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"Nice shiner you got there, Dean. Messed with the wrong guy?"
Chris retreated from his conversation with Joseph, head raising and eyes scanning the cafeteria in search of the cunning voice.
"Think so, Stan. Everyone knows the faggot can't keep his eyes to himself."
A chuckle ricocheted from the corner of the room. Chris located it's origin; a blitzing, treacherous circle. Three ravenous men surrounded a lone soldier, whose shoulders caved around his chilling breakfast.
Joseph continued to speak in an abandoned conversation, and slowly, it ebbed until it could not be heard. Chris only knew it existed because his friends had not left.
"Who was it?" Stan goaded, hands at his side, prickling and curling into fists. "Come on, give us a name. Don't be shy now."
"No one." Dean's glare speared through the cloak of bodies, fearful but brave.
Without warning, Stan's fist rained on his cheek like the torrential beginnings of a monsoon. "Don't make eye contact with me, fucking fag." He grabbed Dean and hurled him to the ground, lips pinched into a disgusted frown as he spat on the boy. "Dirty bastards like you should stay on the floor where they belong. But you'd like that, wouldn't you?"
"N-No," stuttered Dean, collecting his sprawled, scattered skeleton and shuffling backwards into his chair.
His gaze pierced the floor, clouding in a stormy surrender. Chris watched as his body shuddered, every breath requesting to calm before it could resolve. But his unseeing eyes hooked into the meat of dismay and estranged from present conversation, likely aware it would only wrought pain.
The knife in Chris' hand clattered onto his forgotten plate. Anger throbbed alongside his pulse in the unnatural turn of his head. In the sculpting veins of his neck, Chris felt adrenaline course.
Stan slapped the soldier and his head hit the back of the chair roughly. "You answering back, boy?"
Men began to gather, observing the assault with curious, unsightly murmurs. They were few but enough, encroaching the violence with a crows greed.
"Be careful touching him, might be carrying a disease," one of Stan's friends taunted.
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right." Stan nodded, drawing closer to the boy curling on the floor. "Queer probably liked it too. I'll just have to use my foot instead."
Chris watched his boot rise and connect in a cowardly collision. The audience chuckled. Dean's agonising groan traversed the cafeteria and landed on Chris' plate.
Without a word, Chris was on his feet, Josephs sentence sputtering to an unexpected halt. He stormed across the room, hands already balled into perfect, rounded fists. Stan and his friends circled Dean, their spines erecting an impenetrable wall.
He brushed past the crowd in callous disregard, pushing aside one of Stan's friends, hearing him squander in useless protest. He marched all the way to the senseless brute, infernal rage flaming inside his bleeding tongue.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he hissed, intervening harshly.
Stan turned and acknowledged him. There was an echo of a smile on his face as he nodded to Dean. "Teaching the fag a lesson, Redfield." It developed into a sinister grin, and he asked, "Why, you want a turn?"
Chris' vision curdled with ire. He pushed Stan away, standing between the two men. "Leave him the fuck alone," he ordered with a glare.
On the floor, Dean was reduced to quiet tears, his arms covering his face from further assault. Stan's lips distorted with anger, pencilled in embarrassment. He scanned the room, observing the amusement shrouding their audience, and responded sprightly - tongue matte with disgust.
Pushing Chris' chest, hands unfurled into poorly controlled palms, he interrogated, "Why, huh? Why the fuck should I? Kid's a fucking freak. He probably liked it."
"Leave him alone," Chris warned, voice rising as his heartbeat reverberated.
Grinning maliciously, Stan teased, "Or what? What you gonna do?"
Chris answered with a simple snarl; there was a violent brush of his knuckles against the mans cheek, and he executed a final push, hands programmed to hurt. The room erupted in shouts. Chris struggled to hear what they said over his furious breaths.
Stumbling backwards, their audience dispersed for the first of many defeats Stan would swallow. Without taking a chance, Chris punched his stomach with the hard-lined soles of his boot, and when Stan curled over, rounded him with another fist.
The soldier coughed, spitting as blood dribbled over his sputtering lips. A portrait of infallible misery, Stan wrapped an arm around his abdomen, bulging eyes staring at the floor as crimson pebbles scattered across the laminate.
Chris sneered in victory.
That. That was what he would do.
But the victory was short lived as someone purchased him from behind, gathering his arms in an ineluctable embrace. He gasped in surprise, looking over his shoulder, but could not see who it was. In front of him, Stan's friend crawled into his peripheral. The sudden presence was an omen of what was to come: devastating, unrelenting, and unearned hurt.
He threw his weight onto the man at his rear and rocked his head backwards, hoping to capture his temple in a grievous hit. But the man before him slammed a cynical fist into his gut and before he could recognise the excruciating pain, threw the next to Chris' unsuspecting nose.
The hands holding him weakened from the collision and eventually disappeared. Chris felt something hot trickle over his lips, eyes squinting as a crater the size of a fist swallowed his breaths. He stumbled - force too great for him to endure. But before he fell, those same hands gathered his shoulders and poured his chest like a waterfall over their crushing knee.
Chris choked, and his ears whined. Through the frenzy, he heard men shouting but it was nothing substantial for him to hold. The world slowed momentarily and when he came to, he noticed Stan on his feet, an expression of unconcealed fury sheathing the pimpled skin of his face.
He descended on Chris like a vulture, picking on discarded flesh, and punched his cheek with greed to rival them. Chris sputtered, gaze oscillating like an ungoverned ship. In the tumultuous waves, he caught sight of Dean - the orphaned whale caught in a tangled net - and remembered why he was hurt.
Why blood gushed like a wretched, ominous downpour across Stan's face.
The returning rage was enough to stabilise his listless feet, to curate his sprawling fingers into fists, and dodge the incoming attack by moving aside. He pushed Stan onto the table, watching his scrawny body flail across the surface, balking. With uncontrollable hands Chris elbowed the man's chest and through his gasps, tossed him to the floor.
Chris towered over him, feet rooted on either side of his pitiful breaths. Blood pooled in his mouth and he spat it aside, feeling the steady rise and fall of his heaving chest.
He fell to his knees, bones keening at the sudden, all encompassing weight and sat on Stan's thighs, lips curled into a malicious grin. With unyielding resentment, Chris unleashed his disgust and pummelled the man.
He punched again and again and again, breathing harsh words in every agonising exhale. Chris did not feel human, this skin was a mere bandage stained with blood - it enveloped a blistering wound that would not heal.
His smile, his breath, his potently wild eyes were merely decoration - disguises - simply ornamental. In that moment, all Chris felt was voracious rage.
It swallowed all reason. Silenced all voices. It panted in his ear, warming his body in a fatal fever. Even if he wanted to, Chris could not stop. He was indomitable fists; irate breaths; tense limbs - suffocating and cold and irreversibly calamitous.
A man beyond reason. A man who perpetrated it.
But the unpleasant reality was that Chris did not want to stop. Not until the crumpled face, marred in distressed, had tasted the seed of its own bitter anger. Stan could not escape his reckoning. Judgement, he would learn, arrived immediately or eventually. But it arrived all the same.
Distantly, he realised that the room had quietened but Chris couldn't determine why, his breaths dangerously loud in his ears.
A hand seized his collar, expertly tugging him from the bleeding man with little effort. Chris growled, eyes blown with fury but before he could address the newcomer, he was pushed back in a threatening shove.
He stumbled to his feet, narrowly escaping the floor and stared at the laminate, now smeared and stained with their blood. Panting, he took stock of his hands, of the ferocious beating inside his chest.
He was fine.
The same couldn't be said for his opponent.
Stan crumbled, blood streaking the flush across his cheeks; vermilion veins within a crimson puddle, and the whole world had witnessed their expansion. His teeth were clenched in fierce rancour but Chris hardly minded, the expression a mere mirror of his own.
"Does someone want to explain why I have two soldiers beating each other to death in the cafeteria?" came a familiar, cold drawl.
Wesker.
Chris pulled out of the stupor, nearing Stan who was still on the floor, holding his nose in a woeful, pathetic expression. Their eyes met, reflecting a similar, glinting promise: this wasn't over.
"It's Redfield, sir." Stan's accusatory fist pointed at him. "He fucking started it."
Grinning wildly, a flush of blood seeping onto his tongue, Chris promised, "And I'll finish it too."
He lunged for the man once more, an unyielding fist piercing the tense air with a snarl. But before it could connect, Chris felt a sturdy palm slam into his chest and his breaths stumbled, simpering into a sharp hiss.
"Enough." Wesker's fury was quiet yet incredibly sharp. Single edged, dangerous but impeccably welded. "I wasn't aware I was in the presence of two children."
The sneer in his voice was clear. It cut through the hypnotising whirlpool of relentless rage. Chris finally glanced at the man, noting the immaculate exterior of his uniform, how competently his glasses sat on the bridge of his nose, and how his lips which had only looked to him in kindness were gnarled - smitten with scorn.
Chris did not feel shame. Wesker's disdain could not cure his unholy, righteous anger.
"It's all Dean's fault, sir," one of Stan's friends lied pathetically. "He was picking a fight with Stan and then-"
"No, he wasn't," Chris interjected, sending a harsh glare to the henchman. "This bastard was beating him up for no reason."
"Oh, struck a nerve, Redfield?" Stan's lips squared, scarlet teeth blotted with his humiliating defeat. Barbarous and petulant, he sneered, "Or should I say, Fagfield."
Chris's throat tightened. Every muscle in his body grew taut. His fists chanted for blood and it was his duty to feed this supple army - these were the only men he had left.
"From where I am, you're the one bitched on the floor, Stan," he reminded him coldly.
The soldier's face mangled in outrage, shoulder's leaning forward in vicious promise. "Motherfucker-" he snarled.
Grinning provocatively, Chris' feet parted as his hands rose in fists. "Come on then-"
"Enough!"
A hand grabbed him by his shirt and pushed him backwards in severe objection. The other pointed to the cafeteria door, nearby soldiers parting to pave a path.
"Stanley: to the infirmary and then report to Captain Marini." The slow turn of Wesker's head swallowed Chris. "Redfield, my office. Now."
Chris' harsh glare spat at Wesker, ruffled brows curled in contempt. The instruction ricocheted in the accompanying silence. Frazzled, Chris breathed heavily and struggled to heed the indisputable command.
Stan scrambled backwards, rising to his feet, spitting to the ground near Chris'. Blood pebbled in the watery womb, opulent with agony the man would never confess.
Belligerent to the bone, he remarked, "Fucking gladly."
An ineluctable hand grasped the man's collar, Wesker's tinted glasses never straying from Chris. He dragged Stan close to him, head tilting in dangerous apathy. "On second thought, report to Major Kane."
"Captain-!" Stan protested recklessly.
With a sudden dismissal, Wesker tossed the man to his shadow. Stan stumbled but collected his sluggish limbs before they collapsed. Growling indignantly, Chris heard his footsteps level the residual spite mounting on the floor.
Looking at the ground, he heard the nervous shuffle of whispers as Wesker waited and expected obedience. At his hips, his palms throbbed with unspent rage - with timeless fear he could not console.
A few corridors away, the office door beckoned him. A chestnut desk ornamented with papers and pens and inflexible authority. A reprimand written in disappointment. Wesker's stoic scolding and Chris' weeping fury.
The room was stifling. Chris swallowed, feet yearning for city pavements and unemotional crowds. A sample of comfort from streets he had just left behind - that had only been safe because of the man at his side.
Without looking at him, Chris turned on his heel and stomped out of the room. Wesker's disappointment speckled his departure like dust. Clinging to him, Chris carried the agonising disapproval all the way to the courtyard and into a flurry of sunlight. By the time he reached the gate and signed out, he hardly noticed it.
The gatekeeper raised a curious brow. "You okay?"
His answer was voiceless.
Handing him the clipboard, Chris stormed off the base and returned to the streets.
The streets, where a day before, he had ventured with the Captain to an aquarium. Sequestered from reality, in the centre of it's chest, they had roamed congested halls to observe cadavers and fish, aquatic lifeforms he could hardly understand. But it had all been incredibly serene. The curve of Wesker's lips never faltered.
Now, Chris stumbled through the same roads, pavement carrying his wobbly knees as his breaths crushed pitifully in his windpipe. It was hard to breathe through his crusting nose, harder to stand on a mottled gut. He was unbearably hurt and ongoers observed him with eyes of curiosity.
Chris found a public restroom and trudged inside. It wasn't empty; a horrible stench bogged the tiles and men passed him without washing their hands. Few glanced at him once and then again, frowning inquisitively as they pointed to his face.
"Looks nasty, pal. You okay?"
He nodded, a pulsating wave tiding over his face. Agony cemented his jaw as it tensed. Everything hurt without a cure.
"You should see the other guy," he laughed, mirth absent from his tongue.
A firm slap on the back. Appraising grins. So much approval. "My man."
After cleaning most of the blood from his face, he surrendered to the journey. It was without destination, a meandering path on unsettled grounds.
He roamed the city for hours. His foot was tethered to a blazing anvil, dragged through pouring dirt. Each step felt heavier than the last but as his injuries slept on his skin, Chris could appreciate that it was not without cause.
He ebbed in and out of reality, an instrument out of tune, a misplaced key, a dip in the road a car did not expect. Despondency looked casual on his skin, eyes wide and lips sentimentally spread.
Even as his empathy syphoned to the gutter, he still kicked the stray ball tumbling his way as children played in a park. He continued to pet a gentle cat, seeking his tender, brutal fingers. He helped a struggling woman collect produce when her bag collapsed. And when a stranger asked for directions, he volunteered to take them as far as he could.
Costumed with a memory of his humanity, Chris did all the things a good person was supposed to do and more, and he loathed the very instincts which allowed him too. The diligent, prevailing muscles which contracted and relaxed. The friendliness a lifetime of misery had taught him was necessary to survive.
If they knew the real him, then it was quite possible their gratitude would sour into Stan's scowl, and what a dangerous thought that was. How peculiar and terrifying it came, that he was only appreciated as a reflection.
But he swallowed his retorts, the pain far too grievous to consider another brawl. Enough had been done and what he desired was accomplished. For now, all he was to do was survive until reckoning caught him and refused to let go.
Eventually, a spitting downpour unravelled through ivory clouds. It arrived undetected, unsuspected, and clung to his uniform, biting through the laden fabric. In it's presence, Chris felt a shudder ruffle the tender discs of his spine. He was beginning to get cold.
The city around him disappeared slowly, in managed increments. Faces shuttered beneath umbrellas, kiosks closed with swift, urgent pulls. Even the odd stray swallowed itself, burrowing into an unseen crevice, rendering him alone.
The world darkened as clouds blew gusts of charcoal smoke. It was conceived in their frightened bellies, as an untouched fire - incredibly thin and white - crackled within them. Glancing at the sky, squinting through the rain, Chris knew what he saw.
A thunderstorm after days of unending heat. And he was caught in it's branches, twigs catching on the tearing fabric of his shirt and trouser.
Sighing, he surveyed the empty road and found a place to hide. A place which would shelter but simultaneously endanger him too.
The phone box glistened, winking conspiratorially like the polished corners of a diamond. Chris had taken many steps to secede from the base - from Wesker - but the sight of the box returned his longing. His feet stuttered to a halt at it's side.
He yearned to call a number he once spent days memorising. Call and listen to the respondents breaths. The curt, clipped greeting. The ever present, easily baited frustration.
He wished to call Wesker and hear his presence, though it could not be felt. Chris would be nothing more than a stain on the pavement, but he would be acknowledged - he would be seen and recognised to ultimately be avoided. And that was enough for him. Enough to convince him of a regrettable decision.
He stumbled into the phone box, entering as a prisoner of desire.
His fingers rummaged through his pocket, collecting stray coins and feeling the print of Wesker's hand imbued onto the surface. They were cold now, dampened by rain, and the lustre of that morning had ebbed into something jaded. He stared at them, bronze and silver and coppery with gloom.
His breath hitched as he recalled Wesker's palm against his own, the sensuous slide as he deposited the change and slowly withdrew his hand. A smirk glittered his lips and Chris had wanted nothing more than to kiss it - to leech the amusement, cherry stained and wet. It was only inevitable he remembered what came after.
Stan's cruelty. Chris' rage. Wesker's indifference.
The grieving taste of betrayal.
His heart ached, sheathed in sadness.
He missed him. He missed the rough pallette of his fingertips, ridges marred with experience and wisdom and structure. The way he would have dusted the anger from Chris' shoulders, cleaning him from the filth Stan and his friends splattered on him. Eventually, after speaking quietly - in a timbre he had promised only to Chris - he would have held him. Swaddled him in an embrace that knew of violence but softened despite it.
He exhaled turbulently, punching an unforgettable number into the dial tone. The booth was silent, even the rain had mellowed in anticipation. Above him, the sputtering light bulb steadied and it felt like a comfort he wasn't sure he deserved.
"Hello?" Steady and sombre - cruelly unaffected. Wesker's voice was composed and succinct like a mountaintop, apathy crowning it like a cloud.
Chris didn't reply. He didn't know if he wanted to.
The silence was marble, chipped by Wesker's intrigue, but remained resilient. Just like Chris' enduring anger, it was sturdy and righteous.
Rain pummelled onto the phone box, each pebble wrought with melancholy. He shivered as water streaked the glass, scratches digging scars into his solitude - this interminable loneliness.
"Who is this?" Wesker asked, tone shrivelling into something accusatory - a mockery of distrust.
Inconsolable, Chris sniffled quietly. The rain was cold inside his veins, vicious and impenetrable. What could Chris do apart from accept it as his own?
Yet even in ruins, Wesker's voice was warm. Even in disgust and disregard and unfathomable despair, the older man was a senseless source of comfort. In the precarious distance between them, Chris' heart yearned.
Perhaps his Captain had realised too, as he breathed quietly over the receiver. He didn't say anything, not immediately.
But then, "Christopher?" he murmured softly, inquisitive and achingly hopeful.
Chris' breath sharpened, it hitched in his throat as rain slipped down his chin. He slammed the phone onto the receiver and leaned against the box. Encompassed in glass, water clawed at the cubicle.
Wesker's tenderness felt brutal. It was a fallacy of a yearning mind.
When he returned to base, he was expecting multiple executions. One to smite his disobedience, another for his insubordination. There was no saying if Chris would keep his job and if Wesker continued to adore him. The only certainty he had was every insurrection would meet its cruel, unsightly end.
But he was granted some clemency; Wesker had said his name with reverence and desire, the way Chris recognised after so many months of hungering for his affections.
No matter what the military decreed, it was possible he remained the fixture of Wesker's unbending adoration. If he didn't, then Chris could see the discharge for what it was: mercy. Those were the only comforts he could find.
He returned to base soon after the phone call. It lingered on his mind like an unwashed stain, one he did not attempt to scour from the bleak surface. He passed the gatekeeper, who raised an eyebrow.
"Cutting it a bit close, aren't we Redfield?"
Chris grinned, a sardonic, empty thing. "Always was good at testing the limits."
"Just hope the Captain's not too pissed at what you did this morning, or else the only limits you'll be testing are the ones on your way home."
He didn't respond and entered the clinical base. The walk was quiet. Few strangers acknowledged him but no one he could name. Chris smiled politely and it felt like a deceitful caricature; painting something beautiful to disguise it's hideous reality.
But the weight of the meeting with Wesker was a burden his feet anticipated (and unrepentantly avoided). As he neared his office, he walked into Jill who slowed to a halt when she recognised him.
"Chris," Jill said, nodding her head in acknowledgement.
He smiled, expression hollowed with grief. "Jill."
"You okay?" Her gaze swept over him categorically, unspeakably kind despite his heinous disarray.
Clearing his throat, he agreed, "Never been better. Just gonna-"
He pointed at the corridor, the path to Wesker carved in concrete, coloured with the stormy resolve of swollen clouds. It was dark despite the heated spotlights, each bulb stroked him in unwanted attention.
"You haven't been yet?" She seemed surprised, glancing at Wesker's office with hooded concern.
"Not yet," he clarified. "So, might as well face the music."
Jill's lips thinned, eyebrows drawn with fury Chris whetted in his bone. "Whatever he says…it doesn't matter. You did the right thing."
His next breath was tinged with relief. Chris grinned, wholehearted and honest. Leaning towards her, he remarked, "I know. And I fucked him up, didn't I? Bastard'll think twice before pulling that shit again ."
She smirked, her expression mirrored his cruel delight. "From what I've heard, you broke his nose."
A grotesque yet justified sentence. Chris felt a swell of pride flourish in his chest, watered by the knowledge that Stan was hurt.
"Now the mutt won't go round sniffing other people's business," muttered Chris, his eyes swerved through satisfaction as it steamed from his chest.
Nodding, she acquiesced, "Hopefully but people like him?" In a bitter slant of her lips and disgusted pinch of her nose, contempt blossomed victoriously. "They never seem to learn."
"Yeah." Chris felt resignation swing across his shoulders and hammer his restless body into reality. "They don't."
A quiet cloth swaddled their breaths, Chris materialising to the present where water wept around his feet. His body returned to him in pieces, fragmented but alive, belonging to apprehension.
"I'll let you see the Captain then." She smiled subdued but valiant. Her resilience was always so formidable. "Curfew's in a few so best get it out of the way. See you later?"
"Hopefully."
It hardened, addled with conviction so firm it could not be swayed. "He won't do you wrong. He's a fair man, he'll understand."
Wesker's cool composure was revered inside these concrete halls. He was not a brute; he was not nice. He was fair. Oftentimes, Chris learned that he was only capable of being just.
Shrugging, he willed, "Hope so." Then after a soft shuffle, farewelled, "See you later Jill."
She nodded, a quiet goodbye tipped into the silence. She left exactly how she had arrived. Chris didn't watch her leave, facing the road that would lead him to his Captain.
When he stepped into the room, Wesker was seated at his desk, back perfectly arched as he drawled lazily on paper. An amber glow illuminated the surface, it emerged from a lamp Chris had seen many times but never in use. It was exceedingly rare for Wesker to work overtime and that too at his office - Chris knew he preferred his quarters as it was the one place he was certain he would not be disturbed.
Chris had disrupted Wesker's meaningful routine. There would be no generosity in his punishment.
At the intrusion, Wesker didn't halt or acknowledge the presence. He continued to work, each shape and letter drawn roughly, the only way Chris had ever seen his writing.
Hobbling to the desk, ignoring the callous shadows bordering the room, Chris paused opposite him and let silence fester. There was no recognition in Wesker, no slip or tell that he had even heard the door open and Chris' sodden footsteps. Perhaps, he didn't care, the earlier disappointment coating him like tar.
Eventually, he asked, "How do you feel?"
Grit rumbled in Chris' throat, excruciating like the memory he had spent hours trying to escape. "Like shit."
At his admittance, Wesker's pen clattered against the table. He looked up, paperwork dismissed with an unspoken glance. Chris reciprocated his gaze and waited for judgement.
But Wesker did not reply, his mouth thinned into an unimpressed scar. Soundlessly, he rose to his feet and scraped the legs of his chair against the floor. Walking around Chris, ignoring his trepidation as it puddled on the floor, he retrieved a first aid kid.
Feeding him painkillers and resting the bag on his desk, Wesker began the tiresome work of patching him together.
The clothes on his skin were uncomfortably wet and as Wesker pushed his knee against Chris' thigh, he could feel the water seep onto his trousers. He was sat on his desk, one leg stretched into the darkness as the other grounded Chris, and he carefully gathered him by the chin, urging him closer.
Wesker's hand did not liberate Chris' face for a moment, keeping him dangerously close. Peering into him, Chris watched his sapphire eyes wrinkle in displeasure as he cleaned the blood on Chris' face.
Wesker's touch felt like mercy on his scalding skin. Cool, practiced, confident, it was gentler than damnation. Is this what angered men like Stanley? What threatened the tempestuous church?
That love could be tender.
It was shaped by forgiveness.
It didn't always have to hurt.
Chris wondered if his love meant nothing without the hate that preceded it.
"Why did you do it?" Balanced with trust, even and warm.
Chris shrugged, eyes narrowing onto Wesker's indifference. "I couldn't just watch."
This close, Wesker's eyes were haggard with exhaustion, fine wrinkles coddling the corners. The familiar frost of his cool gaze had thawed into something gentle. Beneath the receding apathy, Chris recognised concern and at it's feet, remorse.
"What happened?" His hand stilled and he stared at Chris, their eyes meeting in a way that felt inevitable, Wesker's expression levelled into an unreadable portrait. "Stanley has told his side of the story."
Chris nodded, expecting as such. So, he told him as his hands soothed the terrible lines of discontent and frustration. Spoke of an ordinary day in the cafeteria, eating his food and conversing lightly with members of STARS. Hearing Stan's uncivilised provocation, his jeers and fists from across the room. Without thinking, Chris rose to his feet and intervened, body trembling as it shrouded Dean from the brute's gaze.
He pushed Stan first. He threw the first punch. He broke his nose and then his friends intervened, barricading Chris' fury in a meaty embrace and pummelling his stomach with their misguided anger. Other soldiers pulled them away and then Chris resumed his brawl with the mindless man who started it all, eventually towering over him and teaching him the iron taste of disgust.
By then, Wesker had arrived and he knew what happened next. Chris' defiance and Stan's insolence: two obelisks shouldered on hatred, narrowed and whittled into a bitter pill. Both men kept it on their tongues, pupils dilating with ravenous disobedience. And then, Wesker saw what happened.
Had witnessed their arrogance with his own two eyes.
The Captain did not speak. Chris' nose sputtered a protest as his gentle fingers cleaned crushed plums.
"He's not getting disciplinary action." Wesker's hands were steady, the comfortable drone of his voice unblemished. His eyes were white when they looked up at him. "Major Kane dismissed it."
"And the boy?" he inquired. "Dean?"
Unwavering. Cold. "Dishonourable discharge."
Chris nodded into Wesker's palm, the turbulent rocking scarred treacherously with disbelief. A laugh spilled from his lips, coating Wesker's hand, birthed onto his chin, relentless and manic, entirely unsanitary.
"Yeah, because that makes so much sense, right?" he voiced, breaching hysteria.
Seemingly apathetic as his touch faltered, Wesker's fingers relinquished his injuries and gathered him by his chin. "It was the best option considering what happened."
Rage accosted him, blinding and infernal singed with inky smoke. Chris felt it steep in his fingertips, slide across the hair dusting his neck. It sat heavy on his chest, so prideful and unrepentant. His throat ached in shameless ire and curdled in his gaze as it reached for Wesker.
"He was minding his own fucking business," he hissed, voice creeping in outrage. "He didn't even get to finish his fucking food."
The meal was abandoned. The staggered chair forgotten. If he was to return to the cafeteria, the air would be medicated and tables scrubbed to sheen. Disinfecting roses would bloom on plastic and it would be so clean, so mindfully sterile, that Stanley's agony would be scoured from the room.
Chris' resistance eliminated.
Wesker's gentle finger caressed his cheek and only then did Chris realise it was damp. A raindrop of rage streaked down his face and he was crying. Wesker's face fractured in disapproval.
He reeled him into his arms, smothering Chris against his shoulder and holding him intently. Held in an embrace more solid than his regret, shaped and wrought with comfort, Chris began to sob in earnest breaths.
"It's not fair. That bastard started it. He-" His voice splintered, scattering on the floor in shards of prickling misery.
Wesker's cheek was firm against his temple, bleeding warmth he could hardly feel through ungovernable tremors. "I know, Christopher. I know."
"I should have broken more than his fucking nose," he snarled, grabbing Wesker's shirt and scraping his nails against the flimsy fabric. "I should have broken his legs. I should have made sure the bastard won't walk again."
"You did," he appeased, soft and rewarding. "You broke his ribs too. He's off duty for the foreseeable future."
Chris did not feel his earlier satisfaction. Sorrow rolled through him like small, relentless waves. Gently smothering but not enough to maim. Through it, he could still feel Wesker's body: potent muscles winding across him like chains, grounding him to the moment - to the tenderness and concern.
But despair was seductive, kissing the hairs on his nape. It would not be ignored so easily or entirely.
And so Chris, trembling and cold and sheathed in uniform which had never felt like armour, clutched Wesker tightly seeking his resolve.
"And it still isn't enough," he confessed, strength funnelled and packaged in a ghastly tomb.
Wesker didn't respond. He let the words storm through the air and settle like bandages on realities painful incisions.
Gravelly, he admitted, "Nothing ever will be."
There was no use for words when silence had thwarted Chris' will to speak. In the resounding void, his fear leered; violent images of Dean's future streaked with crimson rivulets mimicking wine. Aware of this, or merely awarding him time, Wesker held his shivers in his unbreakable, steel arms and allowed him to mourn.
In the morning, sunshine would swivel in pirouettes and ease the rain soaking the pavement. The kitchen would host hundreds of hungry, grumbling men - Chris one of them - and feed their pleading stomachs. Wesker would be nothing more than his Captain and Dean would crumble like clay into mangled memories.
Life would resume and it would not be cruel but that did not mean it would be kind.
It would be indifferent. Cold and somehow warm. An unwritten page - one he could draft.
It would simply be and that was all he was owed.
He pulled out of the embrace, eyes hooded and distant. Wesker's hand returned to his chin as he gazed at his emptiness and stayed through it's malcontent.
Frowning - his nose and lips gasping painfully - he confessed, "I don't even know if the guy's like that, you know?" The words load between them like insurmountable cargo. The were fat on his tongue, far too meaty to chew, impossible to swallow. An inedible cut of an animal that died bitter and angry. "Like us."
Wesker resumed patching him up, calm and composed, wearing Chris' anxiety like a medal. "That doesn't matter for people like Stanley. They are looking for a target - they can make reason out of anything."
Chris scoffed. That much even he had deduced. "People probably think I'm that too." At Wesker's silence, he clarified, "A fag."
"Aren't you?"
He laughed but it was mirthless. A sharp exhale costumed as amusement. "You're right." Then, the smile fell in a structured collapse. "Guess I'll be walking around with a target on my back now."
Wesker's hands chilled. Frosting, they lingered. Voice tight, he said, "If anyone-"
"I know, Al." Chris smiled and it was surprisingly earnest. "But you can't save me from everyone."
"I will," he promised.
Chris reached for his eyes, finding Neptune's waves tamed and tethered. Wesker stared at him, equally entranced, though his hands did not halt. There was a certainty in his grasp, in his gaze, in the spread of his lips.
"They'd think you are too then," Chris told him. "You might lose your job if that ever happened."
Raising an eyebrow, the Captain asked, "So?"
As if it truly was so simple. All those years curating a legacy of efficiency and calm, of rising in the ranks a prodigy, thrown away at the sight of Chris' honour. It could not be. If the time came, Chris would leave quietly and without complaint; he would not drag Wesker through the ruins of his charred reputation.
One of them would survive. One would outlive the everlasting cruelty.
Chris' anger was too poignant, too loud and poor. It would not be him. But Wesker was calm, his mere presence instilled with authority no man could touch. If it could be anyone, it would be him.
A cotton pad lightly pressed onto his brow, the surface wet, biting his raw wound with vengeful teeth. Chris winced, his body recoiling in unseemly pain.
"Do you get used to it?" he asked softly, a tired distraction.
Wesker's finger paused before resuming - slower, more careful. He did not pull Chris closer and instead, moved into his orbit seamlessly. "To what?"
"To them hating us."
He stopped entirely, the hand on Chris' jaw stroking the skin in absent contemplation, as his eyes reached over Chris' hair to find something in the darkness. The touch remained incredibly tender, as though his fingertips were prescribed such softness - could only hold another if it was in adoration. But Chris knew that to be untrue.
"No," he answered eventually. "I don't think you do. To live in fear means accepting it will always be somewhat of a bother. But."
His gaze returned to Chris, it was gentle how his eyes swept across his. Wesker smiled and it was an ardent, warm thing.
"But you do learn to drown out the noises. Like in this instance, now. I can hold you as my own, touch as you such. There is no one to dispute it or who can. It's just us and I'm content."
Chris considered his words, gently spoken but fierce with adoration. A thinly spread, fortified wall of possessiveness lined his desire. He had always known it existed, much like the moon was born knowing the earth, but it was compelling regardless, to hear Wesker's love admitted so quietly in the office.
The secret he had contained since yesterday, locked and bandaged and eventually soiled with concrete, knocked in response. Chris clawed at it's unyielding surface.
"Yesterday, at the aquarium, I wanted to touch you so bad," he confessed quietly, a secret marred with sadness, marbled with embarrassment.
He grabbed Wesker's hand, the one holding a cotton pad and clung to his fingers, spread in invitation. Staring at the pink, warm skin, he caressed the artistic scrawls pencilled neatly, felt his thumb press against the heart of his palm and feel the beat of an unstoppable heart.
Unable to stop, he continued, "I saw a guy holding his girl's hand, putting his arm around her waist and all I could think is: I can't do that with you. And I want to. Always."
"Do you fantasise about holding me often, Christopher?" A smirk tinged Wesker's response.
Nodding, he admitted hoarsely, "All the time." The hand on his jaw tightened just enough for him to feel it. "I get greedy when we go out. Walking a bit too close, some times even into you but I just. I want to hold you. Why's that so bad?"
"Is this not enough?" Wesker's voice was equally as soft, punctuated with hope. "What we have now?"
"It is!" he insisted. "It is. But I want more. I want… You're gonna mock me, I know you are." His sentence tapered into an embarrassed laugh, the accompanying smile tender with it.
The hand in his grasp curled to hold him. "Not about this, you know that."
Nodding, Chris swallowed stiffly and whispered, "Some times I want to just put my head on your shoulder. Or lean on to you when I'm tired. Or kiss you." It came out quick, sharp, ferocious with want. "I want to kiss you so bad, Al. You don't see yourself out there, not how I do."
His golden hair fluttering in a gentle breeze, reflecting the sun with effortless beauty. The divinity in his wide, soulful smile. The chuckles which followed. The heat of his gaze as Chris felt it on his skin. The way those ocean eyes always tide at Chris' shore.
Always returned to him. Only belonged to him.
"You look so perfect, like a supermodel - even a God. You look so good I think you're not real, you can't be. And I want to touch you, hold you, remind myself that you are but I can't. I can't do that. And it hurts."
"Chris…"
"I love you," he mumbled, brave despite the uneasiness of his confession. Glancing at Wesker to return his gaze, he continued, "I love you and I want you see it all the time. Not just here, now. But out there too, where there is so much of you for me to love."
Wesker's fingers stiffened. This was not the first time Chris had uttered those words but the orchestra of desire which followed, certainly was.
The touch was no longer soft, it was ravenous. A crimson bite etched fingerprints onto Chris' hands, a display of ownership - of possession. He looked at their fingers, forever intertwined, and could see the seeping longing stain Wesker's knuckles. They were ivory, paler than sorrowful snow.
He smiled, even as the embarrassment ricocheted and crumbled into regret.
"You can't say that to me, Christopher," Wesker said, slow and calm and undeniably steady. Yet, his body betrayed him. His frosty gaze thawed into fickle slush. "I am a selfish man. A man who will always want more. You cannot-"
"But it's true," he replied. He gripped Wesker's hand with equal ferocity. "One day, maybe when they kick me out or you retire, we can go somewhere. Somewhere just for us, where I can see all those things and not have to hold back."
Wesker's breath kissed his lips and Chris leaned in, allowing the Captain's response to be stream straight to his stomach, where he would retain it forever.
"Whatever you want, Chris. Whatever you want, it's yours."
He felt the miserable ache of his nose as Wesker's touched his, just briefly. He relished it, soaked in it's infernal warmth. So long as it was from him, Chris would wear any scar with impenetrable pride. He was, after all, his best man.
"You," he said quietly, pressing their lips together in a sombre conclusion. "I only want you."