7
Jill's apartment was just as modest as she was, and Chris found that finding to be oddly endearing. Her quaint living space was decorated in a series of blues, greys, and whites, a color scheme that he had come to associate with her after prolonged exposure to her wardrobe. He made himself comfortable on the dark grey couch that encompassed the majority of the living area, sighing as he sunk into the softness of the cushions. It was nice to relax, for sure, but her presence made the relief just a little sweeter.
She paused at the kitchen counter, rifling through the mail that had piled up in her absence. The neat, looped script of her father's writing caught her eye and she shoved the envelope to the very bottom of the pile, but she wondered if out of sight truly meant out of mind. She placed her keys on the countertop and finally slipped out of the shoes she had been cursing for the last several hours.
"Hey, Jill…!" Chris had turned on the television, his errant flipping of the channels coming to rest on the local news. The room was suffused in the orange glow of the flames being broadcast live from above a smattering of trees.
Arklay Forest was burning.
"Raccoon City Fire Department has admitted to difficulties in controlling the spread of the mysterious fire."
A newscaster was reporting from the ground, seemingly undeterred by the massive wall of flames that roared in the background. The popping and crackling of the fire was audible, trees cracking and colliding against the earth as the blaze ate through their foundations.
"The National Guard is en route. All citizens within the outskirts of the mountains are advised to evacuate."
Jill crossed her arms across her chest, standing beside the couch as she watched in morbid fascination. "Just what Umbrella wanted. No trace of anything."
It was a shame. The lives lost to their bioterrorism apparently weren't enough. She wondered how high the body count would be once the inferno was eventually extinguished.
"They won't get away with it." Chris's claim lacked the certainty that she would have liked to hear. Umbrella had proven their prowess in stealth, but it was only a matter of time before someone slipped up again...wasn't it?
Chris didn't want to wait around to find out. "We'll stop them."
Jill gave him a skeptical look. It reminded her of the lofty speech of a naive child promising to instill world peace in his adulthood. As much as she wanted to hold Umbrella accountable for their crimes, she wasn't sure that a ragtag group of survivors would be enough to do it. This would require intervention from the feds, for certain. Who knew if they had more facilities elsewhere?
"Are you hungry?" She asked mostly out of hospitality. Jill questioned the contents of her fridge, but there was bound to be something edible within the walls of her apartment. Chris shook his head. His appetite was typically insatiable, but the trauma had understandably managed to put it to rest for the night.
With his declination, she seated herself on the couch beside him, eyes fixed on the television. Scenes of the tragedy continued to flash across the screen: smoke billowing in the sky, a soot-covered face, bystanders coughing furiously, flames engulfing trees. Jill swore she could hear the anguished howls of the living dead as they burned with the forest.
It made her feel sick to her stomach.
"Get some sleep." Chris placed a wide palm over her knee and gave it a slight squeeze. "I'll make sure the place doesn't burn down."
Jill wanted to laugh at him for even suggesting that sleep could be a possibility, but the concern on his face silenced her. She watched him in the artificial illumination of the television screen and he met her with those pleading brown eyes that made it seemingly impossible to protest.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand to silence her. "I'm fine." He assured, pulling the grey knit blanket that had been draped across the back of her couch into his lap. "I've slept in far worse places."
Stay with me, she wanted to plead, but yielded because Chris Redfield's puppy eyes proved to be the most formidable opponent she had ever faced to date.
Each time her eyes drifted closed, Jill saw the image of Kenneth burned into the backs of her eyelids, his throat slashed open as he gurgled for mercy. Within the darkness of her bedroom, her mind featured a slideshow of the horrible things she had experienced in the Arklay Mountains, forcing her body awake despite every exhausted fiber of her being screaming in protest.
The barking of a dog somewhere in the neighborhood somehow became accompanied by the swift footfalls of the hellhounds she had only narrowly escaped the night before. With a quiet groan, she turned onto her side, burying her face beneath her pillow. Would the rest of the S.T.A.R.S. toss and turn during the night, or would they sleep easily, having already buried the past behind them?
Jill harbored a sense of disappointment in herself. She felt this was a failure on her part, her apparent inability to expeditiously cope with what had occurred. Ever since her childhood, she had been exceptionally hard on herself, often holding herself to unrealistic standards, but she attributed these expectations to her successes in life. Her father's encouragement to aspire for greatness in life was tainted by his suspect morality. Yes, she excelled in breaking and entering because of her father's training, but he had not expected her to lend her talents to the police force. Her father was a career larcenist, and her noncompliance to a life of crime was perhaps his most grand disappointment in life.
With a squint, she peered over at her bedside alarm clock. It was half past one. Time apparently flew while you were being tormented.
She sat up in bed, the blankets pooling at her waist. Her mind wandered to Chris, as it often did as of late, and she swallowed hard. Jill was not the type of woman to bring men home, and the fact that Chris-fucking-Redfield, of all people, was likely crashed on her couch roused her.
Ever since their initial meeting in the basement of the police station, Jill had been drawn to Chris like a moth to flame. There was no particular characteristic about him that she could pinpoint as having drawn her attention. The attraction was instantaneous. Something about him had felt so safe and familiar, soft and worn in all the right places like a blanket salvaged from childhood. It wasn't something she could explain.
Joseph had spilled a lot of alpha team's secrets during their interactions with one another. On her first day of work, he had been tasked with orienting her to the job. Their tour of the office had been enlightening, to say the least.
"Captain Wesker is a cyborg." Joseph stated the claim with enough conviction to make Jill wonder if he had intended for it to come off as the joke she interpreted it as.
"He hates everything, doesn't eat, probably kidnaps women and hides them in his basement, and you don't ever wanna get on his bad side." He paused, musing over his description of their boss. Pleased with his synopsis, he continued to lead Jill through the room.
"Barry is old and kinda boring because he has kids. He pretends he's fair and doesn't like to cause trouble, but he's friends with Chris. They were both in the Air Force together and have some of that 'hoorah brotherhood' bullshit going on. It's cool though."
He gestured towards the cleanest desk out of the group, its surface wiped bare of any hint of personalization aside from a photo of two young girls. She assumed they were his daughters, and she smiled at the gesture because Dick Valentine wasn't the kind of dad to put her photo up on his desk.
The next desk was in complete disarray, littered with crumpled up candy wrappers and disorganized piles of notes.
"I'm usually pretty clean." He openly lied, but Jill let it slide.
"I'm sure you are." She teased, and Joseph scowled at her. He pointed to the desk beside his.
"This is Brad's. He's a rule follower, so don't tell him anything you don't want the Captain or Chief Irons to hear about." Jill took note of his warning. There was always a brown-noser no matter where you were.
"Forest seems like a dick when you first meet him, but he means well. He'd give ya the shirt off his back if you needed it." He pointed towards the back of the room.
"He's kinda competitive, but mostly with Chris. He's jealous of him probably, but Chris doesn't brag or anything. Forest just likes the challenge."
"Chris is on vacation right now, but you're gonna have to share a space with him." Joseph took a moment to mull over his introduction.
"He's a good guy who does the right thing most of the time, but his anger gets the best of him sometimes. I think he's stressed out cuz he's been responsible for his kid sister ever since their parents died. Don't worry though, he hates Captain the most, so you probably won't make him mad." He leaned in closer to Jill and whispered, "I wanna see him kick his ass someday. Redfield's got some serious guns."
Jill laughed a little to herself at the recollection of the bittersweet memory. Wesker wasn't a cyborg as far as she could tell and Barry wasn't really that old, but Joseph had been spot-on about some of his assessments. A sense of melancholy filled her as she realized she wouldn't be able to listen to any of his far fetched conspiracy theories any longer. Aside from the Arklay cannibal axe murderer, he had attempted to assure her that the government was hiding mutant alligators in Raccoon City's sewer system, among other ridiculous things. She was grateful for the comic relief he offered, given the harsh nature of the job.
Having grown a little restless from lingering in bed, Jill rose and stretched her limbs in a long, exaggerated manner. She was inadvertently trying to kill time, somehow a little nervous in her own home by the presence of her partner despite having spent more than ample enough time with him to be at ease.
With as much stealth as she could muster, Jill slipped out of her bedroom door, searching for a distraction.
Chris was nestled into the couch, arms extended behind his head and feet just barely hanging over the arm's edge as he stared hard at the ceiling. He had drifted off for a little while, but had startled himself awake some time past midnight. The finer details of his dream were hazy, but stills of the nightmare managed to flash through his memory-him on his knees with Barry holding a gun to his temple, blood pouring from Jill's mouth when she attempted to speak, Rebecca convulsing on the floor where Kenneth had been.
A shiver ran up his spine, and he closed his eyes tightly, willing it all away. You're probably gonna be fucked up for a little while. He thought to himself, accepting his inevitable fate. Chris wondered how the others were managing, though a petty part of him hoped Vickers was suffering. Fuck him. Motherfucker deserves what he gets.
The closure of a door halted his train of thought, and he craned his neck a little, peering over the edge of the couch. The blinds were cracked just slightly, allowing strips of the yellow lamplight from outside to filter through the window. He caught Jill's silhouette in the faint light, and he jolted upright on the couch to see her more fully.
Even when disheveled by sleep, Chris found her to be breathtaking. She had paused mid-movement, a hand still on the doorknob with the other pressed against the doorframe in her attempt to maneuver the door as quietly as possible. Her short hair was tousled slightly, wrinkles evident in the oversized shirt she wore. He followed her figure, breath hitching in his throat upon discovering the hem of the shirt ended just past the tops of her thighs, putting her long, pale legs on display.
He coughed to kill the whimper that threatened to surface, and Jill jumped slightly at the sound. She hadn't expected him to be awake.
"Chris." His name rolled off her lips with ease, her voice warm and a little hoarse. It stirred something in him, fanning the flames of something smoldering hot in the depths of his belly that threatened to boil over at any minute.
"Jill." His voice was exceptionally husky, and she instinctively bit her lower lip at the sound of it. It wasn't fair how attracted she was to him.
She turned towards him slowly, sheepishly running a hand through her hair in both a nervous gesture and an effort to make herself more presentable.
"I...couldn't sleep." She confessed, forcing a quiet laugh. Chris swallowed hard, studying the rise of the hem of her shirt as she moved. Maybe I can wear you out. He wanted to punch himself for the thought, but his subconscious prayed she'd grant that unspoken wish.
"Yeah, me neither." He admitted, tearing his eyes away from those fucking legs that didn't seem to end. She didn't even know how hot she was, and Chris thought it ought to be a crime to not let her know.
Nut up, Redfield. He practically screamed at himself. You wouldn't be here if she didn't want you to be.
Chris was conflicted. She was Jill Valentine, his partner and the woman he owed his life to, and she was different than any of the girls he had romped around with in the past. She deserved the best he could offer. She deserved romance and whatever the hell else women dreamed of, the latter yet having been determined since he hadn't had a chance to probe Claire for the answer.
But here she was, standing in front of him, half naked and watching him with those lonely blue eyes that made his heart clench in his chest like a vise. Chris Redfield was honorable, yes, but he was a red-blooded man whose patience could only be tested for so long before he snapped.
Jill Valentine had always been an overachiever, and in this moment, she lived up to that reputation. She didn't merely cause Chris to snap-she shattered him.
He closed the distance between them with a speed that she couldn't quite register. Jill found herself pressed between the door and his hard body, one of his hands pinning her wrist above her head and the other curved around her hip.
His breath was hot and ragged in her ear and he all but growled, voice gruff as he murmured, "Let me wear you out."
The hard press of her hips against his was all the answer he needed. In one fluid motion, he slipped his hands behind her thighs, lifting her against the door and finding her mouth with such persistence that she gasped, and he took advantage of the opportunity to taste her more fully. Her legs wrapped around his waist and her hands found his face as she kissed him with abandon, all teeth and tongue and a clear communication of just how desperately she needed him.
He cradled her back with a palm, holding her to him as he pushed open her bedroom door, wasting no time in seating himself on the edge of the mattress with her straddling his hips. When he broke off the kiss, she whined in protest, and he buried his face in the smooth column of her neck. She tangled her fingers in his hair, tilting her head to the side to offer him better access, and he playfully nipped at the sensitive skin. Her other hand slid up his arm, reveling in the feel of the muscle that shifted beneath his tanned flesh, and she bucked her hips against his.
The loose collar of her shirt had exposed the delicate curve of her collarbone, and he groaned against it as the heat between her thighs came in contact with him. No, zombies and fucked up reptile hybrids weren't enough to kill him, but he thought Jill Valentine might prove to be the death of him if she didn't take it easy.
He pulled away and the sight of her, lips swollen and flushed, compelled him to crush his mouth to hers once more. His hands drifted beneath the hem of that goddamn shirt, fingertips dancing along soft skin at last, and he moaned into her mouth when he caught the frilled edge of her skimpy underwear with his index finger.
She was perfect.
His hand ventured across the expanse of her back, caressing hot skin along its path. It came to rest at the nape of her neck, and he pulled back, using his free hand to tug her shirt away from her body as if it were offensive in some way.
He nearly lost it at the sight of her, all pale skin and full curves in his lap. In this moment, Chris was grateful for all the misfortunes in his life, convinced that he had saved up every ounce of his luck to meet her.
God damn, he wouldn't have had it any other way.
Her deft hands were at his hips, yanking at the fabric of his shirt. He was more than eager to oblige her and tossed it across the room without regard, too enamored by the sight of her to be concerned with anything else. She traced her fingertips across his chest, slow and purposeful as if committing each and every ridge of muscle to memory, and, unexpectedly, she gave him a rough shove, and he found himself flat against the mattress.
Jill curled her fingers beneath the waistband of his sweatpants, and she pulled the fabric back with one fell movement, leaving him exposed beneath her. He watched her with fascination as she bit her lower lip and allowed her eyes to wander the entire length of his body, taking in the sight of him.
It was too fucking much.
Chris thrust his hips forward, lifting her weight as he shifted positions, transferring her to the mattress as he rolled on top of her. He nuzzled the side of her face, nose brushing against her ear as he peeled off the last little scrap of clothing she wore. With her lingerie discarded onto the floor, he could smell her, drenched and ready for him, and he felt a sense of pride bubble in his chest because, holy hell, it was him who she longed for. He pressed a kiss to her temple and then the bridge of her nose, watching her as he slid into her at last.
Jill mewled when he filled her, and the sound dissolved the final shred of constraint he had.
He thrust into her and she greedily took every last bit of him until his pelvis met hers. His eyes rolled back in his head as she clamped down around him, lifting her legs to circle his waist once again and bring him just a hair closer.
That night, Chris proved to be a man of his word. He wore her out again and again until she was limp beneath him, each and every muscle in her body spent. She struggled to keep her eyes open as he pulled her on top of him, and she tucked herself beneath his arm, thought fading into static as sleep came.
There, in Chris's warm embrace, Jill finally found the dreamless sleep she had so desperately craved, and Chris grinned to himself in the dark.
No, it wasn't romance, but it was love, and Chris knew she deserved that, if nothing else.
