~ 3 ~ Wesker's other side

"You better take off your clothes before he arrives."

I almost jump. "What are you saying?"

Claire tilts her head in the way she always does when she thinks that something is wrong with me, and replies: "I said you better change your clothes before Piers arrives. Or do you want to greet him in this attire?"

I look down at myself and realize I'm still wearing my pajamas. It's already evening, but I haven't gotten dressed the whole day. That's not new anymore. I've become, as Claire calls it, a "layabout".

She was the first to notice that something wasn't right when I came back from Africa in the middle of March this year. After all that happened there, I started to let myself go, hardly leaving the house except for work, and spending the weekends in my pajamas. I refuse to see a therapist because they wouldn't understand. I don't understand myself either.

Early in April Claire decided to have me move in with her for a while so she can at least keep an eye on me while I don't talk to her. She does everything she can to make me feel better. So I'll do her the favor and at least take a look at that Piers, even though I can't promise that he'll get what he wants.

"Alright, I'm going," I tell her, leave the dining table and go up the stairs to the former guest room, which is now my bedroom. I gather some clothes from the wardrobe, approach the bed – this time even without hitting my head on the roof slope – and take off the pajamas. Doing that, I can't help remembering the way Wesker undressed me.

After the incident in the waiting room he went back to pretending nothing had happened. During the following week I tried several times to call him out on it, carefully making sure that I never was in a drunk or tired state and there were always enough people at the RPD so he wouldn't try to seduce me in his very own way. But he always put me off, pretending not to know what I was talking about, and once in a while I caught myself doubting my memory. But this time a false memory was impossible because I still knew exactly how I had left the waiting room and what I had done after that. That smug guy intended to drive me crazy with his games, but I wouldn't allow it. We both had better things to take care of, especially during that fateful night when we received an emergency call from Bravo Team.

Bravo Team, which was second-in-command after Alpha Team and consisted of six members as well, was sent to investigate the forest beyond the city limits because the amount of victims had increased dramatically. But the forest seemed cursed; the Bravos were just gone when their emergency call reached us, their chopper crashed and we lost contact.

The Alphas were sent in as back-up and the catastrophe took its course: Joseph was eaten alive by mutated dogs, causing Brad to panic and fly off with the chopper, Barry went lost during the escape, and Wesker, Jill and I barely managed to flee into the abandoned Spencer Estate in the middle of the forest, which, as it turned out, was not as abandoned as it seemed at first.

A noise in the adjoining room caught our attention and Wesker sent me to check it while he remained in the foyer with Jill. I soon found out what had caused the noise: Kenneth, a member of Bravo Team, had fired a shot to defend himself against the cannibal that was feasting on him when I entered the scene. When I returned to the foyer to report, Jill and Wesker had mysteriously disappeared.

It would take too much time to list every single detail and every secret of that horrible night and the horror mansion in the middle of the Arklay Forest. The synopsis: Umbrella, the great pharmaceutical concern ruling half of the town, had released the artificially created T-virus in the mansion, which literally turned any infected into a living dead – and a flesh-eating one as well. The secret experiments of the Umbrella Corporation were terrible enough by themselves, so that my investigations brought about only one piece of news that hit me even harder than that crime: Albert Wesker, our captain, blindly trusted by all S.T.A.R.S. members, was hand in glove with Umbrella.

"I see you've figured it out," he said to me calmly when I confronted him about it in one of the laboratories beneath the mansion. "Well, I wasn't expecting anything else anyway. You're my best man, Chris."

Immediately afterward he fired a shot at Rebecca Chambers, Bravo Team's medic, who I had found in the estate and who had accompanied me into the lab. Not the first member of the S.T.A.R.S. unit Wesker tried to kill single-handedly. She was wearing a bullet-proof vest, but the bullet hit her with a force that knocked her out nonetheless. And then Wesker turned to me again.

"I won't kill you, Chris," he promised. "You're too good for that. And I have different plans." He told me about his plans to betray Umbrella like he had betrayed S.T.A.R.S. and to disappear into thin air along with the collected material he should have handed over to his superior. On top of that, he offered me to become his partner, but I didn't want to have anything to do with his inhuman ways.

Having learned all of this, I tried to persuade him to turn himself in, promising that a self-indictment would grant him extenuating circumstances, and that it was not too late yet to change. When that didn't work, I tried to hate him. He had betrayed the S.T.A.R.S. and lured them into a trap, he was working for the company that had created that zombie virus, and he was jointly responsible for the deaths of many people. I had every reason to hate this man. But that didn't work either.

"You should reconsider my offer, you really should," he said while Rebecca was still lying unconscious on the floor, not moving. "Just think about what you and I could achieve together!"

"No thanks, Wesker, count me out."

And then he suddenly hit me. I was caught off-guard and overwhelmed. I landed on my back on the cold floor and before I could even think of sitting up again, he was already sitting on me, with his legs spread so his knee pushed my arms down while he was aiming the pistol at my face. He showed me a wide grin, then he pulled the trigger, I cringed – but apart from the clicking of an empty clip, there was nothing to hear. Wesker's grin became even wider and he threw the pistol away.

"I would never put a bullet into your pretty face! What do you think of me?" he said, amused, wagging his finger at me.

Since Rebecca and I had entered the laboratory I hadn't seen him do anything with his gun. He must have planned this. It had been loaded with only one bullet right from the beginning so he could get Rebecca out of the way before turning to me. Now he seemed to have what he wanted, and I had a pretty good idea of what that was.

But then something happened that I didn't expect. Wesker took his sunglasses off. He had blue eyes, like me, only a few shades brighter. I became even more puzzled when he suddenly put the glasses on my nose.

"Suits you." He bent down like to take a closer look at the new accessory on my face, but kissed me instead. I wanted to fight, to push him away with my hands, but his knees were still preventing me from moving my arms, I couldn't do anything with my feet in that position, and when I turned my head to the side, he would take my face in both hands and hold it. So I couldn't do anything but lie still and wait for it to stop.

It didn't stop too soon, though, and at the bottom of my heart I didn't even want it to. The kiss felt exactly like back then in the cell, the same passion, the same fire behind it... I closed my eyes and stopped fighting, physically as well as mentally. Wesker's tongue was playing with mine, tickling me.

I was neither tired nor drunk nor in another state that would possibly make me mentally incompetent. I could be absolutely sure that this was happening. Wesker, that asshole, that hypocritical traitor we owed this whole situation, sitting on me, kissing me... and me enjoying it.

Then he brought his lips to my ear and whispered: "You like this, don't you? You could have this every day, you know. Won't you think about my offer once again?"

"No, I... hate you!" I replied while he tenderly bit my earlobe and then tickled my neck with his tongue. I got goose bumps. Only now did I realize that his knees were no longer sitting on my arms, and if I had wanted I could have resisted. But there was something about Wesker that made it impossible for me nevertheless.

His hands opened the fastener of my S.T.A.R.S. vest. There was nothing beneath it except for the white T-shirt which had turned gray in some places due to the exertions. Wesker put his hands under it and slowly pushed it up, kissing every free inch of my upper body with a tenderness I hadn't considered him capable of. I twitched when his tongue reached my bellybutton – it had always been a sensitive zone – and continued to make its way up to the chest.

Had he undressed me all by himself? Had I helped him? I only remember that shortly thereafter, my T-shirt was lying on the floor next to my vest and Wesker was handling the belt of my pants. Everything he did, he did it slowly. He didn't seem to be in a hurry.

When the pants were open, I felt freed from a burden I hadn't even noticed until that very moment. Between Wesker and me, a hill had risen, the same color as my underpants, and the top of the hill was slightly wet, like a volcano that had erupted too soon.