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Monday mornings usually didn’t come with a side of Chris Redfield walking into the office whistling and twirling his keys around a finger. They didn’t in ‘96, when they were in their 20s. And they certainly didn’t in 2006, after life had fucked them over several times in the meantime.
Most days, Jill would drag herself to the office after way too little sleep, share a look with Chris, and meet him in the break room. They’d share a cup of terrible coffee and a heartfelt groan when that second dose of caffeine of the day hit the spot. Chris was the one person she could count on to look just as miserable as she was on Mondays, and now he betrayed their sacred bond?
She stared at the ray of sunshine that had taken the place of her partner and hoped he was on drugs. Hell, maybe he’d share.
“What has gotten into you, Chris?” she asked, pulling her favorite mug from her desk drawer so she could get caffeinated before anything else. She wasn’t yet ready to open her email to deal with a weekend’s worth of people ignoring professional boundaries.
Chris seemed to return to Earth at her call. “Huh? Nothing. I’m in a good mood, that’s all.” He also opened his drawer and emptied his pockets into it, stuffing his phone, spare change and the keys he had been twirling until a moment before. She saw something orange attached to the keyring, but filed the information for later.
“On a Monday morning? Nah, something happened,” she teased as they walked to the break room in tandem.
“Nothing happened,” Chris insisted, grabbing a mug from the cupboard, still in his suspiciously good mood.
The decaf pot was empty, but no one went for it before 2 PM anyway. She checked the temperature of the regular coffee, deemed it acceptable, and poured a generous amount into both mugs. She sipped it while Chris fixed his own with non-dairy creamer and sugar. Jill waited for him to take his first sip before she started her interrogation, as a friendly courtesy. She studied Chris, way too happy for that shitty coffee, and had a little intuition moment. “You finally got laid!” she theorized.
Chris choked on his coffee, making an undignified noise as it went down the wrong pipe. He turned to grab a paper tissue to not so discreetly cough it up and blow his nose. “What? No. No, I haven’t.”
Jill wasn’t so easily convinced. She raised an eyebrow and stared at him past the rim of her mug. “Dude, you came in whistling instead of cursing, as per usual. I was half sure cartoon birds were gonna flock around you and start singing.”
Chris rolled his eyes. “I just finally slept 8 hours straight for two nights in a row,” he stated. “My new personal best.”
Jill wouldn’t have been jealous of her best friend getting some, but sleeping a whole night uninterrupted? That was something to envy. She hummed, impressed. “How? Did you hit yourself in the head with a dumbbell before bed?” she playfully asked, leaning back against the counter.
Chris chuckled. “Very funny. No, I just spent some time outdoors,” he explained. “You know, walking.”
Jill gave him a thumbs down. “I call bullshit, Redfield. I do my stupid walks for my stupid mental health, like my therapist said, and I am lucky if I get 5 hours. Spill the beans.”
Chris put his free hand in his pocket. “I went to the zoo on Saturday.”
Jill’s eyes narrowed a bit. She didn’t miss how defensive Chris’s body language was. He was also weighing his words very carefully, and it sounded like he was hiding something from her. “Do grown-ass men usually go to the zoo? Alone?” she prodded.
Chris shrugged noncommittally as he took another sip of coffee. He only ever looked this fidgety when he was trying to keep a secret from her, and that never lasted long because Chris couldn’t keep secrets for shit.
“But maybe it’s a good place for a date?” she tried, thinking that she may have struck the right chord when Chris’s eyes widened a little.
“It wasn’t a date!” He was very quick to reply, she noted. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but Jill thought he might be blushing a little. “I just tagged along, that’s all.” It was interesting how he kept adding only a tidbit of information at a time, trying to omit telling her the crucial details.
She wasn’t having it. “Tagged along with who?” she pressed; a suspicion was beginning to take shape in the back of her mind, but surely she was wrong.
Caught with no way to evade the question, Chris confessed. “Wesker and Zeno,” he said quietly, avoiding her eyes, as if expecting her disapproval.
Because of course he’d been playing house with their ex-Captain, turned terrorist, turned possibly reformed suburban single dad.
Jill sighed, deep in disbelief at her partner. “Are you kidding me?” she asked, flatly.
Chris at least had the decency of trying to justify himself. Although his defensiveness was making it even worse in her eyes. “No, I mean, I wanted to talk to him about work, and the kid doesn’t have kindergarten on weekends, so I just decided to tag along and you know, take in some fresh air, see some animals. Zoos are really nice nowadays.” He was rambling, and she knew a half-assed excuse when she heard one.
It was good that Chris was the most honorable man she knew because he wouldn’t last a day as a criminal. Still, she was unimpressed by her best friend’s aptitude for dumb decisions. She had severely underestimated him in this regard. “Chris,” she said, mustering all the patience she was capable of. “Are you listening to yourself?”
Chris drank a long sip of coffee, having the good sense to look ashamed, at least. “Yeah, I know it sounds weird. But Zeno’s a great kid and Wesker… has been helpful so far.”
She was relieved by the qualifier, but she was still worried. “At least you know it’s weird,” she remarked, taking another sip while she thought. “And how did the conversation about bio-weapons go next to the tiger habitat?” She tried to trip him up, because there was no way they’d discuss things like that out and about.
But Chris surprised her with a reply that didn’t even sound rehearsed. “He thinks he’s found traces that lead to another organization hidden in the shadows, we… he,” he corrected himself quickly, but Jill didn’t miss the slip-up. “worked on a presentation to show the hidden links.”
Jill wasn’t going to let his momentary blunder go that easily. “You’re not fooling me. Go back a second, you said we. Explain.” Jill put down her mug and crossed her arms. “Is Wesker having you do his homework?”
Chris looked confused for a moment. “No, I mean, he prepared the slides, and I will be showing them to the higher-ups after lunch.” He was still leaving something unsaid, but Jill was patient; she knew he’d slip up again.
She took a slow sip of coffee, lulling him into a false sense of security, then asked, “And when did he show you the presentation, before or after your date at the zoo?” Perhaps Chris conveniently forgot, but Jill had also worked under Wesker in their S.T.A.R.S. days and knew how thorough he was. She wouldn’t believe that he’d just emailed Chris a .ppt file and let him free to make an absolute ass of himself and the presentation in front of people. If Wesker had put his name on it, he’d make sure it’d be perfect, and he’d make Chris practice his speech all the way to the ‘any questions?’ at the end until he knew it by heart.
Chris cleared his throat.
Yep, bullseye.
“I went to his place for coffee yesterday.”
Jill knew they spoke on the phone; Chris hadn’t made a secret of it, as it was one of the terms for Wesker’s conditional freedom while he collaborated with the BSAA. Chris had even been the one to propose it in the first place. But stepping inside the man’s house? That was a whole other boundary crossed. She gave Chris a hard, unblinking stare, letting the silence stretch until he cracked.
“He gave me a pen drive with the slides and a doc with what to say exactly to, and I quote, ‘avoid looking like a complete idiot’, then he offered me a cup of coffee, and finally I went back home to practice.” It sounded like the truth, but she still thought that Chris was holding back something. Jill decided not to press him on it, yet.
“No more hiking?” Jill teased him, instead.
“No.”
She nodded sagely. “Then I don’t think your secret to a good night’s sleep is strolling in nature, Chris.”
“What are you trying to say?” he asked, looking as if he already knew the answer.
“That I think something’s wrong with your head. Maybe it’s all the concussions you got during missions.”
Chris rolled his eyes and finished his coffee in silence. “Maybe,” he agreed, without specifying which part.
Jill patted his shoulder and refilled her mug with fresh coffee before they returned to their desks.
Back at her seat, she kept a casual eye on him, not missing the way Chris immediately checked the phone hidden in his drawer while his PC booted up.
Rolling her eyes, she strolled over behind his chair, slid the drawer open before he could stop her, and fished out his keys to examine his tiger keyring. “Cute souvenir, did Wesker buy it for you?”
Chris snatched the keys back out of her hand. “I bought it for myself.”
Jill tutted mockingly. “So he’s stingy, too?”
Chris didn’t rise to her bait and simply put the keys away.
"Just kidding." She raised her hands in a mock surrender and walked back to her own desk. “Anyway, I’d better start working on my speech,” Jill said, logging into her computer.
“What speech?” Chris asked, turning to look at her.
“My best woman's speech for your wedding. I already wrote the one for your funeral years ago,” Jill teased. Chris rolled his eyes at her antics, and she winked at him before she turned back to her monitor. “I like to be prepared.”