Normalcy
AN: This piece was originally intended to feature in a chaptered fanfiction I was working on, which I later abandoned and merged into Entropy. In this story, there was a plot line in which Umbrella scrapped all work on the G-Virus to study Las Plagas. Despite not continuing on with the original story, this remains my favorite piece of my own writing, and thus I'm publishing it purely out of my own vanity.
A heart that's full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won't heal
You look so tired and unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us
I'll take a quiet life- a handshake of carbon monoxide
No alarms and no surprises.
The shower was hot to the point of almost scalding. She could feel it as soon as she entered the room; mist hanging in a blistering haze around her face. William always pushed the faucet up to boiling when he was upset. It brought Annette back to the psychology class she took years ago; supposedly bathing was a way of subconsciously trying to rid one's self of undesirable emotions. Of course, back then, the professors were still quibbling over if the Oedipus Complex was a real thing or not. Regardless, she had always found some truth in the statement. William certainly seemed to believe in it.
She quickly got undressed and tugged at the plastic curtain of the shower to take a peek in. William wasn't so much standing in the shower as he was leaning into it, arms crossed and face against the wall. She stepped inside, trying her best to not make a sound. As soon as her foot touched down on the floor, he muttered, "just leave me alone."
"And let you wash down the drain?" she replied, trying to force some humor into her voice.
He didn't say anything, or even turn to face her.
"I'm not leaving," she added, like it was a simple afterthought. He didn't really want her to go. It was an invitation to save herself.
"It's okay if you don't want to deal with this," said the implied statement.
When it was clear she was not leaving, William emitted a few muffled sobs into the wall of the shower, before catching his breath to speak.
"All my fucking work, Annette. Ten years of my life, and Umbrella wants to throw it all away for some parasite they literally dug out of the ground."
"I know; I know, darling."
She was angry too—furious in fact—but, Annette was good at burying her feelings behind a wall of stoicism. Staying strong was a responsibility she had placed on herself a long time ago. When something went wrong, Annette fixed it. There was no backing out of that role now, not when he needed her like this.
And, she enjoyed it a little bit, being needed.
Annette traced her fingers down the peak of his spine, dancing over the nubs of bone that nearly broke the skin. She counted them, beginning at the base of his neck. It was an old habit.
"One, two, three," she mumbled in a sing-song voice.
Water followed the trail her fingertips left and pooled up on the skin between each process. He had freckles on his shoulders. She was the only person—alive at least—who had seen them. How strange it was, to be the only person who knew that William had freckles on his shoulders, or that the bones in his spine stuck out like fence posts when he was working too hard. Of course, they kept lots of things just between the two of them, bodily features perhaps being the least strange.
"Four, five, six," she went on.
She wondered if he thought it was a strange habit. Probably not. He knew she had her reasons for these little idiosyncrasies. Sometimes she was afraid he was just going to start disappearing, piece by piece. Bones would just slip right out of their hollows until he was nothing but empty space. The thought was entirely illogical, but she counted just to make sure.
"Seven, eight, nine."
She felt his heartbeat around the seventh thoracic vertebrae. It was jumpy, as if it was rolling around inside his ribcage—the the effects of caffeine and stress. She could always tell how anxious he was by his pulse. Tonight was particularly bad. That was to be expected, although he didn't seem so angry now; his ragged breaths sounded defeated instead of enraged. The outburst had drained the last of his bitter emotions. Exhaustion had moved in when fury ran out.
"Ten, eleven, twelve."
When her hand reached the small of his back, he stood up from his leaning posture against the wall, but he still didn't face her. Shaking like he wanted to cry, but couldn't muster up the strength to do so. She pulled him close to herself in an attempt to calm his subtle convulsions.
Arms around waist and skin against skin, breathing in time: the same evenly paced gasps. He was all shakes and clammy skin, but his heart was still drumming a marching beat through his chest, lungs were still sucking in air, all the bones still in their proper places. No empty spaces.
"Shhh, steady now," she whispered.
Water made little rivers wash through her hair, down his back, slipping off their skin. It didn't know where he ended and she began. She couldn't quite tell either.
They stood in silence for a few minutes, her hanging around his waist like some sort of makeshift anchor. She knew exactly what he was feeling: the anger, the disappointment, the let down. They considered their uncanny ability to perceive emotions and predict actions to be the natural progression of spending the past fifteen or so years together. Speech had become almost unnecessary, at least as a means of relaying feelings. They simply knew. His thoughts were laid out in his mannerisms and expressions, and she could read them easier than a book.
They clung to each other without saying a word, scalding hot streams doing their best to clean up the events of the past day, the past month, the past ten years.
Maybe if she turned the faucet the whole way up, it would burn off those ten years. That damn virus had sucked the soul right of their bodies, and now there was nothing to show for it. The data would be carted off to some library and filed and sorted and brought up again years in the future when someone tried to bastardized his research... the thought of someone riding off to success on her husband's work made Annette want to smash a few pieces of expensive equipment herself.
Undesirable emotions indeed.
While she was silently fuming, he seemed to have settled down. Heartbeat was slowing, less shakes, all good news.
"Do you want to wash your hair now?" he asked.
"Sure."
They stepped around each other so she could stand under the shower head. Once William was facing her, Annette saw how red and bleary his eyes were and the way his cheeks seemed to be hollowed out. She winced in sympathy. Bright lights didn't do either of them any favors—she had mistaken herself for a ghost on multiple occasions—but, everything about him just looked pained.
"You need to go to sleep."
It was a completely pointless statement—he knew he should sleep; he knew she wanted him to—but she said it for the sake of saying something. It would feel wrong to not acknowledge his pain in some way. Regardless, William would sleep when he was able to sleep, and no time sooner.
"I need... I don't know..."
He didn't finish the sentence, but ran his hand down her stomach, letting it rest between her thighs. A ghost of a smile passed over his tired face.
"I need some normalcy."
He worked his fingers against her, not acknowledging the action.
It took a few seconds for her to recognize what was going on.
Neural stimulation, release of dopamine, pleasure response. Tightening of muscles, blood rush, sensation of mild euphoria or general wellbeing.
Right on the end of his fingertips.
She rested her head on his shoulder while he continued.
It felt nice, but—
It felt like masturbation.
She just wasn't sure for whom.
They were too similar, like two incomplete halves of some perfect yet distorted whole.
Self pleasure.
She pondered the thought for a minute, rolling it over in her head, furrowing her brow, but never making an actual sound.
"Please, Annie?"
This was not the right occasion for silence. She felt guilty.
"Sorry, it's too hot in here. Do you want to go to bed?"
He nodded, expression completely blank.
"Alright, let's go be normal," she said, searching her face for a playful expression. Nothing came to mind, so she leaned in to kiss him. Before she could, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him so tightly that she briefly thought he was trying to force all the air out of her lungs.
"Thank you," he whispered.
"Why are you thanking me?"
"I just really need this."
"So do I."
He needed her, and she needed him to need her.
They made a decent whole.
Normalcy. When you spend your childhood bounced between schools and universities and aptitude tests, normalcy becomes a holy word.
Pillows. Sheets. Mattress.
He was so tired, but he couldn't sleep just yet. Not without her making him back into a person. She could make him forget, just long enough to get his thoughts to stop drilling a hole through the wall of his skull.
Lips. Tongues. Breath.
Making love, sex, fucking—whatever it was called—it was what being real felt like. Instead of the amalgam of caffeine and stress and the maniac phases that faded into the incomprehensible sense of paranoia by which he was defined. She pulled the person out of the wretch of anxiety and exhaustion he presented to her night after night.
Breasts. Waist. Hips.
Every inch of her was warm and alive and in perfect contrast to the way he felt. The great irony of his research was that he was devising ways to improve the human body while destroying his own. But, she was, in his opinion—and his opinion was always correct—as lovely as the first day he'd met her. Blonde hair and blue eyes; he couldn't help but think that she looked like an idealized female version of himself. He had heard the jokes about her being his clone, but "other half" would have been closer to the truth. Maybe he was in love with himself, but that was only because she was himself, the better parts of him at least.
Yes. Oh God. I love you.
She breathed in words like those, staring straight into his eyes all the while. She rolled her hips and sighed out another, never losing sight of him, never letting go. He was going to let himself drown in that gaze. He was going to let himself drown in her, in her eyes, her mouth, her warmth, her waist and hips and what lay between; he was going to suffocate the part of himself that screamed and cried and broke things when he didn't get his way. He was going to push himself under until it was blue in the face, because it wouldn't let him sleep or eat or think straight.
Drowning. Sinking. Suffocating
Though, sometimes he was afraid that if he drowned all his demons, there would be nothing left of him. He didn't really have any concept of himself outside of the viruses he created and the litany of scientific accomplishments he could dangle over the head of anyone who dared to challenge him. And if he slipped or fell behind—like he almost had with that Ashford bitch—then he would have nothing left. He needed his narcissism and the stress that came with backing it up. But, he couldn't hang onto it forever, or he would burn himself out. He could feel himself drying up at the edges sometimes, three or four days without sleep and he could feel the flames licking at him. Just thinking about it made him feel parched, so he drank up her eyes and gave in to her relentless waves.
I love you. I need you. Closer.
They were pressed up against each other so tightly that he could feel her every twitch—breath—motion; so he could assure himself that she was real and he could safely let himself sink. She moaned, and he was under all at once, subsiding into release. His demons put to rest, there was still something left to him. There was still something more than the virus. Relieved, he just about fell off of her, and was asleep before his head met the pillow.
Sleep. Sleep. Dream.
And then in his dreams, he was twenty all over again, and she was brushing up against the back of his chair and telling him that he better hurry the hell up and clock out, Dr. Birkin—God, it sounded so good when she said it—because he had a very important lesson about the female anatomy in her apartment tonight. She said that all other scientific discovery had to be postponed until further notice, and for once he agreed, because she was perfect and she actually wanted him; who would have thought?
And nothing would ever change, he promised her, when they were laying next to each other, tangled up in the sheets and laughing like they had just invented the very concept of sex. Nothing would ever change between them, he had said, because he was a dirty fucking liar.
He didn't tell her that she was the only thing that had ever made him feel like a normal person, because while he wasn't the most socially competent young adult, he was certain that was pretty high on the list of things you don't tell a girl after she loses her virginity to you. This wasn't supposed to be about forgetting or drowning, or any of that. It was supposed to just be fun.
He didn't tell her that someday it wasn't going to be just fun anymore; it was going to be something they did because he was totally numb without her.
Sometimes, the realization of how much he needed her stunned him.
This is my final fit, my final bellyache with no alarms and no surprises.
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
Please.
AN: God, I love these two so much. There's a terrible sadness that accompanies their relationship; the sense of inevitability and Annette's complete loss of her own identity. I hope you all didn't mind me publishing what are essentially my notes, but I loved this piece too much to let it sit on my computer forever.