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It’s cold out here. It’s been cold out here for a long while now, and it doesn’t look to be stopping anytime soon. It’s the opposite of what Phil once thought was bound to happen, but the earth stretches and bends in her own ways, and the clouds that puddle in the sky day in and day out are proof of that. He squats down near the edge of the pool, hips creaking a little in protest. The breath that spits out the end of his mask puffs out over his vision. He raises the hammer over his head and brings it down on the ice with a swift crack.
The ice splits in a satisfying six-sided star and Phil knocks some of the larger pieces aside to grab the rope that’s been freed from the icy grip of the pool. He grips it tight and begins reeling it up towards the bank until he holds in his hands a wriggling net, containing a few, slim orange fish. He watches them wriggle for a moment on the ground in front of him, then bites his tongue and raises his hammer again.
It’s the worst bit of it, he does this nearly every morning but that’s still the bit that makes him feel a bit woozy underneath the plastic layer separating him from this frosted world. The first time he’d accidentally dropped the fish back into the pond. The second time he’d slammed the hammer down on his own pinky toe and by the time he finished panicking about a possible broken foot the fish were already dead. By the fourth or fifth time he’d been able to kill them with some accuracy, and he hoped, some humanity, and by now he was a fairly certified humane fish-executioner.
It was only when he heard a crack behind him that he really did lose his humane fish-execution license, losing his head completely and slamming the hammer into the tail of the larger orange fish and falling back onto his ass at the same time. He spun to stand up and face the tree-line behind him, his back foot jutting back to step on the flailing body of the orange fish, fully dooming any chance at re-licensing as the fish was promptly crushed beneath his heel and being forced to windmill his hammer-holding arm in order to stay standing.
There’s a man standing at the edge of the tree-line. He’s tall, and thin, and his face is hidden beneath a thick, black mask that covers all but his eyes. He stands frozen still, as frozen as Phil is now that he’s regained footing on the icy bank of the pond, and for a long, eternal moment Phil has no idea what to do. Then the man stumbles, and falls forwards and then Phil is rushing towards the trees and the man falls, hard into Phil’s chest.
The inside of the cabin is lit by a low, flicking blue fire in the corner. Phil lit the stick greedily, stupidly, maybe, but it casts a low warmth over the bed, which Phil has dragged right in front of the fireplace. Dan is pale under the mask, and his face is lined with patchy stubble, and the rose spattered across his cheeks only feels like fever under Phil’s shaky touch.
He goes back outside to retrieve the fish, smushed and frozen hard again. He sits and pushes his stake into the ice and replaces the net, securing it onto the bank. He does this quickly, glancing back at the cabin every few seconds.
He cleans the fish sitting cross-legged on the rug next to the bed, the fire hot against his back. His heart is beating hard against his chest, had been for nearly an hour now. He looks towards Dan again, who is so still in the bed that Phil stands and crosses the room to grab the glass globe off of the shelf.
There wasn't anyone in the cabin when they had first found it, but it was full of — well, evidence that people had been there recently. Most of the rotten food they had buried in the back, some half-hope of a compost pile if the temperature ever rose above freezing. The clothes, most of them had fallen to dust and tatters, and it was too small for them anyways. The toys disturbed them both, but Dan especially. Phil had wanted to bury them too, but Dan stopped him, stashing them in a box in the back of the closet. Phil had caught him a few times, turning the stuffed bear and train set over and over in his hands, a strange faraway look on his face.
The fishbowl they had found on the nightstand in the bedroom, frozen over with the blue fish still inside.
"It was probably already dead," Dan had said. "Floating up on the top like that."
"Is that really any better?" Phil asked. "Poor Norman 2."
"Norman 2? Really?"
There was a cracked smile on Dan's face that warmed Phil's chest, dead fish and all. They buried it in the woods, Phil arranging a clump of cracked and dead branches around the tiny grave.
"I still think we should've eaten it," Dan said later.
Phil shrugged.
"I feel like beta fish are poisonous, right? Besides, that would've been like, half a bite each."
They kept the empty fishbowl, though, up high on the shelf. Phil grabs it now, crossing back over to the bed in three long strides, and leans over Dan's face. His hair has grown long in the time since he's been gone, falling over his eyebrows.
A moment, and then the glass softly fogs with Dan's exhale. Phil feels a surge of relief, sitting back down on the rug. He spends the night there, awake. He bounces between cleaning fish and stoking the fire, pausing every few minutes to once again hold the fishbowl up to Dan's lips, each time being greeted with the beautiful curls of fog, allowing him a few more minutes of respite.
It's just after sunrise when Dan wakes. He blinks his eyes open slowly and Phil, once again leaning over the bed, puts the fishbowl down at once and leans forward. Dan blinks a few more times, and then lifts one hand to Phil's face, tracing over the scraggly beard that has cropped up over the past few weeks.
"Hi," Phil says, very softly. "You scared me."
Dan opens his mouth and closes it again, clearing his throat. Phil reaches down to the cup of water next to the bed, pushing it towards Dan's lips. He drinks, most of the water spilling onto his neck but for the first time in so long Phil doesn't even care about the waste.
"We had a fight," he says.
His voice is raspy. Phil nods, slowly.
"You left me," Phil says.
Dan squeezes his eyes closed.
"I came back," he says.
"Yeah," Phil says. "Yeah, you did."
"Tried to come sooner," Dan says. "It was cold."
"Yeah," Phil says, the end of the word catching in his throat. He clears it, then tries again.
"Where did you go?"
Dan takes a deep breath, then exhales.
"Everywhere," he says. "Felt like it anyways. Everywhere around here."
"So did you find anything?"
Dan blinks his eyes open, and his gaze drifts upwards, not meeting Phil's eyes.
"Not really," he says. "Nothing as good as here. You were right."
Phil says nothing to this.
"I tried to come back sooner," Dan says again. "I got lost in the forest. There was a storm. Everything froze over again."
"I know," Phil says. "The windows iced up on the inside."
"That's all I was thinking about," Dan says. "This house. The fish. You."
"Dan —"
"I'm sorry," Dan says quietly.
Phil leans down, plants his lips firmly against Dan's. They're both chapped, Dan tastes like stale breath and firesmoke and the angle is all wrong but for one long moment it's the best kiss Phil has ever had.
At some point they break apart, and Phil suddenly feels the ache in his knees from where they press against the hard floor through the tattered rug.
"It's okay," Phil says. "You came back. And now we know. Now we stay here."
A gust of wind rattles the window. The grey light is creeping up across the room.
Dan's eyes drift over towards the fireplace, still smouldering.
"Shouldn't use the firestick," he says.
"It was a special occasion," Phil replies. "You were pretty much an entire snowman when I found you."
Dan smiles, and then his gaze softens again. Phil's eyebrows furrow slightly, then he starts to lift the fishbowl back up.
"S'okay," Dan says. "Just melting."
"What?" Phil asks, brushing back the fringe from Dan's forehead and pressing the back of his hand across it. It's sweaty, but less hot than before.
"You said I was a snowman," Dan says sleepily, like it's obvious what Phil should be understanding. "In front of the fireplace."
Phil smiles, and it feels like his face is cracking apart.
"Okay, Frosty," he says, twirling a lock of Dan's hair through his fingers. "You go to sleep. I'll make sure you don't melt."
"Should sleep too."
"Hmm?"
"You should sleep too."
Dan's hand pushes up out of the blankets and finds Phil's, their fingers intertwining.
"I will," Phil says. "Don't worry."
Phil glances around the small cabin, at the quilted blankets hanging over the windows, the coats and socks strewn around the floor. The bent twig in the vase that Dan always referred to as "the houseplant" and pretended to berate Phil for not watering. The couch with its squished and mismatched cushions, the weird pig statue that Phil found in the closet and that Dan has an irrational hatred towards. It's not much — nothing compared to what used to make up their world. But with Dan, it's more than enough.
"'M not worried," Dan says, his voice barely audible over the crackling of the fire. "I'm home."