~ 5 ~ Tender violence
Nowadays, the S.T.A.R.S. vest is nothing more but a memory, an heirloom the person I once was has left for me. Even if I'd still fit in, I couldn't wear it in my free time anyway. During most of my field operations at my new job I wear a stretch shirt with an imprinted BSAA emblem that fortunately adapts itself to my measurements, no matter how much mass I take on or lose.
Should I put on that shirt? Piers will arrive soon, he wants to work for the BSAA too... so why not. I quickly put it on and go down to Claire who was cleared up the table by now and is sitting in front of it with a magazine. When she sees me, she smiles.
"The BSAA uniform... nice. Are you a bit more optimistic now? At least it would fit what it says in your horoscope." She turns her attention back to the magazine.
"Let's see..." I sit down by her side. "What does it say there about you?"
She looks up again, wrinkling her forehead. Does she wonder why I'm interested in her horoscope hocus-pocus all of a sudden? But there, in her eyes that are quite similar to mine, only a little more gray, there's something else, like a mischievous smile her lips are trying to suppress.
"Come on, spit it out!" I'm curious now. "Does it say that Leon is going to propose to you?"
Now she laughs. A happy hearty laugh that I haven't seen on her face for weeks... maybe because of the depressive mood radiating from me... But in any case, there are some moments when she's happy without me causing her to laugh. Namely, when Leon visits. The nightmare called Raccoon City he survived along with Claire has brought them closer to each other – maybe a little too close for them to still pass as friends.
None of them admits it. I've never seen them kiss, they don't even touch each other in my presence, which I find kind of cute. As if Claire was afraid that the smallest touch could give me some kind of "big brother complex" and Leon some bruises... but it's not extreme like that. I do hate it when someone gets too close to Claire, but only when that someone is not supposed to. Leon seems like a decent guy to me, and the looks he and my sister exchange speak volumes, even without physical contact.
The first time I noticed it was even before I got to know this Leon in person. Claire asked me if it was normal to develop specific feelings for someone you've gone through hell with, and if there's anything similar between Jill and me after all those years. So I put two and two together. Of course she was referring to herself and Leon.
It's something different with Jill and me, though. We've been partners and good friends for years, or even close confidants. But there never was anything romantic or even purely sexual between the two of us, at least not from my side. After those various Umbrella incidents we were both too busy with our work to even think of something like that, even though I won't completely exclude the possibility that something could have been there if the events in the Arklay Mountains had never happened.
After my encounter with Wesker – and I'm speaking of that special encounter in the lab – I lost that kind of interest in women anyway. In general, I remember only one real relationship I ever had, but with a man. He was a secret agent for the US government and partly responsible for Claire, Leon and Sherry Birkin getting out of Raccoon City in one piece.
For a long time, I only knew him as "Dee-Ay"; that was his codename at the secret service. I don't remember how I got to know him. One morning after a wild night out I was just lying next to him, too bothered with my hangover to have an idea of how I – or rather, how he – had gotten into my bed. It took me two years to find out two things: First, that I obviously wasn't made for solid relationships, and second, that my heart, whether I wanted to accept it or not, beat for only one person whose name, whose whole being I would just like to forget.
In all that time I was determined to deal with matters of international security, there were moments when I wished nothing more than to put an end to his and other power-mad guys' activities once and for all. But what could I do? For years, there was only one thing Jill and I could be sure about – that he was still alive, but we did not know where he was and what he was doing... or with whom.
Yet another question that bothered me more than I liked to admit to myself, it haunted me in my sleepless nights and didn't leave me alone: Was Wesker still thinking about me once in a while? Or had he found someone else, a new victim and object of desire at the same time, whom he offered, just while I was pondering over it, a place by his side? And in case they were together, what were they doing? Were they planning to take over the world, lying in his bed side by side and telling each other old stories? I didn't know which one of those images bothered me the most.
It was Rebecca Chambers who helped me to find him eventually. After the Raccoon City disaster she had quit her job as police medic and dedicated herself to the research of curing serums, although she sometimes considered joining the BSAA. She always kept her eyes and ears open and got in touch with me to tell me about a hint at Wesker's potential whereabouts approximately three years ago. How she herself came by that hint is another story. But Jill and I had to follow it up, and so we did.
We were led to a remote mansion resembling the Spencer Estate in the Arklay Forest in more than one way. That was where Oswell E. Spencer lived, one of the founders of Umbrella and proprietor of the Spencer Estate before its destruction, in person. But when we finally found the monster in a big library, it was already too late to demand answers from him. Wesker, who was connected to Spencer in his own complicated way, was expecting us next to his bleeding body when we arrived.
During the first few seconds I only had eyes for Wesker and not for the brutal mess he had caused. It had been ages since I'd seen him the last time, and he'd changed, become older, if only a bit. The sight of his posture, his demonic grin and the eternal sunglasses made me wallow in nostalgic memories, summoning feelings in me I didn't want Jill to notice. So I shot him the angriest look I could manage in that situation, raised my pistol and aimed at him. We knew he was a terrorist by now and up to something, and that was the only thing that counted... That, or something like that, was what I told myself.
It happened fast. Wesker hadn't forgotten over the years to use his superhuman abilities. He was by our side before one of us could shoot, hitting Jill in a way that would have knocked out a bull. She flew through the air, losing her gun, crashed into a shelf and fell down. The shelf spat out books, burying her underneath.
Next, Wesker grabbed me by the neck and raised his fist as if he wanted to hit me, but stopped in the middle of the movement and started to grin. It wasn't the same grin he had greeted us with.
"Long time no see, Chris. Very long time," he breathed into my ear, giving me the shivers in the neck area. He forced me to drop my pistol with a skilled grip around my wrist. Then he pushed me away, just a few steps, and looked at me from top to bottom. I could see his lustful gaze even through the darkness of his sunglasses. "You have gained some weight. In a good way, though."
That was right. I had started my intense strength training years ago in order to prepare myself for the inevitable next encounter with him, to avoid facing him as weak and helpless as I had the last time on Rockfort Island.
And yet I did it again. I'd lost my pistol, and the way he looked at me almost made me even weaker. Was it my imagination or was there a subtle smile on his face, well hidden under his usual poker face that only allowed a grin once in a while? I had never seen him smile like that, not even when he had still been human. He seemed happy to see me again, as if he'd missed me sorely.
"Why don't you let me see your new body?" He made a step in my direction and reached out his hand as if he wanted to touch me, but I slapped it away and jumped back. Nervous, I looked at Jill. I didn't know what scared me more; that she might be unconscious and severely wounded, or that she was wide awake, seeing the way Wesker approached me. She would think of me as a traitor in the end. Whatever happened, I couldn't allow him to seduce me. Not again.
"Come on, stop those games. I know you've missed me too! So don't make such a fuss. Destiny will always bring us together again until you realize you can't run from me. You belong to me!"
While he was standing there, so sure of himself that he didn't even consider I might resist him, I bent over as fast as I could to get my pistol. I aimed it at Wesker before he could say another word. I had not forgotten his superhuman speed and I thought he might be fast enough to dodge bullets, but my reaction speed had increased as well over the years, so I considered myself able to shoot and dodge in time as soon as I noticed the slightest hint of a movement of his. But he stayed there calmly, not impressed by how I'd managed to recover my gun without him interfering, and that unsettled me. I wondered if he had allowed it on purpose.
"What are you up to? Why are you here?" I asked, anxious to control myself while my eyes twitched back and forth between the dead old man on the floor and his murderer. I really wanted to know. It was the reason why Jill and I had come.
I looked to Jill for a second when I thought of her, just to check if she was okay. I believed to see a little movement of her hand that was sticking out of the little pile of books, but before I could see more, Wesker took advantage of that little moment of inattention, grabbed me by a piece of my clothes and... moved with me.
There's no better way to describe it because I don't know if he was running, jumping or actually teleporting, only that within a split second we were suddenly on the other side of the spacious library and he was pulling me over the table there. Using only one hand, he pushed me over the edge and I landed on the floor between the long table and the big floor-to-ceiling window allowing pale moonlight to enter the dark room, providing a spooky atmosphere. Today I think the spare lighting was one of the reasons for Jill's reaction to what happened next.
I lost the pistol again, this time I lost sight of it as well. When I tried to get up, Wesker was suddenly standing in front of me, his crotch at the same height as my face, and said: "How nice that we finally get to the point."
Of course I knew what "the point" was. I looked at what I could see of Jill again, remembering the episode in the lab beneath the other Spencer Estate and wondered if it was my destiny to have sex with Wesker while my unconscious partner was lying somewhere close by. And he himself had even used that same word, "destiny", less than a minute ago... Coincidence?
Wesker's abnormal speed was not restricted to his movement from one place to another. Within less than a second he had lowered his pants – wearing nothing beneath –, pulled on my hair and forced me to put my head back, then he put... no, he downright rammed his manhood into my open mouth. When the tip of his glans bumped against my uvula, the gag reflex shook me so hard I thought I had to throw up.
Despite all the pain Wesker had caused to my backside on Rockfort Island, I'd never expected it to be that big. This time it was less painful than simply uncomfortable. That one time in the past when Wesker had assumed the active part, he had only entered through the backdoor, not through the chimney. Now he acted like a real chimney sweeper who thrust his broom in again and again until he apparently lost interest in it and he let go of me.
"Don't be so lazy, Chris, play along!" he said when my upper body fell over and I choked on the floor. I was glad it was over, and the same time I felt ashamed for not being able to deny that not everything was completely uncomfortable... There was something special about Wesker's kind of cruelty, at least with me. He didn't really want to hurt me. This evening, it was rather me who was willing to hurt him.
That was the moment when Jill moved. I saw her shaking off the books, getting up and looking in horror, first to me, then to Wesker. Since the long table was standing between us, she probably only saw the upper half of his body which wasn't bare... and me, coughing, lying on the floor to Wesker's feet... then that spare lighting... I know what she was thinking at this instant.
"No!" she screamed and started to run, past the table and directly up to Wesker of whom she thought he was trying to kill me. Although he was unbelievably fast, he didn't get out of her way. Was he really taken by surprise or did he let it happen on purpose?
I will never be able to ask him about it. Jill jumped at him, breaking through the big window with him. I jumped on my feet, startled, crossed the small distance between me and the window with a big step and only caught a brief glimpse at the two of them falling down the cliff on this side of the house before the darkness swallowed them, taking away from me my long-term partner as well as my... whatever Wesker was for me at that time.
