One day I'll write a more detailed explanation of "the new planet" being officially called Ragnarök(I feel like it would colloquially just be known as New Earth) but I did want to explain the basics because I'm not sure I've put anything about it here before.
The section at the end of chapter 29 when Matt reads to Casey from the Prose Edda after the power cut is possibly my favourite scene for them. For those who won't have read it; Casey likens the destruction and rebirth of the earth to their current situation. The earth literally ending, the new start ahead of them, the group of several thousand humans in the pods being representative of the two surviving humans who repopulate the earth in the original story.
(Side note: I also relate certain aspects of those two humans- Lif (female, "life") and Leifthrasir (male, "life's lover" OR "life's yearner" depending on translation) to Casey and Matt themselves, but, probably better to put that in the larger explanation.)
That is part of Casey's reasoning, but there's also a more personal level to the decision, and it's not something she mentions aloud to Matt, though I feel she would tell him later on when they're a couple. It's that the main description-
-heavily reminds her of the aftermath of the boat explosion. This, to her, is death and rebirth in a much more visceral and personal sense.
Anyway, I think a few people, not necessarily here, think it's just a silly shippy thing on my part, or even in-universe on Casey's part. Which is not the worst thing in the world I guess, but I very much enjoy the deeper significance of it. 😊
This was just a lil comfort sketch bc I've had a weird past week or so. But also I have a tablet now and this is my first drawing of them on it! No more starting with pencil sketches (maybe) 😊
Companion piece to Day 4 and I will probably colour them together. I wanted to show some of the light positions though 😊
Those are not appropriate boots but we forgive her 😅
This is actually a really important bike. My favourite bit is when it gets used like the bench in The Amber Spyglass with Matt and Casey having a cross-time conversation on it. I think that would make for a beautiful piece of art when i have the patience actually.
I could have done a few things with this prompt, but honestly? I wanted to talk about a section of Out of Time that's one of my absolute favourite scenes ever. It's the beginning/end sections of Chapter 14: Smashed(non-smut chapter but only the beginning and end will make sense out of context), which refers to both the slang for drunk and illusions being shattered.
I remember writing it around this time this year. It was definitely November, because it's set on Christmas Eve, and I remember that being the following month and then when it was actually Christmas I was reading it back and smiling to myself.
I never intended Matt and Casey to be super close before the events of my fic, not in the first draft. But the more I started writing these little excerpts of their life in the two years after SRIV, the closer they became as friends. I began to see the fanfic concept as way more than 'meddling with the past changing things' and way more about a deep requited love that Casey doesn't admit to herself is there and Matt doesn't know is requited.
I also didn't intend for them to have had anything definitively non-platonic happen between them except for the one off "romance" during SRIV. But this scene was pivotal for establishing that Casey switches from being almost completely clueless about her feelings to actively in denial.
To summarise the setting, the Saints have been watching Christmas movies and drinking. The final few have just gone to bed aside from Matt and Casey who are side-by-side in one of the egg chairs, and Kinzie who's passed out in one.
They have their usual banter and decide since they didn't manage to sneak away for Nyte Blayde night as planned (Christmas Eve 2021 was a Friday) they'll watch it on the projector instead of the couch. Casey decides to go back to the couch to get her Christmas pyjamas and a bag of chips she's been saving there.
She changes at the couch, but is surprised by what she finds in the wall above it, pulling the item out. At first when she returns, Matt is focused on a combination of getting Nyte Blayde to work and slightly making fun of the ridiculous outfit.
“Wait, stop trying to distract me and answer my question.” she reminded him, waving the offending item. He seemed to look properly this time.
“Oh that...” he looked at her curiously. “I think it’s mistletoe. Do you um... need that one explained?” he asked, sounding amused.
“Do I need the custom explained? No; Shaundi told me. Do I wanna know what it’s doing above our couch? Fuckin’ yes.” she clarified. His nonchalance to this whole thing was starting to bother her.
He frowned. “Oh so it’s OUR couch now but when it needs all the crisp and popcorn crumbs cleaned out, suddenly it’s MY couch.” he said with a smirk, still evading the question.
“Matt, why did you put this where we were gonna sit tonight?” she rephrased, done with his distractions.
“What? I didn’t!” he protested.
“...What?”
He laughed. “You think I put it there?”
“Well yeah... I guess I... assumed...”
He shook his head at her. “Don’t you think if that were the case I’d have insisted on us watching there?” he asked, almost suggestively. He had a point.
“Huh.” she replied thoughtfully, returning to sit beside him.
“You know, there are free chairs now...” he said gently. “Although...” his hand brushed against the side of her thigh lightly. “You’re very soft...”
She ignored him, looking down at the mistletoe in her hands. “Who d’ya think put this above our couch?”
“I presume... one of the others messing about.”. He shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“Uh... I guess not.” she replied, turning it over in thoughtfully, wondering for the first time how the rest of the gang might perceive their Friday nights together. “You’re sure it wasn’t you?” she asked again.
There was a pause. “Why, did you want it to be me?” she heard him tease.
“Shut up.” she smirked, looking over at him. His face was softened by the glow of the Christmas lights and the fireplace. His blue eyes sparkled through the haze of eggnog and mulled wine and brandy. Fuck. Her smirk fell right off her face.
“Are you alright?” he asked gently, his expression turning from playful to mildly concerned.
It was the booze right? It had to be the booze, and the lights, and the festive cheer or some shit. She knew objectively that her Matty was hot, or she wouldn’t have fucked him that one time. But he had no right looking all... beautiful like that.
“Matty... I uh...” she heard her words slip out, disembodied. If there was an end to that sentence, she certainly didn’t know what it was. She picked up the mistletoe and held it above her head, smirking at him like it was some sort of challenge. God, what was she doing?
His eyebrows raised in alarm. Then he smiled, drew closer and placed a kiss on her cheek, but he hovered there for a very long moment. Curious. Unsatisfied.
“EWW!” she suddenly heard Kinzie shout, making them both jump. Her arm dropped back to her side as she peered forward for her, but it seemed she was still in her own chair. “You two let me watch Nyte Blayde? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
So yeah, this is the night Casey kind of realises she's very attracted to Matt, which turns into the wanting to fuck him again at New Years, though that actually becomes a very bittersweet kiss instead. From there they have other near misses, until the fanfic begins and kind of drags her feelings out in a few different ways.
That mistletoe and the resultant spacesuit left on the couch caused all sorts of problems on Christmas Day, believe me!
As for who planted the mistletoe... well that might just come up on a different day 🤭
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!
This one's just lineart and I have a companion piece on one of the other days, so I'll probably colour and shade it when they're both done.
The boy building his toy :3
This might seem pretty random to those who don't know my hcs/fanfic. But I have it that Matt likes fucking around with physical tech, and has a fondness for bikes. Around the start of Out Of Time, 2 years post-SRIV, he's just finished building his Saint Cycle, a vast improvement on all the shitty Decker bikes that were destroyed before the Saints even got to Steelport.
