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He’s cold. This is the first sensation that manages to break through the stuffy fog of unconsciousness, the black suffocating him like a heavy blanket.
It’s followed by an ache, which quickly becomes the headache of all headaches. An icepick straight through his temple would be kinder.
Chris groans. He knows what a concussion feels like too well.
Then: a third feeling. Cool fingertips pressed against his cheek. They tap gently, then prod. “With me again, Redfield?”
Chris cracks his eyes open, is met with a white glint of light and another lance of pain through his head. Ow. He squeezes his eyes shut again.
He’s lying flat on hard ground. It smells like cold dust and rotting wood.
“What happened,” he asks. His voice is rough and he coughs to clear it.
“Don’t say you don’t remember,” Leon says. His tone is teasing, but there’s undisguised concern there too. “Tell me where we are.”
“Italy.” There’s a fog weighing down Chris’ thoughts. He furrows his brow, wading through it. “Chiecchia.”
“Well, good to know the brain damage isn’t that bad.”
Chris opens his eyes again, still squinting against the light. Leon leans back from him and sits on his heels. He’s visibly worse for wear, dark under eyes and a new bruise on his jaw. His jacket, thick and charcoal grey, is zipped up to the collar.
Chris swallows, the feeling of having to piece together his jumbled memories sending an uneasy fear through his chest. This isn’t the first time he’s taken a blow to the head in a fight— it happens more often than he’d like— but that doesn’t make it any less terrifying.
He remembers now though. So maybe headbutting a BOW wasn’t his brightest idea ever.
Chris groans again and presses the heel of his palm against his forehead. “I’m fine,” he says.
Leon snorts. “I know your skull is thick, but you should rethink using it as a weapon.”
Chris huffs and drags his hand down his face. “You sound like Claire,” he mutters. Taking in a breath, he gets his elbows under him and pushes to sitting. Dizziness swarms around him, nausea climbing up his throat. Leon’s hand wraps around his shoulder, warm and steady. Chris tries to focus on that, on the weight of Leon’s palm against him, the individual press of each fingertip.
They’re in a house, dilapidated and falling apart at the seams, but with four walls. Half the roof is collapsed, a mess of water-warped wood slumping down over an old staircase, cutting off access to the upper floor. Dim light slants in from the exposed sky. It’s late. “Sitrep,” he manages eventually.
“We’re waiting for evac,” Leon responds. He looks off to the side, eyes fixing onto the cloudy glass of a half-broken window. “Things are definitely worse here than the BSAA thought they were.” Chris nods. He remembers the horde they’d been caught in before things start to get fuzzy. It’s a miracle Leon managed to get them out.
The BSAA’s Europe branch had their attention on Chiecchia for about a month after some initial signs of an outbreak in the region surfaced. The town is long-abandoned, at the foot of a dam that overflowed in the eighties, but there are some pretty heavily populated settlements that neighbor it. The DSO requested to send an agent in with them. Their best, of course.
Leon’s gaze slides back over to Chris and he lifts his chin. “Plus we’ve got a man down now.”
Chris blows out a breath. “It’s just a minor concussion.” Leon rolls his eyes. “I can still fight.”
Leon opens his mouth right before a faint shuffle sounds outside. They both go silent. Leon turns, aiming his pistol at the door— hastily barricaded, Chris notices— and goes still, his stare sharpening.
Chris strains to hear past a faint ringing in his ears. Shit.
A minute passes and no BOWs burst through the door, no infected begin to crowd at the windows, but Chris can’t relax. Cold wind comes in through the collapsed roof.
“About to get stormy,” Leon says quietly. “Your team is sending a helicopter to pick us up at the top of the dam once there’s clearer weather.”
Chris glances towards the sky again. They’re losing light to the gathering clouds.
His rifle is lying on the floor at his side, his pistol set neatly next to it. Leon tucks his own pistol back into his belt, and Chris watches the hem of his jacket lift just slightly over his lower back.
He swallows and forces his gaze elsewhere.
The door has been barricaded with an empty bookcase. Not impervious, but better than nothing. The windows are still exposed, but there is only one by the door, and another towards the back of the house, where a ruined couch sits rotting and soggy with black mold.
“We should,” Chris starts, then stops. God. The nausea is only getting worse. He feels sweat break out on his forehead.
“Chris?” Leon puts his hand at the back of Chris’ neck, thumb brushing at his hairline. “You okay?”
“Windows,” Chris says, covering his eyes with one hand. Blocking the light helps.
Leon’s hand squeezes. “Hey, let me see your eyes,” he says. “I need to look at your pupils.”
Chris obliges because that’s Leon’s worried voice, the one that only comes out when he doesn’t mean it to, when he can’t help it. He’s not supposed to sound like that, especially not because of Chris.
Leon’s brows furrow as he looks at Chris, gaze flicking between either eye. His hair has gotten longer this past year, blond brushing over his brow, tucked clumsily behind his ears. He might be able to tie it back if he gives it another few months.
“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay.” He leans away. “You should be fine until we can get out of here.”
Leon stands up and winces, making his way over to the house’s gutted kitchen.
Chris narrows his eyes. “Are you okay?” he asks, because he knows by now Leon will always, always leave his own problems at the bottom of his priorities list.
“Just sore,” he says. “Getting too old for this shit.”
Chris hums. “You and me both.”
Leon crouches to open the cupboard under the sink and with a clunk he drags out a metal toolbox rusted completely to hell. Pulling his combat knife out of its sheath, he wedges the tip underneath the latch and pries it open with a few twists.
He blows a breath out his nose. “You Redfields are good luck charms, I swear.” He picks a hammer up out of the toolbox, along with a handful of old tarnished nails.
Couldn’t agree less, Chris thinks, but he won’t deny being able to board up the windows is invaluable.
Using wood from the splintered rafters, Leon covers both windows. Pushes a table in front of the bookshelf as extra protection at the door. Chris watches, feeling useless, but kept down by the dizziness.
By the time the last of their light is gone, Chris is drowsing. Wild wind has started howling outside, and rain spots the floor. The two of them are in the part of the house still with its roof, so at least they can sleep without getting completely soaked.
“Get some rest,” Leon says, settling down next to him, back to the wall and legs outstretched. “I’ll keep watch for a bit.”
“Fine,” Chris says, lying down again. “Wake me up when you’re tired.”
“Sure thing, boss.” He does a lazy two-finger salute.
Fucking liar.
In the night, Chris wakes up and rolls onto his side to vomit. It’s just bile, bitter and burning at the back of his throat. A slender hand curls around one shoulder as Chris wipes his mouth on his sleeve.
He can’t quite place things for a moment, his environment a puzzle with too many pieces out of place. He notices the smell of rain before the sound of it clarifies in his ears, water clattering over the roof and the floor, rattling the glass in the windows. It’s dark. It’s cold. He’s cold. His head is aching and his neck feels stiff like clay.
“—hear me? Chris!”
Leon’s voice suddenly registers, his hand on Chris’ shoulder tightening almost painfully.
Chris spits onto the floor, nose wrinkling at the taste lingering in his mouth. “Sorry,” he says, forcing himself to sit up fully. The rainstorm drowns out his voice. He can hardly hear himself. “I’m fine.”
The house is dark, the sky completely black. A flashlight has been set on the floor, a cone of light faintly illuminating half the building while leaving the other half, where Chris is, in darkness.
Chris squints at it, then notices the dark grey jacket laid over him. It’s Leon’s jacket. Then he notices Leon himself, knelt down at Chris’ side and grimacing and not wearing a shirt. There’s a strip of bandage half-wound around his torso, a second one already pinned around his forearm. Blood spots through it.
“What—?” Chris starts, then the confusion finally clears. “You motherfucker.”
Leon doesn’t say anything, glaring like Chris is the one who’s being an idiot.
“Why didn’t you say something before,” he demands. His head throbs with pain and he clenches his jaw.
“I’ve got it covered,” Leon says. “You have a concussion.”
“I’m not brain damaged!” Chris yells over the rain, which does not help the headache. “I can treat a wound. What if you bled out while you were letting me sleep!”
“It’s not that serious.”
“Let me see.”
Leon keeps glaring. The flashlight pointing behind him limns his face with pale white. The violent wind blows a sheet of rain into their shelter, speckling them both with wetness.
“I know—” Chris cuts himself off. Takes a breath. “I know you’re used to going it alone. To never getting any help.” Those DSO assholes are always tossing him into shitstorms and expecting him to just work it out. Why he doesn’t just quit, come over to the BSAA, Chris doesn’t know. Is it not obvious enough that he would be welcome? Or hell, he could even go work with Claire at TerraSave. Anything. “But I’m here with you right now, so stop being a stubborn bastard.”
Leon still just looks irritated at being caught, but he lets out an exhale. “Fine,” he says. “It’s not that bad. Just got charged by one of them, landed on a bit of broken rebar.”
“Jesus Christ,” Chris breathes. Just a bit of rebar. He gets onto his knees to move closer. Leon turns. The bandage he was winding around himself has fallen loose, revealing a deep, ragged puncture in his back. Off center, thankfully nowhere near his spine. He’d been wrapping it uncleaned, still covered with drying and coagulated blood. Chris leans to check that it hadn’t gone all the way through him and Leon moves his arm out of the way, revealing unbroken skin above his hip. “It wasn’t that long,” he says.
Chris nods and takes the end of the bandage from Leon, unwinding it so he can at least clean it up a little. “What about your arm.”
“Just a scrape.”
“Better be.” Chris reaches over to grab the flashlight from the floor, propping it on his knee so it illuminates Leon’s back. Goosebumps are risen all over him. Another gust of wind comes in through the collapsed roof, and he shivers.
Chris wipes away the dark blood smeared over the wound before using half a bottle of disinfectant on it. The rebar Leon landed on had to have been filthy, but they have nothing to really flush the wound out with now. Hopefully the evac will go off without a hitch, and then it won’t matter. Chris winds the bandage around his waist as Leon had been doing before, his fingers ghosting over Leon’s skin, and then pins it in place neatly at the end. “There,” he says. He doesn’t let his hands linger. “Now put your shirt back on before you freeze to death.”
Leon huffs. Chris just barely catches his half-smile, lit up by the flashlight, as he pulls his shirt over his head. Chris hands him his jacket back too.
“C’mon,” Leon says, tilting his head. “Let’s move over a bit.”
Right, Chris remembers. He left a puddle of bile next to where he’d been sleeping. He gets up to move over and only feels slightly dizzy doing it. Rain splatters against them, sending a chill down his spine.
“Don’t throw up again, Redfield. You might get me worried,” Leon says, scooting closer to him. He clicks off the flashlight, and they’re left in sudden darkness.
“I’ll try,” Chris says. A long roll of thunder rumbles through the sky. “Now, go to sleep. We’ve got to climb a dam after this storm breaks.”
“How could I forget,” Leon gripes, voice low, and Chris feels the shifting presence in the dark as he lies down.
Chris follows suit, easing down flat, and presses a hand to his aching head. Goddamn.
He inhales the smell of rain, earthy and wet in his lungs, and he’s briefly reminded of Arklay, a homesick ache in his heart. Leon is a warmth at his side, one he’s immeasurably grateful for. Chris sleeps and for once he doesn’t dream.