No Longer An Option


A/N: Warning - this contains both slash and incest, and is definitely not for the faint of heart! (or for the easily squicked, for that matter) (but the kid’s of age; I’m not that creepy - though I wouldn’t put it past Norman!)

Norman no longer recalls quite when it started, so desperately muddled are the contents of his mind with hate and fear and the quivering strains of what he fears is madness. Off and on, he hates himself; and when he attacks himself too vehemently, the Something in his head laughs its harsh laugh, and tells him Why hate yourself for giving him something he wants?

For it’s obvious, even to Norman’s eyes, that the boy does want it. Indeed, Harry’s responses to such an un-fatherly touch are startling, to say the least.

Off and on, Norman worries desperately about his son. How starved for touch is the child when Norman's overtures are welcomed - even craved?

Such doubts never occur to him when they are...together. Together, in the night - always in the night; a fitting backdrop for his own soul. And in the encompassing dark, there is no need to speak; no need for awkward questions or unfelt aphorisms. There is only the night and themselves.

And Norman knows, in the clarity that the darkness brings, that the only thing they truly have left is one another.

The condition persists, though Norman worries over it, and the demon Something in his head alternately mocks his morality and urges him into his son’s arms once again.

It is almost too much for him to bear. And in his increasingly rare moments of clarity, he despairs; and he wishes, hopelessly, that he could love Harry as a father should love his son, instead of feeling this new emotion that seems to be driving him further into the circling madness.

Oh, how he wishes; with all of his broken heart and his shattered mind, he wishes. But it would seem, in the end, that that sort of love is no longer an option.