A/N: My first foray into Dexter's world. I think I'm going to like it here. This is a short extension of the scene between Deb and Astor during "Argentina", y'all know the one. Hope you enjoy.
I don't own Dexter, made for fun not profit.
Everyone needs their Argentina.
You take the joint from her fine fingers, and as she sits up in resigned failure, you slip the paper between your lips and the drug's calming fibres take a hold.
"Aunt Deb?" she says in a small, uncertain voice.
You don't answer her, just pass the roll back to her like it's perfectly fine. You'll go to hell for this but that's where you were going anyway, so what does it matter?
She studies the roll, looks over it thoughtfully and you see yourself reflected in her unlike what you've ever seen before. This lost girl, forsaken by life's cradle and thrown into its cruelty, is who you were long ago.
"I heard you and Dexter fighting," Astor continues. She sucks on the joint as she looks at you. "It didn't sound good."
"Did you hear what we were fighting about?" you ask as a formality, because would it matter if she had? You don't know what's coming, what could be beyond this point anyway.
She passes the joint back to you and you don't even bother to hesitate. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters.
"No," she says easily, as if she doesn't care anyway, "I just heard the noise. Is everything okay?"
I'm smoking a joint with my surrogate niece, what do you think?—you'd love to say. What do you tell a scared kid, afraid of the big bad world? Astor's world has been stripped down, to the barest bones—father, an addict, dead, memories of her mother tainted with blood and bathwater. Is there much hope left after that?
No wonder getting high seems like the best thing for her.
"Dexter and I don't always agree about things," you reply after a silence. "It'll be okay."
So you tell a lie, that's what you do. Most of your life has been a lie—Dexter, a killer. Serial killer. Fuck!
You love him, that's been there all along. In love? Well, who knows now.
The joint still in your hand, you take another toke and pass it on. As you exhale you mumble out: "Holy mother of fuck, that's good."
As the night wears on you decide not to tell Astor how similar you are, how your lives mirror the other because you think she knows anyway.
"I know what this does to me but I don't care," Astor drawls out and you frown because it's what you would have said, what you've been thinking all along.
"Shit," you mutter. It's all you can say really.