There are Rules

by Solia

Harrison and Justice stumble across some of Deb's secrets, and try to discern between fact and inference. Set fourteen years after the concluding events of the larger AU fic Break Me Every Time. Recommend reading that first in order to make sense of this. Rated M for coarse language typical of the show. Written for AngryHellFish.

Title: For AngryHellFish

Fandom: Dexter

Rating: M for explicit language typical of the show

Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters.

Author's Notes: This requested fic is written in thanks for my imaginary friend AngryHellFish, who not only very kindly wrote a glowing review for my published works but also has given me and my writing ongoing encouragement and support ever since we imaginarily met. He asked me to write a Break Me canon piece about Harrison and his cousin Justice as teens/young adults. It got a bit long. I doubt anyone minds.

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The zipper won't close over the densely packed stack of library books. She's kneeling on the stone steps of the college library, urgently tugging and twisting the tight material of the backpack as the first light drops of rain begin to fall. The librarian is locking up behind her so she does what she can to ensure the books' safety. There are rules, you know, rules about keeping library books safe in order to return them in the condition you borrowed them in. She turns the bag and squeezes the teeth of the zipper close together, and pulls once more. The zip slides smoothly and the books are enclosed safely and dryly inside.

She straightens, leaving the heavy bag at her feet, and looks hopefully out over the parking lot as a car pulls in. But it's not the car she's waiting for, and the other girl waiting for a lift doesn't move for it, either. A young man not much older than they are parks, gets out and comes to stand at the base of the steps.

He wears a hood. He glances up at the girls and leans casually on the balustrade. The librarian's son, maybe? Here to drive her home?

The fourth rumble in the blanket of grey in the sky sounds louder and closer than those before it, and she draws her arms closer around herself. Behind her the librarian locks the front doors, offers a tight smile at the two teenaged girls standing on the top landing of the front stairs, and departs. A steadier spritz of rain begins to fall in her wake. The young man leaning on the balustrade down the bottom of the steps watches her go from under his hood. She walks to the only other car left in the lot and drives away.

The hooded man makes no move to follow. So, not the librarian's son.

"Goddamn it," one of the girls, Katie Jensen, mutters, and unzips her jacket. She peels it off hurriedly and throws it over her hair to keep it dry. The other girl ignores her and makes no move to copy, even if she might have liked to. Being stuck in the rain on the stairs of the college library just after closing with one of her least favourite people, and some stranger, is not ideal, but she remains staunch in her belief it'll only be for a moment longer. He'll be here. He always comes for her. She keeps her gaze on the parking lot even as raindrops gather on her lashes. She wants his car to pull up so she can leave. But until she sees his face through the windscreen, or until Katie goes the fuck away, she'll stay right here where she was told to wait, because that's the rule, and because it was Katie's idea, she won't do a damn thing to prevent the rain from soaking her. She has her mother's pride sometimes. It serves her about as well as it does her mother.

The spritz becomes a mild drizzle and she feels the cold seep into her scalp as her hair dampens. She always wore it long, but when she started college in the fall she cut it to her shoulders. She thinks it makes her look more grown up; her parents worry it makes her think she is more grown up. She's eighteen and smart and sensible but she'll always be their little girl, and she doesn't really do anything to challenge her position on the family. She's always been doted upon. She doesn't know any other way and so she enjoys the status quo.

A flash of sheet lightning illuminates the dark grey evening and she tries to suppress a shiver as wind cuts through her jacket and the stranger at the bottom of the stairs checks his watch and glances idly up at both girls. She's not afraid of the dark, and she's not afraid of storms. She's never been afraid of people, either, but that's because she's rarely alone. There's always been someone around in her experience to pave her way for her. But the stranger's presence sets her on edge, and now cold, dark worms of worry have entered her mind. He can't have forgotten her, so what's taking so long? What if something happened to him? She can't resist pulling her phone from her pocket and checking it for missed calls. If something had happened, someone would have called her, right? She's always been the younger, the lesser, the dependent, so it's not in her nature to worry about him, but she's growing up now and beginning to realise that the world is a cruel, unkind place and that her people are not immortals.

Bad things can happen to nice people.

And that's why she doesn't like being here, alone, with this stranger casting her casual looks every few moments. Or is he looking at Katie? Either way, she doesn't like him. His arrival circumstances set alarm bells off in a brain that has had no training in paranoia but which is the genetic product of generations of detectives. Closing time, as the weather turns bad – this is when people leave, not arrive. And he apparently has no one to collect, no one to meet… It's this failure to follow the rules, the expected norm of social behaviour, that makes him stand out, and makes her wary of him. She continues to ignore him, looking through her phone.

No one's called. She flicks a text message: Where are you? Rain leaves fat splotches on her screen as she awaits a response that is not forthcoming.

The distant grumble of thunder finally follows, and a new flash of light catches her attention. Headlights. Her heart leaps; she spots his car pulling in. Distantly, she sees his face through the wet windscreen and, flooded with relief that he's totally fine and that means now that she will be too, she snatches her bag off the ground and throws it over her shoulder. She spares a nod of acknowledgement for Katie because that's what you do when you part ways with someone you have a standing arrangement of civility with, and flees down the stairs. As she passes him, she chances a quick look up at the hoodie-wearing stranger who thinks a nice way to spend an afternoon is sitting on an empty staircase at an empty library on a mostly empty college campus afterhours in the rain, casting careless looks over at two girls he doesn't even know.

He's less creepy-looking than he should be following that description. He catches her eye and offers a smile. He's cute but her reply smile is small and forced. She was raised by cops and despite being relatively naïve, she's also appropriately paranoid of strangers who hang out in weird places watching teenage girls. Of people who don't follow rules. She bolts for her cousin's car.

The window wipers are on as the rain starts to really pelt, and he leans across the seat to open her door for her. She could do it herself, just as easily, but this is his role. He opens doors for her; he makes her breakfast when she can't be bothered making her own; he does all the driving even though she's got her licence now, even though she got a car for her last birthday, even though he doesn't even live with her anymore. It's just the way things are and neither of them questions it.

Harrison Morgan and Justice Quinn have made these rules for themselves, and these rules govern a peace and a love that is both endearing and incomprehensible.

"You're late," Justice comments, panting, throwing herself into the passenger seat and slamming the door behind herself. The steady pounding of water on the roof dulls immediately. Harrison offers a cardboard tray of takeaway coffee and all is forgiven. She doesn't bother to check the lids for which one is hers, as she would anyone else – all of her friends know her long list of allergens and baristas are good for writing the details of special orders on the plastic lids of their drinks. Harrison is not like anyone else. Friends think of her needs before their own, which is sweet and which she appreciates. Harrison thinks of her needs and not his own. When he buys food or drink for her he buys the same for himself, even though it won't taste as good as it would with lactose, gluten, soy and all the artificial colours and flavours and preservatives that she can't have. The fridge in his apartment doesn't have anything in it that could spark an anaphylactic reaction in her. Not that she would be stupid enough to eat something so dangerous for her own health, but with her cousin she doesn't need to think about it. He does the thinking for her. So she doesn't check which cup is hers. They're both hers if she decides she wants them.

"You're dripping water all over my seats," he replies as he takes the remaining cup and casts the tray over his shoulder into the backseat. "What can you do? Shit happens." He peers through the windscreen and takes a sip of his organic black coffee. Sometimes Justice wonders whether he prefers it with milk, or one of those sweet-smelling sugary syrups her friends order in their drinks, but she's never asked and isn't sure she wants to know. Sometimes Harrison wonders whether Justice would even notice if he bought something different, but he's seen her in anaphylactic shock before and it's his second-worst nightmare so he can't imagine playing Russian roulette with her life, offering her a tray with one safe cup and one of virtual poison. She kind of likes the idea that he likes what she likes, and he likes letting her think whatever she wants to think. It works for both of them. He gestures with his cup at the stairs, where Katie Jensen is pulling her jacket tightly around her head and where the guy with the hood is still standing. Still glancing between the two girls and checking his watch. "Who's that?"

"No idea." Justice inhales the steam of her drink and takes a long, warm mouthful. Mmm. It tastes amazing and invigorates her cold, shaky body. "But that's his car right there – I saw him pull in – so I don't know why he's waiting in the rain."

Harrison is the easy-going type but he's sharper than she is. He had his hand on the gearstick to reverse out but now he pauses.

"He just drove here, hopped out, and went and stood there in the rain?" he confirms. She nods. She sees the cogs working behind his eyes, telling of quick and critical thinking. He notices the same discrepancy between the stranger's actions and the accepted rule of standing in the rain waiting for nobody. "How long ago?"

"Closing time."

"Text Katie."

Justice does as he tells her. She never questions him. Katie Jensen has backed against the building to try to take cover from the pelting rain, and hoodie guy is still just standing there, spinning his keyring around on his finger idly, embracing the bad weather. The text message goes through – it's only through reluctant necessity that Justice even has her number, and vice versa – and Katie withdraws her phone. She hesitates a very long moment, and then gives in and hurries down the steps. She doesn't look at hoodie guy but he watches her as she comes straight to Harrison's car and climbs into the back.

"Hi, Professor Morgan," she mumbles, eyes averted, because he's a good-looking guy and one of her teachers and the cousin of someone she really doesn't like, and because she's taking shelter with them, resenting every second of it but quietly grateful because though it hurts her pride to accept help from them, her fear of being alone in the dark with the hoodie-wearing stranger outweighs her pride.

"It's just in case, Katie," he answers, sipping his coffee. He sits back in his seat and turns the car off. "As satisfying as I'm sure it would have been for Justice to watch you get drowned in the rain…" He flashes her a smile in his mirror while both girls wince. Their competitive dislike for each other is unspoken but Harrison never treats it as such. The two went all the way through school together, and now they're in college together, still running track together, still trying to outdo one another, and still unable to think of anything nice to say about the other. Her mom says it's just bad blood. Debra Morgan knocked two of Katie's dad Billy's teeth out in a fistfight in junior high some forty-something years ago, which really shouldn't have a bearing on the relationship between the daughters, but somehow it seems to. Maybe Katie's dad talks about the Morgan family in the same tone that Deb Morgan talks about the Jensen family.

Hoodie guy is put off by Katie's retreat to the car. He folds his arms and watches them. Harrison stares back. Justice sometimes thinks he isn't scared of anything.

"What were you studying for?" Harrison asks presently. Justice adjusts her position in the front passenger seat, pulling her legs up against her chest, while Katie outlines the research assignment they have been given for their shared journalism class. Justice is doing all writing and humanities subjects. Katie is, too, except for criminology, along with a heap of other girls. The last three years have seen the highest enrolment of female students in the criminology class in the history of the college. Funny that it should coincide with Harrison Morgan taking on a teaching position in the faculty.

"We have to choose a local mystery," Katie explains, "or a family one, something we can investigate personally. We're meant to sort out the facts from the inferences, identify the primary sources and discuss what information is missing. We're not meant to solve it, just clear up what's actually known and what makes it a mystery."

"Sounds like it could be fun," Harrison says, taking his eyes off the stranger long enough to reach over to push his cousin's feet off his seat. He catches her gaze for an instant. "What are you thinking of basing yours on?"

Katie stays silent, detecting that this question wasn't directed at her.

"I found a few books on local mysteries," Justice says carefully, reluctantly lowering her feet back to the floor, "but I was thinking, our family has plenty I could use. Maybe."

It's a delicate subject, which is why she's raising it with him rather than with her mom. She's not the questioning type, never a curious child, but her journalism course is prompting her to enquire, to wonder, to dig. It's a way of thinking she's never bothered with before because what she's needed to know has always been readily provided by either a parent, a cousin, a step-grandparent, a family friend… She's been surrounded by older, wiser, cleverer people her whole life.

Harrison doesn't react, which is a positive sign. "Like what?"

"Maybe Grandad Tom," Justice suggests, encouraged. "No one ever found out what happened to him."

"I think you'll find out that mysteries investigated by police are rather more difficult for freshman journalism students to get their hands on," Harrison comments. His gaze is still locked with the stranger's outside. "Even if your parents are cops and your cousin is a criminologist. No one's going to give you access to the official files, Jus."

She refuses to be put off. "I don't need the official files. I just need to know what evidence the police had and what inferences they made from that, and what was missing. I could ask Mom to get me a copy of the inventory from work."

"You could ask," Harrison answers calmly, "but if I were you, I'd ask your dad."

Hoodie guy seems to make a decision and pushes off the balustrade.

"Harri," Justice says suddenly, sitting forward and reaching for her cousin's arm. He's already got his door open and his eyes have gone sharp, focused. She's noticed before that his reflexes are much quicker than anyone else's but, in action, he always surprises her all the same.

Headlights cut through the darkening rain and another car pulls into the lot. Hoodie guy pauses mid-step, and Katie recognises the approaching car. Her mom squints through the rain at the man outside the library and her expression tells of the same distrust.

"Thanks for waiting, Professor Morgan," Katie says graciously, and lets herself out to go to her mother. Harrison says nothing but stands firm in the rain, staring down the now frozen figure of hoodie guy as the girl retreats to her ride. There's a loud snap as her door closes, and Justice leans across Harrison's seat to check everything is well. Mrs Jensen must know who Harrison and Justice are but she doesn't have the issue with them and their family that her husband and daughter have; she nods appreciatively at them for waiting as she backs her car out and drives away.

Hoodie guy is still immobile, and Harrison decides to let it rest. He climbs back in.

"There's our good deed done for the day," Harrison says easily, snapping his door shut. He's back to his usual casual self. Mostly. He eyes hoodie guy through the windscreen and restarts his car. The stranger pushes back his hood and stands on the wet ground, staring at them. Harrison flicks his lights onto high-beam, temporarily blinding the man outside, and reverses out of the lot.

By the time they're home they're both mostly dry and they're warm from their coffee. It's the family home, the place she grew up and the place he came to after his life and world was stripped from him, the place where he drops her every evening and recollects her from every morning on his way into the college where he works, teaching classes while he studies for his dissertation. He's painfully smart, the kind of intelligence that can act up all through elementary school and somehow not be affected academically. The kind of intelligence that gets someone accelerated through university with grades in the top one percent. He's twenty-three now and the teachers whose classrooms he so inelegantly dismantled wouldn't recognise him. Sandy hair, long enough at the front to hang into his eyes, but still neat, always neat, and the hazel eyes that match his cousin's well enough that people readily believe they are blood relatives, which is relatively the only thing they are not. A lecturer at college, someday to be a doctor of criminology. He has his life together. Not that Justice ever worried about that, but everyone else who has ever had a stake in Harrison Morgan's life has worried at one point or another.

"You have to help me convince them," Justice insists as they hurry from the car to the door and duck under the porch roof. She has keys but he's the caretaker in this relationship, so even though this isn't his residence anymore he's the one that lets them inside. She walks in ahead of him and he holds the door and closes it behind him.

"I'll stand next to you while you ask, if that helps, but I'm not saying a word," he warns in reply.

"Why not?"

"I think it's a bad idea. I think you should rethink your research material and choose something else."

He doesn't know what she'll find because he doesn't know himself what happened, but he remembers the days before Thomas Matthews disappeared and he's sure nothing good can come from digging up those hurts.

She doesn't know what she'll find either, and she remembers the time of her grandfather's disappearance differently, more vaguely, less sequentially. She remembers the barbeque and the dog that sparked a lifelong phobia; she remembers Grandad Tom's cuddles; she remembers chocolate icing, and Harrison hiding in his bedroom; she remembers the cupcake dress covered in red, like blood, and the terror of being leapt on by that animal, and the hush of the guests and the expressions on Harrison and her mother's faces; then she remembers the police in her living room, asking her mom questions about Grandad Tom, and she remembers her mom being so quiet for so long. Harrison, too. She remembers that they never cried or said they missed Grandad Tom. They're tougher than Justice, less open with their feelings, those Morgans, and she never wondered before but now she wonders how deep that pain really goes. Are they haunted by the idea that maybe Tom simply left them by choice? Is there evidence in the lock-up at Miami Metropolitan Police Department that indicates he might have?

How awful would it feel to know someone you loved left you out of choice?

"That's not very supportive," Justice challenges, turning back to her cousin irritably. He stands his ground, unaffected. She doesn't often challenge him but there's nothing much she can do to ruffle his feathers. She's still short and slight for her age, and when she tugs her scarf off his gaze catches briefly on the familiar pink scar down her chest. There's nothing she can say or do to make him forget that she's the little sister he wished for on his big sister's birthday candles, born too early with a broken heart, tubes in her nose to help her breathe and immune system undeveloped, life-threateningly allergic to pretty much everything, on his late father's birthday. So he can never be mad with her; he can never feel tempted to argue back at her when she experiences a brief spark of antagonism. It never lasts long.

She's not the same as her mother, and he's not the same as his father.

"I think you should pick something else," Harrison reiterates, "or ask your dad and fail to mention it to your mom."

"He'd keep it between us if I asked him to," Justice agrees, seeing the possibility.

"Yeah, he would," her cousin relents. "But I'm not lying to her if she asks."

"If she asks what?"

Lieutenant Deb Morgan is in her fifties now, but she's still striking, pretty in the face, tall and toned and fit, dark hair maintained, with the same intense hazel eyes as her daughter and nephew. Justice's don't have that sharp, discerning look her mother's developed over the years, but the shape and colour is the same. It's easy to see that they are mother and child. If she got any DNA from her father at all, it's all recessive.

Justice smiles as her mother takes her scarf from her and hangs it on the stand beside the door. She doesn't have her wording all worked out in her head yet – she's still recovering from the idea that Harrison won't ask for her – so she starts small.

"We were just talking about one of my college assignments," she opens. She watches her mother lay a brief hand on Harrison's shoulder and witnesses the exchange of affection that passes between them. She's the thing they both love most, but they had each other before either of them ever had Justice, and there's a bond between aunt and nephew that she will never understand but will always respect.

"What assignment?"

"Journalism." Justice sits on the floor to untie her shoes. It's always warm and clean and familiar in her parents' home. She's never known her parents as anything other than parents. Their friends make it sound like there was a time when Debra Morgan couldn't cook the best roast in the street, or when Joey Quinn wasn't the quickest dad at brushing little ballerinas' hair into buns at dance concerts. She's allergic to dust and pollen so her home's always been clean, and when Uncle Angel jokes that Deb used to be messy, Justice finds it hard to believe. Deb has nearly as many dietary requirements as her daughter, so when Uncle Vince laments the loss of heavy drinker, casual smoker, junk food consuming, past-life Deb, she can hardly believe that either. Her birth can't really have changed her mom and dad that much.

That said, she can't remember the trauma that surrounded her coming into the world, so she really has no concept.

"And your journalism tutor told you to lie to your mother?" Deb prompts, never afraid of a confrontation. Justice made that little show of bravery to Harrison before but she's really not got the guts of her predecessor, so she drops her gaze. Harrison isn't so flimsy – he meets his aunt's gaze when she turns it on him and he holds it, but he says nothing. Deb is stronger than them both; she lived a harder life than they can ever know, and even though they're adults now, they're still her kids and she'll always have this power over them.

Justice decides to just blurt it out. "Can I have the inventory page from Grandad Tom's missing persons file?"

There's a cringe-worthy silence.

"The what?" Deb repeats, unsure. Justice hurriedly throws her shoes into the corner beside the door and stands to even things out. She's still little.

"Just a photocopy or something," she corrects herself hastily. "For an assignment. I have to sort facts from the inferences drawn from primary sources, and I need to base it on a family mystery."

"Or a local one," Harrison adds helpfully, earning him a dark look from his cousin and an incredulous one from his aunt.

"It's not a big deal," Justice presses, no clue as to how many long-festering still-open wounds she's stomping over. "You won't even know I'm working on it. I just need the one sheet from the file and I can do all the rest of the assignment in my bedroom. I won't ask any questions or upset anybody."

Deb can't think of anything to say. She stays absolutely still and though nothing around her moves or changes, she's pretty sure the entire room collapses in on her from the way her chest begins to constrict. She swallows with difficulty and looks around for a lifeline. The person she spent her life relying upon hasn't been reliable or, indeed, in her life, for almost two decades now, so when she casts her helpless glance around the room she instead finds the one who did stay, the one who looks more like him than she likes to admit. She feels herself begin to relax, very slightly, when she locks her attention onto her nephew.

They've survived everything together. An innocent question from her innocent daughter isn't going to be any different.

"I don't think it's a good idea, princess," she says finally. "Harrison will help you find another mystery to investigate for your project."

One that doesn't involve unstitching this family.

"I don't need his help finding one," the littlest Morgan, the Morgan who isn't even legally a Morgan, states, feeling overlooked. "I just need that one photocopy. I'm not going to find anything the police didn't-"

"We aren't going to talk about this anymore," her mother replies. "Dinner's on."

She turns away and Harrison exhales, relieved. His two favourite people shouldn't be at odds. Confrontation makes him uncomfortable. His psychiatrist says it reminds him of the way his father and aunt used to interact – intensely, passionately, fearlessly – and while it didn't bother him as a child, he has associations with that style of relationship as being synonymous with tragedy. His Justice is mild, and so is his uncle, which keeps Deb even and mild, too. Mostly.

Justice isn't relieved. She's frustrated with being shrugged off. She immediately regrets what she snaps after her mother.

"Why do we have so many things in this family that we can't talk about?" she demands, and when both Harrison and Deb turn to stare at her she claps a hand over her mouth. There are rules. Rules no one ever told her, but rules she knows well. Grandad Tom is gone – don't ask where, or why, or how. Harrison has no parents – don't ask. Grandma Doakes has no discernible familial connection to the Quinns or the Morgans – but she's still Grandma, so don't ask. Harrison's brother Cody is a Morgan but their sister Astor isn't – don't ask, it's too complicated. Aunty Jamie is in a wheelchair – we don't talk about that. Mom has some unresolved issues regarding her father – don't ask. Mom has battle scars underneath her clothing – choose your timing well, because she probably won't want to go into detail. Mom had a brother – don't ask, don't even wonder, that's off-fucking-limits. Don't ask, don't ask, don't ask. There are rules, and now Justice has broken them.

The look of shock in Deb's eyes at her daughter's outburst really gets to Justice, and she lowers her hand. The silence stretches on, and she licks her dry lips nervously, feeling the intensity of her cousin's frightened gaze on the side of her face.

She takes a brave metaphorical step and asks, "Why can't we talk about any of it?"

"Because we fucking don't, Justice," Deb answers brutally. The force of her voice drives her fragile daughter backwards a full step. The heels of her feet bump into the toes of Harrison's shoes and her back presses against his stomach and chest. She stays there, drawing strength from him, while he stares anxiously over the top of her head at his aunt, desperate for this not to spiral out of control. For a split second Deb sees two different descendants of Harry Morgan, and she presses her lips closed against the next harsh words that nearly spill from her mouth. In this moment she is Harry and she can't accept that.

She will not be her father, she's sworn it; yet here she is coming down on her daughter for daring to think independently and stand up for herself, and forcing the boy she's taken on as her son to tear his loyalties in two and find a way to be true to them both. Here she is keeping secrets from one and sharing them with the other. Here she is driving a wedge between herself and the child she wants to protect and sending her, needy and vulnerable, to take cover with her brother.

Harrison isn't her son but he knows Deb Morgan better than Justice thinks she does, so he recognises the conflict of emotions that pass across her expression until she settles on an icy, passive look of stone that tells him she's locked it all down and switched off. There was a time she couldn't do this, felt too much, too deeply, but she's different now, changed. He remembers when the change occurred, and that's just another reason he thinks Justice should leave Grandad Tom's mystery well alone.

Deb brushes her own hair back behind her ear delicately, revealing the bullet scar in her hairline. Shot in the line of duty, is all she ever says. She never tells her daughter what or who her duty was to. She's never known how and Justice has never pushed before.

It's been nice to get this far unquestioned.

"I'll think about the inventory sheet," she says smoothly, finally. "I'm sorry I raised my voice at you."

Justice blinks and inches forward so that she's not leaning into Harrison anymore. She's experienced her fair share of playing with fire tonight and she won't do anything else to fan the flames. She nods her thanks in response to her mother's compromise.

Harrison slips out from behind his cousin.

"Can I help with dinner, Aunt Deb?" he asks, eager to smooth things out. They go together into the kitchen, conversation expertly redirected by charming Harrison's quick thinking, and Justice remains in the hall, breathing very slowly, still shaken from the confrontation with her mother. Deb is more intense than Justice can ever be. How did her parents handle her? How does Joey? How scary to think that there used to be two of them, two Morgan siblings – although, was Deb Morgan's brother even half as full-on as she is? Jesus, just imagine there being two of them. Harrison leans out of the kitchen amid the sounds of Debra moving pots about and in a low voice, begs, "Don't do that again."

Dinner is delicious as always and conversation is light, driven by Harrison's determination to be part of a normal family that talks about nice things. Justice's dad wants to know about her day. She skips over all aspects of her journalism assignment and instead discusses what she had for lunch and what atrocious outfit someone was wearing when she was studying at the library after class, waiting to be picked up by Harrison.

"He was late," she laments, stabbing a floret of broccoli with her fork. "I had to stand out in the rain."

"You could always drive yourself to and from school," Joey mentions sweetly, since he's the one who picked out and bought the car for her back in spring when she turned eighteen. She scoffs at this idea and eats her broccoli. She drives. To the mall to meet her friends. To the corner store to get her dad's newspaper. She drives whenever Harrison isn't there to do it for her. He works at the college. He comes past this way, sort of. Why shouldn't he take her?

"Why were you late?" Deb asks. "Held up?"

Harrison nods and swallows his mouthful of steak. "I held an exam today. After class I had to collect up all the papers and do a count to make sure I had the right amount. One guy walked out with his exam paper."

"What a fucking tool," Joey comments, grinning. "I thought the kids in your classes were meant to be the smart ones."

"So did I. And this was the senior class. He did come back and hand it in once he realised, but now I have to arrange a time for him to resit. I can't mark an exam that left the room – who knows, he could have met up with someone afterwards and added extra information." Harrison sighs irritably and sits back in his chair, casting an apologetic look at his little cousin. "If I hadn't been chasing this guy down for his stupid paper, I would have been there right on closing time."

Right on closing time. Justice recalls a car pulling into the lot right on closing time, and recalls it wasn't him. She would have hopped into Harri's car and would have ignorantly driven off, leaving Katie Jensen alone there with hoodie guy for at least seven minutes before her mother arrived.

A lot can happen in seven unmonitored minutes.

Deb's phone rings and she stands to answer it. Her tone is businesslike and crisp on the phone. There's no question as to whether she deserves to be the lieutenant of Miami Metro Homicide. She's the most qualified person for the job.

"We'll be there in fifteen," she assures the caller, ending the conversation swiftly. Joey puts down his fork and looks up at her. "Gunshots fired, called in by a neighbour. Dispatch sent a patrol car and they've found five dead. So now it's ours." Deb pockets her phone and goes for her gun and its belt. She shrugs on a jacket as Joey leaves the dining room to change. Justice and Harrison keep eating. Emergencies out in society requiring her parents' attention do not require the concern of the children, though Harrison at least is always intrigued. Justice won't remain with journalism – she doesn't have the curious nature. Deb looks up at her nephew as she pulls her hair free of her jacket. "Can you mark those exams here tonight?"

"I'll get them out of the car," he promises, and it's an unspoken promise to what was the unspoken question. Will you stay here tonight and watch Justice? She's eighteen, the age Debra was when she lost her father, but she's not as old as Deb was at eighteen. She's never been left at home alone overnight and there was never any consideration of her going to board at the college. Of course she would remain living at home and just commute. Of course she would attend the same college Harrison did, where he continues to study and research and teach, where he can keep an eye on her.

"Thanks, baby," Deb murmurs, pressing an affectionate kiss into his hair as she passes him on her way out of the room. Justice has never understood the origin of this pet name; her own girly nature, especially in early childhood, definitely earned her the title of 'princess', but Harri's 'baby' is yet another family mystery.

Harrison smiles after his aunt. He feels calm and settled again, glad that she and his cousin are past their near-collision. He loves them both so deeply he can't even begin to articulate, and seeing them argue puts cracks in the rose-tinted glasses of his idyllic world. He remembers, once, a perfect, golden weekend – he remembers coming home to see that torn into blood and screams and rainstorms. Debra and Justice are perfect, too, perfect and golden and everything that matters – he cannot bear to see their varnish fade, and worse, he cannot bear to risk them dissolving into blood and screams and rainstorms.

The only thing worse than seeing Justice in anaphylactic shock is seeing her bleed. Or Aunt Deb. And they are mortal enough without worrying about them breaking each other with weapons forged from words and the past.

Deb pauses beside her daughter and kisses her temple, hugging her head and shoulders tightly against her own body. Justice is never for a minute left wondering whether she is loved. Not in this family. She obligingly wraps her arms over her mother's, leaning into the warm embrace.

"I love you so fucking much," Debra whispers to Justice before she leaves.

Justice is delicate with Harrison after her parents go. She doesn't push any topics he doesn't want to broach, and she certainly follows the rules. She helps him with the dishes and makes meaningless conversation while they watch television. When he switches to the news, because he likes boring things like that, and gets his exams out of the car to work on at the coffee table, she fetches her textbook from her bedroom and flops back on the couch beside him. It's winter and it's cool in the evenings, though definitely not cold; even still, she doesn't need an excuse to snuggle into his side, and he makes no complaint as she readjusts position eighty thousand times, eventually settling with her head and shoulders propped up against his thigh with a cushion. She's like a kitten, affectionate and warm and too trusting, and everybody around her is a potentially comfortable spot to lounge on. Harrison sometimes reflects he should be glad she doesn't have claws to soften him with.

He marks and she reads and they take the same comfort in one another's company they always have. When she bores of reading she stays where she is, enjoying his presence. There's no self-consciousness in the way she reaches over her head and takes his hand, bringing it closer and into her range of vision so she can admire his watch. She's always liked it. It's not as pretty as her cousin Astor's gold and diamond one, or as distinguished as her cousin Cody's old pocket watch, but it's Harrison's, has always been his, and she likes anything that's his and reminds her of him.

She unlatches it from his wrist – she knows no boundaries with her brother – and takes it. He doesn't protest or pull away, but he does stop reading exams to sit back and watch her.

She knows it was his dad's. She knows it was given to him not long before his father died, which was not that long before Justice was born. She remembers the first time she saw him with it, which was when he told her this – he would have been about nine, she four – and from then, she can't remember ever seeing him without it.

She slides it over her own hand and latches it. It's way too big for her and it slides most of the way down her forearm, almost to her elbow. She's skinny, like her mother's genetics were always going to ensure, but then small, slight, dainty. Her doctors said she would be. She was born dangerously premature. Her body is months younger than her birthdate suggests.

"Does it suit me?" she asks casually, twisting her arm to feel the sensation of the cool metal slipping over her skin. Harrison takes his time answering.

"Not really," he says finally. "You aren't like him."

His dad. Mom's brother. The one in the pictures over the mantelpiece but who is never spoken of. Justice tilts her head to meet her cousin's eyes.

"Are you?" Because she doesn't know. She vaguely recalls, just once, sitting in Harri's ruined bedroom after one of his tantrums with her mom and dad, and he had his watch, and he said whose it used to be, and Deb and Harrison and Joey talked about Dexter for so long… But that's the only time. If Harrison and Deb still talk about Dexter, they do it without Justice around. So she doesn't know what Harrison's dad was like, whether they were similar, only that, from photographs, they do look similar. Maybe not as similar as Deb and Justice do (Harrison also definitely looks enough like his cop brother Cody to be sure that they are blood) but the bloodline is clear in their features, their statures, their heights, the colour of their eyes and their hair.

Harrison reaches over her to touch the watch face with one fingertip. "In some ways."

"Is Mom?" They weren't blood, this much she knows. Mom's brother was adopted, but they still loved each other; were they similar? Was Dexter Morgan as fiery and stubborn and aggressive as his sister, or was he mild and thoughtful and measured like his son? Some mixture in between? Something else altogether?

"In other ways, yes."

Justice grasps his hand with both of hers.

"I'm sorry I stirred shit with Mom," she whispers, because she saw the stricken look on his face when she broke the rules. "I should've listened to you."

Again, it's a long time before he speaks. He prises his hand out from hers and gets to work removing the watch from her wrist. She makes no attempt to help but also doesn't prevent him from taking his possession back. He puts it back where it belongs and asks what time she starts class in the morning, and suggests she go to bed.

"No one's mad at you, Justice," he adds as she starts out of the room. He looks over the back of the couch to ensure he catches her gaze, to ensure she knows he means it. "Our family's complicated. That's why we have the rules."

In bed she stares at her dark ceiling for hours. Harrison's parting words stick with her. Our family's complicated. They've never seemed complicated before, but maybe in fact they are. To Justice, living inside said family, it's happy and nuclear and traditional, with a mother and a father and a brother and home-cooked meals every night, two grown-up cousins living in and around the city, grandparents in Orlando, Grandma Doakes on the other side of the city and a smattering of family friend uncles and aunties. Maybe on closer inspection it's less normal. Maybe being raised with a cousin for a brother with no explanation as to how his parents died isn't normal. Maybe having parents who have been engaged for nineteen years but won't marry isn't normal. Maybe having your grown-up step-cousins' grandparents for grandparents isn't normal.

She's still awake when Harrison checks on her, but she pretends not to be. He's not fooled. He's smarter than she is, and he knows her better than she knows herself. He knows the funny sprawled-out positions she twists into when she's properly asleep, so he knows when he sees her lying flat and straight in bed, plank-like, that she's trying to play him, but he doesn't let on. He closes her door, mostly, leaving a small crack, like always, and goes to bed in his bedroom, which his aunt always keeps made up and ready for him in case he stays over.

In the morning Justice wakes earlier than usual, overhearing voices out the front. She gets out of bed and peers through the window. Joey and Harrison have the hood of Deb's car up and they're tinkering away with the engine. They do this sometimes. Neither is exactly a mechanic, but between the pair of them they've got the wherewithal to solve minor mechanical issues. Justice heads for the bathroom.

"…distracted outside with the car. Should keep them busy for a bit…"

She hears a scrap of her mother's voice from inside the master bedroom. She pauses, hesitant. Who is she talking to? No response is forthcoming, and it didn't sound directed at Justice.

"No, fucking… no, of course not, no one knows I'm calling you. But it's important, or I wouldn't fucking risk it, would I? You said anything, if there was anything, to call you."

Deb's voice falls silent, and Justice creeps a step closer along the hallway. Is she on the phone? She must be on the phone. There's no one else here and she mentioned 'calling'. It sounds intense. It sounds… worrisome. No one knows I'm calling you. Joey and Harrison are distracted outside with the car. Who the hell is Deb calling that no one can know about? And why all the drama of distracting the whole family just to place a call?

Deb exhales with frustrated relief while Justice tiptoes to the door to listen. "Thankyou. I didn't know who else to call, what else to fucking do." She pauses. "No, nothing like that. I'm fine, we're all fine, for now anyway. It's Justice."

Outside her room, her daughter freezes up. Who is her mom calling, and why has her name been brought up? The hushed and frantic quality of this end of the conversation gives rise to such theories as 'forbidden affair' or 'crime lord', but for either of those theories to hold true, Justice's whole mental image of her mother would need to change. And if her mother were seeing some guy behind her partner's back, or if she were some sort of breaking bad kingpin, surely she wouldn't be throwing her daughter's name around like that.

"She's asking questions," Deb hurries on, voice low and anxious. "She's never asked questions before- Questions about Tom, fucktard, questions about shit I don't want to talk about with her. Awkward fucking shit, alright? And me; I'm not who I wanted to be." She pulls in a breath and it's audibly shaky. "I shouted at her. I'm driving her away. I'm fucking Dad, I'm him and I didn't even see it."

Her next inhalation is bordering on a sob. Justice's next breath is shallow, unsettled. Debra Morgan has a mouth – her daughter is shielded from a lot but she's heard her mother with friends at parties, or on the phone when she's angry. She doesn't talk like this when she thinks her family can hear her. This is Deb Morgan out of control, afraid even. Justice can't remember seeing her mother scared before. Her mom has a way of shutting her fears out. Both her parents do, and her cousins, too. Justice is the only Quinn, Morgan or Bennett with her heart out on her sleeve. The others are all heroes, fearless and strong, with the superpower of being able to wall off their soft sides and deflect pain.

She doesn't know what they went through to develop those thick skins.

"I don't wanna be Dad," Deb tells her phone friend tearfully, sounding broken and childish in a way Justice has never heard. In the same way Justice might appeal to Harrison to do something for her when she's unsure. "Just tell me what to do."

She goes quiet, and, breath held, Justice leans aside until she can see through the door. The dresser is the first thing she sees, and spots one single drawer pulled almost all the way out. She leans further, trying to see the mirror. She sees the edge of her mother's reflection. Deb is sitting on her bed, dressed ready for work, hair loose, knees up against her chest. She's clutching a phone to her ear, holding it jealously tight. She nods a few times and sniffs, pulling herself together. It looks like whoever she's talking to is saying what she needs to hear, something encouraging perhaps, by the way her breathing settles and her posture relaxes. She wipes tears away and continues to listen.

"I don't feel like I'm doing a great fucking job," Deb murmurs miserably. "I feel like there's a big dark gaping black hole in the middle of the world trying to suck my kids inside, and I'm holding onto them both by the skin of my fingertips, and like I let myself fall in twenty fucking years ago. Jesus." She clears the last of her tears away and lowers her legs. She pushes herself off the bed and Justice whips back, keeping out of sight. She hears the next comment, slightly muffled by the door, "I've got to get to work. I love you – so fucking much. Stay safe."

After a moment the drawer is slammed shut and Justice bails down the hall. She flings herself into one of the chairs at the breakfast table and grabs the only thing on-hand, a pen, and sets to immediate work drawing lines along the skin of her arm and the back of her hand, connecting the freckles like playing dot-to-dot. She's done it before, for fun, and it seems the most natural thing to do with the pen without paper handy. She doesn't give it any thought, just does something to make it look like she's been sitting there all along, deep in random distracted thought as all teenage girls should be at five-thirty in the morning. And when Deb comes out of her room less than half a minute later, she buys her daughter's act.

"Discover any new constellations?" she asks, clipping her belt into place.

"This might be Gemini," Justice answers easily, lifting her pen nib away from her skin to admire her own handiwork. Inside, she's shaken by what she overheard, but outwardly she appears as falsely calm as her mother does. "What time did you and dad get in?"

"Three. Excuse the fuck out of us if we're a little short with you today; we're operating on two hours of sleep."

Their hours have always been erratic and hopelessly long. During Justice's childhood they made it work for their family, ensuring either that after school hours they were rarely ever both at work at the same time, or that one of their extended family members was arranged to take care of the kids. Once Harrison got old enough to take care of his cousin, this was no longer an issue.

Joey comes in and complains that he can find nothing wrong with the car, even though Deb maintains she heard something wrong with the engine yesterday. He says he even checked Justice's car in case Deb was mistaken, and heard the rattling noise when she was borrowing her daughter's mostly unused vehicle. It was likewise fine. Deb suggests he follow behind her in his car in case hers breaks down – she doesn't trust it.

Harrison goes into the bathroom and takes the first shower. Joey grabs his keys, wishes his daughter a great day and heads out. Deb grabs her phone off the charger and follows after him, scrolling through idly, checking messages.

So what was she using in the bedroom to make her call?

"Have a good day, princess," she calls back as she closes the front door behind her.

Justice stays at the table and keeps joining freckles with long straight lines of pen. She listens to the sound of water running through the pipes. She listens to the sounds of car doors opening and closing. She listens to the sound of Joey's car starting and pulling out, idling in the street while Deb backs out, too. She listens as their cars shift into gear and drive off down the street.

She listens to the sound of the shower shutting off and the silence that follows. Now's her chance. She mightn't get another.

She casts the pen aside as she leaps up and rushes back to her parents' room. She sits on the floor in front of the dresser and pulls the drawer all the way out. It falls heavily onto the floor. Inside, it looks like a normal drawer, clothes Deb rarely wears strewn all through. Justice begins to dig. It's only a moment of wondering whether she's going crazy before her hand meets something that isn't fabric. Somethings.

A big medical envelope.

A photograph.

A phone, a really old model.

Justice lays it all out on the carpet in front of her and picks the unfamiliar phone back up. It's slightly warm from being held, but when she tries to turn it on, she gets no response from it. It's dead. Out of batteries? So quickly? Or has her mother disabled it? Pulled the battery out? Or… and this one makes Justice most uncomfortable… was the phone dead already, and was Deb talking to herself? Because how could it be out of power already if it was only in use a minute ago?

"Jus!"

Harrison is at the door, freshly showered and dressed, still tugging his shirt on. He looks furtively down the hallway.

"They've gone," she tells him. "Harrison-"

"No, what are you doing in your mom's things?" He strides in, determined to defend his aunt's right to privacy against anything, against anyone, even Justice, if that's how Deb wants it. He protects Deb; that's one of his jobs. He reaches his cousin and leans down to grab her but she shies away. "Justice, don't."

"No, Harri, look for a minute," she insists, waving him away and gesturing at the things she's found. Hidden at the back of an obscure drawer in her mother's room. Secrets. Mysteries. "I overheard Mom on the phone. But her phone was in the kitchen. She was talking on this."

She pushes the offending device into his hands. He's reluctant to touch it. His father was a forensic technician, his aunt, uncle and brother are cops and he himself is a criminologist. He knows how easily fingerprints can be lifted. He turns it in his hands. It's old.

"So?"

"So why does my mother, Lieutenant of Miami Metro Homicide, need a burn phone hidden in the back of her drawers?" Justice prompts. Harrison sighs and sits on the edge of the mattress. She pushes her advantage, now that she's got him here. "She was talking about me, about me asking questions. She was crying. And now," she takes the phone back and presses buttons, holds them down, gets nothing once again, "it won't even turn on. She was using it ninety seconds ago."

Curiosity finally piqued, Harrison extends a reluctant hand and tries to turn it on as well. He's stumped when it won't. He tosses it back into the drawer.

"Piece of shit old thing," he comments. "Maybe it's temperamental. Who cares? It's none of our business who Aunt Deb calls when she's upset."

But Justice has moved her attention onto the other two items she found. She immediately wishes she hadn't.

"Harri," she murmurs, picking up the envelope. She turns it over, hoping it'll have a different name from the one she knows to expect. It's exactly whose she expected. Morgan, Debra. She scans for a date. She finds one. "Harri?" She reaches for him and clutches his forearm when her grasping hand finds it. She tugs – she's not strong but he goes where she pulls, reluctant as before – and he lowers himself to the floor beside her. He's glad when he does, if only because now he can't fall to it.

"What the fuck…?" he asks softly, ignoring her envelope dilemma completely and leaning in to look more closely at the photograph she found. He snatches it up and stares. "You found this with the phone?"

"Harrison," Justice says, more urgently, unaccustomed to having to work for his attention, "this is a paternity test. For Mom. For me."

That finally pulls his gaze away from the photo and up to her. "It's a what?"

"Mom had a paternity test when she was pregnant with me," Justice repeats, heart beating wildly. This was not what she expected to find. "She…" It's overwhelming, and Justice is struck now with the implications. "Did she think I wasn't Dad's?"

Harrison blinks. He looks back at the picture. It's overwhelming for him, too. Confronting, and conflicting with what he remembers from that time. He doesn't remember any mention of a paternity test, but of course, he was only four or five years old. He remembers his aunt determinedly maintaining that the family would not be keeping the baby. He remembers that the baby was to be adopted by another family.

He remembers that Deb did not want Justice, and that Justice made Deb's life absolutely hellish. But he has never told Justice this. He prefers her to believe everything was always perfect.

"Did my mom have some other boyfriend before she got together with Dad?" Justice asks, and is ashamed to hear her voice shaking. The last couple of minutes have forced her to totally rework her whole conception of Deb Morgan, and indeed, her own life. She doesn't like it. Harrison doesn't either. He exhales slowly, thinking.

"Uh, no, I don't think so," he says finally, trying to remember. His memory is excellent but his life has been eventful and his early life was inconsistent. "She got together with your dad – for the second time, they'd been together for a year or so a while beforehand – after he split from Jamie. It was when… when everything else happened. But before that…" He shakes his head and turns the picture over, face down on his thigh so he doesn't have to look at it, trying to get the idea out of his head. No. No, no, no. It's impossible. "There was this time, just before everything, where I saw her all the time, and she was unattached. It was just her, and me, and… and Daddy." He hardly ever brings his father up, but when he does he refers to him by the name he called him back then. "That time was good. Before that, I remember she was away. Gone."

"What do you mean, gone?"

"I don't know. I remember asking where she was and no one seemed to know. It went for ages. And then, suddenly, she was back."

Justice stares at the envelope, and then at the phone. She'd had the nerve to wonder what secrets her mother was hiding from her. Now she's drowning in them. And there's one more, at least, upside-down on Harrison's knee. She takes the picture without asking, without warning, and turns it over before he can stop her.

"What... the hell is it?" she asks, confused. It's a large, dark surveillance-style photograph of two people sitting on a couch making out. The woman is kneeling over the man's lap and his hands are on her and hers are on him, and all in all it looks pretty heavy. The shot has been taken from outside, zoomed in from some distance, and there's a timestamp printed in the corner that makes it the middle of the night, the July before Justice's birth. Why was someone spying on this couple, taking pictures of them being intimate, and why does Deb Morgan have a copy of it in her drawer with her secret phone and her secret paternity tests?

But then she realises she recognises that figure, having sought it out in countless shopping centres when lost or after parting ways to look at different departments, and traces a finger along the woman's spine. "Mom?" She's young here, mid-thirties, and beautiful, and alive. Her passion for her lover is visible, easily read in her body language, her closed eyes, her hands on him so firmly. "That's not my dad."

Not by any stretch of her imagination is the man pictured Joey Quinn. She's seen a thousand pictures of her father, comical and serious and posing and cuddly and blurred and shadowed and everything in between, and this is not one of him. His face is indeed half-shadowed, but while he's certainly familiar he is just as certainly not her dad.

"He's mine," Harrison says weakly. Justice's mouth falls open as she's forced to acknowledge that he's right and that the man is familiar from the photos on the mantelpiece. "That's my dad."

"And my mom." Justice doesn't finish the sentence with making out furiously, because that's implicit. She frowns up at her cousin. "But… they were siblings."

"Yeah," Harrison agrees bluntly. "I distinctly remember that part." He jabs the picture with a finger. "The part where they were hooking up, I don't recall that part." He glares at the timestamp. "This was a week before he died. Exactly a week."

He's outraged. That Dexter's love for his sister was anything different from how he remembers it is upsetting. That Deb's love for Dexter is different from how she's portrayed it is upsetting. That they might have been in love and never let on, to him, is upsetting. That the three of them, and later Justice, by some miracle twist of happenstance, might have been together, happy, a family somewhere, is upsetting. That the love he's loosely based his relationship with Justice upon is not how he perceived it is upsetting.

That the rules might not mean anything, but that nobody bothered to tell him, is very upsetting. He feels betrayed.

Justice is struggling to understand. She tries to rationalise it.

"Your dad was adopted, right?" she says. "So they weren't blood."

He takes her meaning and rejects it. "Fuck that excuse. You and I aren't blood, you don't see us fucking in the middle of the night," he says harshly. She withdraws, confronted further. He tries to smooth out his tone to avoid scaring her off, because he didn't mean to say that. "They were brother and sister, blood or not, it didn't matter. End of story. If they were more than that, they should have been open." With him. "They shouldn't have been screwing around." He shakes his head, memories, words overheard, things coming back to him. Hannah… her apparent jealousy toward Aunt Deb. No wonder. He recalls his father's gut-wrenching screams for Hannah to leave her alone, to let her go. They weren't just the screams of a brother losing his sister, but of one lover losing another. Were they carrying this on behind Hannah's back? Were they really so stupid? Dexter was dating a serial murderer and thought he'd step out on her with his own sister? Harrison will never believe his aunt deserved what she got but this definitely does tarnish her hero/victim status in his mind. His father's image can't be much further tarnished than it was by Tom Matthews the last time they spoke. "They really shouldn't have been screwing around."

"Maybe they weren't, and maybe we are," Justice says, too quickly, and blushes when she rethinks how that could be taken. Harrison's comment about fucking in the middle of the night has her unsettled. "Not that. Maybe they weren't screwing around. They didn't take this picture, right? Who did, and why? Not for any nice reason."

"What's your point? Someone caught them at it."

"Or maybe someone doctored an image digitally to make it look like they were kissing," Justice counters determinedly. "Maybe we're jumping to conclusions."

Harrison forces the air out of his lungs and forces himself to consider her argument. "You think someone made this picture and gave it to Aunt Deb?"

"Maybe she and your dad found it just as offensive as you do."

It's not a meritless theory. "So… blackmail?"

"Is that impossible?"

"No," he admits. "I can think of scenarios." His thoughts light on Jacob Elway, the mean man who came to Aunt Deb's and upset her. Daddy had to throw him out. Wasn't he some sort of private investigator? And the Morgan siblings had plenty to hide, especially by that time, so it's not hard to think of things Elway might have been blackmailing them for. "But," Harrison argues now, "if it's a fake, and it's offensive, why did she keep it? Why didn't she tear it to pieces?"

Justice has no answer for that. She holds up the medical envelope. "Why didn't she throw this away once she knew the results?"

"Let's find out," Harrison answers, leaning over to grab it from her. She protests – "No, no!" – and because he's already got it, he pauses. "What?"

"Just stop," she pleads, heart racing and stomach turning over in terror. "Don't open it."

"Why not?"

"Because," she says emphatically, as if that's an answer in itself. She gestures at the other secrets they've uncovered. "Because look. How much did you like the picture, Harri?"

"Not a fucking lot."

"And who the hell was she talking to?" Justice presses. "She said 'I love you so fucking much'."

"She did not," Harrison disagrees immediately. "That's what she says to us."

"It's what she said. I heard her. Who was she talking to?" She looks intently at her cousin, urging him to make the same connection she is making. "She was talking to your dad. Her brother."

"No." He's certain. "He's dead."

"Maybe he isn't."

"Listen," he says firmly, "he's dead. She was talking to someone else."

"Who else-"

"Justice," he interrupts, "I saw him stabbed. That's not an inference, that's a primary source. I was there, I saw it. Cite that shit in your fucking assignment. Trust me, he's dead."

She stares at him without fully comprehending. He sounds like his aunt when he gets irritable. Is her cousin sharing with her for the first time that he witnessed his father's murder? It won't compute, it won't sink in. Harrison, well-adjusted super-smart incredibly-driven got-his-life-together Harrison, a witness to violent crime?

It's too much.

"Then… who was Mom talking to?" she asks softly. "I'm fairly certain she thought she was talking to him."

"You think she cold-called some stranger and thought it was her twenty-years-dead big brother?" Harrison asks scornfully. "Let's try another theory."

"But Harri," she reminds him, "the phone doesn't even work. For all we know she imagined the whole conversation."

"Your mom has epilepsy, not amnesia. She knows her brother's dead as well as everybody else does." Harrison runs a hand through his hair, frazzled. "This is fucked, all of it." He goes for the envelope again and Justice launches at him, grabbing both of his hands with hers.

"Don't do it," she begs. "You're going to ruin everything."

"What are you scared of?" he asks. Her eyes widen incredulously.

"Are you seriously asking me that?" she checks. "Everything else we've found, we haven't liked. Why would this be any different? Mom had it hidden with her secret phone and her secret freaky photo. How can it possibly be any better?"

"Don't you want to know what Aunt Deb wanted to know when she had this test done?"

Justice shakes her head urgently, finally reaching the extreme edge of her curiosity and wanting to throw herself backwards to keep clear of the drop, to get very far away from it. "No. I don't. What if it…" She can't finish. "What if my mom and your dad…?"

"What if our parents were fucking?" Harrison concludes easily. "What will it matter? It was twenty years ago. At least we'll know for sure that anything goes in this family, and we'll never feel low about a bad grade or scratching your dad's car ever again." He waves the picture at her and looks pointedly at his aunt and uncle's bed. "Beyond us hooking up ourselves, there's really nothing we can do to outshine this."

Justice blushes again, realising suddenly how close she is to him. She refuses to let go and back down and allow herself to acknowledge any sort of self-consciousness.

"What if it says you're really my brother?" she finishes after swallowing, with difficulty.

"Aren't I already?"

"No. Yes." Justice struggles with the right answer. No, technically, he's her cousin. It says so, right beside his name and number, on the Emergency Contact form she filled out at college. Yes, he's as good as her brother. They've been raised together by the same couple, and when people mistake them for siblings, neither one corrects it. No – he's more than a cousin, more than a brother, more than a friend or mentor or carer. He is something else entirely, though she doesn't have a name for the multi-faceted role he plays in her life. And she is not ready yet to try to pin it down and understand it, especially not today, of all days. She tries another angle. "What if it says I'm your sister, not your cousin? Your sister and your cousin."

"If that's the case, I'd rather know for sure," Harrison insists. "We deserve to know."

"Do we?" she counters. "Do we have some sort of right?"

"If this envelope changes who were are to each other, then we deserve to know. But that's not going to be what it says."

"I don't want it to change who we are!" Justice explodes, panicking. "I don't want to be Mom's kid from a fling with her brother." Tears stream down her face and she stands hurriedly, struggling to draw breath. "I don't want my dad to not be my dad."

Harrison realises he's pushed her too far and hastens to his feet in time for her to dissolve into tears. He wraps his arms tight and warm around her and draws her in close against his chest, where she sobs, overwhelmed. He shushes her gently and strokes her hair and murmurs apologises for being a jerk. Her arms go tightly around his middle and she cries into his shirt. She wishes she hadn't wondered. She wishes she hadn't asked questions. She knows now why there are rules.

"You are my sister, in all the ways that matter to me," he whispers into her ear when she's calmer, "but whatever's in that envelope is going to contradict me. It's going to say we're not blood, just like we've always thought, just like my dad and your mom. It's going to say you're Joseph Quinn's daughter."

"How do you know?" she asks in her weak, miserable little voice. She wishes now she never got out of bed this morning, and certainly that she never opened that drawer. She reaches a hand up and takes Harrison's wrist, tilting it so she can see his watch. Seven minutes. They've been in here tearing their own lives apart for only seven minutes.

A lot can happen in seven unmonitored minutes, as it turns out.

"Maybe Aunt Deb and Daddy were a thing." Harrison shrugs when she shudders in fear of what this could mean for her, for them, for their family. He shrugs to convey how little it matters. He shrugs to show he's not judging. His anger with them remains but he finds he isn't bothered so much by the morality or acceptability of their actions as he is by the falseness they surrounded themselves with. His whole life, the greatest love he had ever seen, the purest and most heated and most attentive unconditional love he had ever witnessed, was the love between Dexter and Debra Morgan. Now he doesn't know what was real. It's hurtful. "You still couldn't be their kid. The last time they saw each other outside of a hospital, they were at my dad's apartment, and she was stabbed four times, including in the stomach, and shot in the head. After surgery, extensive bleeding, a few transfusions and a massive aneurysm, she died in hospital and had to be revived on the table. My dad died a few hours later. Your mom was in hospital for weeks. And not one doctor, not one test picked up on a pregnancy. Because she wasn't. And lucky she wasn't, because you wouldn't have survived all that. So you see," Harrison says gently, drawing away to be able to see her, wiping tears away with his thumb, "you can't be Dexter Morgan's kid. Your dad is still your dad." He smiles gently. "Nothing has changed."

She tries to breathe through what he's saying. It's all incredible, unbelievable, these stories about her mother that she's never heard before, but she also hears the truth in what he's saying. Nothing has changed. Deb Morgan is still her mother. She still loves Justice and Harrison more than anything in the world. Maybe she had something very weird and complicated going on with her brother, but it was two decades ago, and here, now, she's still with Joey, still raising their family, and they're both happy. They are a family. Blood has never mattered. Nothing has changed. Harrison loosens his grip on her to lean aside and drop the envelope back into the drawer.

They don't know that Deb never read the contents. They only know that they will never read the contents.

Justice watches the envelope fall and feels the tightness in her chest relax. She knows Harrison's curiosity remains with the test results contained inside, but with the same certainty she knows he won't read it because she doesn't want him to. She knows that like with the coffee, like with the daily rides to college, like with everything, Harrison exists to carry out her will, and in the harsh light cast by the secrets spilled this morning, with so many truths uprooted in the last few minutes, she feels a sudden rush of gratitude for him, for his loyalty and solidarity, and that he exists at all.

When Harrison straightens and resumes looking down at her, Justice does something she hasn't done before. She unwinds her arms from his waist and reaches up to place her hands on either side of his face. His breath catches and the breaths that follow are shallow, and his gaze on her is intense and still.

His hands are on her back. He moves them to her waist as his awareness of her closeness becomes higher and higher, and puts a breath of space between their bodies. The distance does nothing to reduce the draw she has on him, but he stays strong, looking into her eyes instead of at her mouth, instead of her neck, instead of at the pink scar on her chest, visible over the scooped neck of her nightgown. There are so many rules.

She too feels the draw but she doesn't recognise it. It's no different from the draw she's always felt to him, a need to be around him, a need to engage his attention and to have him attend to her. She doesn't feel any self-consciousness about their connection. She's never learnt to.

"Thankyou," she murmurs. She runs her hands down his face to cup his jaw, maintaining eye contact, all meant in innocent affection, but she doesn't know the effect she has on him. So she feels confused when Harrison abruptly breaks away, dropping his eyes and his hands and prising hers off.

"You should clean this up, put it back the way you found it," he says, stepping away and gesturing at the open drawer. "And you should drive your car into college today. I checked it this morning and it's fine, but the battery will go flat if you don't use it."

She doesn't understand why, but he leaves, and outside she hears his car start. He takes himself to class and leaves her behind. She returns her mother's secrets to the state she found them in. She wishes she hadn't delved into them. She wishes she understood what secret thought drove Harrison out the door without her. She readies herself for class, showers, eats breakfast, locks up the house. By the time she's parking her car at the college, she's thoroughly pissed off with her cousin. She's had time to think about it and she's resentful. The moment she feels grateful for him and the consistency of his perfectness, he up and fails her.

She does her day of classes. She meets Katie Jensen, the coach and the other track girls after lunch and does her training session. She goes to her afternoon study group. All day she tries to avoid thinking about the secrets in her mother's drawer, and the questions that arose when she opened that Pandora's Box. Who is Deb Morgan, really? Who was on the phone? What happened to her brother? What has Harrison borne witness to in his life? Why did Deb take a paternity test? Who is Justice's biological father? What does Joey Quinn know? What scared Harrison away? How could he walk out on her after such an emotional morning?

She decides she isn't talking to him, and texts him to tell him so.

At the end of her day she heads back out to her car. She's annoyed about having to drive herself, and even more annoyed when it won't start. She messages her cousin.

That's impossible. I checked it this morning.

Well, it's happened, so he obviously didn't check it properly. He follows up with a second message, instructing her to walk over to the psych building where he holds the criminology lecture this afternoon. She replies no. She decides she doesn't need his help. She opens the hood and looks inside, certain a solution will present itself.

It does not.

"Nice ink."

She turns, caught off-guard, and draws her breath in sharply when she finds a stranger standing at her side, having approached without attracting her attention. But not just any stranger. The stranger, hoodie guy, from yesterday.

"I'm sorry?"

He points at her arm, the lines of biro connecting her freckles, now bared as her sleeve is pushed up to make her feel more like she knows what she's doing with her broken-down car. He seems now to notice what she is doing. "Car troubles?"

"I'm fine," she lies immediately, eager to get rid of him. She turns firmly back to her useless staring contest with her unwilling engine. He doesn't leave.

"Do you want me to-"

"No, I've got it," she insists, sparing him a quick smile. She has to do a double-take. She saw him briefly yesterday, saw enough to know he was cute, but now she sees something else. Eyes she knows from somewhere, and something about the shape of his face that strikes her as familiar.

He's caught her attention now and he smiles back.

"I know I freaked you out yesterday," he confesses, surprising her with his forthrightness. "Outside the library. Sorry about that; afterwards I realised how creepy that must have seemed."

"Pretty creepy," she agrees coyly, her innate politeness unwilling to allow her to tell him yes, that he was concerningly creepy. That she texted Katie Jensen and invited her to sit in the car with her and her cousin to ensure she was safe from hoodie guy, because he came across so incredibly creepy.

"I actually saw you at the library yesterday and wanted to come over and introduce myself, and couldn't work up the courage until I left," he says, offering a sheepish look. "I turned my car around and came back… but then you were there with your friend, and then your boyfriend turned up-"

"He's not my boyfriend," she feels compelled to admit. Hoodie guy, who today isn't wearing a hoodie, allowing his light blonde curls to fall roguishly around his face, tilts his head in something akin to surprise. But she doesn't think he's surprised. It looks rehearsed, like maybe he was hoping for this response, or that he'd perhaps asked around today and learnt this for himself, before bringing it up for her to confirm.

"Anyway, I'm sorry for being a complete and total creep," he says, and offers his hand. "Mason Pierce."

"Justice Quinn," she relents, deciding his story checks out, that he's not so bad, and lets him take a look at her engine. He can't find anything wrong with it, but admits he's not any sort of mechanic. The way he examines the engine, though, Justice might have been fooled. He certainly seems to know his way around the engine better than Harrison or Joey.

While he pokes around, they talk. He says he's from interstate. He moved here this semester to carry on with his economics degree. He's a couple of years older than Justice, she gathers, with a couple of years of college under his belt already.

"Why Miami?" she asks, when he says he's from Minneapolis. "It's pretty different."

"I have some family here," he answers easily, very easily for someone that was scared to introduce himself initially, "and I'm hoping to reconnect with them." He sighs and straightens, wiping engine grime from his hands onto his dark jeans. She squints at him in the dimming winter afternoon light. There's something familiar about his posture, too, and his silhouette. Now that he's in more form-fitting clothing and not yesterday's baggy hoodie. But she can't place him, doesn't know where she knows him from, if anywhere. "I have no idea what's wrong with your car. Sorry."

"Don't be," she says immediately, ever polite. "Thanks for trying."

He looks up at the sky. His eyes catch the last light of the day and sparkle hazel. "It's getting dark."

She looks around her. The other cars have pulled away while she and Mason were looking in the engine, and now they're alone, except for her dead car and his car a few rows away. The sun has gone down and the light that's left is grey and cold. Mysterious.

She's so sick of mysteries.

"Can I drive you home?" he asks, and when she tries to refuse, he adds, "So I know you're safe. Please?"

She knows better. But she's polite, and trusting in nature. She bites her lip and looks at her phone screen for the time. Late. Getting late, anyway. Her parents might be finished work by now but it'll take them ages to get here for her at this time of day. There's no one else around. No one she's talking to, anyway.

"I should call my…" She trails off. Harrison walked out on her this morning. She's informed him she's not speaking to him. For all she knows he's just as annoyed with her as she is with him.

"Your what?" Mason presses, and she can't answer. What is Harrison? She couldn't work it out earlier today. Now is no different. "Come on," Mason decides for her, closing down the hood of her car. "I'm not due anywhere – I can take you anywhere you need."

Meekly she gets her bags out of the car and locks it. Not that anyone is taking it anywhere very fast. She slings her gym back over her shoulder and lifts her backpack, and Mason extends a helpful hand to take it, and the flash of headlights cuts across them both, freezing them.

She's not talking to him, but Harrison is here. He spots them and drives over, pulling up right beside them. He gets out.

"Justice," is all he says, and his voice unfreezes her. Frees her up to make her choice. She looks between them, Mason who has been so friendly and helpful, and Harrison who upset her.

She hefts her bags higher on her shoulders. "Thanks anyway, Mason. My brother's here to take me home."

He smiles the ghost of a familiar smile, but he's not paying her much mind. His attention is with her cousin. He replies to her, "Glad you're going home safe. And I'm glad I finally met you."

"Same."

"I hope I see you again."

She gives him a smile and waves goodbye over her shoulder as she goes obediently to Harrison's car. She gets in without a word. She dumps her bags at her feet and puts her belt on. Outside, Mason stands his ground as Harrison drives her away. Both young men eye each other.

It's a long time before either cousin speaks in the car. Justice doesn't know that Harrison has been driving around the college campus ever since his class ended, from parking lot to parking lot, trying to locate her and her car. But she can guess. Harrison doesn't know what Justice was planning on doing next, with this stranger in the car park acting so helpful and chivalrous. But he can guess. They say nothing but their gratitude for the other emanates within the confined space of the car. She's grateful for his timing, and reflects that getting in Mason Pierce's car would have been unforgivably dumb, regardless of whether there was a serious consequence. She should just know better. He's grateful just to have her, because too many times in her short life he almost hasn't had her, and he's annoyed with himself for putting any doubt in her mind this morning of his devotion to her. That she might have considered accepting a stranger's help over his is not acceptable.

They're almost home, just a few streets away, when she says, "I'm sorry I was a bitch. You're still my Harri."

"I'm sorry I was an asshole. You're still my Justice," he replies, and that's all that needs to be said on that topic.

At home they walk inside in their usual fashion. He unlocks the door, even though she's got her own keys. He holds the door for her. She kicks off her shoes and shrugs off her jacket. He strides ahead of her to find her parents. He reports that her car isn't working and they've left it on campus. Joey is embarrassed to think his daughter was stranded at college the very same day he and his nephew checked the car for problems. Deb only raises an eyebrow and asks her usual pointed question. Always the one to notice the detail out of place.

"Why was she driving at all?" she asks, as Justice enters the room. Harrison glances back at his cousin, and then returns his gaze to his aunt. He doesn't lie to her. He knows better. But he also promised somebody once that he'd protect her, take care of her, and even though he was always the child and she was always the adult, he meant it then and he means it now. The truth of why Justice had to drive herself to school is ambiguous, impossible to articulate. So he tells her what happened.

"I told her to. Keep the battery alive."

Deb accepts his explanation. She nods at Justice and looks pointedly at a folder at the end of the table. "I did some thinking today. I got something for you."

Justice knows immediately what it is, but needs to confirm it. She steps hesitantly close to the folder. There are rules, though, she aches to shout at her mother. Rules that say we can't talk about this. Rules that say, no questions. Rules that keep everything running smooth and even.

She opens the file and finds a single photocopied page. The inventory from Thomas Matthews' missing persons case. Her grandfather; the man she knew as her grandfather, anyway.

Deb is sitting back in her chair, watching her daughter closely, critically, intensely. Thinking a lot of things, her brain working swiftly and methodically, the way her brother's did. She says, "I know you've got some questions and I'm sorry I've made them hard for you to ask. I didn't bother to pay attention to the wall I was building between you and a lot of truths." She smiles thinly. "I didn't notice I was becoming someone I hated." She swallows and makes herself say the next part. Harrison sits down very slowly nearby, barely breathing. He is hyperaware of the precariousness of his world in this moment. "Do you want to sit down after dinner and go over that document together? You and me? And… we can talk about other things, too, if you like."

Justice hears the tension in her mother's voice. She hears the weight of the secrets that burn at her from inside that drawer, from the black hole she fell into two decades earlier and can never climb out of, and Justice knows what it costs Debra to offer even the faintest, the palest truths to her daughter. She sees in her mother's eyes, which so match her own, which so matched someone else's, that she's weighed this personal cost against the cost of keeping secrets inside a family, and she's made an informed decision.

The ball is in Justice's court. Does that make it a game?

Maybe. But there are rules, and she never knew it before today, but she likes rules.

She flicks the cover of the folder closed. She goes to Harrison, where he sits in an armchair, and nudges him over with her hip until he makes a space for her to squeeze in beside him. It's a one-seater chair but that's never meant much to her.

"No, thanks," she says, pulling her feet up onto the seat. Harrison, a bit squashed, twists to lean forward enough to push her legs so that her feet fall back to the floor. "I'm going to choose a local mystery out of one of the books from the library."

Deb pauses, thinking a million miles a minute. "You don't need the file?"

"No." Justice snuggles into her cousin's side. He's calmed by her answer, and gets out his phone to go searching the internet for a mechanic. "I don't need the file. And I don't have any questions at all."

Deb can keep her secrets, whatever they are, and Justice will choose what her father chose – blissful ignorance. She looks like her mother, but she isn't her mother; she'll choose harmony over the truth. And Harrison looks like his father, but likewise, he's his own person. He looks after her needs in place of his own, and that fulfils him in the way darkness fulfilled Dexter. He doesn't need to know anything more than she wants to know.

Deb smiles her lop-sided smile at her daughter, and Joey reflects it's the first time he's seen her smile so openly, so genuinely, in a very long time. There's always a tiny percentage of secrecy, of mystery, of guilt or dishonesty or uncertainty in any of Debra's smiles, no matter who they're for. But not tonight.

Justice smiles back, and gets in first.

"I love you. So fucking much."