A/N: A piece I dug up from a couple of years ago and finished this evening. A first attempt at this fandom; any reviews over characterization would be very much appreciated!
Warm, hazy light filters through the windows of the hangar, glowing golden with the sunset across the minute slope of Dex's nose, the smack of bubblegum pausing as he sinks deeper into thought. He leans out of the beam of sunlight, catching another one across his cheekbones as he marks another sighting of Totenkopf's robots on the map. Really, what Joe should be worrying about is the fact that they'd taken Totenkopf down less than a year ago, and yet here his creations still were, reviving themselves from the dead to hunt something else entirely unknown.
Rather, what Joe is worrying about is the way the brilliant specks of dust spin about in the air whenever Dex releases a quiet breath. He's also worrying about the exact amount of faint freckles smattered across Dex's cheeks, lit by the soft, unearthly glow of the sunshine. Gum smacks and a bubble pops with a satisfying crack, before Dex leans lazily upright again, out of the light, and the spell is broken; reality's icy water drags foreboding fingers down his spine and Joe tries his utmost not to shiver.
Dex's chest heaves when he sighs, face tight with fatigue in the absence of beaming shadows to cascade across it. He casts Joe a wry smile and gives a surrendered shrug.
"Can't do an equation without all the variables, Cap," he declares apologetically. Joe nods, lost in his own thoughts, scrutinizing the map before them with a defeated sort of contemplation. They've chased these things across the world and back, and just when they should've been destroyed—and Sky Captain been able to rest for at least a couple of weeks—a whole new disaster is only beginning to snowball, and the only man who could've helped them lays rotting in his office. 'Forgive me'; Joe snorts derisively. Had Totenkopf wanted to talk about forgiveness, the sniveling prick should've stuck around to suffer his work as the rest of the world had nearly been forced to.
It's a dismal train of thought without the sunbeams on Dex's face to stare unseeingly into, and with effort he drags himself back to the surface as Dex stretches after a long day hunched over the desk, shoulders un-knotting and back cracking. The sides of his palms are slick with graphite and his forearms spattered with ink and grease.
"You need a towel?" Joe asks, already moving across the workstation to get one and dampen it.
Dex holds out his hands and Joe tosses it into their grip.
He watches as his friend scrubs at the grime until the damp towel is black and his skin shines pink in the light. He's watched Dex far too much since they've returned alive from Totenkopf's island; only now does he finally notice the details that have begun to commandeer his life—dark eyelashes, eyes that shift from deep brown to golden-rimmed with the time of day, deeply embedded callouses and lines in slim hands from days upon days' work. And for six long years now, every single pencil stroke or calculation or experimental disaster involved in that work has been for Joe.
The notion evokes equal measures of guilt and warmth when he allows it to linger.
"God damn, where's Polly when you need her?" Joe chuckles, shaking his head. Dex shoots him a quizzical glance. "She'd dig up that last variable for you if it cost the universe, just to satisfy her curiosity," he clarifies, fond exasperation undisguised in his voice. Now it's Dex's turn to smile.
It doesn't reach his golden eyes.
Joe feels the small frown crease between his own eyebrows.
"Something wrong?" he asks quietly—and sure enough, his palms begin to sweat. He's terrible at things like this, but damn, Dex is usually the sunniest person he knows. Dex is the one he always runs to, because he's the only one who can cheer Joe up simply by existing in the earnest way he does.
"Nah, just need a night off," Dex shrugs, turning his back on Joe.
"Take tomorrow, too," Joe tells him. "You've earned it."
Dex looks pleasantly surprised when he crosses the work station to rinse the remaining grime from his forearms. "If you insist, I ain't gonna argue." He smiles, and this time it's a little more genuine. He hesitates for a moment, then turns to Joe with cautious eagerness in the dimming sunlight. "You got plans for tonight?"
Joe shouldn't feel like such an ass for wanting to spend a night with his lover for the first time in almost a month, but he does when Dex is looking at him with a gaze like that. "Polly," he mutters. "I'm taking her out tonight."
Dex's gaze hardens and he shrugs, but it's stiff and Joe immediately wants to grab his words back out of the air. Of course we can go out, he'll say. Polly can wait another few days. We need some guy time. Let's get tipsy and go see the latest documentary about the Sky Captain's fantastic army-for-hire.
But he's already spoken, and Dex smiles again, saying something about it being fine before he walks away, sunbeams dulling and fading across the back of his worn blue shirt.
So Joe takes Polly out. He listens to her complain about the restrictions her boss imposes upon her and chat about her friend's birthday last week. He vents about the virtually indestructible design of the latest of Totenkopf's attacking creations and voices his worries about Dex. Polly sighs, a sadly knowing look in her eyes, and pats the back of his hand with her delicate palm.
"You know you should go to him, Joe," she tells him matter-of-factly, as though she's not a relatively possessive woman telling her lover to terminate a (long-awaited, mind you) date, in favor of checking up on a friend who's probably fine anyway. After all, it's not as though Dex has been having problems since his abduction. Is it?
Joe apologizes to her, pays for their half-eaten meal, and hurries to Dex's minuscule apartment.
Dex is not fine.
When Joe arrives, Dex is far beyond drunk in the sitting room, in tears with a nigh-empty vodka bottle in hand. Joe feels sicker than any amount of flying could make him at the sight, but his milk of magnesia is under the pilot's seat of the plane that Dex built for him—too much of his friend, panic—and his heart is pounding, too big, and his breath comes short and shaky. How didn't he know? Why didn't Dex speak up? They've saved each other's lives time and time again, and yet Dex doesn't know that Joe would do nothing short of kick down the doors to Heaven or Hell for him?
The air Joe breathes is ragged grit and he doesn't give a damn, because Dex is crying alone on the couch and god damn, the guilt is a fucking torrent of ice water and glass down his back, and it doesn't stop falling even while he's struggling to stay above the surface.
"Y' shldn't've come," Dex slurs, staggering to his feet and running a hand through his hair, only succeeding in mussing it further. "Thought y' were with P'lly."
There are nail marks on his forearms, as though he's been clawing at himself. And that's it; Joe doesn't bother to hang up his coat, just drops it on the floor and rushes to embrace the best friend he's ever had in his life.
"What the hell, Dex?" he whispers, shaking his head as the younger man collapses shaking into his arms. "Christ, what did they do to you?" Joe's eyes are pricking, nearly watering. He tells himself it's because of the low light.
Dex drops the vodka bottle and Joe doesn't catch it, doesn't bother trying, before it lands with a hollow thunk on the carpet and the little remainder of its contents drain, unnoticed by either of them. He clings to Joe like a dying man, and when his legs give out, Joe eases him down on the creaky sofa, sitting next to him awkwardly but never looking anything less than totally distraught at the tears Dex feels flooding down his face. His throat burns from alcohol and crying. He loathes himself for making such a scene of this.
"T'ld me you were dead, Cap," he rasps, smiling grimly. He looks a haunted man. "T'ld me I'd failed, thought I w'ld never see you again—" His breaths pick up and then hitch, choke, golden eyes growing wild, becoming panicked black pits, and Joe doesn't think, just takes his face in his hands, wiping tears from his cheeks with his thumbs, and forces Dex to look at him.
"Dex. I'm here, you didn't fail at anything. I would never stop searching for you. Never."
The crackle in the air holds them both motionless, breathing each other's air, neither daring to blink nor pull away.
"Joe, I.. I think I—" Dex's eyes are sliding into focus for the first time this evening, face falling deadly serious. Noses brush.
"Coffee," Joe says abruptly, cutting him off with a rough finger to his lips. He pulls roughly away. "I'm making coffee. No more talk until you're sober."
He's up off the couch as fast as he came, the loss of his presence cold as ice.
Dex passes out before Joe's finished making the coffee, but it's alright, because if Dex had finished his sentence, he may have run from the apartment and been unable to come back for the tangle of heartstrings ripping him apart. Joe both longs for those words and dreads them with an unspeakable terror.
Dex is Joe's sunlight, his art, his intellect and his delight in the world. His happiness. Joe owes everything to Dex, and he knows it, and he doesn't mind at all. And that scares him absolutely shitless.
He sighs, watching his friend breathe deeply in sleep, positioned awkwardly on the sofa, and abandons the pot of coffee in favor of slipping off his shoes. Padding over, sitting, and gently moving Dex's head into his lap, Joe leans his head back and falls into a restless sleep.
In the very early morning, Dex stirs and Joe jolts awake.
Dex's eyes are glazed, but his gaze is focused, and when he meets Joe's eyes, Joe breathes a quiet sigh of relief. No alcohol poisoning. No hospital. He hadn't thought it would happen, but damn him if he ever stops worrying about Dex.
Weak moonbeams shatter the darkness and paint the apartment floor. Dex gives a chuckle that sounds more like a cough than a laugh.
"I vaguely remember somethin' about coffee," he rasps. Joe smiles.
"It's bound to be cold by now."
"I also remember you cuttin' me off in the middle of a something important," Dex continues deliberately. "Until I was sober. Which I happen to be now." Joe's stomach lurches into his throat and his blood suddenly feels very hot and very cold. Dex fixes him with a stare that's all resolute affection, and it feels like those bright sunbeams from the warehouse are buried in his eyes. And then they dim.
"I'm jealous of Polly."
Joe blinks. "What?" he sputters, utterly bewildered. "Why?"
Dex shuts his eyes and scowls. He's biting the inside of his cheek. "I wasn't done, you fucking idiot," he groans. "I'm jealous of how you talk about her, and how you look at her. How happy she makes you."
"Stop, Dex," Joe says suddenly. "Stop."
He leans down to take Dex's face in his hands again, thumbs brushing over the cheekbones and chin rough with stubble. Dex looks upset like he wants to speak again, but Joe stops him, jumps in, dives in to the myriad of things he's been thinking and not saying without letting himself pause for a breath of sense.
"You make me happy. Happier. You're so... I just, when I look at you, I see all the good in the world standing right in front of me. And whether you're drawing or building or chewing that bubblegum, there is always something about you that fascinates me. You're always so bright, Dex. You remind me that good things exist. I don't know how you do it. I..." Joe falters, and realizes with sudden, painful clarity what he's skirting around, trying to say without really saying it. "I want to know how you do it."
Silence.
"You want to know how I do it?" Dex whispers, frozen beneath Joe's stare.
Joe takes a shaky breath. "Yes."
Dex sits up and kisses him.
Both of them have their eyes wide open and it's brief and hard and neither is prepared, but a moment after they break Joe chases Dex's lips when he lies back down and kisses him properly—long, languid, heating.
Joe's heart throbs against his ribs. Right. Right. Right.
Dex makes a soft sound beneath him, and he kisses harder. The pressing of lips turns to the soft click of teeth and the brushing of tongues; there is no breaking for breath. Deep, full pants come in unison, rushed exhales pressed into one another's cheeks. Joe slides into place beside Dex on the too-small sofa, pulling him close, a quiet murmur escaping him when Dex rolls on top of him and traces the intricacies of Joe's ear with calloused fingertips.
When they come up for air, the gray beginnings of a sunrise are starting to permeate the horizon. The two men have become entwined, legs tangled, holding each other close. Dex tucks his forehead against Joe's throat, kissing the skin there as an afterthought that makes Joe shiver.
"So," Joe murmurs, nuzzling Dex's mussed hair.
"So," Dex mumbles against his neck.
"Are we a... well, are we a 'we'?" Joe stumbles over his words.
"If you want us to be," Dex smiles, looking up at him. Joe knows that he's holding the most precious creation in the universe—he's always known, but now, the truth of it is so clear that it almost hurts to admire too closely.
Joe kisses his forehead. "Coffee?" he offers. Dex laughs, then winces with his newly-realized hangover and buries his face in Joe's chest.
"Coffee."