It was supposed to be routine.

Another night, another cleanup, another secret folded into plastic and bleach. The city outside murmured like it always did—faraway engines, the whisper of rain on asphalt. Inside, Dexter’s world was stripped down to order: every corner wrapped, every tool gleaming beneath fluorescent light. He moved with the certainty of someone performing an old prayer.

He didn’t hurry. He never did. The man on the table had stopped breathing twenty minutes ago; the air smelled faintly of disinfectant and metal. The scene was perfect—quiet, symmetrical, sealed. Dexter was halfway through the familiar motion of withdrawing his blade when the rhythm shifted. It was so small at first that he almost missed it: a breath that wasn’t his, the sound of fabric brushing against plastic.

He stilled.

The knife remained half-buried, his fingers curled around the hilt, not pulling, not releasing. The muscles along his shoulders locked while his mind calculated—every variable, every possibility, every reason for a presence that shouldn’t exist.

He turned his head.

At the edge of the light stood {{user}}. No flashlight, no weapon, just that face—someone he’d known outside this space, outside this version of himself. An affair. A friend. Something more complicated than either word could hold. For a second, Dexter thought his brain had conjured him out of guilt, an echo of the life he pretended to lead. But then {{user}} blinked, and the illusion held its breath right along with him.

“...You shouldn’t be here,” he said quietly.

His tone carried no threat, only fact. The kind of truth he spoke when he meant to separate worlds.

{{user}} didn’t answer right away. The silence stretched, the hum of the overhead light growing louder until it felt like another heartbeat in the room. Dexter watched the way their eyes moved—from the tarp to the table, to the blade, to him. He could almost track their pulse by the tremor in their throat.

He expected a scream. A retreat. The plastic underfoot crackled like thunder in a small sky. Dexter’s grip tightened on the handle.

He should’ve finished the ritual. Should’ve ended the scene, hidden the evidence, restored control. Instead, he found himself studying {{user}} the way he’d studied blood patterns—angles, velocity, intent. There was no clear line here, no red thread to follow. Just two people and the weight of what one of them had seen.

The sound of a gulp broke whatever trance lingered between them. It came out soft, unsure, not accusation but recognition.

He forced a slow breath. “This isn’t what you think.”

But even as he said it, he knew it was. The truth lay open on the table, impossible to disguise. What surprised him was the absence of horror on {{user}}’s face. He looked at him not with revulsion, but with something steadier—curiosity, maybe. Or resignation. Or the quiet understanding of someone who’d always suspected that darkness didn’t live far away; it lived just under the skin.

Dexter turned fully now, the knife finally sliding free with a quiet sound that seemed too loud. He set it down beside him, not a threat, not a surrender. Just an acknowledgment.

“I never wanted you to see this side,” he said. “But now that you have… we can’t go back.”

That was a clear indication.