Even in the first episode of Dexter, when Dexter is at his least human, it's so apparent that the whole "no feelings" things isn't true and Dexter just doesn't realize that.
He claims he isn't truly capable of loving his sister, but he smiles listening to her voicemail even though there's no one there to pretend for, sitting alone in his apartment.
He comes to help Deb purely because she asked, when it's not necessary to do that for any kind of "normal life" cover—a lot of brothers would say "no" and avoid being inconvenienced.
As he talks about Rita being perfect for him from a "practical" perspective, because "she's as damaged as me" we see Rita open the door from Dexter's POV, and she's literally glowing. It's night time and all the light should be coming from behind her inside her house, but instead her face is glowing, because Dexter sees her as someone who glows. It happens again on their date, while she gazes at him and Dexter notes to himself that she's different from everyone else.
Shortly after this in the car, Dexter grabs Rita's thigh, and afterwards, he can't figure out why he crossed a boundary like that—why he even wanted to do that, when he's never been interested in sex except as a means to fit in. (And yeah—there's the element of the crime scene staged specifically to get to him that also plays into this moment, but it isn't the only thing going on).
Rita asks Dexter to come over, and he tells her he’ll come over that night. He ends up stuck at a crime scene when the ITK drops a head on his car. Instead of making excuses to Rita about being unable to see her because of the crime scene and going home to crash, he goes to her house. He has not slept all night. It’s morning by the time he can get to her place and he’s still wearing last night’s clothes. But she wanted to see him so he came. There’s no necessary performance there. He came because he wanted to see her.
He’s surprised by his own reaction to their kiss. He’s still thinking about it when he gets back to his place, smiling as he remembers, saying he has to admit it was “interesting”. But this also isn’t the first time Dexter’s kissed someone, so it’s not a general reaction to the act of kissing. It’s a feeling specifically tied to kissing Rita for the first time that he isn’t sure how to interpret. He then immediately worries to himself that he can’t let that happen again, because she’ll realize something’s wrong with him if things go any further. The dude is feeling feelings of attraction and love and fear of rejection over the woman who will later be his wife and he doesn’t even realize it.
Ig mainly what I’m saying is Dexter was down bad for Rita from the very beginning, and she’s extremely pivotal in the process of Dexter realizing he actually does have feelings. Which he himself eventually acknowledges. But like. That’s not any kind of ret con. From the beginning, she truly was a source of light, reaching inside him finding feelings he didn’t know were there.
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