Impenetrable -- Dexter (Debra, F)

[Winged]

So Debra Morgan is one of my favorite fictional characters of all time, without a doubt. And there's something quite appealing about being able to take a character who's such a badass and subject her to a terrible cold

Takes place sometime in season seven after Debra has found out that her brother Dexter is a serial killer. She is currently incredibly pissed off about the whole situation and has run herself into the ground, hence the burgeoning cold.

Warnings for language because Debra curses like a sailor. Enjoy!

--

Nothing about Debra Morgan was quiet. Her footsteps, her body language, her vocabulary — they all made her presence known without a doubt.

And her sneezes were no different.

“hhah-CHOO!”

As the shotgun blast of a sneeze echoed through the precinct, Angel Bautista’s head snapped up from where he was working at his desk. He looked around until, seeing nothing, he returned to his paperwork.

“huh’CHEE-oo!”

Angel jumped, startled, and just barely avoided knocking over his coffee mug. He set down his pen and leaned back in his chair.

“Quinn,” he called, and the detective at the other end of the precinct glanced up, rubbing at his eyes. He looked like Angel had just woken him from a mid-morning snooze, and the Detective Sergeant shook his head.

“Is Deb all right?”

Quinn scoffed. “How should I know?” And once again, Angel was reminded that Debra had turned down Quinn’s marriage proposal on the same day that she had gotten promoted to Lieutenant. He felt a pang of discomfort. Just because his own marriage hadn’t worked out didn’t mean that he didn’t want his peers to be successful. And Debra…Debra was like a kid sister to him, and she deserved the world.

With that thought in mind, he squared his shoulders and went to go knock on her door.

A raspy voice bade him to “Cobe ind,” and he obeyed.

Lieutenant Debra Morgan sat behind her desk, hands framing her face as she stared blankly at a pile of paperwork at her desk. Her eyes flicked up to Angel for a fraction of a second and then went back to the folders in front of her.

“What do you wandt, Adgel?” Her voice was flat and thick with congestion. Heavy shadows lurked beneath her eyes, and her cheeks were flushed with what looked like fever. She was also dressed far too warmly for a Miami autumn, with a thick winter jacket and a scarf wrapped around her neck, but even as Angel watched her she shivered.

“Go home, Deb,” Angel replied, matching her tone. It startled her enough that she looked up from her files.

“Why?” She feigned innocence, and Angel rolled his eyes.

“Mija, you look like death warmed over.”

“Thangks for thadt,” she coughed, “but I’b fide.”

Angel wasn’t convinced, particularly when Deb reached for the tissues on her desk and wiped roughly at her nose, which was already turning an irritated shade of red. The tissue box was almost empty, and when Angel looked to the side he could see the rest of the box used and wadded up in the trash bin.

He stood in silence as she paused and gave in to a shivering inhale that seemed to travel all the way up her spine, giving her hands a faint tremble as they clutched the tissue to her nose like it was a life preserver. Her eyes closed, her breath hitched one final time, and she launched forward into the cupped tissues with a resounding “hhhuh—EEECH’ooOO!”

“Salud,” Angel said softly, as someone yelled a surprised “Bless you!” from the precinct outside. Debra sniffed angrily and asked, still with her tissue pressed to her face, “Cadn you shudt the door?”

Angel obeyed, then sank into a chair across from her. Debra gave a tentative sniff behind the tissue, and her breath began to build in stuttered inhales (“hhih — hiiiih — hhaaah!) until it suddenly died, and she gave a frustrated exhale.

“Fugck you,” she grumbled to Angel, who was still watching her patiently. “I dodn’t ndeed your pidty.”

“Then I won’t give you any,” Angel replied easily. “But you should still go home and rest.”

“I dodn’t ndeed to rest,” Deb said, sniffling stubbornly. She balled the tissue in her fist and tossed it in the general vicinity of the trash.

Angel’s eyes creased ever so slightly at the corners as concern tightened in his chest. “When was the last time you slept?”

Debra ignored him, her silence telling, and Angel sighed.

“Let me get Dexter to drive you home.”

“Ndo.” The response was harsh and immediate, and Angel arched an eyebrow curiously. So the Morgan siblings were fighting. That explained Debra. Her immune system was below average at the best of times, and as soon as she started working herself into a frenzy she would catch whatever bug was going around the precinct.

“Well is there someone else I can call for you, then?”

“Ndo.” Debra coughed into her elbow. “There’s ndobody.” She blinked and her eyes were overbright with the beginning of tears. It hurt Angel like a bullet to the chest, and he almost got up to embrace her, but her body language made him think that it wouldn’t be welcome. Instead he pulled a pouch of travel tissues from his shirt pocket and tossed it onto the desk between them. Deb eyed them for a moment like she was going to refuse them, but when her nose began to twitch it seemed to make up her mind for her. She tore the seal from the travel tissues and ripped the top one out just in time to catch a throat-scraping “HEEEESH’ uuh!” in her cupped palms.

“Salud,” Angel said again, and this time Debra moaned softly in response.

“I feel ligk shit, Adgel,” she said stuffily, and that tiny admission of weakness was all that it took for Angel to make a decision.

He stood, and Deb watched him with watering eyes. “I’ll take you home,” he said. “You need to be in bed, not exhausting yourself here.”

She blew her nose and gave a hearty sniff before tossing the tissue towards the trash. “Fide. But ondly because I’b about to fall asleep adt mby desgk ad Laguerta would kill mbe.”

Angel smiled. “That’s the spirit.”

It took Deb a few minutes to gather her things (and in the meantime she worked her way through the entire pack of travel tissues), but when she was ready to go Angel helped her out of her office and towards the main elevator.

Halfway across the precinct, however, Deb stopped dead next to him. He heard her mutter “Shit,” and he turned just in time to see her catch a violent set of sneezes in the crease of her elbow, having left the tissues behind in her office.

“God bless you.” Angel took her elbow (the non-sneezed-in one) and began to guide her across the precinct again when Dexter poked his head out of his lab.

“Deb? Are you okay?”

“Fugk,” Debra sighed, and Angel did his best to wave Dexter away.

“I’ve got her, man, don’t worry about it. I’m taking her home to rest.”

Dexter paused, clearly confused by the situation at hand, but recovered after a moment or two of processing. “Sounds…sounds good. Thanks, Angel.”

“Cadn we go ndow?” Deb sighed beside him, and Angel placed a gentle hand on her lower back.

“Sure.”

[telltale]

I lovelovelove Deb too and this was perfect.

[Hedgehog]

Awwww, poor Debra. That's a really nice story.

[Bruyere]

Nothing about Debra Morgan was quiet. Her footsteps, her body language, her vocabulary — they all made her presence known without a doubt.
And her sneezes were no different.

I loved this! You captured Deb and Bautista really well.

[Winged]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! Debra is literally one of my all-time fictional characters so it makes me very, very happy to see others appreciating her as well <3

Surprise surprise, I wrote a follow-up to this! Spring puts me in a very fetishy mood, so I've been writing a lot lately. More warnings for Deb's foul language! There's also a tiiiiny mention of what could potentially be considered incest, but it's way tamer than anything the show ever brings up, so if you can handle it there you should be good.

--

Debra’s house had felt very quiet and empty since she had kicked Dexter back out the other week. She was an extrovert by nature, used to filling spaces in her life with the warmth of other people, and especially lately she had no desire at all to be alone with her thoughts.

Yet here she was, curled up in a silent house with a too-short blanket and a beer.

It was fucking miserable.

Angel had offered to stay with her, but the older man had done enough for her today. Honestly she was embarrassed that he had seen her in this state, she thought as she shoved her face into her elbow for a coughing fit that left her watery-eyed and wincing.

Deb felt like shit, and while huddling on her couch was a little better than trying not to face plant into her keyboard, she was still alone and sniffly and her feet were cold.

She must have dozed off while feeling sorry for herself, because the rattle of her front door opening jolted her out of a woozy sleep. She hurtled forward, almost falling off the couch as she grasped at her waist for the gun that wasn’t there. 

“It’s just me, Deb.”

Once that voice would have put her at ease. Once it would have made her sigh with relief and flop back onto her couch cushions. Once she’d even lusted for the owner of that voice, in a weird perverse way that she had shoved to the back of her mind since that fateful night in the church.

Now, it tied her stomach into knots and set off a very primal fight-or-flight reaction that made her want to curl up under her bed and let the dust of time cover her. She definitely didn’t have the energy to deal with her brother right now.

“Go the fuck away,” Debra muttered, digging the heels of her palms into her sore eyes. “I don’t want you here.” She heard Dexter’s footsteps pause and finally slid her weary gaze to the front door, where he was standing with a cardboard coffee cup and a paper bag. “Also you need to give me my fucking key back.”

“I don’t have a key. You left it unlocked.”

Great. Her nose was somehow both stuffy and runny, and she pushed it against her sleeve as she cast about for anything that she could use as a Kleenex. Why the fuck did she never have anything she needed in this damn place? Her life was a fucking train wreck.

“Here.” Dexter pulled a handful of napkins from the paper sack he was carrying and tossed them across the room, somehow managing to land them directly on her feet. Deb took two, determinedly avoiding eye contact with her brother as she tried to blow her nose. However the congestion blocking her sinuses was unyielding, and she gave up after a few attempts. Something had shifted enough, however, to irritate her swollen nasal passages, and Deb’s eyes flickered shut as her breath began to hitch.

“HEEEH’chuuh — HHHUH’chh!” She snapped forward at the waist to catch the sneezes in the napkins pressed to her face, her ears ringing with the force of them. 

“Bless you,” she heard Dexter say as she cleaned herself up with a congested sniffle. “You still sneeze like that, huh?”

What a dumb question. “You soud ligke ad idiot,” Debra snapped, although her voice was so stuffy it was hard to sound anywhere near imposing. “How else would I sdneeze?”

Thankfully that shut her brother up for a moment, and she focused on trying to clear her sinuses again, this time with a little more success. When she looked up, Dexter had moved to her kitchen and was putting…something in a pot on the stove.

“The fugck are you doig?” Debra demanded, getting up from her couch and immediately regretting it as the world tipped beneath her. She reached out and caught herself on a nearby chair and took a deep breath in an attempt to still her tilting vision, but it really just made her want to sneeze again. She sniffled it back determinedly and made her halting way towards the kitchen, feeling along the pieces of furniture as her head continued to spin.

“Making you soup?” Dexter said, although the pitch of his words rose at the end like a question, like he wasn’t quite sure that’s what he was supposed to be doing.

She finally reached the kitchen and stopped, grasping at the counter like a lifeline. Dexter seemed to notice her pale, sweaty complexion and stepped forward to help her onto one of the bar stools. Debra was shaking too much to fight him.

“Here, let me get you some water.” When he placed a cup in front of her, she found herself suddenly parched and chugged it.

“You look…rough,” Dexter continued as he replenished her water. When she glanced up she saw him watching her with one eyebrow raised, like a cat eyeing a particularly lethargic mouse. The mental image made her instantly nauseous, and she let her head drop to her hands, her breathing uneven and ragged.

“Fugck off,” she managed, the profanity but a shadow of its usual vitriol. Dexter’s hand landed on her shoulder, tentative, and she shrugged it off with as much force as she could.

“Have you eaten anything today?” He seemed to get the picture, and when she peeked up through her fingers she saw he had moved back to the stove. In all honesty, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten — yesterday her throat had felt like she’d swallowed sandpaper, and today she’d been too busy coughing and sneezing to have any sort of appetite.

She let his question hang in the air and turned her face into her shoulder to catch a weary set of coughs that ended in a pathetic-sounded sniffle. Fuck, she couldn’t breathe. At least now that she was seated her head wasn’t spinning quite as badly, and her hands had stilled around the cup of water.

Dexter placed a bowl in front of her, drawing her out of her misery once more, and she inhaled tentatively to see if she could smell anything. Nada, but she could feel the warmth of the mystery soup rising up against her face in damp curls of steam.

“I’b ndot hungry,” she said, but her stomach was thinking otherwise, and after a moment she took a halfhearted bite of soup. Her tastebuds were dulled by the congestion in her sinuses, but she could still taste the underlying salty goodness of chicken noodle, and the unexpected kindness of the gesture went straight to the lump building in her throat.

No one had ever made her soup before. Not her mom - she had died too young - and certainly not her dad. Come to think of it, none of her trashy boyfriends of the past had even brought her tea when she was sick — Lundy might have, but their relationship was too fleeting for them to experience any of those domestic moments.

Debra ducked her head, supremely embarrassed but unable to do anything at all as the tightness in her throat swelled into the beginnings of breath-catching sobs and hot tears. Her nose was starting to run again, and she grabbed a paper towel in a desperate attempt to keep herself together.

“…Oh.” She thought she heard Dexter say, and she snorted a laugh between dabbing at her nose and eyes in turn. If there was one thing Dexter didn’t know how to deal with, it was vulnerability, and in this moment she felt so exhausted and spread thin that her tears had suddenly become humorous. Wow, she was mood-swingy when she was ill.

“I’b a mbess,” she rasped, and held the paper towel up to catch a stuffy “HHH’chxx” that somehow left her both congested and runny-nosed.

“…Yeah,” Dexter agreed hesitantly. She heard him shift his weight and looked up from her improvised tissue to see him digging through the paper bag again. “I, uh, brought you some medicine.”

“Is there somethig id there that will kdogck me the fugck outd?” Dexter held up a bottle of Nyquil, and she sighed in relief. “Thad’ll worgck.”

Far past exhausted at this point, Debra finished some of her soup, downed a dose and a half of cold meds, and allowed her brother to shepherd her to her room and help her into bed.

“I’b still mbad at you,” she sniffed, eyes already drooping as Dexter draped a blanket over her.

“I know,” she heard, and she thought he said “go to sleep,” but she was already halfway there.

[Anonymouse]

I'm going to post a separate comment for chapter 2 because I don't trust my phone not to delete the entire reply if I do both at once.

I love when characters try to tough it out, then admit defeat when it's already so obvious. This part:

Quote

 

He stood in silence as she paused and gave in to a shivering inhale that seemed to travel all the way up her spine, giving her hands a faint tremble as they clutched the tissue to her nose like it was a life preserver. Her eyes closed, her breath hitched one final time, and she launched forward into the cupped tissues with a resounding “hhhuh—EEECH’ooOO!”

“Salud,” Angel said softly, as someone yelled a surprised “Bless you!” from the precinct outside

 

-was so well-written. I like the forceful sneezes you've written for her. The random startled blessing from outside the office was a funny touch. We had this lady at my old job who sneezed like that and everyone was like HOLY SHIT BLESS YOU up and down the hall. They were loud but they weren't harsh or terrible sounding.

Quote

 

She tore the seal from the travel tissues and ripped the top one out just in time to catch a throat-scraping “HEEEESH’ uuh!” in her cupped palms.

“Salud,” Angel said again, and this time Debra moaned softly in response.

“I feel ligk shit, Adgel,” she said stuffily, and that tiny admission of weakness was all that it took for Angel to make a decision.

 

I'm torn; that sneeze was so... nice, but she's also so miserable that I feel bad for her. I didn't really watch far enough into the series to get a good sense of their brother/sister dynamic but I felt so bad for her when Angel realized that she and Dexter were fighting, on top of her feeling like shit.

Onto chapter 2!

[Anonymouse]

Okay yeah I need to finish watching this show! You've got me interest in the characters and their relationship. 

Quote

She must have dozed off while feeling sorry for herself, because the rattle of her front door opening jolted her out of a woozy sleep. She hurtled forward, almost falling off the couch as she grasped at her waist for the gun that wasn’t there. 

I love that thick, woozy sleep when you're sick. And her instinctive grab for her gun. 

Quote

She finally reached the kitchen and stopped, grasping at the counter like a lifeline. Dexter seemed to notice her pale, sweaty complexion and stepped forward to help her onto one of the bar stools. Debra was shaking too much to fight him.

:((((((

Soup and NyQuil should have her feeling better soon but I won't complain if there's more after this! I love how she's already half-asleep with him walking her drowsy ass to her bed.

[Winged]

Aiiiie Nonny, you're the best <3 thank you so much for your lovely feedback!! And I would totally support you watching the rest of the series (except for the last season because it's trash). 

And as far as a continuation, maybe! I definitely go through Deb phases so we'll see when the next one comes around, haha. 

[Bruyere]

Aw, poor Deb. You captured her misery so well.