Well folks we're starting to head into the RE8 Chapters I think we have next chapter and maybe half of the chapter after that to go. That being said this one is probably going to be on the shorter end, hopefully, that can be forgiven with the thicker chapters that are likely about to make their way down the pipeline based on my notes.
Song Suggestion: Chase You Down by Runaground
Disclaimer: I own nothing ^u^ Resident Evil belongs to CapCom whom I am not associated with.
Chris tapped his thumb against the side of his laptop as he looked over a spreadsheet. He'd been crunching numbers over the last two months between digging around behind the scenes at the BSAA, missions to check on the Winters, and life in general. He considered every possibility he could think of, and the more he looked it over and planned and studied, the more this looked possible. He had been building up his savings ever since he left S.T.A.R.S. Not to mention, being a founding member of the BSAA came with its perks as far as pay went. So that, combined with the fact he didn't really spend much outside of his needs over the last seventeen years, had landed him with enough to cover a modest down payment with extra for wiggle room.
He smiled as he closed the laptop and moved it over to the coffee table. How to bring this up with Emma, though? He was kind of running on a major assumption that she'd even be interested in moving with him. Was it that major of an assumption, though? The two had been seeing each other for more than a year and a half, and they'd know each other for three at this point. Emma had just taken a pretty major hit to her pay too. So, if they split the expenses between the two of them it would make things more comfortable for both of them.
Chris closed his eyes and silently nodded in agreement with his own logic. It seemed sound to him, but that didn't really mean she'd see it the same way. He got up and stretched before walking over to the fridge. He was about to grab something to eat when a bright orange sticky note caught his attention.
Don't forget:
We're helping Mrs. Russo move out over the weekend.
- Emma
Ah right, that was tomorrow. He was glad that he'd be around to help. From the sound of it, Mrs. Russo's kids were going to be driving down to help her pack up her boxes and drive her home. The harsh late summer heat was not going to be pleasant, but with more people, the move would go along quicker.
"Wait, the move," Chris muttered under his breath. What better time to bring up the idea of moving than after helping someone else do exactly that? Yeah. That could work. He nodded at this thought before opening the fridge to dig out some supplies to make his own dinner. Shredded chicken mixed with a packet of single-serving instant rice, mixed together with some mayo and crushed black pepper. He stared at the mixture with a slight frown. As he ate it, he'd occasionally nudge the mixture with his fork. It was bland … He was starting to get spoiled when it came to food.
He gave a short huff at the realization before finishing up the almost-chicken-salad. He was about to get up and wash his dishes when Emma finally made her way in with a yawn.
"Hey," she greeted, closing the door behind her. "Sorry about that. Duke was taking his time."
"Tired?" Chris asked and Emma nodded.
"Yeah, I didn't sleep well last night," she admitted as she walked over to Chris and gave him a peck, which he returned.
"Couldn't fall asleep, or?" he asked as he got up to put his dishes in the sink.
"I'd fall asleep for an hour or two, then Duke would end up kicking me or the window unit would turn on. That thing is like a jet engine," Emma explained as she headed over to the couch, grabbing a throw blanket along the way before putting her phone on the coffee table, then settling into her spot to wait for Chris. "And then there was the lovely frustrations of work, so…" she rambled before yawning again as Chris sat next to her.
The two assumed their usual position, where Chris would rest his back against the arm of the chair, allowing Emma to rest against him. Once they were comfortable, Emma reached for the remote and turned on the TV as gentle music played and a British narrator talked over the melody.
To move around Sea horses are equipped with a dorsal fin.
The TV showed one of the small aquatic creatures floating around in the ocean, trying to move with the help of the single tiny fin flapping around like a hummingbird's wing. Thanks to the calm music and soothing, accented narration along with the rather boring subject and comfortable warmth, Emma was out like a light in about fifteen minutes.
Before long, Chris yawned as well. This was nice. It was simple and maybe mundane, but it made him happy. A tired smile crossed his face as he thought over the day to come. Chris leaned his neck forward to give the sleeping Emma a kiss on the top of her head before slowly reaching to grab the remote to prevent waking her up.
Sea horses are one of the few creatures on this planet that mate for life.
Click. The TV was turned off and the remote was returned to its place on the table before Chris gently shifted to lay down on the couch with Emma still sleeping on top of him.
beep!beep!beep!
Emma groggily shifted, reaching for her phone to turn off the alarm. 6:30 AM. She jolted slightly as she unexpectedly heard Chris grumbling about her alarm in her ear. Oh gosh, she fell asleep at his place again. This was happening more and more frequently.
"Whoops," Emma said with sleepy amusement, yawning. She was about to try to get up, but Chris held her in place and rolled to the side to sandwich her between himself and the back of the couch. Emma chuckled as he sleepily leaned in to kiss her. The two traded affection, each kiss becoming more impassioned then the last as Chris began waking up. He had just started pulling at her shirt when a knocking at the door caused him to stop.
"Hey, are you guys joining us or what?" Bastion asked from behind the locked door.
"Damn it," he grumbled quietly before letting her go so they could sit up. It was the weekend.
"Later," Emma said, giving him a peck on the cheek before getting up and walking over to the door and opening it. "Hey Bastion," Emma said, though her hair gave away that she had only just woken up.
"Good morning to you too," Bastion said, trying not to laugh. "You need a minute?"
Emma nodded. "Yeah, I need to walk Duke," Emma admitted before yawning again.
"Okay, just check a mirror first. You look like you slept on a couch," Bastion said, figuring he should let her know before she left the building.
"I did," Emma replied, amused, as she heard Chris finally get up and shuffle to the kitchen in search of breakfast.
"Ouch. Dog house?" Bastion asked quietly which Emma waved off.
"Nah, that's just where I ended up falling asleep," she replied, and Bastion nodded.
"Fair enough. Well, the move is started, but we still have a lot of packing to do, so when you're back we need you. The kids want to get this done before the heat really kicks in at noon," Bastion explained even though Mrs. Russo's kids were all around the same age as him and Emma.
"Right, right, sorry. I forgot to set an earlier alarm before passing out," Emma admitted. "Thanks for the wake-up call."
"Not a problem. See you soon," Bastion said before heading over to Mrs. Russo's apartment, which was left open for the group of men and women to enter and exit as needed. Emma made her way over to her apartment and leashed up Duke for his morning walk. It was a quick one, but she'd take him out again after the move. With the good boy fed and cared for, Emma locked up her apartment to join the hectic process.
Chris was already there and had started carrying some of the heavier boxes to the moving truck.
"Emma dear, over here." Mrs. Russo waved for Emma to join her. "Can you help me with wrapping up these plates?" she requested and Emma nodded.
"Of course," Emma said, and the two got to work wrapping the fragile plates in newspaper to stack them up inside of a box labeled fragile/kitchen.
"Mom, where do you want this?" asked one of the kids as they held up the old record player.
"Careful with that, it was your father's," Mrs. Russo said with a hint of panic in her tone, afraid it might be dropped and broken. "Pack it carefully, please. I'd like to have that in my room with the records too," she requested and the kid nodded.
"Okay," he replied with a nod, doing as instructed.
This process continued for most of the morning. Mrs. Russo, Emma, and the women worked on packing up the remaining items while Chris, Travis, and the men worked on carrying the boxes to the moving truck. Bastion entertained the grandkids back at his apartment. Emma chuckled as she worked on packing up one of the last boxes. No wonder Bastion wanted to make sure she was awake. He was probably at his wit's end with eight kids running around his place.
It took until 1 pm but eventually, everything was all packed up and stowed away in the moving truck. After the truck pulled away and the family left, Emma leashed up Duke again and took him for a walk before heading back to the apartment, washing her hands, and making a few sandwiches.
She walked over to her couch where Chris was sitting and resting his head on the back of the couch.
"Duke, no. It's too warm out for that," Chris said as he nudged the warm, fluffy pooch who was trying to snuggle up next to him. Duke gave a curt huff in response before getting up to lay down elsewhere.
Emma chuckled and took the space next to Chris instead. "Food?" She offered Chris a plate.
"Yes please," he replied, accepting the plate and happily digging into the simple meal. Now how to bring this up...
"Man, I hate moving, it's such a pain," Emma said as she shifted to get comfortable on the couch.
Well crap. Um. "It's not that bad?" he offered in response before taking another bite. Off to a great start.
"It just feels like a lot of energy for little result. Put everything into a box so you can take it back out of the box and repeat," Emma explained and Chris chuckled at the explanation. To be fair, it wasn't exactly like he moved around often.
"All right, fair enough," he agreed, giving a lazy one-handed motion of surrender. He paused and took another bite of food. Come on, man, just rip off the band aid. "What if we were to move?" he asked before continuing to eat.
That got Emma's attention pretty quickly, and she looked to him with hesitant, confused curiosity. "Where would we go?" Emma asked in return and Chris shrugged.
"Somewhere else? Together." When Chris offered the suggestion, it caused a smile to form on Emma's face.
"Together sounds nice." She grinned. "If that was the case, then maybe moving wouldn't be so bad," Emma added since Chris' original question was a 'what if' scenario.
Okay so she was cool with the idea. He nodded at her answer. "I've been looking around lately. I was thinking about buying a place and figured, if you're interested you could come with me?" he officially offered before going into the planned spiel of why it would benefit her. "It would make things easier with Duke. Whoever made it home first could let him out, and a house would mean a yard, so you would have a way to care for him without walking around town at night. Between the two of us, the expenses would be more cost-effective. There'd be more space in general since there wouldn't be a wall between us. We'd just have to upkeep the place ourselves and fix things up a bi—"
While he was speaking, Emma had put her plate down on the table and moved to kiss him, smiling. He was surprised but returned the kiss while carefully moving to put his own plate down on the side table so he could move to hold her and deepen it.
The two eventually broke away and Chris gave a low chuckle. "I take it that's a yes?"
Emma nodded. "Yeah. That's a yes," she confirmed before moving to give him another peck, and the two picked up where they left off in the morning.
'*'*'*'*'
Monday eventually rolled around, and Chris was a pretty happy camper. It had been a while since he felt like he had a plan. It wasn't much of one, but it was a plan all the same. He looked over the paperwork on his desk and filled out what he could on the report regarding his last visit to the Winters' estate. They were doing well enough, but Mia was definitely showing some signs of mental fatigue and decay as she was getting more and more irritable without her medications. She was due any day, though, so hopefully she'd be back on her medicine sooner rather than later if not for her own sake then for Ethan's.
While visiting was sometimes a pain, and he wasn't thrilled that Ethan was purposefully botching his own training, Chris did in some ways consider Ethan a friend after knowing him for the last three years. The guy was in a very unfortunate situation and he could sympathize with that to a point. Ethan was an engineer, not a soldier and Chris was often reminded of that while visiting. It didn't sit well with Chris that the BSAA was allowing Mia to keep her affiliation with the Connection a secret.
Maybe that's where he needed to dig. He had looked over the Baker incident every which way since, to the best of his knowledge, that was when Umbrella came into the picture. But maybe He needed to look into the Connection to see if there were links to Umbrella? His thoughts were cut short as a knock could be heard at his door.
"Enter," Chris said while going back to filling out the paperwork on his desk to try to look busy.
The door opened to reveal the director's secretary. "The director would like to speak with you."
Great, and he was in such a good mood prior to this. Chris nodded. "I'll be right there."
"I'll let him know," the secretary replied before heading out and closing the door. Chris finished the page he was on before getting up and heading out. What did the director want this time?
Chris knocked on the director's door. "Enter," he heard in response, and Chris did so. The director looked up from a folder that was open in his hand. "Ah, there you are. Go ahead, close the door and take a seat," he instructed.
Chris did as he was told once again, taking the seat and waiting for more bad news. What is it this time? Oh, I know. Wolf Squad will be disbanded as well now.
"Effective January 1st," the director started. Here it comes. "Hound Wolf Squad will officially be reinstated as promised." The director looked over the file in his hand.
"What?" Chris hadn't been expecting to receive good news.
"Is that an issue?" the director asked with an unamused expression as he raised an eyebrow.
"No. Not an issue at all," Chris replied quickly.
"Good," the director said, putting down the folder of files and nudging it over to Chris. "Hound Squad will be returning in October. Three months from now. From October to December, you'll continue working as individual squads while doing reintegration training."
Chris nodded and accepted the file to read it over. Things were looking up for once.
Forgive me for the sea horse thing X'D I watched into the spider verse and could not resist because that scene makes me laugh even though it shouldn't.
FanNatic Logic time /o/ so assuming Chris is a pretty standard guy and has his debts paid down. If he was able to put $100 a month away for the last 17 years he'd have about $20.4K in savings. and again that's being pretty modest as far as a savings estimate goes since he A) gets paid well and B) isn't particularly frivolous with spending.
Review Responses:
Starrat - glad to hear you enjoyed the last chapter ^u^/ comments like this help keep me motivated to keep writing so thanks for taking the time to do so. If there's ever anything you think of that you'd like to see me add to the story just let me know and I'll do my best to include it.
