Horizon
Rowvember Day 5: Rebuild.
This is a short fic (1.5k words) from Dex's perspective, set in mid-2023. Dex faked his own death in 2013 in my headcanon, and was one of very few people who changed their records so successfully that not even Zinyak had him stored under his real name. He is eventually removed from the pods in one of the final waves of humans. Hopefully that's all the context needed for this!
I'm not going to do the usual description and stuff for this bc it's short and I don't want to spoil things, but it's SFW!
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Down to earth.
That's how everyone's always described him. Pragmatic. Level-headed. Grounded. Down to earth. He was never too sure whether he liked that. It felt like a responsibility he'd never signed up for. A mould he was forced into.
Be the anchor, Dex. Weigh us all down so we can go off doing our dumb shit and know you'll still be there. Keeping us down to earth.
Yeah, actually, for a long time, he didn't like it at all.
Maybe that's why after he faked his death he was always moving around. He always told himself he was just being smart. There were Saints in so many cities now. If he stayed too long, he’d be recognised for sure. Deep down though, he wasn’t just escaping people who knew him. He was escaping himself. The very essence of who he was. Dex was an anchor, not a ship. Dex never would have left Stilwater. That Dex was dead.
He survived that way for three years until a moment of serendipity changed that aimless drift. His car had broken down for no god damn reason. He hated shit like that, shit he couldn't plan, couldn’t account for. There was no cell reception on that route either. His tendency to go down the least travelled paths had backfired.
There was a diner within walking distance. The waitress, a kind older lady, told him sympathetically that no-one really came this way. Once she’d poured him some coffee she headed into the back to see if she could find her phone to charge for him. As he'd sat there, sipping in silence, wondering where the hell he was going to go from there, the cheap plastic door had swung open like a saloon door in an old western, appropriately followed by a cowboy. Or a biker. Or both.
The only objective observation Dex could make of the man was that he was clad head-to-toe in magenta leather, perfectly matched to his long curls. He didn’t suit a drab, lifeless, silent place like this. He was bold and lively and it wasn't long before he became pretty loud, too. He immediately started talking, talking a little too much, and yet somehow Dex didn’t mind that he could barely get a word in edgewise. Because he’d left his world behind already. But he knew then and there that something about that guy was otherworldly.
He spent four years bathing in the light of that man’s smile, and yet he still remembers the first time he experienced its warmth. When he sat there, trying to decide whether to wait for the waitress’s phone to charge to make a call, or accept a ride from a relative stranger, and did what he did best. He questioned everything.
Did this guy really just happen to be here? On this barely travelled route, at the same time as him? A guy who had allegedly just come up against the Saints and lived to tell the tale? A guy from Stilwater? A guy he may well have glimpsed in the street years ago? He asked his barrage of questions, expecting another continuous stream of words in response.
Instead, the reply was surprisingly understated. Because the other man listened carefully, thoughtfully. “I guess just...” he began, and that’s when the beautiful smile lit up his features. “Right place, right time.”
For four years, they ran together. Travelling. Exploring. Falling in love. Suddenly Dex didn’t mind being down to earth anymore, because his lover’s head was so high up in the clouds and it was everything, everything they both needed. Together they were the earth meeting the sky. A beautiful sunrise breaking on the horizon, just like the ones they watched together wherever they happened to be.
But like a sunrise, it was fleeting.
Four years flew by in an instant, two more in a simulation, and now earth is lost, replaced with the closest thing they have to a facsimile. It doesn't sound the same. It doesn’t feel the same. It doesn't smell the same. One part, though, looks the same. Almost exactly. So he has to admit, he's spent every morning there ever since it moved. The first rebuilt church was used as their HQ. He didn’t go near it. He wasn’t ready to face the Saints again. He certainly didn’t know how Case would respond to seeing him alive after years of thinking otherwise.
He’s proud of what she’s become, he really is. He always knew she had a good head on her shoulders. It used to mean a lot to him to have a younger Saint around. After he quickly unpicked her bullshit it turned out she was the same age as one of his sisters. But unlike his sisters, she actually seemed to listen to his advice.
But he’s not sure he can call her down-to-earth anymore, even as he lives within the infastructure she and the rest of the Saints have built for humanity. She’s down to New Earth, or Ragnarok, or her earth. This planet has multiple names but whatever you call it, she’s moved on. All the Saints have. They've moved on with their lives. To them he's dead, and has been for near enough ten years.
His heart might as well have stopped when he processed that his partner was gone.
He’s back to aimlessly drifting.
He's a ghost now. Haunting this place.
It isn’t for anything now. Not since the town was relocated, the thing re-rebuilt. He’s heard whispers. They’re too scared to make it the HQ again after the last one was destroyed. Scared it’s an easy target. So it almost feels like they rebuilt it for nothing. No one. No one but Dex, sitting there every morning at sunrise like a recurrent sinner.
He sighs and closes his eyes, tilting his head up into one of the first warm rays of sunlight beaming through the stained glass. It casts a dancing array of colors down onto the former Saint’s face. But with that ray comes a change. A break in the routine. A slight jangle of the door.
There’s a knack to it. You have to push down the handle, but not too hard, just short of all the way down. He knows it.
Casey probably knows it too.
He turns his head towards the noise, trying to make out a shape in the glass. The dawn is still breaking, it’s not the easiest to see. About the right height; 5’9” or so, maybe a little taller with heels on. A lot of hair. The shoulders look a little broader. But then he’s seen her wearing her boyfriend’s jacket before, when he’s been watching from afar. It looks like a Boss alright.
This might just be judgement day.
Maybe it’ll be OK. Maybe she’ll just be glad to see him alive. He knows she’s not the most forgiving type, but she has a great deal of dedication for her friends. He can’t tell where he sits between those two extremes. He’s an anomaly.
He’s going to have to talk fast. He has no weapon, despite the fact that in the back of his mind he already knew she’d come one day. While he didn’t seek death, he wasn’t actively resisting it either. Perhaps he’ll make a joke out of it. “Yeah, yeah, I know, I ain’t Jules.”. The sort of thing she’d love. He’s not exactly coming up with the smartest shit right now, but he has to come up with something.
But the door opens, and it’s definitely not the leader of the Saints.
The magenta hair remains but it’s cut a little shorter. The man dressed entirely differently to how he dressed before the earth was lost. Stylish as ever, but nowhere near as colorful. Like something has been stripped from him. Ivory shirt, black pants and boots, long black coat. The stetson remains but it’s a new, pure black one, not the one Dex was never entirely keen on because it had belonged to the dead boyfriend. He almost looks like a vampire hunter.
Or... maybe... maybe a ghost hunter.
There’s a stunned silence between the two. It seems impossible. It should be impossible. But still their feet are advancing in a quickening tandem across the floor and the feel and the sound and the range of emotions overcoming Dex as they near each other make it all seem so real.
He doesn’t quite believe it. He tries to be lighthearted about it as he moves closer, but his voice is trembling. “Let me guess. Right place right t-“
He is interrupted as the other man closes the gap and smashes their lips together passionately, wrapping him in a desperate embrace.
Dex's heart and mind trade places at that moment. The former races incessantly and the latter just... stops. Stops focusing on the what and the why and the how of what is going on. The time doesn’t matter. The planet doesn’t matter. Even the church doesn’t matter, because all that matters is the earth and the sky colliding into a perfect sunrise.
Anteros is here.
Dex is alive again.
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Look, Dexteros isn’t just a ship, guys, it’s poetry.
So... Ted if you read this, hiiiii! I didn't tag you yet but will later because I thought you'd probably read a thing about Dex anyway and that it would be a nice surprise just to see your own OC pop up! Happy (early) Birthday! xD
Tagging/crediting now: Anteros and his dynamic with Dex are very much the creations of @whoredmode
Everyone else, for further clarification, here are a few posts about Anteros’s place in Casey’s universe! There are probably gaps that I’ve probably thought about but not written anywhere but I’m always happy to answer questions!
