Work Text:
The static crackled through the emergency radio, spitting out fragments of news that felt more like a dystopian movie script than reality. Los Angeles, usually bathed in perpetual sunshine, was now under a deluge of biblical rain. Reports were flooding in of unprecedented storms sweeping the globe, temperatures plummeting at an alarming rate.
Matt, cradling his mobile in his Venice house, felt a knot of dread tighten in his stomach. He’d just wrapped up a recording session at the studio earlier, the infectious beats of his next track still ringing in his ears when the warnings had started, blaring out over LA, the playful confidence of his former job a million miles away, replaced by a primal fear.
His first thought, sharper than the icy wind howling outside his window these days, was Alex.
Alex, his friend, his person, his partner - was in Vancouver, working on his own music, a thousand miles north and seemingly a world away. They were more than just collaborators; their careers and personal lives intertwining into each other’s like their ridiculous inside jokes they’d had since they’d met almost a decade ago. He can still remember looking at his phone, fingers clumsy with a sudden chill, and trying to call Alex several times, panic clawing at him like a lion in a cage.
Static. He tried again. Nothing. Just the hollow, echoing silence of a deadline. He tried a few more times, his Mom, friends, and Alex again, each more desperate than the last, until a blizzard of biblical proportions, unleashed by a climate catastrophe, swallowed the world whole in a matter of days and stopped any signal except some TV ones getting through.
Days blurred into a chaotic mess of power outages and dwindling supplies. LA, used to earthquakes and wildfires, was utterly paralyzed by the cold and ice. They eventually got the radios working as well and the broadcast system, but these days, a few months after the disaster had started, it was no good for anything but spilling mindless warnings that Matt drunkenly had drowned out as he went through his liquor cabinet in despair. You couldn’t hear them over the snow anyway, even when you vented outside to what was left, short no matter where you went within the main LA area. People were short as well, frozen corpses littering the streets and cars iced over. He just wished he was home, back in Minnesota.
He hopes his Mom is okay, all on her own. He hopes she’s still alive as he won’t think of any other possibility otherwise. Same with his friends, he hopes they’re alive too, having no eway of contacting anyone outside - but Alex is what his brain focused on as the weeks went back and it just got worse, life altering and terrifying as people learned to cope with the new.
He wouldn’t admit this to anyone, but he had watched the news obsessively because of him, desperately searching for any information about places to see if some people made it out, but if he was honest with himself, it was mostly for Vancouver. The reports were grim. The northern Pacific coast was being hit the hardest it seemed. British Columbia and other areas used to large patches of snowfall before, were objectively swallowed whole, temperatures plunging to unimaginable lows and the words “polar vortex” and “ice age” were being bandied about with increasing frequency, each syllable a hammer blow to his chest before he was forced to turn it off, unable to look at the destruction anymore.
It was only after a few months after the world ended, that a chilling realization seeped into Matt’s bones not from the weather as he stared at the completely grey sky, the last sip of Tito burning it’s way dow his throat. He might never see Alex again. The thought was a slow-burning one, but when it hit, it produced a physical ache, a void in his chest like the world had become that threatened to swallow him whole.
He runs inside from his balcony, like he’s trying to escape it as much as the cold, but he doesn’t make it far enough, slumping onto his couch as he shakes with sobs, the vibrant colours of his apartment suddenly muted and the laughter from old videos and making shitty music with Alex echoing like ghosts.
He was truly alone, stranded in a city succumbing to the cold, with no way to know if his best friend (and so, so much more) was even alive. He couldn’t live like this. He wouldn’t live like this. He had to do something.
People, normal and strangers, implored him to stay put, at first. “It’s suicide, Matt-” Someone had pleaded, their voice tight with worry and eyes boring right through him as if he’d turned into a madman. “you’ll freeze to death out there.”
They painted grim pictures of frostbite, missing people, hypothermia, starvation. They spoke of the brutal reality of a world gone to shit, but their words were lost on him and after a while, they deemed him insane and left him be. So what if he was? He wasn’t the only one and he doubted he was the last one to have done what he was about to do, so he didn’t care if they called him crazy or worse.
He couldn't live with the possibility that he hadn’t tried everything.
He’d spent his life crafting lyrics about love, about the absurd, about finding joy in the mundane. This wasn’t a song, however, that he could just make and release and be at peace with, do a tour and get over. This was real, life or death and fuck it, he needed to know.
He needed to know if the man he was kinda-ass-over-heels-in-love-with, was dead.
He scavenged what he could so he wouldn’t have to ask people and listen to them talk to him as if he was an infant, something he used to do in Minnesota when he was a teen after his Dad passed away in a different context – extra thermal gear, preserved and canned food, a battered axe for protection that he barely knew how to use and a rudimentary map from someone who considered him foolish, but brave of everything around the I-5 (his best way of getting to BC despite all odds) that was more than likely hopelessly outdated, showing roads now buried under mountains of snow and pockets of civilization that had either frozen or hopefully moved on. He didn’t know which of the two he would have preferred.
He left his former home for what could possibly be the last time somewhere in May when it was supposed to be spring, under the eerie glow of a city frozen in its tracks. The streets were eerily silent, coated in a thick layer of ice, abandoned cars like frozen monuments lining the roads and the cold air bit at his exposed skin where he couldn’t cover it up like where his gloves met his wrists and stuff like that, raw and brutal.
Southern California, once brown and dry and full of life, was now a frozen wasteland, palm trees were encased in ice, their fronds brittle and snapping in the frigid wind, houses buried under snow drifts, ghostly outlines in the white expanse that guided his way to the highway.
He took one last look at the place he’d called home for so many years, before he turned and started walking north, a compass needle leading the way.
Days bled into nights, he can remember walking for so long, that he sometimes forgot to sleep, wandering streets and roads for hours without much thought.
The initial days were manageable, his adrenaline masking the biting cold. He followed what he thought were highways, now frozen rivers of white, his breath frost-forming on his beard as the sun, a pale, weak disc in the sky, offered little warmth.
It tried it’s best, obviously, but the cold was constant, relentless, seeping into his bones just like others, numbing his fingers and toes. Hunger also gnawed at his stomach, his meagre rations dwindling faster than he’d anticipated. He developed a routine: walk until exhausted, collapse, eat what little he had, try to sleep, then repeat. He also scavenged for firewood where he could, building small, smoky fires in sheltered spots, their warmth fleeting against the overwhelming cold as he tried his best to remember what the fuck he was doing this for.
Alex. he was doing this, in some vain, hope filled attempt, to get to Alex.
His body ached, his muscles screamed in protest, and his will faltered. He would stumble, fall into the snow, and lie there for a moment, the frigid ground pressing against him, the temptation to just give up, to let the cold take him, almost overwhelming - but then he’d get back up, because he had to and start all over again until the next time.
There were moments, countless moments, where he had found others. Survivors like him, trying to make their way in the world. They would offer him whatever food they had left, some shelter and all would gawk at him when he said where he was going - but none of them stopped him. It’s not like he would have, had they done so anyway. The landscape had shifted now, the frozen desert he’d passed through giving way to weather worthy of being near the border, the highway marker for Seattle appearing in his line of vision as it crossed over into the first days of June giving him hope.
Washington. So close. He was so fucking close. All the abandoned cars, skeletal buildings and occasional bodies frozen in their last moments of terror didn’t matter to him anymore. Missing his mother, his friends and his family. All the mattered was crossing the border and making it to Vancouver somehow. Seeing Alex’s eyes meet with his.
Whatever it takes.
He didn’t believe it, when he finally made it.
He couldn’t let himself believe, not back then. Time itself had frozen, becoming nothing but a construct to his dumb Midwestern brain as he moved ahead, the seemingly endless white and grey landscape weighing heavily on his mind. He’d refuelled in Seattle - sleeping for a couple of nights in a hostel, stealing food, checking himself for damage.
He swears he cried when he crossed the border - but doesn’t really know as his tears had frozen off before he could care for them. It’s abandoned, like everything else and he guesses he won’t find much help here, but in the distance, through the swirling snow, there’s a faint outline, a cluster of buildings, huddled together against the white expanse.
Vancouver International Airport - stark against the snow. A sight for Matt’s eyes that makes him weak at the knees, his body shaking as he stumbles through the snow in order to be able to press a covered hand to one of the glass windows that is dark and oppressive, just like everywhere else, only now, it held so much hope.
Matt knows where he is. He knows the way out of here. The way out.
First things first, he knew Alex lived in North Vancouver. While he wasn’t the greatest with navigation, he’d been there and given the address of Alex’s parents' place to Uber drivers enough times that he vaguely knew get there from the airport, or at least when he was paying attention, knew how to get a short chunk of the way. He would just have to trust that for now, as it was all he had. He navigated the frozen streets, his progress agonizingly slow through the deep snow. The city that Alex once loved, that he grew to love with him the more Alex took him back to it despite its problems, was a graveyard.
He just hoped Alex wasn’t a part of what was left.
As he climbed a hill to reach the top of it, Matt could see another colony in the distance, all huddled around soup bowls and cars just in a group, restless against the biting wind. His stomach growled, but he really didn’t want to intrude, too close to seeing Alex to care about things like food and staying uptight. He still found himself stumbling towards it, a heap of frozen rags, his legs heavy, his breath ragged.
He doesn’t know what he'd expected, given it looks like a soup kitchen where he can be fed and rest and nothing more than that, but his heart stops when he sees a figure at the helm of it, talking to people that surround him like the leader of a cult. All it takes is for Matt’s eyes to catch the grey streak in the man’s hair under his beanie and earmuffs and his legs fold.
“Alex?” The name was barely audible, a question and a plea all in one, but it seemed that the figure, Alex, fuck Alex, hears him, as there was a moment of stunned silence, and then, a gasp, a choked sob. “Matt?”
Matt pushed himself up, legs unstable and wet from falling - but it didn’t matter as a body rushes to cling onto him, making him fall on his ass in the snow, the melting snowflakes on his eyelashes rubbing against the fabric of a hoodie and jacket is so, so warm.
“Matt-” Alex’s voice is against his ear, crackling and upset and disbelieving as he clings to him like he’ll disappear into the wind if he lets go, trembling, his own tears soaking into Matt’s worn jacket. “You’re here, you fucking- how the hell did you even…?”
“I love you.” Matt mumbled, his slurred voice thick with emotion. He pulled back slightly, looking at Alex’s face, his eyes red-rimmed but shining with relief, though he was practically slumped on Alex’s form despite being a foot or so taller, practically falling apart now he’d stopped moving. “I love you so fucking much.”
“Shh- save your strength.” Someone, Alex’s father it seemed, bless the man, was wrapping him in a thick blanket as he finally succumbed to exhaustion, Alex leading his lumbering form into a chair as Matt’s head swam "I had to know.” His voice was soft, rough from the wind biting at his lips and cheeks from crying. “I thought...I needed to know if I'd lost you."
“You could have died, you stupid idiot!” Alex’s lip trembles and Matt uses his thumb to wipe away a warm tear from under Alex’s glasses as someone passes them more soup, Alex already cracking open the lid and feeding him a few spoonfuls against his chapped lips before he can protest, the warmth pooling in his abdomen as it does his heart as Alex looks at him like he holds the answers of the universe. “How the hell did you get here from California?”
“I-5.” Matt says simply, somehow finding the ability to shrug his shoulders, like it means nothing.
“Matthew fucking Hauri-” Alex looked at him in disbelief, awe tinged in his features and fear creeping in straight after as Matt’s shaky hand snagged his free one and brought it up to his lips to kiss, feeling Alex’s knuckles trembling under his own.
“I love you.” He said again, not caring who heard them as he looked into Alex’s eyes, half-baked and completely spent. “So fucking much.”
Alex stared at him, his eyes searching Matt’s face, drinking in every line of exhaustion, every hint of chapped skin, every fleck of snow still clinging to him. The environment around them seemed to fade at that moment, the gentle murmur of people in the background, the fires burning around them, all blurring into a soft hum as Alex just wordlessly reached out and held him, grounding him. "I love you too, you crazy bastard," he whispered, his voice raw with emotion. "I thought I'd lost you forever."
“Too fucking stubborn for that-” Matt had to quip despite feeling like he would just kneel over and die alone somewhere. He was still half convinced that was the case, but Alex and this place and these people felt real, so he hoped to god it was.
"Rest-" Alex murmured, shushing him before he could say anymore and pressing a kiss to his icy forehead. "We can talk when you're feeling better.”
Matt just gave up fighting it and nodded, his eyes already drifting closed as the heat he’d craved for so long since this all started seeped into everything on his person. All that mattered was that he was with Alex.
That he had made it. That they were together again.
That was all he cared about.