Alright y'all, it took me a while but here I am, serving this new chapter. I'm sure you're gonna recognize that little… uhm… retelling of an iconic canon scene.
Title borrowed from Madonna's artistry. Next one will be borrowed for her as well – more or less.
And that's enough spoilers for today.
Chapter 23 – Candy Perfume Girl
Part 1 – Exhaust pipe
What had pushed Chris Redfield to sneak out of his home late at night isn't difficult to guess. But it's perhaps difficult to imagine the importance of the sorrow that pushed him to punch that stupid, unmovable boulder in the middle of Tall Oaks park.
Said boulder emerged from the grassy soil on the low summit of a mildest, almost imperceptible declivity mantled in oaks and conifers. It had been there since the dawn of time, opulent, slouchy and sprawled like an old fat monarch, ruling its tiny plot of land undisturbed. Basically, it had done nothing to deserve to be punched that savagely by a distressed teenager.
The sharp smacks of Chris's cold knuckles hitting the greyish lichen-sprayed stone mixed up with his grunts in an escalation of despair, rage and depression. The young skin began to crack soon and blood trickled down, in slow but copious rivulets. It stained the rock with a myriad of tiny dark-red spots, elevating its surface from ordinary stone to a conceptual artwork, but Chris didn't care. Albeit increasing, the pain wasn't strong enough to paralyze him yet and to make him desist in such senseless fight.
Sure, the pain in his hands wasn't the crux of his sorrow.
If he could, he'd have split that boulder in a half just like his heart was. Transfixed, battered, abused, broken and left there to bleed as it meant nothing, Chris's heart was nothing more than a heap of shards, as big as those fists he kept smashing onto that unarmed opponent, carelessly yet bound to get him no satisfaction.
In the late hour in which he usually met up with Claire to give shape, sound and heat to the love that magnetized him to her, Chris had failed to just stay in bed. Actually, he had barely sat on it and there he had stayed, head sunk in his hands, after rabidly driving his sister out of his bedroom a few hours before, when he had been only one sob away from collapsing and her presence wasn't doing him any good – just as her absence did though. He had spent the following hours cursing himself for his brusque reaction. Many times he'd stood up to go apologise but he couldn't even get to his door that he'd just turn on his heels and sit down again, more discouraged than he was before. It was like having fallen into a hole in the ground whose sides were too vertical and slippery to clamber out of. Entrenched at the very bottom of it, Chris found an old friend waiting for him open-armed.
Self-pity licked its drooling lips, ready to savage its prey. And Chris Redfield was all its to take.
The words Claire had barely breathed out in the closet, spun in Chris's head and pealed like thunders, overwhelming him with the feeling of annihilation they bore. His moans had opened his heart to her, she had shut it all down with a whisper. How could such a sweet creature like Claire be able to elicit such an immense and unbearable sorrow?
It was when the tendons of his neck had implored for a shift in the posture, and the rising bitterness threatened to drown him in his own tears, that Chris had stood up, put some sweatpants and running shoes on and, accustomed to move in the darkness without making any noise, he'd left Man's Cave. It was heart breaking for him to keep walking straight towards the front door instead of turning right to the living room and the basement like he had done any other night so far.
It was impossible for him to don't stop and peer at the dark room.
He almost caught a glimpse of their impatient bodies' shadows all entwined and lent against the wall in a passionate kiss. Everything in that room spoke of their passion.
Everywhere he'd turn, in the darkness of the night just like in the one of his soul, he saw her.
How could he stand the thought that such a memory would never come to life ever again?
He couldn't, hence he ran away.
If he ran fast and far enough, he reckoned, maybe the sorrow dripping out those walls wouldn't reach him.
As soon as the front door closed behind him, Chris knew he was engaging in a hopeless marathon.
But he ran, crazed and fast, he ran away from home in the middle of a frosty, foggy night. The icy and sharp air lashed his face and blushed his perfect cheekbones, the autumnal humidity wetted his hair even before fuming sweat would drench it and drip down the short locks. To climb over the park's fence was a child's play, and the pain of the stinging spike pricking his thigh resulted pretty welcomed. He hopped to the other side and resumed his run towards nowhere – because that's where he was going with his life.
He felt lost. And a lost man can solely roam.
Chris expended all the energy he had left in that formidable run through the murky park of his childhood, not ever slowing down. He dashed through trees and flowerbeds, not giving a shit about following any trail. Inwardly, he hoped he'd stumble in a twig, fall in a ditch, slam into a tree, get caught in a fence like a slow-witted insect in a spider-web. He didn't care about safety, he only desired to give shape and corporal substance to that formless pain poisoning his limbs and nerves.
The boy had got an unnamed crave for death.
When fatigue gnashed his lungs and swelled his tongue over the limits, Chris was forced to stop but he wasn't satisfied, he didn't feel better. Exhaustion only fuelled his desperation. That's when the near boulder made an entrance on the lonesome stage of Chris's tragedy. The boulder appeared as the best option to play the exhaust pipe role for his inner self-consuming combustion.
The first punch slammed onto the stone like a silent imprecation and the pain in his hands was as great as welcomed and it elicited a flurry of other punches and many more to follow, in a crescendo of violence and grunts of exasperation in that unilateral struggle.
What did he expect to get?
He couldn't break anything but his own phalanges, neither could he turn that dozen-tons-heavy boulder over with mere punches and roars – physics is no joke. Still, he kept fighting, raising his elbows high in the air to load his next blow as the other fist hit the adversary in a suicidal crash.
It took him a while and his knuckles full of bloody cracks, to realize he'd get nowhere fast and nothing to soothe his innermost needs. He lastly collapsed and sat on the frosty ground, his placid opponent as the only support to the boy's weary and curved back. Little ruffles of white vapour came out along with his wheezes only to dissipate as soon as the surrounding mist absorbed his breath. He was puffed and enervated and more than one pant sounded too much like a sob not to understand he was on the verge of crying again. His sorrow, masked as pain and fatigue, had reached its climax.
Chris tilted his head backwards until it hit the cold rocky surface but he resisted the temptation of hitting it again and again until his nape bled too. Much to his rocky opponent's delight, as it preferred to be a cuddling pillow to his head rather than to be soaked in blood any more. Chris let out a shaky sigh of resignation and swallowed the drought in his throat the best he could.
Claire...
Destiny can be cruel.
Straight in front of him, a few feet ahead in the distance, some dim shapes stood in the nightly mist. Chris immediately recognized it was the playground equipment. An authentic stab from the past, full of memories, empty of solace. His prostrated mind convinced itself he could see a little, chubby, rosy figure toddling around the big wooden slide architecture, fanning some blinking thing in the air.
It brought him back in years to a moment he remembered as clear as though it had occurred only a day before. It was a memory as old as the park he was in.
He remembered how cute and tiny Claire had been in her princessly pink dress, how brave she'd been in defeating the dragon and, even more, in dealing with her first fallen tooth. A melancholic smile sweetened his features to the memory of little Claire bursting into his bedroom on the following day, pouring on his bed a rain of candies that Tooth Fairy had left under her pillow, and they gorged themselves on them.
That faint grin hardly made it to its apex, that two lonesome tears wetted the corners of his mouth and pushed them backwards, resurrecting the usual grimace of pain.
How come he had fallen in love with that little girl?
Claire had long stopped being that cuddly child. Every day she resembled a little more a woman and a little less a kid. Day by day her beauty had grown up along with her, effulgent like the hues of fawn gold in her hair, and Chris was aware of it even before he'd had the chance to incarnate that beauty from the inside out. And when it had happened, the long-time jealousy and affectionate possessiveness he had always felt as a brother, had blossomed into something else. At least, that's what might've appeared at a first glance.
The more Chris remembered, the more he hopelessly questioned his heart.
Why did his first real love have to be Claire?
How could he let himself turn into precisely the guy he had sworn to protect her from since puberty had filled his boyish mind with dirty thoughts and his boxer briefs with boners?
These questions went by just as they came, leaving almost no trace of their passage. His real torment was a whole worse range of queries.
How could he hope to go on without her? Was it too late to turn back now?
Was there some salvation for him? F-for th-them?
How do you forget you love someone so hard?
How the fuck am I supposed to forget her?! Tell me!
But there were no friendly ears listening to the poor boy's mentally screamed supplication. Loneliness granted him no help.
Part 2 – Broccoli sucks
History repeats itself, they say. To Claire it was like being caged into a loop but inside a mirror. Basically, they had switched again. Now it was her to repeatedly glance towards the guys' table, in the hope to meet her brother's eyes even if only by mistake (of him).
So far, no luck.
Chris had considerately kept his look dropped onto the fast ever emptying plate. Still, despite the distance and Carlos' broad shoulders and the wild fuzz of black hair, Claire had a perfect view of his sombre scowl.
Once he had kicked her out of Man's Cave the previous night – Claire recalled – she had had to put up with Lily's quizzical looks and Robert's fed-up preaches – obviously unhappy to be proved wrong by facts, aside from being badly waken up by yells and a fucking slam. The two adults had appeared in the staircase, bringing along their scolding and suspicious frowns and, literally, storming her with shocked questions. She'd lied, she'd minimized and she'd giggled dismissively, appealing to Chris's innate temper, before she could let herself go to discouragement in the privacy of her room and, finally, bury herself under the blanket's protection with a heavy heart.
The shadow of his firm grip around her elbow had kept stinging for a while, it had felt so humiliating to be hurled away from his room that way, with those angry words being barked at her face without mercy nor consideration – or prudence. Claire had never experimented that side of him on herself until then. Had he slapped her, she'd have felt the same. After all, what had he done if not to verbally slap her with his repressed rancour? Who could ever imagine that telling someone they love them can be done so disruptively and violently it sounds more like pure hatred? Claire kneaded at her elbow to rub that shadow off her skin and replace it with her trembling touch, but how could she erase it from her mind?
On that evening their roles had switched again: she'd had to bend over backwards in order to remedy her brother's careless outburst that, by a chance, hadn't cost them their parents breaking into his room to compel them to spill the beans. Claire wasn't sure Chris was in the condition to keep up their secret without having a breakdown, therefore she had to insist until she dissuaded her parents from knocking at his door.
In the noisy school's cafeteria, now, Claire deeply sighed and attempted to pick a little of that muddy and insipid slime they pushed as steamed broccoli. Her appetite was zero and it wouldn't have been any different, not even with a thick slice of high-calorie chocolate cake on her plate. Nevertheless, she made up her mind to eat something, at least not to draw unwanted attention from her friends – who luckily were all caught up in some juicy, fresh gossip.
Ew… it's even chill.
She chewed that greenish mush unwillingly, just not to suffer those hunger pangs that had kept her awake last night as she had quite totally skipped dinner, and that had pushed her to gulp down two more pancakes at breakfast to compensate for the nocturnal fast.
Breakfast.
That had been the first hard-to-swallow thing of the day.
Differently from dinnertime, that morning Claire hadn't even tried to approach Chris. The big boy entered the kitchen as noisily as a cat, deigned her and their mother only of a 'morning he grumbled through a clenched and tense jaw, and sat down one stool farther than usual. He was wrapped in a sweatshirt, too oversized even for him, with the hood so low that it cast a shadow on half of his face and the sleeves so long they covered half of his fingers. It reminded her of a picture of some sort of statue of some friar sentenced to death by fire as heretic she had seen in some random history book but she hastily dispelled that image so powerful yet so appropriate.
Claire had kept having her breakfast as the big body next to her never arrived.
She might've even overlooked his chagrined tone but to distance himself from her as if she was a leper was too much to start the day with. When she'd got up from the kitchen island, she'd looked at him with hurt disdain printed on her face and had walked away determined not to even wait for him before heading off to the bus stop. He ignored her? He wanted to be left alone? Fine! She'd have given him a taste of his own medicine then!
Once outside the front door, though, her determination had fast faded, to lastly leave her with only her hurt pride and a bunch of other displeasing feelings. To walk without him just felt wrong. It felt like she was letting him down, when it was clear he needed help above everything else. Moreover, she had to make sure none of their parents' eyebrows quirked in suspicion like the night before – if to hide the obvious truth was ever possible.
Lily Carter Redfield sure didn't need any other confirmation that the issue between her kids was far from being resolved – their pouts were more than enough. Still, it was unclear why she'd seemed to overlook it that morning. Maybe she didn't want to make them be late for the bus with a lengthy interrogation, or maybe she preferred to not interfere... uhm, Claire wouldn't have bet on this last one.
Anyway, Claire gave up on her spiteful attitude, took a seat onto the first step and waited for him, her leg bouncing both for the chill air and the nervousness.
She'd heard the handle gyrate and click, then the rustle of the door opening, but a few instants passed before she'd heard his steps. She knew Chris didn't expect to find her still there. Not willing to see how he'd react, she stood up and descended the few steps along with him, still keeping her eyes onto anything wasn't her brother. After all, there was nothing for her to see besides his hateful standoffishness and his baggy clothes.
It happened that, as they were walking towards the bus stop, her eye fell onto the visible red marks on his hands as he briefly pulled them out of his pockets to light up a cigarette. She wondered what might have caused them, or when he got them as she clearly remembered there were no wounds on his hands when he'd returned from the gym. Something on her face instantly shifted from bothered to concerned. She'd have bet her life he had caused those wounds himself, any time overnight perhaps. With self-inflicted violence.
Claire saddened incredibly.
Until then, she had been so sure she was doing the right thing and paying the unfair price for persisting in her belief, but now she realised she was only the little, unexperienced, immature girl anyway, with scant skills in foreseeing all the implications of her own actions. As much as she believed she had altruistically taken the lead on their issue, in the end it was nothing more than an illusion. She deluded herself she'd acted responsibly, moved by her noble motives, but it was Chris who had to pay the consequences, as the only adult of them two, who was well aware that a mere talk wouldn't magically fix a thing, unlike her. Those bloody wounds were the arrogant evidence that he knew what to do – what he needed to do – in order to deal with his own grief, whereas she could barely fathom emotions on his face at this point. Again, she was unable to return him the protectiveness he'd raised her with and this bothered her. Will ever come the day she'd be as mature as him? Why couldn't she just effectively look after him?
She felt like an idiot. A useless one.
They proceeded side by side but they were miles apart from each other. He carried himself clerically curved down and grim. She walked timorous, silent and self-blaming and for a moment she felt like a poor little hooker dragged to the Inquisition by an intransigent priest who, instead of the whip, tortured her differently.
She wondered if she deserved it.
Another form in which punishment came was the lack of kiss on the temple that morning.
Not that she expected any different.
Once by the bus stop, Chris lighted his second smoke, waved at his friends with a nod and took leave of his sister by simply turning his back on Claire who, forbidding herself from feeling mortified, continued towards her chatty friends as if she'd come alone.
Thankfully – and Claire was truly grateful for it – Jill hadn't "got over with her insignificant and temporary feud with Chris" – as Rebecca had once addressed the matter – so they had a perfect excuse to keep the two groups of kids still apart in those moments when they were gathered in the same place. Otherwise, those recent cross-frequentations would've soon led to the two to melt into one big group of friends.
That was how her day had started, frustrating and discouraging, but now he was there, sitting down just a few feet afar, and she wasn't feeling much grateful anymore.
Since the bell had rung, Claire had been preoccupied to find a way to casually approach him by the cafeteria. She might have pretended she had forgotten her wallet at home so she had to ask him for some money – Chris would never deny her a meal – and she might've returned his favour with some reassuring, comforting smiles, maybe a hug... Or she could… she could… uhm… she found herself queuing already without even the shadow of a good idea on the horizon. So she let that chance to share a little meaningless word with him slip away.
How many were the chances that she guessed the luck she looked for so badly would come to her in the shape, voice and healing human touch of Leon Kennedy?
"Hey, Becca!" He called, approaching the girls' table while they were collecting their dishes and preparing to leave.
"Hey Blondie!" Rebecca replied, standing up beside Claire, the only one still sitting down, still fidgeting with the fork and the uncanny veggie.
"Look, what about going to watch that movie you talked about?" Leon said and returned the red-haired amused smile while he affectionately tousled her ponytail as a nice way to say hello.
"Weren't you supposed to get some cop practice?" Rebecca asked, glancing at Claire in complicity. A sly look surfaced on the brunette's face as she was pretty damn remindful of how Leon had ditched her proposal to go to the cinema because he had already planned to go to the firing range with Chris for another session of mindless shooting at human figures.
"Yeah, Leon!" Claire intervened, wringing her neck to look at the boy standing up behind her. "Crime doesn't go on vacation…"
Leon accepted the girls' predictable irony with an utmost appreciated gentle caress on Claire's shoulder and a cocky wink at his girl. "Well, dudes at the precinct will have to settle for fighting baddies without a wannabe rookie this afternoon…"
"And you let Chris go to face those cardboard culprits all alone?!" Rebecca jokingly gushed. "Besties my ass!"
"Chris wouldn't even make it to the east wing without me and my leaflet map!" Leon bragged, patting the back pocket of his jeans.
At her brother being mentioned, Claire turned to check if he had at least finished guzzling his meal or if he was swooping also his friends' leftovers like a vacuum cleaner. She hardly refrained a gasp when, instead of finding him lent over his plate, she found him standing up right beside her table, hands plunged into his pockets, less than one step away from her.
And he was staring at her.
It was unsettling, exciting, scary, lovely.
"Chris changed his plans so…" Leon explained.
"So he ditched you! Let's just call things by their names!" Rebecca petulantly shouted, laughing evilly. "How does it feel, rookie?"
While the two kids began their usual joking bickering right behind her, Claire waited for her brain to come up with anything to say as she couldn't just ignore Chris's presence – not that she would. Whatever existing English word was fine! Even a stupid "hi" was ok… no, that was lame as fuck. What about "sup?". Jesus. A nod and nothing more, maybe? God…!
Unexpectedly, it was Chris who broke the silence first.
"You barely touched your food." He murmured as he glanced at her tray.
The first words he told her in hours and it was a reproach! So cute. So... Chris! But those words sounded like anything but a reproach. Claire had to curb a sigh at the tender tone in which the big guy had decided to break the torture of silence. Was it that the priest pitied the miserable hooker?
"Well… Uh… broccoli sucks."
Bravo, Claire! You truly did something to gain that lamest conversation award out there!
"Try to eat more, Claire." Chris said and, before departing, he hesitated a little, side-glanced at her and gently pinched her cheek with two hooked fingers.
It was a very swift and light move but it filled Claire's heart with such a warmth that she couldn't help but smile, even if she still had no idea how to deal with him in that situation. Her confusion rose again as much as he walked off. Wasn't he mad at her anymore or was he just making sure she noticed the rough scabs on his wounded knuckles? Did that touch bear forgiveness or bitterness? Was it a white flag or an ambush?
She had no clue, she only longed for more of the shivers it sent down her spine.
"Hold up, hold up, hold up!" Rebecca scoffed, halting everyone with her drawn hands from further moving. She pivoted on her feet and planted her fists onto her hips. "You saying you really stared all these times only to check if she was having her veggies?! You must be kidding!"
Part 3 – Enigma
"Come in!" Claire loudly replied to the gentle knock at Girly Room's door, without stopping stuffing her backpack with books.
She'd just finished checking she really had only that little homework when the broad shape of Chris appeared in the doorframe. He havered at the entrance a little before getting in, he then closed the door behind himself and cleared his voice. Everything about his demeanour suggested he must've long rehearsed – or at least pondered – his brief speech before showing up in the middle of the afternoon. At least, so it suggested that plain expression he had on, so different from the funereal scowl he had worn the last day. He looked calm. As if the shower he had just had had somehow washed away the most superficial layers of hurt. Claire hoped he was so even inside and that, hopefully, his inner tempest had calmed down too.
"Are you busy right now?" he asked, pointing at her backpack.
Claire shook her head no as she couldn't speak while holding her breath that hard. She didn't expect Chris to step into her room so soon to be honest. It hadn't even been 24 hours since he had last got in it with her barenaked self on his shoulders. The wound was still fresh… for both of them.
She couldn't really say she was that surprised, though. The stroll back from the bus stop hadn't been any chattier than in the morning but she had sensed Chris's silence harmless and quiet this time, as if he was simply lost in his thoughts. She had walked beside him almost comfortably, as though she sensed things were getting better.
"Fine. I wanna talk with you but…" Chris whispered while pensively looking around and faltered a little as his look dropped onto the closet entrance. "…but just not here. I don't feel safe."
"Ok." Claire nodded, now certain that Chris was about to do "that talk". Her heart began racing, every beat bringing her closer to... she gulped down every hurtful word.
"Good. I'll be waiting in my car." He said and slowly turned.
He was already grasping the doorknob, when he indulged a little more and took a long, intense glance at her over his shoulder. It was enough to roil Claire's emotions and blood.
The buff boy was a walking enigma.
Claire was confused.
They had just crossed the uprooted gates of the discarded industrial area in whose maze of alleyways and secluded corners they had often secretly had sex in the past. Like, for real. She didn't expect Chris would take her there ever again, let alone after what had happened on the previous day.
Claire observed her brother's profile while he wordlessly drove.
His hands grazed the steering wheel with fluid, decisive and expert movements which immediately summoned the remembrance of the times those same hands were caressing her lower belly with the same expertise, just a couple of more edifices down the road, and each time her back spasmed against the steering, making it erratically honk, it elicited a swirl of amused giggles. Claire then observed his appreciable mass composedly sat and she remembered him laying down, naked and panting, hardly outstretched on the backseats whilst she rode him with urge. The cockpit was quiet now, but how many sweet words had he susurrated right there anytime they had made love in it or just spent a few hours kissing and petting or when she had… oh!.. When she had given him her first blow job.
All those memories… and it was all over now.
Unless…
Claire inspired deeply, suffocated that adverb, exhaled its remains along with a quiet sigh and returned to pay attention to the desolate landscape outside the window. She discovered they were now crossing an alley she'd never been before. Her sense of direction couldn't quite tell in which corner of the area they even were.
Claire had no idea why he had chosen such a place to "have that talk" – aside from being far from every-motherfucking-one's ear – but she felt that the most pleasing memories it carried were undermining her. To see those places again sharpened her incertitude. Honestly, it was quite a cheap shot of him. She'd have soon discovered her brother's intentions, that was for sure, but expectation was killing her. What if Chris attempted to kiss her? Or what if he asked her for one last fuck? Would she be able to say no? Would she be able to put him first and renounce such a tempting chance?
Would he accept no as an answ- STOP IT CLAIRE!
You're raving.
Her mind hadn't the time to rage much further as Chris parked the car between two old grey storehouses and killed the engine. Here we go, Claire thought and took another deep breath. A dose of oxygen would've surely dispelled those stupid thoughts of her.
From the brief moment that separated the sound if the engine stopping and Chris speaking up, Claire found herself in keen discomfort. Normally, by the time he'd kill the engine, she would already be clinging to his lips. What was she supposed to do now? Or say? What was he expecting her to do? Should she speak first? Should she wait? Dammit, she was so unused to just share a car with him for non sexual purposes that she could hardly find a proper place for her own hands. Even keeping the one curled around the balled other onto her lap felt strangely unusual. She felt so awkward.
"Let's go." Chris said unfastening his safety belt and opening the door.
"Where are we going exactly?" Claire wondered, repressing her wish to see him unfasten another kind of belt.
"Follow me." He commanded, mysterious but gentle, and got off the car.
They walked below the tepid sun, alongside one of the big buildings up to a rusty old door, apparently anything but solid. Chris gave it a little push with his shoulder and it screeched until it cracked open enough for him to insert his thick forearm. The sound of a chain ringed clear as he deftly fiddled it and let it slip onto the ground with a loud metallic noise. Chris seemed to know exactly what to do in order to open that door. Another push and it opened completely. A frowzy smell of dust and bankruptcy hit Claire's nostrils but it was of no indication on what to expect on the other side. Chris glanced in and invited her to follow him inside with a wave of his hand. She trusted him so she did as he wished. She didn't trust the old, cracked walls, though, so she walked keeping her eyes peeled.
The inside of the huge storehouse consisted of a wide only room, with the concrete floor full of cracks and weed. A few thick pillars emerged from it to sustain a highest ceiling made of rusty girders and such ruined panels that it gave the impression they were stepping into an enormous, upside-down colander. The late afternoon pale sunlight filtered through each crack and casted feeble but well outlined rays in the otherwise sombre air. If outside November silvery light dominated the ether, inside instead, by reflecting against all that rust, it enriched of a faint orangish hue, making the big area appear warmer. As soon as their eyes adapted to the new luminosity, Chris resumed proceeding towards a huge cumulus of… things all amassed in the farthest corner of the big room, right below some wide glassless windows.
"What's this place?" Claire asked, quickly taking in her surroundings.
"Oh, it's a secret place where I used to come." Chris replied with an unseen nostalgic grin.
"You mean with your exes?" She candidly asked as her eyes fell onto a dirty mattress on the ground across the room.
"Not that kind of place." Chris muttered, gulping down his chagrin. "Even though I think it's in one of these storehouses Piers lost his virginity."
"Romantic guy…" Claire deadpanned, now looking at the far mattress in distrust.
They walked around some big wooden containers and found some smaller boxes and buckets and crates strangely disposed to form a set of scattered seats.
"When we were kids" Chris began recounting "Carlos and I used to ride over to shoot at cats and rats."
"Did you kill animals?!" Claire squealed, her impromptu shrill yell echoed in the vast ambient.
"Hell no! We had toy guns. You know, all noise and no perforation!" Chris hastened to clarify. "Some cats didn't even run away any more… it was just a game. We'd keep score and never run out of targets."
"Oh, I see…" Claire mumbled, only partially convinced. "So it was kind of a no-girls-allowed place. The treehouse Daddy never built. Which explains why you never wanted to bring me along!"
"Actually…" Chris sighed, while lowering himself into a plywood box. "I didn't want you to watch me doing it. You'd have thought I was heartless and… I wanted to be your hero for a few more years."
Claire smiled softly, she moved another crate beside his, wiped the dust off with a hand and sat down as well, cautiously savouring the gentle warmth radiating from his limbs. "I'd have rather asked you to let me try and then I'd have most likely asked Santa for a toy gun for Christmas."
Chris regarded her of a faint chuckle and a melancholic gaze. Proximity wafted her delicate perfume up to his nostrils, trumping the oppression of the stagnant air smell. She smelled like sweets, candies and adolescence. His olfactory memory immediately reminisced the honeyed taste of her skin, the sugary flavours of her lips and the fizzy spirituosity of her inebriating breath. With two fingers, Chris tucked an auburn strand behind her ear and caressed her cheek. It was the first time he touched her since the past outburst. Claire's breath immediately reduced to a thin whiff as her big round eyes struggled against her will to not look at his mouth not even for a shy glance. After his long, self-inflicted distancing and his brutal silence, this sudden closeness was baffling her and her heartbeats.
His mouth curved into a weak smile and he retreated his hand. "Well, I brought you along in the end." He softly said, stretching a cheesy grin, instantly mirrored by her.
Her smile was certainly wider and, unlike his, it even reached her eyes and gave them that special glimmer of hers. To watch his smile again after all that time and to have it so close she only needed to reach up with a finger to caress it, it truly warmed her heart. Claire couldn't tell where he was going with this small talk but, whatever Chris had in mind to do, she'd have let him set the pace, the direction, the timing. She'd have done anything and more not to see that little smile fade away from his stunning face once more. If he needed some warm-up she was up for it!
"Yeah, you can still give me some shooting lessons!" The red-haired girl proposed. "Or maybe you can ditch Leon for good and bring me at the firing range next time!"
"And let you shoot with a real gun?! No way!"
Claire pulled a face but, at the same time, hid with a theatrical wave of her head the blushing her hammering heart plastered on her cheeks as, for the first time, Chris had sounded just a little more like himself, like the… brother she used to know. "Why not? Do you think I'm too dangerous with a real gun in my hand?"
"I don't. Actually, I think you might learn fast but then you wouldn't need me anymore to protect you." Chris replied resuming his melancholic but sweet tone.
Claire's heart sank.
"Well… you never know…" She murmured, her look momentarily dropping to the dusty ground like it did anytime a sad thought crossed her mind. "But I wouldn't mind being able to protect you too every once in a while."
Chris's already downcast look replaced hers in the absent observation of the ruined floor but he said nothing. He just appreciated her words and let them sink in.
"You'll always be my hero, Chris." Claire insisted, in the hope of pleasing him, but he didn't even thank her for the consideration.
Seemingly, the just started small talk was already over.
They shared some long moments of silence, in which what began as a slight uneasiness, grew up to an embarrassed waiting for the first of them to make up their mind and tackle the reason that led them into that forsaken storehouse. Chris knew it was up to him to start as he had asked her to come. Waiting was of no use, although the looming displease discouraged him from speaking. He scraped his head as if the best words to start that hardest conversation would sprinkle out his skull like magic dandruff and, maybe, instil the strength he needed, but with little success.
"I didn't ditch Leon." Chris uttered with a grimace, shifting his gaze from the ground back into Claire's.
Answering Claire's disoriented blinks, he explained that it had been Leon who suggested he put off their plans for the day. The blond hadn't missed to notice Chris's standoffishness by the bus stop, especially the way he hadn't waved at Claire at all when parting from her. Such an offish attitude was so unusual of him, especially after the recent involution of his sickening brotherly possessiveness. His wounds and his permanent hard frown only confirmed that something was up, and it had taken just a little inquiry for Leon to figure out that Chris had had a fight with his sister. For a heedful observer like Leon Kennedy, it had been almost a child's play. "That guy was born to be a cop." Chris lastly chuckled, joylessly, to defuse his own uneasiness as they were slowly approaching the subject.
"So… do I have to thank him for you talking to me again?" Claire bugged.
"Kind of." Chris chuckled in embarrassment. "I mean… I knew I needed to talk to you but I… just needed more time to figure out..." …How to survive it…
"Well, thank you Leon." Claire resolutely said to some vague no one else around. "Now we're here and I'll let you do the talk. I think I talked too much yesterday." She articulated, absently kneading her own elbow as she spoke.
Chris nodded and breathed out. She was right. In the spur of the moment, she had talked too much and he had gone too far.
"We both did and I'm sorry for it."
"Are you apologising?" Claire whispered. "'Cause it sounds like you are."
"I am." He solemnly answered.
Claire let go of her elbow to rub his arm and regarded him with a smile that conveyed all her acceptance and forgiveness. It took that little.
A little heartened by that first tiny step, Chris straightened up on his extemporaneous seat and exhaled one last shred of hesitation along with that last deep breath he had taken. The sooner…
"Alright, let's do it. I've got just one condition." He said, remarking his statement with a forefinger. "No lies."
Claire pretty much disliked that stupid remark of him – was he implying that she'd like to him? – but nodded the same and pretended it didn't bother her.
"Good." Chris muttered.
His palms nervously glided up and down his own thighs many times before he spoke again. And Claire began suspecting that his condition wasn't really addressed to her. "I love you." He shakily said, his voice almost cracking by the end of those three fateful words. His tone implied it was just the premise of a longer speech but nothing else was uttered. He faltered, mumbled sounds and stammered hums robbing him of speech, and lastly seemed to give up on continuing.
"I know that." Claire lamely whispered, to fill up the sudden silence that Chris didn't dare or care to interrupt.
He remained quiet, as though in the stupid waiting for his words to be returned – although he knew it wasn't going to happen. To him, to be honest to the bone, there was nothing left to add. Love is an axiom. But he wasn't deluded enough to believe there wasn't anything else to say. Indeed, there was nothing he could say or do to save him from the inevitable break-up.
"Don't look at me like that." Chris implored with a headshake.
"Like what?" Claire asked, her round sapphires questioning him in renewed concern.
"Like I just… blasphemed!" Chris muttered under his breath. Elbows planted on his knees, he grabbed his head like it was a basketball and he nervously rubbed it as if it suddenly ached. "Please not you too, Claire, now." He sobbed.
"Not me what?" his sister asked, careless if she sounded like a childish broken record. As long as her concern increased, Claire's comprehension of her brother's demeanour went down and down. Where had his melancholic little grin gone? Why was he sounding so broken again?
Chris abruptly stood up, paced around for a little before vehemently turning towards her, seemingly in pain.
"Not you too to make me feel like a motherfucking pervert! A goddamn monster who didn't only fuck his own sister but even fell in love with her!" Chris sputtered, his voice gruffed by self-loathing and shaken by despair. "I already do it by myself."
There's a first time for everything.
The luckiest people experience a first time for whatever almost on a daily basis. On that day, to the Redfield siblings, it was the first time Chris showed his fragility that unashamedly and sincerely. The brawny boy needed an armour, instead, on his sleeve he wore his heart and wrapped his vulnerability around it like a ribbon. Like a virus, the littlest creature, can affect and sicken even the sturdiest and most vigorous of men, the feelings Chris had for his sister poisoned and weakened him down to a spiral of prostration.
The siblings locked gazes for an infinite moment before his averted and hers demurely dropped. Chris had never been that naked to her eyes. She failed to keep watching him hating his very own self.
He hated himself because he had fallen in love with her.
Aside from a bottomless pity, Claire felt guilt rise in the form of heaviest stone in her stomach, almost causing a retch to build in. When their eyes met again, in a casual looking for each other, both seemed pained.
"If you think you're a perv, then we both are." Claire murmured and sought his hazelnut eyes to confirm her she was indeed a pervert fuck too. Instead, they bore the resignation of whom, defenceless, almost apologises for loving so much, so morbidly. In her sapphires, he found the rue of the sinner and a sense of inadequacy as she realised she was unable to figure out the width and depth of his grief.
"You didn't fall in love with your flesh and blood." Chris deadpanned.
"Still I asked you… I pushed you to have sex with your flesh and blood, Chris! Don't blame yourself. You didn't even want to go on with this!" Claire retorted. A scornful snort accompanied her last headshake. "You didn't even want it in the first place!"
"I wanted it." Chris firmly disagreed, almost offended. "I wanted you."
He had wanted her first, he had told her so first, on that night he'd almost succumbed to his wrongful lust, when he had lastly felt not allowed to take what he most craved from her. Claire couldn't confute it. It was Still vividly impressed on her mind the size and consistence of his desire as she had felt his arousal pressing against her skin for the first time. Chris had been the one who put the first foot across the final line, although it had been Claire the one who had gripped him tight and crashed themselves beyond it and down the cliff.
"You wouldn't have taken me if I didn't… would you?" and she hastened to warn him. "Remember: no lies. Your own words, Chris."
Chris mulled that cropped question over for a few instants, then ducked his head and collapsed back on his crate. "I can't tell anymore at this point." He shrugged in defeat, saddened by not being able to blame it all on himself.
Claire's thin arm draped the expanse of his shoulders as much as it could and gently rubbed it. A sympathetic soft smile blossomed between her cheeks. They let the silence cradle their narrow hug for a while, both sinking in their own thoughts.
It was the chance to show everyone that she, Claire Redfield, was able to be the responsible one too. She needed to show she was mature enough to make good decisions.
It started with a low murmur but, word after word, it gained confidence and reaffirmed her determination in pursuing the right path and doing the right thing. Claire told him the reasons behind her decision so disruptively whispered in the aftermath of their last intercourse. All the thoughts that had worried her young mind since that unsuspected night at Jack Bar.
Chris stared at her for a while, letting her words sink in with no hurry. He didn't know how to feel. On one side, he was deeply moved by her motives, appreciating the kindness of her soul and being grateful for having a sister like her. But on the other… heartbreak. Total heartbreak.
Suddenly, Chris's mind blasted in a thousand things he could say to coax her to not persist in her determination, to talk her out of dumping him. Chris knew he had enough ascendancy on Claire to make her change her mind, even if it would've most probably taken days if not weeks, as stubborn as the Redfield blood made her. He only had to speak and the enchantment wouldn't break. The temptation was strong enough for him to be on the verge of interrupting her more than once, lips already puckered to speak, but it wasn't stronger than him. He'd just keep his mouth shut, listen and endure.
"…I don't want to keep you from having a real girl and being happy." The girl concluded.
Chris's longanimity was his most commendable quality, second only to his genuineness.
"I was happy with you." Chris whispered, words slipping out almost against his will.
It hurt them as a bolt cracked through their flesh to leave them both carbonised.
Claire couldn't stand the desperation impressed on her brother's face. And Chris couldn't bear his real, concrete, material and tangible happiness to be denied and unconsidered just like that.
It's impossible to tell who pressed their lips against the other's first, who took the initiative, but they kissed. Their kiss tasted like regret, nostalgia, loss, loyalty, love. It was living on the last embers of their romance it also consumed, but its fire burnt like incandescent lust for that short moment it lasted. Their lips parted, but neither their faces nor their eyelids did. Their foreheads touched, the tip of their noses brushed and danced, their lips kept grazing and wetting each other in their breaths. Claire's subtle fingers curled in the short hair of his nape, clinging to his presence. She was so small against his well-built body. Chris caught a glimpse of tears glimmering in her eyes as she fiercely struggled to keep them. It reminded him of the last time he'd seen them roll down her cheeks, only a day prior, when they were far closer than this.
"I can't be your man…" Chris susurrated in a lowest growling lament, keeping repeating it like a hypnotic mantra in his head. If he said it enough, maybe he'd resume believing it someday – had he ever truly believed it in the first place.
Claire sniffled and gave him another kiss. Then she grabbed the hand he slid down her cheek and kissed each of his scabs. They may have not tasted like blood, but each kiss lashed her lips like a whiplash. "I've spent one month in your shoes, Chris… I've been so inside you… I wish I could just jump back into you." She sobbed, revealing how open the wounds in her soul still were.
"I love you, Claire." Chris blurted, with a mere susurration, close to tumbling down to his sorrow.
Claire's grip on his hair tightened as much as the grip of guilt did to her bowels. She sniffled, wheezed and struggled to find a hint of order in the thoughts that hefty barely breathed words had shattered. "I've literally been a whole fucking month inside you..." Claire repeated in a broken voice. "And now I have never felt so scared of losing you."
"Same here." Chris lamely chuckled, the flickering in her voice compelling him to try to alleviate the situation the best he could.
Claire drew back and looked at him wide-eyed, almost shocked. The teardrops in her eyes glistened clearly. "You'll never lose me, Chris!" She gasped, tapping the rim of her eyelashes to wipe them. "How can you even…?"
Chris forced a smile. Oh, he had already lost her! He knew that but, admittedly, she didn't, so he decided to play along. For her sake and for his own. He'd plenty of sorrow for that afternoon and, for real, there was absolutely nothing left to say. Every other minute of her so close yet so forbidden was a torture he yearned to end.
"How couldn't I?" Chris sarcastically asked.
"I am your sister! Nothing can ever change that! You just can't lose me." Claire soothed, fondly caressing his stubbled cheek.
Chris stretched the smile she was so anxious to see but some formless feeling inside warned him that such loving, apparently heartening words were going to hurt him someday. He wasn't even remotely aware of it but the fear those considerations of hers weren't as comforting as both intended in that moment.
For the time being though, Chris needed to believe them.
"Pinkie promise?" He asked, offering his finger like they always did when they were kids to resolve any fight.
Claire's smile returned to its rightful place. "You still remember?"
Their fingers entwined and the hollow promise was made.
As she tried to loosen their union, Chris kept her little finger caged and plunged his gaze straight into her questioning one. "One last thing and then we go home." He sternly uttered.
Her eyes nodded on her behalf.
"Back in the closet, did I force you?"
"No, you didn't."
"You sure? Please be honest." He insisted. "You got no reason to be scared to tell me. I mean, it can't get any worse than this anyway after all."
"I'm no little girl, Chris, I did what I wanted. And you fuck like a god. Do I need to explain more?" Claire sassed.
"Ok." The big boy hummed. "I believe you. Here, let's go home." He said as he stood up and offered her his hand.
The sun was setting, November isn't generous with daylight.
Claire was already walking towards their car while Chris picked up the old chain from the floor to seal the unstable door again. Its dirty steel links were the only unrusted metal in the abandoned storehouse and they jangled appreciably as Chris tried to get its end.
Halloween had long gone but he resembled a ghost now.
Hollow and evanescent, Chris felt like he'd been carved like a pumpkin, robbed of his entrails and forced to wear a grin that didn't belong to him.
He had put a smile back onto Claire's face, but at what cost? He had lost it all.
Oh, who was he fooling? He had never really had it at all.
He had even spoiled one of his dearest childhood places for the nothingness he owned! And what had he got in return? Nothing.
He stared at the chain hanging from his balled fists and dug his nails into the rough skin of his palms as he they tightened. But it was no rope to cling to in his downfall.
"Hurry up, Chris!" The distant girlish voice of Claire woke him up. "It's getting quite chilly out here!"
"Coming!" Chris replied and absently fiddled the chain back around the handle and the hook in the wall and forcefully pulled the door close.
His hands were empty now but his chain, his burden, it was waiting for him to open the car.
Well, apparently our babies really want to put an end on their romance.
But I just can't believe them.
Sorry.
If the story of the burnt friar tickled your curiosity and you want to see what Claire saw on that book, google Giordano Bruno.