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in the the aftermath
Fairy tales weren't true yet they did get one thing right: monsters never got happy endings.
They didn't deserve them.
Dexter Morgan was a monster and his ending wasn't happy, not in the slightest, but he'd managed to find a way to get through life in the aftermath by simply living one day at a time.
Monday
Monday was equatable to the death of "fun" for normal people.
Dexter had always loved Mondays. They meant that he got to go back to the safety of normal work hours, normal expectations, normal---normal without having to worry about finding something suitable to fill up his weekend hours. People did expect him to have stories to tell of all the fun he'd had in his "down time" which meant he had to sometimes make an effort to have stories to tell them come Monday.
Deb had always wanted to hear what he'd done with his weekend. In spite of being raised with him, Deb had never really caught on to the fact that Dexter was the polar opposite of normal; she expected stories of women he'd met in bars, hangovers he'd suffered while trying to get those women to go home with him, and, sometimes, if she weren't doing as well in her own love-life, even stories of what he'd done with those women once he'd managed to charm them back to his place.
It had been Deb whose opinion had mattered such that Dexter had finally broken down enough to have sex with a woman for the first time. He remembered thinking the entire experience was messy. That was all he could remember about it beyond the fact that he'd had to think about how easy it would be to squeeze the life from the squirming, squealing girl underneath him in order to stay erect.
He'd gotten off in the exact moment that he had pictured the air leaving her body for her final moments.
That wasn't something Dexter had ever shared with Deb though he had told her how she'd been right---fucking that whore who called her names really had felt like fucking a wet sock.
Mondays belonged to Deb in Dexter's life in the aftermath.
It seemed fitting that he allowed himself to think of her on his favorite day since she had been his favorite person in the world.
Dexter might have loved Hannah last, but he had loved Deb first. She had taught him how to be human without ever realizing that it was her example that he was following or that while he might be her big brother? She was the one of the pair of them that knew what the world was all about.
Some Mondays Dexter imagined Deb as she had been in life: his sister, foul-mouthed, funny in a crass-yet-cute way that made her just shy of endearing. Those were the Mondays where he was half-smiling all day as he worked in the trees. There was always something to smile about with Deb along for the ride. She'd have been bitching about the bugs or the cold or the destruction of the "fucking ozone layer" or something while Dexter would have been enjoying the fact that he got to cut something without that something being a victim's throat.
Those were good Mondays. They led into good dreams that comforted him to sleep as he let himself remember how it had felt to be young enough to share a room with Deb without anything being "weird" about it. His face hurt sometimes on those days from all the smiles he had to suppress.
He wasn't proud about the other Mondays Deb featured in.
They hadn't been his idea in the beginning.
Dexter wondered on occasion if those other Mondays hadn't been the result of Deb haunting him out of pure spite.
The first time he experienced an Other Monday, Dexter had woken up with a smile on his face, glad to see the sun start to shine on another Monday, only to realize he was half-hard and it wasn't because he'd drank too much water before bed; it was because he'd been dreaming Deb was in his bed at his side, warm, witty, wonderful, and wild for him since she'd said she was in love with him even knowing what he'd come from, what he was, and everything else. He had tried to make the thought horrify him as his eyes had popped open to the expected emptiness of his bed, his rental, his so-called-life in the aftermath.
Pushing away the darkest cravings of his heart had never been Dexter's strong suit though---so he'd given in to that Other Monday. He had let himself imagine how Deb would fight back if he tried to pin her in the shower to fuck her from behind. He'd allowed himself to get off with a soapy hand that was ten times tighter than a normal man might prefer yet he'd done it with a smile because Deb would have been tighter than any woman he'd ever had. She was always better at everything. It seemed fitting to think of her being better at that too.
Other Mondays were usually spent with a half-grimace instead of a half-smile because he was always thinking of how he could have loved Deb.
Brian had been right. Deb wasn't his real sister. He could have loved her back.
Mondays were hit or miss for Dexter though they always belonged to Deb which meant they were still his favorite day of the week.
Tuesday
Smiles were secret, strange creatures that flitted across Dexter's face on Tuesdays. He devoted Mondays to the joy of Deb only to follow up with Brian. His real brother. That hadn't been something that he'd planned. It had simply seemed to happy that way. Mondays were Deb, his sister and his sometimes not-sister; Tuesdays were Brian, his brother and his real family.
There were no excuses for Tuesdays in Dexter's world. He started the first one out on accident, much the same as he had with Deb on a random Monday, yet he had known then what train he was about to set in motion. Dexter had lived it all before. That time? For Brian?
Dexter had chosen to let himself fall down the rabbit hole rather than try to climb back out of it.
In the mornings, he woke up with an ache to feel a hard, slim body sprawled over him, clinging too tight, tighter than even Deb would have been able to hold on because only a man could have held him that way; it always took very little to motivate himself out of the bed on Tuesdays. The shower offered the refuge of solitude as Dexter knew without knowing how he knew that Brian would have never showered with him.
There was a meticulousness to his particular kind of madness that would have kept him from feeling clean enough if he'd bathed with another person, even if that other person had been Dexter. No, there would have been no shared showers with Brian. They would have saved reconvening until the breakfast table. Brian would be a person who chose to bathe once before bed and once after preparing and consuming his breakfast. That would have been the way that his mind worked as it was simply cleaner.
Talk was something they would share. Dexter ate all his meals in silence yet he and Brian talked endlessly, enthusiastically, exactly the same as they basked in the perfection of their family time. It was something that seemed to appease his Dark Passenger as nothing else ever did though their conversation rarely turned to violence. It wasn't the butchery of prostitutes or the dismemberment of murderers that thrilled the beast inside Dexter's mind, after all, it was the knowledge that it wasn't caged while Brian was there.
Brian didn't need any protection from monsters.
He was one.
They went by Ryan and Kyle Butler in spite of the fact that Dexter was aware that his Kyle Butler identity had been partially compromised. Where they lived, no one read anything other than the local papers or watched more than the weather. Theirs was not a socially-aware audience. It was all too easy to ingratiate themselves in with the yokels, begin working with their blades, their trucks, their saws, and though they were sore, dirty, and over-qualified for the manual labor they toiled away at every Tuesday, they were happy.
It was easy to be happy when all the pretenses in life had been stripped away.
Brian had taught Dexter everything when they were children. Those memories came and went in Dexter's mind, but the knowledge of their existence was with him always. It made sense that Ryan would teach Kyle how to love a man.
There was something incredibly simple about loving a man in comparison to loving a woman. Men wore their emotions on their bodies boldly while women often hid theirs behind clever tricks or make-up or lies. Ryan wanted Kyle when he was hard. Ryan was angry with Kyle when his face flushed, when he yelled, when he shoved, hit, slapped, punched, kicked, or started grappling with Kyle until they were a tangled, panting, sometimes bloody mess on the floor of their simple home in their simple life in their simple solitude that Kyle had resigned them to as if they deserved to be damned for their sins when Ryan never understood what it was that Kyle meant by sinning at all.
They were only the monsters they'd been raised to be.
Sex was easier with a man. It hurt in a way that felt delicious and right.
Ryan would give Kyle anything he wanted of himself, too. There was no hesitation, no shaking hands as if to ward off a potential violent blow, no greedy pawing at him as if he were trying to determine whether or not Kyle wanted him back, nothing more than everything because when they were together? They were complete again. Whole. They were both a family born of blood and then one reborn in blood once more in a new, frightening way which made them stronger rather than fractured them into broken pieces of what a person should be. It was reaffirming to have sex with Ryan---less messy, too, which Kyle couldn't help except to appreciate.
There were Tuesdays where Brian was only Brian to him, too. He wasn't 'Kyle's roommate' or whatever the rumor-mill thought-up to describe their relationship with one another. He was only Brian, Dexter's true, real brother, and they spent those days doing nothing more than working, talking, always, always talking, and occasionally drinking before Dexter went to sleep on the couch alone. It made sense in his head that they would trade out who would get the bed versus who would get the couch; on the days that Brian was only Brian, Dexter slept on the couch. That made waking up on Wednesday easier.
Wednesday
Wednesday was an entirely different story.
There were rarely smiles on Wednesday. Dexter did not look forward to weekends and Wednesday was one step closer to them while taking him one step farther away from the beauty of Monday -Deb- at the same time. He didn't have it in him to pretend on Wednesdays which meant that Harry had to come back to keep him in line.
It didn't seem fair that Harry never got to move on, but that was how it was for them. He would wake up differently on Wednesday depending on where he woke up: good Wednesdays meant on the couch where the pains from the springs and poor furniture construction distracted him from the absence of Ryan -Brian- while bad Wednesdays meant in his bed still aching for one more moment in the arms of acceptance that Tuesdays always brought.
Depending on where his Wednesday started out, Dexter would know how the rest of his day was going to fare.
If it were a good Wednesday, he would drudge through his work with slumped shoulders and silence, meekly accepting the life lessons that Harry chose to dole out to him piecemeal while he did his job due diligence.
Manual labor of the sort Dexter had chosen to undertake required diligence. Lives could literally be lost if he weren't paying careful enough attention to any little detail and Dexter knew that mistakes also led to attention which led to questions which led to things that he had to stop himself from considering because he couldn't reinvent himself again. This had to be his life. This had to be his home. There was no option for him to move on again. He wouldn't survive it. His family -what was left of them out there- wouldn't survive it. He had to be perfect which was why it was easy to accept the verbal beating that Harry chose to give him without responding in kind as it wasn't an option. Lashing out was not an option on good Wednesdays.
Bad Wednesdays led to his shoulders slumping more, his feet shuffling along rather than plodding forward with the same perseverance Dexter had come to expect from his body after years of training.
Those were the days that Harry talked to him about all the things that Dexter never wanted to know.
He heard all about Harry's affair with his mother -his real mother, lovely Laura Moser who died too brutally for words- and about how Harry had chosen to end it all because he couldn't face that he'd helped nurture the monster that Dexter had become and about how Harry thought that he, Dexter, was the stronger of the pair of them because he was abstaining, wasn't he? Dexter hadn't killed. Dexter had to understand that Harry knew he was doing his part, but he had to also understand that there were rules that had to be followed.
Bad Wednesdays left Dexter feeling furious, a wild animal trapped in a cage while an audience poked at him with sharp sticks to prove his impotence in the face of their glorious trap, and he had to drink himself unconscious to keep from going out to find some kind of release that Harry wouldn't approve of at all.
All Wednesdays were miserable, regardless of whether they started off good or bad.
They were the days that Dexter chose to allow himself to feel the full extent of his exile. They were they days that he stopped allowing himself to dream and forced himself to live while Harry watched.
Monsters might not deserve happy endings, but sinners could be granted absolution. Dexter had learned that much from Travis Marshall.
Forgiveness came through acts of penance: Wednesdays were penance for Dexter and every other day he simply let himself accept that he was seated on the Hell train with his Dark Passenger at his side, riding the rails straight to Hell where all good monsters went with they died.
Thursday
Life began anew come Thursday morning. There was always a hint of hope in the air when Dexter woke up on Thursdays. It had something to do with the realization that Harry had gone back to rest for another week though Dexter mostly thought it could be attributed to Lumen.
Lumen was happier every week because every Thursday that Dexter woke up was one more week since she had decided to release her own demons to the winds in order to reclaim her life as something other than a monster.
Thursdays were the most human days of Dexter's week.
Most of those days were spent thinking about her smile or the way that her body had bent yet never broken beneath the hands of the monsters who'd gotten her first.
Dexter could only allow himself to recall Lumen in pieces as he lost his ability to distance himself from her loss otherwise. He couldn't let himself imagine her with that man she'd likely gone back to marry. There were never moments where the Dark Passenger took enough control of his mind that it made him envision that other man touching her skin, brushing her hair, fucking her. He controlled how he remembered Lumen.
Control was something that he had Dr. Vogel to thank for though Dexter couldn't think about that either.
He'd failed Evelyn Vogel in a way that he would never be able to pay enough in penance to compensate whatever God existed for her loss. She had been a treasure to the world and Dexter had allowed her to be taken away. It had been up to him to keep her safe, to keep Deb safe, to protect them, and he had failed.
That wasn't something he could think about though, not after listening to the wisdom of Harry for the entire day prior, so, instead, Dexter chose to think about Lumen.
He hadn't failed her.
Exactly the opposite had happened with Lumen since somehow, in spite of the fact that he was clearly The Beast to her Beauty, Dexter had managed to be the one to save her while she had left him only so much more aware of how monstrous he had become.
Lumen was safe in the world. She was never with Dexter. Thursday was the only day that Dexter basked in his solitude because it was the day that he chose to let himself think of how the world did go on without him. Thursdays kept the Dark Passenger firmly at the back of the bus rather than right up behind the driver's seat, whispering directions in his ear as he tried to steer himself along the right course through life. Those days made it clear that no matter how many monsters Dexter might be able to slay for the good of the world there would still be those that got away and he had done more than his part.
He had saved the girl.
Lumen was happy wherever she had landed.
She laughed with her mouth open, lips wide, and eyes narrowed to slits from the force of her mirth; she had put on a few pounds because she wasn't afraid that her food would be poisoned any longer. Her hair was longer though she'd had it cut at a salon so that it floated when she walked, moving, always moving since Lumen had learned the consequences of standing still. Dexter thought she might have started to wear a little make-up on her face, too, though he tried different looks in his mind every Thursday to see which would and wouldn't work for her only to typically give up to imagining the pieces of her he could let himself see naked as they had been when he'd known her: unblemished yet unvarnished, that was how he liked her best.
Lumen Pierce wasn't the one that got away for Dexter. She was the one that made it out alive and that made Thursdays a good day to be alive in Dexter's world.
Friday
Every new beginning came from some other beginnings end.
Dexter had heard that line in Closing Time -some song by some band named Semicolon? Semisonic? Semisomething- too many times to count thanks to Deb's terrible taste in music. It helped to remember it on Fridays since Thursdays gave him that back through his remembrance of Lumen and Fridays were another beginning in spite of Thursday's end.
He let himself remember his son on Fridays because it seemed fitting that his end had allowed for a new beginning for Harrison.
Harrison was the kind of child who was inquisitive, intuitive, and intelligent without being too much for a parent to handle. He was almost a prodigy in how very advanced yet how very normal he was in direct comparison with his father. There had been moments when he had lagged behind the times -his first word, his first steps- while others he'd far surpassed the curve on -his first full sentence, his understanding of what time to expect his father home from work or what time to expect his father to have to leave him for work- and Dexter had wished more than anything that Harry had actually been there to give him a little reassurance that he wasn't ruining this beautiful boy Rita had helped him to create.
For that matter, Rita would have been nice to have around only Dexter couldn't let himself think of Rita on Harrison's day. That wasn't fair. It wasn't right. Harrison had lost more than Dexter had when Rita was stolen from them by Arthur Mitchell and that too was Dexter's fault.
Rita was another one he hadn't been able to save.
Harrison! Friday was about his son and Dexter had saved Harrison. He had given him all that he could by passing him into the care of Hannah. She would love him as Dexter loved him. Hannah would protect him the same way that Dexter would have protected him. She would give him the most normal life that she was able to manage and she would do it without ever treating him any differently than if he were her own son because Hannah was everything that Dexter could give Harrison since she was everything he'd taken away from him: a mother.
On Fridays, Dexter allowed himself to think about real time. He let himself remember the exact day that he'd last heard his son's voice. He matched it to the day that he was living. That let him know how old his boy had gotten and gave him an idea of what Harrison might have gotten into that week. It had started out as something simple like an understanding that his father would never be coming to South America with them and had led to the idea that Harrison was completely comforted by the notion that Hannah would never leave him. She was dependable that way. Strong. Unbeatable.
Hannah would have become the one to soothe him back to sleep after the nightmares started. She would be the one that cared for him if he became sick or kept him out of the path of anything dangerous while also being the one to teach him how to communicate with the locals as if they belonged there. It would be Hannah who would teach Harrison how to adapt and she would be doing a better job at it than Dexter because she was---different from him.
Dexter was a monster by design; Hannah was a monster only as a matter of circumstance.
Every Friday saw Harrison learn something new. Dexter was careful in his learning alongside his son. He did very little coming or going outside of work. It wasn't good to attract attention and the place he had landed was too small not to when one was a single man renting a single home without looking for a single person for company. He did try to keep up through the best means he knew how: TV, the most global newspaper the corner store carried, trips to the library to read books about Argentina under the guise of looking into travel without ever checking a single thing out or registering for a library card no matter how many times the kind lady there offered one to him for free.
Dexter Morgan was a dead end, but Harrison had a whole new life going on in the world and that made Fridays a breath of fresh air that sometimes even smelled, tasted, felt a little more exotic and free if Dexter let himself dream enough while holding books about penguins in his hands.
Saturday
Weekends had always been their own kind of Hell for Dexter; it seemed fitting that he feel the sting of loss, failure, and the dissolution of a happy marriage most strongly on Saturdays which brought back the beautiful Rita who had been too broken by another monster to recognize the one she'd married.
Dexter knew that he had loved Rita.
There had been a time that he'd questioned that. He had been playing at a relationship with her, a game made especially for Dexter with rules set in place by Harry, Playing Normal: The Sociopath Edition. What they'd had together had started out as part of his disguise, a way to help him blend in with the norms and keep Deb from asking too many questions, but it'd transitioned beyond that somehow along the way into something real. It could have been the kids -Dexter couldn't believe how much love he could feel for both Astor and Cody in spite of the fact that they shared nothing in common with him save Rita- or it could have been Rita herself that had swayed him away from only using her to becoming involved with her.
Even monsters could recognize goodness and Rita Bennett was everything goodness entailed. She was kind. She was patient. She was able to love everyone, even monsters like her ex-husband who raped and beat her, even Dexter who was---
Or she had been.
Rita had been everything good.
She was gone though.
Dexter had chosen to try to satisfy his curiosity rather than protect her or his family and she was gone. That was his fault. There was no getting around the fact that he -he, Dexter Morgan- had personally caused the death of Rita. Her children were orphans because of him. His son was motherless because of him. The world was a darker place because of him. Those were all facts, not illusory misapprehensions of his damaged mind.
Saturdays didn't bring Rita back.
Weekends were always Hell which meant that Rita stayed dead, living again only in Dexter's mind where he watched her smiles fade away to muscles gone slack in death and her blood seep out of her body to overflow the bathtub in what was supposed to be her dream house.
There were never any Saturdays Dexter managed to get his broken brain to resurrect her though he did try. He imagined her for hours to remember her as exactly as possible. No sounds were allowed to interfere with his concentration. The television wasn't turned on or the radio. He drew the shades even though Rita had always preferred light to fill up every dark corner of her world; Dexter thought it was because she imagined it could chase away the monsters, but he'd never had the heart to tell her that plenty of monsters walked around in the light of day, unnoticed, Playing Normal, exactly like him.
Dexter did everything to bring Rita back only she stubbornly stayed dead.
From sun-up to sundown, Dexter spent every Saturday trying to bring back his beautiful, bright wife, only to have her remain stubbornly dead in the darkness where he'd buried her. It had become his own personal nightmare. She was gone. He had failed her. No wishing or hoping or any amount of dreaming would bring her back.
Who knew that sociopaths really couldn't control the illusions their minds produced?
He imagined Dr. Vogel would have known that, but she wasn't there to ask either. He'd failed her too. Lost her to the darkness of death the same way that he'd lost his Rita.
Saturdays ended with Dexter having to resort to drinking to fall fitfully to sleep or else he spent them wishing away the hours while hopelessly hoping for a chance to hallucinate a dead wife back to life.
There was no peace for him on Saturdays.
Monsters didn't deserve peace.
Dexter tried to remind himself of that every Saturday, too, but that thought was always washed away in a river of Rita's blood which was fitting he supposed. He'd been the one to fail her. He didn't deserve peace.
Life gave him some hope in spite of whether or not he deserved it anyway---after all, Saturday was only one day a week, twenty-four hours in length, and every day ended the same was the one before had and the next and the next and the next forever and ever amen.
Sunday
Deb had taught Dexter how to love. Her innocent smiles and grasping, little girl hands had shown him how to care for another person; her laughter had been his reward for following The Code of Harry to the fullest and that had been worth the pains he'd experienced in the beginning when his Dark Passenger had not wanted to be kept on a leash. She had never hesitated to come to her big brother to protect her from the monsters in the dark.
It had been Deb that Dexter had loved first.
Hannah had been the one that he had loved last which was why Sunday always belonged to Hannah McKay, killer by circumstance rather than by choice.
Sunday mornings began at one minute after midnight. Dexter was always awake. Alcohol only worked so well to numb him into submission; there wasn't enough alcohol in the world to put him down before midnight on a Saturday. His wishing and hoping for the ghost of a wife he'd never see again kept him tortured enough to make it impossible for the oblivion of sleep to find him before his sentence -the full twenty-four hours- was up.
Hannah came with a sadness in her eyes that Dexter felt into the marrow of his bones.
She had not been failed by him in the same way that he had failed Harry or Dr. Vogel or Deb.
Dexter had failed Hannah on a coward's level: he had run away rather than face the possibility of destroying her.
It was easy to tell himself on any other day that he had done it for her or for his son. Dexter could spin that web of lies all the livelong day while he worked his new profession as if he'd never worked another. He didn't expend any real energy thinking about Hannah while it was someone else's turn to have him for his own for their day, but, in the fleeting moments when Deb or Brian or---well, in those moments, if his thoughts did turn to Hannah? Dexter could remind himself that she had also made it out. She was his son's new mother. She was his gift to his son.
That was harder to believe in on Sundays when all she did was stare at him with her slim shoulders bowed beneath the weight of his loss, dark circles under her eyes from the sleep she lost dreaming her dreams of him, of the love they'd lost, of the life they'd never have, while she lived in the paradise he would never see.
Sunday was a day of mourning for all that was lost, but mostly it was a day of mourning for Hannah who he had loved last.
He was given some gifts on some Sundays -a smile that wasn't tinged with sadness, a kiss that was filled with passion rather than remorse, a hand that ghosted through his hair lovingly rather than a sharp hit that threatened to force sense into him to make him see what all he was missing hiding in the wilderness- but Dexter knew better than to look for those as a matter of course.
They were meant to be gifts. Surprises. It wasn't as if he deserved to get a happy ending with Hannah---or potentially that Hannah deserved to get a happy ending with him.
Both of them were monsters in their own way; monsters didn't get Happy Ever Afters.
Whether they were monsters by choice or by circumstance, they didn't deserve to be happy.
That's why they were called monsters.
Thankfully Sunday usually ended with the knowledge that Monday was yet to come with the return of smiles and first love and Deb and that was how Dexter lived in the aftermath.
as the aftermath went on
Life happened one day at a time for Dexter. The cycle might have driven others to madness, but Dexter was a monster who thrived in worlds based on predictability. He would never get a happy ending, but he would survive life in the aftermath one day at a time knowing that he was a monster---and monsters didn't deserve happy endings.