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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
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Two days later, the Spencer mansion blows up, taking the Tyrant, Wesker, Lisa Trevor, most of the STARS team, and most of their evidence with it.

Chris sits in their helicopter, slumped in his seat, looking at the pillar of smoke as it recedes into the distance. He's got a lot of things in his head just then, which are colliding together and creating an effect like white noise. He's exhausted, relieved, terrified, thinking about throwing Vickers out of the fucking helicopter, you name it.

He has a few photos and papers stuffed into his vest, but his hopes aren't real high. He's been a sort-of cop for long enough now that he knows when even a shitty lawyer's going to be able to kick big holes in a case, and Umbrella's got money to burn. Chris knows he has to do something about this, but right at that moment, he has no idea what.

Barry sits across from him, feeding fresh rounds into his .44 (that gun no longer looks like the hilarious overcompensation mechanism that Chris once thought it did) and looking like he's aged ten years in the last hour. Rebecca's curled up on the seat next to Barry in the fetal position.

Jill fell asleep on his shoulder about ten seconds after the mansion exploded. She just turned herself out like a light. It's something she's done maybe three times before, when they were riding home safe after a particularly close call. Jill's beautiful when she's sleeping, and he always feels... honored, he supposes, that she's comfortable enough with him to let her guard down.

It also means that he can't really move or he'll wake her up, and he's fine with that. It lets him relax, if only because he doesn't have a choice, and the adrenaline rush he's been living on all night finally begins to subside. It's a long flight back to Raccoon City.

The RPD's locker rooms are still under construction in the basement, so once he gets home, the first thing Chris does is almost run to the shower. His exposed skin is filthy with smoke, sweat, shredded tissue, and dried blood, some of which has hardened into a black crust. It feels like death crawling over him and it never quite feels like he gets it off, even though he scrubs until his skin's raw.

He doesn't know how he didn't catch the T-Virus and it's been bothering him. Rebecca drew his blood and says he's clean, but he isn't sure whether or not he believes that.

Chris finally gets out of the shower when it starts running cold and walks into his bedroom, wrapped in a towel. All he does is look at his bed, and the next thing he knows, he's lying facedown on the pillow and it's thirteen hours later. He only woke up because he's starving.

Chris ignores his answering machine, fixes himself a few grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches - the idea of eating any kind of meat makes him think of zombies, and nearly makes him throw up in his kitchen sink - and picks up the last three days' newspapers from his front stoop. The most recent paper's headline story is about a come-from-behind victory for the Raccoon University football team.

He reads the whole paper back to front. There's nothing in it about a massive explosion in the Raccoon Forest.

That's when he realizes, with a sensation like his spine's slowly freezing, that the fix is in.

Chris eats the sandwiches and drinks a gallon of orange juice with them, still too dumbfounded to be genuinely angry. That's going to come later, but most of his emotional reaction to this is complete shock.

Then his doorbell rings, and Chris gets up to answer it before realizing he's still naked, which means he just gave the neighbors an eyeful. He pulls on track pants and a T-shirt that doesn't smell too bad, then opens his front door.

It's Jill, in black slacks and a short-sleeved blouse, and she looks like he feels. There are waterproof bandages wrapped around both Jill's forearms, over defensive wounds from the mansion, and another one where her neck meets her shoulder, half-hidden by the blouse's collar. She's cut a lot of her hair off, so now it falls to just past her ears, and her blink rate's way off. He knows without asking that she's seen the paper too, and he lets her into the house and locks the door behind her.

"So," he says, "how're you doing--"

"It was all for nothing," Jill says. "We were something he could throw away, do you realize that?"

"Yeah." He looks at the floor for a second. "I've got a few things. What'd you grab?"

"A couple of journals. Nothing serious."

Chris nods. "We'll get them, Jill. I mean, some of what we saw... it's not just illegal, it's against the Geneva Convention. They're war crimes."

"It's not even them. At least, not right now it isn't." Jill walks into his kitchen. She knows where he keeps the bourbon. "I really thought this was it, Chris. I couldn't be in the Army, but at least I could be a cop, and now I find out that the whole thing was bullshit." Jill opens the cabinet below the sink and picks up the bottle.

Chris steps up behind her and puts a hand on her shoulder. "It wasn't all bullshit."

She puts a hand on top of his, then turns around. "I know."

Jill is the least physically demonstrative person on the planet, so it's a surprise when she wraps her arms around his waist. She doesn't cry, but she puts her face against his chest, and after a couple of awkward seconds, Chris puts his arms around her.

"I can't believe we lived through that," she says finally, and looks up at him.

"Yeah."

"Sometimes it just hits me," Jill says. "The zombies. The Hunters. The Tyrant. We should be dead."

"We aren't."

"No."

She takes his face in both her hands and after a second, pulls it down to hers.

It's not a kiss so much as a question. When she draws back from him again, Jill's eyes are wide open, like she's gotten lost somewhere.

"Are you sure?" Chris says. His voice has gone hoarse.

"I think I need this," Jill says. "Can you help me?"

"Yeah."

"Give me one of those," Jill says.

Chris puts a second cigarette into his mouth alongside the first, lights them both, and passes one to her. She takes a drag, and it's so quiet that he can hear the sound of the ember burning the paper.

They smoke in silence for a while, sitting up in his bed a few inches apart. The windows are open and it's the last night of the full moon. Everything's a negative image, defined by moonlight against edges, and the smoke curls through the air in lazy curves.

The word he'd use to describe what just happened was "desperate." He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, they tore each other's clothes off like animals, and then...

Chris lets out a puff of smoke. He doesn't have the words right now. He feels like he went away for a while, on a field trip to some caveman part of his brain, and now he's finding his way back.

Naked, Jill's nothing like he thought and exactly as he should've expected. She's all angles and flat planes; the muscles of her stomach and thighs are defined to the point where she looks like she's carved from wood. Her hands are strong and calloused, and she's got a couple of interesting scars.

"Now I remember why I quit," Jill says, but she's almost finished the cigarette.

"Yeah. I've been trying to for a while."

She looks around, and he takes an ashtray off his nightstand and hands it to her. Jill takes one last drag, then butts out the cigarette and leans her head back, exhaling smoke towards the ceiling.

"I haven't been with a man for a few years," Jill says finally.

"I was wondering about that, yeah."

"Honestly, so was I." She looks over at him, her eyes unreadable in the darkness. "It was good, though."

"Yeah. Definitely."

It's a profound understatement, but Chris doesn't want to say as much. It's mostly down to survivor's guilt. Intellectually, he knows that Forest and Joseph and all the rest wouldn't resent him for this in the least, but it's hard to admit to enjoying anything right now.

So he shuts up, an option which has never failed him, and finishes his cigarette. By the time he's done, Jill's fallen asleep, so he grinds out his cigarette in the ashtray and settles in for the night. Unexpectedly, Jill moves over without quite waking up and drapes herself over his chest, with one of her legs twisting around one of his like a grapevine hold. Chris freezes up for a second, then puts an arm around her shoulders, and she settles in against him with a quiet murmur of satisfaction.

This is strange, Chris thinks, but it's okay. Whatever else happens, this is okay.
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