TITLE: You Really Want to Know?
CHARACTERS: Dexter, Doakes RATING: T WIP OR COMPLETE: Complete WARNINGS: Talk of murder, etc...
DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything. None of this (EVER!) happened. I'm just a poor student with an annual fee of £ 22 200 for my money-sucking university. Suing me won't do much good.
Summary: Doakes got the creeps off of Dexter Morgan and, after the Ice Truck Killer case, his alarms have been blaring. He asks one more time: What the fuck is wrong with you? He never expected Dexter to answer.
And thank you to my beta XMarisolX
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Doakes got the creeps off of Dexter Morgan. The lab rat had been staring at the wall for twenty minutes but that was only the tip of the iceberg of his weird behaviour. He was just weird. It seemed like everything he did was fake. Every smile, every laugh, every reaction was just fake.
With determination to hassle him about the next blood-report, he marched to Dexter's office. Upon entering he barked, "Morgan! Got my blood report?" The lab rat didn't even blink.
"I'll have it done for you by the end of the day," he replied softly, glancing up at the Captain briefly.
Doakes narrowed his eyes. He knew that look. That was the look on the face of a soldier after battle; something was wrong. "There is something fucked up about you Morgan," he growled. "One day you'll slip up and, mark my words, that day I'll be there."
Dexter looked up at him slowly. His eyes flickered briefly at the clock on the wall before he spoke, "It's lunch time..."
"Don't you think-" But Doakes hadn't expected what Dexter said next.
"Have lunch with me."
What?
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~*~
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Not long after, they were by the harbour, having decided to go for a walk while eating their lunch.
"You really wanna know what's wrong with me?" Dexter asked softly, nibbling on a bagel, still not looking at Doakes more than a split second at the time.
Doakes paused. "You're gonna tell me? Just like that?"
Dexter nodded, "Yeah. I figured... if anyone could bear to listen, hear me out-even just to state your own curiosity-it would be you."
Doakes frowned, a feeling of unease creeping up on him. A different feeling of unease than the one he usually felt from being around Dexter. It was the unease of being someone's confidant. "Why not your sister?"
"Deb isn't my sister. Not really. I remember... when we were kids she'd make that clear on several occasions."
That didn't sound like Deb, Doakes mused. "How so?"
"She said she wished Harry had never brought me home."
This was new. "'You're adopted?"
Dexter nodded, "Oh yeah..., that is pretty much where my tale of fuckup-ness begins..."
Doakes snorted, "So you're another fucked up foster kid than. That's your big secret?"
Dexter shook his head and turned towards the sea. "My big secret is... I can't feel anything."
"Right... that makes no sense," Doakes said.
Dexter turned to look at him, and when he did, he looked Doakes straight in the eyes. "I can't feel anything, Doakes. Anything at all. No anger, no joy, amusement, annoyance, sadness, empathy, regret, surprise...happiness... I can't feel."
Doakes blinked. "You're a psychopath..."
A humorless snort escaped Dexter. "Yes. That's my big secret. Everything you know by instinct-what makes you happy, what to say, how to react when someone is happy, sad, scared-I had to learn. Do you have any idea how... empty it feels," he used the words with irony, "Not being about to feel anything at all? Not being able to connect with anyone? Knowing that you never will? That you'll never feel that random rush of happiness Deb keeps talking about when she meets someone she cares about - even loves. To not to be able to feel affection for the people you know you care for?"
Doakes was speechless. "But... how? How did you get this way? Were you born like this?"
Dexter raised a brow, "How should I know?" he shrugged, "The official story of my life; Harry found me on a crime scene, covered in inches of my mothers blood after I'd been locked up in a container for days with her dead body. I was three, no living family. He gave me a home, taught me how to deal with... my situation, taught me how to pretend and fit in."
"He was a good man," Doakes offered, honestly having no idea what to say, but feeling he needed to say something supportive. Feeling...
"Right... The real story; Harry was cheating on his wife while fucking my mother. She was an informant on a drug bust back in '73. She told him that it was too dangerous, that she couldn't go back, but he made her anyway. She was a druggie. Probably a hooker at some point too. She wore multi coloured nail polish on her nails."
Doakes' ears sharpened and his head snapped up to stare at Dexter, but before he could say anything Dexter continued.
"She was killed by three men with chainsaws. I still remembered. My mother pleaded for our lives. Me and my brother... me and Brian."
Doakes' breath caught.
"Brian was a great brother," Dexter said, "We'd play and he'd always watch out for me... I suppressed every memory I had of the time before I came to the Morgans... Harry took me, seeing a child that could be salvaged; I wouldn't remember. While my brother... all he saw was another fucked up kid. Brian screamed for me... screamed at Harry begging him not to take me away. I asked for him for days, but nothing... We'd been locked in the container, the one in the shipyard for two days in a pool for our mother's blood and Harry just left him. He went straight to a mental hospital while I grew up in a loving and caring family..."
Doakes could feel dread creeping up his spine.
"Funny... no matter how different our paths were... we were still so similar..."
Wait. Was Morgan telling him what he thought was telling him?
"What are you saying, Dexter?"
"He'd been watching me for years. He... he killed those prostitutes for me... to recreate the murder of our mother. Each of them, bloodless, like her. Cut to pieces, like her. Arranged perfectly, like her. The room covered from roof to floor in blood, just like the container." Dexter closed his eyes, "He said... he said it was such a relief... to find that he wasn't the only one... He broke into my apartment... each of the crime scenes he chose from my family album..."
Oh hell...
"Then he became Deb's boyfriend... I just met this stranger, this guy I thought I'd never met before in my and I felt... connected. I felt like I could talk to him. Share... He said... that with him, I didn't have to pretend. With him I could rest from having to put on an exhausting face of love and caring and happiness... and just rest..."
Dexter's voice was shaking and his breathing was shallow.
"That now... we could do what we did best together." Dexter shook his head, "Pretend. He was my brother... he sang to me when I had nightmares, patch up my knee, played hide and seek and even drenched in our mothers blood he'd stay strong and tell me everything was going to be okay. He was my big brother... and I killed him."
Dexter's last words came out as nothing but a whisper, "I chose a fake sister who wished her father never brought me home, who would abandon me without a second thought if she knew I... was the way I am... over my blood brother, who was the only one in the world who could accept me..." he swallowed heavily, "All because Harry taught me you never kill an innocent. I idolised him, lived by the rules he set me and never strayed from them. But Harry made us. He taught me how to kill, how never to get caught. He left Brain at the mercy of a mental institution in the fucking 70's. I was six when I first felt it. The need to kill..."
Doakes could do nothing but listen in pure horror and fascination.
"But Harry taught me never to kill... at least not without knowing they deserved it... never an innocent... but no one was around tot tell Brian that. He said... he loved me... that no mater what I was his little brother... and by killing him I would do the right thing..."
Doakes turned by in time to see the tears slip down Dexter's face.
"But if it was the right thing... why does it hurt so much?" he asked, looking up at the taller man with an almost childish expression. "Why does my throat feel like its burning and my chest like I'm drowning and my heart just hurts? Why am I crying? I've never been able to cry for anything. Not for my mother. Not for Harry when he died and I still idolised him. I've never felt fear or regret... why do I feel it all now? Why in those few times I was with him... did I feel?"
Doakes did the only thing he could think of and pulled the crying young man into an embrace.
"I miss him so much..." Dexter sobbed, his tears soaking into Doakes' shirt. "Even with everything he did... he was my brother."
Not knowing what else to do, Doakes just held him.
They talked for many more hours. The talked about each of Dexter's kills. Doakes had at first wanted to turn him in, but in the end, after hearing the names of those who had come under Dexter's knife, he chose not to. Many of those men he had been itching to kill himself. They were the scum of the earth.
As for Brian... the Ice Truck Killer... Doakes' brother had been a soldier, just like him, and he'd seen him do some horrifying shit with a fucking smile on his face, and now, ten years later, he still grieved for his brother. He could not blame Dexter for doing them same.
The End