17.
~ There was a feeling of heaven in moments like these; as well as a feeling that it couldn't last. It was a dread. A sense that Alex didn't deserve this kind of bliss. That he hadn't been a good man, a worthy man, to merit stolen moments of happiness with a woman who loved him. A woman who saw past his barriers and self loathing and was willing to care for and make him feel such joy.
Norma should belong to a someone better than him. A man who had a nicer temperament and not so much blood on his hands.
Yet here they were. Together, and they were oddly happy. His wife, stunning in the blue neon glow that came through the windows to touch her naked skin.
She was stretched out on her stomach as if casually posing for an artist to paint her. Her body looking every bit like the work of art she was. Her ankles crossed and her legs lazily moving back and fourth as if bored with him. A slight knowing smile on her face as if she could read his mind.
"Aren't you cold?" he asked as if he suddenly noticed she was uncovered. Her body a thing of rare beauty with its' elegant curves. He wasn't cold himself, in fact he was almost too warm. The heater had kicked in and warm air was moving steadily under their bed.
"No." she smiled and her legs moved back and fourth hypnotically.
"Is it early or late?" he asked.
"Early. Almost 3 am." she told him with a contented little sigh.
"Oh." he said softly and tried to maneuver his hands. The sharp, unforgiving nature of metal arrested his moments at once.
"Ummm. Mrs. Romero?" he asked politely before turning on his side so she could see the handcuffs were still locking his arms behind his back.
"Oh!" she smiled and jumped to grab the key from her nightstand. Her movements feeling a little too slow for Alex's taste. Almost as if she didn't want him liberated.
"Better?" she asked when the bracelets snapped off and he was suddenly free.
He quickly rubbed his writs where the metal had bit into the skin and could fully appreciate how uncomfortable they could be when they were too tight. Not that she'd cuffed him too tightly. She'd been shockingly gentle in their little game, but he'd suffered all the same from not being able to touch her.
"Much better." he said when his hands rested on her bare skin again. Norma had curled up, cat like, on his body and looked a little pleased with herself.
"That was fun." she said with and amused smile.
"For you." he huffed, feeling as if she'd taken advantage of him. He'd never given power over like that before and it had been a little scary to not be able to free himself. True, it was fun, but he always liked to be in control. It was a new experience, thrilling and very nice to do such a thing with Norma.
Not that he would want to do it again. At least, not right away.
Norma looked to be suppressing a smile. Her skin seeming radiant in the strange, artificial light.
"You said you wanted to try something new, Sheriff." she reminded him with the loving voice of a women who abused him so well.
Alex felt his own smile bubble up.
"Alright, it was a little fun." he admitted reluctantly. "I can't believe you're so mean to you poor husband."
Norma snorted a laugh and kissed him.
"Just have your wicked way with me, Mrs. Robinson." he reminded her.
"Alex!" she giggled and rested her head on his chest again.
They enjoyed the peacefulness for a few minutes before she spoke again.
"What time do you have to be at work?"
"Eight or nine." she told her.
"We should try and get some sleep."
"Hmm." he said already feeling his eyes wanting to close. A relief at 'resting his eyes' came over him and he was in real danger of nodding off any second.
"I don't… I don't want to be in a world without you in it." he said dreamily before falling into an abyss of blackness and only waking up again when his alarm went off.
~ Norma expected something to happen right away with the DEA. She'd half expected back hawk helicopters to swoop in and lay siege to her home that night, but nothing happened at all for weeks.
Dylan kept insisting the longer they wait, the worse it will be, but yet, silence.
It was like purgatory. They were living on the hope that Rebecca wouldn't go to the DEA herself and try to cut a deal.
Alex seeming to think that was unlikely with him having the key as insurance. If she went to the DEA and tried to make the first move, he could easily give the DEA any evidence they could ever want against her.
Romero and Dylan had privately hidden the deposit box key and refused to tell Norma where it was. Feeling the less she knew, the better.
All of Bob Paris' holdings were being monitored. If Romero got the safe deposit box first, the bank would automatically alert the DEA and he would be stopped before he ever left town.
Same scenario if Rebecca was simply given the key and allowed to take her money and her ledgers.
It was a stalemate and no one was flinching.
~ "Maybe we should talk to the DEA." Norma sighed one morning. Alex had left the mail on the hall table from yesterday, and she'd been sad to see another of her letters to Norman had been returned unopened. She'd written to him every week. Just normal things and simple conversations she so desperately wanted to share with him. He hadn't responded and lately, her letters were coming back unopened.
Dylan was going to visit his brother soon. Making sure he was still alive and being treated will. He reported that Norman was distant, but that might have just been because of the therapy and medications.
"It takes a lot out of you, Norma." he'd said. "Give him time."
Dr. Edwards sent a report on Norman at the end of the month, but he used such big words, it sent Norma searching the internet, and what she read frightened her. She agreed with Norman's diagnosis, but found all the treatments for it terrifying.
Dr. Edwards assured her Norman was only on a mild anti psychotic so that he could remain lucid and communicate.
As far as Audrey Decody's suitcase, Alex and Norma never spoke of it after that long car ride back from PineView. Neither one of them sure of what to do. Another stalemate that had no resolution.
She watched her husband straiten up after putting the coffee pot back. She'd gotten used to his morning habits after nearly two months of marriage. Alex wasn't a breakfast man. He didn't like big meals in the morning, but preferred simple black coffee and plain toast. He liked a plain lunch which she usually packed for him or to hit up a burger place in the village. For dinner, he always had a good appetite and didn't care what she made so long as it was hot and fresh. He despised anything that came frozen saying that he'd eaten so many TV dinners during his bachelor days, he couldn't stomach them now. He'd often teased her that she'd spoiled him and they couldn't divorce because he would starve to death.
Norma wasn't sure why this made her so happy, but it did. She liked the fact Alex didn't want to be without her. That their relationship was far more than sexual, or even just friends living together. They honestly took care of one another. Even if her part was as simple and mundane as doing laundry, cleaning and making dinner.
In an odd way, Alex had replaced Norman in needing her to look after him. Only now, Alex looked after her in kind. He'd called in an electrician to repair several lights and outlets that had been giving her problems. A job made cheaper since Alex paid them in cash.
The plumbing was going to be a bigger issues since the house was so old and even the experts were a little afraid of what they would find.
So far it had only been a big concern during the harder snow storms when the cold just wouldn't let go and it was hard to keep hot water going for very long. Norma and her sons had solved this conundrum by setting up a shower schedule, but Alex had a different tactic.
He liked to surprise his wife in the shower on cold mornings, forcing her to share to save hot water. All this over her gleeful cries of protest and laughter.
It had been a peaceful winter, almost like sleepwalking because everyday seemed to melt into the next. The heavy snowfall sometimes entombing the motel so they would get no visitors and the house, standing on it's lonely hill, watching over a bleak landscape of gray, white and blue.
She couldn't wait for spring. For her trees to bloom like fireworks and for the raw smells of the earth waking up to great her again. She'd always enjoyed the way the wind carried the smell of trees and the ocean to her on the hill. It always hit her on her walk down to the motel.
"Alex?" she asked when he didn't respond. He didn't like to talk about the looming fear of the DEA and what might happen. They liked to stay shut up in their own little world. Protected by snow.
It seemed to be their shared preference that their lives truly began the moment they got married at City Hall and everything else before had just been background noise. A nice way to live once they were safely cloistered inside the house with an old movie on the tv, or when Alex slow danced with her to one of the records they liked to drunkenly look over and laugh at.
The winter had cause them to stay cloistered inside this house like ghosts who couldn't leave. Trapped by some kind of curse where all they could do was wander around and accomplish nothing.
Not nothing exactly. Norma had cleaned out the attic and found some very tastefully framed pressed botanicals that must have been done by a long forgotten family member.
One day, shocked she hadn't done so sooner, she pulled down her wedding pictures to Sam and hung the very artistic pressed flowers with the pictures of Norman and Dylan.
The photo of her and Alex remained on the mental piece without a frame. Simply because she realized it annoyed him to see such a large picture of himself and a part of her still liked to aggravate Sheriff Romero.
She'd found a box of his things in the dining room and the only photograph he seemed to own, or care enough to frame, was stashed inside.
Something that must have been taken in the 70's by the look of the clothing but whom she guessed was Alex and his mother.
She removed it from its' cheap frame, put it in a better one, and neatly placed it with the other family pictures. Alex had noticed it right away when he came home one evening to find her playing piano. His focus quickly arrested on the old photograph and Norma had to apologize to him. Explaining how she'd found it in one of his boxes and felt he wasn't in enough family pictures.
He'd only nodded and said nothing more about it. Later she asked if there were more family pictures she could put on the walls of him as a child. He'd been an adorable little boy and his mother was beautiful enough to have been a professional model. Alex shook his head and she hadn't asked again.
Her old wedding pictures with Sam were quickly boxed up and went into the attic. She wrote Norman Bates on them and carefully stowed them away. Sam was a horrible husband and father who had gotten what he deserved, but he was still Norman's father and Norman might want these pictures one day. She'd only put them up to start with because she wanted to assure her son she'd once been in love with Sam. She had loved him. Loved him fiercely and with a passion that could turn to anger if she felt he didn't love her back. A mixture that proved so fatal a match.
With Alex as a husband, it shocked her how easy and calm their everyday lives could be. How surprisingly normal she felt when she was with him. She never felt any tension on fear like she did with other men. No desire to act outside of her character or worries he might hurt her.
She felt that anger that was always so quick to rise in her, slowly start to ebb away. The ease of their relationship making her forget what she was always so mad about.
It was a new sensation for her to have a husband and not have to adjust her behavior on how drunk he was that day. To not have to push Dylan off on his friends or find some place for Norman to hide or for herself to hide.
With Alex, there were no surprises. He was always the same. Always a peaceful, routine. He liked to watch the news while she made dinner. Then tell her about the news or what was happening around town over dinner. He always liked what she cooked and told her so. They would usually watch a movie after dinner and he would occasionally fall asleep on the couch. Norma waking him up after the movie had ended and guiding her sleepy husband to bed.
On the weekends, he liked to watch sports like any other man she'd ever known, but those were days Norma would stay upstairs to read, or write to Norman.
Sometimes she would sew in Norman's old bedroom. She wanted to relearn how to make her own clothes again and it was more difficult than she remembered. For now, she was entertaining herself with the hobby of quilting. Something Alex was enchanted by.
Her husband found it charming that she could do these domestic things that were becoming a lost art. The canning of fruits that made the whole house smell like cinnamon and winter socks she knitted him in just a few days had delighted him.
All her domestic hobbies seemed to fascinate him. Although Norma wasn't sure why. Maybe apart of him wanted a female presence to take care of him just as she longed for someone to look after. Maybe that was why they got along so well. Their shared need that easily fell into step with each other.
It had surprised her. Surprised her everyday that this was working. Marrying Alex had been a desperate, crazy Hail Mary. Something she did because she could think of no other way. Yet, it was working. Her crazy plan was working.
Everyday that was passing during that sleepy winter, each day that they were alone, it felt like life had always been like this. Like days had slipped away just as easily. Without notice or some new terror visiting. Life with just her and Alex held no new terrors. No fears or drama. Because of this, Norma worried no stop.
Perhaps they were ghosts.
Perhaps they had slipped away from life one night and they were simply haunting this old house together in an eternal afterlife that was winter.
"Nothing's happened so far." Alex argued breaking her out of her never ending worry.
"It could still happen." Norma reasoned. "They could still bring a case against you."
"If I make a move, if I go to the DEA, you know what that means." he told her.
Norma knew exactly what it meant. He'd described in detail what witness protection would mean if the DEA cut a deal. They would disappear. Vanish with no trace and Norman would be alone except for Dylan. Alex had assured her he would try to make arrangements for Normans' care but he was sure her son couldn't come with them. Not after everything he'd done. The young man was far too dangerous.
It was a prospect too horrible to think about and one Alex had told her she had to decide on her own. The topic of a simple divorce had come up. Alex could go into witness protection alone and leave Norma behind with the run money still stashed in the basement. Enough to keep Norman in PineView for a year or two. At least till Norma could arrange insurance for him some other way.
But the idea of divorcing Alex wasn't a good thought either. She didn't like the idea of being separated from him for even a day and didn't want to imagine a life without him now.
Besides, their relationship was about far more than insurance and they both knew it.
Even if she did divorce Alex, there was every possibility that very bad people might come after her. Knowing she was his wife. Divorced or not.
Dylan had wanted her to move in with him and Emma if it came to that, but these people would find her anywhere.
"Alex, we have to do something." she sighed. "Maybe it won't be that bad. Maybe the DEA won't need to put us in witness protection. They'll just let you off."
"Norma-"
"The longer we wait, Alex the worse it's going to get." she said.
"I've been waiting this long because I want you to be sure. About us." he said at last.
She leaned back in her chair and glared at him in shock.
"We fell into this… marriage so quickly." he explained. "I need you to be sure about me. About how you feel about us before we do something we can't undo."
"We've already done something we can't undo." she said weakly.
I had this idea that Norma would handcuff Alex or something but the chapter just didn't come out the way I wanted it to, so I'm just going to have to let you guys imagine it.