"Sometimes I cannot sleep. Sometimes Shotwell cannot sleep. Sometimes when Shotwell cradles me in his arms and rocks me to sleep, singing Brahms' "Guten Abend, gute Nacht," or I cradle Shotwell in my arms and rock him to sleep, singing, I understand what it is Shotwell wishes me to do..."
- Game, by Donald Barthelme
"War."
Jill and Chris put down three cards in a row, flipping the fourth so that it faced up.
She took that hand.
They continued to put down one card at a time, Jill taking most of the pile.
Music played on in the background.
Wesker thought about how much noisier the bunker had gotten with Chris around.
He pretended to be bothered by it.
(He wasn't).
"I win." Jill.
Chris gathered the cards in a messy pile, smearing them around rather than shuffling them.
Typical Redfield, Wesker thought.
"You wanna play, Cap'n?" He asked.
He asked. Almost without sarcasm.
The Zoloft had mellowed him out.
A lot.
Wesker looked up from the microscope. "No."
"What are you doing over there anyway?"
"Creating life."
Chris grunted. "Oh. Right. I forgot."
"You scoff. But I am going to repopulate this waste planet."
"Of course you are..." He smiled.
"Would you like to see?" Wesker smiled back - only more sinister.
Chris went to the work station, suspicious. Wesker gestured to the microscope, scooting back in the chair to give him room.
"Jesus Christ!" He jumped back.
Wesker laughed.
"Is that your fucking jizz?" Chris was furious and embarrassed. "Jesus."
"Perhaps." (It was actually Chris's sperm).
He backed away, glaring.
Jill dealt the cards.
They flipped through a few rounds.
"War."
It was a dangerous game they played in the dark of his room.
There was one rule for their game: complete silence.
Some nights, it was a very hard game to play.
It started out as all of those kinds of things do.
Innocuous. Decent. Small.
"Can I sleep in your bunk? Please?"
They hadn't spoken much since she'd kissed him, since they'd acknowledged it on the beach. He found he had nothing to say, too much to say; too much time and somehow not enough.
Hearing her voice, addressing him, was startling.
She stood in the hallway, the sound of Chris's snoring carrying throughout the hatch.
She had told him before that she would have gnawed off her own arm to get away from the noise.
Wesker glanced up, nodded, turned the page in his book.
He rarely slept anyway.
The next day, when she was gone from the bunk, he could smell her.
She was on everything.
She was everywhere.
The scenario repeated itself for a week.
She would creep across the hall to the bathroom after doing whatever vile things she did with Chris, leave him the warm cup on the counter, and crawl back to bed. When Chris's snoring became too much, she would pussyfoot out into the hallway and ask in a husky voice to sleep in his bunk.
Then she would leave every possession he had with the perfume of her scent.
"What do you wanna play?"
"I dunno... Go Fish?" Jill shrugged.
Chris nodded.
Handed the deck to Wesker.
"You shuffle."
So he did, looking as bored as possible.
"Seven cards each," Chris ordered.
Wesker obliged him.
"You know the rules, Cap'n? Oh wait. You won't play by them anyway."
Jill rolled her eyes.
"You are just full of jokes, aren't you, Chris?" Wesker smiled, rearranging his own hand so that it fanned out in order.
"So... the point is... to get all four suits of the same card. Then you can lay it down. Once your entire hand is gone..." Chris kept pausing as he moved cards around. "You win."
Wesker nodded.
"If you need like, say, a three - if that's what you're collecting - you ask either me or Chris for the card. And if we have any, we have to give them to you." Jill continued.
"And it works the same way, Wesker. If we ask you, you can't hold out." Chris added, glaring.
Wesker put a hand over his heart, furrowed his brow, mock pain. "I am deeply offended that you think I would hold out on either of you."
"Whatever. So if we don't have the card, we'll tell you to "go fish". You'll pull a card from the deck there and then your turn is over if you can't lay down." Jill ignored them both.
"Sounds ridiculously simple." Wesker sighed. "Dealer goes first."
"That's new," Chris muttered.
"Ms. Valentine, have you any queens in your possession?"
"Why yes, Captain, I do..."
It was bound to happen, he supposed.
For a few nights, she did not come out to the lab with her bare feet and sleepy questions.
He thought it safe.
He was drifting in and out of a dream (rare) when the door opened.
He held his breath. It was her.
She approached the bed, felt it with her hand in dark.
The heat of his body made her snatch her arm back.
"Jesus Christ! You're in here! Why didn't you say something?" she whispered.
He thought she would leave then.
She did not.
She thought he would tell her to leave.
He did not.
That first night, they dared not breathe.
They lie on their backs next to each other, the bed unbearably small.
Neither slept. Neither moved.
No touching. Paralyzed. Silent.
They were so still they could feel their own pulses, hear themselves blink.
All night.
Of course, they didn't mention it the next day.
Chris noticed the way they avoided one another.
"You have a fight with the Prince of Assholes?"
She took the pencil out of his hand, filled in the last word of the puzzle.
"Yeah. Something like that."
Chris looked at the crossword. "Oh man. I couldn't get that one."
Yearning.
Jill was laughing hysterically.
He could hear her from the lab.
"Alright. Okay. Ask, um, a question about how he died."
Chris thought for a second, his fingers perched on the viewer.
Wesker interrupted them. "Is that really what you needed to run to town for?"
"Yeah. Hello. It's awesome," Chris said, turning around, his hands still on the Ouija board.
"You wanna join?" Jill looked up at him from where she was sitting, cross-legged, on the bunker floor.
"We're talking to 'Ted'." She used her fingers to quote.
Wesker had a bottle of Febreeze in his hands. He fidgeted, playing with it. "No."
"Oh, come on, Grampa." Chris patted the cement. "It'll be fun."
"You don't want me to touch that, truly."
Jill scowled. "Why? You don't believe in this shit. It's fake."
"You're mistaken. It is most definitely real." He looked almost nervous.
Wesker. Nervous.
"Really?" She was smiling at him, unbelieving.
"Okay, Hoss. Make it work then. Let's see." Chris challenged.
He dropped the Febreeze in Chris's lap and knelt on the cold floor.
He hesitated, thoughtful. Then he reached out slowly, his fingertips barely grazing the viewer.
It darted across the board, then back, then to all four corners - possessed.
He wasn't even touching it anymore.
The board flipped itself wildly - ending their fun.
Jill had backed up, cowering. Chris flung himself against the wall.
The room was silent.
"Oh my God." She whispered.
"Holy shit." Chris was awed.
They all looked at each other.
"I was never any good in seances," Wesker said, standing. He brushed his knees off. "I attract the wrong kind of... spiritual attention."
He was surprised that she came back every night.
But then he wasn't surprised.
Was it spite that drove her to this awkwardness?
Was it fear - was he something that had to be conquered? A dare?
They both so loved to play games.
The cold of the night sank through the ground, sank into her bones, froze her marrow.
She let herself thaw, curled around him, her face pressed between the blades of his shoulders.
There was a morning routine.
She woke up before Chris, leaving Wesker.
She brushed her teeth, pulled her hair back, and examined herself in the mirror.
He knew she was adjusting her mask for the other man. She'd let it slip while she lie next to his enemy all night.
He would lean back on an elbow and watch her from across the hall, the bunks door ajar. Reptilian eyes on her every move.
She would always look at him one last time.
And then she would take her place with the other man.
Chris slept through his rival climbing into bed with them, lying between them, stealing her away.
He was blind. A blind arrogant fool.
The first time she put her hands on him as they lay together, he imagined crawling out of his skin.
No one had ever touched him as if he would break.
They had no reason to. He had not deserved such courtesy.
But Jill, who found the light even in him, was different.
She followed the curve of his spine, the muscles on either side.
She followed his arm, her thumb rubbed over the rough skin of his elbow, to the inside and down to the wrist.
She followed the length of each finger, memorizing the knuckles that had broken and mended when he was mortal, knowing the calluses from the weapons he held, taking in how his middle finger was bent from writing.
He felt overwhelmed by her gentleness. He felt she would try to change him with it.
Some sort of magic.
Her hand caught in his, stilled.
No more, Jill.
No more for tonight.
No one had ever touched him as if he would break, except her.
She taught him how to touch her without using words.
He learned through the sound of deep breaths, quick breaths, an arch. She showed him how to pleasure her in this way.
She liked when he ran his hand up the back of her thigh, to the inside of her thigh, stopping just short, as she lie on her stomach.
She liked the way he lay his head on her back and listened to her breathe and live, listened to rustle of sheets. His hand reached down, absently stroking behind her knee.
She liked best of all the feel of his mouth on her.
It was wrong and sick, she knew. He was evil and relentless and manipulative.
But she liked that he was wicked and fierce; she liked that he could tear her apart if he so pleased.
It was knowing that he chose not to which appealed to her.
It was a dangerous game they played with Chris.
There was one rule for that game as well: Never talk about what happened when she and Chris were together, with the door closed, the lights off.
Sometimes, that game was the hardest for Wesker to play.
Their days were spent forgetting and hating what they did at night, their weakness for touch.
Their days were spent counting the minutes until Chris fell asleep.
During the day, they argued and tried to stay sane and were separate.
But in his bed, there was no room for that struggle.
They understood so much more in the absence of voice.
"Jill?"
She looked up from her book. "Yeah?"
"Ever think about what would have become of you if this all hadn't happened?"
"What do you mean? The end of the world?"
"I mean Raccoon City."
Without being noticed, Wesker raised his eyebrows. A fairly deep question for a meathead.
"Oh." She thought about it. She put the book down. "I guess I would have stayed with STARS."
"Raccoon City doesn't exist," Chris said. "So STARS doesn't, either."
"Oh. Like, Raccoon itself didn't exist." Jill said. "Then maybe I would have lied my way into something fancy, like SWAT."
Wesker snorted. They looked at him, but he pretended to be consumed by other things.
"And family?"
She chuckled at the thought. "Maybe something fancy like family, too. What about you?"
He shrugged. "I don't know."
She prodded. "Let's have it, Chris."
He yielded. "I guess, I dunno... settle down, find a girl, get a dog and win the lottery."
They both laughed.
Chris turned to Wesker. "Hey, old man. What would you have done?"
Wesker stared into the microscope. "What would I have done if what?"
"If you hadn't bombed the world with your shit-virus."
Wesker looked up, blinking hard against the fluorescent lighting.
"Well, Chris, I can't be sure of course, but I probably would have... bombed the world with my shit-virus." He smiled, nasty.
Chris flicked him off. With both middle fingers.
Some nights were desperate.
Wesker wanted to rip her open and crawl inside.
She had the good sense those nights to let him be what he was.
His hand on her throat, testing.
He would grab her, pull her to him, smell her, teeth gritted.
Always, he could feel the other man on her. It drove him nearly to madness.
But then she would sigh, or try to stifle a moan deep inside, and he would kiss her as vicious as he had ever wanted to.
She would go limp in his arms and he loved her for it - for her portrayal of the victim.
Other times, she was angry and vengeful.
He knew she wanted to kill him.
He had the good sense those nights to let her be what she was.
Her sharp little teeth cutting into his skin, her claw-fingers underneath his shirt, raking down his sides, his back.
She would grind herself against him, force herself into him, and punish him.
She would bite his lips, easing up only when she tasted his blood and he loved her for it - for her portrayal of the villain.
This was the result of years of denial.
The stakes went up every time they played the game in the dark.
He lost control one night when his mouth was on hers, when they were tangled and aching and fighting.
He broke both rules.
"Does he still fuck you like that, Jill? Like a dog?"
She stopped and then yanked when his grasp tightened.
He did not let her go.
"Can he look at you, when you go to him?"
She twisted and fought, her ragged breathing like thunder in the room.
He felt her hips roll.
When he did let her go, she ran from him.
He realized then that he was capable of nothing more than cruelty and offensiveness.
He had written himself as the Beast.
He could not be unwritten.
From that night, the days were filled with her false kindness. She helped him, she smiled, she laughed her fake laugh.
They all played such games.
Chris began to take naps in the afternoon, while she dozed off in a chair, as he toiled with the creation of life.
The nights were especially long without her.
He would wait for her, his ear to the thin wall that separated their bunks.
All he could hear was the movement of bodies on sheets, sighs.
All he could hear were the nights without Chris's snoring.
He thought of the games she was playing in the dark of the other man's room.
She unwound her hair from the towel.
He had come into the bathroom, shut the door quietly, stared at her in the mirror.
She said nothing.
He watched her for some time.
"I am exhausted," he said.
She brushed out the tangles.
"I do not sleep, Jill."
She worked on a knot at the end.
"You will come to me tonight. I've had enough of this game."
She ignored him, hung up towels, wiped down the counter top.
She opened the door.
"Please," he said.
The word was rusty in his mouth. It left a metallic taste in the back of his throat.
He had no purpose for it in decades.
He had said it almost hatefully.
And she had pretended not to hear him use the word that cut his tongue.
The forbidden word which threatened to bleed him dry.
Please.
"Five-thousand dollars?"
"Yeah. It's a big bet game. You got a problem with that?"
"Chris, you are aware money is worthless, correct?"
Chris stopped mixing the cards with his patented smear technique, feigned shock.
"And guess who's responsible for that, asshole. You gonna play now, or what?"
Wesker sat down.
He patted his pockets, dramatic. "It seems I don't have five-thousand dollars on me. Strange."
Chris thought about that for a minute.
"Your sunglasses."
Silence.
"Excuse me?"
"Your sunglasses. Bet your sunglasses."
"No."
Chris narrowed his eyes.
"Don't be a coward now, Captain. Bet the fucking shades."
Three hours later, they had long since passed bets like golf sets, Dolby surround sound systems or whatever else Walmart could offer.
Poker had become a disguise for all those things that had been lost and could never be taken back again.
They played for the lives left at Arklay. For their old friends and the sacrifices they made. For a past they all yearned for, but could not go back to.
Although in the end Chris did not win back his dead sister's life, his lost and brainwashed girlfriend or his former existence, he beat the hell out of Albert Wesker at a round of high-stakes poker.
And in a world where everything else had stopped mattering, a pair of sunglasses meant a lot more than all the money in the pot.
On poker night, she went to bed with Chris, left Wesker in the lab.
An hour later, she came out, came back to him in her T-shirt and bare feet.
She walked to him and he looked up at her, tried to soften the eyes he knew were alarming.
He had never tried to soften for anyone before.
She brought a hand to his cheek, ran her thumb over his bottom lip.
And then she slapped him. Twice.
Hard, stinging, breath-taking slaps across the face.
He was too astounded to do anything.
In his bunk, in the suffocating heat, in the humid air between them, he stripped off his shirt, his pants, leaving only the shorts he wore beneath.
She sat on the edge of the bed, fully clothed and waiting, staring at him in the dim light of a table lamp.
She was as unreadable as he'd ever seen her. Strange clear eyes.
He did not know what she wanted.
He knew only what he would have wanted.
He sank to his knees in front of her.
He thought of how he looked, how he would not recognize himself at that moment - his face buried in her lap, so aroused he was dripping on his own thigh, seeping through the shorts.
Shameful and wanton and wretched.
He thought of Rodin's Eternal Idol.
He thought of how he might burn to death of his lust - burn until there was nothing left.
"Please."
He said the forbidden word over and over - until it didn't rasp his throat, until it lost its power to make him weak.
Until he meant it.
She pulled off her clothes, brazen, and stood naked in front of him - defiant.
He stepped out of the shorts, his movements slow, his eyes on her - distrustful.
Half of her in shadow, he couldn't resist running a finger down her divide of light and dark.
She led the way that night, laying him down and finally taking him inside of her.
He let her.
No more games.
He gave up, gave in for her.
If only he could have years ago.
If only.
He had never touched anyone as if they would break, except for Jill Valentine.
And our love is pastured; such a mournful sound
Tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues strong
But it's always darkest before the dawn
- "Shake It Out"