, looking worried.

"No, you didn't," he assured her.

She breathed an obvious sigh of relief, and he turned to leave.

Stopping just outside the office, he couldn't help himself – or the grin that had spread over his face. He stuck his head back in the office.

"I mean, besides asking if we could have sex, and then trying to put your hand down my pants. That was a little out of the ordinary, I guess."

He enjoyed her horrified expression for an instant before resuming his walk back to his waiting SUV. He had a shift to start, after all.

He laughed to himself the whole drive into work.

Norma went through her morning in a daze, her body doing things on autopilot while her mind was firmly entrenched elsewhere.

The first part of her dream, when she was seducing Alex in the motel office… that had been real. She had actually put her hands all over him – and even there – and asked him to take her to bed. Part of her wanted to curl up and die in shame.

And part of her didn't.

As morning turned to afternoon, her feelings on the subject shifted. She began to realize that she had thrown herself at Alex, and he'd had the damndest time turning her down. He'd struggled with it the whole time. He acted nonchalant in the morning, sure, but at the time, it had been torture for him.

He had unwittingly given her an unconquerable weapon against him. He wanted her. He wanted her so badly that he nearly took advantage of her when she wasn't in full control of her actions. That was a potent amount of desire he had been keeping to himself, but now the cat was out of the bag.

He also had played innocent when she'd asked him about the previous night – if she'd done anything inappropriate. He intentionally waited until the last moment to tell her what had really happened. He'd enjoyed drawing it out like that.

Now, Norma wanted payback.

A knock on the door drew Alex's attention back to reality. He glanced at his watch, wondering who would need him this late in the evening. Turning off the television, he went to the door.

Norma was standing there, leaning casually against the door frame.

And she was wearing…

Jesus.

His eyes didn't know quite where to look. There were the black patent leather pumps on her feet. Or the black, lacy number with a plunging neckline, very nearly sheer in all the right places. Or her eyes, which promised everything in their smoldering blue depths. Even her mouth got his attention; the tiny smirk told him that this – what he was gaping at – was her revenge.

He knew he was just standing there staring at her, but he couldn't quite find the words to say what he was thinking. Clearly she knew what he wanted, and he began to wonder if he needed to say anything at all.

Her smirk widened, and she pushed herself off the wall so as to stalk sexily into his room. He backed up a few steps to let her in, and she caught the door with her fingertips, shutting it soundly behind her.

She leaned back against it, and tilted her head to one side, an eyebrow raised in challenge.

Her eyes had not left his since he opened the door.

He couldn't help it. It was as though he was being pulled by forces much larger than he could even conceive of. He took a step towards her, and then another. There was no stopping it, and no fighting it. He gave in. If she wanted revenge, she could have it. He was all hers.

"You sure you haven't been at those cupcakes again?" He finally found his voice, low and gravely as it came out.

"I'm sure," she said with a smile.

He closed what small distance remained between them, their noses almost touching.

Now, her eyes moved, first taking in his face before making their way downwards. When her lengthy visual examination was complete, she leaned in, her lips brushing his with a feather-weight touch. Before he could act, she moved them along his jaw line, and onto his neck.

"I want to remember tonight," she whispered in his ear.

"I'll make sure you do," he whispered back.

A/N: This one-shot is in response to an anon suggestion. It was too funny to bypass. Thanks to whoever sent it in!