With the venomous kiss you gave me, I'm killing loneliness. Killing loneliness.

With the warmth of your arms you saved me...

Oh I'm killing loneliness with you.
The killing loneliness that turned my heart into a tomb.

I'm killing loneliness.

They've got no reason to be dishonest with each other, but as Chris follows Jake into his own apartment, it's obvious Jake doesn't want Chris here. He doesn't need the man who killed his father to see that he's been functioning at some lower level these past few months, working with a security firm, a clean slate, a new name, to pay the rent, feed his stomach, fill his arm. He hates the pile of dirty abandoned clothes right next to the door, as if he'd thought about dumping them and decided he didn't care. He despises the sound of his own faucet, still dripping in the sink, dirty dishes in the garbage - nothing he wanted to bring with him when he brought his ticket with him to the airport two days ago.

Dirty carpets. Stained linoleum. The cheapest efficiency he could afford. Chris takes one look around and then walks to the windows, looking outside. Jake drops his bag to the other side of the door, and stands in the dark, arms across his chest. His teeth grind, popping his jaw.

"Pretty nice, right?" Jake leers. "Got all the amenities. It even has running water I don't gotta boil."

Chris lets go of the shade, letting it flip closed. His whole stature is tight with displeasure. "We can get a room if you want." The offer sounds like a hollow attempt at chivalry, but it still sounds like he's insulting the place Jake is so used to calling almost home.

But it's never felt like home and nowhere really has. He feels most relaxed when he's traveling, going somewhere... but now, thanks to Chris - thanks to his father - he's trapped between four walls and a ceiling in a room with a man he hates. A man he craves with every fiber of his being.

Even now, he wishes he could let go of his hatred, his disappointment and hurt. But his heart's got its teeth sunken right in to that, like a lifeline, and if he lets go he'll fall all over again. He doesn't want to fall.

"I don't care." Resigned.

Chris stands for a minute, then mills toward the kitchen. Without asking, he finds a half-empty bottle of dish detergent (orange blossom citrus scented), rescues the dishes from the garbage, organizes the dishware, before scrubbing and then filling the sink.

Jake touches the bullet wound at his side, remembers the feel of Chris's hands in a vibrant moment of nostalgia and guilt, and goes to the sofa. He lowers himself onto it and pulls the dingy blanket over himself, waiting for sleep to take him.


He dreams about Jill Valentine; it doesn't take a lot of imagination, because without knowing it, he's memorized every feature of her face, every curve of her body by sight alone. He doesn't really know why, but he sees her, and there's an animalistic desire to possess her as a man should - to punish her for being the creature Chris desired more than Jake. He wants to cut her face, tear her hair, ruin her until she's too ugly, too bruised, too despicable, for even Chris Redfield to want.

He wakes up, drenched in sweat and hate for himself.

Why can't I let him be happy?

Morning light drizzles in through the blinds, illuminating Chris's shape on the floor, his army bag as a pillow, pistol on the floor beside him. His eyes flick open, and he stares across at him - from the floor to the couch where Jake is lying - and they stare at each other.

Chris looks wounded, and tired. He doesn't move, and perhaps doesn't know how to begin the day at all because he knows it's going to be difficult.

Looked at, Jake thinks, like I'm going to be the one to put him in his grave, and that I'll be the last thing he sees before his eyes go dark.

"I'm sorry." Chris rolls his head to look at the ceiling, and his broad chest rises and falls in slow motion - one deep long breath, before the inevitable plunge. "I'm sorry I hurt you."

"You're not," Jake says, suddenly. He stares at Chris's profile. Cleaner-shaven, softer. He's gained weight, he thinks. "You're not even close to being sorry."


Chris sweeps, vacuums, and scrubs the floors while Jake microwaves hot pockets. His arm itches, and his blood feels sour and thick in his own body, weighing him down. Jonesing for another fix. His side hurts, his stitches itch, and the fresh ink in his skin burns. The hot pockets cool on a plate - lumpy breaded indigestion in one convenient meal.

He eats half of it, and leaves the rest on the counter, ignored. He feels Chris against his back wherever he goes, his heat that fills the room, no matter where he stands. He feels his presence, gaze and his largeness compress the air around him, draw it in closer, and Jake wishes he could be one molecule hovering against his skin, breathed into him, beneath him, on top of him, again.

It drives him insane to want and also not want. It's the same addiction he feels for the needle, when he aches for its illusory joy. He pours himself a glass of vodka, ice cold from the freezer, and drinks - and Jake doesn't tell and Chris doesn't ask how he got the stuff in America under the age of twenty-one. He drinks and stares at Chris.

Jake doesn't have the excuse of going to work because he had given his two week's notice three weeks ago, and though he has money, it won't last forever.

His lips press together, and the heat in the booze doesn't begin to touch the cold in his skin. Doesn't even make a dent. He wears a longsleeve shirt and jeans and freezes slowly from the inside out.


"I'm taking a shower."

Chris nearly jumps. The TV is down low, and he's been listening closely. Occasionally he calls headquarters, dealing with business of his own, his voice low and familiar and grating all at once.

"Sure." There's the slightest frown, as if he wonders why Jake is sharing this news. He watches Jake vanish around the corner to the bathroom. Sees his reflection in the mirror as he peels off the shirt. His lips part, before he sucks in a breath and watches Jake inch the clothes around his body - narrow hip, length of spine radiating outward with wings of flexed muscle. Hands drop to the belt buckle, and as he works it, Chris notices his biceps pop and twitch and he sees the dark bruises in his elbows, the tracks on his forearms. And his blood runs cold, because he doesn't want to think that Jake has fallen into that again. That it was his fault if he did.

The bruises are dark, as if the Devil himself had gripped him tight there. Chris stands up, television forgotten, crossing the long distance.

"Jake-"

The mercenary looks up, trousers already unfastened and hanging open at his hips. He snarls, half of an angry outburst out of his mouth before Chris takes hold of his shoulders, pushing him back. He grabs an arm. "Jesus Christ, Jake."

Jake's eyes follow his gaze to his arms. His hand clenches into fists and he twists his arm to free it. "Fuck you. It's my life. They got my blood just like they wanted, but this body's mine, I do what the hell I want-"

"Where's the rest of it?" Chris demands suddenly, his voice hard and his eyes straying again and again down his ribcage where his muscles have thinned away to make him frail to the bruises on his arms. His lips thin and he suddenly can't breathe at any normal rate. "Where's the rest of that shit you use?"

Jake clenches his hands, and his jaw juts out in defiance. But he speaks the truth. "There's nothing else. Like I was gonna leave it behind in my apartment, or bring it with me on a plane! I'm not a moron. And it's your fault. If it weren't for you-"

"Don't you dare blame this one on me!" Chris roars, and he punches the wall so hard the medicine cabinet jumps and falls open and a sad collection of ibuprofen and painkillers tumbles out, spiralling in the sink. He advances on Jake, menace and authority. "Take some fucking responsibility for onc e in your life - you're not the goddamn victim here. And I spent all this time blaming myself for this, and everything else that's gone wrong, but when it comes down to people, it's their choice. But I can't let you make this one. It's a bad one, Jake."

Jake steps back, as if every word is a dart missile-guided toward his bubble with the threat to puncture. He can smell his sweat and cologne, and he's looming so close he could just lean his head foreward to lean it against his. Lover, the words scream. You're lovers.

He hates that he thought he meant so much.

"Like my father? When he left you, when he hurt Jill - your precious little whore - when he fucked her?" he says suddenly, decisively. His voice raises, seeing that has stopped Chris dead cold in his tracks. His lip curls, and he bites out the words. "Like Piers Nivans before you watched him die?"

It's the most horrible thing Chris has ever heard. Not darts, but fifty-caliber sniper rounds, combustible upon impact. The older man stops, hovering mid-step before he seems to deflate. His eyes are wet.

He shrinks. Devastated.

Jake has never felt more powerful in his life. Nor as miserable. But he's said it all and it's out now, making the air toxic with ugliness.

He averts his gaze in a moment of contrition. Chris backs him to the sink and he takes his face in his hands and he kisses him, angrily, but softer and softer as if he can't stand to stay mad and Jake makes a sound, an awful sound, and sags against the sink, pinned there.

"I hate you," Jake whispers/sobs against his gruff cheek.

Chris squeezes him, and it hurts his wound. But it feels good, absolving him only a little bit of his guilt. It feels better when Chris finds his lips against, and his tongue makes a quick invasion, tasting again, rubbing and soothing his aching as if the words he'd spoken must have hurt on the way out.

"I'm sorry," Chris says so low it's a growl. He pulls him from the sink, into his arms, his hands scorching on his lower back as he strokes his skin. "I'm sorry I hurt you, Jake. I'm sorry."

There's that noise again, and there's nothing more than longing in the young man's body as he presses close. And again and again, that rasped sobbing. He cries like a child, gulps of air and ugly noises. He hates himself. But Chris needs to love someone. He'll love Jake, flawed and broken and imperfect. He kisses his scar, holds him as he falls apart.

"It's going to hurt," he says, with a realization. "Oh god. All over again. So bad. Chris, I'm scared."

He wants to give it up. The addiction. The self-punishment. He wants to give it all up for something beautiful, something real. For Chris.

"Everything hurts eventually," Chris replies, his voice raw. He had no comfort for him other than the promise: "But I'm not leaving you alone with it. Just like last time. Remember? Right here. And I don't have to leave you. I won't."


Chris finds the bruises with his lips in the dark. They're tangled, rough-hewn statues of potential, still and quiet, in the moonlight. He lies between his legs and sucks at the crook of his arm and the sensation draws from somewhere deep inside Jake that hurts, and he moans with his head back, teeth white and bared. But it feels good - as if Chris is taking the Devil out of him, taking the burden unto himself. He hasn't been hard in over three weeks but he is now and the shape of him is pressing hard against his thigh. He's desperate to keep him right there, against his skin. Feeding the other addiction, filling that other ache. Replacing one pain with another.

And when he wraps his fingers around him and strokes, it's as if he can't remember how awful that betrayal when he heard Chris and Jill's coupling that day. He can't remember anything.

He hates Chris for making him want something so much. He loves him for giving it to him so readily, as if every stroke of his tongue was a handwritten apology. He's ready to come. He can feel it twitch and ache all through his abdomen.

"Tighter," he moans, and Chris feels the change. His whole body twists with his climax - lifting off the bed, lungs straining as he holds a breath for longer than he should. When he lets it out, he's almost sobbing. His fingers rake at Chris's hair, pushing him down, making him swallow. "Oh shit... Oh shit, oh shit-"

Chris gulps, taking it in, drinking his suffering and his need. It tastes sick and bitter all the way to the very back of his soul.


They're on the bed in Jake's apartment, lying close. Touching. Jake lies against him, the length of his body pressed inch to inch against his. His body responds with light shifts and tremors to the light brush of knuckles against his side, against his cheek. Chris wants nothing more tonight than this. Maybe every night. Just to feel his skin against his, to know he was there.

"You don't live with her," says Jake. "You fight with her?"

"About you. A lot."

"Why?"

"She said I couldn't save you. I shouldn't have to. So I asked her if I shouldn't have saved her, then." He paused. "It got ugly from there."
Jake is silent. He doesn't like Jill. He doesn't hate her, either. But the heat of Chris's body soothes his emotions. He ignores the turmoil brweing whenever he imagines her body, her face. That imploring, sad gaze.

"Chris." He slid his fingers over his bicep, squeezed at his elbow. He rolls his hips to his and keeps him pinned. "You need to commit to me. I need you to do that for me. You said yourself, I'm all you've got left. I don't know what you meant by that..." He traced his lips along his jaw, and felt the shape of cock against his hip. His tongue tastes sweat under his jaw. Feels his pulse leap. His voice hums against his ear. Like Wesker's. "You were crying in the jeep that day."

Chris knows what day. He remembers the heat of the Mojave oppressively crushing in against the sides of the jeep, Jake beside him passed out in the passenger side. And god help him, Jake feels so good against his body at this moment, pursuing his lips until he breathes against them.

"What were you crying about?

"Piers," he answers, and the pain splits open, fresh and raw. "Piers Nivans. He died to save me... He died for the B.S.A.A."

Jake pauses. He buries his nose against his neck again, carves pale yellow furrows into his thighs with his fingertips. "And he saved you, right?"

"Yeah. Guess you could say that." Chris settles his hand against the back of his neck. "Jesus."

"You loved him, huh?"

"I loved him..."

"But you weren't ever together."

"I didn't want that with him."

Jake looks up, white-blue eyes slashing through the dark in a steep glance.

There are tears in Chris's eyes again as he massages his hand down Jake's back, pressing him into his skin. His whole body yearns just as badly as the male above him. He desperately wants to tell Jake how badly he'd like to come for him. His eyes close, languishing in that delicious feeling of want and molten desire.

"Don't lie."

"I didn't. He respected me. He believed in me, like no one else did. It mattered to him... what happened to me. You know," he sighs, shifting. "He was... a lot like me, you know. Integrity. Honor."

"Loyalty?" The accusation is there. Jake will not let him forget. And that's okay for now.

"He was better at that," Chris admits softly, looking away, "than me."

Jake's lips find his. Then his teeth, biting softly. Chris steals a breath, groaning, "Fuck me."

"Not yet." He pushes against him. "You're still not sorry."


It takes Chris two weeks to convince Jake to go to rehab.

He's followed him around in the streets, finding more heroin. He sweats at night, then he's moody all day until he takes it.

He didn't want to watch him at first. The act to him was despicable - but Jake demands he stay and watch him fill the needle. He stares at him with those intense eyes - the ones Wesker used on him to get his way, to command him on matters beyond his station.

He sees the needle go in and watches Jake fidget. The young man curls up afterward, and sleeps almost soundly. Chris doesn't know what to think about it. From the filthy sofa, Jake says softly, "I wish I didn't need it anymore." Unspoken: I wish I could be someone you want.

But Chris did want. He sat beside him, stroked his short bristly hair. As if he needed to prove his worth, Jake wraps his lips around him on the sofa, but Chris couldn't come. The sadness was too great.

It takes him two weeks to convince Jake. During those two weeks, nothing happens. No more attacks. Suspects were taken in and questioned concerning the attack, though, and as it turns out, a terrorist group interested in Jake's antibodies wanted to create a black market version of the Anti-C. He finds Jake listening to the news with only half an ear, as if he didn't honestly care anymore what these people wanted with him.

"You know what they did to me in China?" he says.

"What?" Although Chris is afraid to know.

"Everything," Jake answers. "So I'm not scared of much."

Yet as they sign Jake into a rehab in New York, Chris knows that he's not as good at lying as Wesker. He's terrified, and before they leave, Jake needs another needle.

For his nerves, he says.


"It's bad."

That's what they say. As if they lack the imagination to describe it any other way. As if there's any way to soften the truth.

"With this much use in the past... you could experience all the worst withdrawal symptoms. You could have hallucinations. Coma. You'll be hospitalized. There's only so much we can do for symptoms that severe."

And to top it all off, Chris would not be able to visit him except on very specific days. He would have to request visitation ahead of time, wait for it to get approved.

Chris stands up when the doctor leaves. Jake hasn't moved a muscle, though there was a twitch of muscle near his cheek. He feels as if he might never move again. He feels he could break. Chris goes to him.

"You'll make it through," Chris says confidently. "You've made it through worse." He lays a hand onto his shoulder, slowly, until Jake leans into him. He pulls him into his arms, and squeezes hard... and then harder until his bones hurt.

There's no ceremony. Chris leaves him, and Jake has to strip down and wear hospital clothing for the next projected three to twelve months. Besides the colored walls and the gentle paintings on the wall, the environment invites the same helplessness.

He trembles alone in his room, as they watch for his withdrawal symptoms. Feed him. They're kind though - handling his situation gently. They want him to feel at home... but no place does and especially not here. Jake thinks of Chris, sitting outside in the car, maybe. Sitting in the car and gripping the steering wheel and maybe Chris was crying. Crying for Jake.

Don't give up on me, old man. He closes his eyes and rolls himself up in his blanket. His whole body began to ache, his blood that familiar itch. He is scared and tries to tell himself he's not and fails. He thinks about Chris when he hugged him, and when he told him he was sorry.

There's a different kind of longing, child-like and purposeful and sincere, and it persists throughout the coming days - even the waking nightmares. A longing to see Chris when - if - he came out the other side of this horror.

The desert opens inside him - a great yawning dryness that ached for a breath of moisture. A drop of water. A gust of cool wind. When it became so unbearable, all he could do was lie in bed with his eyes peeled wide open, his body tossing and twisting in fits of agony, chills, and fever. Nurses came and did what they could to alleviate his suffering with whatever medication he can swallow and keep down.

When he dreams, he even sees the desert again - that yawning empty plain of gray that made his dream-eyes ache and his mind tremble in fear from losing itself there. The same as the night with Jill and Chris - watching the horizon quiver with imaginary heat.

Then he's not alone in this place. There's a silhouette. The man with the red eyes, the mirror shades, joins him. But it's his face behind the shades, and the same scar etched into his sallow hollow cheekbone. This doppelganger smiles, and lifts a hand to gesture. "You know you're not leaving this room, don't you?"

"Leave me alone."

"But you are."

"I'm not my father."

Somewhere he knows he's said that before, but out here in the desert it rings as an awful defense against the truth.

He's in the hospital room, talking at the walls. He looks to the left, toward the clock. Wesker smiles from the chair beside him, legs crossed, hands folded, as if he has always sat there. His shades are on the desk in the dim light - and those unearthly pupils pin Jake to his bed as he sweats and squirms. But his struggle grows still, whether by horror, fascination, resignation. His mouth feels like sand and tastes like vomit.

"I made you in my image, didn't I?"

The fire in his blood is too much for his brain. In the effort to grasp at some semblance of homeostasis, and to overcome hallucinations, he falls asleep and he doesn't want to wake up. He doesn't want to look at the doppelganger that is his father, or the father that looks like him. He doesn't want mirrors and he doesn't want to long for Chris, who can't visit. No visitors. He's at a critical point. He dreams of needles, and they go into guns like bullets and the guns they're all pointed at him. And the guns fire and the needles go through him, tearing out chunk after chunk of himself, filling him with dozens of ragged oozing holes. He runs from the great behemoth Ustanak until he's caught in his granite fist and with a giant spinning drill of an arm he's split in half, hot steaming white ropes of intestines falling and piling on the floor, and Jake's screaming and not dying. The pain is as real as anything he's ever felt.

He can't lift himself from the desert sand, wet with his own blood. It's hot and stifling, draining him dry... and when night falls, it freezes what is leftover.

I'm going to lie like this forever.

He thinks of Sherry. She thinks he's a filthy merc bastard. Nothing good can come from Jake Muller. Just a disappointment.

It hurts to feel worthless. Her opinion matters when it really shouldn't.

He thinks of noble and selfless Chris. The man who loves the boy. Wesker's boy. It brings comfort, and steadiness.

He's so far under, but he tries every eternity to reach up and grasp at wakefulness. Every thump in his temple beats out his name. Chris. Chris.


Chris works. But he devotes every second he can spare to checking on Jake. He's sick, they say all the time. Very sick. He's thrown furniture at people. Chris hears every excuse he can stomach. Today's not a good day. He's sleeping today. He can't stand it. But he has to be a good boy, though every instinct in him demands that he hurl down the doors of that rehab center and go to Jake.

But his mind always fumbles as to what he would do from there.

What he doesn't do: call Jill Valentine.

He gets an email every now and then. She's in Texas. She complains about the heat as if it is something to start an actual conversation. She complains a lot about other things. He closes the email and doesn't respond until he can think of something to discuss with her other than Jake and that's never.

It seems Jake occupies every thought. He sleeps alone because he doesn't want anyone else beside him anymore. He doesn't hunger for Jill's softness. Her last words to him haunt him at times. He doesn't worry about Jake's safety because there's at least twelve men guarding Jake through rehab in case there's another terrorist attack. He's protected American property now.

As he lies in bed, he tries to remember the way he feels. His scent. He has one of his pillows - pathetic, Chris - but it's nice to have something of Jake's to remind him of what he is looking forward to rather than the fear of everything he could lose.

That's all fine. Then he gets the call.

"He could be dying."

"Shit."

No.

"No." Then: "I'm taking the week off. I'm coming out there."

There's really no argument. Only a strange curiosity as to why the captain of BSAA Alpha Team is so interested. "Okay."

He doesn't remember half of the drive. It's almost as if he could make it with his eyes closed - and how many times was he turned away at the door because Jake wasn't 'okay' enough to be seen?

He decides he's not being turned away this time. No matter what they say. He grips the steering wheel tightly and sets his jaw, glaring at the road. He checks in, almost ready to tear off the glass between himself and the uppity woman behind it. Who works at a rehab center and gets to show off that much cleavage?

In moments - at least - he's approaching his door and in the room. The lights are down and Jake lies on the bed. He's been sleeping for four days, but to Jake how long must it have been?

He looks like a corpse. The similarities between father and son began to blur now that he was pale and hollowed out, a husk.

Chris finds his stomach has plunged somewhere down into his bladder. He speaks around the knot of agony in his throat. "Jake... I know this is hard-" He steps in, sits down at the edge of the bed, rubbing his thumb over the young man's forearm. "-But don't trade this in yet. I'm right here." Come out of wherever you are in there. Let me keep you, at least.

Let me love you.

Chris eats meals out of the rehab snack bar until he longs for even the simplest hot microwavable meal. He refuses to leave, and he uses his bear-like stature to intimidate the nurses into letting him stay.

He does that for two days, and at night he sleeps beside Jake in a reclining chair made of pain. But he doesn't complain. Tangles his fingers in Jake's, squeezing. He doesn't let himself cry although every moment leaves him straining against the need to burst. Strong for Jake, he thinks.

He talks about all the new recruits he's been working on. Training them up to live up to Piers' example, and all that. Although they're flawed, he tries to bring out their best attributes to help them function well as a group as well as individuals.

He lingers on stupid details, to give his voice something to drone on about. He begins to wonder if Jake will wake up and make some comment. Something to make Chris feel like he's not talking to a ghost.

The miracle happens a little while later... and maybe all Jake needed was time, but the fingers he's holding suddenly squeeze. He almost stands right up - but instead he looks right at Jake, and waits for him.

"Tell me what you need."

Jake breathes deep, as if drawing the first breath in decades.

"Home."


On the road.

Jake's relaxed in the passenger side and this time, he's got his iPod plugged in, and music is playing softly through the car speakers.

"You okay?" Chris asks, and for the thousandth time.

Jake rolls his head toward him, nodding. His eyes are bruised with sickness but he feels a little better. "Yeah." The flickers of ghosts, the phantom of Wesker, still hovers beyond his sight. Teases him. But the voice is gone. Now only visions remain.

He doesn't tell Chris, hopes that guarded silence about his hallucinations will make them vanish quicker.

Except that maybe someday he'll speak up. He'll sit down and they'll drink together and not fight about something. Instead Jake will talk and he'll tell Chris everything that ever happened.

He watches the lights of night play against the planes of Chris's rugged face. His body hungers for things but only so very distantly. The addiction is gone, and the only thing he feels right now, even as he stares, is tired. Cored out.

"You can stay as long as you want."

"I know." He closes his eyes, curling his hand into a gentle fist. "Chris... why do you even want me over...?"

"There a reason why I shouldn't?"

Jake rolls him a look. Chris glances at him, frowns. Then he smiles with all the tragic sadness of the past few weeks. "You waited for me... knowing all this time, I'm just-"

"I need you."

It stops him cold. Then he curls up in the seat. "Don't."

"I'm not lying."

"I know you're not." Swallows. "I'm scared."

"You don't have to be scared with me. I know I was dishonest with you once before. And it killed me. It really did. But I'm being dead serious with you right now - I need you, Jake. I need to have you around. I want to help you. I don't want to lose you." It all boils over - earnest words tumbled out in a heap of whispered phrases that he's been thinking every night and day. Now they're out and floating in the air in the car like soft paper lanterns, glowing.

Jake sniffles. Then he smiles a little. "Okay then."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

And it was okay.


It's easier when they reach Chris's generous apartment to relax, to breathe. The last time Jake had been there, he had spent all his time glaring at the man who lived there, feeling largely insulted and out of place. But the place is cleaner now. Filled with Chris's welcome and warmth, rather than a bachelor's loneliness and neglect. Chris takes off his light fall jacket and smiles when Jake toes off his boots. He looks filled out and better - his pain only shows now in his face.

He steps behind him, taking his jacket and removing it carefully. Jake still likes longsleeve shirts, but he knows even as Jake begins to step away and turn to him to smile a little, the devil's bruises are gone. His arms are pale, lean, muscled and clean, strong like they should be.

"Hungry?" Chris says. "I got steak."

"Sure."

"Anything else?"

"No. I'm good. I'm okay." He takes a breath again, and believes it. He walks to the sofa - a clean sofa, soft, the bottom not broken. He sinks into the cushion and feels his whole body devoured and cushioned by the comfort it provides. His head falls back and he legs his knees inch apart in a boyish manner. But only because his legs are too long to keep them comfortable any other way. His head falls back, and he listens to Chris as he talks about the steak from the kitchen - preparing it, the pan heating up, the sound of a knife cutting garlic and onion.

Jake didn't think he had been so hungry before in his life. But the scent began to fill the apartment and in rapid order, he felt his stomach clenching and unclenching with nauseating regularity at the prospect of being fed something soon. Chris lets the steak linger on the heat for awhile, coming out with a PBJ to tide him over for awhile.

"Smells good," Jake says, shifting as he chews the sandwich - the flavor and plainness of it fail to satisfy completely. But for now it's good enough.

Chris leans over. Jake instinctively tips his head back. And his lips are on his just temporarily. The older man's voice stays husky and gentle. "Are you okay?"

"Stop asking me that." Jake trembles but only out of cold. He gets cold very easily lately. "I'll be fine."

"You don t have to be scared. I know you're a little off right now. You ll be okay."

Jake nods. His eyes flutter shut.

"It's almost ready. Just relax. Okay?"

They sit at a tiny for-two table, two chairs, two plates, two sets of humble plain cutlery. Chris watches Jake eat without meaning to stare too much; the way he cuts his steak, the way he brings the fork to his mouth, chews. The way Jake tries not to appear ravenous. He decides he'll put this kind of food on the table for him as often as he can - vegetables, meat, grains. Everything Jake needs. Jake eats as if it's the first meal he's had in centuries. Maybe it was more accurate to say it's the first thing he's ever really tasted with all of his being.

He puts down his fork after a moment and meets his gaze.

His lips curl. "What?" he demands.

"Nothing. Just glad you like it."

Jake just nods. "Chris?"

"Yeah."

"I'm staying, right?"

"Of course. As long as you want."

"As long as I want?"

"Absolutely."

"I need a job again."

"That's all right. Take as long as you need. I know you're still reeling a bit. It s hard to get back into the swing of things."

Jake cuts another piece off the steak, as it bleeds into mashed potatoes. Slowly, he pushes it around. He sinks back in his chair, putting down the fork. He looks lost. "I just-I don't know why. I still don t understand."

"It doesn't have to make sense to you. When it does, I won't pressure you or make you feel like you have to make a decision. But Jake. Look." Chris wipes his mouth with the napkin. He leans forward, reaches past his plate and finds his hand as it lies numb on the table. His fingers spread over his knuckles and squeeze them, tenderly. His throat closes, and whatever it is he wants to say, it's hard to. It's the hardest thing.

It doesn't make it past his teeth but Jake turns his hand over slowly - palm to palm. His fingers brush the stony tendons beneath Chris's skin. He understands, just by watching his face and his Adam's apple dip hard down his throat.

Some things are hard to say with words.

"You wouldn't give up on me."

"No way in Hell would I give up like that."

"I thought about you. I swore I heard you talking. And I kept on hearing you." He shudders. Everything falls into place, neatly - the table, the kitchen, the steak, the mashed potatoes piled like little pale mountains with a tiny lake of gravy. Chris s face across from his, short dark hairs sprinkled across his jaw. Everything here has its own touch of dirtiness to it, its own flawed existence staring him unabashedly right back. Everything real. Painfully.

Jake's chair squeaks on the sticky tiled floor. He goes around the little table. He sinks to the floor in front of Chris and buries his face in his stomach, arms gripping him hard around his waist.

"It's not the same," he chokes, breathing deeply. "Oh god. What if- What it's not the same anymore?"

Jake clings. Chris runs his fingers through his hair - something he hasn't been able to do before. Jake's hair has grown out. No one has cut it. His strands are pale and gold-red, but not blond-white. Not like Wesker's. He finds the difference the most alluring thing about Jake.

"Take your time, okay? I know that I was kind of a replacement for that. But I didn't mind. And I don't mind if you still need me for it. Take all the time you need. Scared is fine."

"What if I can't-" Jake shudders. He's afraid of what happened to his own body, what might not work. He doesn't know. He hasn't bothered to look up anything.

"We'll find out, then." Chris tugs his hair gently. Jake s breath is hot and humid through his shirt. But he waits.

Jake needs time, so he'll have it.


Living with Chris is easy.

He only asks that Jake clean up after himself, and Jake does. It's not like he makes much mess to begin with. He's cleanly and orderly, it's almost eerie. It s almost as if he s afraid of leaving his mark on his personal space, though Chris encourages Jake to make himself at home wherever possible.

It s not really like Jake at all to be afraid of anything. The old Jake would have gladly taken up residence in Chris's home. He would have marked everything that he thought they ought to share. Maybe even criticized him, put his personal touches on anything Chris had already changed.

It's been four weeks and they have slept in the same bed but hadn't made love. The bed is huge, and with the two of them in it, it feels like a world unto itself - peopled by only two. They were all it needed. The utter lack of total intimacy doesn't seem to bother Chris - his hands find him in the dark, stroke bare skin, but it rarely builds to that fevered heat that so consumed Jake in the green house in Nevada.

Sometimes Chris will catch Jake looking into the distance. His gaze seeming flung far elsewhere - and he'll be very still, watching something, his jaw set, and he looks a little bit like Wesker and a little bit more like a lost boy in a nightmare. He's somewhere else, then... and every time, Chris calls his name so he can find his way back.

It's hard to leave him alone when he has to work. His job demands more hours. New trainees to break in. After a couple days, he invites Jake to watch, although company policy frowns upon an ex-foreign insurgent from observing covert tactics. Mostly Jake talks to the soldiers, and finds that not a one of them gives a rat's ass who his father was, or what he did. None of them really even know, since the information is classified. And none of them know that Jake was ever an addict to anything.

He feels almost ... welcome.

He inadvertently becomes the B.S.A.A. mascot - a scar-faced youth who watched in silence at first before he is standing up to shout encouragement during exercises. His fresh face, though scarred, is a welcome sight. The rough-and-tumble crew greet him like he's part of the family. He decides to join them every Tuesday for training.

Chris is glad that Jake is welcomed so readily. He decides that it was a good idea to bring him to work. He'll wait to ask if he'd like to join someday. He'll wait, maybe, instead for Jake to ask if it would be appropriate to join, and become a member. He likes the way Jake is smiling more and more. He knows how it is.

It feels good to belong somewhere.