CHAPTER 9 | FIXATION | BRIAN MOSER
As fragmented memories resurface and the evidence becomes impossible to deny, y/n calls Rudy to her apartment and confronts him, leaving y/n horrified by the realization that what he sees as devotion is, in reality, a lifetime of obsession.
Word Count: 2.5k
A/N: damn, it took me a whole half a year to get back to this im SO sorry. updates will be coming, but slower than before. im finally moved into a new place and have a new job thus i will finally have some more freedom to write! <3
I give up on pretending I don’t realize what’s going, as if the dots haven’t been connected for a long time. It’s a relief, but it’s also as if surrendering will lift the weight off my back and instead drop to my feet. My head tries to shake off the dizzy flickering while crossing the living room, the lilies in the kitchen have had enough of my half-assed care, and the stench of guilt seeps into the walls.
The counter is a crime scene of mail I haven’t opened, a notebook with a torn page of scribbled grocery lists, and two mismatched mugs, one with ghosted lipstick on the rim and the other spotless. My purse is half-spilled, credentials peeking from the mouth; I tug the zipper wider and pull out my phone, screen too bright for 8:14 p.m. The newspaper photo from Dade City stands out in the camera roll: shipping container bloodbath; Laura Moser. I pinch to zoom a million times over, but there’s nothing new; I stare until the afterimage burns behind my eyelids, pace to my laptop, then start digging.
I tell myself I’m only looking for context and connections to things that I already know, but I keep thinking of “context” like it’s not the same word I’ve used to excuse the bad decision I keep repeating as of late. I pull up a backdoor to the County Archive Portal and type names, combinations, anything in hopes to make sense.
Moser, Laura.
Port of Miami.
Institutional escapee.
The site is slow, shitty graphics line the sides and everything official are old scans uploaded by decade old interns or detectives with cold cases. While it loads, I write out an evidence board with scrawled out circles and lines I pray connect, then a new page flashes onto the screen, loading ever so slowly, it’s a local newspaper in grayscale, headline serifed and aggressive: MOTHER FOUND IN BLOODBATH WITH CHILDREN. Dates cascade: 1973, 1974, 1981. The name Laura Moser repeats and the name Brian appears smaller first, then bolder in later clippings: Six-Year-Old Survives; Placed in Institution. Institutional Escape—Child found and returned. Beneath that, a single captioned photo two boys blurred, the older one a smear of dark hair and shadow and the younger one in tears. I pull my notebook closer to cover the shock on my face.
The title of my notes is a straight line- ‘WHAT I KNOW.’ Underneath, the list continues:
house fire??? (remember y/n!!)
‘he’ knows my favorite flowers
angel plush in the room of the fire
Laura Moser → containers → bloodbath → two kids. (whos the other?)
Brian Moser → child → institution → escaped → still alive?
My handwriting gets worse the closer I get to writing what I won’t: Rudy Cooper. The pen hesitates and then stutters the “R” anyway, next an arrow from Brian to Rudy and then another arrow back, a loop, a closed circuit. It feels wrong to say it out loud and worse to see how right it looks next to everything else. I place down the notebook and rub my thumb against the faint ridge of the scar at my throat in a nearby mirror. The line looks softer than it feels, but I press harder hoping the ache can bring something back to me, just one memory.
I close my eyes trying to think back, there were constellations on the walls, glow-in-the-dark stickers. With the sight comes the smell and its was sickly sweet, like sugar turning into char by the second. The sweat seeped over my hands as they slipped over the window latch, my grip fleeting and nonexistent; A boy was standing on the street and his face misaligned, eyes dark and empty like he made a decision long ago.
Somewhere in the building the concrete carries out every soft noise and amplifies every hard one. I breathe in through my nose and out in a measured count like a therapist taught me once but I’m aware of how ridiculous it is to be sentimental now, on the edge of whatever this is. I make coffee I don’t need, then peel an orange I don’t want, oil slicking my fingers, and rind leaving colour under my nails. I read one line three times before I let it hit me: Institutional records indicate multiple transfers; final discharge lost; whereabouts unknown. A child disappears inside a system and then slips out of it, sounds similar to the eerieness of a boy standing outside a window he’s not supposed to be at but doesn’t run when he’s seen, and a man who learns your flowers, face, and habit as if it’s just another part of his daily routine.
I pace the living room, my mother’s ring warming around my finger and I stop by the mirror to look at myself until I’m not sure whether the expression I’m seeing is mine or something I practiced for an audience once. “Deb,” I say softly, testing the weight of it against my tongue. It hurts to let her in here even as a word, to imagine what this will do to her, but not as bad as it hurts that I’m still thinking about him while I say her name.
I sit and pick up the notebook, adding 1981 underlined, and then ‘Port of Miami’ with arrows to ‘containers and brothers?’ I don’t know why I add the question mark there but everything inside me is moving forward and backward at the same time. I hold the phone a long while before tapping over to my contacts. His name is saved as Rudy but I consider changing it to Brian before calling, just to punish myself. I don’t. I press the call icon and feel my mouth go dry.
It rings once. Of course it only rings once.
“Angel.” What happened to hi or hello? Or even my name for fuck’s sake. He sounds awake, like he hasn’t slept either, and we’ve been in the same room all night, on the same page of different books.
“We need to talk,” My voice comes out steady, flat. “Now.” A pause, three heartbeats long. I imagine him smiling because I can hear it when he does.
I hang up first and that’s the only thing I know is in my control.
I cross to the table and pinch the spent lilies at their bases, lifting the whole bouquet in a single careful motion so I don’t drop pollen. The trash bag opens like a mouth, I pause but don’t let go. Instead, I carry them to the sink, lay them there, stems in a line, petals fanned and aching. I wash my hands and press the ring down my finger to set it in a dish with its pair, the little circle inside the larger. It’s a dumb metaphor and I hate it but I keep looking at it anyway.
I check the lock, I don’t why when I literally just invited him here.
I stand and then lean against the counter with my hands planted and my head down. I think about the moon lighting up the line of his jaw when I confronted him outside the house and how he didn’t look away when I said the wrong name on purpose. Then about how close he was to me in the car when he didn’t unlock the doors right away. I feel stupid for the parts of this that feel romantic and even more so for the parts of me that feel alive.
The phone buzzes on the counter, my stomach pivots but it’s not him; it’s Deb: ‘alive?’I send a heart and she replies with a middle finger and a kissy face. I set the phone face down so the clock stays out of my view, I know how torturous counting the minutes can be.
It’s a soft knock at the door, three measured taps that are nearly rhythmic to my heartbeat. I don’t check the peephole because I know he’s there, exactly as much as I knew he would be. I clasp the door handle, opening to dark jeans and a grey button-up; This time he appears with no props to justify being in my doorway.
“Angel,” The name reverberates itself around the room and I bite my lip.
“Brian.” His face changes, slightly. He’s been waiting his whole life for this moment and only now does it come true before his eyes. I nudge my heard towards the couch, an invitation, thinking the devil himself would be safer than this. On the couch, I throw one leg over the other and stare Brian down in hopes he’d be the first to break the silence. He doesn’t.
“Rudy… Brian… Whatever your name is and whoever you are, this would be the time to tell me the truth.” The air is still and it gets heavier by the minute, he doesn’t sit but he observes the room, studies it, studies me. He places his hand on the lillies in the sink, flickering his eyes over to the living room table, gaze lingering on the notebook abandoned next to cold coffee, frantic arrows and circles, the evidence of my unraveling laid bare for him to admire.
“You remembered,” he says softly, it feels wrong that he doesn’t say ‘figured it out.’ This was always inevitable, and somewhere deep down I’ve always belonged back here with him. I cross my arms tighter over myself, trying to hold my body together.
“Don’t do that,” I snap, louder than I expect. “Don’t stand there acting like this is some fucking reunion.” My voice cracks around the last word and Brian tilts his head slightly, studying me with that same unbearable calmness from the firelit memory clawing its way through my head.
“I told you when you recived these that they mean devotion.” He looks up at me. “I just happen to be devoted to you… for most of your life.”
I scoff. “What does that mean?”
“You were supposed to be easy.” he says after a long silence, eyes dropping briefly to the scar at my throat. “That was the problem.”
The flames from memory are in my eyes, his next sentence doesnt it make it any better, “I couldn’t just let you die in a fire, no, you were more important to me than that.”
The room starts to feels claustrophobic, and I stare at him, waiting for the punchline when he laughs and tells me this is a big fucking joke, but Brian only watches me. My stomach twists. "No. You're talking like...you've been there." He doesn’t respond but the silence speaks in volumes, replacing his words.
A memory flashes behind my eyes. The lilies on my kitchen counter, how he knew when I was lying, the scar, and the goddamn house fire. The nausea hits so hard I have to grab the back of a chair. "You were there, and you watched my house burn down?!"
His jaw flexes. "I called for help."
I go wide-eyed, and howl out a laugh, a cackle more like. I couldn’t fathom crying to him.
"You called for help? I don’t know if you’re stupid or you’re brain isn’t working but my parents are dead because of that fucking fire."
His face doesn't change, "You lived though."
For the first time since he arrived, something genuinely ugly rises in my chest. Anger. "You don't get to stand in my apartment and act like you're some guardian angel because you made a phone call."
He circles me, thinking out loud. “I watched you after that. The orphanage. The apartments. Your jobs. Every time you tried to disappear.” He stops and comes up closer to me, breathing slowed and vibrational on my cheeks, “I’ve always been there Y/N. You’re broken, but it’s not like you don’t need fixing. You don’t want to be fixed.”
I take a huge step back, almost stumbling into my coffee table. “You think this is normal Brian? Do you think that stalking someone for years and watching them for their whole life after kidnapping them is normal?!” I feel heat in my cheeks and tears threatening to drop out my eyes.
“No. I don’t.” He speaks plainly. “I had spent weeks planning my first kill, and you and your stupid laughing ruined it. I knew you we’re terrified but you joked about death in the face of it, I didn’t understand it, so I let you go in the middle of the street near your house.” He pauses, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
“I thought I’d forget about you but I never could. After the fire, I’d check everywhere you’d been, everyone you’d live with, and every relationships you’d make. I never lingered to hurt you, I lingered because I was plagued with the thought of you. I was never waiting for the right time, just the right version of you so when I’d come back to you…” He finally looks up, gazing into my eyes like there were headlights in them.
“You’d understand.” I stare at him, unsure of what to say. I don’t know if I should be furious, or shocked. He’s never seen wrong in his action because he did them all for me and it sounded like the most monstrous love story.
The painful silence in the room stretches as I pace and debate between what my head is saying to me and what my heart feels like. “I have only one more question then” I say without looking up at him. At this point I’ve sat on the couch near him, head in hands and breathing slowing.
“Did you ever really love Debra?”
He doesn’t answer immediately, in fact I start to wonder if he’ll ever answer at all. “No.” I look at him, I see Deb in his eyes. The excitement in the way she moved her hands when she spoke about him and the blush on her cheeks after he’d kiss her hard. The trust to let him into her house even at the latest and to bring him around Dexter and Rita. I walk over to the front door and open it.
“Go.” He looks at me, eyeing me down. “I need to think.” The silence stretches but Brian doesn't move and neither of us speaks. Then he stands and slowly walks over, but when he reaches the doorway he pauses beside me. Close enough that I can smell his cologne and his sweat and his skin.
I don't look at him, I look down, watching and waiting for his feet to move.
The hallway light spills across the floor as he steps outside, I shut the door and lock it, pressing my forehead against it. For several seconds I just stand there listening for footsteps, or his car door, or anything at all but nothing comes and the apartment outside is as silent as it is inside.
And for the first time since I met him, I know exactly who Rudy Cooper is, the worst part is that now I don't know what to do with Brian Moser.
