Last Christmas

The music hits him first. Not the quality of the sound, Barry’s stereo is too cheap for that, but the cheer of it, the relentless, jingling insistence that joy is mandatory tonight. Jokes and laughter and the clatter of cups pressed close together in the narrow S.T.A.R.'S office. The song warbles, tinny and off-key where a few people sing along, but no one seems to mind.

Wesker stands just outside the circle of it, observing with the detached interest. He watches how they lean toward one another without thinking, how trust is passed hand to hand with the drinks, stitched into shared glances and half-finished sentences. They are imperfect, undeniably so: Brad’s nerves, Forest’s recklessness, Barry’s simplicity . And yet they love one another. They believe, without irony, this is their family.

Wesker feels the distance then. He understands that this is what brotherhood looks like when it is unshadowed by design. And he knows, though no one else here could guess, that this is a language he will never be able to speak.

Only one of the overhead light switches are thrown on, the room dimmed by someone who thought it would make the place feel warmer. It doesn’t. It only throws the room into pockets of shadow and glare, makes the tinsel strung along the filing cabinets flash too brightly when it catches the fluorescent. A red cloth, someone’s tablecloth from home, judging by the faded holly print, has been thrown over two pushed-together desks, sagging in the middle under the weight of food and platters. Paper plates bow under stacks of sandwiches, foods both fried and baked already going cold with condensation building on tupperware lids, trays of cookies that smell aggressively of cinnamon and chocolate.

Mistletoe hangs crookedly from a thumbtack in the ceiling tile. It's dotted along computers, wedged into door hinges.

Men and women he commands, officers who snap to attention in the field, are leaning against desks with plastic cups in hand, laughing too hard, shoulders loose, voices overlapping, wearing casual clothes and smiles. A few RPD officers he doesn’t recognize well enough to name mingle at the edges, emboldened by sugar and alcohol and the novelty of seeing the elite unit behave like this. Someone has brought antlers. Someone else is wearing a sweater that plays music.

Wesker takes it all in with disdain. Christmas has always struck him as strange. He cannot connect to it. Happiness without purpose unsettles him; love without leverage feels naive, almost irresponsible. These celebrations demand no excellence, no conquest, only participation. Smile, drink, repeat. The calendar turns, and everyone applauds as though time itself were an accomplice rather than a thief. He scoffs, inwardly, at the idea that survival alone is an achievement. What must life be like, he wonders, for those whose ambitions are so modest, whose potential is so incurious, that making it through another year constitutes a victory? There is something almost obscene about the cheerfulness of it, the way men congratulate one another for not having drowned while standing in shallow water.

He straightens his coat, smooths a crease that doesn’t exist. The room smells like food and cheap liquor and winter wool damp with melted snow. It clings. He dislikes that, too.

He had not wanted to attend. If this gathering had been anywhere less official, if it hadn’t been hosted here, under the thin pretense of morale and interdepartmental goodwill, he would have sent his regrets and remained precisely where he is most comfortable: alone and in the lab. But S.T.A.R.'s is watched. He is watched. Absence would have been remarked upon, filed away as a note of dissent.

So he is here.

A few heads turn when he steps fully inside. Conversations shift pitch. Someone mutters, “Cap’s here,” and a couple of cups are discreetly lowered, then raised again once it becomes clear he’s not immediately reprimanding anyone. They are drinking despite his standing orders.

He registers it. Files it away. Does nothing for now.

That, too, feels wrong to them. Wesker can see it in the way Jill watches him over the rim of her cup, in the way Barry’s grin falters for half a second before returning, louder than before. They expect friction. They expect the tightening of the reins.

Instead, he merely surveys. The office looks smaller like this, crowded with bodies and noise and color. The maps on the walls, Raccoon City laid bare in grids and routes, are partially obscured by streamers. Someone has stuck a Santa hat on the incident board, the red fabric drooping over a corner.

His desk, at least, remains untouched, no tinsel, no confections, no cup daring to leave a ring on the polished surface. The separation is instinctive, maintained without comment. Even celebration respects certain boundaries.

Laughter breaks out near the food. Someone tells a story Wesker doesn’t quite catch, punctuated by Barry’s booming chuckle. It rolls through the room and for a moment Wesker is struck, not for the first time, by how easily these people are placated.

He moves further in, nodding once to Jill, to Rebecca, acknowledging their presence without inviting conversation.

The music swells again, have yourself a merry little Christmas, and someone groans good-naturedly, tossing a crumpled napkin at the stereo. Barry shouts something about tradition. The song stays.

Wesker exhales through his nose. He considers retreating, standing long enough to be seen, to be counted, then leaving under the guise of work. That is what he will do.

And then, from across the room, he hears Chris laugh.

It’s unguarded. Wesker’s attention shifts before he consciously allows it to. Chris is near the filing cabinets, sleeves rolled up, a tie loosened slack in green and red stripes with a reindeer that has a light up nose when a button is pushed, but something had malfunctioned and the nose beats on and off in a rhythm that sets pace with the music. He is holding a cup in his hand he is absolutely pretending contains nothing stronger than punch though his eyes give it away immediatly. His hair is mussed in a way it never is on duty. He’s flushed. Someone claps him on the shoulder. Chris sways, recovers, grinning, and says something self-deprecating that earns another round of laughter.

Wesker allows himself to watch. Rebecca is speaking animatedly to him.

Wesker attention settles on the tie.

The thought arrives uninvited. His gloved fingers winding into that ridiculous strip of sateen, feeling the slick give of it as it coils around his knuckles. He imagines the gentle resistance at first, the fabric whispering, sliding, then the moment it tightens, drawing Chris forward out of the warmth of conversation and where his focus belongs. The leather of Wesker’s gloves would creak softly with the motion, a sound utterly at odds with the music’s bright cheer. He imagines pulling him close enough that the air between them would disappear. The tie would cinch just enough to tilt Chris’s chin up, not cruelly, but with intent and with ownership. Wesker thinks of how easily that fabric would slide through his gloved grasp, how little effort it would take to remind Chris where his attention should be. He'd be able to smell the drink on the boy. He catalogues the possibilities without meaning to, rum, maybe, or bourbon diluted past respectability, but no, it would be even simpler than that. Something cheap. Spiced vodka, perhaps, or whatever had been closest to the register. Chris has never pretended to have discerning tastes. He likes what is available, what works, what gets the job done. There is a purity in that, Wesker thinks darkly, even as it irritates him. In the imagined closeness, Wesker’s gaze drops to Chris’s mouth. He pictures himself wetting his lips, just once. He pictures himself leaning in, just enough. Not a kiss. The slow drag of his tongue across Chris’s lower lip, tasting the residue there, the cheap liquor, the salt of his skin, sugar from the cookies.

The music swells. Rebecca continues talking, her hands moving. Chris nods, smiling.

Wesker loosens his tense jaw and looks away, the tie still bright in his peripheral vision, absurd and tempting. It is unfamiliar enough that his first instinct is irritation, at himself, at the room, at the noise pressing too close. He shifts his weight, fingers tightening briefly in his pockets.

Then the song changes. There’s a brief crackle from the stereo, a muttered protest from someone near it, and then Wham! slides into the room, smooth, melancholy under its pop veneer. The opening notes draw a few words. Someone sings along immediately, badly.

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart…

Wesker doesn’t react. Not outwardly. But something in the cadence of it, soft, regretful, threaded with a kind of quiet resignation, catches against him in an unexpected way. He’s always liked this song, though he’s never examined why. He has no sentimental attachment to the ideas of aching hearts sung about in the lyrics. He wouldn’t know anything about that.

But the very next day, you gave it away.

Chris looks up at that exact moment.

It’s accidental, of course it is. A lull in Rebecca’s sentence, a glance drawn by movement or sound. His gaze lifts, travels, and finds Wesker. The noise of the room seems to dull around them, to recede, as if someone has turned down the volume on everything else.

They hold eye contact.

Chris’s expression shifts. His smile softens, grows quieter, more contemplative. His eyes linger. Maybe it’s the alcohol in his cup, definitely not just punch, Wesker notes with a flicker of dry certainty. Maybe it’s the permissive looseness of the night, the way rules feel temporarily suspended.

Maybe, Wesker thinks, it has nothing to do with the present moment at all. Maybe it is the memory of the week before, Chris cornering him with a desperation that still unsettles him when he allows himself to remember it. Hands fisted in the hard weave of Wesker’s flak jacket, knuckles white. Chris’s voice had been raw then, stripped of it's usual humor and bravado, saying he didn’t care about suspension, about reprimand, about worse. Saying only that he needed Wesker, as if it had been burning him for months. The word had landed uninvited, but impossible to unhear. They had been flirting so aggressivly for months thatWesker could hardly have failed to see it coming. To wait for it to come. To press Chris's buttons so it would come.

Maybe it is the way Wesker had kissed him back once those lips had closed in. Not gently. Not cautiously. He remembers the sharp intake of Chris’s breath, the sound torn loose when Wesker moved closer, when impulse overrode discipline. The cramped stillness of the supply closet, shelves pressing in, their hands roaming with a hunger that startled even him, urgent, clumsy, human. The heat of it had been dizzying. It had seemed conceivable, for a few dangerous moments, to keep going. And then reality had surged back in. Wesker had broken away for air, for control, for the crushing knowledge that he could not, simply could not, follow the path Chris was offering. He remembers the look on Chris’s face then, confusion flickering into hurt. Perhaps Wesker had felt it just the same as he fixed his hair and pushed past Chris, back out into the office.

Now, across the room, that same gaze finds him again. Open. Searching. Unaware of the full shape of the man it rests upon. Wesker feels the familiar tightening in his chest, the old, merciless clarity asserting itself. This, this, is how things fracture. In moments of quiet wanting that ask for more than he is capable of giving.

Chris keeps looking. He takes Wesker in. The black button-up, crisp even now. The sleeves rolled to the forearms, practical, unadorned, revealing gloved hands tucked into his pockets as if to keep them occupied. Enrico is speaking to him, saying something about paperwork or next week’s schedule, oblivious to the way Wesker is no longer fully present.

Wesker hears none of it. Against every screaming better judgement in his head, he stares back. And there is no alcohol to excuse it. No borrowed courage. He is aware, suddenly and acutely, of his own stillness, of how long the gaze stretches, of how easily it could be noticed. A warning bell rings somewhere distant in his mind, late but insistent.

What are you doing?

Chris’s mouth quirks, just slightly, as if he’s about to say something, or laugh.

Wesker breaks the contact first.

He turns his attention back to Enrico, nodding at a point that may or may not have been made. The song continues behind him, all soft regret and loss.

Snow has begun to fall again outside.

Jill is the one who notices first, pressed near the window with her cup cradled between both hands. She tilts her head, squinting past the reflection of the office lights. “Hey,” she calls over the music, raising her voice. “It’s coming down pretty good out there.”

A few people drift closer, groaning in exaggerated despair when they see it, fat flakes spiraling under the streetlights, already whitening the pavement. Someone complains about their car. Someone else jokes about chains. The idea of being trapped here, of the night stretching longer than planned.

“Great,” someone mutters. “Just what we need.”

Brad grins, lifting his cup. “Wouldn’t want to have to spend the night here.”

Agreement ripples through the room.

Wesker’s attention shifts back to Chris without conscious decision.

Chris is still looking at him.

Not accidentally, then. Not as a passing glance. His smile is lazy, warmed by drink and noise and the peculiar intimacy he thinks he's earned with one kiss that he hadn't gotten written up for giving. When Brad’s comment lands, Chris snorts softly and, without breaking eye contact, says, “I call the captain’s office. I like quiet when I sleep.”

There’s another burst of laughter, louder this time. Someone elbows him.

But Wesker doesn’t laugh.

He stares back at Chris as the words settle, as the smile lingers. He tries, absurdly, to imagine it.

Redfield snowed in. The office emptied of noise and color, the lights dimmed to their after-hours hum. Chris leaning back in the leather chair behind Wesker’s desk, boots kicked off, jacket draped carelessly over the arm. Asleep, head tipped to the side. There would be no need for pretense. No planned distance. No walls maintained. Sleep would absolve Chris of questions, of his own expectation. Wesker would not be required to perform restraint. He imagines, briefly, what it would feel like to remove his glove. In the privacy of his mind, his fingers brush Chris’s cheek. A thumb sliding across flushed skin, too young. A hand lifting to smooth the hair near his ear, careful yet unnecessary. It is the lack of necessity that makes the thought dangerous. There is no future attached to this imagining because none can exist between them, no confession waiting to be answered in the sorrowful look in Redfield's eyes. Just contact without consequence. Wanting without escalation. A version of closeness that asks nothing further of him. Safe.

Wesker’s fingers twitch inside his pocket. It’s a small thing but it startles him all the same. His hand curls, then stills, as if he has physically caught himself reaching for something that does not belong to him.

If you kissed me now I know you'd fool me again.

Wesker disengages from Enrico with a curt nod and a murmured excuse that barely registers over the music. He doesn’t wait for a response. The irritation comes on suddenly, sharp and invasive, too many sounds overlapping, too much color, too much ease. The laughter scrapes at him now instead of passing harmlessly by.

People with their simple lives. Their simple joys. Something tightens in his chest, enough to make him pause, searching for a rational source for his sudden overpowering discomfort. The distasteful atmosphere. His workload waiting at Arklay, untouched and growing. The cumulative exhaustion of the week. Chris’s eyes, lingering where they should not. The song, still crooning softly about loss. Or, the knowledge he never allows himself to dwell on: that most, if not all, of these people will be dead within the year. It does not horrify him. It simply is. And perhaps that is what makes the room suddenly unbearable, the way they laugh beneath borrowed time, unaware of how narrow the margin truly is. He tells himself Chris will survive, he is sure he can manage that much, but even then, Chris will survive only to hate him.

Wesker's steps carry him out. He is not rushing. He knows that. His posture remains controlled, his pace measured, his breathing even. And yet there is a peculiar sense of acceleration, as though something inside him is straining to get away from all of it.

The door swings shut behind him, muting the music at once. The abrupt quiet is almost violent in its relief. He crosses back through the RPD, heading straight for his car, his footsteps measured in the long corridors. The building is mostly empty now, but not entirely. Pockets linger, clusters of officers gathered near doorways, hands wrapped around paper cups, laughter spilling in low, conspiratorial bursts. Someone has an arm slung around a partner’s shoulders. Someone else is recounting a story with clumsy gestures, the punchline met with familiar groans and indulgent smiles. Everywhere he looks, there is connection. Wesker moves through it like a current of cold air. No one stops him. A few nods are exchanged, respectful, distant.

By the time he reaches the exit, his jaw is set. He moves to the parking garage and the air is bitter, bracing, blessedly empty. Snow blows in through the open entrance in sharp, wind-tossed flurries, stinging against his face and catching in the folds of his coat. His breath fogs out immediately.

He welcomes it. He adjusts his gloves as he walks, already cataloging the route back to Arklay in his mind. He needs to get back to the lab before the road is blocked for the night. They won’t clear it before morning, not in weather like this. Work waits. Data waits. His purpose waits.

Stay focused.

The wind howls through the garage and it swallows the softer sounds easily, the scrape of boots against pavement, the uneven rhythm of footsteps that are not his own. They speed up until Wesker might be running from someone.

Wesker slows, just enough. His head tilts, senses sharpening, the cadence behind him no longer random, no longer swallowed entirely by the wind. Too close now. Too deliberate. He pivots on his heel a few feet from his car, coat flaring slightly with the turn. His hand is already rising, body angling as his fingers nearly find the familiar weight of the Beretta tucked into the chest holster beneath his coat. The motion is so ingrained it barely feels like a choice.

But he only sees Chris when he turns. Stranding there in the open mouth of the garage. He’s breathing hard, chest rising and falling, cheeks flushed a vivid red.

For a fraction of a second, Wesker does nothing at all.

Then his hand withdraws, curling back into itself as he pulls away from the weapon. The tension doesn’t vanish; it merely redirects, settling somewhere lower, quieter, harder to name.

Absurdly, impossibly, he can still hear the song.

I keep my distance but you still catch my eye.

The song drifts faintly through the concrete and steel in warped echoes, melancholy and persistent. He tells himself that this is ridiculous. That sound does not linger like that. That music does not follow people.

Chris tries for a casual smile. It doesn’t quite land.

He takes a step closer. Then another. Whatever distance Wesker put between himself and the evening, the thoughts, what he actually wants, Chris erases it with ease, until he is standing directly in front of him. Close enough to see the way his breath stutters as he reins it in, the way he is clearly pretending he hadn't been running. That he hadn't come to the Christmas party just to see the Captain.

“Already leaving?” Chris asks. He pitches it lightly, conversational, as if they’ve merely run into each other at the coffee machine instead of in an empty garage with the snow blotting out the world and noise around them. Wesker rushing away from him, Chris rushing after. Their game of chase that had been eeking on for months finally culminating in a moment.

Wesker studies him for a beat longer than necessary.

“Indeed I am,” he says at last. He slips his hands back into his pockets again.

Chris lets out a short laugh, breath puffing white in the cold. “Yeah,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I kinda figured you wouldn’t even show. And if you did… well. I didn’t think you’d stay long.”

There’s no accusation in it. His tie is still blinking weakly.

Wesker finds himself cataloging irrelevant details: the way Chris’s lashes are long and dark; the faint tremor in his plump lower lip that has nothing to do with the temperature; the lean of his body toward Wesker’s warmth. I want him, Wesker acknowledges in the private dark of his thoughts. Not merely the body, though God, the body, or the skill, formidable as it is becoming. He wants the light that still burns in Chris despite everything. Wants to cup it in his hands until it goes out, or until it ignites him instead. Possession or purification; he no longer knows which hunger is stronger. There is still too much work to do for purification, though. Possession, then.

“Guess I’m starting to get to know you,” Chris adds, half-joking.

“Anyone would have guessed I would leave early,” Wesker replies smoothly. “And they would have been correct.”

It’s true. Unremarkable. Predictable.

They stand there for a moment, facing one another in the open space of the garage, snow skittering across the concrete between their boots. The wind howls and then recedes, leaving a pocket of quiet that feels oddly intentional, as though the night itself is offering a chance for them to say things that should be said.

Chris only knows what anyone else knows. That Wesker is brilliant. Distant. Exacting. They are not friends. They do not share confidences. Their lives intersect at briefings, in the field. Wesker reminds himself of this - one kiss does not constitute access. It does not collapse distance or redraw borders. It was an aberration, pressure meeting pressure after a long day, nothing more. A moment of human error, swiftly corrected. Chris is no closer to him now than Barry or Jill. Whatever Chris believes he felt, whatever meaning he has begun to assign to it, exists entirely outside Wesker’s jurisdiction. It does not matter. Chris does not know him. Not his designs, not the scope of his intent for the future.

Wesker tells himself this. He cannot afford for meaning to accrete where it does not belong. He tells himself this, again.

Chris reaches into his pocket, hesitates, then pulls out a small box.

It’s wrapped in aggressively festive paper, red and green foil stamped with snowmen, and topped with a bow that is squashed. It looks exactly like something Chris would give.

He stares down at it for several seconds, as if weighing the decision, then lifts his eyes and offers it out between them. There’s a shy hitch to the motion, a brief uncertainty he doesn’t bother to mask.

Wesker doesn’t move. His hands remain in his pockets as he looks down at the box, expression blank, unreadable. The object feels suddenly loud in the quiet space. A line crossed without permission.

Finally he removes one hand and takes it.

The box is lighter than he expects.

“I was hoping I’d get you for Secret Santa,” Chris says quickly, as if filling the silence before it can turn on him. “But they said you refused to participate.” A crooked smile tugs at his mouth. “I was gonna bribe whoever got you so I could -” He cuts himself off, huffing a laugh at his own expense. “-have a reason. But I guess you don’t make it easy.”

He laughs again, softer this time. "So here it is, without reason, anyway."

Wesker looks at him, really looks at him, and feels the shape of something approaching, something unwise. A confession, perhaps. A hope that had been there in Chris’s eyes upstairs, unspoken but present all the same.

It is not something Wesker can allow.

He waits until Chris’s smile begins to fall, until the moment hangs long enough to hurt, and then he extends the box back toward him.

“I can’t accept this from a subordinate,” he says flatly.

He doesn’t wait for Chris’s response. He forces the box back into Chris’s hand, their fingers brushing briefly. His gloves forms a barrier between them. He turns, keys in hand, and slides into his car. His chest aches: a low, stubborn echo he has learned to endure. Chris Redfield has not been the first, nor will he be the last, thing that Wesker can not allow himself to have.

Before he can steel himself with the thoughts of a past and future blighted by denial, the passenger door swings open. Chris moves with that impatient confidence Wesker has seen before and climbs in, dropping the box carelessly to the floor. His hands are already on Wesker’s coat, tugging him closer in one fluid motion.

Senses ignite: warm lips pressing against his own, the unexpected cold of Chris’s nose, the faint burn of vodka lingering in the curve of his breath. There are echoes of the office still clinging, the faint sweetness of holiday scents.

The engine hums to life, Wesker having already inserted his keys. Wham wafts from the radio, almost ironic, almost fated, almost painful.

The kiss catches Wesker off-guard, not because it’s unexpected, Chris has always been reckless, but because of how thoroughly it undoes him in the span of a single heartbeat. Chris’s mouth is warm, insistent, tasting of the sugar-dusted cookies he’d been stealing from the tray all night. There’s no hesitation in it, no polite request for permission. Just the sudden, reckless press of lips, the scrape of stubble, the way Chris’s hand fists in the collar of Wesker’s coat as if steeling himself against the possibility of being pushed away.

But Wesker doesn’t push him away.

He lets it happen again. Lets the heat of Chris’s mouth sink into his own, lets the faint tremor in Chris’s breathing register against his cheek. One gloved hand remains on the steering wheel, knuckles whitening, but he doesn’t pull back. Not yet.

The song keeps playing, low and mocking from the car speakers.

…this year, to save me from tears…

Chris makes a small sound, half-relief, half-frustration, when Wesker doesn’t immediately end it. He leans further across the console, awkward and determined, chasing more. His free hand finds Wesker’s sunglasses and pulls them away from the mans face and they fall somewhere to lie with the discarded gift.

Wesker turns his head, breaking the kiss. Not rough. Just final. Some of his blonde hair slips out of it's perfect styling - long enough to shag over his pale eyes when it isn't pushed back.

Chris stills, breathing hard, forehead almost touching Wesker’s temple. Refusing to let the moment end.

“You shouldn’t be in my car,” Wesker says. His voice is quiet, controlled.

Chris doesn’t let go of his coat. “Yeah,” he says, voice rough. “I know.”

…I’ll give it to someone special…

Chris exhales, a shaky laugh. “You gave the gift back.”

“I did.”

“Because I’m a subordinate.”

“Among other reasons.”

Chris pulls back, just enough to search Wesker’s face in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. His eyes are bright, too open, too willing to be hurt. “But you kissed me back last week. You kissed me back tonight.”

“I did," Wesker repeats. Chris hears something else in the silence that follows, permission, maybe, or just the absence of refusal. He leans in again, slower this time, giving Wesker every chance to stop him.

Wesker doesn’t.

Their lips meet again, softer at first, almost careful. Chris angles his head, deepening the kiss with a quiet hunger that’s been banked all night. His absurd tie is still blinking. He shifts closer, one cold hand slipping beneath the open edge of Wesker’s coat. His fingers, chilled from December, find the firm muscle of Wesker’s shoulder through the thin fabric of his shirt and grip hard. The contrast of cold skin against warmth makes Wesker’s breath catch.

Chris feels it. He presses the advantage. The kiss turns filthy in the space of a heartbeat.

Chris licks into Wesker’s mouth, slow and wet, dragging his tongue along Wesker’s lower lip before sucking it gently, then not so gently. A low sound escapes him, half moan, half plea, as he crowds closer, knee pressing into the console, body twisting awkwardly but unwilling to break contact.

“I want to be more than that,” he whispers against Wesker’s mouth, the words rough, urgent, breathed straight into him. “More than a subordinate. You know that. "

His hand slides higher, fingertips digging into the tense muscle at the base of Wesker’s neck. The leather of Wesker’s glove creaks faintly as his own hand finally moves, rising to grip Chris’s wrist, not to remove it, but to hold it in place where it's holding onto him. If it was anyone else Wesker might have snapped the wrist for touching him, that instinct that was bred in to him to be above and apart. But he would never, not Chris.

Chris, oblivious that he has toppled a king and thinks he's simply mastered an ordinary office romance, kisses him again, deeper, messier, teeth grazing Wesker’s lower lip, tongue stroking in a rhythm that’s anything but subtle now. The windows are starting to fog.

Wesker’s control is a thin, trembling thing. He knows nothing is allowed to mean anything to him.

But he lets the kiss go on. Lets Chris’s cold hand brand his skin. Lets the words, I want to be more, settle heavy and dangerous in the small space between them. Lets himself relish being wanted, and wanting. God help him, he wants Redfield.

Then he pulls back. Not far. Just enough that their mouths are no longer touching again.

Chris’s eyes open, dark and glassy, lips swollen and wet. His hand stays where it is, fingers still curled possessively around the back of Wesker's neck.

Wesker’s voice is low. “You already are,” he confesses. Then, quieter: “And that’s precisely the problem.”

The snow keeps falling beyond the garage, soft and relentless, erasing the world.

Chris’s eyes stay locked on Wesker’s in the dim light.

“Drive me home, Captain,” he says. The meaning is unmistakable. His gaze flicks to Wesker’s mouth and back up, unflinching.

Wesker says nothing. His gloved hand returns to the wheel. The engine idles, warm air barely pushing back the cold seeping in through the cracks.

Chris waits a beat. Then another. When no answer comes, he closes the last inch of space. His lips brush the shell of Wesker’s ear, soft at first, just breath and heat, the wet flick of tongue against skin.

“Don't worry, I don’t want just a ride home and a polite goodnight at the door.”

His hand slides down, fingers brushing over Wesker's chest. He is reckless and buzzed and he says exactly what he means, expresses exactly what he wants. Something Wesker can never do.

“I want you to come inside. Want to push you up against the nearest wall the second the door’s shut. Want my mouth on you, everywhere. Want these gloves off, your hands on my skin."

Wesker doesn’t answer right away.His thumb lifts, brushing once, almost absently, across Chris’s bottom lip, pressing just enough to feel the give of it.

“You’re asking me to fuck you, Redfield?” Wesker’s voice is stripped of inflection except for a faint, dangerous rasp at the edges. He almost hopes the bluntness is too much for the boy. That he will turn tail and run.

Chris doesn’t flinch. If anything, the words embolden him as he leans into the touch, lips parting further against Wesker’s thumb. He bites it softly through the leather.

“Yeah,” he says, rough. “I am.”

Wesker’s eyes flick down to where Chris’s hand still rests against his chest, over his heart, then back up where Chris is almost sucking his thumb. The boy wants his heart, wants his body, wants it all.

Wesker’s jaw flexes.

Chris is watching him, eyes dark, lips still wet and parted. Waiting. Willing to take whateveer he can get. That simplicity is what undoes Wesker the most. Chris has always been like this: direct, uncomplicated in his desires. He sees something he wants, justice, loyalty, a good fight, a warm body in the dark, and he reaches for it without a labyrinth justification. No weighing of future fallout. He likes what works, what feels right in the moment, what gets the job done. The cheap vodka tonight, the ugly tie with the blinking nose, the impulsive kiss in a supply closet, this reckless confession in a snow-choked parking garage. All of it pure Chris: take what’s available, give what’s asked, trust that it will be enough.

Chris doesn’t know the scope of what he’s offering himself to. Doesn’t know that Wesker’s hands, still gloved, still controlled, will one day sign orders that ruin Chris's life. Doesn’t know that every second Wesker allows this pulls Chris deeper into a future that will leave him filled with regret.

It’s almost cruel. Wesker, though, is a cruel man. Perhaps it's fitting.

Then his hand moves, not to Chris’s face but lower, fingers closing around the ridiculous festive tie still hanging loose around Chris’s neck. Wesker winds it slowly around his fist, once, twice, the slick sateen whispering as it tightens. Exactly the way he’d pictured it back in the office, Chris drawn forward. Until Chris has to brace one hand on the dashboard to keep his balance across the console.

Only then does Wesker speak, voice low, the words brushed directly against Chris’s mouth.

“Whatever I give you tonight, Redfield… you’ll take it without asking for more.”

It isn’t a question.

Chris swallows.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “I will.”

Wesker’s grip tightens for a single heartbeat - promise, warning - then releases.

He turns forward and shifts the car into drive.

What a brave boy, he thinks.

The drive is silent except for the swipe of wipers and tires on snow-packed streets. Chris gives directions in short bursts; Wesker absorbs them without comment. The city thins out, streetlights growing farther apart until they reach a modest brick complex on the edge of town, practical, anonymous, the kind of place a young ex-Air Force operative would choose without thinking twice.

They park under a flickering light. Snow crunches beneath their boots as Chris leads the way up the exterior stairs to the second floor. He unlocks the door with steady hands, no hesitation, no second-guessing, and pushes it open into darkness.

Wesker steps in behind him, senses already cataloging the space before the light comes on: the faint, lingering sweetness of cheap incense, sandalwood and something cloying beneath it, cutting through the cold air that followed them inside. The apartment is exactly what he expectes for a twenty-three-year-old bachelor fresh out of the service. A folded American flag on one wall. A glass-fronted cabinet displaying cleaned and oiled firearms, glocks, AR-15 variants, a couple of older service pieces. Empty protein-bar wrappers and a few takeout containers on the coffee table. A weight bench in the corner. No books. No art. No pretense of culture. Functional. Spartan. Unapologetically male and unapologetically simple.

He braces for the pedantric dance, Chris fumbling for the light switch, muttering an embarrassed apology about the mess, maybe kicking a stray sock under the couch.

None of that happens.

The door clicks shut behind them and Chris doesn’t even reach for the light.

Instead, he turns, crowds Wesker back against the closed door in one smooth motion, and kisses him like he’s been starving for it the entire drive. He buries his nose against Wesker's throat and inhales him, his cologne, his musk, before returning to the kiss.

It’s not polite.

Chris’s hands fist in Wesker’s coat, yanking it down his shoulders as his mouth opens hot and demanding against Wesker’s. There’s no pause for breath, no shy testing of boundaries, just raw, impatient hunger. His tongue slides in, stroking deep, and then he sucks on Wesker’s tongue like he wants to swallow him whole. He shoves a thigh between Wesker’s legs, forceful, and grinds up slow and merciless. The friction drags a sharp hiss from Wesker, music, fucking music, and Chris feels the thick, rigid line of his captain’s erection straining against expensive wool. He rolls his hips again, harder, savoring the way Wesker’s composure fractures just enough for his breath to catch.

“Good,” Chris growls against his mouth. “You’re just as fucking desperate as I am.”

Wesker’s back meets the door with a solid thud. Usually he chides Chris about his language in the office, but now, nothing comes.

His hands are already tearing at Wesker’s coat, yanking it down powerful shoulders, trapping his arms for a breathless second before the garment hits the floor. Buttons scatter as Chris rips the shirt open, doesn’t bother with finesse, just needs skin. Hot, bare skin under his palms. He spreads his fingers wide over the hard planes of Wesker’s chest, thumbs scraping across nipples that pebble instantly under the attention. Wesker’s head thumps back against the door; a low sound escapes him.

Chris dives in. Mouth on throat, teeth sinking in just enough to sting, tongue soothing the hurt immediately after. He sucks hard, deliberate, pulling blood to the surface in a blooming bruise he knows Wesker will feel for days. Another mark lower, then another, until the pale column of Wesker’s neck is littered with wet, red claims. All the while his thigh keeps moving, slow, relentless circles that drag the seam of Wesker’s trousers over his cock again and again. Wesker’s hips jerk forward involuntarily.

He drags one hand down, cups Wesker through fabric, squeezes once, firm, unapologetic. The captain’s breath stutters; his gloved fingers tighten on Chris’s hips like he’s holding on for dear life.

Chris pulls back just far enough to meet his eyes.

“Tell me you want this,” he says, voice hoarse, thumb stroking over the clothed length of him in a slow, teasing drag. “Tell me you were hard for me the whole goddamn drive.”

Wesker’s answer is soundless, just his hips bucking into Chris’s grip.

The apartment stays dark, lit only by the faint orange glow of a streetlight filtering through half-closed blinds. Shadows cut sharp lines across Chris’s face.

Wesker’s gloved hands finally move, one sliding into Chris’s hair, gripping tight at the nape, the other settling at his hip, fingers digging in through denim. He lets Chris devour him against the door for several long seconds, tasting the urgency, the uncomplicated need. They rub their cocks together in slow rolls.

Chris finally leads him deeper into the dark apartment, like he’s afraid the spell will break if he stops, questions, insists on anything more than the one thing he knows the both of them want. He kisses him again, deeper, filthier. One hand stays fisted in Wesker’s open shirt; the other slides down, pulling their bodies flush as he walks Wesker backward through the dark apartment without breaking contact.

Wesker’s back bumps the hallway wall halfway down the short corridor; Chris pins him there for a long, breathless moment, grinding against him with slow, insistent rolls of his hips. Chris tugs him down the short hallway by the front of his shirt, leading him like a prize he’s won. Wesker follows, allowing it.

The bedroom door is already ajar; Chris kicks it open with his foot, pulling Wesker inside without slowing. He doesn’t bother with the overhead light here, either.

It’s an extension of the living room’s simplicity: queen-sized bed with rumpled navy sheets, a wooden dresser cluttered with spare change, an old wallet, a half-empty bottle of cologne that smells faintly of cedar when the air stirs. A punching bag hangs in one corner, scuffed from use; a pile of clean but unfolded laundry sits on a desk. No frills, no excess.

But the walls tell a different story, one Wesker absorbs in a single, sweeping glance.

Framed photos everywhere, clustered on the dresser, tacked to a corkboard by the bed. Chris younger, high school age in some, arms slung around grinning friends in football jerseys, mud-streaked and triumphant after a game. Another: him at maybe eighteen, Air Force basic training, standing tall in fatigues with a group of recruits, that same easy smile, the kind that draws people in without effort. He’s loved in these pictures, respected, the guy who’d buy the first round, pull a buddy out of a fight, laugh off a loss and rally for the next win. Photos from the beach: Chris shirtless and tanned, mid-laugh as he tackles a friend into the surf, water spraying; another with a group around a bonfire, faces lit orange, beers in hand, living that effortless, sun-soaked life of connection and camaraderie.

A life Wesker can’t quite imagine for himself, unshadowed by ambition, unmarred by isolation. No designs, no leverage, just bonds forged in the shallow waters of ordinary joy. Chris has always been this: the golden boy, the team player, the one people follow not out of fear but affection and trust.

And now he’s Wesker’s. The thought slips in unwanted as Chris moans into him. He wants to claim every fragment of that sunlit past, to eclipse it with his shadow until those smiling faces in the photos fade to ghosts. Wants to be the only one who draws that laugh from Chris’s throat, the only one who sees the vulnerability flash in his eyes when pleasure breaks him open.

Wesker’s hands move before Chris can, gloved fingers gripping the hem of Chris’s sweater and ripping it up and over his head in one fluid, forceful motion. The ridiculous tie comes with it and Wesker seizes it immediately, winding the slick sateen around Chri's throat.

Chris stumbles half a step, breath hitching, but his eyes spark with heat rather than surprise. He’s bare-chested now, skin flushed from the cold outside and the fire building between them, muscles shifting under the lamplight, broad shoulders, defined abs from endless training, a faint scar across his ribs from some old mishap.

Wesker yanks the tie tighter, drawing Chris’s mouth to his in a bruising kiss, leather creaking as his free hand slides possessively over Chris’s chest, thumb dragging over a nipple hard enough to make Chris gasp into his mouth.

The gasp turns into a ragged moan as Wesker tightens the tie further, slowly, deliberately, until the fabric bites into Chris’s throat, restricting his breath just enough to make his pulse thunder under the sateen. Chris’s eyes flutter, pupils blown wide, but he doesn’t pull away. He leans into it, throat working against the pressure.

His hands, trembling now with raw desperation, drop to Wesker’s belt. Fingers fumble at the buckle, clumsy, urgent, metal clinking as he yanks it open, then pops the button of Wesker’s trousers, dragging the zipper down with a hiss. Chris’s breath comes in short, shallow bursts, almost sobs of need, his hips rolling forward instinctively, seeking friction.

Wesker watches him unravel with dark satisfaction. The thought crystallizing like frost on glass: I want him utterly, ruinously, until there’s nothing left but us, until his light is mine, and my darkness is his salvation.

Chris tears at his own belt next, one-handed and frantic, nearly ripping the leather free before shoving his jeans down his hips. Shoes are kicked off haphazardly, boots thumping against the floor, one of Wesker’s, then both of Chris’s. Pants follow in a tangle at their ankles, stepped out of without ceremony, leaving Chris in nothing but dark briefs stretched tight over the obvious strain of his arousal.

“Tomorrow’s Christmas,” Chris whimpers into Wesker’s mouth between desperate, open-mouthed kisses, voice cracking with want. “Stay the night. Spend it with me.”

Wesker hesitates, just a fraction. His grip on the tie loosens almost imperceptibly, the calculated control wavering for the first time. The idea of staying, of waking here in this ordinary bed surrounded by photos of a life he’ll never share, of allowing morning light to fall across whatever this becomes, it’s too much when said outloud so honestly.

But Chris feels the slack and refuses to let it grow.

He surges forward, one hand closing over Wesker’s on the tie, guiding it, no, forcing it, to tighten again around his throat as he pulls Wesker down toward the bed by his own bound throat. Chris leading him with the promise of surrender, offering his vulnerability like a leash.

They tumble onto the mattress together, Chris on his back, Wesker looming over him, the tie still wound tight in Wesker’s fist.

Chris grins up at him, breathless and wrecked, eyes glassy with need.

“I want to be fucked Christmas morning,” he rasps, trying to simplify it, arching up against Wesker’s weight. “I’ll call you Santa.”

Wesker’s eyes narrow, a low warning growl rumbling in his chest.

“Don’t,” he says, voice dangerously soft. “You dare call me that.”

His free hand slides down Chris’s body, slow, deliberate, fingers hooking under the waistband of Chris’s briefs and dragging them down just enough to free him. Gloved palm wraps around hot, leaking flesh without hesitation, stroking once.

Chris’s back bows off the bed, a choked cry tearing from his throat as the tie pulls tighter with the motion.

“Please,” Chris gasps, hips bucking helplessly into Wesker’s gloved grip, chasing the slow, deliberate stroke that’s barely enough to satisfy and far too much to endure. His voice cracks on the word, raw and pleading. “Fuck me. Use me. I don’t care, just stay.”

He arches higher, thighs spreading wider on the rumpled sheets around Wesker's body, offering everything without reservation. “It can be whatever you want it to be,” he whispers against Wesker’s jaw, breath hot and unsteady. “Rough, slow, one time, every night, just don’t leave. I’ll take anything you give me.”

Wesker stills for a heartbeat, hand tightening reflexively around Chris’s cock, the tie pulling taut against his throat until Chris’s breath stutters. The words sink into him. No, Wesker thinks, a quiet, bitter ache threading through the heat. It can’t be whatever I want it to be. If it were, it wouldn’t be this: a frantic, stolen night in a dim apartment that smells of cheap incense. It wouldn’t be rushed and temporary, hidden behind secrets and the ticking clock of a future where Chris will hate him. It wouldn’t be cheap and easy, over by morning, leaving nothing but bruises and silence. If it were what he truly wanted, it would be something slower, deeper, something that lasted past dawn. Something that let him keep this warmth, this reckless trust, without destroying it. Something that didn’t end with Chris alive but broken, looking at him across a ruined desire with betrayal in his eyes.

But that’s impossible.

All he can offer Chris is this. And Chris is begging for it anyway.

Wesker’s jaw tightens. He leans down, mouth brushing the shell of Chris’s ear, voice low and controlled even as something raw flickers beneath it.

“Then shut up and take it,” he murmurs.

He releases the tie just enough for Chris to drag in a full breath, then yanks it tight again, rolling his hips down hard, pinning Chris to the mattress with his weight.

Chris moans.

Wesker gives him what he can: everything, for now.

Just not tomorrow.

Wesker’s mouth trails down Chris’s throat, teeth grazing the spot where the tie still bites into skin, then lower, sucking hard, deliberate marks into the column of muscle, branding him in the dim. Chris writhes beneath him, thighs parted wide, hips rolling up in silent demand, every breath a ragged plea.

Chris’s hand fumbles blindly toward the nightstand, fingers scrabbling over the cluttered surface until they find the drawer handle. He yanks it open, the wood scraping loudly in the quiet room, and reaches inside, searching, desperate, for the box of condoms he knows is there.

Wesker feels the shift. His hand snaps out like a striking snake, catching Chris’s wrist mid-reach and slamming it back to the mattress above his head. The other wrist follows a second later, both pinned in one iron grip, Wesker’s weight settling heavier between Chris’s thighs to keep him spread and immobile.

Chris’s eyes fly open, wide and dark, chest heaving.

Wesker leans in close. “I'm not using a condom.”

To punctuate it, he dips his head and latches onto the hollow just below Chris’s jaw, sucking hard,slow, relentless, until blood blooms beneath the skin in a deep, possessive bruise. The mark will last days. Weeks, maybe. A secret under collars and Kevlar that only they will know about.

“I, wait,” Chris rasps, voice cracked open. “I’ve never… not without something..” The confession comes out small, almost embarrassed, as though admitting it makes him less of the reckless, fearless man he pretends to be.

“I know,” Wesker murmurs, low and intimate, “But I’m not going to fuck you wrapped in latex like some stranger. I want to feel you,” he continues. “Every slick inch of you, clenching around me with nothing between us.

Chris’s reaction is immediate and devastating. A filthy, broken moan tears out of him. His back arches off the bed, wrists straining against Wesker’s grip, cock jerking untouched against his stomach as the pleasure-pain of the hickey and the words crash through him. Heat floods him so fiercely it borders on pain. Wesker's own cock, hard and leaking, pressed against Chris’s thigh, throbs in response. He has to pause, has to shift his weight to free one hand and wrap it around himself, stroking once, twice, three times, slow, firm pulls. Precum beads at the tip, thick and clear, and he angles himself deliberately, letting it drip in a slow, warm strand onto Chris’s stomach.

It lands just above his navel, glistening in the lamplight, pooling slightly in the dip of muscle.

Chris watches it happen, eyes glazed, lips parted on shallow breaths. Another soft, needy sound escapes him.

Wesker’s gaze lifts to meet his. “This is what you asked for,” he murmurs, voice rougher now. “Me. Exactly like this.”

Chris swallows, throat working against the loosened tie.

“Yeah,” he breathes, voice wrecked. “Exactly like this.”

Wesker releases his own cock, wipes the remaining slickness across Chris’s skin in a thick smear, then shifts lower, lining himself up, letting the head drag through the mess he’s made, wetting it first.

Outside, snow keeps falling against the window, silent and indifferent.

Wesker pushes forward, slow and careful.

Chris takes him with a choked gasp, fingers clawing at the sheets above his pinned wrists.

Wesker pushes in with one slow, inexorable thrust, bare, no barrier between them. Chris’s body resists for a heartbeat, then yields, taking him deep with a choked cry that echoes off the bedroom walls. The heat is overwhelming, tight and velvet-soft, and Wesker’s control fractures at the edges.

He starts rough. Hips snapping forward in hard, punishing strokes, the tie wound again around his fist as leverage to yank Chris’s head, exposing his throat for more marks. The bed creaks under the force of it, headboard tapping the wall in a steady, brutal rhythm. It's cheap, it's fast. Wesker tells himself this is all it can be. Chris’s legs wrap high around Wesker’s waist, heels digging into his back, urging him deeper, harder, meeting every thrust with desperate rolls of his own hips.

Sweat beads on Wesker’s skin; Hair that’s usually slicked back falls forward in dark strands across his forehead, into his eyes. His shoulders flex with each drive, broad, powerful, the body of a man engineered for dominance.

Chris buries his face in Wesker’s throat, nose pressed to damp skin, inhaling him like oxygen, leather and faint cologne and something sharper, uniquely Wesker. “Harder,” he gasps against the pulse point, voice muffled and wrecked. “Faster, please.”

Wesker’s pace falters, just slightly. The sweet plea cuts through the haze, and something shifts.

His thrusts slow, deepen, still powerful, but rolling in long, grinding strokes now that drag over every sensitive spot inside Chris until he’s trembling. One gloved hand releases the tie at last, letting it fall loose, and slides down Chris’s sweat-slick chest, fingers splaying possessively over his heart before wrapping around his leaking cock.

He strokes in perfect time with his hips, firm, loving pulls from base to tip, thumb circling the head on every upstroke, spreading precum down the shaft. The leather is warm from their heat, slick and smooth.

Chris sobs into his neck, arms wrapped tight around Wesker’s shoulders, clinging like he’ll never let go.

“You’re beautiful,” Chris murmurs, voice breaking on every thrust, lips brushing Wesker’s skin. “God, Captain.”

Wesker’s breath catches. He looks down, really looks, at Chris beneath him: flushed and open, eyes glassy with tears of overwhelming pleasure, lips swollen and parted. So young. So alive. So completely his in this moment.

He sees the tears spill over, tracking down Chris’s temples into his hair, and leans in, kissing them away gently, tongue tracing the salty paths up his cheek, tasting the evidence of how thoroughly he’s fucking him.

Chris’s mouth opens on a broken moan, words tumbling out against Wesker’s jaw.

“I love -”

Wesker registers it instantly, the dangerous shape of the confession, and his hand clamps over Chris’s mouth before it can finish, palm firm and unyielding. Chris’s eyes widen, startled, then flutter half-closed as Wesker snaps his hips forward again, hard, deep, relentless, fucking into him with renewed force, stroking him faster, thumb pressing just under the head on every pull.

The muffled cry vibrates against Wesker’s palm. Chris’s body clenches around him, thighs shaking, cock pulsing in Wesker’s grip as he comes, hot, messy shots across his own stomach and Wesker’s glove.

Wesker follows moments later, buried to the hilt, spilling inside with a low, guttural sound that’s almost a growl. There’s no condom, nothing between them, and that knowledge surges through him like a dark triumph that he's the first man to fill the boy. He stays there, unmoving, savoring every second of it. The heat of his come flooding Chris, marking him from the inside. Chris’s body clenches around him instinctively, wanting it, milking every drop, taking it all. Wesker relishes the mess he’s making: thick, warm. Mine. The word thrums in his blood, possessive and absolute.

Chris’s pulse thunders beneath Wesker’s lips where they rest against his sweat-damp shoulder, and Wesker presses a slow, deliberate kiss there, almost tender, before lifting his head just enough to watch Chris’s face in the afterglow: flushed, wrecked, eyes half-lidded and glassy with satisfaction.

Wesker doesn’t pull out yet.

He stays buried deep, hips rolling in tiny, lazy circles to feel the slick give of his own release around himself, to feel Chris shudder and clench weakly in response.

Chris’s arms tighten around him, holding him close, as if he senses the possessiveness radiating off Wesker in waves and welcomes it. He feels owned, and no other feeling will ever suffice, again.

The room is quiet except for their ragged breathing and the faint patter of snow against the window.

Wesker lifts his hand from Chris’s mouth slowly, cautiously.

Chris doesn’t finish the sentence.

He just pulls Wesker down into a kiss instead,soft, tender, letting him taste the unspoken words that exist whether Wesker wants them to or not.

Wesker stirs as the mattress dips, a shift of weight pulling him from the shallow depths of sleep. His eyes snap open, heart rate spiking in a rare, unguarded moment of disorientation, where is he? The ceiling is unfamiliar, cracked plaster instead of the high vaulting in his own bedroom. The air smells faintly of sandalwood incense and sex, sheets tangled around his bare legs.

Then memory floods back: Chris’s apartment. Chris’s bed. Chris. And the deeper alarm: he fell asleep. Actually slept, vulnerable and unguarded, in a place he never intended to stay.

It’s still dark outside the window, the snow-reduced streetlight filtering in weak orange streaks. Early hours, maybe four or five a.m. Christmas Eve bleeding into Christmas Day.

Chris is already up, kneeling on the bed in nothing but his dark briefs, one knee planted between Wesker’s still-naked thighs. The faint glow from the hallway outlines his body, broad chest, narrow hips, skin marked with bruises and bites from hours ago. He smiles down at Wesker, soft and unguarded, eyes bright even in the low light.

“Hey,” Chris whispers, extending a hand. “Come with me.”

Wesker blinks, mind still fogged with rare post-sleep lethargy. He should refuse. Should already be dressed and gone. But the hand is there, warm and steady, and he finds himself taking it, allowing Chris to tug him upright, sheets pooling at his waist.

Chris’s grin widens as he spots Wesker’s discarded underwear on the floor, black Louis Vuitton briefs, expensive and understated. He picks them up, whistling low and appreciative at the embossed waistband before helping Wesker step into them, fingers brushing deliberately along his thighs as he pulls them up.

“Fancy,” Chris teases softly, grin crooked. “Didn’t peg you for designer underwear, Captain.”

Wesker gives him a dry, half-lidded look, voice rough from sleep and disuse. “Don’t get used to seeing them.”

Chris just chuckles quietly and leads him by the hand down the short hallway.

They reach the end, and Wesker pauses instinctively, fingers slipping free from Chris’s grasp.

The living room is transformed.

The small, real Christmas tree by the couch, something Wesker had barely registered earlier in the dark, is plugged in now, multicolored lights twinkling in slow, rhythmic pulses. Ornaments catch and scatter the glow: cheap glass balls, a few handmade ones from childhood maybe, tiny flickering plastic candles that almost seem to dance to an inner melody. The light spills across the room in soft waves of red, green, gold, washing over Chris’s bare skin like he’s made of warm bronze, highlighting the smooth planes of his back, the curve of his shoulder, turning faint bruises into shadows of color.

Soft music plays from a small speaker on the coffee table, old 1950s crooners, Bing Crosby or Dean Martin, voices smooth and wistful, singing about white Christmases and wishes for the new year. Promises of joy and togetherness.

Nothing good is coming. Wesker knows that with cold, absolute certainty. The new year will bring only ruin. Chris will survive it (Wesker will make sure of that, even if it costs him), but everything else will burn. This warmth, this fragile trust, will turn to ash.

Chris turns to him, standing there in the colored glow, eyes too young, too open, full of something Wesker refuses to name. He supposes if he's honest with himself, he's known it was there. Felt it stir the first day Chris had shaken his hand.

“Dance with me,” Chris says quietly, holding out his hand again. Waiting.

Wesker feels the future pressing in from all sides: the moment Chris will look at him and see only the monster; the moment those open eyes will narrow with hurt, then harden with hate. He will survive it, yes. But survival is a cold country, and Chris deserves warmer shores than the ones Wesker can offer.

Still, the hand waits.

“I should go,” Wesker tries, voice flat, blank.

Chris shakes his head, stubborn as ever, and steps forward. He takes both of Wesker’s hands this time, gentle but firm, and pulls him into the small clearing between couch and tree.

Wesker stares down at him, unmoving at first, every instinct screaming to leave now, before the illusion deepens. But Chris doesn’t falter. He slides his hands to Wesker’s waist, fingers warm against bare skin, and rests his head against Wesker’s chest, right over his heart. Then he starts to sway, slow and simple, guiding Wesker with the gentle pressure of his body.

Wesker swallows hard. Against every better judgment, he begins to move with him, small, reluctant sways at first, then matching the rhythm. One hand settles at the small of Chris’s back, the other at his shoulder blade, holding him close.

Chris exhales, content, face tucked into the curve of Wesker’s neck, who presses his lips to the crown of Chris’s hair, a kiss too light to be noticed, and holds him.

They dance in silence, barefoot on the cool floor, colored lights flickering across their skin. Outside, snow keeps falling. Wesker allows himself this one, doomed moment, knowing it will cost him later, but taking it all the same.

The music shifts.

The crooner’s voice fades out, replaced by the familiar opening synth chords, soft, melancholy, unmistakable. Last Christmas spills into the room again, George Michael’s voice smooth and regretful, threading through the colored lights like smoke.

Wesker’s breath catches.

He almost laughs, silent, bitter. The absurdity of it is perfect, almost cruel. Like something lifted straight from a novel, the kind written to haunt the reader years later. The exact wrong song, playing at the exact wrong moment, turning this fragile, stolen dance into something prophetic. He knows, with the same cold certainty he knows everything else, that this will follow him. Years from now, decades, maybe, in whatever sterile, secure place he’s carved out for himself after the world burns, he’ll hear this song again. In a passionless room, in a car, in the background of some anonymous broadcast. And every time, it will drag him back here: Chris’s bare skin warm against his chest, colored lights flickering over them both, the scent of cheap incense and sex still clinging to the air. He’ll remember the way Chris’s breath felt against his throat, the way his hands rested at Wesker’s waist like they belonged there. He’ll remember this moment, and it will hurt in a way nothing else ever has. Just as it hurts, now.

“I love this song,” Chris murmurs against his chest, voice soft, sleepy. Like he can read Wesker’s thoughts.

Wesker doesn’t respond. He can’t.

Instead he tightens his hold, one hand sliding up to cradle the back of Chris’s head, fingers threading through short hair, the other pressing firmer at the small of his back. He pulls Chris closer, aligning their bodies so perfectly there’s no space left for anything but the slow, swaying rhythm.

The song continues, lyrics weaving around them: Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away.

Chris hums quietly along, barely audible, cheek pressed to Wesker’s collarbone. His eyes are closed, content, unaware of the shadow that’s already falling across this memory. Chris’s voice comes then, low and drowsy, words slurred just enough to reveal how deeply the warmth has settled into him.

“Since the day I joined S.T.A.R.S… I always felt like this is where we’d end up,” he murmurs, breath warm. “You and me. Like this.”

The confession is soft, almost wondering, as though he’s only just realizing it himself. There is no demand in the words, only a sleepy certainty.

Wesker's arms begin to loosen, preparing to step back, to deflect with silence or a cutting remark, anything to keep this moment from sinking deeper. But Chris feels the shift. His hand slides up Wesker’s back, fingers spreading wide between his shoulder blades, anchoring him. The other arm tightens around his waist, gentle but unyielding.

“Shh,” Chris whispers, lips brushing the hollow of Wesker’s throat. “Don’t. Just… stay.”

Wesker stills.

Chris is quiet for a long moment, the song filling the space between heartbeats. When he speaks again, his voice is even softer, threaded with something fragile and childlike, the way one might ask a parent if the dark under the bed is truly empty.

“I’m not really the kind of person who believes in fate,” he says, eyes still closed, cheek nuzzling closer as though seeking reassurance in the steady rhythm of Wesker’s pulse. “But… do you?”

The question hangs there, offered up with the same open trust as his hand had been minutes ago. Do you believe we were meant to find each other? Do you believe this matters? Do you believe in anything at all?

Wesker’s throat works soundlessly. He thinks of the ruin waiting just beyond this room.

He thinks of Chris’s heartbeat against his own, steady and unafraid.

“No,” he says at last, the lie quiet. His fingers thread through damp hair. “I don’t believe in fate.”

Chris makes a small sound, acceptance, or perhaps simple exhaustion, and burrows closer.

Wesker closes his eyes and finishes the truth in silence: I believe in choices. And I have already made the one that will destroy this.

Dawn has barely broken when Wesker slips out of the apartment, coat buttoned high against the cold, footsteps muffled in the fresh snow. The sky is a pale, washed-out gray, the world quiet except for the distant scrape of a plow somewhere down the street and children already awake laughing in a front yard, a few blocks away.

He tells himself it had been enough to fight Chris on staying the whole day. Warm mouth on his skin, hands coaxing, voice soft and pleading for just a few more hours, breakfast, maybe more. Wesker had refused, voice flat, already rebuilding the walls. He’d dressed in silence, ignoring the way Chris watched him from the bed they'd collapsed back into, sheet pulled low on his hips, eyes too knowing.

He tells himself he stayed strong.

It’s a lie, and he knows it. He stayed far longer than strength allowed.

The BMW idles in the empty space outside the building, engine warming. Wesker sits motionless behind the wheel, breath fogging faintly in the frigid air, staring through the windshield at nothing. Snowflakes drift lazily across the glass, threatening to erupt again.

Movement catches his eye.

He glances up.

Chris is at the second-floor window, bare-chested and warm in his apartment, one arm stretched overhead against the frame, the other braced on the sill. The pose is casual, unashamed, lean muscle and faint bruises on full display, skin golden even in the weak morning light. He looks down at Wesker with a quiet longing, not so different from what the days in the office had turned into. It will only get worse, now, Wesker knows.

His jaw tightens. He forces his gaze forward again.

Then something on the passenger-side floor catches his attention, the small, discarded gift box, still wrapped in its garish foil.

He should leave it. Should toss it in a bin at the lab, let it disappear with the rest of the evidence of weakness. But he can’t stop staring at the messy, almost childlike handwriting scrawled across the paper: From Chris followed by a lopsided heart.

Wesker exhales, slow, dubious.

Chris is still watching.

Wesker leans over, gloved fingers closing around the box. He hesitates one last time, then peels back the tape, sliding the wrapping away. Inside is a smaller velvet box, dark blue, unassuming.

He opens it.

Nestled in the satin fold is a single apartment key, simple brass, newly cut.

Wesker stares at it for a long moment.

Then he looks up.

Chris hasn’t moved. He’s still framed in the window, expression softened. His free hand lifts in a small tap on the glass, and he draws a heart with his finger. He accents it with a smart-ass grin. No pressure, no demand. Just the offer, laid bare. Come and go as you wish.

Wesker’s fingers close around the key.

He slips it into his coat pocket.

Ten years later.

Prague, or somewhere close enough,some snow-dusted city in Eastern Europe whose name Wesker barely registers. He’s here for proximity: Spencer’s estate lies a few hundred kilometers west, hidden in the mountains, its security protocols layered which he intends to peel apart before he burns the core. Revenge, patient and precise, has brought him here. He maps patrol routes in his mind while sipping black coffee in a crowded cafe on the edge of the old town.

The air is thick with the festive hum: Czech and German and Russian mingling over clinking cups, the rich scent of roasted hazelnuts and peppermint steam curling from the espresso machines. Strings of lights twinkle along the windows; a small brass band plays carols outside on the cobblestones.

And then, inevitably, it starts.

The opening chords drift from the cafe’s speakers, soft synth, melancholy pop. Last Christmas.

Wesker stills.

He’s in his long black coat, collar turned up, sunglasses firmly in place despite the dim interior light to hide the inhuman red glow they burn with, now. Ten years, multiple continents, languages he doesn’t speak, and still the song finds him. Every December, like clockwork. He used to wonder if it was coincidence. Now he knows better. It’s punishment. A haunting he earned.

He stands abruptly, chair scraping against the tile, and crosses to the small gift kiosk near the register. His gloved fingers flick through the rack of postcards and greeting cards until he finds one that will do: a watercolor of snow-dusted fields at twilight, an old farmhouse in the distance with hazy, out-of-focus lights glowing in its windows. Simple.

He pays without a word, borrows a pen from the barista, a young woman who smiles too brightly, and returns to his corner table.

It’s tradition now, this small annual penance.

Every year since Raccoon, since the mansion, since the world cracked open and Chris learned exactly what kind of monster he’d let inside him that Christmas night. Wesker sends a card. No return address. Posted from whatever city he’s in, routed through enough dead drops that even BSAA forensics can’t trace it. Chris has never stopped them reaching their destination.

Wesker uncaps the pen.

He writes in his precise, elegant hand, first the factual update, the things Chris would never want to know but reads anyway: the new strains he’s cultivated, the rivals he’s eliminated, the slow, inexorable climb toward apotheosis. Then the shift, softer, almost conversational. A memory pulled from their past. He asks, as he always does, if Chris is finally tired of chasing ghosts. If he’s ready to stop pretending he doesn’t still feel it. If he’d like to join him, properly this time. No more games.

He never signs it with love.

He doesn’t need to.

Mid-sentence, his free hand rises absently, fingers brushing the thin gold chain beneath his shirt. The old apartment key, plated after Raccoon’s fires, worn smooth from years against his skin, rests there, warm from his body. He’s never taken it off. Not once. Not even when the apartment went up in flames. He'd made sure Chris was out of town for it, sent him on a wild goosechase to a european lab. But he had never let the ofer go, to come and go as he pleased.

The song swells.

…This year, to save me from tears…

The pain arrives exactly as he always knew it would: sharp, precise, right beneath the sternum. A decade of god-complex and calculated detachment, and four minutes of 1980s pop still undoes him.

He finishes the card.

Folds it. Slides it into the envelope.

He’ll mail it tomorrow.

Chris will read it, hate him a little more, but keep it anyway.

Wesker stands, coat swirling as he heads for the door.

Two years later.

Chris stands in the dim light of his BSAA dormitory room, the door locked behind him, the corridor outside mercifully quiet. The space is spartan like always, gray walls, metal locker, narrow bed with regulation sheets pulled tight. A single duffel sits half-packed in the corner; deployment orders came down this morning. Somewhere cold. Somewhere dangerous. Same as always.

He’s bigger now than he was at twenty-three, years of field work and rage and grief have layered muscle onto his frame like armor. Shoulders broader, arms thicker, chest heavier. But the skin is stretched tight over it all, etched with scars that ride the ridges of muscle like pale rivers: burns from Kijuju, bullet grazes from Africa, the long, ugly slice across his ribs from ops gone crooked. Some of his men joke, half-serious, that he’s trying to die out there, throwing himself into the worst of every fight. Chris never laughs when they say it. He just nods, checks his weapon, and moves on.

Christmas is in two days.

He is staring at the small stack of envelopes in the top drawer of his nightstand. Ten of them. One for every year since Raccoon. Different postmarks, Antarctica, South America, Eastern Europe, Asia. Same handwriting, elegant and precise. Same unsigned messages: updates on horrors Chris learned more about in classified briefings, memories pulled from the nights before like splinters, the same question asked in different words, Are you tired yet? Come find me.

This year, nothing. No card in the mail drop. No unmarked envelope slipped into his locker by whatever courier Wesker uses. Nothing.

Of course there isn’t. There won’t be this year. Or any year after.

Wesker is gone, truly gone this time. Volcanic ash and molten rock and ten years of chasing a ghost that finally burned itself out. Chris was there at the end. Saw the body. Put a rocket in it just to make sure.

Chris came back from that final mission a hero. The BSAA brass pinned medals on his chest in a quiet ceremony. They called it the decisive blow against Umbrella’s last ghost. Legends would reference it for years: Redfield’s kill shot, the rocket that ended Albert Wesker in a volcano’s heart. Definitive. Clean.

The rookies idolized it.

In the armory, some kid fresh out of training would mimic the stance, shoulders squared, imaginary launcher on his shoulder, grinning as he quoted the after-action report: “One rocket. Center mass. No regeneration.” They’d slap Chris on the back, ask for tips on “taking down the big ones.” Veterans in the chain of command were worse, casual comments in briefings, over coffee, in performance reviews. “That kill’s gonna cement your legacy, Redfield.”

Every time, Chris smiled. Nodded. Said the right things: “Just doing the job.” “Team effort.” “Glad it’s over.”

Then he’d excuse himself, bathroom break, gear check, quick call, and find the nearest dark corner: supply closet, empty locker room, stairwell no one used. He’d lean against the wall, one hand pressed hard over his heart like he could physically hold his it together, the other braced on his knee. Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Count it out like the shrink taught him after Kijuju. Clamp the panic down before it clawed its way up his throat.

Because Chris Redfield wasn’t the kind of guy who could kill the love of his life. He’d never been built for that.

He’d loved Wesker, stupidly, fiercely, in the only way he knew how: all in, no half-measures. One night had turned into a decade of chasing shadows, telling himself it was duty, justice, revenge. But every confrontation, every bullet fired, every time he looked into those cold eyes across a battlefield, he’d known the truth. Wesker had made him into a man who had to pull that trigger. Chris pressed harder against his chest in those dark corners, feeling the scars pull tight, the muscle memory of Wesker’s hands still ghosting over his skin after all these years.

He’d killed him. Put a rocket in the man he’d once danced with under Christmas lights. And no medal, no legacy, no decisive blow would ever make that feel like victory. Just another scar. The ones that aren't visible hurt the worst to forge, he'd learned.

Chris presses the heel of his hand hard against his mouth, eyes burning, trying to force the tears back down where they belong. His throat works, but no sound escapes. He won’t cry. He doesn’t get to cry over the man who orchestrated half of the breaks in him.

Still, his shoulders shake once, hard, involuntary.

He thinks of the dance in the dark to a song that still guts him every December. Of a key he never got back. He thinks of Wesker’s gloved hand over his mouth, stopping the words he was too young and too stupid to want to hold back.

Chris drops his hand, exhales shakily, and reaches for the drawer. He pulls out the stack of cards, fans them across the dresser. Ten years of poison and memory. The stack of cards laid out in front of him like a losing hand he can’t bring himself to fold.

Eventually he gathers them. He doesn’t put them back in the drawer. Instead he carries the small pile to the bed, sits cross-legged in the center, and lays them out again, one by one, in chronological order. The oldest on the left, the most recent on the right. Ten envelopes, ten cards, ten years of a dead man’s love.

He starts with the first.

The paper is worn soft at the edges from handling. He brings it close, presses his face into the fold where the card meets the envelope flap, and inhales, slow, deliberate.

Wesker is there.

Faint, but unmistakable. The ghost of expensive cologne trapped in the fibers all this time. Chris breathes it in until his lungs ache, until his eyes sting harder than before.

He moves to the next card. Then the next.

Each one carries a slightly different note, some more faded than others, depending on climate and time and how roughly the mail system treated them, but the essence is the same. Wesker’s presence lingers in the paper, in the careful pressure of the pen, in the deliberate blank spaces where he never wrote what he really meant.

Chris’s forehead rests against the newest card, the last one, postmarked near the Spencer Estate. He inhales again, deeper, chasing the scent like it’s the only proof he has left that any of it was real.

Wesker is in the ink. In every looped letter, every word describing atrocities Chris already lived through. In the softer lines where Wesker remembered the taste of cheap vodka on Chris’s tongue or the way he'd finally said the three words Chris had wanted to hear, right before they left for the mansion in July of 1998. In the writing Wesker had lamented not saying it sooner, because it had always been waiting there for words, true - and truer still after everything, he promised.

Chris’s shoulders shake harder now, silent. Tears slip free despite every effort, soaking into the paper. The salt of them mixes with the faint trace of cologne, and for a moment it feels like Wesker is right there, gloved hand over his mouth again, stopping the words, stealing the air, but still claiming everything.

The mission has been live for thirty-six hours, some frozen hellhole in Eastern Europe, an old Umbrella-affiliated facility buried under snow and concrete. Chris’s team is deep in prep for the final push: blow the labs, extract any survivors (if there are any), salt the earth behind them.

Early morning, sky still bruised purple outside the field tent. The air smells of diesel heaters and instant coffee. Chris is bent over the folding table, full kit on, heavy plates, winter camo, gloves off so he can trace the evac route on the laminated map. Two disassembled anti-biohazard rifles lie scattered among the clutter: bolts pulled, barrels wiped, magazines loaded with specialty rounds.

He barely registers the tent flap rustling, or the soft clear of a throat.

Piers, ever patient, clears his again, louder. “Captain.”

Chris turns, slow, eyes sharpening as he takes in the scene: Piers and another operative flanking a courier Chris doesn’t recognize. Young kid, civilian contractor by the look of him, bundled in a parka that’s too clean for this theater. The courier holds up a single red envelope. No return address, just Chris’s name in that familiar, elegant script across the front and his current location.

Chris freezes.

The courier takes a cautious step forward, two more when Chris doesn’t move, and gently lays the envelope on the corner of the table, right beside the map, careful not to disturb the weapons.

“You have to take it,” the courier says softly, voice low so the rest of the tent doesn’t hear. “I have to see you take it. Please. Those are my orders.”

Like always.

Wesker always knew where he was. Exactly where. Black-budget couriers, routes that skirted every BSAA security protocol. Chris had stopped asking how years ago.

But Wesker is dead.

Chris watched the body disintegrate in volcanic fire. Cried over the ashes in private, burned out every emotion until there was nothing left but duty. Had time, a years of it, to reflect. In the darkest corners of his heart, the ones he never voiced, he’d admitted the truth: that if Wesker had asked one more time, if the offer had come when Chris was tired enough, broken enough, he might have stepped down from the BSAA and followed him blindly into whatever hell Wesker was building. He’d never have said it aloud while the man was alive. But with Wesker gone, it had felt safe to finally confess it to himself,because it could never happen now.

His hand moves.

Fingers close around the red envelope. The paper is heavy, quality stock. He lifts it, turns it over once. No postmark visible. Just the handwriting.

The courier nods, relief flickering across his face, and backs out of the tent with Piers’s escort.

Silence falls.

Piers stares at the envelope, then at Chris. “Who the hell is sending you mail in a classified warzone, Captain? I thought this op was need-to-know only.”

His voice trails off, thinning, as the faint trace of scent rises from the paper, crisp winter air, leather, that specific expensive cologne that hasn’t been manufactured in years. That noone else would smell like.

Chris waits until the tent is empty, Piers and the others stepping out to check perimeter sensors, giving him the space he didn’t ask for but they know he needs by the look on his face.

He sits heavily on the ammo crate, the red envelope in his hands. For a long minute he just stares at it, thumb tracing the familiar loops and sharp angles of the handwriting. Then he tears it open with one rough pull.

Inside: a single card, heavy stock, the same watercolor style Wesker always chooses, snowy fields, distant lights. No printed greeting. Just the handwritten note, in that precise, elegant script that hasn’t changed in a decade.

My dear Christopher,

I must begin with an apology for the silence last year. I was… under the weather, as you know. A rather prolonged convalescence after our last encounter. RPGs are notoriously unforgiving, even to me.

But I’m feeling much better now, revitalized, in fact. My thoughts are clearer, sharper, and more consumed with you than ever. Infact, I believe my purpose has hit a pinpoint.

You’ve become magnificent. I’ve watched. Always from a distance, of course, as you’ve grown into something truly formidable. Stronger, harder, relentless. I made you this way, didn’t I? Forged you in betrayal and loss until you could put a rocket through my heart without flinching. There’s a certain poetry in it. I made you into the soldier you so tire of being. Come, meet your maker.

The offer will remain. When you’re tired of pretending this war is worth winning, send word with my courier.

Until then, stay formidable.

Chris reads it twice. Then a third time, slower, eyes lingering on every curve of ink.

He presses the card to his face again, inhales the faint trace of cologne still clinging to the paper.

Chris slips the card back into the red envelope, folds it once, and tucks it inside his vest, close to the scars, close to the heartbeat that’s suddenly too loud in the quiet tent.

He sits there a moment longer, staring at the map without seeing it. He hates the relief that floods him. Hates the way his chest loosens, like he’s been holding his breath for two full years.

He hates that Wesker is right.

He has become exactly what Wesker forged: stronger, harder, relentless. A man who can walk into hell and walk out again, carrying the ashes of everything he once believed in.

And next year…Chris exhales slowly, the decision settling into him. Next Christmas, when the courier shows up again, because he will, Wesker will make sure of it, Chris won’t just take the envelope. He’ll have one ready to hand back.

Two years later.

Southern Italy, late December. The Amalfi Coast is quiet this time of year, tourists thinned out, the sea a cold, glittering gray beyond the cliffside town. Chris is on rare leave, two weeks mandated by a commander who finally noticed the cracks after Piers death. He’s chosen a small bistro tucked into a narrow street in Positano: outdoor tables under a striped awning, heater lamps glowing orange, the faint smell of wood-fired pizza and espresso drifting on the salt air.

He’s bent over a local newspaper, Italian headlines about regional government dissent and corruption scandals. He reads slowly, picking out words he knows, half-interested. Anything to keep his mind occupied. The envelope he sent last year is long gone, handed to the courier without hesitation.

Where?

No signature. No plea. Just the single word.

A shadow falls across the table.

Two gloved hands, black leather, familiar even after all this time, slide across his shoulders from behind. Slow. Possessive. Fingers curling just slightly at the collar of his jacket, thumbs brushing the bare skin at the nape of his neck.

Then the scent hits him. It floods his senses like a drug, pulling him straight back to colored lights and snow-choked nights and a dance he never really stopped feeling when he was young and the world was in front of him. How many nights after did he take out those cards as they accumulated and dance with them in his arms, humming that goddamn song. Cursed to ache for what he couldn't have.

Chris freezes, newspaper crinkling under his clutching grip.

The hands stay where they are, steady, claiming.

A low voice edged with quiet amusement speaks near his ear.

“You’ve kept me waiting for a long time, Christopher."

Then the bistro’s outdoor speakers crackle faintly, shifting to the next track in whatever holiday playlist the owner queued up. Soft synth chords drift out, the same song that follows them everywhere.

Last Christmas…

Chris exhales a short, rough laugh, the sound catching in his throat. He doesn’t turn around yet. Doesn’t need to. The cologne is already wrapped around him like a memory he never managed to outrun.

“You kept me waiting-” Chris says, voice low, steady, but edged with everything he’s carried for eleven years. He folds the newspaper slowly, sets it aside. “First."

The hands slide forward, one gloved palm settling over his collarbone, thumb brushing the hollow of his throat.

“You killed me, Chris,” Wesker murmurs against his ear, amusement and something darker threaded through the words. Close enough that Chris feels the faint warmth of breath. “Rather spectacularly, I might add.”

Chris’s jaw tightens. He finally turns his head, just enough to meet those eyes, still hidden behind dark glasses even in the shade of the awning. Wesker looks almost unchanged: sharper, maybe, the lines of his face harder, hair still slicked back.

“Now we're even.” Chris says, quiet. Hadn't he atoned enough now to every person who lost their life because of this man? Chris had pulled the trigger and meant it. The bastard just wouldn't die.

Wesker’s mouth curves.

He leans back just enough to look at him properly, gloved hands sliding from Chris’s shoulders to rest on the table on either side of him, caging him in without touching. The song keeps playing, soft and relentless, George Michael crooning.

“Even?” Wesker repeats, tasting the word. “No, Chris. We’re not even.”

He reaches down, one gloved finger hooking under Chris’s chin, tilting it up with gentle insistence until their gazes lock fully.

“You took everything from me that night. My plans. My body. My purpose.” His thumb brushes Chris’s lower lip, leather glove warm against his cool skin. “But I let you. I stood there and let you burn me alive because the thought of your hands being the ones to do it was… exquisite. I think of it every night."

Chris’s breath catches. Only Wesker would turn something so terrible into a fantasy.

Wesker leans in again, closer this time, mouth almost brushing his.

“So no,” he whispers. “We’re not even. Not until you admit you didn’t do it to save the world. You did it because you couldn’t stand not walking back to me any longer."

The song swells.

Chris’s hand comes up slowly, touching Wesker's unaged face.

“You’re still an arrogant bastard,” Chris says.

Wesker’s smile widens, sharp and genuine for once.

“And you’re still in love with me. And if you come with me I'll finally allow you to say it."

Chris doesn’t deny the accusation or barb the offer.

He simply winds calloused fingers around the mans neck, and pulls him down into a kiss that tastes like twelve years of wasted time.

The song plays on.

A man undercover but you tore him apart.

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Last Christmas

Floweredgirl

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