Fic - Thin Lines (Deb Morgan) R, 1/1
Title: Thin Lines
Summary: Maybe they're both trying too hard to hide the scars they carry. Most of the things you remember with painstaking, acute clarity are the ones you wish you could forget.
Rating: R
Author's Notes: 670 words. Dexter/Burn Notice crossover, although it isn't exactly necessary for you to watch the later to read the story. Set post-season 4 of Dexter and somewhere in season 1 for Burn Notice. I have no idea where this came from and it is the first time I have written the ever-so eloquent Debra Morgan, so con-crit is both welcome and appreciated. Rating is solely for language because, well, it is Deb.
Window open, midnight filtering in and the click and release of her lighter echoes through the loft as Deb lights a cigarette with her too-skinny fingers. Sheet wrapped around her, hair stuck to the back of her neck, and once upon a time this sort of after was something akin to routine.
“This is a sketchy mother-fuckin’ place you got here,” she says in-between puffs of smoke. “Have I told you that?”
He’s already got his pants on, shirt on his shoulders, and they both have been here before, done this enough times to take this for what it is. Deb’s not one of those clingy fucking girls who equates sex with feelings, and she sure as fuck doesn’t take all of her hopes and dreams and pin them on some guy (this is experience talking, you know, because deep down she is so the silly little girl with daddy issues) and when she breathes in the bitter cigarette smoke and twists her neck to get the kink out, she is not ashamed.
A look over her shoulder and she swallows thickly at the subtle curve of his back.
Maybe they’re both trying too hard to hide the scars they carry.
“Plenty of times, yes, and with that same vulgar language, too.”
She smiles slightly, the edges of her mouth turning upwards. “You like my potty mouth.”
A laugh, maybe, a hint of a chuckle, and she can feel it from across the room. “Maybe.”
Another puff. Another exhale.
“Your skinny ass girlfriend going to be mad?”
“She’s not -“
“You’re girlfriend, yeah, what the fuck ever.”
Silence again and Deb tries to remember how they got here.
There was the case, of course.
The one that cut her somewhere deep because underneath the shield she’s still human, still a fucking woman for Christ’s sake and things like some asshole beating a girl within an inch of her life still affect her. She remembers in this moment with acute clarity the girl - nineteen, maybe twenty, with blonde hair matted with blood - and Deb sitting there on the street curb, sick with some twisted sort of déjà vu and memories of Rita and the bathtub that she still can’t shake.
She remembers taking the girl’s hand despite the fact that she is no longer on Vice and even has a Goddamn detective shield that says she doesn’t have to deal with that sort of shit anymore. She remembers saying, I won’t let this happen to you again, ‘kay? I can fuckin’ promise you that and whole heartedly meaning it because you shouldn’t have to deal with that kind of shit when you aren’t even legally allowed to drink away the pain.
And there was Quinn, too, his sketchy ass shoving a card into her hand saying he knows a guy and she’d been through the ringer enough times to know sayings like that never went anywhere good, but it’s all she had so she took the lead and ran with it.
There is a half-hearted attempt at trying to remember how they got here, exactly, her and Michael post-coital, with his back to her and her naked between his sheets, but there’s blurring around the edges. The memory is too fuzzy to wade through.
Deb has always been the forward type though, so it’s not too hard to figure out.
“That’ll kill you, you know,” he says from behind her and this time she doesn’t bother turning around.
Instead she falls back onto the bed haphazardly, cigarette between her lips again, and watches the smoke as she exhales, takes note in the way it swirls and clouds and finally fades away completely. She breathes and sighs, and closes her eyes, reaches a hand to her abdomen unconsciously and traces the scar there like Braille.
She breathes in deeply, a bittersweet remembrance of sorts, and falls gracelessly back into the deafening silence of reality.
Finally, Deb grins to no one in particular, bearing her teeth.
“That’s the basis of its appeal.”
Summary: Maybe they're both trying too hard to hide the scars they carry. Most of the things you remember with painstaking, acute clarity are the ones you wish you could forget.
Rating: R
Author's Notes: 670 words. Dexter/Burn Notice crossover, although it isn't exactly necessary for you to watch the later to read the story. Set post-season 4 of Dexter and somewhere in season 1 for Burn Notice. I have no idea where this came from and it is the first time I have written the ever-so eloquent Debra Morgan, so con-crit is both welcome and appreciated. Rating is solely for language because, well, it is Deb.
Window open, midnight filtering in and the click and release of her lighter echoes through the loft as Deb lights a cigarette with her too-skinny fingers. Sheet wrapped around her, hair stuck to the back of her neck, and once upon a time this sort of after was something akin to routine.
“This is a sketchy mother-fuckin’ place you got here,” she says in-between puffs of smoke. “Have I told you that?”
He’s already got his pants on, shirt on his shoulders, and they both have been here before, done this enough times to take this for what it is. Deb’s not one of those clingy fucking girls who equates sex with feelings, and she sure as fuck doesn’t take all of her hopes and dreams and pin them on some guy (this is experience talking, you know, because deep down she is so the silly little girl with daddy issues) and when she breathes in the bitter cigarette smoke and twists her neck to get the kink out, she is not ashamed.
A look over her shoulder and she swallows thickly at the subtle curve of his back.
Maybe they’re both trying too hard to hide the scars they carry.
“Plenty of times, yes, and with that same vulgar language, too.”
She smiles slightly, the edges of her mouth turning upwards. “You like my potty mouth.”
A laugh, maybe, a hint of a chuckle, and she can feel it from across the room. “Maybe.”
Another puff. Another exhale.
“Your skinny ass girlfriend going to be mad?”
“She’s not -“
“You’re girlfriend, yeah, what the fuck ever.”
Silence again and Deb tries to remember how they got here.
There was the case, of course.
The one that cut her somewhere deep because underneath the shield she’s still human, still a fucking woman for Christ’s sake and things like some asshole beating a girl within an inch of her life still affect her. She remembers in this moment with acute clarity the girl - nineteen, maybe twenty, with blonde hair matted with blood - and Deb sitting there on the street curb, sick with some twisted sort of déjà vu and memories of Rita and the bathtub that she still can’t shake.
She remembers taking the girl’s hand despite the fact that she is no longer on Vice and even has a Goddamn detective shield that says she doesn’t have to deal with that sort of shit anymore. She remembers saying, I won’t let this happen to you again, ‘kay? I can fuckin’ promise you that and whole heartedly meaning it because you shouldn’t have to deal with that kind of shit when you aren’t even legally allowed to drink away the pain.
And there was Quinn, too, his sketchy ass shoving a card into her hand saying he knows a guy and she’d been through the ringer enough times to know sayings like that never went anywhere good, but it’s all she had so she took the lead and ran with it.
There is a half-hearted attempt at trying to remember how they got here, exactly, her and Michael post-coital, with his back to her and her naked between his sheets, but there’s blurring around the edges. The memory is too fuzzy to wade through.
Deb has always been the forward type though, so it’s not too hard to figure out.
“That’ll kill you, you know,” he says from behind her and this time she doesn’t bother turning around.
Instead she falls back onto the bed haphazardly, cigarette between her lips again, and watches the smoke as she exhales, takes note in the way it swirls and clouds and finally fades away completely. She breathes and sighs, and closes her eyes, reaches a hand to her abdomen unconsciously and traces the scar there like Braille.
She breathes in deeply, a bittersweet remembrance of sorts, and falls gracelessly back into the deafening silence of reality.
Finally, Deb grins to no one in particular, bearing her teeth.
“That’s the basis of its appeal.”