Chapter Text
When Chris was eleven, all he wanted for his birthday was a guitar. He begged, and pleaded, and whined, and bargained for weeks and weeks. With his pocket money he bought a book for beginners, and a VHS tape with a few tutorials on it. He watched them religiously, insisting over and over that he would learn it, he promised.
And so, when his birthday rolled around mid July, his parents presented him with an acoustic guitar. After several minutes of enthusiastic thanks, he quickly disappeared into his room. After a few moments, the soft sounds of strumming quietly filtered out. His parents just shook their heads, fully expecting their son to struggle and quit, as he had with baseball, and with rugby, and with several other hobbies he had before.
His sister, though, she hid behind the door, ear pressed up against the keyhole. She listened and listened, and heard her brother try day after day. So, when her dad took her to the corner store down the block from their apartment, she went to the back and picked up a music book. Proudly counting out two dollars from her chore money, she bought a copy of "Rock and Roll: Classics on Guitar".
She had presented Chris with it immediately upon arriving home, and loudly declared that he had to learn how to play her favorite Buddy Holly song, or she would never ever forgive him.
It took Chris a week, but he had eventually learned it. Painstakingly, carefully, but he learned. And he waited for everyone to be home, sitting down in the living room, before he stood up on top of the coffee table, guitar in his arms.
With shaking hands, he braced the instrument against him, and strummed out the opening to Peggy Sue.
As his family watched, enraptured, he grew bolder, bouncing along with the song, voice slowly joining along with the melody. Soon enough, their whole living room was his stage as he played, singing louder and louder, guitar strumming steady, confident.
And when he was done, his parents clapped, and cheered, and ruffled his hair. My little Rockstar, his mother called him, pinching his cheeks. Claire hugged her brother, before telling him that he was dumb, and Peggy Sue was most definitely not her favorite Buddy Holly song, so of course he had to keep learning them to find the right one.
Chris only laughed, and from that point on, he played every day. Soon one song book became two, became five, became twelve. He signed up for school talent shows, played on the street for extra change, sang carols at his Aunt's house when they left state for Christmas. He wanted to be a musician, wanted to play in a band.
Then when he was fifteen, edging on sixteen, late one night he got a call, and everything changed.
It was nearly a year after his parents died when he played again. The trailer that they had moved into was empty, no sounds but the radiator humming, a late winter storm having rolled in that night. Claire was over at a friend's house, and Chris had already called their landline, asking them to keep Claire overnight.
So Chris was alone when he found his guitar case tucked underneath his bed while digging for an old shoe box. After a long pause, he pulled it out, staring down at the leather for a long time before willing himself to pop open the clasps.
One of the strings had broken, but extras were still carefully tucked away in a pouch. With careful hands, he restrung the guitar, only strumming to judge what needed tuning. Once everything sounded right, he once again fell still, hands hovering in place.
All his song books had been left behind in the move, tucked into a box and tossed into the trash. Too expensive to take, not a necessity, but he could never bring himself to toss the guitar. It was likely the only gift he had left from his parents, now.
Yet.... Yet his fingers would always freeze upon landing on a note, unable to play the whole way to Glenndale. Once they had moved in, he found he still had the same dilemma, at a loss for how to start. And so the guitar had been tucked away, safe and close, but hidden where it would no longer hurt to look at.
He didn't know what drew him to it now, what drove him to try once again. Maybe it was the looming anniversary on the horizon, or maybe it was just that he just missed it. No matter what it was, this time when he hesitated, a song finally came to mind.
In the quiet of the trailer, whistling wind and humming radiator, Chris strummed out a muted tune in the night, some old Beach Boys song that his parents used to dance to, his mother singing along with the radio as her head laid on his father's chest.
It was nearly a year and after his parents died that Chris played again, alone in a snow storm. It was nearly a year since he had let himself process what had happened. Nearly a year since he took custody of his sister, left New York behind, and forgot his dreams for her. Nearly a year since Chris let himself think about his parents, and let himself cry.
But he cried that night, singing along to the barely played notes of a song older than he was, and maybe, in a small way, he finally let himself move on.
The next day, when Claire got home, she found the guitar in the living room, proudly on display next to their broken TV. Once again the Redfield house was filled with music, if only for the two of them.