Sex
Setting: "Crocodile"

We've been lying here awhile, and the bed is damp beneath us. Even with the AC blasting and the blankets kicked down to our feet it's just hot, and we're both slippery with sweat, and I'm sure his sweat is getting into my hair but it doesn't really matter because we still have...

I shift up to glance at the clock on my nightstand. We've got an hour and ten before we have to leave.

We still have time to shower. Finally having that dinner Dexter's been insisting on. I haven't seen Rita in a couple months. Haven't had dinner at an actual restaurant in awhile either. If I'm hanging out with Sean we order in, and I can't remember the last time I bothered to go to a sit down place alone. Fucking ready meals and take out.

"When do we have to go?" Sean asks, his fingers traveling lazily up my side. His breath puffs into my hair.

"We've got time," I exhale.

It's so hot. When I take his hand and kiss his skin all I taste is salt. But now that it's over all my thoughts are swirling back. Today. Yesterday. This whole week. I mean, what the fuck?

We got a name for the pool vic. The hooker who came in yesterday confirmed the ID after we handed her a small stack of polaroids from the morgue. The first thing she said was, "Jeez, she's so pale." And she is— milky white, from the liquid nitrogen. I know from standing over her chopped-up body in person.

After carefully turning over the pictures, she said it was her friend Cassie Mendoza, and that she was sure. Then she looked away, stared at something in the corner of the room. I wonder how well or how long she knew her. Were they friends, or did they just share a street corner? Even after the rest of our conversation, I wasn't sure. She didn't really want to answer any of our questions.

Four out of five IDed. How are we not any closer to a suspect? How has no one even glimpsed the guy? Trying to speculate out how he even got that body into Bayfront Park is still driving me crazy.

Sean asks me something, as he gently pulls some of my hair off my forehead, smooths it back. I don't catch it.

"What?"

"What'cha thinking about?" he repeats.

"This case," I answer, after a second.

"The ice truck guy?"

It's weird that that's becoming his moniker. This guy's the "ice truck killer" now. He got that name from my brother's theory, my lead. "Yeah," I say. I start running my finger down his ribs, tracing little circles. "Even though we've gotten almost all his victims IDed we're no closer to catching this fuck. I mean, he chopped off her fucking fingertips..." I stop, lay my hand flat. Stare at it. "You should've seen it— fucking frozen in a block of ice, all spread out. Like this." I hold my hand up. Every nail a different color.

"That's messed up," he says.

"And fucking LaGuerta. Sending me out to interview the guy whose truck was stolen, interviewing the hookers who knew one of our vics." Cassie. We have no idea who Sherry ran with. Batista took care of the notification while I was out chatting up the pros. "Anyone with half a fucking brain would know he's just taunting us, that we're not gonna find anything by looking at his victims." He threw a fucking head at Dexter for chrissake.

"Hey," he says. He pulls on my shoulder, turns me over.

"What?" I say.

"Nothing. You're just so damn hot."

I smile on reflex, but my head still isn't here. He shifts up, draws me up with him, tips my chin. He kisses me, and eventually I let him in, close my eyes. For a second the thoughts go away. But then...

"But why fucking fingertips?" I pull away, look up at him like he may actually have an answer. "What could that possibly mean?" And the nail polish?

"I dunno." He pulls me back, this time slightly more forcefully. No talking. He doesn't give a shit. Why am I even talking about this?

I close my eyes again, feel my blood surge. Sometimes it seems like this is the only thing I really understand, the only thing I'm really, truly good at. Sweat and saliva and kissing and touching and his fingers squeezing and caressing, lightly pinching. The movement of it. Breath. Mine catches as skin gets caught between fingernails.

"Sorry," he murmurs.

"No, no…"

He's so fucking attractive. It makes me feel attractive, wanted, useful, alive.

He rolls me onto the bed, climbs on top of me. I reach up to kiss him, pull him down to my lips as I wrap my legs around him, as his hand snakes around my thigh. We just did this but it doesn't even matter. I don't really like being below him but I'm responding anyway. His fingers are crawling up. Mine are somewhere. I don't know what I'm doing. Call and response.

But part of me's still a million miles away, back downtown, thinking about those damn body parts. So fucking pale and white and dead, laid out on plastic sheets, wrapped up in butcher paper. A whole life reduced to props in a serial killer's display, maybe a message, or something else. Something less. And those fingertips. The nail polish…

I force myself to refocus, or he does. His own fingertips. Spreading. My breath fires out. What the fuck am I doing?

I don't want him on top of me. I've decided. I pull him down and roll him over, arch backwards for a second as I straddle him, readjust. His fingers are caught in between. "You're so fucking hot," he moans, staring up at me.

"So're you," I murmur, falling back down.