We walk the rest of the way back to the apartment, Lumen's hand wound tightly in mine. I try to name, to categorise, this feeling I have inside me, this strange lightness which is based in the pit of my stomach. Acceptance, I think that's what it is, Lumen's acceptance of it all. Brian, the Dark Passenger, all of me and my complicated shadowy life which she just understands and then carries on loving me. I am walking on eggshells, waiting for the bubble to burst, it has to.
"Dexter?" Her voice seems thoughtful and I glance sideways to see her twisting her hair in her free hand, looking ahead but not seeing the road.
"Mm?" I can feel that this is a big question, something she's been pondering and turning over in her head, like coffee filtering through paper.
"Remember when I asked if you always used the knife?" I nod, but I don't make a sound because I don't think I can. She wants to know, Dex, my inner voice sounds a lot like Harry. She wants to know about the drill, the hand saw, the chainsaw. Fuck.
"What else do you use?" her voice is still light but I know the undertone, the beginning of flight in her voice as she manifests the question of how I kill, makes it real between us. I walk a few more steps and she doesn't push me. I almost wish she would, at least that way I could be prompted, take some clues from her voice. It's one of those moments again, a cusp.
I stop walking and bite my lip. I feel her looking up at me and I frown, trying to summon the courage from somewhere. I can't ask her to understand this; to her, the killing is a means to an end, not an end in itself. She's only seen me use a knife, only used a knife herself. In my head I see her sanitised view of who I am, what I do. Fuck it.
"Nothing..." She looks at me and her expression changes. I watch, and imagine I can see her thoughts chasing over her face. She settles for disbelief, it hurts like a blade.
"Did you just lie to me?" Her voice is soft but all the more cutting for the gentle tone. I look up at the moon again, like that dead, white lump of stone is going to help me out of this situation. I close my eyes and my mind is like the inside of a snow globe, ideas floating madly, too many for me to grasp and own. I nod. She sighs and walks a few steps on. I stand in the road and watch her walk away.
"Dexter," Harry's voice is urgent, insistent, "are you going to let her walk away, son?
"She can't take the truth Harry; it's not fair to ask her to accept what I am, not all of me." Harry looks at me with exasperation, he looks back at the retreating figure of Lumen as she walks under a street light. Her hair seems to be on fire in the yellow glow.
"You're not in a position to decide that for her, Dex! This is what normal life is about, taking chances, putting yourself on the line. Could you lie to her and still be with her?" I look at Harry, through Harry and into the night where the woman I love is walking away. No, no, I can't lie to her, not when I've gone so far down this road.
"Lumen!" I jog towards her and she turns, even in the dim light I can see the wet streaks on her cheeks. Something rips through my stomach, something cold and mean. She doesn't say anything as I get near to her, she just looks at me. She doesn't try to hide her grief.
"Dexter," she bites her lip and looks down at the floor.
"Sometimes I use a drill, or a handsaw. Once, I used a chainsaw." The words sound strange on the air; I've never admitted anything like this before. Not to Dr Meridian, the therapist I killed, not to Doakes when I could tell him anything, he was going to die anyway, not even to Brian, even though he knew. Lumen looks up at me. I close my eyes because I can't bear to see the expression on her face. No doubt she's imagining all these bloody scenarios. I hear her breathing, so she hasn't run away, not taken the opportunity of my closed eyes to escape my terrible clutches. I feel something touch my hand. It's her fingers.
"Thank you," she says quietly. I open my eyes and she is still crying but her mouth is crooked in a small smile. I nod, because I don't know what else to do. She takes my hand and we carry on walking, I can almost hear her thinking.
She changes the subject, we discuss Quinn and Deb, their relationship and how they seem so evenly matched. We talk about Masuka, Su Lin, bowling, anything but chainsaws and power drills.
It isn't until we're in bed that she brings the subject up again. Sonja's passed the baton of the sleeping kids over to us and we've checked on Harrison and brushed our teeth. She's lying in the crook of my arm and my other arm is bent up under the pillow.
"You really enjoy the killing, don't you?" I feel her words against my chest. I nod. "Do you like hurting people, Dexter?" I frown into the night. Oh god, how do I answer that? This truth thing is going to kill me.
"Yes, I do. It's part of the release, I suppose." I blow out a long breath, trying, not for the first time, to work out my dark urges. "But it's all tied up now, in the Code. I don't know what was mine before and what Harry made of me." I lie there for a minute and listen to her breathe.
"Sometimes they deserve the pain and then it's like I give my Dark Passenger free rein, like I get permission to really let the monster out of its cage. Other times they just have to die, quickly and that's enough too," I try not to say the next words but they come out anyway, "but, yes, I enjoy hurting them."
Her hand moves over my skin, along the scar from when I was ten, under and across my rib bones. She taps her fingers lightly against me, drumming like she's conjuring the truth out of me, then she raises herself on one elbow. Her mouth is near mine and I can feel her breathing. I look up into those dark eyes but I can't tell what she's thinking.
"You've never hurt me," she says softly. For a second I try to imagine what that would be like to make her scream, see that look of terror on her face, feel that power. It's like a brick wall. I try the same thing with Harrison, Cody, Astor, nothing. I can't even make my mind imagine it, it feels like a horse refusing a jump or that the idea is so slippery that my thoughts just slide away from it. I frown, shake my head.
Lila, Brian, Miguel, all people I have been close to and then had to kill. But it's not the same, it's not. All of them threatened me, threatened my life, my life with Deb, with Rita, the kids. I know that Lumen will never be that threat. I know it in such a solid, tangible way that my brain won't even comprehend the concept of having to protect myself from her.
I can't move, everything slows down and the realisation that I trust her, that I can never hurt her, hits me like an articulated truck, like an ice age, a meteor. I can hear my blood in my ears, feel her gaze on my face, but I can't move.
"Dexter?" Her hand touches my face, it breaks the spell. I turn to her, lying along my side and bringing my arm down to hold the small of her back. I shake my head dumbly, trying to find words that aren't natural to me, not in my vocabulary, like an alien language.
"I'll never hurt you Lumen. I can't." The next words escape me and I look down almost expecting them to be burning on the air like the words of a god I don't believe in. "It would be like hurting myself." She smiles, it's not an expression of happiness but it radiates warmth, security, all those things I've craved without understanding what they are.
It still doesn't feel like I've expressed myself right, really made sense of the enormous, burgeoning feeling inside me. I kiss her, trying to tell her with my lips this thing, this fathomless emotion I am feeling. What is this? I frown as her lips touch mine, it doesn't feel enough. It's not close enough, not deep enough. This moment is so overwhelming that kissing her isn't enough. I roll her over onto her back; pressing my mouth to hers and feeling her lips open beneath mine. One hand is in her hair and the other moves down her body, a fierce touch, as I try to tell her what she means, what this all means with just my hands and my mouth. I roll my fingers up, under her nightshirt, pushing it up to her neck. She pulls away, fighting for air and she laughs as she drags a deep breath in. I smile and move my kisses to her throat, down her clavicle and I press my mouth to her sternum, both hands on her shoulders. I can feel her heart beating under my lips.
She arches under me and I slide my tongue across one breast, feeling the ridge of a scar and the curve of her body like some contour map of my whole world. She gasps as I put the flat of my tongue against her nipple. The blood pounds in my ears; once again there is nothing but Lumen. One hand on her other breast, I tease the nipple with my teeth, then swap, alternating the sensations and I am rewarded by a long moan. It sets my body on fire.
I move lower, realising that I don't want to possess her, I want to thank her. Thank her for accepting me; for once again taking in that three year old boy covered in blood, she is a new Harry. The man who was my god and my creator is superseded by this woman who clutches at the mattress and trembles as I skim my tongue past her navel and down between her legs.
The scent of her, the heat and the wet openness of her makes me catch my breath. The assault on my senses is almost too much, I hesitate and I hear her hiss in her breath over her teeth. The sound is so sensual, conveying such desire, that I dip my head to taste her, all patience gone.
I reach for her hips and pull her down the bed, opening her wide so that I can show her how impatient I am for her, how much I want her.
She holds my hair in her hands and her hips ride along with the movement of my tongue. I brush my lips over her and she shivers against me. Hard and then softly, down and then across, I vary my pace, the pressure, until she is almost suspended on my tongue; sometimes only her heels, hands and shoulders still in contact with the bed. Carefully I reach up my hands and place them on her breasts, grounding her body and holding her so she knows I am there.
I match my tongue to the movement of her hips, taking my cues from her, speeding up when I can feel the pressure building. The sound of her voice becoming hoarse, saying my name, telling me she loves me, all of me. Her thrusts become less rhythmic, more demanding, and I follow where she takes me. I feel her tensing, muscles clenched to an impossible degree and then she lets go.
I close my eyes as she tells me that she belongs to me, she says it fiercely, half sitting up as she comes and I slow my movements with her calming body. She falls back against the pillow, breathing heavily, laughing to herself.
I rest my head against her thigh for a moment, savouring the peace, the softness of her skin and the languid posture of her body, knowing that I made her feel this way makes me grin. She touches my forehead with her hands, smoothing back my damp hair with a gesture that is so familiar, so Lumen, that I grin wider.
"Come here," she whispers, I move up the mattress and lie next to her on the pillow. She is smiling, I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and she giggles. "Thank you," she says and kisses me. She makes to move her hand down my body, no doubt thinking to return the gesture but I stop her hand. She frowns.
"That was yours, I can't find the words for this Lumen, I don't need..." She smiles again and tucks her head onto my shoulder. I stroke my broad hand down her delicate bones and listen to her breathing deepen as she sleeps.
I lie there, in the semi darkness and make a checklist of my feelings. I sift through my closest people, testing myself about how I'd feel if they got hurt, went missing, died.
Masuka, my internal monster meter tells me I would miss him, if he were gone. I missed him at work today. I'm not sure what that means. LaGuerta, she's more than just my boss sometimes but she still makes me uncomfortable, all that raw emotion she has kicking around her like an invisible gas. Angel? Yes, I feel something for Angel. He tries to look after me, confides in me and I wouldn't want to let him down. Then I get to Deb and the kids, I get a fierce burn in my gut when I try to think of anything bad happening to them. The feeling is intense, scary. This must be some form of love, whatever version I am capable of feeling. I remember the hollowness when Rita died.
Then I get to Lumen, I look at her breathing quietly, resting her head on my arm. The thought of her not being here, of something dreadful happening to her brings back the sharp sensation I have with Deb, with the kids, but then there's something else.
As I look at her the sharpness subsides and a warm, liquid heat seeps through my bones, starting at my solar plexus and radiating out until I can almost see its golden shine all over me. I lie there, scared to move and wonder what is happening to me? It feels like an emergence, like a chrysalis opening, breaking apart. What the hell am I? The question begs another. What have I been? If I'm not intrinsically, mentally, down at cell level, a monster, then what have I been doing all these years?
The thought rocks me. If I've been capable of this all the time, why have I been hiding behind the monster? There's a thought. It's not the mask of normality I am using to protect my demon self, it's the other way around. I'm acting the demon, the monster, to protect the real me, the ordinary, loving man. Jesus.
I think back to the first night I really shared at the Narcotics Anonymous meeting. The night Lila became my sponsor with all that that entailed in the end. Even then people were beginning to matter, I was starting to care. Was that because, for the first time, I put myself in that position? Near enough to people for them to start to figure on my emotional map? Or was this potential always there? Latent? Dormant? Oh god. Have I really wasted all this time?
But I still need to kill, right? I feel for the internal clock which tells me when the dark wave will rise up and carry me along again. Yep, he's still there. My Dark Passenger, who likes to take the wheel and drive, and I like to let him. I still want the knife; I glance down at Lumen and correct myself, the weapon, in my hand. That sublime stillness as I make the first cut. I still crave the silence when their last breath is gone, when they finish pleading and accept that I am their ultimate fate. The thought makes my blood rush, my body responds to the thrill of the images my mind replays for it.
This is in me, for real. I don't want the Dark Passenger to go and yet he's the barrier between me and the normal world. He's the guy that stops me being who I could be, stops me filling out that gap in life with my name written on it.
Can I be both? Can I be the monster and the man? Is this what everyone is, deep down, and I've just accepted it? Embraced my primal urge to kill and now it won't go away? I don't want it to go away. Inside Angel, Masuka, Quinn, is there a dark passenger buried deep? There was inside of Doakes. I saw it and it saw me. The idea that this is what is in all of us, I make the inclusion of myself almost by accident, makes me stare at the ceiling in wonder. Instead of being half a man, someone unformed, disfigured, am I really the model of what mankind really is? Are they all monsters and all men too?
There's noise from the lounge, Harrison mumbling in his sleep. Is he both of these things too? I've seen his primal side, the side which will push over another kid to get a toy he wants. Seeing him develop should have made me feel better. I saw in him all the things I am and how he learns to repress them to make himself fit in. How he smiles because it gets him what he wants. I nod to myself. Maybe it's true, maybe everyone is like me and I am like everyone. Will the real Dexter Morgan please stand up?
I didn't think how much Dexter would have to explain to Lumen in order for them to have a 'real' relationship but there's lots he didn't tell her. I hope I'm doing an ok job of filling the gaps and writing out a believable Season Six. Thanks for all your kind comments so far, I really do love to hear from you. Thanks too, if you put me on author or story alert but don't review, it's nice to know people are reading (even if I don't know why! :D) thanks, as always, go to VB for being an ace friend and beta and to Loastie17 for the invaluable list for Angel. Cx