Work Text:
It was a perfect night.
Well– as perfect as a night could be without me sinking a blade into someone’s chest cavity. But I had learned to appreciate a few other things almost just as much. Sleep. Rita. Sleeping with Rita. Actually sleeping. The other things we got up to in bed were nothing to scoff at, but Harrison hadn’t been sleeping well, so neither had we, and we didn’t have the time or energy for all that exercise. Actual rest was a hot commodity.
That being said, Harrison went down that night with just a few verses of America The Beautiful. If I was lucky, I’d get a whole sixty minutes of sleep before he woke up again.
Rita changed into her night clothes and slid into bed next to me. It gave me a pleasant, comfortable feeling, like she belonged there, and I thought it was funny how things had changed.
There were times in the past that her body pressed up against mine was claustrophobic enough to set my teeth on edge. Her presence was my shackles, my ball and chain, making sure I could not slip off into the night and indulge in any nocturnal activities.
But those days she had become more of an anchor, a comfortable reminder of this life that somehow belonged to me, despite Harry’s warnings and all my wrongdoings. Rita was the reason, and the keystone holding it all together. She was warmth in a cold world. A safe place to shelter from the hostile world.
All that to say solitude was not as comfortable as it used to be. I’d come to need her there as a prerequisite to quality sleep.
Oh, Dexter. How domestic of you. You could almost be normal.
With that delusional thought stirring around in my brain I breathed in the clean peachy smell of her shampoo. She laid her cheek over my heart and tangled her legs up in mine.
“Mm,” she hummed, “It feels so good to just get off my feet.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I hope it’ll last. Harrison–“
“Don’t worry about Harrison. I’ll take the night watch,” I said with an overplayed note of heroism.
“Really? Aren’t you tired?”
“Yes,” I told her honestly, “but so are you.”
As exhausting as the up-and-down could get, I enjoyed those little moments alone with my son. He was so small, so perfectly profoundly innocent, and when I held him I was filled with a very pleasant sensation of protective reverence for my little creature. My sacrifice took some weight off of Rita, too. It was a nice thought.
Rita made a pleased sound in response and pressed a kiss to my chest. I could feel her smiling against my skin, and I smiled back at her automatically, forgetting she could not see my face.
“I love you,” she said.
“Me too.”
She hummed again in a different way I wasn’t quite sure about, but she didn’t say anything so I just pulled her a little closer to me and settled in. Then I closed my eyes and sank towards blessed unconsciousness.
I almost got there, too. Almost.
Drowsy Dreaming Dexter was on the doorstep to dreamland when Rita propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me. Even though her features were blurry in the dark I could feel her stare boring into mine. There was a weight to her gaze that carried some sort of expectation. I rolled onto my side to face her.
Just as I began to wonder if this was an attempt to come onto me, she spoke.
“Why don’t you ever say you love me?”
I didn’t even get my mouth open to defend myself before Rita continued,
“You just say ‘me too.’ It’s not the same.”
I begged to differ. It meant the same thing, didn’t it? ‘I acknowledge reciprocate your statement.’
It irked me but I didn’t argue. On emotional matters it was safer to assume I was completely, utterly, disastrously wrong– after all, I didn’t feel things the same way most people did. So I did as I was told.
“I love you,” I said to her, and laid my hand very softly on her cheek to really sell it.
As if I could really love anyone. It seemed too big of a feeling to fit inside me. But I did care about her, so perhaps it was my best imitation.
“That’s not what I meant, Dexter.”
Had she read my mind? I felt a jab of discomfort. I was selling, but Rita wasn’t buying.
“It’s not?”
“I don’t want you to feel–“ she struggled with the word for a second, “–forced.”
I was stuck, then.
Now, it’s worth saying that I preferred Rita to be happy. Satisfied. I tried to keep her not upset at me, also. It also warrants mention that she added a great deal of positive things to my life. And yet, finding any desire to say those words was difficult. They sat on my tongue and mocked me by playing just behind my teeth.
I wanted to squirm like a suspect being interrogated. I could not deliver on this simple request, and I didn’t know why.
I’d done the hard parts already. Conquered sex, then marriage, then having a baby, all the normal but Herculean things expected of me. ‘I love you’ should have been easy. Dear Dexter, steely serial slasher, struggling with these simple words. Come to think of it, when had I ever…?
“Is it something to do with me?” Rita asked after a long pause.
“No.” The denial came out very urgently. I amazed myself with the real shock in my voice. “It’s not you. I promise.”
Because I was known for keeping my promises, of course. But I had to do something– Rita hadn’t shown me that kind of insecurity in a long time, and I didn’t like it when she was sad.
“It’s never you,” I repeated.
That earned me a faint sigh of relief, but it didn’t get me out of the doghouse.
“Maybe if we can get to the root of the problem, we can work through it together.”
She sounded like our therapist.
Considering that therapist had a way of dragging all those clumsy too-honest things out of me, it wasn’t a bad idea, if you were Rita. It’s just that it was so much more convenient and comfortable for detached Dexter to steer around those kinds of topics.
Still. I was sort of cornered here. I opened my mouth and prepared to give her a very good and satisfying answer.
Except, um… what exactly was I supposed to say? I didn’t have the why, just the what.
“I need to think,” I muttered instead, and she gave a small sound of acknowledgment.
Before Rita there was nothing like… this. I had a few bonds, sure, normal safe ones with Deb and Harry, but I had never called it love. The women before Rita had just been companions to me, fleeting, never lingering. This made sense. Most other people saw me for what I was eventually and left. If it wasn’t that, I had to go because the risks got too great. And then there was Rita, my wife, who had seen and stayed, and who I had married despite the risk she posed to my secret.
I wanted the feeling to be true. I wanted to be capable of it. Did that make it so? Where was the line of pretending here? I was beginning to wonder if I had crossed it years ago without realizing.
Rita was still waiting for something else. I felt nauseous. I almost ground my teeth together as I willed my brain to come up with something.
“I guess it feels… dangerous.”
That didn’t come out right. I tried to think of a therapy word for our situation.
“Vulnerable.”
“You can be vulnerable with me, Dexter.”
“I’m trying.” It was like nobody ever told her how difficult this was.
I could sense the ‘how hard can it be?’ before she even said it. But dear Rita surprised me this time and leaned our foreheads together. I felt her fingers smooth through my hair.
“I know, baby.”
An unfair combination, really. Engineered specifically to make me want to spill all my guts.
I couldn’t say when I’d become so susceptible to Rita and her touch, only that I found it hard to keep my very necessary guards up in the face of such simple words and careful affection. It should have embarrassed me, probably would have embarrassed a normal person. It kind of just left me dumbfounded. I’d been prepared for things to sour, and here she was calling me her baby. I was paralyzed.
I closed my eyes and tried to focus. Something honest. That was all that would satisfy her persistent urge to dig into my head and turn over all the interesting hidden parts inside. Eventually my mouth started moving.
“I think… Something’s missing. It got… taken. From me.“
I had never really told Rita that. I preferred that she think I was whole.
“And now I don’t know how to love. I don’t know if I can.”
I thought for years that I had moved past the desire for emotions and real relationships. Harry had been proven right again and again and again– something in me was missing. I was broken. I was a killer, a monster, and the only reason I should keep anyone around me was to hide myself better. Never close, never genuine.
And yet here I was, devoted Dexter, trying my hardest to build a new neural pathway, to defy my nature once again in the interest of Rita. Because I wanted to.
“…I understand. A lot of things happened to you when you were little. That’s bound to affect anyone.”
I felt an uncoiling of tension I didn’t know I was holding. Beside my vague impending sense of doom I was also aware of something more pleasant. The sensation of being known. It was an honest sort of relief I usually only got to feel in a kill room.
“But you can’t be so hard on yourself. You know how to love. You’re one of the most loving people I’ve ever met, Dex. I’d just like to hear you say it every once in a while. That’s all.”
I gave a slightly dazed nod, and she removed her hands from my head and settled against me again. I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling.
“Don’t say it just because you feel like you have to. I can be patient.”
One of the most loving people she’d ever met. Sometimes Rita would say something so outstandingly inaccurate that it put me in a state of shock. Had I become such a good shapeshifter that I passed for a completely different man? Or was I the wrong one here?
It would be nice to be the person Rita believed I was. Kind, loving, honest, vulnerable Dexter. The kind of man she’d actually be lucky to have. Only, I was pretty sure that none of those qualities went hand in hand with being a killer.
Well, not usually.
I held her very close to me as she drifted off to sleep. The words I couldn’t seem to say still taunted me. I would think I had found my nerve, and I’d open my mouth to begin, but my tongue wouldn’t move and my vocal cords couldn’t seem to operate like they should have.
The slow, even sound of Rita’s breathing told me she’d fallen asleep. A few minutes ago I’d wanted nothing more than to do the same, but now I had a bunch of thoughts bouncing around in my skull and making me restless. One was louder than the others:
Did I love Rita?
I had an abounding fondness for her, at least, and a great deal of attachment, and a yearning for her company that I could not remember holding for anyone before her. That sounded very much like loving someone, and none of it was fake. Had I pretended my way into genuine emotion? That would mean Harry was wrong about yet another thing, which made me question what exactly he’d been right about.
Love was a big feeling. But now I was thinking that I could make room for it, could let Rita fill the space inside that I’d assumed would just be empty forever. Maybe she already had.
I liked that. I wondered if Harry would like it too. And then I decided I didn’t care. I was going to get what I wanted for once.
“I love you,” I tried again. It was easier.
I blinked and wondered if that tender and perfectly human voice was really mine, if Detached Devil Dexter had completed his transformation into a real boy.
And then my mouth kept moving, because in this moment I thought I could tell her anything. Maybe it didn’t count if she was sleeping, but it felt nice to say it out loud, and a part of me hoped my sentiment would make its way into her dream world. I hoped that one day I could say it to her face.
“I want to be who you think I am. I don’t know how… but I’m gonna figure it out.”
I shut my eyes listened to her breathing for a while longer. Sleep came.