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At precisely 7:25am, Alice Abernathy wakes up in a strange bed with a familiar redheard in her arms and a burning question in her mind:
At what point does a bad idea officially become an affair ?
Not the first time, certainly. Two bodies moving together in a club is not a sin, even if they recognize each other. She’s still not sure Claire even saw her when they were dancing, not until after she gasped that guilty “ Alice-” and damn it, she flinched.
Alice hadn’t seen her either, at first. Or at least, hadn’t believed it; in the strobing lights of the club, vision blurry with mascara and a secondary high, if she squinted just right, any redhead’s features could be slurred into a decent enough approximation.
But the voice, the voice , was never right. And the more this sickened habit of hers grew, the more she loathed the slow, jazzy nights, refused to go out on the floor for fear of the illusion shattering. Better to be the one crooning on stage, to hear nothing but her own lies.
That’s what got her, she supposes. That little breathless, half-involuntary, unmistakeable “ Alice” . The way she curled her L’s, made a simple name feel so complex. Alice blinked, and the oddly clear features on that night's redhead hadn’t shattered. No, they snapped into a brand-new clarity, filled in all the blurry blanks with the eight years she’d missed. Claire Redfield , here, now, in her arms.
She’d flinched, mind going blank for a second with revelation. And of course, Claire had picked up on that, eagle-eyed as ever, and Alice swears she could see , like slow motion, the moment Claire registers her slip-up was true.
A second gasped “Alice,” low and furtive. The slight smell of whiskey.
“You’re drunk,” she’d grunted, moving to pull away—run, like always—but Claire’s grip on her hips tightened like a vise.
“Don’t you leave again -”
How easy she was to play.
“...this way.” For the hundredth time, Alice relished the small blessing that the dressing room door had a lock.
Claire kissed her first, again. Still chasing after her sorry ass, even after the explanations; if not for their distance, then at least for Alice’s operation scars and the thin silver-and-diamond ring Claire wears on a chain.
“We’re taking a break,” she’d said. Her tone was remorseful, guilty—but her eyes didn’t leave Alice’s.
Alice didn’t—couldn’t—ask why; didn’t ask if they made her happy or why they’d messed up. Or what the hell they’d done to win her over in the first place.
Claire doesn’t ask either, why Alice never returned even after the stitches had healed, the final tests were run, the NDAs signed.
Instead, she just takes her calloused hand and kisses her like they’re twenty-something again.
Bad idea, something whispers.
Thank god she’d always had a stark lack of common sense.
Three weeks (trysts) later, at 7:30am, Claire’s alarm goes off, and Alice carefully stations her train of thought at Sort Later—Medium Priority . Right now, Claire is waking up, which means it’s time to treat her the way her fuckwit husband never did.
Claire extends a tanned arm, groping blindly for the beeping phone. Alice finds it first, silences it with a tap, and Claire sighs back into her naked chest.
“‘Morning,” she mumbles, tucking her hands back under and around Alice.
“Good morning,” Alice smiles back. “Sleep well?”
She feels Claire grin against her bare skin. “Yeah. No thanks to you.” She reaches up again, whole-bodied, to stretch, limbs trembling out last night’s soreness. Alice tries her best to not be distracted by the way their legs brush together tantalizingly.
“You better not be doing that on purpose. I don’t want to make you late to the clinic.”
Claire shakes her head, guilty as charged. “When did I become the fun one?”
Alice laughs softly in reply; it’s safer than saying anything, like since I crashed my bike and legally died , or since you walked headfirst into a dead-end marriage . “C’mon, get dressed. I’ll make breakfast.” she sits up, guiding a mostly-willing Claire up with her. There’s an old familiarity in the motion, made a hundred times before, and yet like everything else now, it feels so utterly new and foreign. Raw.
“Oh, you- you don’t have to.” Are you allowed to do that?
Is any of this allowed? “I want to.”
“Alright.” Claire flashes her that brilliant smile; it’s dulled a little, but the spark is back in it compared to the night they met. It twists something in Alice’s gut. “There’s bacon in the left drawer of the fridge.”
Then she’s climbing to her feet, white sheets falling away from her bare hips, her long, muscled legs. Alice watches her go for a moment, the sheets alreadly cooling, and wonders what her wedding dress looked like.
(Is it relief or disgust she feels when she can’t find a photo of that day on the mantle?)
Claire takes too long in the shower and ends up rushing out the door—but not before scarfing down a hearty portion of breakfast.
“Old habits die hard,” she laughs, slinging a jacket over vet-green scrubs.
Alice rolls her eyes. “If three’s a pattern, then four must make a habit. What does that make me? A ghost?”
“You’re shit at haunting,” Claire returns. “D’you see my keys?”
“Hanging by the door.” It was probably the only thing properly put away last night, though they had to quietly congratulate themselves on showing more restraint than the first time.
“Oh, damn-” Claire looks back up, shoe halfway on and her lip pinched between her teeth. Fuck, she’s still gorgeous . “Do you need a ride home? I just realized you didn’t drive your own car here.”
“It’s alright, I’ll walk.” Alice sets the used dished in the sink with a muted clink .
“You sure?”
“My apartment’s not that far, and I like to walk anyway.” It’s safer, and it keeps my knees from hurting. It’s definitely not a walk of shame .
“If you insist,” Claire acquiesces, too rushed to fight it. She gives, however, give one last, critical look at Alice, the ‘I know you’re in a mood right now and I’m going to figure it out sooner or later’ look. It’s well-practiced, but so are Alice’s poker faces.
Alice just smiles, playfully reasuring. “If I need something, you’ll hear me barking with the rest of the dogs, Red.”
“Oh, it’s pretty loud this week. You might have to howl.” The door shuts, the lock clicks, and Claire is whisked away into the early morning traffic.
Being left alone in the kitchen of a stranger/your soulmate is an odd feeling, to say the least. It’s sleek and white, save for the black marble countertops. Claire must hate it , she thinks. The whole house is modern and sanitized, like neither of its occupants could keep the operating room from following them home. It makes Alice’s skin crawl, prickling where IVs and electrodes had once made a pin cushion of her limbs.
And yet, when she focuses, she can see Claire peeking through, creeping out from the corner she’s been shoved in. Little homey touches; collected tchotchkes on the shelves, a thick fur throw on the white couch, the painting in the hall of rolling fields and a lone horse under a tree.
“Still a country girl,” she murmurs, tracing the frame. Claire had been delighted to take her home on holiday breaks; hell, the whole Redfield family had been more than happy to welcome her with open arms. Shovel talks aside, they were the kindest family she’d ever known.
They didn’t have any horses on the property anymore, so she and Claire had gone sidewinding through the deer trails on foot, bagged sandwiches shoved in their back pockets.
Those were simpler times. When life was good . She tracks her steps back through the halls, cleaning up the evidence of her passing, leaving the house acerbic once more.
Something about it makes her feel guilty. Like it would have been better, less of a lie, to leave the chairs bumped and the sheets messy. To let them keep some semblance of life, not take it away, cover up the fact that for a few hours, life had been vibrant again.
Alice shakes the thought away, puts her head down, and takes her walk of shame.
Nobody is there or even looking to see it, but it’s always the principle of the action. Secrets are defined by who doesn’t hear them.
At 8:46 that same morning, Claire Redfield checks on her first patient at the Raccoon Veterinary Clinic. It’s a stray, brought in to be neutered and sent to an adoption agency, but he’s resting for another day or two to make sure that the stiches don’t pop. He’s some sort of German Shepard mix, abandoned on the streets. A kind family had brought him to the facility. Hopefully they would be interested in taking him out of it as well. They’d named him—Claire bends down to check the placard on his cage; it’s the lowest row so she has to half-crouch. Ah, there— Paco .
“Okay, Paco, let’s see how you’re doing today,” she says, standing, reflexively tucking her necklace back under her scrubs in case it slipped out. Her hands meet nothing—a small relief—and merely pat the small lump below her collar.
Or not; it’s flat. A frantic hand races over her neck, to no hint of silver chain.
No, she realizes. I took it off. It’s still at home, she knows; she’d bid Alice set it on the nightstand when it started feeling too much like a noose.
When was the last time she’d done that? And why does it feel like such a relief ? How strange, the weight a stone can carry. She feels adrift without it, abruptly, anxious to not have something to fiddle with, to distract. She doesn’t have anything else on her, around her, save for the clipboard.
But—she hesitates, fingers coming to a standstill, resting spread over her collar. That’s not entirely true. She digs her thumb into the skin, feels the hickey hidden underneath twinge delectably.
She came back . It seems a little silly, now, to be reveling in the acceptance of a very clear fact. Alice always came back, no matter how fucked up things got. No matter how fucked up she got. But she had left, hadn’t she, well and truly fell off the edge of the goddamn earth, left Claire and all their young, hopeful plans to wither and rot under the midday sun of reality.
But she came back .
The thought follows her all throughout her shift, hanging over her shoulder as she checs stitches and administers medicine. Only once the end of the daycomes and she clocks out with a weary sigh, settling into the familiar grooves of her old Hummer, does Claire very, very carefully considers how much paperwork is involved in divorce.
Quietly, alone for the moment, she tastes the name Abernathy .