Dishes clinked in the kitchen as Mia loaded the dishwasher. Christmas was a week away, but still kin and close friends stopped by to drop off gifts, stay for coffee and hors d'oeuvres, and catch up on new goings-on in their lives. Mia always explained her job vaguely to try and yield as few questions as possible. Ethan always said he was doing fine.
Ethan brought the remains of a cheese board and a bowl of gnawed olive pits over to the kitchen. He wrapped up the salvageable rinds and wedges as Mia lifted the smeared dishes from beside him and started the sink.
"You're a good hostess," he said without turning around.
The dishes rattled violently. Mia uttered a quiet "woops" to herself and click-click-clicked the dished back on top of each other. The sink ran for a few seconds, then shut off. "Sorry, what did you say?"
"I said you're a good hostess." The dishes punctuated his words with the duller thump of getting filed away on the dishwasher rack. "No one seems worried about us anymore. Not explicitly. Isn't that nice?"
Mia laughed. "They all look at me like I'm a ghost, have you noticed that? The scorn on your mom's face. I think she thought I eloped with someone else."
"Well," Ethan chuckled. "I wouldn't be surprised if she thought that. That's easier to believe than the truth."
Mia smirked and wrung a dishtowel between her hands. "Oh, would it? Sorry, I didn't think I'd have to include a line about zombie mind-control in our wedding vows." She swung the dishtowel so it thwapped his shoulder playfully and slid it back over the towel bar. "Wanna watch a movie?"
"Sure," Ethan smiled over his shoulder at her and brushed the damp crumps and pilled fuzz off his shirt. As he walked over to the den and powered on the TV, he called, "You didn't think Lucas was cute? 'Could have gone with him."
"Oh, gag." She laughed and the dishwasher shut with a beep, and rhythmic jolts of water began to fire.
"Jack?" he offered, "Not husband material?"
She imitated the sound of vomiting, then laughed again. "Not quite my type."
He pulled up the search bar and tabbed through Christmas movies. Every cover was a heterosexual couple wearing red and green. Some hijinks or misunderstanding implied in the title, or the setting behind them. Some promise of a happy ending, a confession of love, a coming together, all charged in the simple way they looked at each other. He tabbed to the bottom of the page and flipped to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. He took a sip of the tea he'd left on the coffee table that had been there for hours, and eventually reached the end list. "All these movies are about family," he said before Mia padded over to the den in sock feet. "Does that work for you?"
"Well," she twisted her mouth sideways, then sighed with high eyebrows. "That's the meaning of Christmas, after all."
He tabbed back to the top of the list to show her. "Elf? Family models. Home Alone? Family models. Krampus, for chrissakes. Family models. If I have to see one more advertisement about being home with family, and family-this and family-that, I think I'll go nuts." he reached the end of the list again and looked up at her.
She was quiet for a while, looking at the screen with the same twisty mouth pinched off to one side. Then she sighed through her nose and looked back to him without changing her expression. "Please don't get angry about it."
Ethan set the remote down and balanced his elbows on his knees, holding open palms out to face the ceiling. "I'm not angry, I'm just-"
"It's not a big deal," she said gently. "We can do something else."
"It's fine, I'm fine. I'm not angry, Mia. Really." Ethan pursed his lips flat and took a moment to breathe. "God," he ran a hand over his eyes, "there's so much pressure to be so damn happy during the holidays. I don't mean to be so tense."
Mia pulled her hair over one shoulder. "Yeah, I don't know if I'm in the mood to watch other people be happy in their families after cordially visiting with people I haven't seen in," she glanced to the ceiling as if it would help with her mental math. "forever. All the tense smiles and pleasantries and small talk? We've filled our quota of that today," she smiled in a mild, disarming way. "There are some, uh, gloomier movies, right?"
"I always thought It's A Wonderful Life was dark." Ethan offered, tabbing to the first page again. "Same with a Christmas Carol."
"I thought they were the same thing for years," Mia said absently, braiding her hair loosely over her shoulder as she thought of other films. "What about Die Hard?"
Ethan tipped his head. "Yeah, I could do Die Hard."
"The thing with the estranged wife won't bug you?"
"Nah. It's the best one available, anyway." He glanced over to her, then back to the screen. "Plus, it's cute when you point out that they sometimes use the wrong gunshot sounds in action movies."
She put her hands up innocently. "They do." She plopped next to him on the couch. "Ooh, and when they don't wear eyes and ears when they shoot? You know how loud that would be? You've have tinnitus within a year firing that much without plugs, especially in a job that requires that regularly. I think I'm rightly bugged." She laughed with a twinge of chagrin. "Also-speaking of bugs-I think we have some under the fridge."
Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"
"Yeah, could you pick up some ant traps from the hardware store next time you're out?"
Ethan sat up a little straighter and tried to crane his next, as if to see them in the next room. "How bad is it?"
She shrugged with a blasé lift of one shoulder. "Two? Three traps worth?"
He stood up and set the remote on Mia's knee. "I'll be right back. Hit play on the movie while I check it out."
He walked over to the fridge and surveyed it top to bottom as if he was sizing it up. The shiny steel glinted a blurry reflection of the kitchen lights, and basked in the orange glow of the remaining sunset that cut through the windows. He crouched down and shone his phone flashlight under the fridge. An old ketchup packet and a ball of purple-grey dust sat by one of the legs. Ants trodded along the grout between the tile and picked up whatever little crumbs and debris they found and carried them off into the blackness. It was hard to see exactly where. He pressed his cheek to the cold tile and angled his phone a little more, but the position was too awkward, the space was too small, and under the fridge was so dark and cobwebbed that it was impossible to make an assessment.
He got back up to his feet and brushed whatever dirt and crumbs had clung to his skin. He placed his hands on the back of the fridge and hauled it forward by one corner. The legs of the fridge ground against the tile with a cumbersome, vibrating groan. Within the fridge, something glass rocked and maybe fell over; it was hard to tell. Certainly nothing broke, but the wobbling glassware wrapped in flimsy cellophane would make a hell of a mess if he wasn't careful.
A large cockroach skittered out from under the fridge. Ethan observed it for a moment before giving the fridge one more tug. It grated across the floor again, but now the space he had created was enough for him to step into and peer behind the fridge and into the derelict corners of the kitchen.
Ants peppered the tile and grout. A little black pile of them writhed in the far corner, no bigger than a quarter, maybe, but it would take more than three traps to get rid of them all. A cockroach the size of an almond sat dumbly in the center, so still and expressionless that Ethan presumed it to be dead. The large cockroach sat by the molding that lined the floor. It darted off again at a staggering speed.
"Fuck!" Ethan started, reflexively.
"What?" Mia replied with a twinge of panic. She cleared her throat. "Is everything okay? Is it bad?"
"No, the little bastards are fast, it just surprised me," Ethan called back. "It's not great."
He placed his hand on the side of the fridge and felt its greasy, rather sticky layer of sludge, watching the ants squirm and undulate. He watched the white gleams on the ants and tried to determine one from the other in the impossible, moving mass. It looked as unnatural as autonomous black caviar, swirling around together. He stared into the darkness beyond them and thought he could hear the clatter of their spindly legs. He swallowed. His hand on the fridge felt hardwood now, and his back felt pressed to the wall of the crawlspace. Centipedes would rain down, and there was only one small flashlight to view them by, and he didn't know what lay beyond the tight corridor but it couldn't be worse than what he was running away from.
"Ethan? I asked you a question."
Ethan worked his hand over the greasy film on the fridge. It wasn't hardwood. He wasn't there. He rubbed his fingers together and focused on the greasy, sticky, viscous feeling, then wiped his hand on his pants. "Sorry, I was just, uhh..."
"I asked if this was bigger than a trip to the hardware store. Do you think we need an exterminator?"
He hesitated. "Do we have to call Umbrella about this?"
"Wait, what?" she paused the movie and walked over to the kitchen, leaning on the wall by the table. "What are you talking about?"
"Forget it," Ethan dismissed with a wave and a shake of his head. "Forget it, it was a force of habit. I didn't mean it."
She studied his face carefully and padded across the kitchen floor. "Ethan," she pressed her palms to his cheeks. "I know what you're thinking."
He brushed her hands away gently. "Then you're thinking it, too."
"It's not-"
"Marguerite?" their tones collided on the name.
Mia lifted her shoulders and dropped them. "It's not her."
"It's not her." Ethan insisted. "It's a, uh…" he wracked his brain for the word and eyed the large cockroach as it skittered to the corner of the room and out of sight. "It's a- a symptom." Mia just stared, pursed her lips, until her silence forced him to continue. "A side effect, of- all that." He tried to observe her reaction, but her expression remained unchanged.
"It's a roach infestation." She said evenly. "Not even an infestation, it's one roach, and some ants. I think maybe, if it's a symptom of anything, it's of the trauma."
The word still struck him like a curse. A pang of anger punched his gut, but he kept it from leaping out his throat. When he spoke, his voice was eerie with an overcompensated calm. "You don't think that means something?"
Mia looked up at him from under her dark eyebrows. "I think it means we need to call an exterminator." She reached out again and rubbed his arms. "Or pick up some traps from the store. And maybe call your counselor? Look at you, you just about lost all the color in your face. Are you okay?"
Ethan looked at her levelly with his lips pressed together so he looked like a dog about to bark.
"Remember who I work for?" Mia said in a light, reassuring tone. "I have intel. I don't think it's worth-" she flicked a tendril of hair from her face and gestured her palm in a circle that looped Ethan and the fridge together. "Catastrophizing." She assessed his expression before continuing, "I'm noticing a pattern with you, and I'm," she glanced around like she had the word in mind, but didn't want to say it. With a bolstering inhale, she looked him in his face and said plainly. "I'm worried."
His expression softened and he shifted his weight. "You don't have to worry."
She picked some leftover dishtowel lint from off his shirt and flicked each fuzzy pill onto the tile thoughtfully. "I just want to help."
"I'm getting all the help I possibly can. I'm getting more help than I ever asked for." He reached up and took her hands from his arms and locked his fingers with hers. "I'm really tired, and I really just want this to go away so I can feel normal again, and we can feel normal again, but it doesn't work like that. I wish it did." His gaze drew back towards the ants as he pondered what to say next. A heavy feeling filled his chest like a thick fog that sunk and swirled and clouded everything up. He pictured the kneehigh grasses and weeds, seeing everything between the sights on his gun. If he looked hard enough beyond the blackness, there'd be a lantern swinging, swinging, swinging, swinging…
He snapped back to her and gave her hands another squeeze. "I really wish it did. I'll call the exterminator so they can patch the cracks in the wood where the bugs come in. You keep playing the movie and I'll join you in a second."
"Okay," she half-whispered with a soft smile. "Thanks, Ethan."
He kissed her cheek and she walked back to the den, plopping onto the couch and pulling her feet up beside her. Ethan pulled out his phone again. His flashlight was still on, and nearly blinded him as he oriented it in his hand. "Jesus," he muttered, and turned it off.
The movie began to play again. Theme music and exposition thrummed from the other room. He walked through the kitchen to the dining room to mitigate the noise pollution as he scrolled through his contacts: Peters. Perez. Pinto. Poole. Pool Service. Quest Diagnostics. Rabinstein. Ramos. Redfield.
The little blue speech bubble tempted him. He tapped on it and the blank message format popped up. It's better to keep him informed, right? He said if anything seems suspicious, even a roach infestation, to reach out. The bar blinked at him, waiting for text to be entered.
No, it was ridiculous. Mia was right about his patterns and paranoia. August seemed ages away, and there were no major updates from Blue Umbrella or Dulvey. Both Ethan and Mia were making remarkable progress with their counselors, and all their tests had come back with satisfactory results. Plus, Mia was with Blue Umbrella now. She had intel, and insights, and they both vowed to have transparent communication and full honesty with each other. He trusted her. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he repeated the thought in his mind, picturing what his counselor might say to this conscious revelation. (What's that like for you? How does it feel to acknowledge that sense of trust? Where do you feel that in your body? That's very good, Ethan.)
Ethan cancelled the blank text, scrolled a little further, and tapped the blue phone icon. The phone rang twice before a gruff voice stiffly recited: "Redford and Sons Pest Control, how may I help you?"
"Hi," Ethan started, feeling a little stiffness in his cheeks. He put his hand up to feel them, poking with three fingertips from his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth. A divot in his cheek revealed a dimple, and clinging to the corner of his lips was a small, but genuine, smile. "Uhm, my name is Ethan Winters, I'm calling to consult about an ant problem."
A real smile. He felt it over and over. A real smile beyond the pleasantries and small talk and courtesy. Since the counseling and the various medications he'd been prescribed, he could count on one hand how many times he'd really smiled. The smile spread. It was because of her, and it was for her. Once he got off the phone, he decided, he'd go back to the family room and put his arm around her and wrap her all up like they were honeymooning again.