Title: '91
Rated: M
A Debster one-shot by Bangfangs

Dexter had barely been back from college for a week, and already, Debra was testing his nerves.

His relationship with Harry's headstrong daughter had been through many phases, beginning the day that his foster father had brought Dexter home. From that first afternoon, she followed him constantly, chattering away and offering him her toys. As they grew up, she veered between adoration and seeming hatred of the artificial Morgan. By the time they hit their teen years, Deb was just as likely to call him an asshole as she was to hug him.

This time last spring, Dexter had graduated and she'd moved up to sophomore year, and she was jealous and annoyed that he got to escape their prison of a high school two years ahead of her. All through the summer that followed, she'd avoided him as much as possible, and had given him a perfunctory embrace just as the last box was loaded into Harry's station wagon to the drive to Tallahassee. Then he'd gone ahead and taken five week courses through Winter break, so he'd skipped Christmas. The end result of all of this was that he hadn't actually spent any time with Debra in almost a year.

Harry was brief and businesslike when he arrived at the college to pick Dexter up, quickly aiding his son as they loaded the few boxes of possessions he'd used in the dorm throughout the semester. The moment they'd pulled away from the curb, all he could discuss with him was his ever-growing need, his own desperation to go hunting as soon as they could to satisfy his darkest urges. The year had been torture, both for Dexter and for a few of the white mice in the biology lab that had mysteriously disappeared from their cages throughout the semester. The professor had been puzzled, and reinforced the cages; yet he didn't have a way to shield the rodents from the plucking fingers of a young monster, talented with lock picks. He'd spared the rabbits and monkeys, purely because they'd be harder to dispose of safely.

Debra hadn't even been home when they'd pulled into the old, pitted driveway, the lone date palm in front of the house sinking sullenly in the already blazing heat of May. Harry had called out her name, but to no avail. Dexter had peered around the house owlishly, surprised at how strange the house he'd called home for so long now looked to him. Even his old room had looked alien.

And now, a week later, Deb was the one who found him- curled in his narrow bed in the stale old room, the Chemistry book for next fall balanced on his lap.

"Hey," she said abruptly, breaking his concentration. He glanced up at her and hastily suppressed a sigh.

The Debra he'd left last spring was hiding her body in baggy tee shirts and some of Doris' Bermuda shorts, shy in her body, not a trace of makeup on her face. The year that followed, spent mostly alone, had made her grow bolder, and now she stood before him in cutoff jean shorts and a neon-green crop top that exposed her midriff. Her long, soft hair was teased and crimped, laying in fluffy layers on her scalp and pulled back in a poofy bun.

Her new taste in clothing worried him. He was all too aware that this was some display to attract attention, the kind of attention he'd found focused on himself in the first few weeks of college, before he'd safely stowed himself into the role of weirdo loner. With her long, lean runner's frame, Deb was poised to attract too much attention. Something coiled deep in his belly at the thought of that, but he swatted it away.

To be polite, he quit mentally analyzing her clothing choices, and tented the book by its spine on the creaky mattress. Satisfied that she'd gained his concentration, she continued.

"There's some party tonight at the marina. Jeff has his dad's houseboat, or some shit. Dad says I can only go if you go with me."

"A party?" he asked skeptically. He did not enjoy parties; they were loud, pulsing, and sweaty in ways he wasn't yet allowed to deal with. He preferred the quiet and the cold of air conditioning, the sweet imaginings his broken brain could call forth to amuse him in his solitude.

"Yeah, Poindexter. A party. With girls and music and beer. Did you even get laid in Tallahassee?" She fixed him with a look and decided the truth for herself in about ten seconds. "That's a no."

"Deb..." he answered, hesitant and wishing dearly that she'd just find some other way to occupy herself. "What if I just drop you off?"

She rolled her eyes. "Jesus, you'd think only one of us was a cop's kid. He knows the marina, he's going to cruise by at least once tonight and make sure our car is where it's supposed to be." She crossed the room quickly and wrapped her slim fingers around his wrist, tugging at him. "Come on, fuckin' lighten up, bro. You don't have to graduate in ten seconds. How about relaxing for once in your life?" Though he lets her pull him up from the bed, he's stiff and anxious, not trusting himself to be good. Her eyes are wide and her hand is soft and warm against his flesh, firm, digging into it as she exerts pressure, probably leaving small divots, or perhaps bruises...

Deb snaps her fingers, and he blinks at her, finally looking her in the eye. She looks a bit freaked out under a thick layer of brown eye makeup, racconish liner and thick lashes framing her dilated pupils. There's a faint chemical blush brushed across her cheekbones strategically, and he's reminded of the hooker his college roommate had escorted from the room one recent morning. He wants to shake her, and smear the makeup off her face, but he schools his face and suppresses the impulse.

"I'll go," he says finally, and she releases him, looking as though she regrets even asking. She retreats from the room and he doesn't see her again until she knocks softly on his door at eight.

If her outfit before had unsettled him, the bits of black Lycra that adorn her body when he escorts her to the party are downright scandalous. They're hidden under a baggy Gators sweatshirt, three sizes too big, that she pulls over the ensemble just before they leave the house. Harry barely glances up as he assembles his uniform for the evening, wishing them a good evening and reminding Dex to have fun. She sheds the green garment as he parks near the houseboat, already alive with music and twinkling Christmas lights wrapped around the guard rails on the upper decks. There are teenagers scattered all over the ship, ducking off to the cabins and nursing Coronas. Deb waves to them with easy familiarity as she slips into high heels that make her an inch taller than him, and sashays down the docks in front of him, a six pack dangling from her fingers. She climbs shakily onto the stairs and manages to board without showing anyone else her black panties. Aside from him, of course, who had the misfortune of following her up the said stairway. She beelines for Jeff, the host, and leaves her foster brother tucked in a corner with a warm beer in his fist.

Dex watches his slightly younger peers, easily separating the prey from the more challenging game. He closes his eyes as the foul, warm beer slips down his throat, and in those moments, as he feigns savoring it, he imagines their blood staining his fingernails, their warm hearts stilling in his hands. A girl even younger than Deb introduces herself, giggling, and she's no more able to defend herself than the lab mice, young and small and stupid. Killing her would be almost too easy... especially if they'd been at sea. A sweet hand around her carotid artery, a quick stroke of the hunting knife in his pocket, and rapid disposal over the railing... but alas, they remained at port, so it was just a daydream. Or an evening dream. Whatever the appropriate terminology happened to be.

Amanda prattles on about what she wants to major in; Dexter raises his eyebrows and nods at all the right places. Suddenly, she lunges forward and grabs his hand, and he follows her numbly as they go toward the main bedroom cabin.

"Finish your beer, we need the bottle!" the blond shrieks, so close to his ear. He swallows and passes it to her, glancing around the small room. Debra peers out from the other side of the cabin, her hand clasped in the lap of a boy her age, maybe younger, with black hair and tan skin; he looks Cuban. There's a couple of other groupings in the room, clustered around the edges; ten, perhaps, total. They wordlessly form a semi-circle when Amanda steps forward and plops down the bottle in the center of them all. She gives it a spin, and it makes five or seven rotations before it stops on Deb. They giggle and peck quickly on the lips, and the group starts chanting and shouting suggestions.

The cabin starts to overheat quickly, the dim lighting throwing shadows over the faces of the strangers, making them monstrous. Like me, Dex thinks. Like me, on the inside.

The bottle spins his way once, and a redheaded girl stumbles forward and slams her lips onto his for a fraction of a second before sliding away. He smiles like he knows he's supposed to and files it away.

The game pauses abruptly when someone rubs up against the light switch, plunging them into pitch blackness. "Seven minutes in heaven!" one of the girls screams playfully, and the cabin is suddenly quiet, aside from the sounds of panting and flesh sliding against flesh.

A rough, masculine palm brushes his thigh, and Dex shies away, sinking back for the safety of the wall. He collides with someone or something that feels nearly naked, their skin slick under his blind hand. He pulls it away as though burned, folding in on himself, focusing on his breathing. It is dark and hot and there's throbbing in his head, a wicked whisper. He reaches in his pocket for the knife, suddenly beyond reason...

A hand grabs him before he reaches the steel, sliding down his forearm. Someone shifts into his lap and sighs, small hands going around his neck and legs parting over his hips. She pins him down and kisses him roughly, shoving her tongue in his mouth, wild. His hands find her ass and he grinds her down on him, achingly hard. Pressed this close together, he can feel small breasts rubbing against his chest, a heartbeat beneath as fast and thready as a dying animal's. He rocks his pelvis up and into her through their clothes and sees stars, sees the spasm of a dying doe and the final twitch of a mouse's whiskers when it's back breaks. He gives a ragged groan, the friction electric and evil all at once, and she- this shadowed unknown- glides back and forth on him furiously for a few seconds and then stiffens in his embrace. That excites him in ways it shouldn't, and he's acutely aware of the knife again, but he stills his hands.

The lights flicker back on, and Deb's eyes meet his, horrified. She falls backward off of him, hiking down her flimsy dress and glancing around gobsmacked to see who's noticed. But no one has; they're all busy with their own shocks. One girl launches into another that has apparently been violating her boyfriend. No one spares a second look at the Morgans.

The rest of that summer, she doesn't ask him to go to any more parties. It takes two weeks before she'll look him in the eye again. He tries to apologize, awkward and fumbling, and she tells him to fuck off. There doesn't seem to be a good protocol for what to do when your foster sister anonymously grinds herself to orgasm, fully clothed, on your erection through a perfectly honest mistake.

He tells himself that it was a reaction to stimuli, that it could have been Amanda or any of the others on him and he would have had the same reaction, that if he'd known it was Deb from the get-go that he'd have rolled away from her. He tells himself that at least once a day until the last day of August arrives, and he mercifully escapes back to Tallahassee, to a new dorm and a new roommate.

He spares the moment one final recollection, as he showers, the first day back. He finds himself in the warm stream of the water and grasps and combines the sensory memory with the visual, of her lean legs and sultry ocher eyes. It is the fastest release he's yet experienced, shameful and silent.

It is going to be another long year.