Chapter Text
There was no denying it—Ian was lost. Really, really lost.
He’d been lost since before he left Chicago.
It had been weeks now since he last saw the city he had called home for his entire life. Weeks since he sat at his family’s kitchen table, surrounded by his siblings, all chattering at once about work and school and relationships as Ian quietly spooned burnt, leftover casserole onto his chipped plate. He had felt lost then, too, with nothing to contribute to their lives beyond the occasional agreeable hum. That, and a regular excuse to borrow the neighbor’s car for endless trips to the psychiatrist, sitting silent and alone in the back seat like a prisoner being carted off to jail.
That was always what it felt like, at least.
He remembered when he had a life of his own, before his diagnosis. He had been consumed by his goals, driven by a need to prove himself, to step out of the shadows cast by his family name and the genius brother that was supposed to pull them all up on his apron strings. And he was making it, he really was. Between JROTC and after-school jobs, he was contributing to his family and to his dreams, and it all seemed so incredibly possible. So possible that he had gone for it before he should, run off to boot camp on a whim and a prayer with his brother’s name in his pocket, the lie barely registering behind the knowledge that he could do anything. He could make the life he yearned for a reality.
Until it had all come crashing down in the fuselage of a stolen helicopter, his hopes snapped in pieces like the rotor blade against the unforgiving ground.
They were all so cautious with him, after that. It’s the disease, he heard them say behind closed doors when they thought he couldn’t hear them, like they had forgotten just how thin the walls were in their old, rickety house. The one that mom—that Monica—had. The one that made her crazy, they didn’t say, but Ian heard it anyway in the way their voices stayed soft and quiet in his presence. So careful not to set him off that even Lip let him get away with being an asshole, to the point where it was easier to just say nothing at all. He was a stranger in his own home, an unexpected guest, and it felt more wrong than any of the drugs the doctors tried to give him.
He hadn’t believed them, then, any of them. He was convinced that everything would work out if they would just let him try again, let him start over where he had left off.
Then he came to one morning with a baseball bat in his hand and his baby sister’s terrified face in front of him, and put himself on the train to the hospital without even getting dressed.
Things had gotten better after that, he supposed. They told him he was stable, that as long as he kept taking his meds and taking care of himself, things would go back to normal soon enough. But Ian didn’t know what normal was anymore.
His boyfriend Caleb, the one he had met in the waiting room when he first admitted himself almost a year ago, the one that had sat next to him in his city-issued uniform and kept him company until his name was called, kept telling him he just needed to find a purpose. That he needed to find himself, like he was just lost, like the absence of anything real in his life was just a consequence of not knowing where he was. Who he was.
“Come on, Ian, don’t you want to do something with your life?” he’d asked one late evening as they lounged around his studio apartment. They’d just come from an exhibition of local artists where Caleb’s work was displayed front and center, some metal monstrosity twisted into the vague outline of a human head, rusted spikes sticking out from a mess of broken gears and springs suspended in its hollow core.
Broken it said on the nameplate screwed to the pedestal, and Ian had lied when Caleb asked him what he thought of it.
“I am doing something,” he mumbled into his drink. Just a cola in a fancy glass, moisture beading the side and dripping cool against his hand. He’d had his one designated drink at the party, some watered down cocktail he hadn’t asked for but that Caleb brought him anyway to coax him away from the wall and onto his arm.
“Watching your kid brother doesn’t count, Ian,” Caleb had rebutted. “Not when someone else is always there watching you, too.”
And Ian knew that’s what they were doing, Lip and Fiona and even Debbie, when they brought Liam to him every morning. They’d say they were going out, but always lingered in the kitchen until someone else was home. He knew they’d never leave him alone with Liam again, not after he’d taken him downtown on a manic high and left him in the arms of a stranger on the L train.
But it still hurt to hear someone else say it.
“What do I do then?” he’d asked quietly instead. “What do the others do, the ones you have to bring in?” He fiddled with the stem of his glass, watched the bubbles move inside it. He wished he was one of them; they always knew where to go, and their only path went up.
“I don’t know, Ian,” Caleb sighed, grabbing the glass from his hand before he could tilt it too far and splash the brown liquid on the white wingback chair. “But why don’t you start by getting out of your family’s house a little more?”
“I love my family,” Ian started, but a heavy hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“They’re holding you back,” Caleb told him. It was probably meant to be gentle, but it sounded more like an accusation to Ian’s tired ears. He’d heard it before, every day since his meds had evened out and Caleb had started pushing him to commit to some new path he couldn’t see.
“You’re not a child, Ian, so stop acting like one,” he continued. “Just…” Caleb cut off long enough to move his hand from Ian’s shoulder to his hair, pushing it back with strong fingers until Ian met his eyes. “Do something, Ian,” he pleaded. “Take a walk, go all eat pray love on me if you have to, but you’ve gotta get out of this funk. You’ve gotta fix yourself.”
Fix himself. Like it was so easy. Like he hadn’t inspired Caleb to make a sculpture that showed just how useless the concept was.
“Yeah,” he’d agreed then, morose. He couldn’t even hold Caleb’s gaze, eyes falling to the floor as soon he let them, restless fingers picking at the fabric of the cushion under him. “I’ll start tomorrow.”
The next day, he had packed a bag and gotten on the first train out of the city, headed to anywhere people didn’t know he was broken, and he hadn’t looked back.
Until now.
It was his own fault, of course, that he was lost again. Not that he ever hadn’t been. He’d fallen in with some ardent hikers a few days after he fled the city, when he was moving from one rail line to the next through towns as old and varied as his own family’s history. They were confident, and friendly, and knew exactly where they were going, and Ian figured he might as well take that walk now.
He’d followed them through the state forests of Illinois, across the border into Missouri, and back again past the lurking suburbs of Chicago and to the open, rolling hills of southern Indiana, where they left him. He had been living his life with them, learning and trying to grow, but they had only been taking a break from theirs. They headed back to college and work and responsibility, and he was left idling, left again with no track to follow.
That was how he had ended up here, alone in the woods in goddamn middle-of-nowhere Indiana, trying desperately to get back to civilization.
There had been warnings printed on every sign and trail marker on his way in, DO NOT LEAVE THE PATH. He just hadn’t cared. He had never been great at following directions—aside from his diagnosis, that was the real reason he was here in the first place, and not still at boot camp where orders were more common than flies.
So he had forged his own way through the undergrowth, eager to leave behind the world and all his failures for the length of the afternoon.
But then afternoon had turned to evening, had turned to dusk, and he lost track completely of where he was and where he had been. His pack held a canteen, an energy bar, some old clothes, and a month’s worth of meds, but none of that would do him any good out here.
And of course, his phone had been lost when he accidentally dropped it in a lake a few days back when Fiona’s name popped up on the screen for the millionth time since he left.
Not that it would have done much good out here, under the trees.
Staring up toward the canopy, where the sky was just a few specks of dark blue between branches and leaves and vines, Ian was struck with the sudden desire to climb.
Movement was key, he reminded himself, harkening back to his days of survival training before his life had gone to pieces. And so far, walking had done jack shit for him. He stuck to that thought as he slipped off his backpack and rested it against the base of a sturdy-looking oak with thick, low branches, pretending that there was logic in his actions.
Pretending he had a reason to go up toward the stars when everyone kept telling him he needed to keep his feet on the ground, now.
He hoisted himself up onto the closest branch, landing on his stomach and swinging his legs up and over. Standing, he stepped easily along the almost bare wood toward the trunk, where he braced himself with a hand as he considered his next move.
A few minutes later and halfway up, he started to regret his decision. The branches were getting smaller and denser as he went, and it was getting harder to squeeze his not inconsiderable body between them. Not to mention the way each branch was thinner than the last, swaying under his weight and bending in his already bruised, torn hands.
He was nearly there, though. And even at his worst, no one had ever called Ian Gallagher undetermined. So he pushed on regardless, until his head finally broke past the leafy barrier and up into the late evening sky.
His breath caught in his throat. It was beautiful.
There was nothing like this back home. In the city, it was all skyscrapers and smog and light pollution, rarely a star in sight. Even at the house, far from the bustle and bright lights of downtown, the smoke from the factories usually hid the night sky.
Out here, the only light came from the quickly waning sun, sending hues of orange and pink through the sky under the encroaching white specks of the stars.
Ian stared for a long moment, until the light shifted again and he realized that he was up a tree, at dusk, with not a clue what to do next.
He still had some instincts, at least, he was pleased to realize through the fog that had been plaguing his mind. While he may not have had the best reasons for climbing so high, now that he was here he knew to look out, over the trees, for some sign of where he might find safety.
Unfortunately, those instincts were rather useless when the trees stretched out for over a mile in every direction.
Ian swallowed as he cast his eyes around again. He didn’t even remember coming this far into the forest, much less which direction he had started from. There should have been some evidence of the trail he had left behind, a thinning of the trees in a line along it, but if there was it was too far to make out.
Finally, he caught sight of one promising possibility; maybe half a mile beyond him, a slight break in the treeline revealed what seemed to be a small clearing. And maybe, if he squinted hard enough, he could just make out some sort of structure there.
He leaned out from the trunk to get a better glimpse, bringing one hand up to block the dying sun.
Then a voice called out from below him.
“What the fuck are you doin’?” it asked, and it surprised Ian so much that when he looked down, his hand came free of the branch he had been clenching to stay upright. He grabbed uselessly for another as his body tilted back, but to no avail, too slow to grab anything but twigs and leaves as he fell.
He crashed down with a yelp, taking the weaker branches with him and gathering what he knew would become quite the assortment of painful bruises and scrapes as he bounced off the rest. He had just enough time to hope that one of the denser spots would catch him, but with the assistance of gravity, going down proved much easier than climbing up.
He landed with a thwack in the dirt under the tree, and lay there with eyes closed, groaning.
“Impressive,” came the dry voice that had startled him and caused his misfortune. Well, his most recent misfortune.
Ian managed to open his eyes a slit, moaning again at the pain the movement caused him. His vision was blurry, and it was even darker here on the forest floor than it was above the canopy, but he could just make out the shape of a man leaning over him.
He blinked, long and slow, and looked again. Because injured or not, crazy or not, he knew a beautiful man when he saw one.
The stranger’s eyes were blue and piercing in a pale, smooth face, the barest hint of dark stubble lining his jaw. He was casting those eyes over Ian’s sprawled body, probably checking for obvious damage, so Ian took a moment to do the same. At least, as well as he could without moving.
If those eyes were intimidatingly stunning, the rest of him was terrifying. The faint illumination of twilight caught on the loose threads of his cut-off flannel shirt, colors indistinguishable in the darkness but the pattern ever familiar. It hung open over a once-white tank top now filthy with dirt and tree sap, exposing a strong upper chest and long muscled arms beneath, all glistening with a faint sheen of sweat.
Ian let his gaze follow those arms down to surprisingly delicate looking hands, stretched wide and grasping, of all things, the body of a loaded crossbow.
If Ian could feel anything but pain, he’d probably be running. Whether to or away from this enticing stranger, though, he had absolutely no idea.
He didn’t think this was what Caleb had meant when he said Ian needed to go for a walk and find himself, he thought suddenly, and choked out a laugh before a sharp pain in his ribs ended it with a gasp.
“The hell are you laughing about, chuckles?” the man asked incredulously. “You just fell from a fuckin’ tree, man, you in shock or somethin’?”
That seemed funny, too, for some reason, but Ian settled for huffing out a few short breaths this time. “Your fault,” he managed to croak, closing his eyes again so he couldn’t see the way the stranger was looking at him.
One part exasperation, two parts concern, the same way Fiona looked at him when he did something stupid. The way she had looked at him in the past, before the exasperation turned to fear, turned to sympathy.
“Yeah?” the stranger scoffed, leaning down to prod Ian’s arms and chest with the hand not holding his weapon. “How do you figure that, tough guy?”
Ian grunted when the man pressed on his stomach, then coughed. “Weren’t supposed to be there,” he managed to get out, with a hiss of pain when his leg was jostled.
The man sighed and sat on his haunches, finally setting down his crossbow next to Ian’s pack, against the trunk of the offending tree.
“I live here, dumbass,” he revealed as he put both hands on Ian’s leg, squeezing around his thigh and slowly moving his grip down with light pulses. “What’s your excuse?”
Ian started to sit up to answer, getting his back a few inches off the ground before the man’s hands reached his knee. Then he collapsed again with a yell at the tight feeling in his hips and the sharp pain shooting up his leg from the twisted joint, biting his lip to keep it muffled.
“Well, fuck,” the stranger muttered, running a hand over his face as Ian clenched his fingers in the dirt, head falling to the side as pain reverberated through him. Maybe he should just stay there, he thought idly. He always seemed to end up falling somehow anyway, be it from trees or from grace.
“Okay, fine.” Ian heard after a moment. His eyes were closed again, but he could hear the other man moving around him, and the sound of his pack scraping against bark as it was lifted. Finally, he felt those strong, bare arms lifting his shoulders, one sliding under his back and the other under his legs. Ian tried to suppress a whimper as his injured leg was moved, but the man just hummed soothingly and firmed his grip.
Then Ian was in the air, cradled in a stranger’s arms in the middle of some godforsaken forest.
“You better not make me fuckin’ drop you, asshole,” his rescuer murmured, voice softer than his words would imply, and started moving.
Ian drifted, suddenly tired as they made their way through the trees, now barely lit by moonlight and starlight filtering through in patchy puddles of light. The undergrowth crunched between the stranger’s boots, dry leaves and broken twigs no match for their combined weight. It was oddly soothing to listen to the snap and rustle of it, Ian’s head lolling against the man’s shoulder without his conscious permission.
He smelled good.
He smelled like pine and woodsmoke, like the bonfires Ian’s family always had as fall gave way to winter. There was a hint of something else, musky and sharp, underneath, like leather and metal and maybe blood.
Ian nosed closer, pressing his face into that exposed neck, and breathed even as muscles tensed beneath him.
“Hey,” that rough voice rumbled, moving the man’s throat where Ian nuzzled against it. “Don’t go fallin’ asleep on me.”
“Mmm, m’not,” Ian whispered, his breath landing wet and warm on damp skin. He tightened his arms around the man’s neck, not sure when they got there but content with the position. His leg was still a dull throb that sharpened as they moved, but his arms were doing just fine aside from an array of bloody scratches.
The stranger snorted above him. “Sure you ain’t,” he agreed. “Cause if you go deadweight on me, I’m leavin’ your pathetic ass here.” He shifted his grip under Ian’s shoulders, though, holding him securely, and somehow Ian knew that he was in no danger of being left behind.
Eventually, the sound of their steps changed from crackling to the hushed thud of boots on grass, and Ian gathered himself enough to lift his head.
They were crossing a small clearing, probably the one he had seen from up high, toward an even smaller log cabin. There was no paved path, no fence, just a well-trod track of beaten dirt winding around the few trees that grew out past the rest.
The cabin stood tucked under the boughs of the tallest trees at the edge of the clearing, brush butting right up against the walls. Ivy ran up one side and around the single window, shutters closed tight against the prodding greenery. Above it, a short overhang cast nighttime shadows over a porch dimly lit by an electric lantern, set on a hand-carved table next to a single bent-wood rocking chair.
It looked like something out of a storybook, Ian’s addled mind decided, but he couldn’t make the image of his rescuer fit with the peaceful image of the cabin under the starry night sky.
Before he could dwell on that, he was carried up to the heavy wooden door, which was promptly kicked in by a booted foot so he could be carried over the threshold. They crossed the one wide room to a bed in the far corner, a finely carved headboard inlaid with wrought-iron curves rising up the wall, where Ian was gently deposited on a surprisingly soft mattress covered in a thin red blanket.
“You can stay here tonight,” the man promised. “Figure out what to do with you tomorrow.”
What to do with him. Ian almost smiled. If this man could figure that out, then he was ahead of everyone else in Ian’s life, himself included. He hadn’t even known what to do when he set off that morning, and look where he had ended up. In a cabin, in the woods, with a stranger that cursed at him and then put him to bed like an invalid. If he was used to his life making sense, it might have bothered him more.
“I’ll wake you up in a couple hours,” the still-stranger promised him. “You fell hard, might have a concussion.”
Ian just looked at him silently, picking at the pills on the blanket under his hand as he leaned back against the solitary pillow behind him. The man eyed him, cautious and concerned, before moving away toward what looked like a kitchen.
Ian’s gaze followed him, pausing on a table filled with rifle parts and an assortment of knives before catching up to see him fling open the shutters of that one small window, letting in the moonlight and a feeble yellow glint from the lantern still outside. It lit him up from behind as he bent to grab a bottle of whiskey from a low cabinet along the side wall. He uncapped it with a clean twist of his hand and took a long swig, silver light highlighting the line of his neck as he swallowed. Ian watched as he wiped his mouth on his arm and leaned back against the counter, head bowed, free hand pushing up into dark hair and holding there.
As the last of the adrenaline from his fall faded, his limbs going limp against the scratchy red blanket, Ian thought he saw his savior lift his head to watch him back. Those blue eyes were bright even across the darkened room, clear and focused, and Ian kept them in his sight until his eyes drifted closed.