Well folks we're starting to head into the RE8 Chapters I think we have next chapter and maybe half of the chapter after that to go. That being said this one is probably going to be on the shorter end, hopefully, that can be forgiven with the thicker chapters that are likely about to make their way down the pipeline based on my notes.
Song Suggestion: Chase You Down by Runaground
Disclaimer: I own nothing ^u^ Resident Evil belongs to CapCom whom I am not associated with.
Chris taps his thumb against the side of his laptop as he looked over a spreadsheet. He'd been crunching numbers over the last two months between digging around behind the scenes at the BSAA, missions to check on the Winters, and life in general. He checked every possibility he could think of and the more he looked it over and planned and studied. The more and more this looked possible. He had been building up his saving ever since he left S.T.A.R.S. Not to mention, being a founding member of the BSAA came with its perks as far as pay went. So that with the fact he didn't really spend much outside of his needs over the last 17 years, give or take, landed him with enough for covering a modest down payment with a bit extra for wiggle room.
He smiles a bit at this as he closed the laptop and moved it over to the coffee table. How to bring this up with Emma though... He was kinda running on a major assumption that she'd even be interested in moving with him. Was it that Major of an assumption though? the two had been seeing each other for the more of a year and a half and they'd know each other for 3 at this point. Emma just took a pretty major hit to her pay too. So if they split the expenses between the two of them it would make things a bit more comfortable for both of them.
Chris closes his eyes and silently nods in agreement with his own logic. It seemed sound to him but that didn't really mean she'd see it the same way. He got up and stretched before walking over to the fridge. He was about to grab something to eat when a bright orange sticky note caught his attention.
Don't forget:
We're helping Mrs. Russo Move out over the weekend
- Emma
Ah right, that was tomorrow. He was glad that he'd be around to help. From the sounds of it, Mrs. Russos kids were going to be driving down to help her pack up her boxes and drive her home. The harsh late summer heat was not going to be pleasant, but with more people, the move would go along quicker.
"Wait, the move," Chris mutters under his breath. What better time to bring up the idea of moving than after helping someone else do exactly that. Yeah. that could work. he nods at this thought before opening the fridge to dig out some supplies to make his own dinner. Shredded chicken mixed with a packet of single-serving instant rice, mixed together with some mayo and crushed black pepper. he stared at the mixture with a slight frown as he ate it he'd occasionally nudge the mixture with his fork. It was bland ... He was starting to get spoiled when it came to food.
He gave a short huff at the realization before finishing up the almost chicken salad. He was about to get up and wash his dishes when Emma finally made her way in with a yawn.
"Hey" she greeted while closing the door behind her. "Sorry about that Duke was taking his time for the evening.
"Tired?" Chris asks and Emma nods.
"Yeah, I didn't sleep well last night." She admits as she walks over to Chris and gives him a peck which he returns.
"Couldn't fall asleep or?" he asks curiously as he actually does get up to put his dishes in the sink.
"I'd fall asleep for an hour or two, then Duke would end up kicking me or the window unit would turn on. That thing is like a jet engine." Emma explains as she heads over to the couch, grabbing a throw blanket along the way before putting her phone on the coffee table then settling into her spot to wait for Chris. "And then there was the lovely frustrations of work so" she rambled before yawning again as Chris sat next to her and the two assumed their usual position where chis would rest his back against the arm of the chair allowing Emma to rest against him. Once they were comfortable Emma reached for the remote and turned on the TV as gentle music plays and a British narrator talks over the melody.
To move around Sea horses are equipped with a dorsal fin
The TV shows one of the small aquatic creatures floating around in the ocean, trying to move with the help of the single tiny fin that was flapping around like a hummingbird's wing. Thanks to the Calm music, and soothing accented narration along with the addition of a rather boring subject and comfortable warmth, Emma was out like a light in about 15 minutes.
Before long Chris Yawns as well. This was nice. It was simple and maybe a bit mundane but it made him happy. A tired smile crossed his face as he thought over the day to come. Chris leans his neck forward to give the Sleeping figure a peck on the top of her head before slowly reaching to grab the remote as a precaution to avoid waking her up.
Sea horses are one of the few creatures on this planet that mate for life.
Click. The tv was turned off and the remote was returned to its place on the table before Chris gently shifted to lay down on the couch with Emma still sleeping on top of him.
beep!beep!beep!
Emma groggily shifted to reach for her phone to turn off the alarm. 6:30 AM. She jolts slightly as she unexpectedly heard Chris grumbling about her alarm in her ear. Oh gosh, she fell asleep at his place again. This was happening more and more frequently.
"Whoops," Emma says with sleepy amusement before yawning in an attempt to wake up. She was about to try and get up but Chris held her in place and rolled to the side to sandwich her between himself and the back of the couch. Emma chuckles as he sleepily leans to kiss her which she returns. The two traded affection each slowly becoming more impassioned than the last as Chris began waking up. He had just started pulling at her shirt when a knocking at the door caused him to stop.
"Hey, are you guys joining us or what?" Bastion asks from behind the locked door.
"Damn it," he grumbles quietly before letting her go so they could sit up. it was the weekend.
"Later," Emma says giving him a peck on the cheek before getting up and walking over to the door and opens it. "Hey Bastion," Emma says though her hair gave away she had only just gotten up for the day.
"Good morning to you too," Bastion says trying not to laugh. "You need a minute?" he asks with a smile and Emma nods.
"Yeah I need to walk duke," Emma admits before yawning again.
"Okay, just check a mirror first you look like you slept on a couch," Bastion says figuring he should let her know before she leaves the building
"I did" Emma replies amused as she hears Chris finally get up and shuffle to the kitchen in search of breakfast.
"Ouch. Dog house?" Bastion asks quietly which Emma waves off.
"Nah, that's just where I ended up falling asleep" she replies, and bastion nods.
"Fair enough, well the move is started but we still have a lot of packing to do so when you're back we need you" Bastion says with a nod "The kids want to get this done before the heat really kicks in at noon" Bastion explains even though Mrs. Russo's kids were all around the same age as him and Emma.
"Right, right sorry I forgot to set an earlier alarm before passing out," Emma admits "Thanks for the wake-up call."
"Not a problem. see you soon" Bastion says before heading over to Mrs. Russo's apartment which was left open for a group of men and women to enter and exit as needed. Emma made her way over to her apartment and leashed up Duke for his morning walk. it was a quick one but she'd take him out again after the move. with the good boy fed and cared for, Emma heads out and locks up her apartment to join the hectic process.
Chris was already there and had started carrying some of the heavier boxes to the moving truck.
"Emma dear over here," Said Mrs. Russo who waved for Emma to join her. "Can you help me with wrapping up these plates?" she request and Emma nods.
"Of course," Emma says and the two got to work wrapping the fragile plates in newspaper to stack them up inside of a box labeled Fragile/kitchen.
"Mom where do you want this?" asks one of the kids as they held up the old record player.
"Careful with that, it was your father's." Mrs. Russo says with a hint of panic in her tone from the fear that it might be dropped and broken. "Pack it carefully please, I'd like to have that in my room with the records too." she requests and the kid nods.
"Okay," they reply with a nod and do as they were instructed.
This process continued for the more of the morning. Mrs. Russo, Emma, and the women worked on packing up the remaining items while Chris, Travis, and the men worked on carrying the boxes to the moving truck and Bastion entertained the grandkids back at his apartment. Emma chuckles as she worked on packing up one of the last boxes. No wonder Bastion wanted to make sure she was awake he was probably up to his wit's end with 8 kids running around his place.
It took until 1 PM but eventually, everything was all packed up and stowed away in the moving truck. After the truck pulled away and the family left Emma leashed up Duke again and took him for a walk before heading back to the apartment, washing her hands and making a few sandwiches.
She walked over to her couch where Chris was sitting and resting the back of his head on the back of the couch.
"Duke no. it's too warm out for that," Chris says as he nudges the warm fluffy pooch who was trying to snuggle up next to him. Duke gives a curt Huff in response before getting up to lay down elsewhere.
Emma chuckles and takes the space next to Chris instead. "Food?" she says while offering Chris a plate.
"Yes please," he replies accepting the plate and happily digging into the simple meal. Now how to bring this up...
"Man I hate moving, it's such a pain," Emma says with a chuckle as she shifts to get comfortable on the couch.
well crap. um. "It's not that bad?" He offers in response before taking another bite. Off to a great start.
"It just feels like a lot of energy for little result. put everything into a box so you can take it back out of the box and repeat." Emma explains and Chris chuckles a bit at the explanation. to be fair it's not exactly like he moved around often.
"Alright fair enough," He agreed, giving a lazy one-handed motion of surrender. He paused and took another bite of food. come on man just rip off the bandaid. "What if we were to move?" he asks before continuing to eat.
That got Emma's attention pretty quickly as she looked to him with hesitant, confused curiosity. "Where would we go?" Emma asks in return and Chris shrugs.
"Somewhere else? together." Chris replies as he offers the suggestion which caused a gentle smile to form on Emma's face.
"Together sounds nice," She admits with a short chuckle. "If that was the case then maybe moving wouldn't be so bad." Emma adds since Chris's original question was a 'what if' scenario.
Okay so she'd cool with the idea. he nods with her answer. "I've been looking around a bit lately. I was thinking about buying a place and figured, if you're interested you could come with me?" He officially offers before going into the planed spiel of why it would benefit her. "It would make things a bit easier with Duke, whoever made it home first could let him out, and a house would mean a yard so you would have a way to care for him without walking around town at night and between the two of us the expenses would be more cost-effective. There'd be more space in general since there wouldn't be a wall between us. we'd just have to upkeep the place ourselves and fix things up a bi"
As he spoke Emma had put her plate down on the table and moved to kiss him while smiling. He was a bit surprised but returned the kiss while carefully moving to put his own plate down on the side table so he could move to hold her and deepen it.
The two eventually broke away and Chris gives a low chuckle "I take it that's a yes?"
Emma nods, "Yeah. That's a yes." she confirms before moving to give him another peck and the two picked up where they left off from the morning.
'*'*'*'*'
Monday eventually rolled around and Chris was a pretty happy camper, it had been a while since he felt like he had a plan. It wasn't much of one but it was a plan all the same. he looked over the paperwork on his desk and filled out what he could on the report regarding his last visit to the Winter's estate. They were doing well enough but Mia was definitely showing some signs of mental fatigue and decay as she was getting more and more irritable without her medications. She was due any day though so hopefully she'd be back on her medicine sooner rather than later if not for her own sake than for Ethan's.
While visiting was sometimes a pain, and it wasn't his favorite thing that Ethan was purposefully botching his own training, Chris did in some ways consider Ethan a friend after knowing him for the last 3 years. The guy was in a very unfortunate situation and he could sympathize with that to a point. Ethan was an Engineer, not a soldier and Chris was often reminded of that while visiting. It didn't sit well with Chris that the BSAA was allowing Mia to keep her affiliation with the Connection a secret.
Maybe that's where he needed to dig. he looked over the baker incident every which way since to his knowledge that's when Umbrella came into the picture but. maybe he needed to look into the connection to see if there were links to Umbrella? His thoughts were cut short as a knock could be heard at his door.
"Enter," Chris says while going back to filling out the paperwork on his desk to try and look busy.
the door opened to show the director's secretary. "The Director would like to speak with you."
Great and he was in such a good mood prior to this. Chris nods "I'll be right there."
"I'll let him know." the secretary replies before heading out and closes the door. Chris finishes the page he was on before getting up and heading out. What did the director want this time?
Chris knocks on the director's door. "Enter" He hears in response and Chris does so. the director looks up from a folder that was open in his hand. "Ah there you are, Go ahead, close the door and take a seat," he instructs.
Chris does as he is told once more and takes the seat waiting for more bad news. what was it this time. oh, I know Wolf Squad would be disbanded as well now.
"Effective January first" the director starts. Here it comes. "Hound Wolf Squad will officially be reinstated as promised." the director says as he looks over the file in his hand.
"What?" Chris asks as he hadn't been expecting to receive good news.
"Is that an issue?" The director asks with an unamused expression as he raises an eyebrow.
"No. not an issue at all," Chris replies quickly.
"Good," the director says putting down the folder of files and nudges that over to Chris. "Hound squad will be returning in October. Three months from now. From October to December you'll continue working as individual squads while doing reintegration training."
Chris nods and accepts the file to read it over. Things were looking up for once.
Forgive me for the sea horse thing X'D I watched into the spider verse and could not resist because that scene makes me laugh even though it shouldn't.
FanNatic Logic time /o/ so assuming Chris is a pretty standard guy and has his debts paid down. If he was able to put $100 a month away for the last 17 years he'd have about $20.4K in savings. and again that's being pretty modest as far as a savings estimate goes since he A) gets paid well and B) isn't particularly frivolous with spending.
Review Responses:
Starrat - glad to hear you enjoyed the last chapter ^u^/ comments like this help keep me motivated to keep writing so thanks for taking the time to do so. If there's ever anything you think of that you'd like to see me add to the story just let me know and I'll do my best to include it.