Okay. NOW YOU WANNA KILL ME WITH THIS THOUGH!!! "the One Person Who Had Ever Looked At Him Without Fear,

Okay. NOW YOU WANNA KILL ME WITH THIS THOUGH!!! "the one person who had ever looked at him without fear, without revulsion [...] His first love." My babies didn't deserve that!! You really wanna hit me in the guts with just the first paragraph alone every damn time don't you?

"their infant hearts already broken before language could name it" Imma add this to the list of lines I need embroidered, not even tattoed, EMBROIDERED on my body.

"I was always yours, even when I didn't know it" Yes my baby you were. You were for him. Even when you didn't remember he always loved you. He searched for you and cared for you.

The nickname. The "Oh, Biney" GETS ME EVERY DAMN TIME!!!

"[...] he might breathe life back into it [...]" I read a fanfiction once where Dexter found out he had some sort of blood magic and managed to bring him back. This line alone made me think of that. Sadly that story lead nowhere but it was a very good idea to use.

"Above him, Brian swayed still, like a dead angel suspended between heaven and hell" LORD. I have no other words, really, forgive me.

i held a dead god in my hands

mosercest

by atticus

His big brother's body hung inverted above him, not merely as a consequence of gravity, but as if the world itself had flipped, as if Dexter’s universe had righted itself by turning inside out—and there, at the center of its cruel design, swayed the one person who had ever looked at him without fear, without revulsion. Brian. His brother. His first love.

The plastic cocooned around him like a shroud for a martyr, glinting under the cold white light overhead as if mocking the warmth that had just moments ago drained out of the body. “Oh, God,” he choked, the words nothing but breath. “What have I done? What have I done?” Dexter stood rooted to the floor, unable to breathe, unable to blink, as if a part of him had been cut free and hoisted there too.

He had imagined this moment before. He had wondered, in some distant way, what it would be like to kill Brian. But never, never in the full weight of his soul, had he believed he would. And now with the blade’s memory still trembling in his hand, he could not reconcile the thing he had done with the boy he had once been, clutching Brian’s hand in that shipping container as their mother a red ruin between them, their infant hearts already broken before language could name it. Dexter had killed him. As surely as time kills innocence, as surely as fire devours its own oxygen, Dexter had taken from the world the only creature who had loved him utterly, and it was not even necessity.

Brian had spoke his name like a prayer, and Dexter had repaid that devotion with a blade.

It was betrayal dressed in a coward’s elegy.

He wanted to climb up and cut the wraps.

He wanted to hold Brian in his lap like a ruined bridegroom.

He wanted to kiss his mouth and taste the copper truth of what they could have been.

Dexter walked backwards until his back hits the wall and dropped to his knees. He tilted his head back to look up at the face of his brother. It was not like his other kills. There had been no satisfaction. Only the weight of decision followed by the collapse of everything he thought he had built atop his code.

“Why couldn’t I go with you?” Dexter sobbed, voice barely human. “Why did I choose them over you?”

He knew the answer.

He knew and he hated it.

The world had not stopped spinning. But it should have.

If there were any gods left in the ether, they should have screamed.

“I was yours,” Dexter rasped, barely able to hear himself over the wet patter of blood hitting the floor. “I was always yours, even when I didn’t know it.” Brian had always known how to find him, as if some magnetic horror bound them. As if being born in blood had turned them into relics of dead gravestones. “I should’ve followed you,” Dexter said, voice cracking beneath the truth of it. “Oh, Biney.”

A sob tore through him and he collapsed forward with it, pressing his forehead to the palm of his hands. His whole body shook from guilt, from the sudden hollowness that came from removing the one person who made his life intelligible. Brian had been his tether. And without him, Dexter was not a man. Not even a monster. He was something shapeless. A ghost in a shell of flesh.

And this kill—this beautiful, terrible kill—had not set him free. It had unmade him. “I loved you,” he whispered into the red. “With all the darkness I had. With everything I am.” He dug his fingers into the blood. It squelched beneath his nails like wet silk. He didn’t care. Let it stain him. Let it ruin him. He deserved no less.

He rose slowly like a man ascending the gallows. His eyes never left Brian’s face. He reached out and cupped the jaw now slack with the weight of silence. His thumb brushed the parted lips. There was no breath and resistance. But Dexter imagined, just for a moment, that the warmth lingered. That if he leaned forward, pressed his own lips to that pale mouth, he might breathe life back into it, like some grotesque inversion of fairy tales his sister loved to watch.

Still, he leaned in. He kissed him on the cheek, then the jaw, then the mouth. Gently like a priest tasting the last drop of sacrament. It was not lust. It was not sin. It was devotion. When he drew back, a thread of blood clung between them. He did not wipe it away. He welcomed it, let it drip down his chin like some holy stigmata.

“I want you to haunt me, please,” he whispered. “I want you to sit beside me when I kill. I want to hear your voice when I sleep. I want to dream of your hands on mine, always guiding me.” His voice grew distant, soft.

Above him, Brian swayed still, like a dead angel suspended between heaven and hell.

And Dexter, alone in his cathedral of death, finally understood what it was to be damned.

This act alone, had married them. Forever.