Chapter Text
A trip to the wilderness seemed like a good idea at the time.
What else do you do when you get toasted like a marshmallow after a run-in with a roadside explosive in Afghanistan, and then while you're in the hospital recovering from said burns, the doctors find cancer? And then after an excruciating burn recovery and several rounds of excruciating chemo and radiation, having your girlfriend break up with you shortly after you pass three years of remission?
It's either AirBnb a cabin in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere, Canada, or hike the Pacific Crest Trail. At least a cabin in the middle of nowhere isn't full of middle-aged divorcées hoping to 'find themselves', à la Wild. In the middle of nowhere, there's no one around to gawk at his face, his ruined skin, his hairless scalp and brow.
Wade just wants to get shit-faced and vape weed near a tree.
And so he finds a perfectly shabby-looking place online, rents it for three weeks, and heads into the wilderness.
Well, heads to the airport, then to the bus, then to the car-rental depot, then to the wilderness, after leaving explicit instructions to his friends to feed and water Al while he's away, as well as a smattering invitations for a New Year's Eve party upon his return to the hellish cesspool that is New York. Because fuck Christmas.
Perhaps he should have taken into consideration the unpredictability of Canada in November, however.
Because it's cold as tits when the plane finally lands, and snowing when he gets off the bus, and by the time he gets halfway to the cabin, he realizes he's made a colossal mistake.
It’s snowing so hard that he can barely see a foot in front of him, let alone the edges of the ditch. The shrill-voiced GPS assures him that he’s still on the road, but at this point, who the fuck knows? He considers turning around, but there’s not a shit motel or even a lit-up building in sight, and he’ll freeze to death if he tries to sleep in the car. Besides, he’s already halfway there, at least there’s a bed at the end of this half, instead of a closed car rental place.
It’s supposed to be a three-and-a-bit-hour drive to the cabin (two-and-a-half max, with the way Wade drives), but more than five have passed by the time he turns into the long driveway where the cabin supposedly sits. The car is damn-near out of gas, but he hadn't so much as seen a sign through the snow for a station on his way up here, and trying to follow the GPS and turn into a claimed side-street to find one seemed like a recipe to get t-boned, or end up upside down in a ditch.
If what was left in the tank could get him to the cabin, he'd siphon something from a neighbouring car or snowblower to get him back down the mountain for food, and more gas.
Wade has always laughed at idiots who turn down the radio to 'see' better, but suddenly his Golden Girls Deep Dive Podcast seems distractingly loud, and the noise alongside the howl of wind and the blinding brightness of headlights against the snow is like a sensory overload as he white-knuckles his way through the snow.
What turning down the radio doesn't do, however, is help him see the patch of black ice that his wheels apparently hit, because suddenly the snow is coming from a different direction than it was before, and his body is thrown against the side of the car and he's spinning, spinning, only coming to an abrupt halt when the side of his car thuds sickeningly against a firm-sounding object.
Fuck.
He presses the gas tentatively, then with more force. The tires whine as they spin, but the car remains still.
"Fuck!"
Still, the cabin is only supposed to be a few metres away. Supposedly.
But the walk feels endless, only bogged down by what now feels like an excessive two duffel bags and a backpack. He feels a sudden, jolting fear that he'll walk right past the cabin and into the woods beyond without being able to see it, and get lost, unable to find his way back to the car. Frozen to death in the cold.
It'd be months before anyone even cared that he was missing. His friends might raise some concern, but Wade was erratic. Unpredictable. PTSD does that to the brain, or so he'd been told. They'll think nothing of an extended absence, they certainly won't raise an alarm. Even if they did, it would be too fucking late, anyways.
He nearly runs right into the side of the cabin, distracted by thoughts of becoming a human ice cube.
It's a slow shuffle along the stone wall, one trembling hand staying in contact with the cabin as he feels his way to the front door, shoulders hunched against the cold.
And ‘cabin’ is a hell of an upsell. It’s a wooden shack with sun-faded gingham curtains in the dirty windows, the rickety door already half-buried by snow. Fingers numb from the cold, it takes some effort to fish his phone out of his pocket and find the email sent by the so-called AirBnb 'host' with the punchcode for the door. His phone has no reception up here, but he'd had the wherewithal to take a screenshot of it beforehand. But when his trembling fingers press into the keypad, there's no telltale electronic chirps, no whirring of a lock retreating. When he tries the handle, the thing won't budge.
"Fuck!"
It was dead.
He could go back to the car, but it would basically be a refrigerator in there, and at the rate this weather was going, he'd be buried inside of it before long. The little fuel left in the tank wouldn't keep him warm for long, and then he'd be trapped up here. He can't call anyone, and if there is anyone else stupid enough to be out here in the middle of fucking no where at this time of year, he can't see two feet in front of him, let alone another cabin.
Wade digs a rock out of the snow and smashes the keypad.
The door, when he finally forces it open, reveals a decrepit old cabin that the AirBnb photos artfully disguised. The place is fucking freezing, somehow, possibly even colder than it is outside.
He flicks the lights. Then again. Then again.
Fucking shit. No power.
They'd warned him he'd have to turn the main water supply valve, fill up the hot water tank when he arrived, but they'd said nothing about electricity. The storm, perhaps, has knocked out the power.
Double fucking shit.
He's protected from the wind here, at least, but there's little else for him. The advertised 'fireplace' is fucking electric, so burning firewood to keep himself warm isn't even possible. A quick scrounge of the place turns up not one metal bowl or bucket or garbage bin. No metal, not even the acrylic tub or cheap sink. Even if he ripped the cabinet doors off their hinges to set alight and risked inhaling burning varnish or whatever shitty chemicals held together the cheap particleboard furniture (hello again, lung cancer), there was not a single container he could start a fire in to keep from burning the house down, even if he had something to light a fire with.
In essence, he was absolutely fucking fucked.
The cabinets, inside, are bare. Like, practically licked clean. He was planning on stopping for groceries on his way here, but the weather had made stopping seem unwise.
Not a morsel of fucking food in the entire fucking house.
He'd just have to wait out the storm.
And so Wade puts on every item of clothing he'd brought that he can, throwing the rest on the lumpy mattress and piling up every blanket and towel and rug he can find on top before crawling under the covers.
Even trapped under a heavy crush of fabric keeping in his body heat, the cold seeps right to the bone.
Wade is going to die here.
There's surely an irony in there, somewhere, that after nearly dying in Afghanistan and then in a hospital from cancer, it's going to be his attempts to 'take time off and recover' or whatever that is going to be the thing that kills him. Nearly dying doing a dangerous thing, nearly dying doing nothing at all, and then actually dying doing the thing that supposed to emotionally heal him.
The cursed trifecta.
It's snowed for another two days without stopping. The wind howls or eases, the sunlight appears and then disappears, but the snow is fucking relentless.
Wade tries, that first morning, to dig his car out, see if he can make it back the way he came in daylight. He gives up, after four hours in the stinging cold.
He knows, as the days pass, he can't go on. The power still hasn't come back on, and he's finished the single bag of M&Ms he had left, picked up from the airport on his flight in, and knew it was far too cold to survive walking back to the nearest town. He'd trekked through the snow for more than an hour hoping to at least get cell reception, and by the time he'd returned back to the cabin, his toes and fingertips had broken out into pins and needles, and blisters began to appear on his feet. He wasn't so much of a city slicker to know what the first stages of frostbite looked like.
The house gets even colder at night, too, and Wade hadn't even slept that last night, pacing around the cabin, doing jumping jacks and squats and push-ups just to try and stay warm. Walking up the next morning seems less and less likely, should he try to lay down and rest in this cold.
And so he gathers up his meagre possessions, puts on every pair of socks he's brought with him, and set off into the freezing cold morning.
The wind and snow are biting, but it's calmer than it's been since he's arrived. Even with trying to keep his phone off as much as possible, it had still died last night without power to charge it, which means he doesn't even have a compass to use to keep track of what direction he's going.
Wade knows it's supremely stupid to wander into the woods with no plan in this weather. But staying means certain death, so.
He'll take whatever shot he has.
Wade has no idea how much time has passed before he finally comes across another cabin. It feels like hours. Maybe days. It's easy to smash the lock on the back door and worm his way inside. This place is more barren than the last, and seems to be some sort of rustic spot, abandoned in the winter months. No food, not even a fireplace, though there's a round little scar on the wood table that may have been caused by a now-absent portable stove. No power, still, and no running water to even hope for a hot tap.
Onto the next.
He hikes through the woods until his extremities are numb, tingling painfully from the cold. Practically barbecued in a roadside explosion and now turning into a human popsicle in the woods.
And the critics say he doesn't have range.
The wind and snow have picked up once again, and not even the towel Wade wraps around his nose and mouth can keep his sore skin from throbbing.
He'd been so angry, back in New York. Angry every time he looked in the mirror, angry at being the unlucky fuck who managed to get both blown up and cancer in one fell swoop. Angry at being so fucking angry all the time, especially when that anger was like a poison to his relationship with Vanessa. How the anger and depression had oscillated, left him feeling adrift. Unfamiliar.
He'd give anything to be back in that stuffy New York apartment now.
The panic is just starting to set in when he finally sees it. It's barely more than a flicker of light through the dense trees, but he's 70% sure it's real and not some cruel figment of his imagination.
But it's enough. Enough to keep his numb feet shuffling forward through the ever-increasing snow. 'It's the hope that kills you' might very well be more than just a turn of phrase.
But it is another cabin that appears amidst the dark trees and blowing snow, and though the light is low and flickering, it's fucking real.
Someone is out here. Surviving. Alive. And most importantly, home.
It takes all his remaining energy to stagger up the shabby porch steps and past the decrepit wood rocking chair that's almost entirely buried beneath the snow. The sagging roof, at least, provides some shelter from the piercing flakes, but does nothing to stop the wind that has whipped up into a fury.
Wade heaves up a heavy arm and slams it against the front door.
Waits.
He lifts his fist and pounds against the door again, then again, and again. Nothing. Not even a stirring inside, at least not that he can hear over the wind.
Wade Winston Wilson is not the crying type, but tears of desperation bubble up and leak from the corners of his eyes. Fuck.
There's nothing on the porch but that shitty rocking chair, but when Wade goes to grab the fucking thing, his frozen fingers refuse to uncurl to even wrap around one spindly leg. With a scream of frustration, he thrusts both forearms under the seat and tosses the entire rickety thing at the dirty window pane. The end of one curved rocker catches the rotting railing of the porch and sends the damned thing off-kilter, and Wade watches, helpless, as it misses the window entirely and slams into the wall before crashing into the snow.
"Fuck," Wade chokes. Sobs. "FUCK!" If he stumbles down those stairs to retrieve the chair, he isn't sure he'll make it back up again. The full-body trembling has stopped, and now he only feels gnawing starvation and exhaustion, like his entire skeleton has turned to lead, like his muscles are liquid. He can barely hold himself upright. Falling against the front door again, he no longer has the strength to even lift his arms. The snow is blowing in with increasing ferocity, and Wade's boots slip, sending him to his knees, his mottled cheek pressed against the wood door.
And maybe he's imagining it, a near-hypothermic hallucination, but it feels...warm. Like just maybe, there's a heater in that cabin and its heat is seeping through the paint-peeling wood of the door.
It would be so easy to sleep. All he wants to do is sleep. To strip his heavy layers and press whatever exposed skin he can into that fleeting warmth emanating from the door. Close his eyes. Rest.
In an instant, Wade is free-falling, the door under his cheek suddenly gone, his body crashing forward as his face slams against the wooden floorboards.
"Jesus, Bub," he hears before the world goes dark. "The fuck happened to you?"
Wade wakes up stark naked in front of a roaring fire, Burt Reynolds-style.
Or rather, he wakes up naked but buried under an ancient plaid comforter in front of a crackling wood stove that's radiating enough heat to make the unscarred patches of skin on his body pool with sweat.
A quick inventory reveals that his fingertips and toes are pale and stiff, the skin hard, but they're still attached to his body and not rotting away, and so he'll fucking take it.
The cabin is...well. Rustic is putting it mildly. There's an aluminum folding chair pulled up next to the wood stove and a literal wooden crate with the faded stamp of an industrial company tattooed on its side. Beyond that, the bed is the only other furniture in the one-room cabin that doesn't include the beat-up kitchen cabinets.
Through the dusty windowpanes, streaks of sunlight fight their way in. It's daylight, then. Hours have passed.
He's starving, but the bed is too warm, too comfortable, for him to rise and try to rummage through the cupboards. Not to mention he's fucking naked, and waltzing across somebody's cabin with his scarred body on display is likely to get him thrown back out into the snow.
The front door opens with such force that it knocks against the cabin wall with a blast of freezing cold air, and a fucking Yeti lumbers its way into the room. Wade nearly yelps in surprise, if whatever shred of his dignity would have allowed it. Toxic masculinity is a bitch.
"Oh my God, the legends are true. Mr. Abominable Snowman, it's an honour to meet you. Mind if I get a photo for National Geographic?"
Even through the thick layers of his heavy winter gear, the man-creature somehow manages to project an acidic irritation. He drops an armful of firewood onto the floor beside the wood stove with a resonating thud and kicks the door closed, shutting out the still-frigid cold that apparently hasn't let up since last night. With a grunt of effort, the guy strips off his gloves then begins to unwrap the scarf from around his face, tug off his hat, until the layers come away and reveal...oh.
He's younger than Wade had assumed. Not all that much older than Wade himself, really. And...not entirely hideous, if you're into that whole rugged, symmetrical, conveniently handsome, sexiest-man-alive, beefy lumberjack sort of thing. Wade resists the urge to hide his own fucked-up silly-putty of a face. Unless he'd gotten to the 'losing his mind and stripping naked' phase of hypothermia last night, this guy had already pulled off his wet clothes and tucked him into bed. Either way, he’s seen a lot more, and a lot worse, than Wade’s face.
"See your sense of humour didn't die, even if you nearly did," the Yeti/Human man grunts, like he's annoyed at the prospect of it. Whether that's Wade's sense of humour or survival, he isn't sure.
"Yeah, sure makes me an unpopular choice to watch the news with. With all due respect, where the fucking shit am I?"
The man grunts again (maybe he's half-Sasquatch, after all?) and shucks off his boots, then his coat, revealing an absolutely disgusting amount of muscle beneath that bulky parka. Despite a flannel plaid shirt and truly dad-ish jeans, Wade's mouth is watering.
"My cabin. The one you threw my chair at last night before you passed out against the front door." The guy gathers up a chunk of firewood with one beefy hand and yanks the stove door open with the other, shoving the splintered log into the heat of the flames. Wade nearly shivers at the warmth that belches out of its depths.
Oh fuck. "Shit, yeah. Sorry about the chair, by the way. The wind was so loud, I didn't think you could hear me knocking. I just...I was supposed to be renting a cabin. I mean, I did rent a cabin. But it was storming so bad when I got here, and my car got stuck. And then the power was out, probably because of the storm, I guess, and the electric keypad wouldn't even work. So I had to break into the place I was supposed to be renting, but there wasn't a fireplace or stove, and there wasn't even anywhere I could start a fire to stay warm without burning the fucking place to the ground, which, yay heat, but then my options for shelter would be limited. And I couldn't dig the car out to take it back into town once the storm let up, and even if I could, the fucking battery died in the cold, and obviously, no electricity in the house to get it charged, so I couldn't get food. I haven't eaten in days. I tried to set some traps and shit to catch animals nearby, but obviously that didn't work. And what kind of fucking cabin in the fucking wilderness doesn't have a fireplace? And so when the storm didn't let up and I couldn't get back down the mountain, I gave up and started walking through the woods trying to find someone. I knew the nearest town was way too far away to walk, but I hoped I could find at least another cabin with a fireplace and hopefully some food. I almost gave up when I saw the light from your windows through the trees. I wouldn't even have known you were here. I mean-"
Throughout all of this, the Yeti has lumbered his way into the little kitchen area and emptied a packet of something into a heavy metal pot before returning with it and an empty bowl and spoon, thrusting the pot into the open mouth of the wood stove, right over the flames.
"You're a fucking idiot."
Wade gapes. "Me?!"
"Fucking assholes from the city, waltzing out here without any survival skills, getting caught in the middle of a fucking blizzard wearing a coat that wouldn't keep you warm even if you burned it for fuel. You're lucky you ain't dead. If I hadn't'a been here, you would be."
"Oh, so I'm not the first city slicker you've rescued from certain death, stripped naked, and thrown into bed?"
Wade might be imagining things, but the Yeti man's ears suddenly look very pink.
"Your clothes were wet and fucking frozen," he snarls. "You were already startin' to show signs of hypothermia, leavin' you in those clothes coulda killed you."
"I assume you're not going to murder me and eat me, then, if you didn't take advantage while you had ample opportunity."
Yeti man runs a hand over his cropped hair, irritated, and Wade can't help but notice how the edges on either side of his head curl upwards, even after the guy scratches at his scalp.
"Keep yappin' and we'll see," he replies gruffly, which is a murderous threat that's pretty quickly undercut by the guy using hem of his flannel shirt to pull the pot out of the wood stove and let the contents slop into the bowl he'd procured earlier. He thrusts it under Wade's nose with a grunt. The contents are thick and alarmingly brown, but it smells better than anything he's ever had inches from his face. Though that might be the hunger talking.
Wade's fingers are still stiff and clumsy from the near-hypothermia, but he manages to navigate the spoon to his mouth, having to suck air in through his teeth when the heat of the stew sears the inside of his mouth.
"Jesus," the Yeti grumbles. "Slow down. You eat like an animal."
"This is the first thing I've eaten in five days," Wade groans, shovelling another burning spoonful into his mouth. "How about you starve for the better part of a week and we'll test your table manners?"
The stew itself is a bit gamey, maybe venison, but it quiets the ravenous hunger that until now has felt like his stomach was digesting itself.
Apparently the strong silent type, the guy seems content to sit quietly as Wade scarfs down the rest of the bowl, practically licking it clean. When Wade finishes, he trades the empty bowl for a glass of water, letting Wade gulp down a few mouthfuls before refilling the stew and letting him go for seconds.
"Thank you," he says in earnest when his gnawing hunger is finally satiated and he's eaten his fill, warm from the inside out. "I mean, for dragging me in from the cold last night. And getting me warm. And feeding me. You know, all of it. I'm...all jokes aside, I would have been a fucking goner if it hadn't been for you, so. Thanks."
Yeti man grunts, what Wade is learning to be his signature sound, and then rises to clean the dishes.
"You can complain about city folk all you like, but you're just as trapped out here in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere as I am," Wade points out, which is a really fucking stupid move, goading the one person keeping him alive. "How'd you end up stuck out here, if you're so tree-savvy?"
"I live here, asshole," the Yeti growls, tossing the dishes onto a towel he's laid down on the counter to dry. "And unlike you, I know how to prepare for the weather."
"You live here all year? Like, alone?"
He tries, he really does, not to let his gaze wander around the barren interior of the cabin. One chair, one crate-slash-coffee-table. A bed and another crate pulled up to its side with a lamp on top. What a depressing fucking place to live. Evidently, Wade does not succeed, because when he meets the guy's gaze again, he's scowling. Oops.
The Yeti glares. "What's it to you?”
Wade holds up his hands in surrender. "Nothing. Just...kinda lonely, isn't it? Took me hours just to find this place, there's nobody else around."
The Yeti tenses, then shrugs, clearly aiming for nonchalant. "Yeah, well. I like the quiet."
Quiet isn't a strong enough word for the utter emptiness that seems to echo through the trees. "I'd go crazy."
"Doesn't seem like that'd be a long journey for you."
Rude.
Wade changes tactics. The further he can get away from this grumpy Yeti, the better. "You got a phone that works, at least? I don't have service up here in the boonies, maybe I can call a...cab, or something? Take me to a motel, or anything that's closer to civilization?"
The fucking Yeti actually snorts at him. "Cab? Here? You'd have as much luck tryin' to find a motel. I don't have a phone, but I got a truck up here. When the weather clears and warms up enough for some of this shit to melt, I'll drive you back to town. Until then, you're stuck here. So shut the fuck up and try not to piss me off."
Wade's many talents include talking and pissing people off, but he isn't about to say that to the only person keeping him alive and warm and fed for the foreseeable future.
So, he salutes, which makes the Yeti roll his eyes. Difficult not to piss him off when literally everything seems to piss him off.
"I'm Wade, by the way. Since we're going to be roomies."
The Yeti raises a brow at him, but after an uncomfortable moment of silence, hauls himself up off the shitty folding chair to offer his bear paw of a hand for Wade to shake.
"Logan."