Jill kept her eyes set on the inside of the fridge, disappointed that it wasn't a window to another world that would lead her to safety; far away from Chris and the question she had dreaded ever since the man had lost his memory.
"Answer my question, Jill," he insisted. "Why is there a tombstone with your name on it?"
That was not the question. The question was how he had found the fucking thing in the backyard of the B.S.A.A. in the first place, when she had planned on introducing him slowly to the organization's private graveyard where all their dead S.T.A.R.S. comrades and all the fallen B.S.A.A. soldiers had their own memorial. Naturally, her grave was there, too. Jill sighed deeply, grabbing the lettuce from the fridge and turning away, avoiding Chris' glance as she proceeded to search the first drawer for a knife.
"Because someone believed that having it removed was an unnecessary cost." Her voice was filled with boredom when she finally gave him a logical answer.
The blade cut through the green leaves, turning them into bite-sized slices as she let silence breathe. Chris, visibly annoyed, approached her and placed his hand onto her fingers around the knife. A shy look turned to the big man, finding the weighty question exteriorized in a frown.
"Why was it put there in the first place?"
Their cold glances met in the tiny space between them, and Jill felt the irrational need to kick him in the guts and flee, run off and never mention the subject again, but she had never been a coward. No. Jill Valentine had always looked danger right in the eyes, running into every confrontation supported by the scent of gunpowder and green herbs. As luck would have it, neither were available to help her now. She forced out a laugh.
"It's easy, Chris," she said with a shrug. "I went missing and was declared dead."
Her look adopted a load of challenging pride when she raised her eyebrow at her partner and Chris suddenly released her hand. She took the chance to turn away, walk back to the fridge and pretend to be looking for more ingredients for the salads she'd suddenly decided they'd have for dinner.
"I lost you?" He grunted with a self-loathing undertone that caused Jill to sigh in despair. The conversation wasn't over yet.
"Oh, Chris..." She pushed the fridge shut and turned back to him, bathing him in her look full of sorrow. "You searched for me. Three long and bitterly cold months you were out there, turning around every stone to see if you would find a hint. I was declared dead, but you never stopped searching."
She watched him ruminate, watch countless questions race through his head in circles, and she knew that they were far from being done, and that the conversation would inevitably lead to the part she so desperately wanted to skip.
"And where were you?"
She could lie to him, couldn't she?
"And how long were you gone? You mentioned three months?"
She could make up a story; maybe one about an amnesia like his. She could say she had lived with the wolves in the Hungrian forest for six months before finding her way back to civilization, that she had been adopted by an old, childless couple who had been dreaming of having a daughter, and who had stuffed her with pastry and meatballs until she'd grown fat. That her adoptive father, József, had told her many stories because he spoke a little English while her mother, Adrienn, only communicated with gestures and sounds. That she'd had the most lovely laughter in the world. That Jill missed her fake parents because they had been more like a family to her than her real parents.
Yes, she could make up a story.
"Don't make me do this," she whined softly as a knot rose into her throat. She couldn't lie to him; he would find out sooner or later and it would all be worse; but telling the truth was such a painful thought. "I can't do this, Chris. Neither of us deserves this."
She dropped the vegetables and began to clean her hands frantically, rubbing and scratching her skin as though the soap would be enough to clean her conscience from all the sins she had committed when Wesker had controlled her. The blood seemed to be a permanent addition to her complexion... What would Chris think of her if he found out what she had done, how her blood and her antibodies had made Uroboros the dangerous weapon it was, how it had nearly decimated mankind so only the worthy could reign and rule, and how the greed for its power had even pushed Neil Fisher to betray his teammates; Claire among them; so he could revive the shady FBC? All because of her.
"What do you mean, Jill?" His voice was loud and beary, the look on his face, though, a painting of panic and fear. "Why don't you want to tell me what happened?"
She was shivering. She was shivering and shaking and her whole self was being reduced to a wobbly mass of doubt. After another sigh, Jill turned to the lower cabinet in the corner.
"I need a drink," she muttered and reached for the bottle of Tequila she had once brought home from Mexico and which she had been keeping for a special occasion. What occasion was better than this one? She frowned perplexedly at the bottle when she found it half empty. "What the…?"
"Jill," Chris called out for her again and she got up grabbing a couple of glasses and filling them.
"You want some?" she asked and snorted at the headshake she was given. It was funny to see Chris Redfield turn down a drink. "Fine. More for me."
He watched her silently as she downed the two shots and exhaled deeply after each, letting the liquid fire burn down her throat and heat her up. It was the one push she had needed, the trigger that made her remember that she was Jill Fucking Valentine and that she didn't fear anything.
Anything but losing Chris.
"I was with Wesker," she said resolutely and turned her gaze to her partner right in time to see the blood drain from his face. She hadn't known that the natural tan of his skin could fade so easily into a layer of paleness.
He gasped. He swallowed.
"What did you say?"
Her tongue moistened her dry lips before she repeated her last words.
"I was with Wesker," she pronounced. "For three years."
His lip began to twitch into a tentative smirk, as though he expected her to start laughing at him, tell him it was a joke, but he knew she wasn't joking, and the faint smile was soon replaced by nothing but shock.
"What…" he cleared his throat. "What happened?"
They stood in the kitchen, each on one side, both waiting for something to happen and put an end to the silence between them. Chris was waiting for her to speak, while Jill hoped that someone would call her, knock on the door or interrupt them in any other way, so she wouldn't have to tell this story right away. It wouldn't spare her an explanation, but the tension wouldn't be as thick and dense as it was now. Nothing happened, though, and when the waiting had lost all strings of natural, she sighed, preparing for the darkest part of her story.
"In 2006 we got a lead on Spencer." She breathed in and let her look rise from the ground to the face of the man in front of her. The shock still sat deep inside him, that much she knew. "Do you remember who Spencer was?"
What a question. He nodded one single time.
"One of the founders of Umbrella," he muttered out in a grunt. "Father of the Wesker project."
Had there been an exam, he would have passed with excellence, and Jill couldn't hold back a proud smirk before licking it off her lips with the tip of her tongue.
"You and I, we entered his Estate in Hungary," she explained and felt her right boot engage in the rhythmic tapping on the floor. "It was like the Mansion in the Arklay mountains again. Spooky and dark. A little smaller." She sighed. "No zombies this time, but those shelled abominations of B.O.W.s luring in the basement. We found Spencer, eventually, dead, Wesker standing above him; the blood on his hands still warm."
Chris' eyes narrowed.
"He killed him?"
The nod she gave him wasn't more than a short twitch.
"Wesker had been as much an ideal son as Spencer had been a loving father," she said. "It had to end like that."
She reached for the Tequila bottle again, wondering briefly if the remaining content would be enough for her to get her through the rest of the tale. A sigh slipped into the glass before she drank.
"We fought him," she continued, leaving the glass aside. "We tried, at least. He had become something beyond human. Chris, he dodged most of our bullets, and those that hit their target didn't hurt him."
Their gazes met hastily, and even in the dimming light of the evening she knew that she had all of his attention set on her. How could she just go now and break his heart?
"What happened next?"
She inhaled through wide nostrils, knowing that the time had come for her to come clean. Once caught at this dead end, there was no point in lying to him now.
"He caught you. Lifted you by the collar," she said and lowered her head, surprised to find a tear dropping from her left eye down to her crossed arms. Unhooking them, her hand suddenly rose, imitating the gesture she had seen on Wesker in that room in Hungary. "I knew he was going to rip your heart out and I couldn't… I couldn't let that happen, Chris." She looked back at him and swallowed down the sorrow in her voice. "I needed to do something, or neither of us would have survived."
He didn't dare breathe, so absorbed by her story that he even believed his heart had stopped beating. Voice almost drawn from him by tension, his words were just a whisper when he asked, "What did you do?"
Jill was breathing quietly. The situation felt like a dream to her, as though she wasn't even there. She pictured herself standing in the kitchen, just as she had seen herself sprint toward Wesker that fateful night.
"I tackled him through the window and down a cliff," she said and clicked her tongue. "And I went down with him."
This is it.
She remembered the salty, green odour of the spruces under them as they were flying straight down into the woods, the whistling of the air around her ears and the bitter cold that froze her limbs and numbed her face. And the one thought she had been able to pull after her.
Good bye, you cruel world.
Because she had known she was going to die. She had felt sorry for Chris, knowing how hard it would be for him to understand and overcome; knowing that she wasn't doing him any favor by letting him survive; but it was the only chance she had seen. With Chris dead, Wesker would have ended her own miserable life quickly, too, just for fun. Not that he believed she was a threat.
He had never seen her as a threat. Every step of the way, he had only been focused on Chris.
And that had been Wesker's goddamn mistake. Had he just paid a little more attention, not been so obsessed with Redfield, he would have seen her running towards him, and he would have killed both of them with one breath.
But he hadn't.
It was as though Albert Wesker had wanted her to save her partner.
"You… you saved me…"
Chris' voice pulled her back to the present and Jill felt the chilly breeze of the February night on her moist cheeks. When had she started crying that much? She shook her head.
"I… no… I…" She couldn't stop the sob from being released. "It was selfish of me. I couldn't stand the thought of watching you die."
A sigh reached her from his side of the kitchen.
"And so you let me lose you instead."
She nodded, having no words to give him, no apology to make it better. The amnesia had all the pain of losing her locked away, and even so, Chris looked destroyed and broken. If the story of it caused this to him, the reality of it must have ruined him. She winced.
"I'm sorry."
Chris blew out a breath.
"Don't be. You saved my life."
She watched him stumble a step backwards, his hand holding on to the marble of the counter to keep himself standing.
"But you didn't die…"
She responded with a sigh. Was there an easy answer to that? No, she hadn't died, because she was still alive, breathing and with a strongly beating heart in her chest; and yes, she had died, at least a part of her, if not because of the fall, most definitely later, when Wesker had started his dirty little tests on her, when he had taken her blood to make Uroboros more stable, when he had made her kill and infect innocent people; when he had made her fight Chris.
"I'm alive," she said. "That's all that matters."
But it was no response to please Chris.
"What happened next?"
She licked her lips again, the saliva in her mouth already thick and pasty from all the swallowing.
"He kept my body," she said with a sigh. "I don't know why exactly, but he seemed to have seen some benefit in it. During my recovery, he found antibodies." She rolled her eyes. "Those I had because of my infection from Raccoon."
Chris groaned at the mention of Raccoon City and the infection which Carlos had cured her from. She chuckled.
"He took those antibodies and…" Her look dropped to the ground, heavy with shame. The next sentence held the truth that destroyed all her work, all she had been standing and fighting for. "He used them to improve his ultimate virus."
Squeezing her eyes shut, she sent a couple of tears down her cheeks as Chris watched her.
"Oh, Jill. I'm so sorry."
She shook her head.
"It's okay. To keep me docile, he used a mind control drug on me," she explained and sighed. "P30 he called it. It basically turned me into his puppet."
When she looked up, she saw his fists balled in anger, and the dark shadow on his face suggested a terrifying idea.
"What did he do to you?"
Jill quickly shook her head.
"It's not what he did to me, but what he made me do to others." Another sigh was released into the cold February air. "He made me fight, infect and kill innocent people, help the bad guys escape from compromising situations. Betray everything I once stood for." Her eyes darted back at his face. "But he wasn't the kind of man who raped people. He considered himself too good for such things, I believe." She wiped the tears away. "Also, it was much more thrilling to see us two confronted."
His frown carved deeper as he huffed out an incredulous laugh. Wesker had always tried to push them into confrontation during their S.T.A.R.S. days; in training, during cases; out of curiosity more than of malice, maybe; but he'd never gotten what he'd wanted. They'd remained loyal friends and partners, until that day in the Monarch room in Kijuju.
"We fought?"
Jill smirked.
"Yes," she explained with a soothing voice. "He was controlling me. That drug, the P30, its effect didn't last very long, so he had..." Her hand rose unconsciously to the aching spot below her collarbone, where the tubes had once dug into her body, providing a continuous dose of the P30, like an IV drip. "He had placed a device on my chest that would administer the drug to me. But you freed me of it. You saved me, and you brought me back."
An attempt of a smile rushed over Chris' lips, but it failed when it collided with the sigh he blew out.
"Three years later." They exchanged a short nod. "And even after losing you, I didn't make you my wife?"
Her lips parted so slightly that there was barely room for her to inhale, and only a scratchy gasp was heard.
"Chris…"
"What kind of man was I, Jill?"
What kind of man? How would she ever make him understand that he was the most caring and wonderful man she had ever met, the man who'd raised his baby sister, who had given up on everything for the sake of others, and that she loved him madly for being all of this.
"Chris, I told you we were not like that," she laughed sadly. "Feelings change. You remember those you had in Raccoon City, but ten years later, they weren't the same."
Dark laughter filled the room. Jill perceived the move of Chris' hand in the darkness as he rubbed it over his front.
"I never stopped searching for you and you say my feelings for you changed?"
The intense stare she received from him told her he was actually expecting a reply from her, but was there any other way to respond to it than the desperate sigh that she exhaled?
"Things are complicated, Chris."
She should have sensed that this was not a response he would accept fightlessly.
"Why, Jill? Why are they complicated? It can't be work alone." Before she could counter Chris had already taken a step towards her and all of a sudden she felt his breath tickling over the tip of her nose and her own heartbeat in her ears.
"Tell me the truth," he pleaded. "Was there someone else? Carlos or…?"
"There was never anyone but you, Chris."
She blurted out the truth so unexpectedly that she choked on her own confession. The gasp coming from the man said that he was as surprised as she was herself. After a second of awkward silence, Chris laughed, and it made her heart jump.
"So, where did I fuck things up?"
Those words felt like just another attack. The big hero, always looking for the fault in himself, when he was the only reason why there was a little stability remaining in the world. No Jill Valentine, no Leon Kennedy, no Piers Nivans could have ever achieved what they had, hadn't Chris Redfield been there before, facing purest evil and destroying it in the name of them all. She reached for his hand, lovingly entwining their fingers.
"It wasn't you, Chris. It was me," she confessed, soaking up his attention with fear and interest. "I couldn't get over the guilt."
She felt the shiver when he squeezed her hand.
"Guilt?"
And a laugh made its way into the night.
"Everything I did, Chris. I should be rotting in a cell for my sins." She shook her head and sighed. "And you… I caused you nothing but pain and concern Chris. You suffered so much only because you cared for me."
If that made sense. He had suffered, on their mission in the Mediterranean sea, when she had been lost on a ship with someone who wasn't her partner; he had suffered searching for her for three long years, when he should have been happy. Yes, bioterror had always kept them from living a normal life, but outside of this all, Chris deserved stability, a loving wife and hundreds of beautiful children.
"Because I loved you."
Beautiful, stubborn and hot-headed children, probably. Jill blew out a hesitant breath.
There was that moment of palpable silence between them, intensified by the touch of Chris' fingertips suddenly grazing her chin.
"And I still do."
It was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard, a confession of feelings a part of her had long given up on. It wasn't meant to be like that, and old Chris knew it wasn't. Old Chris knew she barely deserved to see the sun come up every morning.
"You can't know that! You don't remember," she jeered, out of nothing, holding down all her longing against her heart's will. Chris blew out a laugh.
"Can't I?" He shook his head. "What I have learned about my old self tells me that I can goddamn affirm it! I was a mess, Jill. The kind of man who lives for the battle because it's the only thing he thinks he is capable of, his comfort zone. A man who doesn't care about his family anymore." His tone was loaded with audible confusion and despair. "A man who disappears with women from Human Resources in supply rooms at Christmas parties."
Jill's eyes widened in surprise. And disappointment. And a little jealousy. Chris was making an awkward pause after his confession and she suspected he willed to scrutinize her reaction. Her jaw rolled into a pout as she heard herself huff out a laugh.
"I knew it," she mumbled, eyes rolling. "You denied it but I knew that you and Melissa…"
She couldn't finish her words. He had ignored all her teasings about him and the woman who had been obviously after his parts, swearing to any deity that he wasn't the kind who would give in to a coworker no matter how short her dresses were.
Chris stepped closer, shaking his head in a soothing manner, asking for a forgiveness she wasn't even allowed to grant. He laughed.
"Don't blame me for the decisions I made, Jill," he whispered with a sheepish smirk on his face. "The man I used to be had all the reasons to make bad choices, because he had missed all his chances to be with you."
Her teeth shattered when she began to shake, moved by his words. Jill gasped softly, her hand reaching up to cup his jaw. Her fingers caressed gently over the man's strong cheeks covered in a lovely five o'clock shadow. Uncertain if she was really permitted to be the lucky one to talk Chris Redfield out of loving her.
"Oh, Chris," Jill mumbled as she held his face in a tongue grip, her voice shaken with overwhelming emotion. His lips were squeezed into a pout by her touch. "What am I supposed to do with you?"
He laughed, showering her with hope in the shape of a shimmer in his eyes.
"You could kiss me."
With her lips and throat dry like the wind that used to blow in Kijuju, Jill smirked, her slight irritation underlined by a roll of her eyes. He was such an idiot.
But so was she.
She sighed, gave his cheeks another soft squeeze, and did what she had always wanted to do.
There was nothing careful or shy about that second kiss of theirs, starting with a resolute press of lips against each other and quickly turning into a hungry dance of tongues. Chris reached up to cradle her head in his palms, fingers instantly tangled in the strands of her platinum hair. They exchanged gasps whenever there was some room left between their lips, and Jill began to toy with the thought that, this time, neither of them would just stop what they were doing unless something else would interrupt them.
So, the surprise visitor she had secretly ordered before had better stay the fuck away.
Chris' touch slid along the curve of her neck and down her back, soon so dangerously close to the waistband that it ripped a cry of surprise from her. It wasn't until she tightly looped both arms around his neck and climbed up his body, though, that he found the courage to descend further. With her thighs settled in the warmth of his palms, Jill pressed herself tighter into him, tasting all the eagerness he had been wearing on the tip of his tongue as she yanked on the short strands of his hair. He grunted in response, stumbling forth and ungently catching her between himself and the next best wall.
"Ouch," she yelped and was given an apologetic gruff from the man.
"Sorry," he panted into the paper-sheet-wide space between them and almost touched her lips when he attempted to lick his. "I… Sorry."
She laughed, a little breathlessly, as she read in Chris' look the same desire she was discovering in herself. Before she could wonder if it was right or give a damn about the consequences, she heard someone speak with her voice.
"Maybe we should move somewhere more comfortable."
Chris' eyes sparkled at the suggestion, quietly telling their stories of expectation and incredulity. He swallowed, sighed, and let his mouth drop back against hers. Once he had Jill tightly secured in his grip, he staggered backwards out of the kitchen — and straight into the bedroom.
With her attention limited to the man, his lips and hair, Jill had initial troubles finding the light switch before the two of them eventually reached the bed. After their collision with the kitchen wall, Chris put her down onto the mattress with utmost care before gently positioning himself next to her — rather onto her — with their legs entwined and their hands running wildly up and down each other's body.
He felt so good. Warm, pulsating and heavy with want, the mere touch of Chris' body on hers lit up the fire of curiosity in Jill and she didn't even think twice before starting to tug indecently on the man's shirt. He chuckled, nibbled shortly on her bottom lip and broke their kiss to let her yank the garment over his head. Once he had tossed it to the floor, Jill found herself staring dumbfounded at him again. He was impeccably shaped, like a Greek god, and she felt a shy flush on her own cheeks when she compared herself to the perfection of a man by her side. The hard, warm sculpture of muscle drew beautiful lines under the soft, natural tan she had envied him for on day one of their friendship, only intensified by the albino-like condition Wesker had gifted her with. Chris chuckled warmly when she ran her fingers along his abs.
"You sure you want this?" He asked when she reached further down, the frown not quite matching the smile on his face. "Because I am. I am very, very sure and I don't know if I'll be able to stop once I take your clothes off."
She blew out a breath, incredulous how someone as handsome as Chris Redfield could still find her attractive. Not wanting to ruin the moment, though, she laughed and nodded.
"Absolutely," she breathed and looked into his eyes, meeting a mixture of curiosity and concern in them. Almost as much as there lay in her own. "I just… I haven't done this in a very long time, you know? I'm not even sure if I remember how it's done."
He chuckled and flicked a thumb over her cheekbone as he susurrated, "The last time I remember happened in the nineties. If we both suck at it, there isn't anyone else I'd rather relearn it with."
And just like that, he blew all the tension away, cradling her in the certainty that she didn't have to fear anything. Just like in combat, they were fine as long as they were together.
"I love you, Jill Valentine. Don't tell me that I don't, don't tell me I can't know," Chris whispered and caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers. "Every single version of me loves you madly. We always did. Never doubt that."
When had he become so proficient with words, she wondered. Was it really the same man who had once described Jack Norman's flashing moves as Fucking Discoball in the eyes? She couldn't hold back a short chuckle and cupped his jaw, stretching her cold fingers along his jawline to grab better hold of him. After she pressed her lips onto his again, she felt it was the right time to share her well-kept secret with him.
"I love you, too," she said and felt him grunt happily in response.
Her eyes fell shut as he kissed her again, a little harder this time, a newborn passion lighting up and controlling his every move. Jill reached for his belt again, taking her time to unbuckle it with slow moves to push up every bit of expectation. She stopped when Chris pushed his hand under her shirt and his fingertips tickled over her abdomen, a sensation so intense that it paralized her.
He gave her lower lip a hungry bite and descended to her chin and neck as his touch moved upwards, softly caressing around her breast under the shirt.
He could be such a gentleman when he wanted.
"Why so shy?" She asked, voice heavy with urgent desire, and grabbed his hand to push it playfully to fill it with her breast. He smirked, pleased, and softly kneaded her in his palm as his mouth sank back to her neck.
She felt him press hard against her upper thigh, and the moan she exhaled just seemed to motivate him more. Chris kissed her mouth again, and when Jill ran her fingers over his shoulders, he reached for the collar of her shirt, flipping undone button after button until he could shove his palm underneath from a different angle. He hooked his finger into the strap and pushed it down, his mouth left hers to move to the exposed breast.
And he stopped.
Her eyes fluttered open at the third heartbeat of inactivity, and she found Chris' eyes staring down at her clavicle, hypnotized by the picture on her chest. She bit her lip in awkward embarrassment at the sight of his fingertips nearly grazing the ugly scar.
"That's where…" she began to mutter.
"I know."
Eyes flashing, Chris blew out a breath and raked his fingers through his hair, the tired glance of the defeated evident on his face. He hadn't even really touched her yet. He had been wrong, it seemed, when he'd anticipated that nothing would stop him once she'd taken her clothes off. Jill laughed at the thought, eye-rolling and starting to get cold. Before she could cover herself, though, Chris bent back down and put his mouth onto her skin. She yelped at the first kiss, squeaked at the second one; by the time he kissed the exact spot where the last string of Wesker's evil device had dug into her chest, she was already moaning in pleasure. His breath was warm, his lips soft and his touch so gentle.
"I wish I could make this undone, Jill," his voice was gruff when he spoke those words against her skin.
She laughed again, loving him for his devotion. There was nothing more he could have ever done, after giving so much of himself to the world.
"This already makes it better," she whispered and flicked a thumb over Chris' cheek as he looked up and a cheeky grin spread over his face.
"Really?" He asked, with a half-sad half-flirtatious tone in his voice. "You have more of them?"
Jill arched a brow, curiously watching how he pointed at the imperfections on her skin. Was he kidding?
"Maybe I can make those better, too."
Still incredulous, but with a growing curiosity invading her, Jill let her tongue slip out to moisten her lips. As Chris crawled back, she sat upright.
"You want scars?" Her shoulders shook from the heavy giggling she performed as her shirt slid down her shoulders. "I'll give you scars."
The bright glow of the cigarette flashed up twice when she took the drag, the shine reflected in the glass of the window from where she looked at the never-sleeping metropolis. The apartment was tiny even for city standards, one size bigger than a shoebox, but it had incredible views of Manhattan's skyline. Who cared if she had to sleep one foot away from the toilet? If she turned around, she could see the skyscrapers glow in all their glory.
Claire blew the smoke of the last drag against the glass and dumped the butt into the ashtray before taking up the glass of Scotch. Drinking alone made an alcoholic, they said, but she had felt like having a glass — even if it meant she'd break the promise she had made to herself on Saturday morning. The first sip put a disgusted grimace onto her face as she gulped it down.
"Ew," she hissed. "Unbelievable that Leon drinks that stuff like it's water."
She'd probably never get to drink enough of that shit to turn it into a problem, unlike her friend — unlike her brother. They always tried to drown their demons in alcohol, finding at the bottom of a bottle solutions to problems that weren't problems before. When she'd come back from Sejm Island, dying of guilt and regret, Leon had been there to take care of her.
I know exactly what you need, he had said before taking her to a bar, filling her up with rum shots and talking her into sneaking into an amusement park at night, where he'd promised to make the roller coaster work so they could take a ride. It hadn't worked, of course and on top of that failure, he hadn't even held her ponytail when she'd barfed next to a tree. He had taken her home though, very respectfully, in a cab, not even trying to get into her pants that night. Also, funny thing? He had, indeed, helped her, because after waking up the next morning with the worst hangover ever, going for a run and throwing up two more times, she had eventually decided that this kind of mourning wasn't for her. That same morning she had written her report on Sejm, Alex Wesker's experiments and Neil Fisher's treason and she had called Barry to start their search for the mysterious island that no map had ever seen.
It's how she worked. She didn't need alcohol to cope.
That's why it was so goddamn disappointing that she hadn't come up with a better way to shut the voices in Piers' head, when a movie night or a theatre play would have had a similar positive result without the embarrassing side effect they had shared. Perhaps Leon was the only one who could use the alcohol method safely. Perhaps he had always had everything under control.
Or perhaps he just existed to remind her of her mistakes, to blame her for everything she had done wrong.
Claire hummed. She blinked.
And she tossed her phone angrily onto the bed as she yelled, "Then why the fuck aren't you taking my call now that I need to blame shit on you?"
One hundred and eight. It was the count of the times she had tried to call him in the previous two months, always reaching just his mailbox, leaving dozens of messages. From Hunnigan, she knew he was alright, alive and working, so why didn't he just pick up his motherfucking phone for once?
Claire turned around, grabbed the glass again and took another sip, instantly regretting it.
"Shit," she hissed and poured the content into the pot with the Yucca plant, hoping the burning fluid wouldn't hurt it before remembering that such concerns were needless in case of plastic plants.
She knew he couldn't do anything about it, that it wasn't Leon's fault that Ada Wong had attacked the B.S.A.A. in Edonia and that he himself was probably as thirsty as herself for the Asian's whereabouts, her phone number or her address, although for different reasons. Leon had always had that strange obsession for the spy, that something that made him smile like a brainless whenever she was mentioned.
And Claire knew she would be his death someday. A siren she was, one of those beings that sang sailors to destruction.
She sighed, tucked another cigarette between her lips and fondled her back pocket for the lighter. Sometimes she hoped that Leon would find someone, someone who could complete him in a way that it would erase that dark look from his face, all the battles, the deaths, the victories that tasted like failures. He wouldn't be able to get over this by himself, of that she was sure.
But who was she to give love lessons to anyone, after all the emotional missteps she had taken? Neil Fisher among them, currently holding the record for the shittiest love interest ever. Tired of traitors, of rich old suckers who believed she could be bought with money, of guys with wives and children and of those who didn't want any, Claire hadn't had many chances to actually regret that her apartment wasn't bigger.
The whole room seemed to tremble when her phone started to buzz on the mattress. Just a couple of times were enough to disturb her peace and make her dive to the bed, secretly hoping she would finally get her chance to yell at Leon for his indifference
No, it wasn't Leon. Of course it wasn't Leon, Claire thought to herself, trying really hard to feel disappointed when another name flashed up on the screen.
'Did you get the chance to speak to Chris?'
No, unexpectedly, she wasn't disappointed when she saw that the nightly interruption of her thoughts came from Piers. Their phone call earlier had been awkward.
Yes, awkward was a good word.
Embarrassing and unpleasant were more good words, too. She chuckled softly, and quickly typed her response to the man.
'Yes, thank you.'
She considered. There lay a lot of sincerity in that short line, but there was so much more she wanted to be sincere about.
'I'm sorry I bothered you before. I tend to get a little crazy when I don't get enough sleep.'
It was a lazy explanation for her behavior, and she genuinely hoped he'd say it's okay and grant the subject the rest it deserved.
'Use a dictionary.'
Claire frowned at the phone and laughed, checking her last message for mistakes in belief the young man was trying to correct her. When she found none, she concluded that the message hadn't really been for her.
Which didn't make her feel particularly better. Guys weren't interested in hearing from her, it seemed. When she was about to tell him he'd sent her a message by accident, she saw he was already typing again.
'Read a couple of pages next time you lie awake. It'll bore you to sleep.'
Claire heard herself gasp in surprise when she realized he had been writing to her all along, so happily amused by the revelation that she decided she wouldn't tell him that she didn't need a dictionary to find sleep, as the reason why she hadn't gotten enough of it was an evenly boring TerraSave report. Instead, she looked at the bookshelf in the narrow space between her bed and the wall.
'Interesting theory. I have a Russian dictionary here. Does that work, too?'
Her teeth sank into her lower lip as she waited for the reply from the young man, who was typing again. She waited so long for him to finish the text that she didn't even notice how the ash dropped from the cigarette onto the plain sheets.
"Shit," she hissed and carefully blew the ashes off the bed and onto the floor, chiding herself for the chaos that reigned in her life. Before she could get up and get the broom, her phone buzzed again.
'I'm not an expert. I heard that it should be as technical as possible, but I'm not sure if the cyrillic alphabet will make it easier or harder.'
Claire smiled warmly at the lines she'd just received. The conversation could have ended there, with a thank you and a goodnight wish, but for some reason she found it entertaining to picture the face of the young man while he wrote to her. Just for fun. Not that she found any real pleasure in it, no matter how handsome he was or how impossibly caramel-colored his eyes were.
'What do you read when you can't sleep?'
Her right hand pulled the drag to her mouth. Aware that she was risking her sheets at best, she eventually rolled out of the bed to drop the half-consumed smoke into the ashtray. Once returned to the comfort of the mattress, she was almost excited to find Piers' reply.
'I have the Str-Tha volume of my parents' encyclopedia for that purpose. Reading about the Stroganov family always puts me to sleep.'
She giggled, wondering if that family was in any way related to the beef dish. She'd have to get one of those volumes for herself too.
'A cup of hot cocoa helps, too lol.'
Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips as she imagined the sweet taste in her mouth. Rolling onto her back, with the phone tightly sat in her hands, she replied.
'Great, now I crave chocolate and I don't have any here.'
He typed. He stopped typing. He typed again. He stopped again. Apparently, he was indecisive about what to tell her next.
'I'm sorry :('
Claire felt the diversion crawl into her limbs and materialize on her face in the shape of a mischievous smirk. A part of her was toying with the idea of running to the closest store and getting cocoa powder to satisfy her need for sweetness. She settled deeper in the cushions.
She'd go when they'd finish their chat. They were surely close to running out of things to talk about, and the message Piers was typing now was probably a goodbye.
'So, you speak Russian?'
Needless to say that Claire didn't get any hot cocoa that night.
"Okay, okay, the time has come," Chris' chest puffed up with the overblown inhalation as he fanned the imaginary tears dry. He swallowed, nodded, and pointed at his left hip bone. "What's the story behind this one?"
Jill smirked, her brows raised into a diverted glare as she watched him strike a pose and exclaim, "Must have been a huge thing."
After an affirming hum, she nodded.
"A Christmas tree in a lake," she said and waited for her partner to deadpan.
Brows furrowed, the big man began to laugh sheepishly.
"Christmas tree? That a code name for one of those B.O.W. things?"
She laughed at the depressively confused look he gave her to demand an explanation.
"No, it was really a Christmas tree," she clarified. "Oh, but a huge one indeed!"
He grimaced and turned his face down to his hip, fingers grazing the nasty scar on his tan.
"How?" He asked when he looked back at her, at which Jill just shrugged.
"It was Summer 2004, near Barry's home. All I remember is that you said Jill, hold my beer. A second later you jumped into the water and everything went red." She laughed out once more. "I think Barry tried to warn you that people dumped all kinds of shit in that lake."
Chris' eager determination to find and heal all her imperfections had led them quickly to a funny game of tickles and touches, and a war for who could show off the more frightening scars.
It wasn't the kind of foreplay she was used to, but the faint contact of fingertips and lips on bare, damaged, stitched up and healed skin had pushed their body temperature to rise and the feverish flush in her cheeks was burning her from the inside out. Piece after piece, all clothes except her panties and his boxer briefs had found a new location on the floor or between the sheets. And so they knelt on the bed, facing each other, and letting their looks sway too often from the scars to more compromising spots.
She somehow liked how he looked at her.
"I'm sure I just jumped into that lake to impress you," Chris muttered with a frown and crossed his arms in front of his chest.
"Oh, I don't even doubt that," she laughed. "But you were the one who got impressed instead."
His lip twitched, and he chuckled.
"A Christmas tree robbery in the RPD. A Christmas tree in a lake. I seem to have a thing for Christmas trees. Maybe it's time to change my strategy to get you."
The pout on Chris' face was lovely; somewhere between amused and discouraged by the reality behind the mark that should have been the most heroic act ever committed. If the goal of that session was to heal all the pain, she could heal that one, too. Jill bowed down —one hand on his chest, the other on the mattress— and kissed the upper extreme of the long mark that expanded from two inches below his ribs to his left hip bone, almost grazing the waistband of his boxer briefs.
Chris inhaled sharply.
"Better?" She purred against his skin, and his body seemed to vibrate when he hummed.
"Much better. But not good yet."
And she went on, making guesses on how many kisses it would take her to cover the ugly line where the evil Christmas tree top had once bored into his abdomen and ruined it. She counted twenty-three before she reached the lower limit of the mark, so dangerously close to the frontline to the last forbidden spot on his body.
The grunt he blew out when she decided not to move farther down but ascend his body on her ladder of kisses lay somewhere between foiled and satisfied, and he held completely still when her lips explored the peaks and valleys his muscles drew under his skin with curious attention. He smelled good; tasted even better; and Jill enjoyed even the tiniest hint of reaction she got from him. She reached his chin and caught it tenderly between her teeth in an attempt to rip another sound from him, causing him to turn his mouth to hers and kiss it. As his caresses rushed down the curve of her lower back and pressed her against him, Jill couldn't hold herself back any longer and hooked her finger into the waistband of his boxer briefs, giving them a gentle pull.
He let her go on without a complaint, only intensifying his nibbling on her lower lip when she shoved her hand into his underwear, blowing a breath against her mouth when she wrapped her fingers around his length and awarding her with a moan when she began to stroke. One hand of his running up to her neck and fisting her hair, he kissed her as though he wanted to choke her, when it was, probably, him who was choking. He panted heavily when he broke the kiss.
"That good?" Jill asked innocently, without stopping her work in his underwear. She ogled his reaction, bathing in the proud certainty that it was her hand he was just coming apart in. Chris nodded, eyes half-shut.
"Very well," she said, steadily intensifying her moves. When she yanked the underwear down, letting him spring uncovered into her palm, Chris grunted, and she sucked in a breath in awe.
He was beautiful. Despite all of the scars and the veins that sometimes lay too thick under his skin, he looked like God had come down to Earth to take a walk among the mortals. He was so beautiful that she herself felt uglier and more unimportant the closer she looked.
Chris placed his hand onto her wrist, stopping the stimulation immediately. The sad, disapproving look on his face was not what she had expected to find.
"What's wrong?" She asked, concern plastered on her face as she watched him. He grimaced, sinking into a sitting position as he let his hand glide into her palm, and Jill reacted. "You don't want to continue?"
He laughed, with a hint of ridicule and one of bitterness loading his voice.
"Of course I do," He answered and made her chuckle. Her heart skipped a beat, though, when he added, "I'm just afraid I'll hurt you."
She gasped softly, letting her fingers curl tightly around his hand as her features shifted into a mask of skepticism.
"I had your penis in my hand and you were worried about me getting hurt?"
They locked eyes for a second or two, until Chris' head sank into a nod.
"Yes."
She shrieked in laughter and, letting go of him, she rolled back into a lying position, holding her belly. Chris chuckled along.
"You find that funny?" With those words, he climbed onto her, catching her between himself and the mattress. "He's unpredictable when he sees a beautiful woman."
Jill stopped laughing, swallowed shortly and placed a finger onto his chin.
"Then tell him there's no risk," she whispered, her eyes waving down at her body. "I'm not beautiful anymore."
Chris tried to speak, but he took too long to come up with another exaggerated compliment and Jill kept the control over the conversation.
"I mean, I used to be pretty once." She clicked her tongue in despise. "But Wesker... He didn't have enough taking my integrity from me, he took normal from me. I look inhuman, like a ghost. Skin, eyes, hair. Everything on me is pale and dull."
There was something on his face she couldn't read, something that said he was thinking, trying to make sense of her words. His hand rose, fingers wrapping one of her locks around themselves in a playful spin.
"So, this is his doing, too?" Chris asked in a low tone, waiting for her to respond with a nod. "I was wondering why I didn't find any hair dye in your bathroom."
Those words put a leery smirk on her lips.
"You've been rummaging through my drawers?" she asked chidingly, doing her best to hold back the revealing chuckle. "Is that the reason why you take so long in the bathroom every morning?"
That was when the tension seemed to explode and they burst into loud laughter. It was a strangely intimate situation, both exciting and frightening to know themselves so close to each other, skin on skin. But she wouldn't have wanted to be elsewhere.
"You're still beautiful," he told her, ignoring her teasing question and receiving a snort from the former brunette.
She looked into his eyes again and said, "Graceless. That's like the perfect word to describe me."
But the man above her just smiled all her troubles away.
"Perfect is the perfect word to describe you."
A gasp was released and her hand crawled up into his nape to gently tousle the hair at the back of his head. She resisted the urge to yank it passionately, limiting herself to running the tips and nails through the fullness of his hair.
"Oh, Chris." She tried to roll her eyes at the level of brave and brazen his comments about her were adopting, but couldn't get past the intense fluttering joined by a sheepish smirk. Chris, amused by her reaction, laughed a little and let his fingertips graze her temple.
Her lungs filled with air, making her chest go up and press against his. They shared another heartbeat before his mouth dropped back down onto hers, their lips melting together instantly as their hands and fingers slipped along the rest of their burning bodies. Chris' grip on her was as warm and gentle as it was demanding, but he awkwardly stopped or slowed down whenever he approached any spot he considered too intimate, needing her lead to actually touch her, caress her inner thighs and everything that lay between the knees and the hipbone. That educated shyness, albeit flattering, felt out of place after they had spent an hour exploring each other for scars to kiss and heal. She knew he was doing it for her, that it was actually hard for him not to rip her panties off her ass, and Jill decided to make things easier for him.
She caught his hand and pushed it past her waistband. He chuckled against her lips, left her mouth to kiss her chin and palpated. His hand was warm, his fingers agile, and after rubbing over her spot, he softly dug a digit into her. She moaned, her body responding very positively to the gentle intrusion.
Her lips gasped a moan and encouraged him to continue. As words had always been superfluous between them, he just hummed affirmingly and obeyed, slipping another finger into her inners, stretching her slowly to comfort. Her fingernails scratched along the width of Chris' shoulder blades, leaving pink marks of lust on his skin. It was the kind of marks one would accept and wear gladly, with pride, and Chris groaned uncomplaining against her neck. His thumb brushed her clit and Jill cried out and pressed her hands onto his cheeks, turning his face to hers to look into his eyes.
"Chris," she shrieked gruffly and laughed at how naughty his name sounded all of a sudden. How often had she said it in the sixteen years they'd known each other? A thousand times? Rather two thousand? It had never sounded like that.
Chris didn't laugh. He kept quiet, letting his penetrating stare search for answers behind her eyes, not seeming to find any.
So, he asked again.
"So, are you sure you…?"
Oh, wasn't he adorable? Jill rolled her eyes and pressed their mouths back together before he could even articulate the question. They had waited long enough. Sixteen years of partnership, hundreds of missions, a million handshakes, high-fives, glares and hugs were enough for many to lose patience.
Not for her.
"Yes," she moaned, her breath tickling moistly on his lips. "I am."
Chris inhaled, deeply, as though he tried to suck her up with a stream of air, and pulled his fingers out of her. She pulled her knees up when he carefully slid the panties down her legs, feeling his fingers tremble in expectation. Chris caught her under him again, watching her through keen eyes as though he wanted to memorize every inch of her. So close to being united to him, she couldn't stop her mind from jumping back to her imprisonment, to all those lonely nights when Wesker wasn't there to torture her with his presence, when she could cry alone for everything and everyone she had ruined. Including Chris.
The pad of his thumb on her bottom lip was meant to pull her back from wherever she was, causing her soon to regret letting the haunting memory come back. She was probably the only person in the world capable of drowning in self-loathing when no other than Chris Redfield was about to fuck her. She was sure that Melissa Knox hadn't lost any thought to bitterness in that supply closet. She awkwardly laughed at the idea and put another frown onto the man's face.
"I always try to make you laugh but this is kinda discouraging," he said with a smirk. "I mean, I haven't even started yet."
Jill wiped her face with both hands and blew out a breath.
"Sorry, sorry," she howled and licked her lips. "Come in."
Another smile and a brush of noses later, Chris turned her in his strong grip, slipping between her thighs in the most gentle way.
Their lips met when he pushed into her, slowly, bathing in every sticky inch of her warmth around him. Jill was tense, at first, but reminding herself that it was Chris, her partner, her best friend, who was finally getting to know her in a completely new way helped her get rid of the evil thoughts. What could have started in Raccoon City in 1997; had Mister Redfield chosen more delicate ways to impress her, that is; had eventually taken them almost sixteen years, but there they were now, naked and…
Jill huffed out a laugh as her hand swept downwards, realizing that only she was fully undressed.
"You could have really taken the underwear off instead of just pulling it down, you know?" she whispered after breaking the kiss, hilarity filling her fine voice. Her eyes adopted a chiding expression, and Chris laughed.
"I couldn't wait," he moaned sweetly, licking his lips. "We've waited long enough."
She touched his cheek and inhaled, opening her mouth when he kissed her once more. He was right. They had waited long enough to become the one person everybody thought they were.
"I love you," she said and kissed the tip of his nose before her hands wandered down the graceful field that was his back, softly pulling when her hands reached his hips. Chris understood and, after giving her back the words of love, he began to move.
Creamy skin, eyes that stung into your soul and consumed it, a couple of round breasts that hypnotized you with their sway as she curled under you, precious lips of peach and rose moaning in the most angelic voice, and silken hair that shone like light. Chris hadn't known that someone as gorgeous as Jill Valentine could feel so ugly as she had described it, but it was no wonder that she didn't feel comfortable in her own body when it had, indeed, belonged to someone else once. Wesker. It shouldn't surprise him. He had always believed that what saved Wesker from being the ultimate douchebag was his uttermost developed sense of justice, because a psychopath like him could do much good on the right side.
Unfortunately, he was just an evil madman, and he hadn't only planned on destroying the world on his trip of whatever drug or virus he had taken, he had also tried to break and ruin the most precious part of him as soon as he'd seen his chance to do so. Jill was stronger than any lunatic, of course, but it didn't mean that she couldn't get hurt. And once that happened, she shouldn't just be left alone to heal.
The more Chris knew about his former self, the more he despised the brave Captain Redfield.
Jill caressed his muscles with playful fingertips and erased all those thoughts from his mind, begging him to stay with her alone. He chuckled in delight, enchanted by the beauty of the woman beneath, and pushed into her once more.
Yes. There was still time for them to heal together.
Update: A/N: Sorry guys, FFnet was giving me a hard time with the update and I totally forgot about the author's note T_T
I'm incredibly sorry for updating this so late, but this chapter needed special attention. Many thanks to everyone who is part of this. All the readers, the followers and reviewers (many thanks as well to Guest Reviewer 1. Sorry it took me so incredibly long to deliver A3C after breaking nivanfield in Secrets T_T). My fantastic beta reader and everybody who inspires me. I hope you are all doing well, and that you enjoyed this chapter. It doesn't have the smut I thought it would have, no. I can promise you that they are going to have lots of hard, wild and dirty sex, but the first time needed to be very special hahaha Also, I'm not very into writing smut lately (reason why I skipped the Claire/Piers scene, probably...), so I don't want to make promises I can't keep. It'll be a surprise for me as well. again, Thank you all for being here, for reading, following, revieing. I really appreciate all the support and I hope you're still having a good time with this fic, despite the long wait T_T
I also hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving and Halloween and whatever holidays you had since the latest update LOL In case I can't deliver the next chapter before the holidays, Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! (Hopefully, a better one)
Xaori loves you!