Work Text:
“Chris!” Wesker screams across a world of bubbling, molten hell.
Above him, soaring on chopper wings, Chris Redfield is an angel of vengeance risen right out of the gospel. But instead of guarding his transgressor overhead, the angel spits venom from his eyes. He spits bullets, and grenades, an onslaught from above, while the mutating limbs of Wesker’s body pull him down, working on him below.
“Chris!” he screams again, more helplessly this time. A help me cry. A save me plea.
He doesn’t actually want it. He doesn’t want this ruined body air-lifted out of the volcano just to house him for the rest of his life, rotting the way of an immortal in a cell or a containment center. What he wants, more than anything, is to know if Chris still responds to him. To know if the thread of humanity that once tied them together still holds, weak and frayed, but clasped despite it all.
Their fates have always been celtic knot. A lion’s paw handshake. His first and last ouroboros, nullifying all the rest.
At least he can have that. At least when he goes down, he can drag it with him into the flames.
But when he looks up, eyes straining for his Christopher’s love, the look on Chris’ face is as blackened and charred as the landscape around him. The expression he finds there isn’t glad, or satisfied; it is merely tired. As though the moment all of this is over, he will take a deep gulp of air into his lungs, and only feel relief.
“No!” Wesker screams, thrashing now against death, “Chris!”.
He will pry himself out of here, disemboweled and half-alive, to make Christopher care again. If not with his heart, then with his hate. Wesker will find another friend he can take. Another family member to dangle over his head like the world’s most perverted mistle toe. Whatever he has to do, he’ll do it, to stop Chris from looking at him with that face.
Chris angles the launcher down at him. There is pure arithmetic in the way he judges the distance.
If there were anything still binding them together, in that instant it is gone, vaporized by the blast.
And then the lava. Dissolving not just the loose threads of their fate, but his body, flesh from bone from will.
🎄
Even Wesker’s office has been decorated for Christmas.
A spiderwebbing of garlands hang above his head, circling the perimeter of the room, ornaments like sprinkles chasing the length of the furry braid.
Everything is as it was: his desk is a mound of paperwork, and his monitor blinks with something new to attend to, and sunlight streams in through diagonal slats in the window looking out into the STARS office.
Wesker, on the other hand, is not as he should be. He sits in his Captain’s chair, and he is shaking so hard that he fears he might be ill.
For a moment, he doesn’t dare to move at all. Just allows his eyes to scrape over everything, taking it all in. He remembers the drive to work this morning. He remembers what he ate for breakfast.
He remembers setting his team loose in Spencer’s home. He remembers Africa, and the Arctic. He remembers the anguish of the heat eating him alive, even though it has not happened yet.
Almost methodically, Wesker feels himself rising from his chair. He hears the screech of its legs on the wooden boards; he feels the action of his limbs. But it is as though his path has been already laid in front of him, and like an automata on a track, or a tin toy wound to fit-for-bursting, the instructions don’t quite meet his consciousness as he walks out to the cubicles.
Beyond the silence of his office is a world of light of sound.
It’s not just the decorations that Chris cajoled everyone into handmaking during the quiet, restless hours of the small town in December- crayon drawings taped to the windows to perform like a child’s stained glass project; the tiny tree shedding pine needles that Barry picked up from the Home Depot; random office supplies wrapped and scattered like holiday filler around the room- it’s his team that fills the space with merriment.
Chris is spinning in his chair again, an arm flung over his chest, barking out a laugh in response to something Barry just said. The latter tries to hide his pleasure at evoking such a reaction, as to reduce his coworker to a toddler, (double-pleased at the way that Jill is currently rolling her eyes), but quickly straightens up, giving an ah-hem, as soon as he notices their leader in the room.
Chris does too, though not as urgently. He doesn’t try to wipe that ruddy grin off his face as he props himself up in his chair, giving Wesker a toothy nod and a, “Captain.”
But it is Jill who is giving him the strangest look. Because, after all, he is staring at her. Her dark hair, her youthful face. A feeling akin to magma bubbling through every artery seizes him, boiling into his throat, and he’s certain he’s going to be ill.
He turns without speaking, and walks heads back into his office.
The door shuts behind him, and the sound pounds in his ears. Wesker stops in the back of the room, holding himself uncertainly up behind his desk. He wishes he kept a bottle of something strong in his drawers, but even then, Wesker rarely finds comfort in drink. Instead, his hands worry at the edges of the wood. He paces away from the chair, then back, then away again. Then, unsure what to do with himself, he drops, sinking onto the ground.
The corner gathers him into his arms. He pulls himself into the two that he has left.
Shaking, Wesker buries his head into his knees, and submerges himself into darkness.
Behind his eyelids, images pulse, shattering him with a nauseating heat. A gun to Chris’ head. A target on Polly and Moira’s bedroom. A throbbing, pulsing organ clinging like a spider to the chest of a woman who once was Jill.
Wesker registers the sound of his door opening, but not quickly enough. There is no amount of time that could have been afforded for him straighten out of the ball he’s armadilloed into before Christopher is crouching down at his side.
“...Captain?” he asks, uncertain and soft. “Is everything… alright?”
Shivering, Wesker raises his head, and there he is: sweet, ignorant Chris. As afraid to overstep as he is bold to dance across enemy lines, his face openly betraying its concern, like he has nothing to lose in expressing it.
How inevitable this all must have been. How unavoidable, when he is like this, and Wesker is what he was bred to be.
“You’re shaking like a leaf,” Chris adds, boyishly disquieted, it all over his face.
So young. So gentle. Wesker never truly realized how small Chris was during this time. Not until he looked upon the rage-driven form that Chris had cultivated himself to be.
“I’m sorry- Chris-” Wesker gasps.
In less than a year, seven hikers will be attacked in the Arklay Mountains. The timeline will be dramatically moved up, and Spencer will give him the go-ahead. It will coincide perfectly with the week that Chris breaks up with him, ever-aware of, but unable to pierce the secrecy that is Wesker’s private life.
First duty, then despair, then hate will bloom in his heart. As simple as that, the Mansion Incident will be under foot.
Many of them will die. Jill will survive to become his pet. Chris will sacrifice his entire life in the pursuit of revenge- and then with the goal of simply, dispassionately stopping him.
But right now, Chris has ornaments in his eyes. Beads of blues and greens reflected by the garland. There’s yuletide joy on his face, and trust in the way that he smiles just as soon as Wesker meets his eyes, apprehensive and tenuous in this time before they’ve shared even a dozen kisses.
“Did something happen?” Chris asks with encouragement in his voice. Then, more seriously, he frowns. “Wesker?” he asks slowly. “Did you get coal this year?”
Wesker blinks. For a moment he wants to laugh, but it only makes his heart twist harder. All at once, horrifically, he lets out a sob- and just like that, the entire awful business manifests itself in tears.
“Woah,” Chris says, quickly sitting down next to him on the floor. “You really did get coal, huh?”
With a gasp, Wesker presses his face back into the cavern of his knees, his head hung in shame.
“I’m sorry, Christopher,” he says around bubbles of grief, undeserving of the innocent way that Chris sees him, yet unable to ever explain to him why. “It’s Christmas Eve. Please go be with the others. You don’t deserve a heavy heart on today of all days.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine,” Chris waves him off.
Even without seeing his face, Wesker can hear his subordinate smiling. He bows his shoulders, trying to collapse it inward- the weeping, the gasping, the straining for air- and releases a strange howling so deep it can only come from lifetimes of torment away.
“Captain,” Chris whispers, moving in close. Arms around him, now. A head laying down comfortingly on his shoulder.
It’s wrong. All wrong. Chris shouldn’t be the one comforting him now. Even if it was Wesker who burned in the pyre, it was Chris who he prepared for the sacrifice.
“Really,” Christopher prompts him. “Captain. Did something happen?”
Wesker sucks in air. He shakes his head.
“I know you don’t like to talk about yourself, but…” Chris is quiet for a moment. Examining those lines again, trying to decide which ones are carved in the sand, and which ones are set in stone. “It can be good, sometimes. To open up.”
Wesker had felt so large and important during this time. Before STARS he’d only ever been an orphan, then a student, then a prodigy. He’d never been let off the leash to such a degree. For the first time he realizes how fragile he still was.
“Christopher,” he says lugubriously, elbowing his way through tears. Briefly, he unravels from his ball to look towards his desk, providing the direction. “The drawer. Top left.”
Chris frowns. He follows Wesker’s sight line, and then, looking pleased to be of some use, gets to his feet. Some form of thrill passes over his face- right, of course, Wesker thinks, at this point I had only begun to let him into my life- to be allowed into a domain as private and off limits as Captain Wesker’s desk, but he doesn’t let the glee overcome him as he opens up the drawer.
Wesker lays down into his knees again, and simply imagines the look on Chris’ face as he lifts the rectangular box out of the clutter.
“A present?” he asks.
“For you,” Wesker supplies, taking a ragged inhale.
There comes the sound of the wrapping rustling. “May I open it, Captain…?”
“So polite,” Wesker teases, then starts, surprised by the reflexive instinct. “Of course you may,” he says, more cogently.
Paper rips, Chris’ methods inelegant. After a moment, Wesker feels a body at his side again.
He turns his head up. Chris is holding the box open beside him.
Chris’ present gleams in the office lights, as high end as it is tacky. The watch he’s had made for Chris is cutely pedestrian: a sour-apple metallic shade, with five bright points encasing the machinery in the shape of a star. Still, the guts of the thing are good. It was not an inexpensive job. The clock face is the kind of expensive quality that one would hope metes out fate and lifespans in addition to digits and timekeeping.
Chris is grinning. Despite the winter, a brief summer shines through Wesker’s office.
“I love it,” he says, and runs his fingers across the silver band. “Can I put it on?”
Silently, Wesker nods.
Slowly, the memories are starting to fade. It is an aching relief to feel them floating away from his mind.
Wesker turns, his face a mess of salt and pain, and carefully lays his hand down on the side of Chris’ beaming face. Pink cheeks. Unknowing youth.
Tell me, he can hear Christopher begging him only months into the future. Please, Wesker. Whatever it is, we can face it together.
He won’t, of course, and after weeks of trying and failing to stop Wesker from retreating, Chris’ own heart will turn hard before giving up. It only makes sense. And Wesker, the self-malignant sop that he’s always been, and the natural-born leader he never truly was, will follow suit, and commit to it for the rest of his miserable life.
Gently, Wesker cups the side of Chris’ jaw, and kisses him through his tears.
🎄
The RPD is adequately transformed, a ballroom masquerading with reds and greens and silvery blues. The banquet table has been laid out- two surfaces wheeled from the meeting rooms, laid down with half-appetizing platters of meat and crackers cheese from Kroger’s, a plastic crystal bowl filled with some mysterious glittering pink liquid- and some hanging decorations line the bannisters and front desk. Even the lady angel herself has been bound in a spiral of twinkling lights.
Still, the music playing and the departments milling fills the space in a way it’s never been before. Spirits are high, crime rate is low, and cheeks are dimpled.
At Alpha’s haranguing insistence, it is Irons’ first time ever throwing an office Christmas party. Wesker doesn’t tell anyone that it’s his first time ever experiencing a Christmas celebration at all.
He chats lightly with those who stop to greet him, clutching a paper cup in his hand. In less than a year, all of this will be a memory. This station will be filled with corpses. Long before that, it will be laden with grief.
And then it will all be gone. Blown completely to nothing, along with the truth of who pushed the button.
All at once, someone sidles up next to him. There is no one else in the world it could be. Wesker turns, and Chris is ever at his side.
“The guys on duty just swapped out again,” Chris tells him quietly, blushing. He fiddles with his wrist, absently playing with his gift. “Everyone’s had some merriment now. Are you… ready to go?”
Wesker’s eyes search the length of the party. Atop the steps, he watches Rebecca receive a nutcracker that looks startlingly like her, and start to fawn. He sees Brad box Forest in the chest, both of them swallowed up by vestiges of red velvet and white fur.
“Are you sure you do not want to spend more time at the party you arranged?”
“I have…” Chris smiles, looking down with a flush on his face. “An afterparty to co-host.”
“Indeed,” Wesker agrees.
They head for the car, and at this point in time, it’s still new. Wesker feels its newness, even knowing all he does, like the rawness of the grass at dawn, the blades wet and heavy with dew.
It’s barely snowed all year. So far the sky has only sent down a few puffs of feathery flakes, but still the ground crunches underneath their boots, the dirt clumped thickly together from the frost that’s spread its fingers over every stretch of Raccoon.
They drive until they hit the fringes of the city. Wesker pulls into the back of the grocery store on the furthest edge of town, out where the mountains start, and forests border their nested civilization. He puts the car in park but doesn’t kill the engine, opting instead to sit there, in the pleasant silence, with the heat blowing onto him and the man in his passenger’s seat.
“So,” Chris says, a toothy grin on his face.
Wesker turns to him, heart lodged in his throat, as Chris reaches around and unzips the backpack he’d thrown into the backseat. He’s getting a present for him. Whatever it is is sliding around behind the wrapping, clunking against the inside of the box.
Wesker almost smiles.
“I did not expect anything in return,” he says.
“I knew you’d say that.” Chris tries to teethe his smile away and fails. “Don’t worry, though. You have plenty of ways to spread out your resentment. Irons and Barry helped make it happen, and everyone in the office pitched in a little bit.”
Then Chris plunks it down in his lap. It is weighty and nicely encased, and for some reason, Wesker doesn’t remember this moment at all.
Lowering his eyes, Wesker lifts the lid off the top of the box, grateful that the packaging doesn’t demean him by demanding to be ruined. Underneath, in the darkness of the box, the gift’s steel surface gleams in one of the streetlights hanging over the car. Wesker presses his finger down on the insignia etched onto the grip.
It’s a firearm.
“It’s called the Samurai Edge,” Chris offers sheepishly, still holding back his grin. “Sounded like we were gonna walk in there and get a sword handed to us.”
“It’s beautiful,” Wesker says thoughtfully. “Is it loaded?”
Chris startles. “Of course not!” he says.
Wesker smiles. He lifts up his thumb, and looks once more at the insignia. It’s blue, with three dancing stars, and more golden than the figures proffering gifts in a nativity scene.
STARS. That’s what he is, isn’t it? Not Umbrella, not fully. Not yet.
He imagines lifting the gun, and ending it all here- not Christopher, but himself.
Gently, he places the lid back onto the box and sets it down on the floor by Chris’ feet. Then he gathers Chris’ hands into his own, and brings his eyes to meet the other man’s.
Chris watches him expectantly, expecting a kiss, or perhaps a thank you. Instead, Wesker lays his head down on Chris’ knuckles. He presses them to his eyes, bowing, making himself subservient the only way he can.
“You are good,” he tells Chris quietly, because he can’t bear to tell him anything else. “You are good, and you will always be good. You will always be my Chris.”
🎄
Champagne glitters in their wine flutes, more carbonated bubble than alcohol content. Still, it’s brought a smile to Chris’ lips, which radiates out of him now with a glowing, merry warmth. Or maybe it’s the warmth of Wesker’s sprawling apartment, and the food in his belly, a whole rotisserie chicken from the hot foods section laid out like a holiday feast.
“Come here,” Chris laughs from his spot on the couch, face glowing in the tv light. “Let’s count down to midnight.”
The champagne dances on Wesker’s tongue, skittering a pleasant tartness down along his tastebuds. He gives a terse grin. “I find it hard to believe you’ve drunk enough to confuse your holidays that badly.”
Chris laughs again. “Nah. I just like Christmas,” he admits, shrugging. “It’s kind of embarrassing.”
A great, sudden sorrow splits open in Wesker’s chest. Of course Chris loves Christmas. He should have adorned his apartment in lights. He should have a tree, and stockings laid over the couch because there is no fireplace, and he should have slipped out of bed in the night to balloon the apartment with presents and magic for Chris to wake up to. Teddy bears. Hot chocolate. A model train chugging circles around an embroidered tree skirt.
How could he have ever let himself do the things he’s done?
How could it ever come to pass?
Wesker sets down the flute and walks into the living room, then sits down at Chris’ side. His heart is heavy in his chest. He watches Chris’ splitting grin grow softer, confusion in his eyes.
“Chris,” Wesker tells him, and now Chris’ smile is a frown. Searching him so sweetly. So ready to take action just as soon as he’s entrusted with what is wrong.
“Wesker,” Chris murmurs, and says the words that he is not supposed to utter until another handful of months down the line. “What is going on?”
“I-” Wesker starts, and it is further than he’s ever gotten. Ever since that first time he saw Chris for who he is, all he’s wanted was to be pinned down and be forced to admit everything. For Chris to not let him go until he juiced out every last drop. Even if it meant having it violently beaten out of him.
“I had,” he says, the words grating together in the dryness of his mouth, “A dream.”
“A dream,” Chris echoes gently.
“A nightmare.”
Chris’ hands go to his arms, and hold him steadily. So sweet. So eager to receive.
In the coming months, Chris would have begged him to open up. This time, Wesker cuts ahead of it. He tells Chris everything, the only way he can.
“I used you…” he says, face twisting, voice low. He’s certain that Spencer can hear him. If not with bugs in the apartment, then with some perverse fatherly sense. “I lured you into a trap, and I killed the ones you loved. The ones who survived, I took. I used them as bait to get to you.”
Slowly, Chris’ face drops, the confusion morphing into something more somber.
“You saw me for who I was.”
“Who?” Chris murmurs.
“Evil,” Wesker tells him. “You saw that I am evil. You became my opponent, and made it your life’s goal to eliminate me. And eventually, years and years later, you… you threw me into a volcano, and I watched the apathy on your face as I crumbled to nothing. And I regretted it. I wished I had… if only I had some way…”
He closes his eyes and shudders, his body starting once more to shake.
For a long time, Chris studies him, his eyes slowly examining. Then, a smile perks up at the corners of his mouth, “So what you’re saying is… you were so bad that you actually got turned into coal.”
“Hah,” Wesker’s chest releases, a strangled laugh forcing its way out of him. Then he laughs again, the sound a frantic puff of air, before leaning over and collapsing, folded over his knees. “I’m sorry, Chris,” he laughs gleelessly. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done.”
Distantly, he realizes he’s being held. He folds his body into Chris’, and feels the two of them meld.
“Wesker…” Chris murmurs laughingly, while stroking the curve of his back. “Did you watch the Scrooge movie before falling asleep or something?"
“I’m sorry,” Wesker whispers again.
“You have done nothing,” Chris promises, “Except for be my Captain.”
🎄
In the night, they’re both awake. Not listening for reindeer or sleigh bells, but lingering in the presence of one another. Wesker pets Chris until he purrs and mewls, contented in the bed, his dick sucked and mind unspooled, filled with Christmastime visions that speak nothing of mansions or pharmaceuticals or bioweapons.
Wesker thinks of the Samurai Edge sitting on his kitchen counter. The exact barrel of the gun that he aimed at Chris’ head. A head which he scratches gently now, nails raking through his hair, until Chris’ brain glows so pleasantly that Wesker can feel it sparkling there inside his skull.
“It’s Christmas Eve,” he whispers to Chris in the darkness, arms wrapped around the other man.
At some point Chris sinks into a hibernation-thick slumber. He drools, releasing snores around the small gasping sounds he makes.
After an hour of restless turning, Wesker pulls the comforter off him and wanders out into the apartment, looking over the uncharacteristic mess of food and champagne he’s left strewn about the countertops.
He glances at the gun on the countertop. Then he turns his eyes towards the window, and steps forward to look out at the orange glow.
The winter of 1997. He remembers it as a snowless year.
And yet…huh, he thinks to himself. Because inexplicably, as he stares out of the window pane, there is snow coming down on the city in heavy, anomalous sheets.