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Sometimes you can see through the cracks of his cold, unbothered demeanor.
There’s something… fragile under all of it. Buried beneath decades of shielding himself from the worst this world had to offer, from dealings with the dregs of humanity and a life manufactured and directed without his knowledge.
You remember how volatile Wesker had been after discovering the truth from Spencer. The cracks you peer through now had been wedged clear open back then. Salt dumped into the not-so-metaphorical wound. You found him in a fit of rage when he finally came home, destroying his entire office just to cope in the only way he could think of. Splinters of debris gave way under your footsteps and he glared daggers at you, daring you to come closer, daring you to cross the fray into the eye of the storm.
His reluctance to let you touch him weaned with every passing second that you smoothed your thumbs over his cheeks. It was startling to see his typically calm exterior eroded so completely. You’d never seen him so… shattered. It wasn’t until later that you’d understand that the foundation of his entire life had been swept out from under his feet. But, even then, you had an inkling that something had truly shaken him to his core.
“Who am I?”
You’ll never forget the flare of amber glowing brighter in his eyes as each word fell from his lips over and over, nor the bruising grip he had on your arms, until he hid his face in the crook of your neck– secretly so desperate to hide from the haunting revelations of his life.
And you don’t forget it now as you run your fingers through his hair, cradling his head on your lap while he rests. His recovery had been long and arduous, and it had humbled him more than anything possibly could have. His dependence upon you had been a nearly insurmountable sore spot, but you wager it taught him a truth so incredibly foreign to his perception of the world.
Vulnerability can be okay.
At least it can be with you. You’re not out here to stab him in the back or raw deal him for a larger cut in some grand scheme. You’re not a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company pulling his strings nor the corpse that once orchestrated the entire marionette show.
You’re someone who loves him– adores him.
It’s taken him a very long time to truly believe that, much less accept it. You will forever be his greatest weakness and strength, all rolled into one. You are leverage for anyone who wants to truly hurt him, but you are also the ferocity with which he will unmake them for even considering it.
Worse yet?
You are the only reason he’s glad to have not perished in that volcano. Wesker remembers only flashes of his dreams while cocooned in Uroboros, but he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he dreamt of you. That it was your voice that pulled him through, your presence that he reached out to in his near comatose state. It was you who he sought after waking, despite how his body screamed to cease his movements.
So maybe…
Maybe it isn’t so wrong to let those cracks open up when he’s with you. Maybe you should see the parts of him locked away from the world. You should know the little boy thrown into the best boarding schools money could buy, the one who wondered if he had parents like the others did, who sought academic excellence so that he’d have even a fraction of the love he’s seen bestowed upon others by right of birth to those who could love them– to the man he is now, stripped of his pride and still always left to wonder what his true name had been.
Long ago, he asked you a question under much different circumstances. Have you earned me, he’d said. As he peeks through his farce of sleeping to take in the sight of you looking at him with endless love, only one thought lingers in his mind.
You have.