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Dexter thinks he can divide time into a before and after Kurt.
Before is marked with uncertainty and suspicion, him and his son doing a dance around each other, evading, never quite connecting together. The after : well, he’s still living in the after, taking his son home in companionable silence—his son watched him kill, and the world didn’t end. Harrison didn’t run or back away in horror. He’s still here. The sun is up, and it feels like more than just the dawn of a new day, a whole new era in life.
Dexter supposes he can go thank Kurt for this, bringing him and his son closer together, but that would be going back to the scene of the crime.
“I could go for some breakfast,” he says as they step inside. “You want to go somewhere? Not Kurt’s diner,” he adds, chuckling. There’s a bounce in his step, a giddiness floating inside him, making him lightheaded.
Harrison shakes his head. “I’m kinda tired. Been up all night, you know?” he says, effacing, heading towards his room. Dexter’s about to say, that makes sense, and that he can’t remember the last time he’s slept, feels like he’s been running on a high for several days and he’s still feeling it. Harrison nudges into the narrow edges of the doorway to his room—closet, really, too small for him, he needs a new room—and winces hard, as his side brushes the doorway.
“What happened?” Dexter immediately asks, stepping forward right away. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s fine,” he says, the lines of his face tight. His body moves before he can stop himself, bringing his hand to the same side as his self-inflicted stab wound is, fingers brushing the space above it, and there it is again—a wince, evasive, pain written on his face as much as he tries to hide it. More secrets he’s hiding from him.
“Show me,” Dexter demands.
Harrison’s eyes are sharp and hawk-like as his head snaps back up, fingers still hovering over a clearly injured side. Dexter’s not sure how he didn’t notice before, moving carefully, but he peels his shirt up, exposing the white gauze taped over his abdomen, the one Harrison insisted on changing himself, the skin surrounding it bright purple now, as if someone had pummeled his son there, and then lifts it higher up, shirt pulled up to Harrison’s armpit, revealing a constellation of bruises along Harrison’s ribs—dark and purpling, skin angry and red, all alongside his left rib cage.
A wave of fury hits him, Dexter’s hands clenching, aching for a knife. “Who did this—”
“No one did this to me,” Harrison says flatly.
Dexter raises his eyes up from his injuries to his face. Harrison is not meeting his eyes, eyes downcast instead, as if scared of Dexter’s reaction. “I did this,” he says, taking another breath, the sick wash of shame rolling over his face. “I did this to me.”
Dexter doesn’t know what to say. How, he thinks, how does a boy bruise himself so badly, but does it matter? That’s not the point. He’s trying to understand but his voice dies in his throat, looking at his son’s pain and no idea how to fix it, even now. Even after Kurt.
That means you did this, Deb says behind him. You fucked him up. You just keep fucking him up. That’s all you’ll ever do.
“I’m sorry I’m so fucked up,” Harrison says, a strange choked off quality to his voice, and Dexter grabs him, suddenly, hands darting out, on his waist, carefully avoiding the bruises, desperate to just hold him.
“You’re not,” he says—it feels imperative to make this clear, but he doesn’t know how to tell his son that, not after what they did tonight, how to say, you’re a monster like me, but you’re the most beautiful monster I’ll ever see, you’re so much better, you’re—
Harrison rolls his eyes.
“Dad,” he says, his teeth clicking, jaw snapping, throat working hard to swallow. “Don’t lie to me, don’t like, act like—”
“You’ll never be as fucked up as me,” he says, grip on his waist tightening. The words feel ripped from his throat, dragged over glass.
It hurts, being this honest. It hurts for both of them. Feels alien, wrong—even if Harrison needs to hear it.
He watches the words wash over Harrison’s face, can see his mind rolling and mulling over, features relaxing, Dexter watching his throat work as he swallows. He nods finally, but says nothing.
Dexter doesn’t let go.
His hands linger on his son’s skin, and slowly, without conscious thought, his fingers start to creep up his skin, until one hand rests over a purple-red splotch over his skin. Dexter can feel the bones of his ribs through the skin and muscle. You need to eat more, Dexter thinks, as he presses down, feeling the tender, peach-bruised skin beneath his touch. Harrison sucks in a sharp breath, voice hitching.
Dexter glances back up. Something like guilt grabs at his throat, choking off his words. I didn’t mean to hurt you —but you did, you hurt him —so nothing breaks past his lips as he catches his son’s gaze. There’s a strange glassy look in Harrison’s eyes, like he’s far away, vision focused on something else even as his eyes don’t leave Dexter—the kill, perhaps? Thinking of Dexter’s hands on his knife as it entered Kurt’s chest? Or going further back, replaying the Moose Creek kid, replaying Ethan, replaying his mother’s death.
He doesn’t know. It’s uncharted territory.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Debra is laughing at him.
“I’m sorry,” he manages at last, but he can’t tear his hands away. The apology sounds oddly foreign on his lips; saying what he’s supposed to say, the right thing to say, and he is sorry but for what, he’s not sure. “I just wanted to check if they feel broken.”
“I can breathe,” Harrison reassures him. “No broken ribs.” He cracks a smile, crooked sweet.
Dexter mirrors it back briefly, but the bruises are still bothering him. He wants to hurt someone for this but there’s no one but him.
“These should be wrapped,” he says. They don’t, not really. He can live without it. But Dexter has to do something. “I have ace bandages,” he says and heads to the bathroom to go get them, moving on autopilot.
“It’s okay,” Harrison calls out from behind him. “I’m fine.”
But when Dexter returns, Harrison is on his tiny cot of a bed, sitting with his shirt already off, waiting for Dexter, primed and ready. He allows Dexter to wrap the bandages around his ribs, even when he grimaces in pain when Dexter’s hands press a little too hard on the bruises. When the ace bandages scratch at delicate and sensitive skin, he doesn’t flinch away, side by side in a room almost too small for two people.
Something about the sound of his son’s breathing, soft and hitching, seeps under his own skin, as if feeling his son’s warmth crawl into him. When he’s done, he doesn’t pull away—places one palm on his son’s breast bone, and feels him breathe against his hand, in and out, moving with his son. If he were closer, he could time his own breath with his. He could time their heart beats together.
In and out. In and out.
“Thank you, Dad,” Harrison says, placing his own hand over his, interlocked.
Jim Lindsey returns to work.
Harrison returns to school.
Angela breaks up with him, and Audrey seems to have cooled down on the romance front with his son, not that Dexter would know for sure, Harrison never tells him. He doesn’t fully understand the nuances and intricacies of teenage relationships.
“Does it bother you?” he asks Harrison at dinner, wondering if it was somehow his fault.
He made them both steaks. Harrison eats like a T-Rex. It’s sort of fascinating to watch.
Harrison chews before he answers, inscrutable, though he cannot tell if this is withholding in a teenager way or withholding in a I watched my father kill someone and now I feel weird about it way.
“It is what it is,” he says, shrugging. “Does it bother you?”
“Angela?” Dexter sighs and lets out a low whistle. He supposes he should be bothered. That he should put on a subtle, but effective show of being a broken-hearted man around town, of letting Logan take him out for drinks to drown their sorrows together. Mainly, Dexter regrets the loss of easy access to the police station.
It’s not as if he didn’t enjoy his time with Angela, but things have changed now. Harrison is the number one priority.
“We don’t need her,” he says, staring at his son fondly.
He has all the company he needs with Harrison.
Dexter lays out his knife roll on the kitchen table, presenting the variety of blades for his son, the two of them next to each other, their chairs pulled out and pushed closer together so they were across from each other, knees nearly touching. It’s not the same one he had back in Miami—that’s lost to the sands of time, and the deep ocean. This is new, not as refined, but the knives should be enough for an anatomy lesson.
“I’m going to teach you how to use these,” he says, and watches the way Harrison’s face lights up, the visible excitement that fills his eyes, even as he tries to contain it all, keep it hidden. Like father, like son.
“Do you use these when you...?” He says, stumbling over his words in his excitement, not finishing his sentence as he reaches forward, like he’s going to grab one of the blades before closing his palm into a fist and stopping short.
“You can go ahead,” Dexter tells him, granting permission. He can feel something unfurling inside him, a warmth spread out throughout his body as he watches his son pick up one of his knives, a small one with a curved bent to it. He holds it reverently, not swinging it around like some of his customers—like he understands the importance of it.
“That’s a boning knife,” he tells him.
“For bones?” Harrison chuckles, lips curved in a smirk.
“Separating meat from bone and sinew and muscle, yes.”
“Oh,” he says, smiling dropping off his face, letting out a soft breath, a visible shiver going down his spine. He doesn’t ask any more about it, and Dexter wonders if this is too much—too pushy, showing him all this, going too far, not sure where the line is, if it exists—but Harrison holds onto the knife, using it to point at another one. “What about that? What’s that for?”
“Chef’s knife,” Dexter says. He can’t help the way his lips curl up, just at the edges. “Not just for cooking. Versatile usage.”
“And this?” Harrison says, pointing to a wickedly sharp instrument in the last slot, not a knife.
“Bone saw,” he tells him. “Nine inch blade. Not the one we used on Kurt. But it cuts through bone pretty cleanly in a pinch.”
“Wow,” Harrison says. There’s a ratcheting excitement in his voice, growing bolder the more they talk. His face is lit up like Christmas when he gave him the rifle, eager to shoot it off. His eyes fixate on the blades, his breath getting shallower as he stares at Dexter’s collection. He drops the boning knife and reaches for another one.
“How about this?” Harrison says, his fingers lingering over the sharp edge of a blade, dangerously close to pricking himself. It makes Dexter’s breath catch, holding it in—as if he’s feeling Harrison’s own burgeoning excitement himself.
Harrison picks it right up without asking, grabbing the handle firmly. He doesn’t make any gestures with it, no fake out stabs, no swinging it wildly around—none of those things new users do. No, his son respects the weapon in his hands, the tools of the trade.
“It’s a hunting knife,” Dexter tells him. “You know this one. We used it on Kurt.”
“You used it on Kurt,” Harrison corrects, looking up at Dexter, fingers wrapped around the hilt. His gaze is hard, unforgiving, difficult to read, jaw out in a stubborn jut. Dexter wonders if he’s still mad at him for not telling him. “Is this what you used to kill Matt Caldwell?”
“Yes,” he says, trying out honesty. It’s foreign on his tongue. The words feel like they’re about to rebel, throat clamping down.
“Where did you stab him?” He asks, zeroing in. The question is heavy, weighed down, almost too much for Dexter to handle.
“Same place I stabbed Kurt.”
“Show me?” Harrison asks. His eyes burn bright and wide, the blue of his eyes stark and clear. There’s a hunger in his gaze, the stare of a lion spotting a wounded gazelle. Does that make him the gazelle?
Dexter isn’t sure what he’s asking for—a demonstration? The location?
His own pulse beats a little harder, or perhaps he’s just more aware of it. When he was Harrison’s age, he used to stand on top of buildings, lingering on the edge, feeling the wind whip him around, just to feel something. To feel alive.
Is that what Harrison wants?
Dexter makes a choice.
He outstretches one arm and places his hand on Harrison’s chest, five fingers all splayed out, right in the center like a bullseye. His son gasps, breathes in hard, but doesn’t pull away. Harrison’s heart rams itself against his hand, as if seeking him. His chest is warm, almost burning hot. Dexter can feel Harrison’s chest rise and fall like this—the motion of Harrison moving his own hand with him. It’s dizzying. It makes his head spin. His world narrows to just here, with his son.
“Right here,” he says, low, as if any louder would disturb some kind of peace. “Always here.”
As always, he waits for Harrison to break away—for him to finally push too hard, to frighten him the way he frightened Deb, or horrified his father, or drove Lumen away.
Instead, he scoots his seat closer in his chair, close enough so their knees bump together as he moves, Harrison fitting himself between them.
“Where else?” Harrison asks in an exhale of breath.
Dexter blinks. “Excuse me?”
“Where else could you hurt someone? With a knife.” The question shakes out of his mouth, words trembling, but he keeps his gaze trained on him, eyes molten hot.
They are caught in each other’s eyes. They can’t look away.
Dexter removes his palm, and places over it Harrison’s neck, close enough to reach now—he doesn’t grab it. This is not a violent gesture, not a chokehold—no, he’ll teach Harrison those later. He doesn’t cup his adam’s apple, if anything, he goes around it from the side, the edge of his hand resting against the bony clavicle, his fingers and palm against the large artery at Harrison’s throat.
“That’s the carotid,” Dexter tells him. His thumb is on the pulse point of his son’s throat, watching it beat steadily against his touch. “You have two, on either side. You cut that, and well...”
Harrison’s places the knife to Dexter’s throat. Right up on the carotid. A quick study, his boy. He breathes out and feels the sharp edge of the blade dig into his skin.
“Here? Cut here?” he asks. “What happens if I do that?”
“To another person?” Dexter clarifies. His son is not plotting to kill him. He is...mostly certain of that. It feels a little like he’s balancing on a tight wire.
Harrison nods.
“Arterial spray,” he says. “All over you. You’d be covered in blood.” It’s something Dexter was taught to avoid, but from a young age, the thought of spilling that much blood made him feel all warm and shivery, and he can feel that now, crawling up his spine, bringing heat to his face.
“Have you ever done that?” Harrison asks, a strange childlike wonder in his voice as he looks up at him, like he did so many times when he was younger. “Have you ever done that to someone else?”
“I avoid it,” Dexter says, which is not the same as a yes. “Too messy. Hard to clean. Blood never lies, so you don’t want to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Venous injuries are better...blood oozes there, not sprays.”
He expects Harrison to pull the knife away but instead he just pulls it up. It scrapes against his skin, like a slightly too close shave, until he can feel it under his ear instead.
“That’s not a place I cut at all,” Dexter adds dryly.
“Not fatal? Could you...slice down or something?” Harrison asks, ever the inquisitive teenager. “Knick something important?”
“I don’t like mess,” he says. “I’m a creature of habit.”
“But you like blood,” Harrison says—he’s figured it out. With a knife to his neck, the words feel almost like a threat. But he doesn’t push in with the blade, doesn’t dig in deep, scratch at his skin. Instead, Harrison stares at it like he’s in love with the sight of it—silver against skin, so close to dying, to killing, just one wrong move separating them. Dexter wonders if his son feels the same burning under his skin—that calm after that kill that only lasts so long, gradually curdling and giving way to anticipation, excitement, need .
“Yes,” Dexter confesses, holding still, because if he nods, Harrison might cut him. “I do.”
The knife moves then, sliding down Dexter’s skin until the sharp edge hits the edge of his shirt where it meets skin.
“Can you take your clothes off?” Harrison asks, blurting it out, then as if aware of how horribly inappropriate that is to ask, he winces. “I mean. Your shirt. So I can see the places I should cut. Please?”
Dexter cocks his head, and in that motion, leans in almost a little too close, inadvertently pressing his body even further into the blade. The sharpness stings, digs an indent into the space right under his throat. One wrong move could cut him. One correct move would spill his blood everywhere.
“Okay,” he agrees. As if Dexter could deny his son such a request.
Harrison pulls the knife back, giving Dexter more room to move, and Dexter feels his insides release a breath, a strange relief, as if he was worried Harrison would slip and cut, and end their little relationship right here.
Harrison’s eyes burn into him, watching with rapt attention as Dexter peels back layer after layer—undoing his buttons, shrugging out of his flannel, then tugging the henley over his head, clothes pooling on the floor around their chair legs. Cool air hits him immediately and makes him shiver—the fireplace needs some more wood—but even more so, Harrison’s unnerving gaze makes him as if a thousand eyes are on him. Dexter has never had any shame about his naked body, his bare skin exposed to others, even when he was a teenager—so it’s not shame he feels when his son’s eyes sweep over his body, eyes raking over him, the hunger in his gaze going razor sharp. It’s not shame that makes him swallow heavy in his throat—it’s something else entirely he can’t identify.
Harrison leans forward, trying to get even closer, knife held firmly in hand. There’s not much space between them left.
“So where are the veins?” He asks. “Or arteries?”
Dexter can’t help but smile. He’s his son’s living mannequin. They could do this on a person if there was easy prey available but so soon after Kurt’s death means they have to lay low. It’s just him. Harry bought him textbooks to demonstrate, but Dexter thinks he prefers this.
“All over,” he asks, leaning back, giving his son a better look. “But all the major blood vessels are closer to the legs, like—”
“The femoral artery?” Harrison asks, glancing down between his legs. He licks his lips. His eyes go glassy.
Dexter knows why. Rita. Ethan. Born in blood, victim and executioner, all at once. Just like Daddy.
“You already know that,” he says. “Don’t you?”
Harrison nods. Carefully, he positions the point of his knife on Dexter’s jeans, poking at his inner thigh. He can’t feel it over his jeans, but it’s a little too close to be comfortable with it. He could stab him in there easily, like Ethan. He could slash him apart.
“When I slashed Ethan, it just…poured out.” Harrison’s voice shakes. “It was so fast.”
Dexter leans in, like this is a campfire tale. “If you were just a little more precise, he would have bled out in seconds.”
He should follow that with and that’s why you need the code, but he can’t change the fact that the first emotion that fills him when he thinks about his son’s almost-murder is pride.
Harrison’s eyes snap right back up to him, his predatory stare landing on him. Dexter finds he relishes the uncertainty—not entirely sure what he’s going to crack open in Harrison. What kind of killer his son will turn out to be.
“Yeah,” Harrison says, voice dry. “But what else? What else could cause damage?”
Carefully, Dexter points to different spots on his body, and Harrison uses his knife like a ruler, following his finger.
Abdominal aorta , right under the heart.
Thoracic cavity , below the clavicle and before the first rib.
The brachial plexus , a bundle of nerves that won’t kill anyone but could sever usage of the shoulder, arm, and hand. Harrison’s blade starts at the base of his neck and slowly winds its way down his arm, all the way to his wrist, almost tickling Dexter.
“And then of course, the organs,” he says.
“Heart,” Harrison says, and presses the point of the hunting knife square in the center.
“Yes.” My favorite.
“Lungs,” Harrison says, as he drags the knife blunt-side down to the side of his body, hovering over the space where his lungs would be. The tip of the knife nudges his right nipple, immediately making it harden up, skin oversensitive there. Harrison stares down at the sight of it, as if fascinated by his body’s reaction.
“That won’t always kill someone but—”
“A punctured lung sounds pretty bad,” Harrison says, glancing back to Dexter’s eyes, like he is searching for approval.
“People can survive that,” he says, “but yes. Your lungs filling up with blood gives people a much shorter lifespan.”
Harrison chuckles.
“There’s the abdomen,” Dexter moves on. “Kidneys, spleen, liver—most people can survive a stab wound here, but—”
Immediately, his throat clenches up, stopping the words from flowing. In the corner of his eye, Debra is watching, blood welling out in the space where she was shot, turning white shirt deep, wounded red. She doesn’t say anything; she hasn’t said much, since they killed Kurt, as if the act robbed her of a voice.
He’s thrown back into reality by the feel of the blade pressing in, sharp side against his skin, not cutting but hard enough to leave a mark. It’s no longer pressed against his nipple but rather digging into the top center of his chest, skin reddening under it.
“God,” Harrison says, voice thick and shaking and filled with awe, visibly excited to see knife on flesh, and it seems as clear cut as anything that’s Harrison’s enjoying this, that this is more than a lesson for the two of them— you’re just like me, kid, two dark passengers feeding off each other.
The blade tickles his skin as Harrison drags it down, clavicle to sternum. Both of them watch in rapt fascination—the cool steel tip, the slow rise and fall of Dexter’s chest, moving the knife as he breathes in and out, the blade tracing the scar across his stomach in a teasing gesture, before he turns the blade flat side down, only slightly less dangerous.
“You ever gut anyone?” Harrison asks, his voice trembling.
“Not my style,” Dexter says, and he’s not sure he can even begin to describe the ritual to him. He knows he shouldn’t. It’s too much; it’ll terrify him, even more. God, he wants to tell him. “I tend to dismember my—”
Harrison flinches, right then, and the blade slips, slicing Dexter across the belly—the pain is sharp and sudden, a burning sting, making him wince, biting down on a cry. He lets out a harsh breath, and Harrison drops the knife, clattering on the ground. The familiar scent of blood fills the air, Dexter’s nostrils flaring, startled as if this wasn’t where this was going all along.
“I’m sorry,” Harrison gasps, panic in his voice, immediately scooting backwards, the chair making a screeching noise on the flooring. He blinks back rapid tears but they fall down his cheeks anyway, flushing red, horror growing in his voice as he stares at Dexter, aghast. ”I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, I wasn’t trying to hurt you—”
Dexter reaches forward, cutting his son off. He places a palm to his chest, stopping him. Harrison’s heart is galloping, almost beating faster at Dexter’s touch, throwing itself against his ribcage. His other hand goes around the back of Harrison’s skull, holding him steady. He drags his son closer to him, and Harrison comes stumbling, pulled forward until he’s at the edge of his seat, about to fall over. Dexter comes closer as well, the palm on his chest going around his shoulders, and Harrison ends up sitting on his knee, like he’s a kid again, legs on either side of his. It hurts, all this motion, his new stomach wound making all his nerve endings scream, but he needs to do this. His son is close enough so he can bury his face in his hair and plant a kiss there, drawing a gasp from his son. A kiss in his hair that slides down to his temple, skin sweaty and overwarm, before his lips linger at the whirl of his ear.
“Don’t be sorry,” he tells him, then moves his head until their foreheads press together, his hand still clutching Harrison by the back of his skull. Harrison’s eyes are glistening and wet as they meet him. “Do what comes naturally.”
Harrison’s eyes are glistening and wet, and he thinks perhaps he is being too pushy, asking too much, even when he’s not sure what he’s asking Harrison to do. He looks down at his body, at the bloody wound at his side, at the knife on the floor, and wraps one arm around him, as if for purchase, to ground himself in his father.
They’re both looking down as Harrison reaches down with his other hand, pressing his fingers to the sliced open skin.
Dexter bites down on a cry, but his son doesn’t stop. Harrison doesn’t stop. He touches the injury at first, stroking it gently, softly—as if he might lean down and kiss it better. His fingers spread the blood around, over his skin, enthralled with his father’s blood. It’s a shallow injury, more shocking than painful after the initial burn fades away, but Harrison seems determined to wring as much blood as he can out of it.
Then he presses a finger inside, into the wound, as if trying to touch the flesh under the skin, as if trying to make it larger, as if he wants to slip inside him. He bares down until more blood pours out, on the floor, all over Harrison’s hand. Dexter does cry out then, his breathing coming in sharp, aching breaths.
Harrison doesn’t stop. Harrison is relentless.
“That’s good,” he tells him, in a ragged gasp. “Good. That’s my boy.”
“We match,” Harrison says, in awe, mouth half-parted and lips pink, and Dexter doesn’t know what comes over him, just that it feels imperative to take his son’s face in his hands and kiss him, love pouring out of him.
Harrison dresses the wound after. Dexter doesn’t need to tell him how to do this part; he already knows how to heal. His hands are warm and possessive over his skin, using them to disinfect with alcohol, using the tape from the first aid kit to hold the gauze against his injury.
“Good job,” Dexter tells him, then watches his eyes, the flicker in them, the slight widening of the pupil. Harrison likes praise. And he deserves it, to be told he did a good thing, did a job well done, stitched him back together just as he took him apart. Dexter has a lot to make up for, and Harrison should know he’s doing great.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Harrison blurts out, guilt all over his face, the very same guilt Dexter is trying to drain out of him. “There’s something really wrong with me,” he says in a hushed voice. The poor kid is afraid of himself.
“Harrison,” he stops him with a warm hand over his forearms, before he runs out of breath. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he says, even if he knows his son doesn’t believe him. “You don’t have to apologize for being yourself with me.”
“That was really fucked up though,” he says, gesturing towards his injury. “You can’t tell me that’s not fucked up.”
Dexter lets out a breath. “I liked it,” he blurts out as well. “If you want to do it again, we can do that too. On me or someone else.”
Harrison’s eyes go wide, but he doesn’t protest. He watches as some unnamable emotion settles over his shoulders, and nods. “Okay.”
It’s funny. He’s not a masochist, much as he enjoyed bad cop games with Angela. It’s not pain he craves. It’s watching his son grow in his element. He’s happy to be whatever stepping stone he needs.
That’s what a father does, after all.