Archive of Our Own

Movement. For years, Chris has needed movement.

If he learned anything on the job, it’s this: the second you put your head down to think- really think about shit, everything falls apart. The organizations. The structures. The reasoning behind every single thing you do. You either move fast enough to keep up with your mission or you risk letting everything unravel in your hands.

There’s a reason he prefers to implant himself in a team, and it’s not because he isn’t equipped to deal with shit on his own. Chris’ strength is that he’s always been a headstrong thinker, able to back his beliefs with action, but once he gets a group of really good professionals around him, he can melt into the unit. When he becomes perfectly focused, the world tunneling to fit the shape of his eyes, it’s like he fuses with his machine gun. He becomes the sultry jolt of the recoil traveling up his arm. He fades into the static of his teammate’s transmissions. His body becomes a means by which his ends are gained, and usually, he’s so deep in the thick of it that his mind turns off, anchoring him in a quiet clarity.

And then, as always, there is the end of the mission.

There’s the moment where he’s discharged and suddenly he sees the wake of destruction that the military left behind. Uprooting other countries, fucking around with human rights, collecting war crimes like they’re fucking stamps for the scrapbook and everyone’s foaming-mouthed lusting for the taste of that glue on their tongues.

That’s the easy part, believe it or not. The worst comes later: if he doesn’t pour himself into the next mission fast enough, Chris starts to realize that his organizations are exactly the same as the rest of them. Power and dominance is such an alluring force that nobody weak enough to succumb to it will get out with their both their morals and their competency. Even the BSAA, which Chris adopted like a fucking child, is not safeguarded against corruption. No one is. No one will ever be.

Not even him.

Distantly, Chris notices the chopper picking up speed. He hears its blades chipping through the frigid air, carving through crystals of ice, so unlike the heat of the blast that still resides on his face. He cannot stop to think about everything that’s happened- not the chopper above, not the raging fire below, because if he slows down for even one second, he will have to see Ethan Winters standing in front of him, his fingers fucked to hell and breath coming out in angry, shallow spurts, tears streaming down his face. If he looks, he’ll have to see the motherless pink bundle clutched against Ethan’s chest. He’ll have to say something laughably useless to this man who he has failed so horrifically that there is no going back from it, this man who is angry as all fuck and sobbing his eyes out, glaring murderous rage in Chris’ direction, because Chris Redfield has killed Ethan’s wife. Not once, but twice.

“How could you?” Ethan asks, his voice shaking. “Fucking- how could you?

Chris has looked monsters in the face. He’s watched contorting creatures scuttle over him, their mangled bodies horrifying to behold, let alone feel breathing down your neck. And still, somehow, out of all of the bioweapons and weird fucking monstrosities he’s had to reckon with, this is the worst of them all. Ethan is the worst of them.

“Chris!” Ethan screams.

Chris grits his teeth and turns his head to the side. He can’t make eye contact. He can’t stop to think about it. He cannot let himself remember the moment that he let Mia fall behind, because if he stops to remember it, everything will fall apart.

“Look at me!” Ethan cries.

Maybe it’s the guttural tear in Ethan’s voice. Maybe it’s the way his yelling has woken up Rose and has set her to screeching. But to his horror, Chris feels his eyes dragging reluctantly up until they’ve landed Ethan’s face. He feels the shame on his cheeks. He feels his eyes gaping wide, already begging for forgiveness.

“You owe me,” Ethan shudders out from between his teeth. He’s quivering, his entire body wracked by shakes, as he bounces the screaming baby in his arms. He opens his mouth to speak and Chris watches his teeth clench as another sob breaks like a wave on his words. “You took everything from me,” he manages hoarsely. “You took my family from me.”

Chris’ mouth tumbles open and suddenly he is pleading.

“I fucked up,” he begs. “I fucked up, Ethan, I fucked up.”

Chris remembers how this felt, telling Mia that Ethan was dead. It’s always like this. One life for another. Sacrificed lambs as a means to an end. He fucked up. So badly he knows that he will never be able to make it right. Chris knows that the second they land, the second he gets back to his home and is forced to sit in silence, it will catch up with him. When it does, he will never be able to turn his mind off and trust his judgement ever again. He is terrified, knowing that moment is about to come.

“My family,” Ethan moans.

“I’m sorry,” Chris pleads, turning his head away because he can’t stand to look at this broken man anymore. “It was an accident. Not just- I never meant for any of this to happen.”

He never intended for things to play out like they did. He thought he had things under control. He never meant to wrap his arms hard around the truth and conceal it from Ethan like this.

He didn’t mean to let Mia fall behind. He thought she was right there. He thought she was right there, for Christ’s sake. Ethan and Rose were already secured in the aircraft, ready to go. She was right behind him. He’d hit the button, let the world explode, but when he turned back to grab her and lift her up, she wasn’t there. He’d left her behind.

Chris feels his breath start to shallow out. He can’t afford to think about this.

All at once, Ethan is rushing at him. Ethan’s body slams against him, careening into his chest as his hand swipes out, fingers sinking and twisting into Chris’ arm. “I can’t do it without her.” He sobs viciously. “I can’t do this on my own.”

“Ethan,” Chris whispers. Rose screams as she’s crushed between the two of their chests. “The baby.”

“We were supposed to raise her together,” he weeps.

“Ethan,” he hisses, thrusting out his forearm to knock the grieving man away. “You’re hurting her.”

Chris takes Rose from his arms and pulls her small, soft body against his chest. As Ethan dissolves into a fit of hiccupping sobs, Chris looks down at her and coo’s desperately, running his thick fingers over her belly, trying to calm her down.

He’s still rocking her, one of his fingers clasped by the entirety of her little peachy fist, when he realizes Ethan is staring up at him from a crouch, his hands curled around his eyes, that peering gaze worming its way around the set of three and five fingers he still has left on each hand.

“She likes you,” he seethes, murder in his eyes. “She likes you even more than she likes me.”

Chris doesn’t know what to say so he just keeps rocking her.

“You might as well just finish me off and take her for yourself.”

“I’m sorry, Ethan,” Chris says, though this time he can hear the steadiness return to his voice. The firmness of the soldier creeps back in. “I will do whatever I have to to make things right.”

“How?” Ethan demands, and Chris feels like he can almost see the fungal darkness dripping off of him, sticky in his hair, wet below his eyes.

“I’ll take care of you,” Chris says, feeling the power of that promise seep in. “Anything. I’ll do anything you need me to.”

“You better,” Ethan grits out. “I can’t- I can’t do that again. Just let you pick up my entire fucking life and plant it down wherever you want. I- I-”

Chris’ face twists. “I won’t, Ethan.”

“I need a fucking say.” Ethan pants, panic gripping his words. “You can’t just be in charge of me anymore. I need to call the shots too.”

“Okay,” Chris answers softly. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Ethan whispers back. He looks down and shakes, verbal huffs releasing between his lips. As he falls apart Rose stays whole, snoring gently on in the cocoon of Chris’ arms.

When Ethan steps out of the sweltering summer and into the foyer of Chris Redfield’s home, he’s got hotel eyes, and they aren’t the sexy kind. There are bags weighted underneath them, pulling at the corners, his whites all murky and bloodshot. He simultaneously looks like he hasn’t slept in ages and like he just woke up, the hair tussled and loose around his face. He tried fussing with himself in the mirror but all that did was exasperate him.

He grumbles something, eyes flicking around the house’s interior.

“What was that?” Chris asks.

“It’s very… pristine,” he says.

Chris leans back with a pitying smile, the breath releasing from his nose. “Follow me,” he offers, “I’ll show you to her room.”

Chris’ house is modestly sized, and interestingly enough, it’s modestly decorated too. If the older’s intentions were to craft a set piece reminiscent of the typical American home, well, he’s succeeded. Ethan thinks about the mess he left behind in the hotel: oily take-out containers, bloody bandages, alcohol stains on the carpet and a gallon of tears in the pillow. At some point, he fumbled through a night terror for the light and heard himself knock something off the bedside table, a glass or something, promptly forgotten about until his foot met the shards the next day. He compares that to this place, with its polished wooden floors and evenly rolled cream walls, the furniture achingly practical other than the few IKEA-reminiscent decorations he’s got lined up on the shelves.

There were some nights, back at the hotel, where Ethan would screw the smoking window open and stand there, feeling the fingers of the wind on his face. If he closed his eyes, very hard, and turned everything else off in his mind (not too hard, given everything he wanted to forget), he could almost feel the world connecting around him. Stems sucking moisture. Roots intertwining, feeding each other messages. Moisture seeping out of the air. Cars whipping past it all on the freeway just ahead, the occasional scream of a happy drunk leaving the sports bar across the road.

As follows Chris up the stairs, the dark wood groaning under his feet, Ethan can’t feel anything like that. It’s like Chris doesn’t even live here. Ethan’s own house sits at the back of his mind, its wooden frame looming and empty. He’s going to tell Chris to sell it. The idea of going back there, to the bed that he shared with Mia, to Rose’s old nursery…

Slowing, Ethan tries to reign his control back in. He can feel his lungs gasping, the fluid of all that he’s lost filling them until his organs are crackling within him. Chris has led him to a closed door at the end of the hall.

Ethan half-wonders if it’s speech time or something. It would be just Chris’ style to administer a pep talk that’s gonna make Ethan want to bite the tongue out of the other man’s mouth, but fortunately, it doesn’t come to that. Chris just gives a tiny sigh and pushes the door open to Rose’s new nursery.

For half a moment, Ethan’s thoughts slow down. He takes a mental paise. Well, this- this isn’t what he was expecting.

Where the rest of Chris’ house is sharp and glossy, Rose’s room is a swath of warmth and excess. The walls have been sheened in a rose-gold tint, the entire floor plush and pink. There are story books and stuffed animals, blocks and a dollhouse, bean bags on the floor and mobiles suspended from the ceiling. It’s as if all those weeks of curling up on his side, terrified about her not being taken care of right, are draining out of him now, and the relief is like nothing he could have ever needed more. Chris has capable hands. Even when Ethan doesn’t want to admit it, that has always been true.

“This is…” he tries unsteadily, padding onto the blushing, fuzzy carpet.

“I know,” Chris says, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s very pink. I hope I’m not giving her a complex.”

“No,” Ethan says, his eyes homing in on her. She lies on her back in a striped onesie, her arms raised above her head, hands curled into miniature fists. She’s awake. Her pale eyes roam around the room, tiny burbles of spit popping on her lips. “It’s… nice.”

Hanging limply at his sides, his hands tremble.

Frowning, Chris turn to him. “You should have come sooner,” he says. “She missed you.”

Ethan clenches his eyes shut but the tears still escape. “I couldn’t,” he whispers. “You understand why I couldn’t. Right?”

He’s asking Chris but feels the words direct themselves towards Rosemary, seeking her forgiveness. He couldn’t let her see him like that- throwing things, screaming, tearing at himself, curling up in a ball and not moving until his joints were so stiff he felt like his bones would never realign. Being away from her was like being cleaved in half. It was like being locked in prison. But he had to. He just had to.

“I understand,” Chris says steadily. “I’ve done my best to take care of her in your absence.”

Slowly, Ethan approaches the crib, his entire body trembling. He plants his hands down on the railing for support, gently leaning over to peer down at her.

“Hi,” he says hoarsely, afraid that even the sight of him will make her wail, terrified that he has become a stranger to her. “Hi, Rosemary.” When she doesn’t startle, he reaches in and delicately lifts her out of her cradle, wrapping her up in his arms.

“See?” Chris says when she gives a small squeal and burrows into his chest. “There’s nothing to worry about, Ethan. You’re still her father.”

Ethan’s vision doubles, the tears creating a kaleidoscope over his eyes. He turns his head to the side so that they won’t fall on her. He is so relieved.

Tremblingly, Ethan turns to really look at Chris for the first time today. The man’s off-duty clothes are still nice, a plain black t-shirt and pants that border more on comfortable than professional. Still, with the hard lines on his face and the way his body is built like a goddamn fucking tank, he looks so out of place in this room that Ethan feels himself start to laugh.

“What?” Chris asks.

The burst of laughter sits bright and warm in his chest. For one glorious second, Ethan feels the nonstop grief of the entire past month retreating to the edges.

“Here,” he says breathlessly, stepping forward, “Hold her.”

Looking perplexed, Chris fumbles to get his arms out before Ethan plants Rose inside of them. She goes without a fuss and Chris pulls her over his shoulder, his hand so huge that it covers both the soft sponge of her skull and most of her back. Ethan laughs even harder.

“You look so stupid,” he says. “How do you know how to care for a baby?”

Chris shrugs. “Claire,” he answers. “When my parents were gone, I took care of her.”

“She wasn’t a baby though.”

“No, I-” He gives a sheepish grin. “I read a lot of parenting articles.”

Ethan plants his hands on his knees, breathless with laughter. Chris watches him, unable to reel back an empathic smile at the display, but quickly feels it drop off his face. Quicker than he can catch on, Ethan is sobbing, chest suddenly heaving in a much different way.

“I miss her,” he says with his eyes squeezed tight. “She should be here.”

Chris’ mouth feels dry. “I’m sorry,” he says for the millionth time. Ethan hasn’t had the stomach to see him in person until now, but they’ve communed over the phone nonstop since landing, and Chris has not stopped apologizing. He probably never well. It will probably never make a difference.

“Do you want to see your room?” Chris asks after a moment.

The reprieve in that question is so sweet and generous that Ethan’s ribs hollow out. Frowning, his cheeks wet, he screws on his face and nods.

“You cook too?”

Bent over the marble countertop, Chris stands with his back to Ethan, plating a dish of risotto for each of them.

“You don’t have to sound so incredulous about everything,” Chris says, turning, but even the firm gruffness of his weathered voice is enough to reinforce Ethan’s amusement. It’s the juxtaposition, maybe. Ethan knows Chris as a fucking mercenary, strapped to the nines in tactical gear, loaded up with weapons that certainly make Ethan feel like a civilian no matter how skilled he gets. Seeing him in these settings is bizarre.

Solid and towering, even in the kitchen, Chris places the steaming meal down in front of him.

“Thanks,” Ethan says, digging in. The buttery rice dissolves on his tongue, piquant notes of the peas and carrots it’s tossed with filling his mouth. He’s been subsisting off of vending machines and fast food for weeks now, and if he could prove that he still has a soul somewhere inside of him, the homecooked food wakes it up and does something to it. “Oh,” he says, his mouth full and burning. “You can cook.”

There’s a satisfied little smile on Chris’ face as he takes his place across from Ethan.

For a moment there’s silence between them. Chris clears his throat, the sound awkward, but he doesn’t make a move to say anything else. Ethan feels the distance stretching across them, splitting down the table, that grating tension kicking back into full gear.

It’s been like this over the phone these last few weeks. Chris all business and updates, seemingly disinterested in discussing anything else. Those tiny, rare glimpses that Ethan got into Chris feel like glowing gems collected near his heart now, but they are so old at this point that they’ve lost their color.

There was a time when he felt like Chris was an iron wall, all of his emotions and memories bulwarked safely behind it. Then there was a brief moment where Ethan wondered if maybe- just maybe, there was simply nothing else to him. Now Ethan sees him for what he is. He is perpetually uncomfortable.

Something settles over Chris in the quiet moments. When he’s not in action, it’s like he has no fucking idea what to do. Ethan feels a simmer of hatred well up inside of him. He trusted this man. He trusted him with everything.

“Do you remember sparring?” Ethan asks.

Chris, eyes lost in his plate as he chews each mouthful methodically, looks up at Ethan. “Yes, I do.”

“I want to start doing that again.”

“Okay,” Chris answers.

Ethan’s hand tenses around the fork. “You’re really not going to give me anything else, are you?”

There’s genuine confusion in Chris’ eyes. “What?”

“You can’t even carry a fucking conversation,” he lashes out. On some level, he knows it’s mean. On all levels, he wants it to hurt. “You won’t even look me in the eye.”

“Ethan,” Chris says. It’s a warning.

“I’m so sorry that you blew up my goddamned wife, but that doesn’t mean you get to hide behind your stupid popped collars and pretend that we don’t know each other.”

There’s steam coming out of his words. Ethan feels them scald, but he isn’t doing this to see Chris get tortured by guilt. He isn’t saying these things because he wants to watch those puppy eyes well with tears. He’s doing it because it makes Chris slam his fist down on the table, his whole aura going alight with frustration, the sheepishness burning completely away.

Ethan knows him. He probably knows him better than anyone.

“Stop it, Ethan,” Chris orders, fork jabbed in the other man’s direction. “You have no idea how hard this is for me.”

“For you,” Ethan states.

“I would do anything,” he growls, the muscles in his neck tensing. “Anything, to bring her back. And I will do whatever I have to to make things right now. I would bet anything that you know that.”

Ethan pushes out of his chair, the wooden legs screeching against the kitchen tiles.

Behind him, the glow of the living room just past the foyer lines his body, those ornate lamps putting in the work. The entire layout of Chris’ first floor is open air, the rooms becoming each other. It is just like him to live like this. Needing space. Not displaying his personality. Keeping the lights on at night even when no one is using them.

“Prove it,” he says, his eyes full of fire. He’s standing above Chris now, staring down at him. Chris’ frown stays pressed defiantly to his face, his forehead furrowed. Chris makes to lift his hand and Ethan slaps it, knocking the fork from his fingers.

Chris looks like he’s about to do something, maybe grab him by the shoulders or put his hands up in anticipation of a swing, but he never gets that far. Ethan lurches forward and drops down into Chris’ lap.

“What-” the older man asks quietly, stunned, as Ethan stares into him hard, eyes grating back and forth over those deep brown irises and all of the secrets Chris keeps locked up behind them.

Ethan remembers walking out of the hotel, into the strip of grass behind the parking lot, and feeling the grass reach out to him. Its blades beneath his soles, its strands between his toes. Then he laid down on his back and it was like he could feel it. Hear it. Growing pains as it stretched from the dirt, pleased murmurs when the breeze slipped through it, delighted screaming when the rain started to fall.

“I know how you look at me,” Ethan grits out, their gazes gripping each other. It’s only because Ethan is looking at him so intently that he sees it: Chris’ eyes lose their edge. That rough, angry gleam softens, melting into something else. “After Louisiana. I saw it. You think I just wouldn’t notice? You really think after spending all of those nights together, I wouldn’t see it?”

“Ethan,” Chris bargains helplessly. He flinches when Ethan’s hands clasp down on either side of his face, two thumbs pressing to the apples of his cheeks.

“Prove to me that you’ll make up for this,” he hisses. “Prove it by telling me the truth.”

All those nights they spent, sparring and drinking, more like therapy sessions than cracking one open with the boys. He remembers lying in the confetti of their traumas, exhausted, telling each other things nobody should ever know. Ethan loved Mia. He would never have done anything to betray her. All the same, he was not immune to the way his chest would crack open and he’d want Chris to drink from it, those nights when they were both delirious from the alcohol and the oversharing, when something in Chris’ perfectly organized eyes would give, forming shapes of longing that Ethan couldn’t understand.

He couldn’t reach out and touch the other man. He couldn’t ask to be held or beg to be fucked, because that would have been massively selfish. So instead, he offered Chris something else. He gave himself over to him. Fully. Let him call the shots. And Chris’ shot had been this: moving him far away, across the globe. Leaving his life. Leaving them vulnerable.

“I couldn’t,” Chris answers. His eyes are wide and gulping now, genuine fear streaking through them. “Mia,” he says. “And your baby.”

“You got rid of me.”

“No,” Chris says, a grunt that’s sent volleying back at him. “No. I just wanted you to have a normal life, for Christ’s sake. I had no right to fuck things up for you. Especially not after everything you’d been through.”

Chris understood things in a way no one else could. He didn’t balk at horrors; he thrived when he talked about them. He was at his most animated when hashing out trauma, laughing crudely at Ethan’s jokes, grappling razor-sharp with any topic that needed tackling. Ethan has never known anyone else in the world who is like that. He has never felt connected to anyone like that before. Even now, the Mold in his body is reaching out, desperate to connect, slamming and slamming against Chris’ iron wall.

It used to be so easy between them. It used to be so effortless.

“It was lonely,” he says, gripping Chris’ face harder. “Without you. I was lonely.”

Chris gives a small hiss, reaching up to capture Ethan’s wrists. “You’re hurting me,” he says.

“You’re hurting me,” Ethan cries back.

Suddenly Chris’ hands are in his hair, cupping the back of his skull, pulling him closer until their lips press together in an opened-mouthed mess of sweat and heat. A tiny, tiny opening reveals itself in Chris’ heart and the Mold leaps towards it. Years run between their lips. That constant needing and denying drips like oil down their chins.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Chris says roughly against his mouth, breath coming out in shaky exhales. “Please, Ethan. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Ethan knows that Chris is all hard lines and sandpapered edges. He knows it from throwing bare fists into Chris’ open palms. He knows it from sparring together. Those rough, calloused hands all over him, sliding down to teach him how to disarm a knife, a gun, wrapping around his neck in a choke, swiping for his eyes, seizing his arms as his hips lock him against a surface.

Still, he is shocked and pleased at the coarseness of Chris’ lips against his own. Chris makes him so aware of the softness of his body. Ethan feels so small, so pliant, so plush in his presence. Ethan has never thought of himself as anything other than a man or a husband or a father, but in Chris’ arms, he feels like a marshmallow.

He releases a shaky breath. Then, parting his lips, he lets Chris’ tongue inside.

The fungal colony inside of Ethan pulses with interest.

There is something warring between them. He feels it in the way his chest lattices against Chris’. It’s there in the wrest of their tongues, not sweet and exploring, but desperate and hungry. It’s the way he slips his hands beneath Chris’ sleeves, sliding over flesh to grip the back of his shoulders, pulling him close, and how Chris responds in kind by crushing Ethan so tightly to him he can hardly breathe. The network of Ethan’s brain gasps for neurotrophin, wanting to suck it out of Chris. He wants to get to his source and see what he is made of, learn his deepest secrets, know and form bridges with every last part of his soul.

Ethan dissolves into his kiss, sucking needily at Chris’ tongue. He loses so much of himself in their bodies that he almost doesn’t realize that Chris is suddenly clasping him tight against his collars, running a hand up and down Ethan’s back, whispering to him.

“It’s okay,” he says, face buried into Ethan’s neck. Ethan realizes that he’s sobbing again. Hot tears roll down his face and land on Chris’ arms.

“I feel so broken,” Ethan bleats. “I feel like I’ll never be okay again.”

“I know,” Chris says, squeezing harder. “I’ll help you. I’ll get you back to normal.”

“There is no normal anymore,” he says unevenly, and in one epiphanous explosion, he knows that it’s true. “Normal is in the gutter.”

“That’s okay too,” Chris whispers.

“I feel dead,” he says, quietly, the words full of terror. “Deep inside myself. I- I can’t tell if I made it out or not. I can’t tell if any of this is real. I feel like I’m dead.”

Chris’ fingers clench around him. He burrows his head beside Ethan’s, letting their skulls scrape together.

“You feel warm,” Chris tells him.

Ethan wakes up slowly, his head spinning.

It’s barely six in the morning, the room sweating with the low blue hues from the darkness outside, when Chris is at his doorway, filling the frame. “Come on,” he says. Ethan has barely convinced himself he’s not dreaming before the older man is turning to leave again. “You wanted training? Come on.”

Ethan stumbles out of the mess of blankets, his knees buckling once they hit the floor, but he catches himself against the mattress and uses it to help work his way to the bathroom. The sedative Chris gave him was more glorious than anything he’s felt all month. It didn’t let him put up a fight. It wrapped around him and pulled him down, submerging him in its merciful darkness, rendering him dead to the world. He wonders what the Mold does while he sleeps. He wonders what it dreams about.

He’s bleary, his body exhausted from the whiplash of changes, as he leaves the dark, intricate bedroom and staggers into the en suite bathroom.

The first thing he does is throw cold water into his eyes, trying to shock himself awake. Then he sets to work rebandaging his hand. The flesh has started to seal itself together, knitting around the gouge where his two sacrificed fingers used to be, but it’s still grotesque and pulpy and nothing he wants to look at.

Chris had all his shit brought over from the house weeks ago. Not much- just the essentials. His clothes, some products, his medicines, a few of his devices. He doesn’t really care what happens to the rest. He should be the kind of widower who takes his wife’s clothing and clings to it at night. He should store her favorite trinkets on an alter which he can worship her by. But the idea of having her things and not her upsets him so badly he can’t even entertain it.

It wasn’t just Chris who was supposed to take care of her. He was supposed to, too. More. And yet he couldn’t tell it wasn’t her anymore? He couldn’t even figure out that it was an entirely fucking different person sharing his bed?

Ethan cleans himself up and dresses, pulling on sweatpants and a flannel. It was eighty degrees yesterday but Chris has the central air conditioner kicked up to a high intensity, leaving his hands trembling and stiff. He stops by Rose’s room on the way down, ready to be pissed as hell on her behalf, but her room holds a gentle balminess unlike the rest of the house. He plucks her out of her crib and she still doesn’t cry. For a few minutes, he sits with her on the floor and plays with her, letting her grasp and taste the toys Chris left strewn across the carpet. She is warm and thriving in his hands and the Mold goes quiet, completely placated, in awe of the tender ways she webs around his life force.

When he gets downstairs, Chris is seated at the dining table, drinking a cup of coffee.

His shoulders are boxed back, rigid as mountains, the expression on his face flattened to give nothing away. As Ethan steps forward on uncertain footing, toeing his way across this new territory, there is no indication in Chris’ body language that last night even happened.

“I made you toast,” he says, not looking up from the coffee. “And an egg. It’s in the toaster.”

“Th- thanks,” Ethan mumbles, streaming around him. The dining portion of the kitchen is separated by a near-indistinguishable floor marker where the title changes color. On Chris’ counter is a rack of mugs and a swirling dispensary of Keurig cups and tea bags. He sees the toaster tucked into a corner, the charred ends of the toast visible behind the glass, and awkwardly sets about opening every overhead cabinet until he locates the one that houses the plates.

Everything about Chris is militant: his reserved nature, his pristinely organized home, the way every box of cereal and bag of granola has been emptied out and stacked in his own Tupperware containers. Ethan doesn’t know why he ever imagined Chris as a bumbling bachelor who lived in a pigsty. It’s just that Chris is so good at protecting his image, putting up a glamour that blankens his face and allows whoever peers into it to come back with their own conclusions. Ethan supposes that tabula rasa was always more like a mirror for him. The only reason he didn’t live in a mound of his own filth was because Mia didn’t let him. He’d projected himself onto Chris. He’s still doing that, he guesses. Or the Mold is. Something.

It makes his chest twist, knowing how far away they are. He wants to know Chris. He wants to get behind that iron fence. He is so tired of standing behind it and thrashing at the gates.

Ethan plates the toast, eyes feasting on the still-warm egg slabbed on top of it. It’s just beyond the point of plain, the yellow yolk a runny crater in the middle of it all, black pepper and a sprig of something green nesting within.

“You can sit,” Chris offers, still not looking at him, but Ethan shakes his head. He leans back against the countertop and takes small nibbles, stomach still rolling from the overeating he indulged in last night.

“Fair enough,” Chris rumbles lowly. He tilts his head, gaze landing back on Ethan, and Ethan is surprised by it until he hears that Chris’ voice is all business again. Chris hides behind business. It’s his protective shield. “What are you hoping to get out of resuming our training?”

“I-” Ethan tries, exhaling hard. He doesn’t know if it’s the way trauma fucked his brain to pieces, or if it’s the fact that his body is fueled by mold and rot rather than arteries and oxygen, but it’s been hard getting his thoughts to run smoothly. “I feel so powerless, I- I want to get strong again.”

Chris gives a sharp, affirming nod. “We can do that.”

“Are you driving?” he asks, a half-hearted smile pulling at his lips. “Or are we going to be chauffeured around by your henchmen?”

“Neither,” Chris answers. He leans back and tips the last dregs of his coffee into his mouth.

“Uh,” Ethan says. “Aren’t the grounds more than an hour from here?”

“You’re in my home now, Ethan,” he says simply. With a pleased look on his face, Chris sets the mug down and rises to his feet.

Ethan had been wondering how even someone like Chris could spend all of his waking hours in such an unimaginative, generic-looking dwelling. Now he understands, because once Chris takes him to the pantry and pulls the fucking shelf across the floor, like it’s nothing, revealing the locked panel and hidden stairwell that leads down to the basement hidden below his home, a space that is undeniably Chris Redfield rises up around him.

That place up there is not his home. This is.

The first below-ground cavern room is an operating station, all of Chris’ equipment set up around a desk, half a dozen monitors screwed into the stone walls. His weapons are displayed too, pretty and glistening, accompanied by random artifacts that Ethan can only assume are trophies taken from missions. Books upon books line the shelf installed across the entirety of the back wall- if he squints, Ethan thinks he can make out whole bays packed with hand-filled journals. He feels a sudden, dry-mouthed need to know what Chris writes in them.

He feels it in his gut: Chris’ essence is soaked into this room. The source that sits at his center is on display here, tangible, such that Ethan can clench his fingers and almost feel it pulse in his palm.

“Here.” Chris tears his attention away by taking hold of a giant barn-style door and scraping it open.

In a slow reveal, Chris’ gym comes into his field of vision. Ethan’s eyes swallow it. The layout is massive, parking-garage big, a huge open pit in the middle of a well-stocked training ground, with punching bags and treadmills and targets lined up around the perimeter.

“Damn,” Ethan whistles, stepping onto the padded floor.

“You’re welcome here whenever you want,” Chris offers, pulling the door closed behind them. “I’ll give you the code.” He clears his throat. “As for today- what do you want to do?”

“Drills?” Ethan asks uncertainly. He looks down at his left hand. “I need to get used to the three finger thing.”

“Save the punching for your dominant arm,” Chris agrees.

“Might make for a good thwacking tool,” Ethan shrugs. “Nice club of dead nerves.”

Chris smiles. “We’ll give it a go.”

They take position in the center of the room and it’s all the familiarity of their past, just in a different setting. It’s been a long time since he and Chris used to run drills at the BSAA base downtown, but Ethan feels their bodies take up form immediately, rolling into natural stances as they position themselves across from each other.

“Come at me,” Chris instructs him. Ethan feels his back leg take his weight, his shoulders lowering to let his fists cover his face. “We’ll start from there.”

They waste no time on pretense.

Ethan lunges, snapping forward with the propellant of all his rage and grief, and is delighted to find that Chris isn’t prepared to hold back. Chris smacks right into Ethan’s swing with his forearm, blocking an overhead attack, and grabs Ethan hard enough to send him spilling to the ground.

To his surprise, he doesn’t hit the floor. It would be fine, everything below their feet has a certain squish to it, but Chris’ fist is wrapped around the fabric of his shirt, holding him inches from the surface. His energy is electric and tapped, whipping through him and into Ethan. Something both frustrated and aroused flares through Ethan’s veins.

“Push me off,” Chris orders.

With his teeth clenched, Ethan does. He plants his feet and pushes off the ground, then curls underneath Chris’ arm to try to flee. It doesn’t work. Chris holds tight, throwing the brunt of his weight downhill, and Ethan feels himself being forced back to the floor.

“You’re too strong,” he grits out, an Atlas-sized heaviness bearing down on his shoulders as they shake, trying to fight off Chris’ weight.

“It’s not about strength.” Chris’ voice is hard, gruff. He hasn’t even broken a sweat. “It’s about using your opponent’s strengths against him. What are my strengths, Ethan?”

In one motion, Ethan stops resisting Chris’ force. He feels the slight stagger in Chris’ step, knocked off balance by the sudden change, and he throws himself backwards onto the ground. With a quick scuttle, he lands on all fours and then springs up, rushing Chris before the older man can straighten himself out. He grabs him, one arm cinching below his elbow, the other seizing the collar of his shirt right at the base of his neck.

“You remember,” Chris growls as Ethan locks him into place. Driving him backwards, Ethan puts up a knee and presses it to the delicate flesh of Chris’ intestines, a threat that orders Chris not to move. “Good, Ethan.”

It’s very hard to get out of a restraint like this. Ethan doesn’t want to let him out.

“Did you ever think about it?” he asks, pinning their hips together. “Before? When we were fighting?”

“Think about-” Chris starts before giving a sudden, “Oh.”

He hefts forward, trying to shatter Ethan’s position, but Ethan braces himself and locks his arms tighter in place.

“I thought about it,” Ethan divulges. “I thought about it every time you tossed me to the floor.”

“I did too.” Chris shares this slowly, unsure, like he can’t decide if he should. Then he gives a rough laugh. “A couple times, I guess, but… I thought I was just being a pervert.”

“Well,” Ethan answers.

The conversation comes to a dramatic end when Chris grunts, slamming his left forward shoulder into Ethan’s. Pain sizzles down the younger man’s scapula and he cries out, loosening his grip. Chris has him then, both hands on his face, lowering him methodically to the ground.

“I wanted to do this,” he says, a sureness flooding in as he throws a leg over Ethan’s torso. With that motion, Ethan’s back is pinned uncompromisingly to the floor. Chris’ immobilizing hands change locations, wrapping around Ethan’s wrists to plant them above his head, but they do not clasp like chains around Ethan’s arms. Instead, they delicately trace the tender webbing of his veins.

He would never admit it, but Ethan’s cock goes heavy and hard whenever he thinks about the way that Chris can throw him around like it’s nothing, like he’s a doll packed with straw. Chris could do anything he wanted to him. But he won’t. Because Chris is restrained by things that aren’t physical. He could knock Ethan out cold with a single punch, but he’s gentle and apologetic, and Ethan knows he never would.

“Please,” Ethan begs, his throat dry. “Hold me down.”

He wants to feel Chris trapping him against the floor. He wants to squirm against the shackles of him, unable to escape, feel his helplessness and have no choice but to give in to it. He knows Chris never would. But maybe if he asks.

Chris looks perplexed again, his eyes folded in sympathy rather than narrowed in dominance. Another thrust of frustration rips through Ethan. He slips his foot through the inner side of Chris’ and bucks, hard, throwing his weight to the side and sending them both tumbling until the tables are turned, Ethan landing on top of the bigger man.

Below him, Chris is completely yielding. For the first time, Ethan can see how exhausted he is. Chris’ face is etched in lines. There’s a deep, heavy sadness burned into his eyes, sunken so far that Ethan can imagine sticking his hands in there and never being able to spoon all of it out. He wonders at how long Chris has been on the job. How much he’s had to see. How much his body has endured.

Chris looks up at him, completely vulnerable, and Ethan feels a shuddering of need. A need to hold him down and please him. A desire to make him squirm and moan, to ease the weariness on his face and exorcise the sadness out of his eyes. He has a distinct sense that Chris would take anything Ethan had to give him. However rough. However delicate.

A hot slash of fear rips through him and he jumps to his feet.

“Rose,” he says breathlessly, cold ice spreading through his veins. He can’t feel her down here, he realizes. He reaches out for her presence and the line is dead. “We-” His lungs are going to burst. “We- we fucking forgot about Rose.”

“It’s okay, Ethan,” Chris groans, planting down an elbow and rising to his feet.

“No it’s not,” he throws back, heart swelling dangerously in his chest. “We can’t just leave her alone like that.”

“It’s okay,” he growls. “See this?” He holds up his wrist, showing off the watch strapped to it. “It’s a baby monitor. If she starts crying, we’ll hear her.”

“But-” he shakes out, “You don’t know what could happen. Somebody could break in. Someone could steal her.”

Chris’ mouth is pressed into a hard line. “Ethan. Do you really think that I don’t have at least three operatives with their eyes on my home at all times?”

“Oh,” Ethan heaves out, his pulse finally starting to come back down. “Right,” he says, “Right. Right.”

Chris steps forward, grabbing him by the back of his neck, but this time it isn’t to restrain him. It’s to hold him steady.

“Everything is okay,” Chris promises. “Rosemary’s okay. You’re okay.”

“I’m not okay.” He glares down at the floor hard, his vision trembling. “I’m fucking- what if she comes back? To finish what she started?”

“You killed her,” Chris reminds him harshly, no wiggle room in his words. “Remember?”

“How do I even know if that was real?”

“Because it was.” Chris grips him harder. “Listen, Ethan, I can’t make you believe anything. But I can get you strong again. Strong enough to take me down. I’ll show you tricks I wouldn’t even trust my own men with.”

“I’m a horrible father,” he hyperventilates. “I didn’t even think about her.”

“You aren’t a horrible father,” Chris says. “Trust me.”

“I hate you,” he whispers, eyes rolling up onto Chris’ face. He sees the older man wince. “I wanted you so bad. So bad.”

Chris’ overwhelming authority circles around him, pulling him close. It forms a casing around his body, bullet-proof, thick as fuck, thicker than the fingers Chris is trailing below his jaw. He closes his eyes and gives himself to it, murmuring a little, his distress melting into the way Chris explores him so thoroughly just by dragging those hands along his lips and into the hollow of his throat.

They are pressed together, and Ethan feels the Mold squirming against his chest. Ethan’s network seeps into Chris, working deep into the folds of him, streaming through his walls, curling up with the soft and squishy parts of him. It’s just a taste. A tiny sampler. But just from that, Ethan can tell that there is so much sadness in Chris’ chest. So much exhaustion. Louder than anything, though, is his guilt. Chris’ guilt is so massive it would not fit in this room. Or this house. Or the world.

What did you do, Chris? Ethan almost asks. With Chris’ shield destroyed, he almost asks.

But Chris’ shield isn’t broken, Ethan realizes suddenly. It’s just bigger now. It has inflated in size to let him inside of it, an umbrella that clamps them together so hard they seem to fuse.

“You have me,” Chris says, and it sounds like he’s being tortured.

Ethan wanders around the house for a while, unsure what else he is supposed to do with his time.

He takes Rose with him, wanting to be close to her, and they kill the hours together. He balances her on her knee and flicks through channels, eyes marveling at the herculean size of Chris’ wall-mounted tv. When he’s sick of the muted colors that dominate the house’s interior, he discovers a sliding screen door that leads out to a backyard and patio.

As he sits in the glow of the sun, telling quiet stories to his blissfully happy baby, he wonders if there’s a scope trained on him the whole time.

Being with Mia was like settling down into a steambath. It felt right. Easy. Healing.

Being with Chris used to feel like that too. Their conversations would flow like butter, and their bodies would orbit like magnets. It never mattered that he couldn’t fill the space between them. They filled the space with words and secret, not-so-secret glances. Now Ethan can’t help but feel like both of them are empty.

He stands up, worried about exposing Rose to the sun for too long, and feels himself stop, feet planting to the bricks below him. He feels it. Just behind him. The earth is singing to him.

He turns, slowly, afraid, and while he doesn’t know what’s happening to him, he sure as fuck knows it’s related to the Mold. Deep down, Ethan thinks that he always knew something wasn’t right about him. Maybe even that first day home from Louisiana. He got really fucking good about denying it though. For good reason, too. It was working.

Now that he knows better, something has changed. He can’t cram the truth into the corner of his mind anymore. He feels his skin sweating, his pores gasping, to taste the dirt. He wants to be with the roots and stems. He wants to suspend himself in the moist soil and connect with them, feed them, feel their messages pulsing through him.

Ethan grits his teeth and tears himself away, heading back inside.

He heads upstairs and puts Rosemary down, quietly shutting her alone behind the bedroom door.

For a second Ethan stands in the hall, feeling hollow, not knowing what to do next. And then he feels it. Tiny, tremulous shockwaves are sizzing through the floor. Ethan’s bare feet picks it up, and it tastes like fear and like guilt and like Chris’ skin.

He follows it, confused, until he’s standing in front of the closed door that must be the entrance to Chris’s room. He’d left hours ago to go deal with business at the BSAA; Ethan didn’t even know he was back.

Half-expecting it to be locked, Ethan nudges the door open with his foot. It’s not even latched. It swings slowly in, revealing a very unconscious Chris Redfield.

The older man lies on his back in the bed, breath coming out in tiny spurts. He’s above the blankets, his head not even resting on a pillow, and Ethan stops, eyes roaming all over him.

There is nothing unique about this room other than the fact that there’s a canopy structured over the bed, the curtains open but black-out thick, ready to be drawn at any time. Ethan thinks about how Chris always knows exactly how to handle him when the panic crashes in. He wonders what Chris needs when he needs to feel safe. He wonders why Chris tortures himself, constantly, depriving himself of things like friendship and pillows, just to keep himself tough.

He’s having a nightmare. That much is clear.

If Ethan couldn’t feel it pulsing through the house, he’d sure as fuck be able to see it on his face. Chris’ expression is knotted, his eyes scrunched tight, little whines releasing from his lips. There is a vulnerability there. Pain. There is a truth that he has been keeping from Ethan.

Ethan bends over him, studying the lines in his face like it’s palmistry. One wrinkle here for all of the mistakes he’s made. One crease there for all of the people he’s failed. His love line and his life line, all tangled up, a mess not even someone with his brawn could disentangle.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers in his sleep, shuddering, and it’s like he knows Ethan is there. A wetness wells in the corner of his eyes and tears go rolling down his cheeks.

Ethan’s heart starts pounding.

He has to know. He needs to know.

He leans down, mouth parting, and drinks the tears off of Chris’ skin.

Chris’ body dissolves with his. The older man’s organic matter is absorbed into him and he staggers away from the bed, the Mold uproarious with information. It takes this sample of Chris and consumes it, breaks it down, extracts from it. It’s all done with such a ferocity that Ethan stumbles back, collapsing onto the floor. His eyes go black. His body crumbles. He feels his skull hit the ground and he’s gone, the Mold taking over.

He comes to in Chris’ arms. He’s not being held. He’s being shaken.

“Ethan,” Chris yells, his teeth set in a hard line. “Jesus Christ, Ethan.”

Ethan’s eyes roll up. The world snaps back into place.

He swipes the back of his hand over his mouth and feels the tacky gum of the Mold smear across his face. He’s not sure where his mind went or how long it was there. What he knows is that Chris is certainly wide awake now, all of the lights in his room on, and he’s got Ethan clutched by both of his shoulders.

All at once, Ethan lurches back. He tears out of Chris’ grasp, his eyes alight with knowing. He watches Chris’ face; he counts down the seconds until Chris realizes that Ethan knows.

“You used me,” he spits out, entire body burning, “As bait.”

He tasted it in those tears. Chris didn’t just kill his wife with a misfire. He moved them there to lure out Miranda.

Chris stares down at him, his face completely unreadable.

“I had to,” he says simply.

“I trusted you with my life,” Ethan grinds out slowly. The rage is welling up from his chest, thickening in his throat, Mold bubbling and bursting beneath his skin. "I did not stop, even once, to question my trust in you."

“I had to make a crucial decision.” Chris looks away, snarling. “You were a sacrifice, Ethan, and that was shitty and I’m sorry. I thought I had things under control. I thought I would be able to intercept her weeks before she was anywhere near you. But I was wrong.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” he bursts out.

“Because,” Chris shoots back, “I couldn’t let you compromise the mission.”

“We could have done it together.”

“No, we couldn’t have.”

“Why not?” he demands. Then, when he’s met with silence, he repeats it louder. “Why. Not?”

“Because I couldn’t afford to let my feelings get in the way of what was right.” Chris clenches his eyes shut and pinches his face with his hands, kneading the space between them.

“This was right?” he demands in a wild flush, throwing his arms out around him. “This?”

“I needed to keep my distance.” He’s reasoning like he’s on trial and his defense is the pain on his face. There is so much pain on Chris’ face. “If I had told you, I wouldn’t have been able to go through with it.”

Ethan rises to his knees and he knows that Chris has no idea what he’s about to do. The bigger man steps back a little, caution all over his face, and Ethan wonders what he looks like. There is a moist, dark sponge oozing out around the bandages on his fucked hand. He feels that same substance smeared all over his face.

He hopes that he looks like a monster. A bioweapon. He wonders if Chris will make it his mission to distance himself and destroy him, next.

“Would you go back and change things?” he asks, creeping forward. “If you could?”

Chris swallows, his throat bobbing slowly. “Yes,” he says.

“What would you do?”

“I would-” Chris stumbles and falls into the chair positioned at the foot his bed, but instead of springing back up, he grips the arms in a tight clench. “I would move your family somewhere boring. Philadelphia or Boston or Cleveland. I would cut you out of my life, separate you from everything that has to do with me, and never speak to you again.”

“And that would have been love?” Ethan spits out.

Chris leans back and closes his eyes. “Yes,” he says, “It would have been.”

“Then what do you call this, Chris?” Ethan asks him. “What do you call what actually happened?”

“A mistake. An awful fucking mistake.”

“Well, that’s something we agree on, at least.”

He’s at the foot of the chair now, clawing his way up Chris’ legs. The older man gazes down at him, tormentedly, the crow’s feet pulling at his eyes unbearably pronounced. “Ethan,” he says quietly.

“Was it worth it?” Ethan asks. His palms are gliding over Chris’ thighs, smoothing up the front of his crotch, just the slightest bit of pressure to make Chris tilt his head back and breathe out of his nose, arching his body in Ethan’s direction.

“Ethan,” he says helplessly. “Don’t.”

He isn’t talking about Ethan’s hands.

“Your target was eliminated,” Ethan says, and he’s curious to find out that he genuinely wants to know. “You completed your mission. So. Was it worth it?”

Beneath the thick fabric of his sweatpants, Chris’ cock is thickening below Ethan’s palm, its shape pressing firmly into the curve of his hand. Chris opens his mouth and he’s panting. Ethan reads need in his glazed eyes, his tousled hair, the beads of sweat on his face. Need for more than just touch. Need for forgiveness.

“No,” Chris says, his eyes locked with Ethan’s, the word so absolute that the younger man has no choice but to believe him. “It was not worth it.”

“Then I release you,” Ethan growls up at him, his teeth bared.

Misted by lust and grief, Chris’ face pulls into a questioning frown.

“I release you from the guilt,” he says. “You can let it go.”

Slowly, Chris’ head moves, a near-indiscernible shake. A refusal. “A woman lost her life because of me. A child lost her mother.”

“And a man lost his wife, but now he’s got his hand wrapped around your cock,” Ethan scowls back.

“I-” Chris starts, leaning back into the chair. “I think I forgot how to be a person. I reverted back to being a solider again.”

“Well, you are good at it,” Ethan says.

“Yeah,” he breathes out, giving a tiny hiss when Ethan squeezes around his erection, gripping it through the fabric. “Too good.”

“What else are you good at?” Ethan asks.

He imagines that Chris is even more touch-starved than he is. This man has been alone for so long, bedded down by his job so thoroughly that Ethan cannot imagine him bringing suitors up to his room lest risk cheating on his life partner. He remembers the chemistry between them post-Louisiana, whip-like and crackling through the air between them, the kind of volatility you only get between two bodies that are aching for contact.

“I’ve gotten very good at pleasing myself.” Chris huffs out a self-disparaging laugh and Ethan can’t help but to grin.

“What a waste,” he murmurs, sliding his hands lower. He curls his fingers around the thickness of Chris’ thighs, trying to gauge just from the imprint of Chris’ cock exactly how large it is.

Ethan makes to take Chris’ pants off, hands hooked around the waistband, when two palms reach down to cup the sides of his face. “I’m sorry, Ethan.”

“Tell me sorry one more time,” Ethan snaps, his temper flaring back up.

“I know I can’t make up for it. I realize that.”

“Oh, you’ll make up for it,” he growls, pulling the sweatpants down around his hips. Chris’ cock springs out, beautifully thick, so large that Ethan has no idea how he could expect himself to take it without hours of prep. He wraps his good hand around it, feeling it swell in his grip.

Chris closes his eyes, still clutching the sides of Ethan’s face. His fingers tighten when Ethan spits onto his cock, slickening their contact, giving his hand something to work with.

“I forgive you,” Ethan tells him, “But I will never stop hating you for what you did.”

Chris’ eyes open. He looks hurt. Angry.

There, Ethan thinks, his chest swelling as the Mold reaches out and devours the emotions palpitating out of him. But it’s not just the Mold that takes interest. Chris’ cock leaps too, leaking all over his fist. Pleased, Ethan tightens his grasp and pumps harder.

“Oh,” he purrs, “I get it.” He lifts his hand into the air and turns it upside-down, jerking Chris off in the other direction. “You have a degradation thing. You want me to stroke your cock while I tell you all the horrible things you are?”

Chris’ expression roughens, his lips pursing hard, but he does not say no.

“It would be like you to get off on punishment,” he goes on. “You have to be in control so much of the time, don’t you? Chris Redfield always has to be the leader.”

He sees the prickle of blush spread across Chris’ face. Ethan is throwing his own words back at him. These are confessions that they shared in the privacy of the BSAA office, down among the filing cabinets and dust during the late-night hours.

“Ethan,” he says dryly, hips bucking slightly.

“What, you can’t handle a few mean words?”

“I need you,” Chris pants, his body spread out and open, completely bared. “Please come here.”

Ethan leans back and looks at the haze shadowing Chris’ eyes. He’s sweating, cold beads of it rolling down his hairline, his lips parted and releasing shallow breaths.

Chris is a lover. He’s a tank of a man, and sometimes he’s even a killing machine, but at the end of it all, once he’s stripped down to his skeleton, he is soft as all fuck, a gentle giant true to form.

“You need me for what?” Ethan taunts.

“I need you-” he sucks in a breath, hips hitching, mourning the loss of contact. “I need you closer.”

“No,” Ethan says. He rocks back on his heels and looks down at his hands, denying him. “You don’t deserve me.”

He can’t tell if the rejection puts the fire of loss or frustration into Chris’ eyes. Maybe both.

“You can always come down here and get me anyways,” he offers cruelly, “If you wanted to.”

It’s definitely frustration now. Chris’ face twists at the implication.

Ethan gives a languid shrug. “Have it your way,” he says, setting about to unwrap his bandaged hand. “Or, rather, my way.”

It’s as bad as he suspected. Where there was once a red pulp of gore, there are now bubbles of black pulsing from his bitten hand, the Mold taking up its work to heal the injury. He studies it for a second, even presses his fingers testingly to the gouge, before leaning back in and taking Chris’ cock between the three fingers left on that hand.

It’s like nothing else. Chris’ pleasure shoots right into the Mold, gets absorbed it, and Ethan, in turn, feels arousal flare through his body.

“Not that,” Chris moans, huffing, squirming against the back of the chair to thrust his dick between the netting of Ethan’s fingers. It’s not enough, it’s disgusting, it’s disturbing, and Chris’ brain dissolves with need.

“You did this to me,” Ethan barks. It’s not a performance. He’s pissed.

“I know,” Chris groans.

“You’re going to come like this.”

He feels it again. His pulse spikes with a jolt of pleasure as it rips through Chris and continues its circuit through him. He looks up and Chris is staring at him, desperation on his face, enough need and trust leaking off of him to feed the Mold for a lifetime.

“Ethan-” he twists, “I’m-”

He gives a groan, his cock pulsing as he comes, his teeth clenched hard and his face screwed up.

His semen mixes with the Mold and the colony eats it. As Chris pants, limp and spent on the chair, his stomach muscles heaving, Ethan feels himself fuse with the other man, becoming one.

He jumps to his feet. Unbuckles his belt. Then he’s thrusting hard into Chris’ mouth, working his cock deeper and deeper until Chris’ throat is closing around him, releasing vibrating hum’s that make his dick spasm with greed.

Ethan wraps his hands around the back of Chris’ skull, curling his fingers through his hair. He tangles up Chris’ short, dark locks with come and Mold, taking control of Chris’ face and fucking himself on it.

He hears something below him. A muffled sentence.

“Did you say something?” he asks, planting his dick against Chris’ inner cheek.

“I asked,” Chris says around his cock, “If you ever did this with your wife.”

“Did I ever give my wife a handjob and then skullfuck her?” he spits.

All at once, Chris pushes him away. The older man rises to his feet, stepping forward, and then he’s got Ethan’s hair in his hands, crushing him against his chest, forcing their mouths to meet in an angry kiss.

Chris tastes like cigarettes and supplication. He is hard and angled in all of the places Ethan has gone delicate.

“Fuck you,” Ethan snarls against his kiss, struggling to break free of Chris’ arms.

Chris just cups him harder, hard enough to hurt, licking at the inside of his cheek and then sucking his tongue into his own mouth. Inadvertently, Ethan lets out a ravenous moan.

“Yes,” Chris breathes into his mouth. “You want me.”

His arms slip down around Ethan’s waist. Then his mouth slips lower too, and Ethan feels two sets of teeth on his adam’s apple, holding the skin delicately between them as Chris licks and sucks at the sweat collected on the delicately thin flesh.

Ethan leans back, whining, as Chris’ motions intensify, working with a pressure that Ethan knows will bruise. “I want you,” he admits breathlessly, feeling loose and pliable. He thinks against of Chris knocking him around during training, sending punches that made Ethan’s knees shake, restraining him against the ground with a force Ethan could never dream of getting out of. He shudders harder.

Chris’ tongue goes to his collars, dragging across their protrusions. “How?” he asks. “How do you want me?”

“Over there,” Ethan orders, pointed at the bare wall behind the bed. “With your back to me.”

Chris breaks from him with a rough kiss. When he lets go, Ethan still feels the phantom constriction of those arms around him.

In front of him, Chris takes up the position gorgeously. He plants his palms above him on the wall, turning his neck slightly to watch Ethan on the other side of the room.

“Take off your shirt,” Ethan instructs as he starts stripping his own clothes off and throwing them to the floor.

Chris follows the command quickly, with soldier-like efficiency, and within the seconds Ethan is pressed up against his back, pressing a kiss to the nape of his neck. His hands travel across Chris’ chest, trailing through the spirals of body hair, squeezing and cupping the shape of his pectorals.

“I love your tits,” he says between his teeth, hissing it into Chris’ ear. His fingers pinch at the other man’s nipples, feeling them grow hard and pointed, and Ethan slides his cocks between the mountains of Chris’ thighs.

Chris looks offended for a second. Then he huffs out a laugh. Ethan licks both his palms and slickens the muscles rippling over Chris’ legs before pushing back between them.

Ethan keeps pinching Chris’ nipples, rolling them between his fingers, and Chris keeps giving uncomfortable laughs until the second he’s not, his noises transforming into aching whimpers. “I want to fuck your tits,” he growls.

“Jesus,” Chris groans, his thighs clenching, and Ethan’s cock gives a pleased pulse. “Jesus, Ethan.”

Ethan draws back and pulls him around, turning Chris to face him. He leans down and slides himself back between Chris’ thighs. This time, he’s thrusting back and forth in a more concentrated rhythm, his palms flatting out to knead Chris’ pecs below them.

“F-fuck,” Chris gasps, his entire body twisting beneath Ethan’s hands. With a rolling sound, he grabs Ethan’s fucked to hell palm and puts the still-human part of it in his mouth, sucking at the sensitive flesh.

“You’re getting hard again,” Ethan notices, eyes flashing delightfully at the sight.

“I want-” Chris mumbles, mouth still wrapped around his hand, the top of his tongue following the grooves in Ethan’s palm. “Come closer,” he whispers.

Ethan leans in, grabbing Chris’ hips and pulling them to him. He drags his belly up Chris’ cock with each thrust, feeling it grow and swell against him with each bout of friction.

He tips his head back, sighing, at the way Chris starts to fall apart in his palms.

“I will give you anything,” Chris pants out. “Anything you want, forever.”

Ethan’s eyes flicker open. Finally, finally, he feels it: they meet. The Mold inside of Ethan has been devouring Chris with every touch, every glance, but here, in their shared eye contact, something else happens. Chris meets him in the middle. The barrier breaks and all of the space that once existed between their bodies is gone.

“Love me,” Ethan orders, his mouth hanging open.

“I love you.” There is no hesitation. The statement is solid. Uncompromising. A truth that’s been there for as long as Ethan can remember. He believes it.

The Mold rears up inside of him, desperate to devour Chris’ love. Ethan starts to get dizzy. The oxygen loosens from his brain, leaving him standing there, gasping for it. He needs to lie down and recharge. He wants to go outside and feel the grass in his hair.

He clenches his eyes and heaves, shoulders rolling backwards, and then he feels himself go limp.

Chris catches him against his chest.

“Ethan,” he whispers, patting at his face until Ethan’s eyes open back up all the way. He is so tired.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. His limbs are floating. If Chris were to let him go, he would accordion-collapse onto the floor.

“What’s wrong?” There’s enough fear on Chris’ face to make the older man look all wrong.

“It’s the Mold,” Ethan whispers. “It’s feeding off of me.”

Chris’ hands go firm, pressing against his pulse to check his heart, laying across his forehead to scan him for a fever. He’s definitely burning, his skin hot to the touch, a thick sheen of sweat turning his flesh clammy.

“I wish none of this had ever happened to you.”

“It’s okay.” In this state of pure exhaustion, there is no room for his emotions. Ethan truly means it. He wonders if Chris knows.

Unsteady, Ethan lets Chris guide him onto the bed. He lowers himself onto his side, going slowly, fighting to stay conscious. When he opens his eyes, Chris is kneeling at the edge of the bed, meeting Ethan at his height. He leans forward and they kiss, Ethan biting at him, needing more of him.

“It’s not okay,” Chris growls. “None of this is okay.”

“Can I-” His eyes flutter open. He remembers staying up all night with Chris, talking for hours, how Chris felt like a tapped well pouring all over him. “Can I drink from you?”

“That...” Chris trails off, the hand stroking the side of his face freezing in place, “That sounded very Cadou, Ethan.”

“No.” Ethan shakes his head against the bedding. “Not like that. It’s just- it's like connecting to your energy.”

“I don't-” Chris falters.

“It won’t hurt. I promise. I’m not…” he frowns, hoping Chris will believe him. “I’m not a bioweapon.”

Chris’ brown eyes float back to him. “Even if you were…” He says it very softly, very carefully, because Ethan knows that he is breaking all of his rules by saying it. “I would protect you.”

Ethan rolls his skull back against the bed, laying himself out. “Can I show you, Chris?” he asks. “I’ve been… kind of doing it without asking, ah, microdosing I guess. But. I want to show you.”

Uncertainly, Chris nods. He takes a deep breath, releases it, and braces himself.

There’s not a lot at first. Just the quiet, stillness of the room. Then he feels Ethan inside of him.

The sensation hits him so hard he almost feels the urge to cry. Ethan is streaming through him, running around in his brain, exploring his skeletal structures and dripping through his veins, so vibrant and alive that it’s like someone is filling Chris’ body full of sunlight.

It’s over in just a moment, but when Ethan comes back, the younger man looks bright and refreshed, the light back in his eyes and the flush returning to his pale face.

“I can do that with plants,” he admits. “Feel myself go into them.”

“When did you realize you could do this?” Chris squeezes his eyes shut, trying to blink out the strangeness of the sensation.

“At the hotel. I started to get really sick, so I went outside for some air, and I could feel the earth calling to me.”

“Okay,” Chris says. “It makes sense, if it’s a network, it would need…. symbiotic nourishment.”

“I figured,” Ethan murmurs.

“Can you do it again?” Chris asks.

“With you?”

“Yeah.”

Ethan rolls into a sitting position. He plants his hands on the mattress. The Mold is oozing and bubbling out of his wound.

All at once, he drops down off the bed and into Chris’ lap. The older man startles, catching his weight, and falls on his ass in the process.

Ethan doesn’t waste a second. He lets the Mold plunge into Chris.

It's different this time. Chris isn't holding back anymore. Ethan's not sure how long they sit there, entangled in each other’s matter. Their minds meld and they meet in a horrible clash of unrestricted information, every single thing they’ve ever thought or felt on display for each other. Chris shows him everything. Even the worst things.

In one violently harsh motion, Ethan rips out of Chris' mind.

“You asshole,” he thunders.

“I don’t want any secrets,” Chris pleads.

“You were in love with me,” he says.

“Yes.”

Between any other two people, it would be the kind of revelatory confession that would end in kisses and weeping. Instead, it is a vicious and harsh reality to grapple with, because it has enlightened Ethan to the full and honest truth: Chris did not just send him there as bait, he picked him. He deliberately picked Ethan.

“I felt myself going soft,” Chris says, teeth gnashed together. “I thought that if I didn’t cut out that part of me, I wouldn’t be able to do my job anymore.”

Chris sent him there just to send a message to his own humanity. There is love inside of me, Chris had realized. So Chris decided to kill that love.

“I wasn’t the sacrifice at all,” Ethan says slowly, angrily. “You were.”

“Yes.”

Ethan reaches out and grips Chris’ face. He feels flames in his eyes and he does not know if the fury will ever completely leave. “I will hate you,” Ethan reminds him, the words renewed with a deeper vigor, “Forever.”

Chris reaches back, clamping his fingers over Ethan’s. “I accept that,” he says.

Their next kiss is all teeth, enamel clashing and scraping, Ethan biting at Chris’ lips until he’s got the bigger man growling in response, grappling with him for control. Ethan doesn’t know what will make up for it. He isn’t sure that anything Chris could do will ever soothe the awful, sick feeling of betrayal that sits in his gut. All the same, this is a good place to start: their mouths like weapons, hot and wet all over each other, Chris’ hands unafraid to grab him roughly and pin him down, their bodies grating against each other sharply enough to bring tears to his eyes and a snarl to his throat.

Then a sound erupts through the house- first in real life, and then through the watch discarded on Chris’ nightstand.

Rose.

They both leap up, breaking away from each other, and lunge in the direction of her room.

Ethan pushes through the door and there she is, screeching tinnitus-loud, thrashing her arms around in the bed.

“Rose,” Ethan breathes out, but she’s okay. Nothing’s wrong.

He scoops his arms beneath her and pulls her into his bare chest. “Shh, shh,” he coo’s.

“Oh,” Chris says, realizing he’s neglected to show Ethan around the nursery. “Sorry, I forgot. Her formula's here. In the mini-fridge.” He points awkwardly at the appliance on the floor. “And her diapers and everything are in the drawer below the changing table.”

“Yeah, thanks, Chris,” Ethan says sarcastically. “I used my common sense to figure that out hours ago.”

“Oh, okay.” Chris crouches and makes to retrieve one of the bottles, but Ethan stops him with a sigh.

“She just wants to be held,” he murmurs, and he knows it’s true because the Mold tells him it.

They take Rosemary back to the bed with them, both exhausted to their bones. Chris wraps Ethan’s hand back up, hiding the black stain crusted to it.

Chris’ bed is a mess, so they curl up on Ethan’s, lying on their sides and facing each other, both cradling a sleeping Rosemary between the warmth of their bodies. When Ethan closes his eyes, all he feels is the glow her softness warming his chest. All he feels is Chris’ forehead pressed to him, the older man’s hot, damp breath exhaling onto his face.

“I’m sorry for everything,” Chris says. “I know-” he adds before Ethan can cut in. “Just one more time. Then I’ll stop.”

Ethan clenches his teeth. “I don’t want her to grow up without a mother,” he mourns. “I don’t want her to be as fucked up as I am.”

“You’re an incredible father, Ethan,” Chris says, and because Ethan now knows the substance that Chris is made of, he can hear that Chris genuinely believes what he says. “And you’re an incredible man, too.”

“What if I crumble?” He’s so scared to ask that it escapes in a tiny whisper. His heart clenches in his chest. “What if the Mold takes me and she has no one?”

“Then I will take care of her.” Chris shifts and suddenly he is towering over Ethan. On his face sits the same exact look he gets whenever he accepts a new mission. “I will take care of everything from now on.”

Ethan grinds his teeth together, eyes narrowed. “I don’t want to be your wife,” he grits out.

“I will be your wife,” Chris says.

It takes all the effort in the world, but slowly, Ethan gives a shallow nod. He lies his head back down on the pillow, his breath kicking back up.

“Chris?” he asks, quaking. He gives a shudder, so much fear in that sound that Chris’ heart squeezes. “Can you… can you tell her a story? To help her fall asleep?”

Chris looks down at Rose, sleeping deeply in their arms. Then he looks back up at Ethan, who is staring at him, his eyes wide open and terrified. With a shaky sob, he starts to cry.

“Shh,” Chris says, pulling Ethan’s head against his chest. “Ethan, shh.”

He leans in, pressing the side of his head against Ethan’s.

“Once upon a time,” he starts.

Once upon a time, there were two men working to care for a motherless baby.

While they loved each other with a gripping fierceness, they had also been through hell and back, and sometimes the terror and rage got the better of them.

Still, they made it work. For each other. For the child.

They watched her grow, slowly, from a tiny, crying lump, into a toddler who laughed loudly and made messes with whatever she could get her hands on. They watched her bald head erupt into shiny, golden locks. They grinned with every new half-word she formed between her babbling lips.

Sometimes, when the world got to be too much, Chris would take Ethan into his bed and drape the thick, blinding curtains around them, suspending them both in a merciful darkness. He would arch his body back, panting, and let Ethan fuck him so deeply that the Mold spilled through him and etched itself into every corner. He would feel Ethan bind with him. Become him. Merge with him, until they were one symbiotic creature, and in those moments, Chris would have the curious thought, a tiny whispering, Does this make me a bioweapon too?

Sometimes, when they weren’t sparring or reading quietly together or hashing out mission details under the pretense of complete domestic confidentiality, Chris would pass by and see Ethan standing on the porch, all of his muscles rigid and straining, holding himself back.

“I’m having a hard time resisting it,” he’d hiss between his teeth the following night, fingers clawing hard into Chris’ forearms. “I hear it calling to me. My body is- it’s-”

There comes a day when Ethan can’t resist it anymore.

Chris finds him lying in the grass, dirt all over his skin, his eyes closed around a kind of soul-soothing peace that Chris has never, ever known. There is moss growing along his arms. There are daisies and dandelions poking out between his fingers and toes.

Chris reaches down, pulling him out of the earth, and Ethan blinks, disoriented, coming out of a deep, black unconsciousness. Where he was lying, there is a colony of mushrooms blooming in the bed of his imprint.

“Look,” Chris says reverently, pointing to Ethan’s hand.

Slowly, blinking the bleariness out of his eyes, Ethan raises it and turns it over. All of his fingers have grown back.

Things come to a head a few nights later, when, a gasping mess in Chris’ arms, Ethan can’t stand it anymore.

“It’s not enough,” he clenches out, fighting off the shakes wracking his entire body. He’s trying to lie down with Chris and connect with him, find satiety once more in the other man’s bottomless well, but all at once he realizes that Chris has a bottom. His life force does not go on forever. The Mold craves more. It needs earth. It needs a connection bigger than what one man can provide. It demands to be allowed to attach to everything.

“What do we do?” Chris whispers, squeezing him tightly enough to hurt.

“You need to let me connect,” he pleads, barely able to catch his breath. “If I don’t, I’m going to die. I’m going to wither into nothing.”

For a long time, Chris’ life had so much to offer. All the takeout his stomach could desire, and any home-cooked dish Chris had the ingredients to prepare. Huge, deep bathtubs for him to sink himself in. A bed that swallowed him whole. Pills to get him through the night on a euphoric high. Chris’ arms bound around him, the other man’s love spilling down him, Chris’ cock deep within him, alighting his body with the older man’s needy panting and desperate kisses. Coming here was like coming into a sanctuary for his physical self. Anything he could have ever wanted, he got it here.

But he has since stopped enjoying physical things. His body is no longer pleased by them.

It needs the ground.

“There has to be another way,” Chris says, all-business, taking this on as his new mission, but Ethan knows that Chris will be stupid and idyllic and delude himself until everything is ash in his hands, and this time, Ethan cannot let him. He shuts Chris down with a forceful, unyielding no.

“There isn’t,” he says, and when he looks into Chris’ eyes, he knows that Chris hears him. “You have to let me connect.”

Chris doesn’t want to. Ethan can feel his muscles quivering, the grief already spreading through him. He doesn’t want to. He wants to find another way.

But Chris loves him, and Chris cannot stand to see him in pain.

They stumble out into the night together, Ethan clinging hard to Chris for support, his organs and his skeleton and everything else degrading within the confines of his body. Chris slides open the screen door and the cold air hits Ethan’s face, sending a chill up his spine, the sensation so delicious he gives a tiny whine.

Chris leads him out onto the grass.

There is plantlife stretching up to reach him, grabbing at his flesh, making his skin sing wherever it touches. His brain turns to liquid. It drips down the inside of him, reaching back towards the earth, needing to fuse.

“Here?” Chris asks, and Ethan rolls his eyes up to see him. Chris is lit by the glow of the full moon behind his back. His skin shines, oily and aged, under its light, and Ethan thinks he has never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

“I love you,” he murmurs, stumbling onto his back into the dirt.

Chris staggers, going down with him, refusing to let go. He lands on top of Ethan and Ethan arches, emitting a pleased hiss. So much life against his back. So much warmth spilling over his front.

He blinks, trying to stay conscious. Both of Chris’ hands are in his scalp, stroking his hair.

“I love you too,” he whispers.

“Please tell her about me,” Ethan says. “Please tell her about Mia.”

“I-” Chris starts, swallowing around a lump of grief. “I saved her things, Ethan. In a storage unit in the city. I’m going to give them to Rose when she’s old enough.”

“See?” Ethan says, his mind filled with clarity. “I trust you. I trust you, completely, with everything.”

Below him, the moist dirt is sucking him down, sinking him into the land. Vines curl around his ankles and fingers, tangling gorgeously with his limbs, breathing and whispering their life and water and sunlight into him.

It’s not just them. It’s the rain of Chris’ tears falling all over his face, too.

He feels himself start to grow.

“I don’t want you to go,” Chris whispers.

“I won’t be gone,” Ethan says, lying his head back and feeling the sweet, nourishing spores of that absolute truth spreading through him. “I’ll just be here.”

That night, Chris Redfield buries Ethan. And there, in that grave, he stays.

Chris steps outside and the sunlight spears down on his face, warming his skin and making him smile.

“Hey!” he calls as Rosemary races past him, a rush of giggles and taunts, her blonde hair whipping in the wind. She’s picking out her own clothes now and to the surprise of no one, likes things that are stretchy and loose and easy to move around in. Still, she never shed her love of the color pink. Chris supposes he did give her a complex after all.

“Hurry up,” she yells, and he watches her skid to her knees in the dirt, her legs splayed out below her, long and lanky like her father’s.

Chris sighs and follows her into the yard, lowering himself onto his knees beside her.

“You wanna do the honors, Spitfire?” he asks.

She grins. “You don’t even know where he is.”

“Yes I do,” he says quickly.

“Where?”

“Mm.” He gives a sheepish smile and plants his palms on the earth, then offers her an upturned brow.

“Stupid,” she laughs, then reaches out and takes a cup of dirt into her palms a couple inches away from the spot he marked, scooping it out of the ground.

They dig for a while, building a miniature pile of rolling soil and excavated roots and squirming bugs, until Chris feels Ethan’s shape meet his hands. He digs deeper. Faster. Then his palms dip beneath Ethan’s skull, and all at once, Chris is pulling him out of the earth.

Ethan’s eyes are closed. Blonde, gentle lashes gently brush against his cheeks and his lips are aflush with the pinkness of life. That same coloring is visible on his cheeks. He is breathing- so softly that you’d have to press your ear to his mouth to hear it, but he is.

“Ethan,” Chris says softly, running his thumbs over Ethan’s cheeks to brush the dirt off the face of the man who is buried beneath his garden.

It takes a while. It always does. But within minutes, Ethan’s eyes are blinking open, fluttering against the light of the sun.

He groans a little, his body rigid from months of sleep.

“Chris?” he asks, blinking up at the man who is holding him.

He looks confused, displaced, for a second. Then his eyes float around Chris’ shoulder and onto his daughter. He gives a huge sigh, closing them again, both a wetness in his eyes and a smile on his face.

“Damn,” he growls. “She’s big.”

“Hello to you too, dad,” Rosemary beams.