They have shared a bed for sixty-three nights now. Every night since Maria Laguerta's death.
(Dexter never uses the word murder, but Debra does.)
They have shared a bed for sixty-three nights. Not in a euphemistic or sexual sense. Each night, they only ever sleep.
Or rather, each night, he is throttled from his already-uneasy sleep by her excruciating nightmares.
She can't ever seem to wake herself from them. He isn't really sure how that's possible, seeing as her subconscious forays frequently bleed into her physical being. Sometimes, the nightmares convulse through her limbs with deliberate cruelty. Sometimes, the phantom terrors tremble down her spine, drawing inhuman keens from her parched mouth.
Sometimes, to draw her fully back into the land of the waking, all he must do is place a few taps upon her shoulder. Sometimes, he must call out her name.
More often than either of them wish to admit, he must haul her upright, cradling her to his chest with one arm supporting her head and the other restraining her arms. When he does not do this – when she gets caught in that brutal moment between sleeping and waking – she lashes out like a starved animal. Tries to tear them both to shreds with just her fingernails. To claw out their eyes and blind them to their own monstrosities.
Each time Debra is finally ripped away from slumber, her breaths shuddering against his collarbone, she gasps out, "Fucking hell." Each time, her hands shove against his chest while her fingers clutch the cotton of his nightshirt. Simultaneously trying to escape from and burrow deeper in his grasp.
Each time, after overcoming her struggle against herself, she hurtles away from him and leaps from the bed to pace before the window. Each time, in frantic cadence to her footsteps, she mutters some variation of what has become her perverse mantra:
"You gotta stop doing this, Dex. You know – waking me up, coddling me out of the nightmares. You gotta let me learn how to protect myself."
Each time, neither of them mention that it is she who chooses to return to his bed every single night.
What happens next each night varies. Dexter knows that, whatever protests his little sister might verbally make, she wants nothing more in the moments after being freed from the nightmare's clutches to be coddled. To talk about the terrors she sees each night behind her eyelids, to be reassured that the conjures of her mind have no basis in reality, to be held and loved and told she is okay and everything will be fine.
Or something along those lines. He isn't sure precisely what she wants because he has never understood how to provide a false sense of comfort. How anyone could be reassured by a seamy bed of lies.
Instead, Dexter opts for solidity. Objects rather than feelings, tangible belongings rather than twistable words. Glasses of warm milk. Dream catchers above the headboard. Aromatic fragrances in the air freshener plugged into the wall socket. Blasting We Are The Champions through his speakers (but not loud enough to wake Harrison, of course). Tea made of valerian root. Worry dolls to whisper individual fears to and then tuck beneath a pillow, out of sight. Browsing through late night shopping channels. Vodka.
Each time, he dares to hope against hope that something might help her.
Tonight, Dexter retrieves a tealight candle from his closet, sets it upon his nightstand, and lights the wick.
"What the fuck is this?" Debra snorts as she paces, shattering his nonexistent hopes. "A vigil? Are we in mourning for the loss of tonight's shitty dreams? Grieving that I'm not once again reliving Laguerta's murder at my fucking hands?"
"It's just a candle," says Dexter. "Don't read so much into it."
"Well, what're you lighting it for? You look ridiculous in this jaundice-yellow candlelight. You look like a fucking jack-o-lantern."
Dexter looks at his sister. She has yanked back the curtains from his window, throwing a silvery glow over her waxy face, her hollowed cheeks. She's lost too much weight over the past sixty-three days.
If he looks like a jack-o-lantern, then she looks like a skeleton with flesh still clinging to its bones. But he does not want to tell her this.
"I thought we could use a light," he says instead. "It's pretty dark in here."
Debra snorts again and stops her pacing long enough to fling open the window. The flame flickers in the dry summer breeze. "No kidding. That's what it looks like in a room where people are trying to sleep."
"Yes," he agrees, cupping a hand over the flame to protect it from the wind, "but we spend too much time in darkness, you and I."
She snorts once more, but there is a new edge of hysteria to the sound. "Fucking poet, you are."
She lifts the window higher; he shields the candle from her angry drafts with both hands.
"Stop protecting the fucking thing!" she yells at him. "It's a candle, for Christ's sake! Why don't you show so much care towards anything else in your fucking stupid life?"
Dexter's hands spasm at her words and he swears as his middle finger grazes the flame. He leaps up and runs to the kitchen to let cool water fall over his skin.
The faucet is still running when Debra enters. Her waxy skin is ashen now, and like a prayer or a penitence, she holds the tea candle between her fingers without its stand. Letting the wax drip over her fingers.
"I closed the window," she mutters, perching atop his kitchen counter.
He nods in understanding. It is the closest thing to an apology that either of them knows how to do.
Debra places the candle beside her. Wipes the wax from her fingers onto a paper towel. They watch the tiny flame swell and dance in the silence of the kitchen.
"I try to protect the candle's flame," says Dexter slowly as he turns off the water and takes a seat beside her, "because I know that I can't protect anything that really matters to me."
Debra takes his burned hand in her own. Holds it close enough to the candle to examine the skin, but not close enough to reinjure him. "It isn't a bad burn. Should be healed in a few days." Her hand drops into her lap, but his hand is still cradled inside of her fingers. "Thanks for – thanks for lighting it."
"Thanks for lighting up my own skin?" he asks.
She elbows him. "Shut up. No. I meant the candle."
He nods. Struggles over his next words. "I know there won't ever be enough light to clear out all the dark. But I have to try," he tells her. For you – but he does not say this aloud either.
With her free hand, she picks up the tea candle. With her other hand, she laces their fingers together, and they return to bed. Before she lies down, she puts the tea candle back inside its holder upon the nightstand.
They sleep through the rest of the night.
A/N: Reviews are love.