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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.

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She isn't there when he wakes up. His shower's been used and there's coffee made.

Chris thinks he's got an idea of how this is going to go. He'll get to work, she'll want to talk to him in private, and then she'll apologize but explain how last night was a mistake, a good memory but one never to be repeated or discussed.

That puts him in a shitty mood before he even gets in the RPD's front door, and then he doubles down by spending most of the day working on his official report of the events in the mansion. He includes as much of the evidence as he can and tells the precise truth in the most clinical language he knows, but even with that, it still reads like a pulp horror novel with a conspiracy-theory twist. He drops it off in Irons's inbox with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

When he gets back to the STARS office, Jill's there, sitting at her desk. It's the first time he's seen her all day, and it takes him a second to recognize she's wearing one of his shirts. It fits her like a circus tent, but with the sleeves rolled up and a knot at the bottom, it almost looks like something of hers.

"Hey," he says finally.

"Hey."

"So. Haven't seen you."

"I was at City Hall in the archives," she says. "There's no record of there ever being a mansion in those woods. No construction permits, nothing. I even looked up George Trevor's name, and he's famous, but he vanished in the sixties."

"Fuck." He gives it some thought, but doesn't have anything useful to say beyond that. Instead, he sits down heavily in his chair and stares into space.

"Your house is a pigsty, by the way," Jill says.

Chris looks at her, surprised.

"Come to my place tonight," she says, and hands him a piece of paper with her address on it.

The next time Chris goes to work, his entire professional life turns to shit.

He'd expected that Irons would take one look at his report and send him for mandatory trauma counseling, which happens, but the report's also been leaked to both the rest of the department and the local press. When Chris sees Irons that morning, Irons is in such a good mood that Chris instantly knows the leak was deliberate. This is a violation of multiple regs and a dick move of such breathtaking magnitude that it almost cycles back around to admirable.

Chris has been known across Raccoon City as a complete lunatic of dubious competence since about fifteen minutes before he woke up that morning, but it's not unanimous. A surprising number of guys in the department are either friendly enough with him that they give him the benefit of the doubt or they've seen something sketchy about Umbrella before now. He has a lot of conversations in dark corners over the next few days, about reports going missing or weird 911 calls.

Most of the guys he talks to consequently decide it's time to blow town. If Umbrella is dirty, the reasoning goes, then Raccoon City is dirty, and there's no point staying here. It's a solid call and he doesn't fault a single person who makes it, but every cop who goes is one less person in his corner.

Chris, Jill, Barry, and Rebecca go to the funerals for the STARS members, constricted and uncomfortable in their dress blues, and watch families bury empty coffins and urns. Chris has a lot of awkward conversations with parents, spouses, siblings, and children, most of whom have heard his version but are assuming they heard it wrong. There are already a lot of quiet lies and understatements on the death reports (Richard Aiken: "multiple stab wounds"), and in the end, Chris just stops trying to tell the truth. He's as vague as possible, tells grieving people that their loved ones died bravely or honorably but not exactly how, and leaves every one of the funerals wanting to puke his guts out.

The RPD's counselor is clearly starting from the assumption that he's section-eight, where the best-case scenario is that he got dosed with bad acid right before he spent the night running around the woods. Chris can see why, since he is of necessity babbling about zombies, lizard monsters, and international conspiracies, but the counselor's just not listening and that means she's useless.

What keeps him sane in the weeks after the mansion incident is Jill, and that's about it.

On the first few nights they spend together, they go straight to Jill's bedroom the moment he's through the door and don't leave until the next time one of them has to be at the precinct house. It's never quite as intense again as it was that first time, which Chris is almost grateful for; having that kind of sex more than once or twice in his life would, he thinks, rupture something important in his brain.

It takes him a while to figure out what they're doing and why, particularly since Jill seems to think he should know already. When he finally gets it, he feels like a moron for not getting it sooner. It's not about the sex, although it's a big part of it. It's about proving they're still alive, to themselves and to each other, and this is the best way they know how. This is the most alive they know how to feel.

He learns a lot about Jill. She isn't that different behind closed doors, but she laughs and smiles more readily in private, and is fond of touching him on the arm or shoulder to emphasize a point. She hates being treated like she's fragile, and during sex she acts like the smallest guy in the mosh pit, coming back at him with almost violent force until he learns she can take whatever he has to give. She makes little angry sounds when he's inside her like she can't believe he's got the balls to be doing this to her, and he soon learns to recognize that as a sign that he's doing something right. She likes gourmet tea and black comedies; she never really keeps track of her keys because she can pick most civilian locks without trying; when she's tired or drunk or asleep, she wraps herself around him like a cat.

It's hard to dwell on the mansion incident or its fallout when he's with her, but they're both still bleeding. There are a lot of almost random little things that can put Chris back in crisis mode without warning: tree branches tapping on windows, watching people eat barbecue, off-tempo footsteps on hardwood floors. He often reacts to one of those triggers before he consciously processes it, and is then forced to explain why he's standing by the nearest door with his gun in both hands, halfway between fight and flight.

The late movie one Saturday night is The Creature From the Black Lagoon. The moment the titular creature comes onscreen, it looks just enough like a Hunter that Jill instantly throws her drink at the television set. It's a whiskey glass with a heavy base and it goes straight through the screen with a crackling explosion. Chris doesn't even move, and when Jill realizes what she's done, she looks at him sheepishly and they share an awkward chuckle.

They both have nightmares, naturally. Jill claims she doesn't remember hers, but at a glance, they're all chase scenes. She always kicks the sheets off the bed and once or twice a night, she wakes up suddenly, clutching at her throat and breathing in big ragged gasps. Chris has to talk her down from those, holding her in both arms and speaking softly until the adrenaline wears off.

Chris's are more surreal: Wesker returning to work at the RPD like it's any other day with four puncture wounds through his chest that are big enough to see through, casual conversations with friends or acquaintances who don't notice the slow gray rot creeping up their bodies, parts of the RPD or the city transformed into spider nests or overgrown with fat green vines. They're the kind of nightmare that doesn't register as such until a couple of minutes after they wake him up. At that point, Chris moves closer to Jill and holds her a little tighter.

It gets better. It's slow, but they're there for each other, and it gets better.
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