~ 9 ~ Sunrise
Breakfast somehow smells better than usual when I stand in the kitchen in my bathrobe the next morning, setting the table. It's pretty much a Sunday morning just like any other, but I didn't dream of Wesker today, and...
"Wow!" Claire's jaw falls open when she sees this. "Who are you and what have you done to my brother?"
No, she can't complain today. She never does anyway, but still. The coffee is ready, the bread defrosted, the pancakes should be ready soon and the daily newspaper is lying by Claire's favorite place, open at the horoscope. It's usually her who arranges breakfast, but if I even get out of bed in the morning, I don't really care... Today is different. I've taken care of everything. Claire is already dressed, and that's all she'll need to worry about today.
"And..." She points at me unbelieving, or rather at what I'm wearing. "The bathrobe... Does that mean you actually started showering again?"
"Now you're exaggerating," I laugh, indicating her to sit down with a gesture.
She checks on the pancakes as she passes by, as if she was afraid I might let the last one burn, but I return to the stove right away to prevent that from happening.
"I wonder why you're up so early," she remarks, and she's right, considering that it's only a few minutes past nine. "It was a long night for you, wasn't it?"
"What do you mean?" I switch off the stove, put the pancake on the plate and spread it with marmalade.
"There was a rumbling sound coming from your room. What the hell did you and Piers do, if you don't mind my asking?" Claire sounds quite amused. So she did hear something...
"Um... Well..." I'm failing to offer a proper explanation. "Childish stuff. You... don't really want to know."
I think about everything I've done this morning right after getting up. First of all, I checked the bed for suspicious stains... but there were none. Then I cleared away the clothes, got rid of the loose feathers and the rest of the mess. Which means that even if Claire already was in my room today for whatever reason, she can't have found anything that...
"Well, I do want to know whether or not you got along. If it even made sense that I introduced him to you. After all it was my idea."
"Well, yes, we got along. We have..." The bright idea comes up not a moment too soon. "We had a pillow fight! Childish, I know. But I told you. Somehow we were up for it."
Claire laughs, choking on her coffee and burning her lips at the same time. But she keeps laughing while she cleans her mouth with a napkin. "Oh man! I would have loved to see that. Is that the BSAA's new acceptance progress?"
"No," I answer, chuckling at the thought of every BSAA applicant having to pass the pillow fight test before being appointed as an agent from now on.
Claire is already reading today's horoscope when I sit down at the table. "And, what kind of rubbish does it predict for me today?"
"Well, let's see..." Claire puts her cup down, her eyes moving further down. "An unexpected turn of events brings happiness to your life. You should go out a lot in the near future, you might find a new love in case you haven't found it already."
"Yeah, just rubbish," I reply, shaking my head, but smiling. I wonder if that's really what it says there. "What about you?"
"My every wish will come true according to my ideas," Claire answers briefly without even looking at it. "So we both have a reason to be happy. A very good way to start one's day, don't you think?"
"If you believe in that kind of thing, certainly."
A mobile starts ringing in the entrance area. It's Claire's ring tone. "Oh, that has to be Leon!" She drops everything and hurries to her phone.
Now I reach for the daily newspaper to make sure she didn't just invent the part about the new love. She didn't – it's written there, in black and white. However, the predictions for her own sign aren't what she said. At least not exactly.
"And? Was it Leon?" I ask with a half-full mouth when she comes back. "But don't tell me he proposed to you on the phone, that would be so unromantic!"
Claire raises and eyebrow, leans onto the rest of her chair and looks straight into my eyes as she suggests: "Okay, let's make a deal. I'll admit what's going on between Leon and me if you admit what happened between you and Piers yesterday. And now don't start with the pillow fight again."
A half-chewed piece of a pancake sticks in my throat and I reach for my glass, choking. Not because I really need it, but to buy time. "Well... But we really had a pillow fight!" I insist, since I'm not going to nonchalantly tell my sister at breakfast that her acquaintance blew up my cock and then sat down on it.
Claire wrinkles her forehead. "So that means a pillow fight has lately become the acceptance process in your anti-bioterrorism organization, well, we know about that already, and you get a positive answer in the form of a long, hot, passionate French kiss?"
I can feel my cheeks blush and try to hide behind my glass. So she noticed how we said goodbye. Now I can't deny it anymore, I have to resort to damage control.
"Rubbish! Long and hot and passionate... It was nothing but... a friendly... little peck!"
Claire laughs out loud, just like yesterday when I told the first joke about Leon's possible proposal, but this time the reason is not the same, and I don't like it. How stupid I was to kiss Piers right in front of the house where anyone could have seen us!
"And since when does a little peck take so long?" she asks with a wink. "I swear you were sticking together for about two minutes, if not longer."
I blush even more. "So long, really? I didn't notice," I answer truthfully. I really did not realize that our kiss lasted so long. It seemed so short to me.
"Well, if you're enjoying something, it never seems that long to you." I can see how amused Claire is, but not if she's making fun of or being happy with me. If only I was happy... That's not so easy when you get involved in such a conversation with your sister one ordinary morning without any prior warning... especially when it's a topic you've never talked to her about before...
"Okay..." Given the circumstances, I decide to lay my cards on the table. "What else do you know?"
Finally she sits down – it makes me nervous when she just stands there, looking at me from above – and resumes her breakfast. "What I know? I know, for example, that there's a lot of stuff you'd rather keep from me although there's no reason to do so." Her smile fades, her face is serious now. "Love can go strange ways. That means it's not your fault if the one you love doesn't deserve it. That happens occasionally."
Now I'm stunned. I don't think she's talking about Piers here. But how the hell can she know about Wesker? Of course she does know about his mere existence. I mentioned him once in a while, never getting personal, and she says she even met him briefly on Rockfort Island. So she knows about the basics and that doesn't surprise me at all. But apart from myself and him there's no one who knew about our strange relationship, let alone someone who could have told her about it. If Piers actually gets the job anytime soon, he'll be the first one of my workmates she knows personally.
"How..." I begin, but she doesn't make me beg for an answer.
"Jill Valentine. Two weeks ago you left your notebook lying about, I found her contact details in it and wrote her an email. I just wanted to talk to her because I know you've been through a lot together, and I thought she might know more about your current condition... After all, she was in Africa too, and she told me."
"Wait a second! What did she tell you?" I start to feel like everyone knows about me. Maybe even better than I do.
"That you and Wesker were close, despite everything. In those three years he kept her as his slave, she could overhear enough to hit on that idea. Then, in Africa, you hesitated to shoot him even though he was about to kill you all... Jill thinks his death might be the reason for your condition."
When Claire notices the unhappy expression on my face, she quickly continues: "Please don't be mad at her because she told me. You know, by the time we were exchanging those emails, we were both very worried about you, and Jill was also happy to have someone to talk to about it. But eventually she only confirmed what I'd already been thinking anyway. You talk in your sleep, Chris. At least sometimes. But when you talk, it's always about him. I heard it a few times now."
I don't know what to say, so I just sit there in silence, gazing into space, chewing on my food that doesn't taste of anything anymore. I'd rather have Claire look somewhere else. I don't know if I've ever been so ashamed in my entire life. Wesker threatens the world, and what do I do... Not only that I dream about him; I also do it in a way so that everyone picks up on it. It would have been strange already to tell Claire she will never have a sister-in-law to go shopping with – I would have managed that one way or another. But that it has to be him of all people... Claire's remark that love can go strange ways doesn't help here. I still feel ashamed, and I think I have every reason to.
"You know..." I say after a long break. "Ever since I'm here, living at your expense, you've never given me a lecture. Now would be the best time."
Yes, that's what I want. I want her to scold me. I deserve it.
"Then you should give me one too. Because I interfered in your love life," she admits guiltily, and I prick up my ears as she continues: "I thought if you get to know somebody... I mean, somebody very special in that respect... then you might feel better. So it came in handy that Piers was so much interested in the BSAA. I didn't know for sure whether or not he's into men, so he also didn't know that it was my plan to hook you up with each other, but... I had to try everything in my power to make you happy again. And it seems like it worked. The way you were beaming when you were preparing breakfast... I haven't seen you like that in ages, it was a rare sight even before Africa. And I wish you could just accept that I know it now and smile again. Like you did before."
She stops eating for a while and seems to wait anxiously for my answer, but I don't know what to say. It all seems pretty unreal to me at the moment; I'm still taken by surprise. But I can't say I'm mad at her, either. She's right after all; if she hadn't introduced me to Piers, I'd probably still be in a bad mood. It's just that strange thought that all this time she had known everything while I had been thinking it was a secret.
"So? Will you invite him to your birthday?" she asks as if to change the subject when she realizes that I won't answer anytime soon. "It's not far off."
At least that's a question I can answer. "You bet! But please do me a favor: Don't tell Jill anything about it. At least not everything. The thing with Wesker... Well, please just keep it to yourself. Spare Jill the details."
Claire nods, and slowly the food starts tasting again. Despite everything it's a nice feeling to finally be able to talk openly to my sister. My only hope is that it won't be our sole topic in the future, but she seems to think about it the same way.
We finish breakfast talking about normal everyday stuff. Then we clear the table together and I go upstairs to my room which may not be my room anymore for long if I stick to my plan to move out.
I open the wardrobe and gather some clothes for the day. The times I used to spend the whole day in my pajamas or my bathrobe are finally over. As I start getting dressed, the specs case lying about on the desk catches my attention. I know what it is because I've had it for weeks and take a look inside every now and then. It's about time to change something about this habit.
I go to the desk, pick up the blue case and hold it in my hand for a while before opening it. Inside are Wesker's scratched black sunglasses that slid off his nose in the volcano. I took them with me without Sheva noticing after she had shot him into the lava. I've been keeping them as a memento of him in this case ever since. Looking at them makes me sad. Maybe this object is haunted by the curse that has been making my life miserable for the past few weeks.
I close the case and dig up an old dusty box from underneath my desk, hidden behind some other things. I've been keeping all kinds of stuff in it for years, stuff I don't need anymore, but can't or don't want to throw away. Time for Wesker's sunglasses to find their last resting place in there.
I put the case in, close the box and put it back to where it belongs since I moved in. That part of my life is finally over.
~ The End ~
