Cough Drops and Corpses: A Dexter RP (SevenxWine)

[wineanddine]

"I knew about you," Brian said softly, and he straightened up a little bit, took a tiny step toward Dexter. His face was soft now, eyes searching, but his expression was one of sincere, heartbreaking honesty. "I never forgot about you. Holding you in the cargo van. When they took you away from me, I didn't know what I was going to do. I had promise that I would keep you safe, and I couldn't even keep that promise to mom."

Another tiny step forward - small, ever small, because he didn't want to risk another shot to the kidneys. More importantly, he didn't want to scare Dexter away.

"From the moment I got out, all I wanted to do was find you." He spoke with fervor then, and his own hands clenched unconsciously at his sides. For just a bare moment, he shut his eyes and shuddered a little, forcing himself to calm down. "..but I've told you all this before, haven't I?" A little shakily, he raked his fingers through his hair.

It was a bizarre feeling for him to be on unsteady ground. From the moment he had been birthed from the shipping container, he had decided to make the world his, to be in control of his environment. He had never realized that the people around him would be so easy to manipulate. Then again, when your feelings normally only ran as deeply as 'hunger' and 'boredom,' it was easy to see what made people tick, how to twist them around and between his fingers.

But here.. here was pushed into the bizarro world where Dexter still existed, and despite their separation, was still just like him. Seeing Dexter face to face excited him in ways he had only been excited a handful of times in his life before, and that utter happiness cracked his face in a jagged sort of smile normally only reserved for anxious children Christmas morning.

"I never.. never forgot you," he finished.

 

[sevenpercentsolution]

As Brian rose and began to approach him with slow, cautious steps, Dexter suddenly felt as though he was standing at the edge of a vast chasm, and with every step that his brother took towards him, a little more of the solid ground beneath him crumbled away. He could only stare at Brian, head tilted down very slightly, peering at him as he recounted their horrors - and these days, Dexter could remember it in vivid detail, if he dared to think about it.

The cargo container; the darkness, the heat and the smell of rot and decay, the sticky feeling of inches of blood up around their hands and their knees, coagulating slowly over the course of the days they were in there. Brian had refused to let go of him, holding him tight, clinging to him, keeping him close; more than anything, he remembered his brother's heart beat, the steady rhythm of it in the silence of the container - it was the only reassurance in the endless dark, with the dead faces staring at them.

With mom's head so close by, her pretty face frozen in perpetual horror, eyes wide and blank, with that broad slice across her cheek. She hadn't looked quite like mom anymore.

He watched Brian intently, shoulders hunched like an animal preparing to fight back; he watched, he waited.

He watched as Brian's hand's twitched; he watched him run his fingers back through his hair.

He watched the smile, which suddenly seemed so brittle.

Three year old Dexter Moser had been too young and too traumatized to remember much of anything; he had suffered the ghost effects of what had happened, never knowing why he was the way he was, but mercifully not remembering the details. But Brian - he had remembered it all, lived it from day to day of his miserable, short childhood going through one foster home after another, too troubled, his story too complicated for anyone to know how to help him at the time.

And through all of it, Biney hadn't forgotten him - had sought him out.

Like the heartbeat in the darkness.

Dexter wasn't sure when it happened, but he found himself suddenly close to Brian, stepping in, closing the space between them, standing so near that he could feel his brother's body heat, so close that their chests were nearly touching, his head cocked just slightly to the side, eyes roaming over a face that was close enough that he could count eyelashes. He didn't touch; he looked, he ghosted close, muscles still tense with some unreleased energy, a predator exploring.

 

[wineanddine]

The muscles on Brian's face relaxed, the smile going slack as Dexter stepped closer, and out of habit he grew tense while sinewy arms locked at his sides. He stared at Dexter, cocking his own head just a few degrees to the side as he studied the lines of his brother's face, and suddenly he was able to see with a startling clarity.

Dexter, the idea of Dexter, often had him in a haze. Someone so perfect despite the imperfections - someone who understood, but hadn't been wasted the way that he had been by the vivid memories of it. (Brian's first diagnosis after being pulled from the shipping container was violent obsessive compulsive disorder. He couldn't stand to be touched, would scrub his hands and wrists and arms until they were raw and bleeding, but never clean, and he was left bent over the sink sobbing. The first time one of his foster parents had found him that way, he'd bit her until she was bleeding, too, and then he'd seen that house again.)

Brian's eyelids lowered slightly, though his body was still tensed, coiled, like a snake ready to strike, even as his eyes cut down to Dexter's chest, mesmerized by the way it swelled with each breath.

As if also struck by the memory of heartbeats, Brian lifted his hand suddenly fingers curled slightly as he pressed it hard against the shirt of Dexter's chest, pitching forward very slightly. He watched his hand for a moment, then looked back up at Dexter, eyes narrowed, as if he were daring him to move away from that.

Dexter was warm. It was not an unpleasant sensation.

 

[sevenpercentsolution]

It was a simple motion, the hand that rose with great care to settle onto his shoulder; he could feel his own heart thudding against his chest wall and he knew Brian was feeling it too - like he had followed Dexter's thoughts, he was also thinking about the heartbeat. He was thinking about the crate where they had been left like animals, left to die.

And something had died in them that day; they just never got to know exactly what it was. They had entered it as normal children, scared for their lives, screaming for their mother, mourning and sobbing and wailing at her violent end as it happened right in front of them.

And then they had left the crate at something else entirely. Still physically children, but with something torn out of them, left inside the crate with all of the blood and the bits and pieces of people.

Brian said that was the day they had been born. Dexter felt it was when he had been killed - and turned into the thing he was now.

He looked up and found Brian's eyes narrowed in something like an aggressive challenge; Brian's darkness communicated with Dexter's on a level that he couldn't understand, but without knowing why he was doing it, Dexter suddenly swatted Brian's hand away from his chest, causing them to fall against eachother, bumping chest-to-chest before Dexter gave Brian a hard shove backwards. He stalked towards his brother again, slow and predatorial - but then he stopped himself. He stood in place then, motionless, but still watching Brian,

"I want you to come with me." Dexter said hoarsely, "Tomorrow night. We'll meet here. I need you to help me bag some garbage."

 

[wineanddine]

It wasn't in Brian's nature to yield. He did not go belly up, he didn't show his throat - so when Dexter shoved him back, his first reaction was to pounce, bite, kill. Self-imposed restraint left him almost breathless, though, as he threw his own shoulders back and stared at Dexter with an angry challenge on his face. He rose, nearly brought to a boil before Dexter spoke, and again he was winded, the anger in bubbling in his throat giving way to a gasp of a laugh.

He leaned forward, tucking his chin down, and his expression was approving.

"Alright," Brian said finally, and he leaned back to slide his hands into his pockets. The moment was over; he wouldn't touch him again tonight, wouldn't push him again. He'd made leeway - at least enough that he believed Dexter wanted to kill with him, not kill him. He had seen the look on his brother's face and recognized it, and he wasn't afraid. Just excited.

He turned from him then, sitting back onto the couch and turning to stretch out, and as hard as his own heart was pumping blood in his chest, the look Brian gave Dexter was a look of almost drowsy satisfaction.

"I'll be here with bells on," he murmured with a lopsided smile, folding his arms behind his head and getting comfortable, apparently settling for sleep. "And if you'll do me a favor, Dex.. don't let anyone know that I'm in town? I'm here on private business." He cut his eyes from Dexter to the door, his position giving him a perfect vantage point for seeing both it and out the shaded windows.

Tomorrow night. The idea of getting to kill with Dexter again made him shiver.