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Partners	By : onionbelt Category: +M through R > Resident Evil Views: 5488 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Resident Evil or any of its characters and make no money with this story. It's just for fun.

Chapter List
- 14
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"You've moved in already?" Jill asks.

"Yeah."

"You aren't in the process of moving. This is it. You're done."

"...yeah."

She gives him a funny look.

They're in Chris's new apartment, a ten-minute ride by subway from the BSAA offices. The rent is ridiculous by American standards, but he can afford it, and the building is only a few years old. His living room, which is open onto a kitchenette, contains a black couch, a glass-top coffee table, and a black cabinet that holds a small stereo and a TV set. The rest is empty space, bare off-white walls, and a dark hardwood floor.

"Your house in Raccoon looked like a thrift store," Jill says. "After an earthquake."

"Yeah, I went a little overboard back then. It was my first civilian apartment. Cut me some slack." Chris sits down on the couch. "I figured as long as we're starting from scratch, I'd try something different."

Jill wanders around the room. She's got a thoughtful look on her face.

"So, out of curiosity," Chris says, "why're we keeping secrets from O'Brian?"

"Huh?"

"You go into professional mode the moment we're in the office and you don't stop until we leave. I've been assuming it was because you didn't want him, or any of the rest of these guys, to know we're together."

"I didn't even realize I was doing it." Jill walks over and sits down next to him, curling her legs up underneath herself. "But no, I don't think I do."

"Why's that?"

"It's not because I'm ashamed of you, Chris."

"I didn't--"

"You were either thinking it or you would've gotten around to thinking it eventually."

She's right, so he holds up both hands in mock surrender.

Jill leans one elbow on the couch's armrest and stares into space. They're both prone to making decisions on the spur of the moment, then having to go back afterward and figure out why they did what they did. It's a habit they share with a lot of cops and soldiers he's known. Chris can tell that's what she's doing, so he gets up, grabs a couple of beers from his fridge, and sits back down.

"It's not that I don't trust O'Brian," Jill says, and takes a beer from him.

"No, he seems all right." The subtext there is that they've both known a lot of people who've seemed all right.

"It's..." She's looking for the right turn of phrase. "I've always been careful to keep my professional and private lives separate. I have to have some amount of detachment between them, or I couldn't keep doing what I do."

He nods.

"That means that when we're working, you're my partner and that's it. I love you, never question that, but if I let myself react to you like that when we're in the field, I'll start second-guessing myself. I can't afford to do that. If I'm not calm, I'm dead." Jill uses the hem of her skirt to twist the cap off her beer.

"You can do that? Just turn it off?"

"I can if it's important."

"I can't."

"I know, and obviously, it doesn't slow you down any. I'm asking you to respect what I do, not change what you do."

Chris opens his beer and takes a drink. "You know I already respect you."

"Yeah."

"I'll do my best, Jill, but I'm going to screw this up the first chance I get. They'll figure it out eventually."

"I think you'll be surprised." She drinks some beer. "Changing the subject..."

"Yeah?"

"I had a doctor's appointment earlier today. The X-rays came back and all my fractures healed clean. My ribs are as good as new."

"Good to hear it."

"How're you doing?"

Chris doesn't think anything of the question. "I'm all right. I'll have a couple of scars, but that's about it."

Jill nods. "Good. That's why I stopped by."

She stands up, puts her beer on the coffee table, slips out of her sandals, and unzips her skirt. Jill lets it drop down her legs, steps out of it, and folds it over the arm of Chris's couch. She proceeds to unbutton her blouse, shrug it off, and put it on top of the skirt. She isn't wearing anything underneath.

Chris is frozen in place, his beer bottle halfway to his mouth.

"I haven't been able to do everything I've wanted to because of the fractured ribs," Jill says casually, and puts one hand on her hip. "Now that they're better, I'd like to start making up for lost time."

"Hold on a second. I'm staring."

"Go ahead."

Chris puts the beer down and stands up. "All right, I'm done."

"Good. You've got a new bed." Jill puts her arms around his neck. "Let's go break it in."

The world is blowing up, but they can't do much about it.

The United States is in the process of consolidating a half-dozen task forces and special units into what becomes the Federal Bioterror Commission. The FBC gets watered down in the planning stages and ends up as a paper tiger, but in the meantime, President Graham takes up the slack. He has squads operating all over North and South America under his direct authority, and Graham comes off like the existence of bioweapons offends him on a personal level. The agents under his command are tasked not with containment or intelligence but outright extermination, and for a few months, Chris can't so much as turn over a rock without finding one of Graham's people underneath it.

China has an anti-bioterror organization of its own, the subtly-named Safety Department, and the Morpheus Duvall incident in late 2002 has put it on the world stage. Bioweaponry researchers and former Umbrella holdings in Asia develop a habit of quietly disappearing, and it's become an open secret that China has several satellite-mounted particle cannons in orbit, which they are not afraid to use. When Chris deals with them, they are polite, thorough, respectful of his experience, and utterly terrifying.

Ozwell Spencer is still at large, which irritates the hell out of every law enforcement agent in the first world. His paper trail has been deliberately sanitized and most of his known associates are dead, preemptively assassinated years ago. Any clue to his whereabouts, no matter how slight, gets a lot of attention from both investigators and freelance bounty hunters.

Many of Umbrella's former employees, both mercenaries and researchers, get flushed out by either the Americans or by the teams pursuing Spencer. Most of them don't allow themselves to be taken alive, and the ones that get away immediately drop underground. That includes Wesker, who's gone uncharacteristically quiet.

There's a lot going on, but they're in no position to contribute. The Americans don't want their help, the Chinese are only interested in exchanging information, and Europe has yet to have a serious bioterrorist event. For the first six months, the BSAA is seen as an expensive indulgence, and most of O'Brian's job is justifying its existence.

That puts Chris and Jill in a strange position. They've fought for the last five years, and now they have what amounts to regular office jobs. It's relaxing for a while, then it starts feeling ominous, like they're living on top of an unexploded bomb. Chris puts in a lot of time in the gym and on the shooting range, burning off nervous energy, and all he can do is wait for O'Brian's disaster.

Jill turns out to be right, which surprises him.

No one at the BSAA seems to think that he and Jill are anything other than partners, understandably close but entirely platonic. For most of their new co-workers, it's because they don't care. They're data analysts and biologists, focused on their jobs and oblivious to everything else.

Some of the rest don't figure it out because they've got other motives, and he brings that up to Jill after work one night, as they're walking to dinner.

"Would it be a problem if I told people you were a lesbian?" he asks.

It's meant to be a joke, but doesn't come out quite right.

"It's not true," Jill says slowly, "so yeah, I would have an issue with that. Why do you ask?"

"A lot of the guys at the office want to ask you out, so naturally, they come to me looking for details. What food you like, your hobbies, that kind of thing. It's annoying me."

"Mm." Jill puts her arm through his. "Tell you what. You can go ahead and do that if I can tell all those ladies who're flirting with you that you're gay."

"What? What ladies?"

She laughs.

"Somebody's been flirting with me?"

"You're clueless," Jill says, "and God help me, that's adorable. Half the secretarial pool wants to, and I quote, 'ride you like a pony.'"

It takes Chris a while to process that, which lasts until they're seated at their table.

"You're serious with this," he says finally.

Jill tosses her hair back, toys idly with a straw, and puts on a wide, coy smile. "Hiiii, Chris," she says with a giggle, her voice pitched a couple of octaves higher than normal. It's an uncanny impersonation of Clive O'Brian's secretary.

"She's just being friendly--"

"Oh, be real," Jill says in her normal voice. "She can't be any more obvious than that without reaching down the front of your pants." She picks up the menu and flips it open.

Chris shakes his head. "I'm surprised you haven't said anything."

"Why would I? You didn't notice."
- 14
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