my submission for the portal secret santa project! I was @parttwoactuallywrites‘s santa and I wrote them a fic with Chell, Doug, and Mel having a fun snow day. Contains found family, mostly fluff with the lightest sprinkling of angst about all the stuff they went through
The snow began falling just as Chell turned back, a snowshoe hare hanging from her belt. Snow meant less food, she thought, frowning, but she had to admit it was beautiful. Pausing under a pine tree, breath misting the air, she rested and watched. Under the thick needles, the snow didn’t touch her. She extended a gloved hand into the open and several flakes landed and clung to her palm. Tracking the hare had led her far from the shelter, so by the time she was close the snowfall had increased. At this rate, it’d cover everything in a thin layer of white by morning.
As Chell approached the front of the cabin, she saw a flash of orange out of the corner of her eye and turned to see Mel, returning to their shelter from a different direction. Spotting Chell, she grinned and shifted the bundle of leaves and sticks she held to one arm to wave. “Heya!” she called, though she knew better than to expect a verbal response. Chell waved back and circled the cabin to the shed in back. When she returned with the hunting knife, Doug had joined Mel by the wall of the cabin.
“Good job,” he commented when he saw Chell’s hare, but he didn’t look at it for very long. Instead he busied himself with insulating the cabin walls with Mel, the two of them packing the gaps between logs with mud, earth, and leaves. Chell sat on a flat rock and began to clean her catch, and for a time the three worked in companionable silence. When Doug leaned back on his makeshift crutch and sighed, soft and weary, Chell stood and nodded at the rock where she’d been sitting. “Thanks,” Doug said, carefully navigating the uneven ground to take her seat.
“Here, once you catch your breath you can help with these.” Mel set down the sticks she’d collected for firewood.
“Yeah. Yeah, no problem.” He smiled and pulled off his hat to push the stray hair back from his forehead. By the time the snow drove them all inside, they had built up a layer of insulation around two sides of the cabin and produced a pile of usable firewood.
The air was rich with the smell of roasting meat from the old wood burning stove- and on a day like this, they were all extra grateful that they’d been able to get it working. When Chell had first arrived, they’d had to do all their cooking outside, over a campfire. With the stove burning, the cabin was comfortably warm, if slightly cooler when one stood in front of the window with their hand on the glass, which was what Chell was doing. “I haven’t seen snow since before Aperture.” Doug was at her side bearing two mugs of pine needle tea. “You?” Chell shook her head and sighed through her nose. Doug put a hand on her shoulder, ready to withdraw it if she indicated that it was unwanted. Instead she leaned into the touch, content.
“I wish we had music,” Mel said, chewing a bite of roast hare. “When the weather was bad, we used to put on a record and dance around.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Doug asked.
“My mom, I guess? Or maybe I was married? God, I don’t… know.” For once, Mel looked dejected, though when she noticed the others’ sympathetic looks she tried to perk up.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have-”
“It’s alright. You two are messed up as bad as me. We’re in the same boat.”
“We should start a support group.”
“We already have.” Mel laughed, Doug said ha, and Chell cracked a smile. “We’re lucky we found each other.” And so they were, Chell thought, picking at a sprout that grew through a crack in the floorboards. They’d fixed the cabin up, but nature still found a way in. Something about that thought was comforting. She released the plant’s slim green stalk and it sprang back into place.
Mel and Doug both turned sharply at the sound of Chell clearing her throat. Hearing her speak was still rare, and they listened all the more closely whenever she did. “Yeah.” Her voice was rusty and quiet from disuse. Chell cleared her throat. “Lucky.”
That night they fell asleep watching the fire, huddled under one blanket, shoulder to shoulder to shoulder.
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Chell woke up unusually late that morning, after the sun had fully risen. She was alone on the floor, leaning against the wall with the blanket draped over her shoulders. She straightened and pushed to her feet, stretching and massaging a crick in her neck. Shouts and laughter drifted in from outside. Cracking the door open, Chell saw Mel and Doug playing in the snow.
“C’mon, Doug!” Mel shouted. “Snowball fight!” She threw a snowball at him, which he mostly managed to dodge.
“I’m not snowball fighting against an olympian!” Doug protested, shielding his face with a laugh. Unseen, Chell closed the door and retreated back into the cabin.
Mel was pelting Doug with more snowballs when Chell snuck around the side of the cabin from the back entrance, though not at full strength. Doug was returning fire, holding his own well enough, but Chell still figured he could use reinforcements. Her own snowball hit Mel squarely in the back of the head, spattering her hair and coat with white. Mel whirled around and immediately turned her focus on Chell, the two of them chasing each other and throwing snowballs. When they returned, flushed and breathless, they found Doug sculpting shapes out of snow. The largest was a big chunk, roughly squared off at the corners, almost like-
“It’s a cube,” Doug said, sounding a touch sheepish. “Or it’s supposed to be. I thought about trying to sculpt the three of us, but I’m better with 2D art.”
“Oh, we know. I love what you’ve done with the place.” Chell nodded her agreement. With the others’ blessing, Doug had decorated their cabin with charcoal drawings done on the old planks of wood that they’d nailed up to keep out the wind.
Doug blushed and looked down at his cube. “Ah- thank you. I try.”
Mel caught Chell’s eye over Doug’s shoulder. They knew how important the weighted companion cube had been to Doug when he’d been trapped alone. It was something they knew well, loneliness. As one, the two of them sat on either side of him and started gathering snow, helping him build up the shape of the snow cube. It wasn’t terribly detailed, but they were able to scratch a heart design into it when they were done.
The three of them walked to the creek afterwards and replenished their water supply, then sat by the water’s edge to admire the view. The rocks were cold, the snow colder, and the onset of winter would only make it harder to survive. They’d find a way, though. That’s what they did- survive. Across the stream, a robin landed on a branch and sang to them. Despite everything, Chell thought, this moment was perfect.
