Author's note- "Growing Old" takes place after the fourth season finale. The title and idea were inspired and/or borrowed from a quote in Season 7, Episode 11, 'Do You See What I See?'.
xxx
Growing Old
"I've never thought about the future, about growing old. Maybe because the future has never been kind to people like me… or their loved ones. But suddenly my future seems very possible and growing old is not only a possibility, it seems… appealing."
—Dexter
"When you are through changing, you are through."
—Bruce Barton
xxx
The first thing he notices is that the bathroom door is open.
He rounds the corner, saying her name, and then all of the air inside of his lungs rushes out and he wants to throw up.
She is in the bathtub, her head resting against the faucet, and it is almost right except there is something so very wrong. Blood is everywhere—dripping out of her neck and overflowing the tub and spreading across the floor, painting the tips of his socks red—and his son is sitting in the middle of it, crying, wailing, really; and as he wraps his arms around the circumference of Harrison's waist, picking him up, he wonders if he looked like that when Harry found him: desperate and abandoned and afraid.
Later on, he can't remember calling the police or walking outside, only his sister pushing through the fluorescent-yellow DO NOT CROSS tape, her face twisted and puffy from crying. Why is she crying?
Why isn't he?
He can't tell who embraces the other first, they are just a tangle of limbs and clothing and salt. She keeps saying, "Oh, God, Dex, I'm so sorry," and he says that he is sorry, too, because if he says it enough times then maybe he will start to mean it.
There was a time before Rita—before any of this—that he knew he was slipping. Something has always been wrong with him, and it's not until now that he finally realizes what that difference is. He used to believe in happiness, that it was possible for someone like him to have a future, a stable career, a son who wasn't born in blood—except he was incorrect.
He looks back at the house, suddenly lit up, like it is on fire, the cops creating shadows where there were none, and his insides burn.
He thinks, in some other world, that he and Rita probably deserved each other. But not in this one.
xxx
"Son, you're not listening to me."
He looks up from the book in his hands—American Psycho, ironically—and at the doorway of his bedroom. Harry is leaning against it, still in his blue uniform, the light behind him yellow and sagging. Down the hallway, he can hear the distant drone of TV, Debra's voice on the telephone.
"I am," he says, because he is, he swears he is. Why doesn't Harry believe him?
Harry walks over to his bed, sits on the end of it. "I know it's not going to be easy, Dexter, but you have to learn how to control these… urges."
"How?" His voice comes out weak, like a whisper, and he looks away, down at the sentence he's been rereading for the past two hours: I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. It was beautiful, he'd thought, tracing the letters on the page with his fingertip, because this guy, a fucking fictional character for God's sake (though he didn't believe in any god for that matter), Patrick Bateman, was him.
They were each other.
They are one.
But each time he blinks, he doesn't see what his alternate does—women and high-rises, a cheap thrill on a Friday night. He sees duct tape and plastic wrapping, the puppy across the street as it chases a tennis ball across the green expanse of lawn, its eyes too wide and trusting as it trots back to its owner.
And he can't tell Harry any of it—of what he's thinking, of what he wants to do (of what he shouldn't want to do)—because Harry will start hiding the knives again, lock the door to the shed that is in the backyard, order Debra to stay at the other end of the house… Like he would kill her, anyway, what the fuck kind of sick person would murder their own relative…
Harry's arm finds his. "We'll figure something out. We always do." He is trying to be a father; he is trying to be reassuring. So he should at least pretend like he's trying to be a son, too.
"Yeah," he says. The word leaves a foul taste in the back of his mouth, and he swallows to get rid of it.
xxx
"Eat."
He doesn't. She shoves the fork at his mouth anyway, as if doing so will make him open it. She sighs, moves back to her corner of the kitchen, where there is a fresh pot of coffee and empty mugs and she can't see the hollowness in his eyes so clearly.
"Goddamn, Dex," she says.
"Goddamn what?" He speaks into his coffee mug. His hands are wrapped around it so tightly that his fingers are starting to turn purple. She doesn't want him to break the mug. Rather, she doesn't want him to break. He can't. She can't. They both can't.
"Fucking eat your breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day."
He trades the mug for the fork. Stabs at the over-easy egg, watches the yellow yolk spill out onto the blue plate. It reminds him of blood. It reminds him of his mother, that shipping container… oh, God, Rita…
He places the fork back on his unused napkin. Rinse, cycle, repeat. "I… I can't do this, Deb."
"Do what? You haven't done or ate anything in three fucking days!"
"Watch it." His tone turns sharp, aggressive—bossy. "Your nephew's in the other room, if you don't remember."
"So what? What happened to Rita… it was horrible, okay? You shouldn't—we shouldn't have to go through that. But the least you could do"—and here her voice catches, like she might cry, but she's Debra and she never cries because she has to be the strong one, she can't be weak in front of him—"is act like you're sad!"
He tries to tell her that he is—that he thinks he is, anyway—and then, just like that, the words get caught in his throat. When he is finally able to say them, he speaks to the wall.
xxx
"—I'm sorry—"
"—I'm sorry—"
"—my condolences, Dexter—"
"—she was so beautiful—"
He agrees.
He says he is sorry, that Miami has lost a bit of its spark now that Rita is gone. He says she was beautiful. He says she was the love of his life (because if he had a heart, if he wasn't a monster, he's almost sure it would've been hers to keep). He says all of this to a faceless crowd in a funeral-parlor full of dead flowers and dying people, (everyone is dying slowly, surely, will eventually) in front of posters with pictures of her on them and Astor and Cody somehow standing next to him, holding each other upright, smiling, smiling through the pain, because that is how we will move on, he says. We will hold on.
xxx
The day of the funeral, he sleeps.
Debra's house is cold and dark, the blinds drawn, the doors locked. It is quiet. It is almost peaceful, besides the noise in his head—of Harrison crying, of his mother's screaming, of Rita's voicemail on his cell phone—and he thinks, someday, he could get used to this.
When he wakes up, he finds them outside, on the beach. Harrison is rolling a toy car over a mound of sand. Next to him, Debra is laying stomach-down on a towel, watching him play.
"Hey."
"Hey," she says, surprised to see him. She sits up, almost embarrassed, like she's been caught doing something she shouldn't, and he feels that twinge again in the middle of his chest, the one that makes him unable to breathe.
He sits down next to her, pulls his knees up to his chest. Sand rushes everywhere—into the space between his toes, the loose waistband of his shorts (he may or may not have lost weight from maybe or maybe not eating). "I've been thinking about coming back to work."
"Work?" She says it like it is an alien word, a delusion. "When?"
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" she sputters. "It's been less than a fucking week, and you're already—you're already thinking about—"
He raises his hands above his head in an I-didn't-do-it gesture. He didn't mean to make her upset, to recall the memories that he's been so careful to avoid for the last several days. But now he can feels Rita's warmth against his skin, her breath on his ear, her mouth on his, and for a moment his heart stutter-stops, his vision goes black.
He inhales, exhales. The salt-spray of ocean is sharp on his tongue. "When Dad died, working helped me—deal with it, I guess. It was a distraction, and I—I think it would help, too, with… her, and Harrison. They"—he corrects himself—"he needs me, Deb, and the income…"
Debra's jaw is slacked. Her sunglasses are sliding down the bridge of her nose, and there is a smear of sunscreen on her cheek. He thinks he must have shocked her. Instinctively, he laces his fingers through hers, squeezing their palms together like he used to, when they were little and she would have nightmares and come into his bedroom and cry herself to sleep in his arms.
"Whatever," she sniffs, and it is not whatever. He can still hear the tremor in her voice, feel the trembling of her palm against his as she squeezes back, hard.
xxx
"I love you."
She moves her hand up his shirt, to the third button. Her breath is sweet and minty on his face, and he kisses her again, deeper and longer this time, because he knows that if he says those three words back, he will mean it, and the only person he would ever have feelings for—if he could—would be his sister.
And she isn't Debra. She is Rita, and he already knows which one of them—if it ever comes down to it—he would choose.
xxx
"You're back!"
Maria hugs him for a second too long. Her yellow pantsuit and matching kitten heels are trying to delude the darkness from the otherwise-gray office, but it isn't working. It's been two days since he told Debra he was returning (she made him do all of her laundry yesterday, in return for the hours of free babysitting) and he shoves his hands into his khaki pants pockets. The shirt that Debra picked out for him—a forest-green bowling one, somehow hidden in the depths of her closet ("to match your, uh, eyes," she said earlier that morning, holding it out for him to inspect)—is beginning to choke him.
"Yeah," he says when she steps away. "Glad to be here."
"We're so glad you are too, Dexter." She smiles, her teeth bleach-white and wolfish. "If you need anything, please let us"—and by us she means me—"know. I mean it, okay?"
"I will."
He won't. He finds Angel and Masuka in the break room, eating donuts and gossiping over some movie star's new tits. At least, he thinks Tessa Two-In-One is an actress; he doesn't watch too many movies. The smell of burnt coffee and cigarette smoke tickles his nostrils, and he sneezes.
Both of their heads snap up at the noise. "Oh," Angel says, just as Masuka says, white powder around his mouth, "What the—"
He waves sheepishly, walks around them to the coffee pot. He pours some into a cup, just to do something with his hands. It shouldn't be this hard to act normal around them, fake everyday interactions, but somehow, after It happened, there is a veil of fog over his brain. "Nice to see you guys, too."
"We're here for you, bro." Angel raises his cup in mock-salute. "If you ever want to talk…"
"I appreciate it." He half-smiles at them and leaves.
In his office, he finds Debra sitting at his desk, logging into her account on his computer. He motions toward it with his cup of stale liquid. "When did yours break?"
"Didn't feel like using it today." She looks up at him, brushes a piece of hair out of her face. "So, have you talked to Gail? About the kids?"
"Oh." Right—Gail, Rita's mother, who is temporarily in charge of Harrison, Astor and Cody, the three musketeers—is in Havana. He'd dropped Harrison off yesterday afternoon and planned to be back for him on Friday. "Uh, no, not really. Vince want me to look at these?" He places his cup next to her lipstick-rimmed one, reaches for the pile of manila folders that are on his desk, all of the blood-splatter he's missed.
Suddenly, Debra's hand shoots out, folding over his own. "Don't fucking touch those," she says. "They're not—"
But he's already seen the file name, the familiar crest of the Miami Metro Police Department printed in navy-blue ink. His head spins, his stomach shoots down to his toes. RITA MORGAN, says the top one, her case number 125-407-3982. He flips to the next one, maniacally, disbelievingly, and his father is there—HARRISON JAMES MORGAN, 124-755-2913. The third file belongs to LAURA LYNN MOSER, 090-281-5320.
A strange noise comes out of his throat, like a gasp or a cry, and he drops the folders. Paper spills across the linoleum. "How could you—"
"Dex, I can explain," she says, shaking her head. "You weren't supposed to—"
Already, he's bent down, on his knees to collect the papers, pick up the pieces of the puzzle he can't solve—and all he sees is red, red red red red red, and Biney is next to him, screaming, the chainsaw goes rr-rrr-rrr-rrrr—
SHE IS SURVIVED BY TWO MINORS, BOTH OF WHOM HAVE BEEN THEREUPON PLACED INTO FOSTER CARE FOR PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION AT THE FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN AND FAMILIES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE—
HE IS SURVIVED BY TWO CHILDREN, DEXTER AND DEBRA MORGAN, BOTH OF MIAMI-DADE COUNTY—
RESPECTS FOR MRS. RITA MORGAN CAN BE PAID TODAY AT THE WALSCH FUNERAL HOME, 45200 S. PARK AVE., FROM 4—10 P.M. FUNERAL SERVICES WILL BE PRIVATE.
"Stop, stop, stop it," Debra is saying now, crouched on the floor next to him, her fingers ice-cold and digging into his arm. "You're scaring me. Please, mother fucking stop! I mean it, Dex!"
He does only because she never says please, never begs. "Why the fuck would you do this?" he asks, his voice rising, matching the erratic beating of his pulse. The rage comes from nowhere, everywhere, all at once. "Why would you fucking hide this from me—?"
"'Cause I knew how you would react!" She releases her grip, pulls away from him like the tide swelling back to sea. After a moment, she blurts out, "I thought—I thought there would be a fucking connection between everything, that it would make sense, like, why Rita was killed"—she drops her gaze—"but there's nothing, Dex; there never was. It's why I didn't want you to look. 'Cause I knew you would try to find an answer."
"You were looking out for me?"
The concept is foreign to him. It's always been the other way around; that was how it was, Big Brother Dexter sweeping in to save Darling Debra's day. No, no, no, he thinks, sitting back on his heels. She wouldn't—
But she would. She did. And she would do it all over again. "Deb," he starts, shaking his head, "I don't—"
"Fucking forget about it, all right?" she snaps. She gets up, brushes off the invisible dirt that has accumulated on her suit-pants. Her eyes are shiny under the fluorescents, and all he wants is his old sister back, the one who used to come over to his apartment every Friday night for T-bones and beer, the one who would call him at four a.m. from Tamiami Trail to tell him that she arrested some sleaze-bag slut-fucker, the one who didn't turn the shower on in the bathroom just so he wouldn't hear her cry. "I have to go."
"Deb, wait."
The door shuts behind her.
xxx
Slowly, ever so slowly, days pass.
On Friday, he picks Harrison up from Gail's house, a Spanish-style villa in the midst of a re-model. The whole time he is walking back to his car, Harrison nestled into the space between his neck and his shoulder, fast asleep, Gail stands on the porch, arms crossed over her chest, glaring.
He straps Harrison into his carseat, throws the duffel bag—full of all his toys and diapers and snacks—somewhere into the back. As he walks around to the driver's-side, she says, loud enough for him to hear, "I always knew there was something wrong with you."
He opens the door, gets in, adjusts his rearview mirror. Then he reminds himself of Harry's first rule—don't get caught—and the second—don't kill an innocent.
But, oh, how he wishes.
xxx
Knock, knock, knock.
He opens the door of his apartment, and suddenly she is there, his Debra, still in her workout clothes and messy ponytail from chasing bad guys on the treadmill for three miles. "Hey," she says.
"It's not Friday," he says, because it's the only thing he can think of, the only explanation that will make sense as to why she is standing in front of him.
"I know. Can I come in?"
"Yeah, of course."
She does, setting her purse and two grocery bags onto the kitchen counter. She unloads a package of raw meat and a six-pack of Miller. "I thought you'd like some company."
"I have Harrison."
"Adult company, dork," she clarifies, rolling her eyes. "Where is my favorite nephew, by the way?"
"In his room, taking a nap. Good thing you brought steak; I'm starving."
"Well, I'm not fucking cooking those." She points at the meat, wrinkles her nose like she is smelling dog shit.
So he cooks, and she passes him a beer, and just like that, they have slid back into their routine, the fight that happened two weeks ago—rather, thirteen days, eight hours, and fifty-seven-point-nine seconds (not that he was counting)—swept under the living-room rug.
"How's Quinn?" he asks as they settle onto the couch to eat, their plates balanced on their knees.
Her fork, halfway to her mouth, drops out of her hand and bounces across the coffee table. "Quinn?"
"The cop who's been screwing you."
"Shut the hell up. And for the record, I screwed him. Twice, as a matter of goddamn fact."
He pretends to gag. "Gross."
"You should be grossed out. I'm your sister, you freak."
On their third beers, he polishes off the rest of her steak with her feet in his lap and then asks the question he's been thinking of all night: "What're you doing here?"
"'Cause I wanted to visit my big bro." When he raises his eyebrows at her, she adds, "Fine. 'Cause I'm a bitch, and I'm sorry about lying to you."
"Thanks for apologizing."
"Thanks for being such an asshole."
"No problem."
Her touch burns when she punches him in the arm.
xxx
Six nights later, he kills, and it is nearly perfect.
The blade is steady and swift in his hands, the metal glinting in the sharp light above him. The blood is a spectacular, dazzling red, and it makes him dizzy with both guilt and pride.
It is control as he saws through bone. It is freedom as he tosses fingers, arms, legs into garbage bags. And he thinks he is finally, finally breathing as he looks around the room at the mess he has made.
xxx
"Dex?"
He opens one eye, then the other. The yellow numbers on the alarm clock swim into view—three twenty-one—and he groans. She is kneeling on the floor in front of him, her face inches from his. He smells beer, the skunk-scent of pot and burning wood, and knows something has happened. "Deb? Are you—"
"I'm fucking fine. Can I—can I sleep in here tonight? I don't want to be alone right now."
"Um, okay."
He shifts over, the coldness of the wall seeping in through his T-shirt. She climbs into his too-small bed, rolls onto her side so that they are facing each other. If he wanted to, he could touch her, run his thumb down her jaw and pretend it was normal to do so.
"Thanks," she says, and he wishes he knew what the word meant.
xxx
"You did it, son."
"Did what?" he asks. Harry is in the passenger-seat next to him, and he is driving down the 415. It is raining, and he can barely see through the sheets of water that hit the windshield with each swipe, how heavy and thick the air is.
Up ahead, there is an accident—brake lights flashing, the sound of sirens—and he reaches for the radio knob, turns up the volume. A sports broadcast blasts through the speakers: "Last night, the Marlins lost, four to seven, to the Mets in Miami. 'After last season's fallout, we're hoping to make a comeback,' said…"
"Reached out," Harry says. "That's all she's ever wanted, Dexter, a brother—"
"And I've given that to her," he finishes, and realizes that it is true. Almost.
xxx
Honestly, he wants her to be enough for him.
He wants to be enough for her.
But lately the Thoughts have started to pick up—the doubting, the self-loathing, the sense of falling though he is on solid ground—like the wind before a hurricane, and he knows that he will kill again, soon, whether tonight or tomorrow, a week from now, a month, a year. Years.
Time will move forward, somehow, someway, and his dark passenger—the part of him that no one but Harry is allowed to see, the part of him that convinces him what he is doing is almost right, almost just—will yearn to be filled. And he will come to it desperately, seekingly, all-consumingly, like a man stranded in the middle of the desert, taunted by a single droplet of water.
And he can't have her see him for who he really is.
No.
He cannot allow it.
He will not.
Except, he already has.
(And that, he thinks, is the worst part of it all.)