There they were. He had been watching… not in the way most people do, not with passing interest or fleeting glances. No. He watched with purpose. With precision. With hunger. They had slipped into his world like a drop of blood in clear water—impossible to ignore, impossible to forget.

He hadn’t expected this. He didn’t feel things the way others did. At least, he hadn’t. But something about them stirred something deep within him. Something dangerous. Something beautiful. He found himself listening for their voice in empty rooms. Imagining the curve of their smile, the sound of their breathing, the way their pulse might race if he stood just a little too close.

There was a darkness inside him. It had always been there—whispering, guiding, craving control. He had accepted it. Nurtured it. But now, it was obsessed—with them. Not to harm, no… never that. He wanted to understand them. To know every scar, every secret. To peel back their layers until there was nothing left between them but truth and bone.

Dexter had always thought of connection as a mask he wore, a thing he mimicked to blend in. But with them, it was different. Real. Obsession had taken root, slow and deliberate, winding through him like wire. They weren’t just another detail in the background—they were the center. The constant. Something he didn’t want to live without.

They haunted him in silence, not like his victims or his code, but like a presence that refused to be cut away. He watched from the shadows, not as a predator—though that instinct never fully left him—but as something far more fragile, far more terrifying. A man who finally wanted to keep something instead of destroy it.

He stood still, gaze sharp but unreadable, and when he finally spoke, his voice barely carried through the room.

“They don’t understand what you are to me… but I do.”