#fic.c

--

From the cabin they’ve been put up in for orientation, Logan can see Mount Baker out the window. Huge and jagged and looming on the horizon like a tooth or a claw. He knows Mount Baker was a volcano. Is still a volcano. Whatever. He’s got all sorts of knowledge. 

“Now,” says the leader, who is nice enough apart from how he insists on being called Ranger Rossi like the alliteration isn’t objectively fucking hilarious, “We’re not sending you all off on your own this early, obviously. Orientation will be over in a week, and you probably won’t need me or Hinch breathing down your necks after that.”

Hinch, the other lead, nods agreeably. He can talk a lot, but he’s good at reading a room, Logan’s figured out. Good at making conversational space or letting Alex—sorry, Ranger Rossi—take the lead. 

“What we’ll do is pair you off,” Hinch says. “Three groups of two spread out at the camps for ten days before we all come back here for debrief.”

“Park’s not all that busy this time of year,” Rossi says, clearing his throat like Hinch has interrupted him. “So you’re just going to be getting your feet under you for the next month before the busy season picks up. You’ll all be fine by then.” He lifts both eyebrows, as if to say or else, or maybe probably not, though.

“Me or Alex will swing by your camps a couple of times just to check in,” Hinch says, and Rossi mutters something under his breath that Hinch ignores entirely. “Make sure you haven’t fallen into a sinkhole or something.”

There’s a pregnant pause. The kid to Logan’s right raises his hand like they’re in grade school.

“Speak, Siegel,” Rossi snaps. 

“Has that happened before?”

“Has what happened before?”

Siegel—Nolan, Logan thinks—ducks his head and goes extremely pink around the back of the neck. “Someone falling into a sinkhole.”

Hinch laughs winningly. “Oh, not in years.”

“Well,” Rossi cuts in. “Not in year.”

“—and anyway, he didn’t die,” Hinch finishes. “He was fine. His leg healed up a-okay.”

--

“I like nature,” Logan says lamely. He does, to be fair. “I don’t get how you think this is the worst.”

“You’ll be in like, the middle of nowhere,” Alex says as Logan turns back to rolling up his underwear. “Pretty much entirely alone.” He’s approaching, now, bare feet sticking and unsticking to the hardwood. “What if there’s a Bigfoot?”

Logan barks out a laugh. “A Bigfoot, dude?”

“Several Bigfoots. A whole army of Bigfeet.” 

“What’s wrong with you,” Logan asks. He knows what’s wrong with him—he’s Alex. This is just how he is. 

Alex sits down on the floor next to him so that their knees are touching. He’s gone quiet, which always makes Logan more nervous than the alternative.

“I just worry,” Alex says, finally. It comes out sticky and sharp, like freshly varnished wood. Like it’d been difficult to say at all. 

“I’m not going to get murdered,” Logan says, because he’s not. Probably. “Or like, eaten. By Bigfeet.”

Alex jabs at his knee with a knobbly toe. Logan grabs it instinctively, closes his hand around Alex’s cold foot. 

“Not like I’m not getting ate by Bigfoot on the regular, anyway,” he adds, in a burst of probably mania-based confidence. 

Alex laughs, and gets up on his knees, and then turns to settle himself across Logan’s lap. Straddles him, tan thighs spread wide. 

“Maybe Bigfoot’s going to miss eating you,” Alex says. It sounds goofier than it does sexy, but it still makes Logan’s spine shiver like windchimes. 

“Maybe I’m going to miss Bigfoot,” Logan says, ducking his head so he can tuck his reddening face into Alex’s armpit. He is going to miss him. “But it’s only for a few months, dude, and like—” 

He pauses, buries his face deeper into where it’s warm and soft and smells like home. He doesn’t want to go all that badly. He’d rather stay in England, with Alex. Even if it’s pissing rain more often than not, cloud-cover like a threadbare duvet over the London sky, the apartment is always warm. The apartment is always safe and sunshiney. 

“I’ll come back,” Logan says eventually. You couldn’t keep me away if you tried.

“I know you will,” Alex says. How he manages to keep his voice so even when Logan’s about a millisecond away from bursting into tears, he’ll never know.

Alex’s big hands wrap around the back of Logan’s head, tug him away, force him to look. Alex’s big hands hold him still when Alex dips to kiss him, all soft-plush mouth and wet-warm tongue. 

“We’ll have to have a final feast,” Alex says, sighing dramatically. “Gotta feed your Bigfoot.” 

Logan dumps Alex onto his back, into the pile of mostly-folded clothes, and climbs over top of him. “It’s the humane thing to do,” he says, already panting as he strips off his shirt.

--

“Stay in the sleeping bag,” Kyle tells him, so he does.

Logan stays perfectly still, in the pitch dark. He doesn’t move even a little—the sleeping bag is loud, rustly fabric like a siren in the silence. He can hear Kyle moving. He can hear Kyle breathing, carefully measured, coming shallow and laboured as hard as he’s trying to keep it level. 

There’s something out in the woods. 

The things that they talked about in orientation, Logan thinks absurdly—the things that Pato told them weren’t real but were local legends, folklore specific to the national park and the whole of the PNW. The cryptids he’d promised weren’t a concern, not even a little. That’s what’s out there. Logan’s never been more sure of anything in his life.

”Kyle,” he whispers, quiet as he can while still managing to be heard. “Dude. Come back.”

He hears Kyle hesitate. He can’t be all that far across the cabin. There’s no moon tonight; the stars cast so little light it’s like they’re not even there, even though Logan’s never seen so many stars in his life.

”Kyle,” he says more urgently. 

Kyle comes shuffling back across the floor. He moves the way a child does, scared, scampering up the stairs out of a dark living room where everything has teeth and a throat to open up and swallow you whole. He wriggles back into his sleeping bag, right next to Logan. He wriggles closer, until their sleeping bags are touching. 

“There’s something out there,” Kyle says. Even at a whisper Logan hears his voice shake. Even in the dark, just with the light from the stars and the red glow of the clock across the room, Kyle’s so close that Logan can see the blotchy shapes of his freckles. 

“Yeah,” Logan agrees. 

They go quiet. They’re huddled so close together that when they breathe their sleeping bags brush, rustling, a damning sound like blood in the water. 

“Logan—“