salmonbutter

He rolled his shoulders – an attempt to alleviate his corded neck and the burning in his spine – and for the first time in over twenty-four hours, he took a moment to breathe. He was irritable and sore, his joints creaking in protest at his lack of sleep and food. It was time to go home, lest he accidentally snapped at the nearest bystander. He scanned his surroundings, tactical helmet hanging loosely from his fingertips and the old floorboards groaning under the weight of his heavy combat boots as he walked. His eyes stopped on a desk.

He reached out to the picture frame that sat between a battered fan and an abandoned mug, the slightest tremor in his hand, and his gloved fingers curled around the splintered wood. His lips pinched together. A portrait of the Baker family in black and white.

He let out a breath, and without really expecting an answer, he muttered. “Think we did any good here?”

The operator on the other end of his line didn’t respond for a long time. “Not for them, unfortunately, but the mold is contained,” taciturn and detached, they finally answered. “Hopefully, they’re Evie’s last victims.”

Chris paused, brows pleating creases between his eyes at the photo in his hand when he frowned. Again. Again. More people lost to the folly of someone’s psychosis. Someone’s god complex. He wished he could focus on the people that had been spared. Good people – people who made all of this worth it. He hated how his mind immediately went to a certain brunette – a smile made of liquid sunshine. But this was a vicious cycle that he would simply never break, no matter how much he tried, and the wraiths of everyone he had failed quickly obscured his view of what really mattered.

“Hopefully.”

The fingers in his other hand twitched, desperate for a cigarette, and he stood paralyzed by the thought of the men – friends – he had lost. Three of them – bombs strapped to their necks, blades running through their skulls, their blood sprayed onto his uniform. The beeping of the explosives coiled around his own wrist. Lucas’s repulsive laugh. He already knew he would hear it in his sleep.

He hadn’t been able to help them in time – a harrowing reality that followed him like a shadow at the end of every mission, but he tried not to think about it. A migraine had been festering behind his eyes ever since he’d gotten out of the mines, and it was only getting worse.

“Chris, there’s a call for you,” a scratch in his earpiece pulled him from his thoughts. “It’s from agent Kennedy. You need to take it back at the camp.”

He let out a breath through his nose, recalibrating himself back into the soldier everyone expected him to be.

“Alright,” he confirmed. “I’m on my way.”

Turning on his heel, he put down the picture frame, tucking away the feeling of his guilt eating through his gut. It’d catch up to him eventually. It always did. And when it did, hopefully he’d have a generous dose of nicotine running through his veins.

༺༻

Morbilosis was one hell of a pathogen, and the research done on it? Thrilling. Disturbing, but thrilling.

Dr. Evans had produced an exhaustive study on the thing– narrowing it down to a virus composed of multicellular eukaryotes. Not parasitic in nature, weirdly enough. Evans had been able to find out the pathogen was completely facultative. In layman’s terms, the virus was alive. An organism in itself. He’d unearthed the virus’s life cycle, as well as its virulency, and had accrued proper evidence and data that the pathogen was, in fact, manmade. AKA, a bioweapon.

The only question left unanswered in his data was why the virus chose to surface in some infections, and some not; a key piece of the puzzle needed to create an effective vaccine. As she had suspected, not all the infected corpses in Marion’s hospital had presented with the horrific symptoms, and the young woman was left to leaf through the sizeable report to see if she could find some sort of lead to answer the million-dollar question.

Back at the BSAA medical wing, Marion was going over Dr. Evans’s notes detailing the relationship between the pathogen and its hosts when she felt a pair of eyes staring a hole through her forehead. Tucked behind the nurse’s station desk, the doctor didn’t need to look up to know who was leaning against the counter and staring so unashamedly at her.

“You’re using up my oxygen, Park.” Marion quipped, her eyes following words as she flipped a page.

Sophie – standing on the other side of the desk – dumped the patient charts she held in her arms on the counter.

“You still reading that report?” she asked before flipping one of the binders open and clicking her pen. “Man, you’re a slow reader.”

Marion still didn’t bother to look up at her. “Maybe it’s not my first time going through it.”

“Evans should’ve put me on the study, not you. I read much faster.”

“I don’t know,” she chimed. “This thing doesn’t have any pretty pictures in it. You might get a little confused.”

Ignoring the jab, Sophie pressed. “How do you know him again, exactly?”

The woman across from her dropped her pen and finally looked up at her friend with a look of exasperation. “How many times are we going to go through this?”

“As many times as it takes for me to believe you when you tell me that,” she jutted a thumb over her shoulder. “Brightest thing in virology research in a generation happened to be your professor in med school.”

“I can try telling you in French if that helps.”

It was true; Marion had also been surprised to see an old face round the corner of the BSAA medical wing, much less in a BSAA-issued lab coat of his own. She shot a look over Sophie’s shoulder, where she had pointed, and found the tall man locked in a deep conversation with another researcher down the hall. They were leisurely making their way towards the nurse’s station the two women were occupying.

Sophie followed Marion’s glance over her own shoulder, stealing a gander at Dr. Evans before turning back around with a question on her face. She put her pen down.

“And you two really never…?” she made a telling little gesture that said what her mouth did not: her right hand made a circle with her index and thumb, and she poked a finger through it, demonstrating an in-and-out motion. Marion lunged forward and slapped her hand down.

“He was my professor,” the woman hissed through grit teeth, sinking back into her seat.

A wild smirk stretched on Sophie’s face. “So?”

Marion looked less than impressed, eyes veering back down at the report open before her. This only made the other doctor stick out a defensive finger.

“You’re telling me you don’t have a thing for older, good-looking men in authoritative roles?” Sophie leaned in closer, brown eyes sparkling with mischief. “Or does that only pertain to a certain captain who shall remain nameless?”

Marion didn’t respond for a long time, pretending to busy herself with Evans’s report as her lips pressed together. But finally, after a beat, there came her answer muttered barely above a decibel.

“Only a certain captain.”

This sent her friend into chaos, first gasping in shock at her disclosure before exploding into a cackling frenzy and barraging her with related questions. Marion had just enough time to wipe the grin off her own face when she spotted someone coming up behind Sophie. The woman made a gesture for her friend to contain herself, and Sophie’s mouth snapped shut – a deep voice suddenly beside her. “Good afternoon, ladies.”

Evans easily stood a handful of inches taller than Sophie, and the doctor leaned a forearm onto the nurse’s station, smiling easily at the two women. He was easy on the eyes; Marion would give Sophie that. Chocolate waves fell just past his jaw, slicked back with just enough product to be kept out of his eyes but not enough to make his curls rigid. Below a masculine brow sat emerald eyes, sharp and perceptive behind an elegant pair of glasses, with a dusting of stubble along his angular jaw.

He had always been handsome, and his looks and magnetism had wreaked havoc in Marion’s cohort back in medical school. Having a crush on Evans had been like a rite of passage back then – even Marion had wondered what it’d be like to run her hands through that hair at some point in time. It didn’t help that Evans was also in fact the brightest in his field, and easy to talk to at that. Not many geniuses were.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Evans,” Sophie managed, the epitome of professionalism as she looked to her superior, but Marion caught the telling glint in her eye and bit back a smirk. “Are you finding your way around here alright?”

“Perfectly fine, thank you, Dr. Park,” he flashed his porcelain teeth in a charming smile, dimples sinking into his tanned skin. He turned to Marion, and she straightened. “How’s the report coming along?”

“Great. Your research is exceptional, Dr. Evans,” she gestured towards the papers in front of her. “I just have a few questions that I jotted down, and I’d love to go over with you once we both get in the lab.”

“Well, I’m happy to hear that. I have a reputation to uphold it seems; I can’t be caught with anything short of exceptional now, can I?” he chuckled, his laugh resonant and rich. “How about we go over your notes tonight over dinner? It seems the lab won’t be ready for us until the end of the week, and I’d love to get out of the city with some good company. Your boyfriend wouldn’t mind, would he?”

Marion blinked, the man across from her smiling so innocently at the joke that it caught her completely of guard. “Oh, uh –” Deer in headlights, her eyes darted to Sophie in a wordless question, and the young woman snapped her an equally bewildered look.

Evans crossed his arms over his broad chest, his eyes catching the interaction between the two friends, and an amused look falling onto his features. “My apologies,” he chortled. “Husband perhaps? Though I don’t see a ring.”

Sophie quickly interjected before Marion could break out into another string of stammers. “We’re actually on call tonight,” she looked at her friend as if seeking approval for her words, and when Marion no longer looked like she was about to shit her pants, Sophie turned to Evans with a disarming smile. “We have some field agents coming back from a mission. I’m assuming we’re going to be a little swamped.”

“Oh, that’s right,” the male doctor hummed in understanding. “From the Baker House, correct?” They both nodded. “Alright, no matter,” Evans mused with a foxlike smile. “I’m sure we’ll find a time to finally catch up after all these years. I hardly recognized you, you know.”

Marion breathed out a laugh, a weak smile on her lips. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Evans answered her with another dashing smile, pushing off the counter as he bid goodbye to the two women with a wave. “Good luck then, ladies.”

The two watched him walk down the hallway, and when he disappeared behind a corner, Sophie turned to Marion with unprecedented urgency.

“So, here’s what you’re going to do,” she started, splaying her hands commandingly on the patient charts in front of her. Sophie fixed her friend with a serious stare. “You’re going to go out to dinner with Evans, laugh at all his jokes, tell him all about how amazing I am, and then say you have an early day and can’t invite him in when he inevitably wants to get inside your pants.”

Marion suppressed the urge to cuff Sophie on the underside of her head, and she was able to hold herself back when both her pager and Sophie’s began blaring. The feeling must’ve seeped onto her face, because the other woman broke out into a laugh as the two packed away their belongings and started down the hall.

Their pagers had read: LOUISIANA INBOUND – ONE URGENT CARE, THREE TO BE EXAMINED, PREPARE ROOMS – SEND DOCS TO HELIPAD

As the two doctors threw on their lab coats and began their jog up to the roof, Sophie added, “Listen, I hear Evans will be choosing the rest of his investigation team any day now. I need all the help I can get.”

“Wow, a good word in with Hound Wolf, and now Evans, too?”

“It’s the least you could do,” she clicked her tongue, pulling out two pairs of blue nitrile gloves from her lab coat as they ran into the stairwell. “Because you’re not on Schoenberg’s service anymore, I’ve been the one stuck doing all of the lab workups. Pain in my ass.”

“Hey, I covered your shift last week when you decided to spend the day at the shooting range instead,” Marion took the gloves Sophie slapped her with, and the two climbed a couple flights of stairs to the top. “And I already told captain Redfield about your hard-on for Hound Wolf. As far as I’m concerned, we’re even.”

They reached the last landing, and Sophie gave her a deflated look. “Please don’t tell me that’s how you worded it to him.”

Marion shrugged, shooting the brunette a toothy grin as she opened the door to the BSAA roof with her back.

“I can’t stand you, you know that?”

The deafening wind of helicopter blades interrupted them, pouring in from the open door, and the two doctors had to squint as they approached the Osprey to keep their eyes from being battered by debris. As hair and clothes flapped in the windstorm, Sophie and Marion kept a safe distance while they waited for the Osprey’s cargo doors to open.

When the mechanical door came in contact with the helipad’s concrete, two BSAA paramedics wheeled out a gurney carrying what Marion could make out was a young woman. Unconscious. Behind them trailed a man she’d never seen before: late thirties to early forties, six feet tall, broad shoulders under a leather jacket, ashy brown hair, sharp nose, and even sharper eyes. He looked scuffed up – scrapes and grime speckled about his stubbled face – but his focus was entirely on the gurney being pushed across the roof of the BSAA.

From behind him emerged a familiar face, making his way down the slope of the Osprey’s door in full uniform. Chris. Marion chewed the inside of her cheek. He looked exhausted.

The Osprey made a whirring sound, its blades slowing to a halt which the doctors took as their queue to make their way closer. They met the gurney and the medics pushing it halfway, and Marion took a look at their patient lying unconscious. A woman – anywhere between her late twenties or early thirties – laid on her back with her head lolled to one side, blood dried to the corner of her lips. Short, brown hair splayed behind her, and Marion could see she had suffered a few injuries to the side of her head, her shaved undercut making the blood apparent.

“What do we have here?” Sophie asked the paramedic, and the poor man opened his mouth to give the doctors a status update when he was unceremoniously interrupted by the man franticly hovering about their patient’s gurney, the words exploding out of him.

“She fell on a sharp piece of metal junk, and didn’t tell me,” the man enunciated. “I tried to patch her up and kept her from bleeding out, but I think it’s infected. She’s got a fever, and she’s been in and out of consciousness for a few hours now.”

Chris came from behind him, his demeanour polar to this mysterious man’s. Calm and collected, his bleary eyes fell onto the woman on the gurney, to the strange man beside him, then to Marion. He returned her greeting of a smile with a short nod, and she then tilted her head. The captain immediately understood the silent question. “This is Leon Kennedy from the DSO.”

“Oh,” Marion turned to this Leon. “Were you on the Louisiana mission too?” Meanwhile, her colleague lifted their patient’s shirt, revealing a bloodied dressing.

“Yeah,” he breathed, pawing a gloved hand through his hair – stressed. His eyes never left the patient on the gurney, watching skeptically as Sophie lifted the gauze taped across the woman’s ribs. “We got ambushed at the Baker House, and she got hurt. We managed to get out of there before anything else got to us, and we holed up in a nearby cabin until Chris could pick us up and bring her here.”

Marion nodded and turned to the exposed wound, eyes falling on a string of cluttered sutures holding together an angry looking laceration between the poor woman’s ribs. The stitches had been clearly tossed together in a panic, and although she appreciated the urgency, an infection was visibly festering behind the seams.

“Did you do this?” Sophie asked, gesturing to the stitches. Leon nodded, and Marion watched Leon’s brow twitch in irritation when Sophie muttered under her breath. “Messy.”

Trying to ignore the gripe, the DSO agent turned to Marion instead and practically snapped at her in provocation, “Is she going to be okay or not?”

The young woman let out a soft breath at the man’s unneeded desperation. She was going to be fine; a few rounds of antibiotics and a fresh set of sutures and she’d be alright. But Marion instead squinted her eyes at the wound as Sophie covered it back up with the dressing, and the doctors began wheeling her towards the rooftop elevator. The DSO agent and BSAA captain followed them.

“Well,” Marion pursed her lips, deciding to punish the agent for the tone he had taken with her. “We’ll have to amputate, but she’ll be okay.”

“What?” Leon practically spat, his voice rising in both volume and irritation. Marion immediately broke into a grin.

“I’m just kidding,” she laughed, and Leon bristled unpleasantly. “She’ll be just fine. You have nothing to worry about; we’ve got her.”

She watched the man pinch his lips together in annoyance and turn to the BSAA agent beside him. “I don’t like these two.”

Even the paramedic started to laugh as he made his way back to the Osprey, but when Marion couldn’t even find the hint of a smile of Chris’s face, her laugh dissolved into the back of her throat – smile flattened. It was like he wasn’t even there with them; eyes vacant and sunken as if he’d seen a ghost. Marion’s shoulders sagged.

“Why don’t you two go to the clinic to get checked out, and we’ll come find you when we’ve patched up, uh – ” Sophie trailed off once they got to the elevator, eyeing the young woman in the gurney.

“Charlotte,” Leon finished for her, helping them push her gurney into the open elevator doors. The two larger men stayed behind the elevator joints, deeming correctly that there wouldn’t be enough space for them to follow. “Charlotte Stone.”

“Like she said,” Sophie continued, offering a comforting smile to the man. “We’ve got her. You two need to rest.”

Marion watched Leon nod in reluctant understanding, sparing a worried look to an unconscious Charlotte, and Sophie pressed the button to the surgical floor on the elevator pad. The doors began to shut, and Marion studied Chris from afar.

His hair was disheveled, scabbed-over cuts and angry bruises peppered on what she could see of his skin, an absent, glassy fog in his ocean blue eyes. He’d hardly made eye contact with her – not that she’d expected a heartwarming reunion, but the Chris Redfield that stood absently in the doorway was not the same that had patched up her hand so dotingly a mere handful of days ago.

And as the elevator doors came to a close, she caught the fleeting look he tossed her way when he thought she hadn’t been paying attention.

༺༻

The small courtyard nestled between the two main buildings – one of the two greenspaces the BSAA had bothered to construct – was calm and empty that night. The leaves on the sycamores glistened with a fresh coat of rainfall from a few hours ago, the gravel beneath them still holding onto a few scattered puddles. Chris rarely sat out here, but tonight, it was the only place he could smoke without somebody asking him to sign something or to approve a debrief every goddamn minute.

Yes, his friends were dead. They weren’t going anywhere, and neither were the dozens of reports he needed to fill out.

After a much-needed shower, he had changed into a simple t-shirt and jeans that he’d kept in his locker – a light jacket thrown over his clothes to deter the brisk evening chill. He sat perched on a bench, leaned forward with his elbows resting against his thighs and a cigarette drooping idly from his lips. His eyes were fixed on the ground, watching disinterestedly as the ash from his cigarette fluttered between his boots. It wasn’t until he could no longer draw tabaco into his lungs that he realized he’d smoked it down to its filter.

He straightened, snuffing out the cigarette in the ashtray beside him on the bench and fished out a lighter and box of Marlboros from his back pocket. He was flipping his lighter open and lighting another cigarette between his lips when he heard the courtyard door open a few feet behind him with an irritating creak. He didn’t look behind him to see who it was. Instead, he drew in a long, seemingly interminable drag from his cigarette and leaned backwards into the backrest of the bench. Quietly, he watched the smoke slog through the air as it left his lungs. It coiled into spirals between him and the only lamppost illuminating the courtyard – like the push and pull of a toxic wave.   

There was a pause before he heard footsteps in the gravel – poised and lively and growing closer – and Chris had to stop himself from exhaling too loudly out of his nose lest his foul mood be heard.

He glanced to his right when a shadow came into his peripheral, and saw a familiar shade of blue from a pair of scrubs rounding the bushes. It was Marion – juggling two, full disposable cups of coffee and a small first-aid kit that dangled so inconveniently by its strap around her pinky. How did she carry all that shit anyways? He’d seen her do the same thing during his stay at the hospital on multiple occasions. Coffee, her cellphone, keys, wallet, binders, documents, packets of gauze. All at the same fucking time, and all while wearing that same contagious, fucking smile.

The way he innately wanted to smile back at her annoyed him to no end, and he quickly averted his eyes before she could draw out their eye contact any longer.

“This seat taken?” A lilting voice came from beside him regardless, and he made a noise that she took as a no when he’d almost wanted to say yes.

The bench creaked as she sat a few inches from him, but he still didn’t look her way, eyes glued to his feet. But suddenly, the cigarette was plucked from his mouth, and he opened it to protest. “What are y – “

“Drink this first,” one of the disposable cups she was carrying was shoved into his open palm, and he finally looked at her. She looked tired – she’d probably worked these past few hours patching up Leon’s partner. But she was smiling and full of mischief as she held up his cigarette.

“If you still want a cigarette after, I’ll give it back to you.”

Chris hesitated, but his fingers instinctively curled around the warm paper cup as Marion fixed him with an expectant smile. God, she was luminous. He watched her stare at him – his cigarette looking so much bigger between her lithe little fingers – and when she looked like she wouldn’t move until he did, he sank back into his seat with an irritated breath. He eyed the cup in his hand.

“Figured you could use a pick-me-up. You haven’t slept yet, right?” she asked, and when he only answered with a caveman-like grunt, she snuffed out his cigarette on the bench and said in passing, “I really wish you wouldn’t smoke these.”

“They help calm my nerves.”

“You have nerves?”

He looked at her like she was missing a few brain cells. “I’m not a machine.”

“I don’t know,” she smirked. “I heard you punched a boulder. I always figured you weren’t completely human.”

He didn’t smile back, and he saw the slight way her shoulders sank in what was maybe disappointment. He almost felt bad for inflicting his cantankerous, old-man surliness on her. To suppress the feeling, he brought the cup of coffee to his lips and drank.

Except that it wasn’t coffee, and he spat it right out in a side-splitting display of flailed limbs and string of curse words. Marion burst into laughter.

“Oh, god! What the fuck is this?” He wiped at his mouth. 

“Triple caramel macchiato with whipped cream,” she answered matter-of-factly.

He looked at her as if she’d insulted his mother.

“You need some sugar,” she continued, unphased by his disgust. “Try it again; you were expecting black coffee. No wonder it tastes bad.”

It took him a while to reconsider even looking at the cup in his hand. But warily, he eventually took another sip, while Marion sat at the edge of her seat in suspense waiting for his verdict. This time, his taste buds weren’t assaulted by a foreign taste, and Chris realized that it wasn’t actually all that sweet. Actually, the bitterness of the espresso and the caramel worked well together to balance each other out. Chris mumbled, licking the whipped cream off his top lip.

“Not bad.” He caught the way Marion’s eyes flickered so briefly to his mouth, but he didn’t dwell on it.

She grinned, giving herself a satisfied little nod on a job well done. “Because you’re in a shit mood, I’ll spare you an I told you so. Just this once, though.”

Chris finally cracked. He shot her a side eye, as if she would see how embarrassed he was that he couldn’t hold back the smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth.

“Smartass.”

“Oh no, the monosyllabic man strikes again. I may never recover,” she replied sardonically, shuffling around for the med-kit she’d set beside her. “I also heard that you didn’t come by the clinic to get yourself checked out,” she held the med-kit up to Chris’s eyeline. “Can I patch you up or are you going to do it yourself?”

Something in his gut twisted at the way she smiled at him, but not in the unpleasant way he was so regrettably used to. It was warm and fleeting – like the stray shaft of sunshine through a storm cloud – and Chris suddenly remembered where he’d felt it before. It was the feeling of joy that bubbled behind his ribs whenever he saw Claire’s caller ID on his phone. When Jill poked her head in his office after a long mission – or when Perlman and Dion plopped a case of beer on the breakroom table every Friday night while bickering about whatever the fuck they always bickered about.

It was a feeling that couldn’t be swallowed down with coffee – a feeling that reminded him that someone cared for him. That someone had kept tabs on him. That Marion had cared enough to keep tabs on him.

He let out a soft breath as if it would help him get rid of the feeling, looking back down at his feet, but he had to bite back a smile. He made a small gesture with his head, indicating that she was free to do as she pleased. She scooted closer to him, unzipping the med-kit in her lap, and pulled out a line of disinfectant pads and some bandaids.

“You got people spying on me now?” Chris asked as Marion angled her body towards him.

She reached out gently to him with a laugh, her fingertips soft and warm when they ghosted over the side of his neck. He suppressed the shiver that threatened to run down the length of his spine, and instead focused on letting her angle his head as she deemed fit, looking anywhere but directly at her.

“No, but the nurses love me,” she replied with a wily grin, cataloging the two long but shallow cuts on his face. One over his jaw, and one just under his eye. She started with his jaw, allowing him to look straight forward as she opened an alcohol pad. “I don’t even have to try and get intel out of them.”

He hummed, unsurprised that the young woman beside him was slowly becoming a well-loved addition to the medical team. He stayed quiet when he felt the alcohol wipe press to his jaw, thankful when the sting of the disinfection overpowered the way his nerves tingled all the way from his scalp to his toes at the feeling of her skin against his.

Gingerly, she dabbed at the cut and pulled open a few thin bandages when she had cleaned it to her liking. Her hand splayed lightly over his cheek – warm and silky soft – as she pulled the dressings on, and Chris had never stared at anything so intensely as he had stared at the tree across from him that night.

Unfortunately for him, she wasn’t quite finished, and when she angled his head to look directly at her, his eyes darted for anything to look at besides her lips as she pressed her mouth into a smile. Her hand cupped his cheek, and he decided to zone in on a lock of her brown hair, falling a bit past her shoulder. Once he was at a comfortable angle, she began to work on the cut under his eyes. Same thing – disinfect and apply a thin dressing – but this time he could feel her small, even breaths fanning ever-so-slightly across his skin.

He tried to take a quiet, calming breath of his own, but the act only drew in a lungful of her scent. Clean laundry, shampoo, and something so entirely sweet that it made his mouth water. He felt his nostrils flare against his will, finding himself suddenly overcome with the idea of leaning in closer to get a better smell. His jaw clenched at the preposterous suggestion, and in the midst of his fight against his body, his eyes flickered to her face. Mistake.

His eyes drank in every detail he hadn’t been able to see from this close: the rings of her irises, the slope of her nose, the singular freckle on her cheek, the delicate curve of her eyelashes. The way her tongue ran over her lip when she placed the dressings on his cut – rosy and wet. How snugly his fingers would fit past the pillowy press of her soft lips.  

Something warm and downright depraved lanced in his belly, and Chris thought he’d splintered a tooth by the force he clenched his jaw with. As quickly as he’d let his eyes fall on her face, he’d averted them, and the poor man wracked his brain for something – anything – he could think of to say in order to distract him from his own personal hell.

She was just about finished dressing the wound when Chris managed to blurt, “You said you had something to ask me when I got back.”

She blinked owlishly at him, like she’d been caught committing a crime, and she paused in her motions. A small, uncharacteristically bashful smile stretched on her lips after a moment of deliberation. “Well, technically, you didn’t come to see me like I’d asked, so…”

Chris almost rolled his eyes, but settled for a disapproving look instead, and the doctor moved away from him, pleased with her work. She gathered the discarded packaging, returning to a courteous distance from him on the bench as she packed up the med-kit in her lap, and Chris tentatively touched the dressings she’d place on his face.

“Thanks,” he muttered, and Marion dazed him with another grin as she zipped up the kit and put it aside, replacing it with her coffee cup. He looked back down to the coffee in his hand, bringing it up to his lips to take another sip. “You never answered me, though.”

“Answered what?”

“What did you want to ask me?”

There was that look again – as if he’d just ask her to rob a bank with him.  He suddenly felt a little guilty— was he pressuring her? — but then he watched a small flush of pink colour her cheeks. It was hardly there, and in the dimly lit courtyard in the small hours of the night, he could barely make it out, but it was there.

Her fingers toyed with the cup of coffee in her hands, eyes downcast to her lap as she deliberated something unbeknownst to him. And after a moment, she turned to him. She had trouble keeping eye contact with him, but a smile sweeter than honey was pulling at her lips.

“I wanted to ask you if you wanted to go out to dinner sometime,” she said, and finally her eyes managed to stay locked with his. Chestnut brown to gunmetal blue. “With me.”

His chest grew tight, a warmth spreading over his ribcage in way he couldn’t quite describe. He appraised her for what felt like a lifetime: lips pulled into an innocent, hopeful smile. Eyes sparkling with the promise of him – of them. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from her, and he didn’t want to. Maybe he was a selfish old man – maybe he was greedy – but he wanted to keep her just like this for as long as she’d wanted him back. Happy, brimming with hope, and good – in the truest sense of the word. His fingers twitched, urging him to press her into a kiss right then and there.

But in that instant, something dark and malicious coiled around his mind like a snake and squeezed – obscuring his vision of what was right before him. Half-shrouded faces – distorted and ghostlike – flickered behind his eyes, and his breath caught in his throat. Old voices rang between his ears like broken chimes when he tried to blink the wraiths away. It only brought them into better focus.

Finn, Marco. Piers. He broke out into a cold sweat.

The three men in Louisiana – the whirring of sawblades and the spurting of blood.

Zack, Cathy. Damian.

Jill – freefalling from the Spencer Estate, and the way he’d almost lost Rebecca due to his inadequacies. He’d failed so many of them. He’d let so many of them die. And suffer.

All because of him.

As abruptly as they’d appeared, the ghosts of his past vanished, and he was left with the sweet smile of the young woman sitting next to him. He blinked, and suddenly she was gone too, replaced instead with a semblance of what she once was. Her skin sapped of colour, her cheeks sallow and eyes sunken. Lips blue.

Cold, and lifeless.

Panic surged up his spine, and before he knew it, his lips were moving, and the word exploded out of him in undiluted distress.

“No!”

What brought him back to reality was the way Marion’s brows furrowed in confusion, almost disappearing into her hairline at her surprise. Paralyzed by some unseen force, he could only watch her as she searched his eyes for an explanation.

“Oh,” she squeaked, quiet and solemn when Chris made no move to speak. “I thought that maybe – “ She trailed off, unsure how to continue.

Chris – body wracked with leftover terror – turned to look at his feet and took a moment to fill his lungs with air. So far, he’d managed to hide his panic from her, and he’d keep it that way. The situation quickly caught up to him though, and after seeing Marion’s lifeless face flash before his eyes, he realized that what he’d blurted out so worriedly was maybe the right answer after all.

He was dangerous, and there was no going around that.

In fact, he should have stayed far away from her from the very beginning, and although he couldn’t reverse time to go back and fix that, he decided that he would ensure she’d steer clear of him from here on out.

Eyes still glued to his boots, Chris inhaled a shaky breath through his nose, and finally spoke. Quietly – painedly. 

“No, I just – no. I’m sorry.”

He heard her stir beside him, and for the longest time, she didn’t say anything. Tentatively, she tried to ask. “Chris, did I say something —“

He didn’t let her finish, and instead, he straightened. He had to make her understand. He turned to her and pinned her with an icy stare.

“Drop it.”

His voice was low and clipped, like he was on his way to boiling over, and he watched Marion’s expression twist into one of worry and hurt. He had to make her understand that he was no good for her. She’d argue if he told her plainly, and she’d win – she always did – so he continued to glare at her as if he didn’t want to pull her into his arms and tell her how much he cared for her.

Her eyes were glassing over, her chest heaving with hitched breaths like she’d been physically taken aback by his tone. He’d never seen her like this.

A silence stretched between the two of them, neither of them breaking the intense stare they were locked in, as if waiting for the other to make the first move.

Marion finally cracked, her voice barely above a whisper. “…what’s wrong?”

He hated it. The way her voice had dipped into a meek, frightened question. Her eyes swimming in hurt and confusion. Her smile – once the brightest and warmest thing in his life – now downturned into a defiant pout. He hated that he had caused her this hurt. But she was better hurt and alive than happy and dead, right?

Chris’s fists balled around the paper cup at the thought, and he clenched his jaw so irately that he bared his teeth at the young woman beside him. Why couldn’t she just fucking leave it alone?

“There’s nothing wrong!” he barked at her, voice rising to a blistering decibel and tone. “You’re not my type! What is so fucking hard to understand about that?”

In his rage, he hurled the cup of coffee to the ground, the liquid exploding upon contact with the concrete and making Marion flinch. He instantly regretted it, and the man couldn’t bare to look anywhere but his boots. He knew if he looked at her now, he would never be able to scrub the image of the hurt he’d caused her from the back of his eyelids.

He heard a trembling breath, then what must’ve been a muffled sob, and before long, he saw her feet move from the corner of his eye. Wordlessly, the sound of footsteps jerking through the gravel filled the courtyard, and he’d accomplished what he’d hoped for when he heard the sound of the door opening and closing shut.

He was still staring at his boots when he realized he wasn’t alone yet, when a new, different pair of feet walked through the gravel towards him.

He frowned and raised his eyes to see Night Howl approaching with a stack of documents in his hands. The young man looked startled. He kept looking between his captain and the door, and Chris had never seen him look so unsure since the last time they’d narrowly escaped death on an assignment.

“Here, the mission summary,” Charlie finally said after much hesitation. He arrived at the bench, extending a file to him. “O’Brian needs you to look it over and have it in by tomorrow.”

Chris took the file from him with a little too much force, but the man was wise enough to not say anything as he watched his captain flip through the papers. Chris – perceptive as always – felt his subordinate staring a hole through him.

“What?” he snapped.

Charlie hesitated, unsure if he would still have a pulse after he said what he wanted to. When his captain didn’t look up from the report however, he decided to test his luck.

“Not your type?”

Chris’s eyes snapped to his with alarming speed, and the other man almost flinched. Almost.

“Chris,” Charlie pushed past the burning scowl his captain pinned him under; he had known Chris too long to be scared of him. Instead, he returned his wrath with a look of sincerity and concern. “No offense, but it’s pretty obvious that your heart beats for that girl,” the man nodded towards the door. Softly, the question was asked as if a single word uttered incorrectly would detonate a bomb. “What are you doing?”

Chris grit his teeth. What gave him the right to eavesdrop? This was none of his damn business, and he had no place to ask him such a question, but instead of answering with that, he shattered for the second time that night.

“Because of this!” he pitched the file he had been holding onto the bench: a list of casualties from the Baker House. “Because being anywhere near me is a fucking death sentence! I couldn’t protect them, again, and I won’t be able to protect her!”

All Charlie could do was watch as his captain came undone, lips pinching together. Chris saw the way his friend looked back at him with only worry and compassion, and he thought his anger would flare, but it only deflated.

“I can barely deal with myself as is,” he returned to stare at his boots, the volume of his voice dissolving by half. “But if I lost her… if anything happened to her because of me – I would – I – “ His words splintered apart, and he cradled the sides of his head in his hands as if it physically pained him to even think of the possibility.

“I can’t.”

“Alright, man,” Charlie breathed gently, finally sitting beside his captain. He laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “It’s alright. I get it.”

Charlie’s hand came back to rest in his lap when his captain didn’t move, and the two men sat in silence as Chris stared blankly at the spilled coffee pooling between his feet.

༺༻

chapter i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi

A whistle blew from their training instructor, indicating a switch in tasks, and Marion pried off the striking pads off her hands and handed them to her sparring partner. Sophie, Marion, and a dozen other new recruits were scattered on the BSAA training grounds – an Olympic-sized indoor running track with a patch of grass padding the middle – practicing the basics. Kicks, punches, and a handful of Muay Thai techniques their instructor had shown them. Straightforward things, really. But maybe not so much for Marion, who had never thrown a proper punch in her life.

“Come on! Put your shoulder into it!” Sophie provoked as her partner landed a few limp blows into the pads, eliciting sad little thumps from the material.

“Okay, listen, Ms. Army reserves,” Marion retorted. “I’m doing the best I can.”

Their instructor – an intimidating man named Lucas Hunt – was weaving casually through the groups of pairs, giving them feedback when needed and ensuring his recruits were performing at their best. Marion watched Sophie come even more alive when Hunt looked their way, and her friend blared more encouragements at her. Her tactic somehow worked, and when Marion managed to throw slightly sturdier punches, their instructor looked away and let himself fall into a conversation with the nurse that had come to supervise the session.

“What’s gotten into you?” Marion huffed, out of breath from the dozens of swipes.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve been working together for a month now, and I’ve never seen you so worked up over anything,” she explained, driving another three consecutive jabs into the pads. “Not even when Schoenberg let you pop a shoulder back in last week.”

Sophie grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Marion raised a brow, too out of breath to ask anything verbally.

“A little birdie told me that they’re recruiting field medics for an investigation mission. Something about that expert they’re bringing in from the EU branch,” the darkhaired woman enlightened. “And Hunt told me that I’d be an excellent candidate.”

“Oh, wow,” Marion exclaimed. “Sophie, that’s great! I didn’t know you wanted to be on the field that badly.”

“Surgery is great and all, but I really miss being in the action,” she mused, proving her point by how expertly she caught Marion’s punches. “Never thought I’d miss the army. Besides, surgery is more your element.”

Marion threw the last punch she could physically handle, letting out a grunt of effort as her knuckles hit the striking pad.

Sophie muttered under her breath, making her partner roll her eyes, “And thank god for that, because you really suck at punching.”

Much to Marion’s relief, Hunt blew his whistle again, and the pair exchanged equipment. Sliding on the protective pads, Marion held up her hands and anchored herself, bracing for Sophie’s jabs. The other doctor hammered her with strike after strike, the brunette narrowly avoiding being walloped in the face by her partner. Sophie revved up a punch, and took it all out on her partner’s padded fists.

Marion was sent stumbling backwards, almost toppling to the ground, and she cried, “Alright, alright! Jesus, Soph! You want to send me to the nurse, or what?”

“No, she looks too busy,” Sophie replied with a smirk, nodding her head towards said nurse. Marion looked over as she regained her balance, seeing not only their instructor, but a handful of other male recruits lounging around her area by the running track, locked in a hefty flirting match. The two women rolled their eyes, but she had to admit, the nurse was gorgeous: long, silky blonde hair, an hourglass figure apparent even under her scrubs, and a smile bright enough to power the whole base. Sophie and Marion exchanged a cackle at their male counterparts, falling back into their exercise.

“Actually,” Sophie started again, mid-punch. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

Marion caught the jab, following along with her friend’s now toned-down attacks. “What’s up?”

“Did I see you having lunch with the Hound Wolf squad a few days ago?”

Marion blinked in surprise at the question. It was true; she had been spending some time with the group – when she could. Once every few weeks, her lunch break would line up with the squad’s, and Marion would take advantage of it to spend some time with the merry group of misfits.

“Yeah, you probably did,” she replied with a smile, which earned her a question on Sophie’s face. “We’re friends; they rescued me when there was a Morbilosis outbreak at my hospital, and I operated on Emily before I started here and got to know them. Actually, the only reason I’m here is because Captain Redfield got me a contract with the BSAA. Why?”

Sophie made an expression caught halfway between a smile and a grimace, sheepishly looking away. “Because I may be a bit jealous.”

Marion's eyes widened before she broke out into laughter. “You? Jealous? What, you got a crush on one of them?”

“Ha-ha,” she replied sardonically, rolling her eyes and landing a particularly hard punch into Marion’s hands. “No, I want to get on their squad. They’re the entire reason I joined the BSAA in the first place. They’re a bit of a legend in the bioterrorism world, and there were rumours that they were going to start looking for a medic to join their ranks.”

“I can imagine,” Marion nodded. “They’re a force of nature when you see them in action.”

“Yeah, Redfield sure knows how to put a team together,” Sophie replied matter-of-factly. When the sound of a whistle echoed through the track again, she let her fists down and asked curiously, a bit out of breath, “What’s he like anyways?”

“Chris?” Marion chirped, sliding off the training gloves and handing them to her partner. “He’s great; he seems like a total hardass, but he really cares for the people around him. He’s actually got a great sense of humour too, and he’s a fantastic leader. He’s one of the noblest people I know.”

Sophie gawked at her friend, watching her get lost in thought, before a ridiculous grin stretched on her face. Marion blinked at her, getting into position to throw the first punch of her set.

“What?” Marion asked, pulling her shoulder back as she aimed her friend’s hand. She drove her fist forward, aiming for the pad when Sophie held her padded hands up.

“You should ask him out.”

Completely taken aback at the absurdity of Sophie’s comment, Marion’s eyes left their target as she spluttered, and her fist followed suit. Her punch slipped past the protective pads and collided directly into Sophie’s unassuming jaw.

“Ow, fuck!”

Sophie yelped, the force of the hit sending her stumbling, but not quite hard enough to send her to the ground. She held her jaw, cursing under her breath. Meanwhile, Marion clenched her teeth at the throbbing pain in her knuckles from her bones colliding with her friend’s, and she attempted to shake out the pulsating sting by flicking her hand. She turned to Sophie when the pain subsided enough for her to feel like she wasn’t going to shatter her own teeth.

“Oh, shit! I’m so sorry!” she rushed over to her friend, a hand on her shoulder to try and see the damage she’d caused, only for Sophie to turn around at her with a loud laugh.

“Jesus, Lambert!”

“Are you okay?!”

“God, it was only a suggestion,” Sophie smirked, cupping her bruised jawbone. “You didn’t have to punch me for it.”

Marion’s expression shifted to relief, only for her to frown and roll her eyes, thwacking her friend on the arm when she realized she was perfectly fine. She went back to hissing at her hand, inspecting the angry and swollen knuckles. “Yeah, well, it was a stupid suggestion.”

“I don’t know,” Sophie muttered, shaking her head as if it would get rid of the throbbing in her jaw. “The only time I’ve ever seen Redfield look like someone hasn’t shat in his boot is when he’s around you.”

Marion didn’t respond, resorting instead to testing the limited movement in her hand and eyeing the swollen flesh along Sophie’s chin as the other woman tried to roll her jaw out. She couldn’t help but let out a laugh of her own when Sophie dabbed at the injury and whistled in respect. “You should get that iced.”

“Yeah, you too,” Sophie gestured at her hand while taking off the training equipment. “Maybe get it wrapped as well.”

“Well,” Marion teased as the two turned to make their way to the nurse. “Now I know that you really are hard-headed,”

“And now I know that your punches aren’t total shit,” her friend replied with a matching, shit-eating grin. “Although, if that was really as hard as you can punch, we really need to work on your upper body strength.”

“Can it, Park.”

The two had only taken a handful of steps towards the nurse, sharing a laugh, when they stopped at the sight before them. The group of three men swarming the nurse had turned into ten, all finding a gaudy excuse to be checked out by the poor woman. Marion narrowly avoided seeing one of them pull his shirt off to show her an ‘injury’ when she turned to Sophie.

“You know what, I’ll just go to the clinic and do it myself. I have the graveyard shift in there anyways after training,” she said, turning on her heel in the direction of said clinic. “You coming?”

“Nah,” Sophie grinned, tapping her nose knowingly. “This’ll give me a chance to flirt with the nurse myself. Wouldn’t mind getting my face iced by her.”

Marion chuckled and started for the exit, waving goodbye to her sparring partner. “Suit yourself.”

“And Marion?”

She turned, looking at her over her shoulder. “Mm?”

“I was serious about what I said before,” Sophie said, an earnest smile on her lips. “If Captain Redfield is as noble as you say he is, he won’t make the first move as your superior. But I’ve seen the way you look at each other; you should take the leap. What’s the worst that can happen?”

And before Marion could reply, she watched the young woman turn and walk away, prying a hole through the men to reach the nurse and earning herself irritated noises of protest in her wake.

Marion sighed, resuming her walk to the clinic after running her good hand through her hair in thought. Seen the way you look at each other? What the hell did that mean?

༺༻

The clinic was thankfully empty when Chris walked in, including the beds and the small office tucked away in the corner. The sound of beeping and chiming droned through the clinic, the constant whirring of medical devices akin to humming insects as the BSAA captain sought out a supply shelf. He scavenged through the array of medical supplies on the nearby shelf, the automatic doors sliding quietly shut behind him with a soft hiss. He shuffled the supplies around, the packages crinkling under his digits as he meticulously picked out what he needed and tried to fit as many bundles of gauze and bandages in his sizeable grip.

The captain was looking for some sort of receptacle to carry his stolen supplies when a noise from the office made him think he wasn’t quite as alone as he’d thought. His curiosity getting the best of him, Chris put down his loot and took a few steps towards the sound, and peered into the office’s open doorway. He lifted a brow at the sight that greeted him.

Marion – hair tied back and dressed in a grey BSAA training shirt, black shorts, and a pair of running shoes – stood at the office desk littered with empty medical packaging, her back turned to the doorway and unaware of the captain’s presence. Cursing quietly to herself through grit teeth, he watched her hold a bandage taut between her teeth, her left hand attempting to wrap said object around what looked to be a sprained fist. When her hand slipped and the wrapping disintegrated into a loose pile of useless bandage, and probably not for the first time, Marion let out an exasperated sigh. She picked up the dressing again and started another attempt.  

“You’re right-handed, right?”

A yelp exploded from the young woman at the sudden baritone voice that came from behind her, and Chris watched the poor girl practically jump out of her skin. Still, he couldn’t help the smirk that threatened to bubble into a laugh when she turned around and looked at him like she’d just lost five years off her life.

“Chris! Jesus!” she exclaimed, shoulders drooping as she put her good hand to her chest. Her relief soon turned into annoyance when she saw him laughing at her. “You ever heard of announcing yourself?”

Chris crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorframe with a smirk, “You ever heard of asking for help?”

She watched him gesture at her failure of an attempt to bandage her hand, and the doctor challenged him with a scowl. “No, but I’ve heard of a magical little thing called minding my own business.”

Judging by the way the agent rolled his eyes, the man paid no heed to her words and instead pushed himself off the doorframe and walked out into the clinic. He grabbed something off the shelf, and as he wheeled a stool over to one of the empty beds, he said without looking her way, “Sit.”

“No, I’m really fi – “

Chris sat himself on the stool, and when his eyes snapped to Marion spectating from the office and he repeated himself, his tone was clipped.

“Sit.”

The young woman swallowed thickly, shifting in her spot. For reasons unbeknownst to her, Marion felt her heart race – a familiar warmth blossoming to life in her belly. She shook her head as if to dislodge the feeling, opting instead to walking herself and her trounced pride to the BSAA agent unpacking a sterile bandage a few feet away. If there was one thing she knew, it was that it was useless to argue with Chris when he used that tone of voice; she’d heard him use it with his squad. His Alpha voice, they had called it.

How fitting, she thought.

Chris made room for her to sit on the edge of the cot, and Marion sat herself down across from the man. Her feet dangled an inch from the ground, the added height of the cot giving her an overhead view of Chris’s hands as he uncoiled a beige bandage and scooted closer to her. He glanced up at her with the ghost of a smile, and when he held out one of his hands expectantly, she brought her injured arm forward.

He reached forward, and when the tips of his fingers pressed softly against her skin, she felt a jolt of electricity scramble up her arm and down her spine. And in that moment, she prayed to whatever gods were listening that Chris wouldn’t notice the insurmountable shade of pink that flushed her cheeks. Thankfully, Chris was too focused on his task to look up at her as he gently turned her wrist in different ways, expertly inspecting the damage he was dealing with.

She was in the middle of realizing that the wonderful, crisp, masculine scent that she was enjoying was Chris’s aftershave when Marion cleared her throat.

“You know,” she started as Chris brought the bandage to her hand, anchoring one of the ends down with his thumb an inch above her wrist. “I really can do this myself; you probably have more important things to do.”

“A thank you would be nice.” Chris countered, shooting her a sarcastic smile as he began methodically wrapping the bandage around her wrist.

It was her turn to roll her eyes. But still, like a scorned child, she mumbled a quiet thank you to the man dressing her wound with such care and gentleness. It was almost astounding to her; for a man so adept at killing living, breathing nightmares, to be so remarkably soft and attentive in peaceful little moments such as this one. With this thought on her mind, she sat quietly and compliantly – grateful that she was lucky enough to share a rare moment of peace that Chris Redfield seldom ever got.

The comfortable, easy silence was broken when Marion winced, Chris apologizing with a grimace after accidentally brushing his fingers over her bruised knuckles. “How’d you even do this?” he asked, almost appalled by the injury.

With a wily grin, Marion cackled, “You should see the other guy.”

Chris, however, pinned her with a look of complete doubt, and Marion’s shoulders sagged at her failed attempt to impress the captain. She scratched her cheek with her good hand, and admitted quietly, “I punched my friend in the face.”

Chris snorted; his attention drawn back to what he was doing on Marion’s lap. “By accident?

“Debatable.”

This elicited a laugh from him, and Marion couldn’t help but smile at the pleasant sound. “What’d they do?”

“She said that I should – “

Marion blurted blindly, and upon recalling exactly what Sophie had said to throw her off, she stopped herself just in time. Chris looked up at her curiously when she froze under those infuriatingly long lashes, and Marion couldn’t help the way she flushed from his unwavering stare. She looked away before she could grow any hotter, and instead resorted to: “She, um, said something dumb.”

“Well,” Chris mused, making slow but fine progress on her hand. “I’m glad you’re making friends at least.”

“Yeah, Sophie’s great, you’d like her,” she said as she released the tension from her shoulders, thinking about how grateful she was to have met her new friend. An idea popped into her head at the thought of Sophie, and Marion almost talked herself out of it, but braved forward nonetheless.

“Actually, speaking of,” Sophie was going to kill her. “She has a hard-on for Hound Wolf.”

The BSAA captain didn’t look up from his task but raised an inquisitive brow. “Oh, yeah?”

Marion nodded. “She heard you guys were looking for a medic, and she’s on the mission of the century to get on your team.”

“What’s her last name? I’ll keep an eye on her progress.”

“Really?” she grinned, a little surprised that the captain of Hound Wolf would be willing to accommodate her a favour of such nature. “It’s Park.”

“I can’t promise anything, especially if she’s a new recruit, but once she’s had a few years of experience under her belt, I’ll see if she’s a fit.”

Marion’s excitement deflated ever so slightly, the girl falling into a sheepish posture. “A few years, huh?”

Chris smiled sympathetically, peering up at her. “Canine was the latest addition to our team, and it took him five years of training to get on,” he explained, pulling at Marion’s bandages. “Not to mention he was a Navy SEAL before he joined the BSAA.”

“Ah, right. Special ops unit and all,” she waved her free hand dismissively. “I keep forgetting about that for some reason.”

“Could it be because you saw them all skip a meeting to eat spaghetti in the mess hall instead?”

The young woman couldn’t help the laugh that exploded out of her, and Chris found her smile to be contagious. “Or maybe it was when I watched John, Dion, and Charlie reenact all of Die Hard one, two, and three for Emily when she was still recovering and her TV wasn’t working.”

“Was it good?”

Marion pinned him with a look caught between a grimace and a cringe.

“There were props.”

Judging by the line that bisected Chris’s forehead, the thought had both surprised and horrified him, but the two quickly burst into boisterous laughter – the kind that made Marion’s sides hurt when they had both quieted down.

Chris, with a leftover smile from their laughing spell, continued to work on Marion’s hand. He added, fondly, “They’re good guys.”

Marion hummed in agreement, watching Chris’s hand – twice as big as her own – wrap the bandage across the length of her palm. She was impressed by his work – the captain took extra care to make sure each fold of the bandage was straight and tightly secured, important dressing techniques that Marion hadn’t even seen second-year residents heed to.

Trying not to get hypnotized by the dexterity of his long, thick digits, Marion offered, “Yeah, they are. I’m lucky to have gotten to know them.”

“And they’re lucky to have gotten to know you,” he emphasized, and something in her stomach fluttered. “They won’t shut up about you, you know that?”

She snorted. “What, like their bets on how long it’ll take me to quit the BSAA?”

“They’re just messing with you,” Chris chided. “They all have faith in you. And so do I.”

A smile grew on her face at his words that he had seemingly only said in passing. But to her, the idea that Chris really did believe in her made her skin buzz with excitement. She paused in thought, her cheeks suddenly feeling very warm. She waited until the feeling passed before she spoke.

“Maybe I should be your next medic,” she joked, her head tilting in amusement. “Sophie does her best work under a little competition.”

Chris, almost immediately, replied, “No way.”

Marion blinked at the speed of his reply, but didn’t dwell too much on it. “Why not?”

The BSAA agent wrapping the bandage around her palm looked up at her with unmatched sarcasm. “Because you almost shattered your tiny, ineffectual fists punching your friend during a training exercise,” he explained matter-of-factly. “That’s why.”

Marion pursed her lips, her brows rising. “I thought you said you had total faith in me.”

“I do; in your surgical skills,” Chris replied with a smirk, looking down at his work. “And that’s why I need you to keep all your fingers.”

The young doctor rolled her eyes, but couldn’t shake off the smile she’d had nearly the entire time she’d spent with him.

“Besides, I like you here,” Chris added, eyes trained on the bandage and the smaller hand in his. It was quiet enough that she almost had to lean in to hear what he’d said, but the weight of his words had her swimming in an emotion she had never quite felt before. “Where you’re safe.”

Before she could really process what the man across from her had meant, Chris finished the last wrap around her knuckles, buckled the bandage in place, and cut the leftover dressing. He stood from his stool with a small smile, mumbling a quiet all done before gathering the discarded packaging and making his way to a nearby trash bin, leaving Marion practically winded.

The captain tossed the wrappers in the bin and walked over the shelf he had previously abandoned, picking back up where he’d left off. Marion swallowed down the dangerous cocktail of feelings pooling in her abdomen and instead tested the movement of her hand with her fresh new wrapping.

It was perfect.

“Thanks,” Marion called out, hopping off the clinic bed with a satisfied grin. Chris briefly glanced at her to shoot her a small smile as she made her way back to the clinic’s office to clean up the mess she’d made in there. She called from the open doorway, gathering her discarded packaging and bandage. “What are you skulking around for in here anyways?”

“We’re getting ready to leave for a mission in Louisiana with Blue Umbrella and the DSO. Wanted to stock up on some supplies, especially since it’s Emily’s first mission back.”

The young doctor smiled to herself; that was Chris. Always looking out for the people around him, as she’d described so accurately to her friend earlier. Then, a thought crossed her mind – not as pretty and butterfly-inducing as the other ones she’d had earlier. What if Chris was simply treating her like he’d treat anyone else? Despite his ill-tempered exterior, he never was a bad guy. Maybe she’d been reading too much into his words and actions, and Sophie – damn her for giving her this false hope in the first place – had been reading the situation entirely wrong.

She watched him leaf through different medical supplies from an opportune angle in the office – the fine muscles of his arms under his too-tight shirt twitching ever-so-slightly at his every move. His strong jaw – sharp enough to cut through metal – taut with the impending stress of an upcoming mission. And his eyes. God, those eyes. She found herself selfishly wanting them on her and only her all the goddamn time.

She tucked the depressing thought that Sophie might’ve been wrong after all into the forefront of her mind, and shook herself out of a daze. She replaced the scowl that had stretched on her face with her regular, professional demeanor, and poked her head out of the doorway.

“The really good stuff is in the supply closet at the end of the hall,” Marion called out to Chris. “The passcode is 6038. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

A slow, knowing smile spread onto the captain’s lips, and the man put down the supplies before turning on his heel. “Gotcha,” he said, tossing a wave over his shoulder as he headed for the door. “See you around then.”

Marion was opening her mouth to bid the man goodbye when a familiar figure made her way past the automatic sliding doors of the clinic, and she felt her stomach drop as she watched the events unfold before her. 

The nurse from earlier that day – the bombshell with the perfect hair, skin, and breasts that had her whole cohort drooling – collided directly into the BSAA golden boy’s broad and solid chest that showed absolutely no give, and Marion almost wanted to look away to avoid seeing the two of them drool over each other. She wouldn’t have blamed them; after all, beautiful people deserved to be with equally beautiful people, right?

But she found herself thankful that she hadn’t looked away.

Chris – ever the gentleman – steadied the staggered nurse with two hands to keep her from falling backwards on her ass, sparing exactly a split-second glance her way before she heard him grumble, “Watch it, buddy.” He promptly let her go, exiting the clinic without a second look at the goddess of a woman he’d bumped into, and disappeared behind the corner.

The grin that spread from ear to ear on Marion’s face was uncontainable.  

“Wait, Chris!” the words half exploded out of her, and she jogged past the nurse who looked as if she wasn’t too sure what had just happened.

He was already halfway down the hall when Chris heard her call, looking over his shoulder as she caught up to him and slowed to a walk. They stood face to face now, Marion having to crane her neck ever-so-slightly to look up at the much taller man.

“Um,” she started intelligently.

Was she really about to do this? Was she really about to ask Captain Redfield out on a date? God, what kind of date? Drinks, dinner, movie? Did he even watch movies? Did he even drink?

Marion suddenly realized that she didn’t know a whole lot about the man, and the harrowing realization made her freeze in her spot. She hadn’t given this any thought. Marion – the girl who rehearsed her Starbucks order three blocks away from the place – hadn’t planned for a single second of this interaction. Chris, however, just watched her like she was the most entertaining thing he’d seen all day.

“I, um,” she stammered again, and when he lifted one eyebrow, she let herself fantasize of drowning someone. Chris. Herself. Both sounded like great options at the moment.

She opted for awkwardly patting him on his rock of a shoulder, aborting her original plan entirely. It wasn’t the right time, nor the right place; she wanted to do this the right way.

“Good luck on your mission.”

A crooked smirk tugged at the corners of Chris’s mouth, full of questions at the bizarre performance that unraveled before his eyes. His brows twitched in an inquisitive frown, and Marion suppressed the urge to burrow directly into the ground. “Thanks,” he replied in a tone caught between a question and a laugh. “Good luck with the hand.”

Marion felt her shoulders sag in her embarrassment, and she offered the BSAA agent an apologetic smile. “You mean my tiny ineffectual fist?”

He chuckled, nodding as he scrutinized her for any signs of an explanation for her little outburst. This seemed to prompt her into what she had to say next.

“Just… Come see me when you get back, okay?” she asked hesitantly, looking at him with eyes brimming with an emotion he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “There’s something I’d like to ask you.”

Chris blinked. “Sure.”

The young woman flashed another smile, nodding in satisfaction, before tossing him a wave of her own and circling back to the clinic doors down the hall.

Chris turned, took a few steps towards the supply closet, and as his fingers padded 6038 into the keypad, a smile spread on his lips.

༺༻

Later the next day, Marion found herself back in her scrubs, filling out what seemed to be the hundredth lab report form at a nurse’s station in the BSAA’s medical wing. She couldn’t exactly complain however: Schoenberg had allowed her to scrub in on a few routine procedures with him, and although she’d seen about a thousand different appendectomies and even performed a few of them herself in the past, she figured it was better than not seeing the inside of an operating room at all.

So, keeping her complaints to herself, she filled out the lab reports as instructed by her boss, and kept her head down. As she completed the form, she heard voices approaching from down the hall and in turn saw a group of men making their way down the corridor. She didn’t bother looking up at them, recognizing Schoenberg’s voice along with a few BSAA board members, figuring she had no need to engage them besides the polite, fleeting head nod of a greeting.

She watched them approach from her peripheral, and continued to complete the form in front of her, and she was just about finished with her last lab report when she heard a voice, both familiar and unfamiliar, call from behind her.

“Well, I’ll be,” a deep, drone of a male voice hummed. “Marion Lambert, is that you?”

She turned, brows raised and lips upturned in curiosity. Her eyes fell on emerald green, and she gasped.

“Dr. Evans?"

༺༻

From an adjacent room, Chris peered out the window in mild interest at the bustle in the hallway. He hadn’t even known Marion was on duty that evening – he’d been searching for one of the BSAA board members before leaving for his mission. He’d known the board members were giving a tour of the place to a new researcher, but what he hadn’t been expecting to find was Marion and a man he’d never seen before engaged in a particularly friendly hug.

The man was tall, a little over six feet tall, with a head of wavy brown hair neatly slicked away from his slender face. A sleek pair of rectangular glasses sat upon his Roman nose below piercing green eyes, and the man – not much older than Chris himself – sported a simple dress shirt and slacks underneath his white lab coat, his build not evident underneath the layer of clothes, but Chris suspected he wasn’t exactly out of shape from the broadness of his shoulders.

He watched Marion’s face light up when the two pulled away, as if reunited with an old friend, and Chris finished strapping on the last of his mission attire; a protective vest he pulled at with a little too much force. He watched them talk, and although he couldn’t hear what they were saying from all the way over there, they were all smiles and laughs. He frowned to himself, unsure of the feeling amalgamating at the base of his skull. A headache? No, this was far too nauseating to be a headache.

“Captain,” Chris was torn from his thoughts when Charlie came up from behind him, calling out to his captain as the younger man grabbed his equipment from the bench behind Chris. “Chopper’s ready. You comin’?”

He tried not to stare – he really did – but Chris continued to study the stranger as he finished lacing up one of his thigh holsters. “Yeah, sorry.”

Night Howl, unable to contain his curiosity, noticed his captain staring at something past the mission briefing room window, and followed his line of sight as he slung his duffle bag over his shoulder.

“Problem?” Charlie asked when Chris didn’t so much as glance at him.

“Who’s that guy?”

Night Howl took another gander over Chris’s shoulder to confirm he was looking at the right person. “That’s Xavier Evans. Lead researcher at the EU branch.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

As Charlie looked skeptically to his captain, the rest of the Hound Wolf squad trickled into the mission briefing room, geared up from head to toe and carrying various types of weapons and equipment.

A grin spread onto Charlie’s face when he noticed who Evans was speaking with. “You jealous or something?”

Finally prying his eyes away from the doctors, Chris pinned Night Howl with a sobering glare. The man winced, holding his hands up defensively. “Answer the question.”

“No, not much,” Charlie started. “Just that he’s here to help with the Morbilosis research and to lead a few investigations with some medics and researchers from the base.”

Chris turned back to their subject, narrowing his eyes as he wracked his brain for the reason behind the tingling in his spine. “He seems… familiar.”

A silence stretched in the room as the squad noticed Chris locked in some sort of glaring tantrum past the briefing room’s window. The squad exchanged a few knowing looks, some of them smirking, others looking distraught. None of them dared to interrupt Alpha, letting him turn to the conference table when he had had enough of the scene in the hallway.

“It’s nothing,” he muttered more to himself than anyone else, and recalibrated himself when he confirmed that all of Hound Wolf sat around the conference table, geared up and ready to go. He turned to Lobo and nodded sharply. “Do you have the mission briefing ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Perlman replied, and the weapon’s specialist clicked on a projector, showing a dilapidated house and the face of a middle-aged blond man. “Rescue target is a man named Ethan Winters.”

༺༻

chapter i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi

“Running late?” Marion asked, still struggling to close her locker.

The stranger spared her a glance, breathless from running.

“Yeah, this place is a fucking maze. I got here forty minutes early only for my key fob to not work!” the other woman replied, slipping on her uniform and pulling on a white lab coat and stethoscope. “Worst part is that my boss isn’t even going to care that it wasn’t my fault.”

“So you’re with Schoenberg?”

The woman was pulling back her long, silky black hair into a ponytail when she looked at the other doctor in surprise, laughing at the insinuation. “Yeah, first day,” she replied, the ghost of a smile forming on her lips. “You?”

“Same here,” the brunette shot her a sympathetic grin, oddly happy that she wasn’t going to face their boss’s wrath on her own. “I’m Marion. Marion Lambert.”

“Sophie Park,” the brown-eyed doctor offered back, mirroring her sheepish smile right back as she finished tying up her running shoes and closing her locker.

“Well, Sophie Park,” Marion said, finally able to pull the lock closed on her own locker. “Let’s go get our asses kicked.”

The two interns jogged out of the locker room and sped their way down the maze that was the BSAA’s medical wing, strategizing the quickest way to Schoenberg’s office, only to be stopped in their tracks when they heard a bark from down the hall.

“Park! Lambert!”

The two women exchanged one last mortified look before reluctantly turning around, bracing themselves for the worst. There stood Dr. Markus Schoenberg, wearing an enigmatic expression at a nurse’s station. Dr. Schoenberg, a middle-aged man, was tall and thin, neat blond hair slicked back meticulously with clear grey eyes and a slim, cleanshaven face. He carried himself with authority – as should any surgeon of his skill – and it had earned him quite the reputation at the BSAA. Another smug-looking doctor stood beside him – a man about the same age as Sophie and Marion, sporting a crewcut and a shit-eating grin. Marion recognized him as another surgical intern. Bastard must’ve been happy that their tardiness made him look good in front of Schoenberg. The two made their hurried way towards the men, words already spilling out of Marion’s mouth.

“Dr. Schoenberg, I apologize,” she blurted when they had closed the distance, hands outstretched in a sign of remorse. “It was our key fobs; someone didn’t program them right and we were –“

“I have five rules,” the BSAA surgeon interjected as if the young woman hadn’t even been speaking. “Memorize them. Rule number one, don't bother sucking up. I already hate you, that's not going to change.”

Marion’s mouth snapped shut, and the woman beside her shot the other intern a glare when he snickered at her. Dr. Schoenberg, choosing to dispense with the interaction, gestured at a pile of equipment that was neatly laid out on the nurse’s station counter.

“Trauma protocol, phone lists, pagers. Nurses will page you; you answer every page at a run. A run, that's rule number two,” the surgeon explained as he began to walk away from the station, his interns clambering behind him to grab their equipment before following in his footsteps. “Your first shift starts now and lasts forty-eight hours. You're interns, grunts, nobodies, bottom of the surgical food chain. You run labs, write orders, work every second night till you drop and don't complain.”

The doctor led them down the hallway, his long strides making it difficult for Marion to keep up without having to trot down the hall. He stopped at a door, opening it to reveal a room with a couple of bunk beds and nightstands.

“These are on call rooms. Field agents and lead surgeons hog them. Sleep when you can, where you can, which brings me to rule number three,” Schoenberg turned to them and pinned them with a withering glare. “If I'm sleeping, don't wake me unless your patient is actually dying. Rule number four, the dying patient better not be dead when I get there. Not only would you have killed someone, you would have also woken me for no good reason, are we clear?”

Two of the interns nodded, but Sophie raised her hand.

Dr. Schoenberg pointed to her. “Yes?”

“You said five rules. That was only four.”

“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a regular Einstein over here,” the man retorted, checking his pager when it beeped at him from the breast pocket of his lab coat. He shoved the device back into the pocket, pushing them aside as he spoke. “Rule number five. When I move, you move,” he demanded, running down the corridor followed by the three interns. A handful of doctors and nurses were scattered about the hallway, hastily moving out of Schoenberg’s way when they saw him approaching at a sprint. “Get out of the way!”

The doctor led them to an emergency bay that Marion recognized as the one she had been in the first time she came to the BSAA with a certain injured captain. Through the double doors came two BSAA operators, dressed in full mission gear and pushing in a gurney carrying another agent. The incapacitated soldier was seizing on the stretcher, one of his teammate’s keeping a hand on his shoulder to keep him from falling off.

“What've we got?” Schoenberg asked, following the field agents into a neighbouring hospital room.

“Marco Rose, thirty-three-year-old male, new onset seizures, intermittent for the past week, BP plummeted en route, started grand mal seizing as we descended,” one of the agents replied, stepping back as the doctors took over, plugging vital machines into their patient and – much to his surprise – starting an IV line without Schoenberg having to ask.

“Get him on his side,” Dr. Schoenberg ordered calmly, starting up an EKG machine by the patient’s bedside. “Lambert, ten milligrams of diazepam.”

Marion nodded, waiting for Sophie to finish turning their patient on his side before injecting him with the drug. The agent instantly stopped seizing, and his blood pressure stabilized. With a reassured sigh, Sophie and Marion looked at each other, giving one another a satisfied smile at their work. Maybe Schoenberg really wasn’t going to resent them for being late on their first day after all.

“Alright, looks like we have a wet fish on dry land here. Let’s shotgun him,” Schoenberg stated as he flipped through the patient’s chart, dismissing the agents that had brought their patient in. “That means every test in the book. CT, CBC, chem. seven, a tox screen. Park, you're on labs. Morales, patient workups and CT.”

Marion stepped forward after making sure their patient was comfortably positioned on his cot. “What about me, Dr. Schoenberg?”

“Well, Dr. Lambert,” the doctor clicked his pen, uninclined to even look up at her while he scribbled down some notes. “Since you decided to be late to my rounds and tried to talk yourself out of trouble, you get to do rectal exams today.”

༺༻

“I give her three months.”

At a cafeteria table in the BSAA mess hall, a group of five sat together with their trays of food scattered about the table. Engrossed in a conversation as they ate, they were peering across the way at a young woman busying herself with the cafeteria’s coffeemaker.

“Oh, come on,” moaned the only woman of the group. “Have some faith.”

“Didn’t she save Cap from a BOW?”

“Barely,” the youngest replied, continuing with his mouth full after taking a generous bite of his lunch. “They would’ve both been toast if we hadn’t shown up in time.”

“Twenty bucks says Schoenberg makes her quit in a month. Who’s in?”

“Fifty bucks says she doesn’t make it past basic training.”

“A hundred says she surprises us all.”

“I agree; I say she’s tougher than she looks,” the woman from earlier standing staunchly in her defense.

They turned to the woman in question, watching her turn around from the coffeemaker with two mugs full of coffee only to bump straight into another BSAA employee standing behind her, her coffees spilling over the cups and splattering directly onto her clothes.

The men of the group turned back to their female colleague at the table, eyeing her with an unimpressed look that could only be interpreted as you sure about that?

The woman huffed, her eyes looking back down at her tray of food. “I said what I said.”

A handful of weeks had passed since Marion’s first day at the BSAA as a surgical intern, and she had fallen into a disciplined routine. Or rather, she had been forced to fall into a disciplined routine: physical training with the new recruits and instructors at the asscrack of dawn, a 10-12-hour shift in the medical wing, more physical training, and passing out from exhaustion either in an on call room on the base or at home, if she had the energy to make it back. Her every muscle ached – muscles she hadn’t even known she possessed, and her brain buzzed with so much information crammed in there by Schoenberg that she thought her head would explode any day now.

Work and training at the BSAA had proved to be difficult – her boss showing her no empathy for being new to a paramilitary environment – but she wouldn’t have had it any other way. Although her work consisted mostly of treating BSAA agents’ existing injuries and running labs for the lead surgeons, Marion was back where she belonged, and that was all that mattered to her, and she had even made some friends along the way.

Back in the mess hall, the intern was in the middle of dabbing her scrubs with a napkin, grumbling something under her breath about some idiot standing too close to her when she heard a hey, Marion! from behind her.

Turning around brought the faces of the one and only Hound Wolf Squad – minus their fearless leader – in view, seated at one of the mess hall tables with their lunches in front of them. Lobo waved her down, bidding her to come closer, and the young woman made her way over after pouring herself new cups of coffee in to-go cups. Marion smiled, relieved to see some friendly faces.

During her first weeks at the BSAA, Marion had gotten the chance to get to know Chris’s squad a little better when she’d had the time to sneak away from Schoenberg’s duties and visit Emily during her recovery. Her heart had felt so full when she had seen that the Hound Wolf squad seldom left their beloved Tundra on her own; coming in for visits, bringing her everything she needed to be comfortable, and keeping her up to date on their missions while she was out of commission. Every time Marion had shown up, at least one of Emily’s squadmates had been there doting on her like a worried mother hen, and consequently, the young woman had gotten to know the pack quite well;

John Perlman, alias Lobo. A middle-aged, easygoing weapon’s specialist, with a tendency of shooting the shit with the rest of his squad whenever he could, but she had learned that John had earned his spot as Chris’s righthand man.

Rolando Elba, or Umber Eyes, was the unit’s trusted sniper and sharp shooter. The squad’s eldest, and a quiet, old-school soul with a sense of humour dryer than his captain’s.

In charge of the team’s communications and research was Charlie “Night Howl” Graham. Easily recognizable by his Kiwi accent and quick wit, and his endearing enthusiasm whenever he got the chance to speak to Marion about any sort of scientific study. 

Dion Wilson, AKA Canine, was the youngest of the group, closer to Marion’s age or maybe even younger. Dog handler and canine expert, Dion also prided himself in being a bit of jack of all trades. An ace pilot with a sharp tongue, and a hankering to entertain his teammates at all costs.

And finally, Emily Berkhoff – Tundra. Marion had learned during her visits that Emily had been a special recon agent her whole life; from uncovering secrets in Umbrella’s abandoned labs to keeping state secrets that dated back to the Twin Towers, the woman had done it all and accomplished it all by an age not far from Marion’s.

The squad, in turn, had learned more about Marion and her struggles over the past few months, and the band of characters had expressed wanting to look out for her at the BSAA; after all, she had helped both their captain and their teammate. And it certainly helped that Marion’s ability to keep up with their banter had secured her a friendship with the elite team. In fact, unbeknownst to her, Marion had started to nestle a spot for herself in the mismatched family’s dynamic.

“Well, if it isn’t my favourite squad,” she said as she approached the head of their cafeteria table, taking a swig of her much-needed coffee. “Hard at work, I see.”

“You bet,” John grinned, taking one last bite out of his lunch.

Dion added, leaning back in his chair, “BSAA’s finest!”

“Haven’t seen you guys around since Emily was discharged from her recovery. How’s it going?”

“They’re making bets on how long it’ll take you to quit or get fired.” Rolando announced before any of them could answer, unleashing an onslaught of scandalized yaps. Canine and Lobo broke out into a chorus of protests at being outed by their teammate, interspersing a few hey, what the fuck, Elba!’s and come on!’s between their exasperated looks.

Ignoring the men’s outrage, Marion turned to Rolando and Emily. “How are my odds looking?”

“About fifty-fifty. John and Dion think you’re going to tank it,” Emily replied equally nonchalantly and deadpan, earning more exclamations from the men. “But Charlie and I have total faith in you, don’t worry. Rolando was the only one smart enough to stay out of it.”

Marion laughed. “I don’t blame you guys; I almost quit this morning when I had to get up at four-thirty to run laps with the rest of the rookies. I didn’t even have time to shower to be on time for Schoenberg’s rounds.”

“Is that what that smell is?” Charlie snickered.

“Very funny,” the doctor sneered. “I’ll be sure to remember that joke when you’re on your deathbed and need someone to fix you up, smartass.”

“Why do I get the feeling that I’m gonna die much sooner than anticipated?”

“Speaking of smartasses,” Marion looked around their table, but she missed the knowing look Dion and Charlie exchanged when she asked, “Where’s your captain?”

“I don’t think Cap has ever eaten lunch with us,” John mused, taking a sip of his coffee. He turned to his teammates, confirming his own observation. “Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him take a lunch break out here.”

Emily nodded and added, “He’s been in and out of meetings about the Morbilosis outbreaks; they’re bringing in an expert from the European branch in a few weeks to look into it, and HQ is scrambling to get all of their ducks in a row.”

Morbilosis – the virus that had turned those corpses back at New York Presbyterian into those creatures Marion had narrowly escaped from. She’d known the BSAA research department was working on a vaccine after being able to contain most of the outbreaks that had scattered throughout North America, but she hadn’t realized it had been a big enough threat for them to send in an expert.

“I heard about that,” she said. “I even asked Schoenberg if they needed a hand with research, but he was less than enthusiastic about the prospect of me doing anything but rectal exams.”

This elicited some grimaces and laughs from the squad, and Marion couldn't help but laugh along at her own misery.

“Dr. Schoenberg still giving you a hard time?” Dion chimed in.

Marion shrugged. “Nothing I’m not used to; it’s certainly better than fetching coffees and making schedules, but he hasn’t let me in on a single surgery yet. I’m mostly patching up minor injuries and running physical therapy. Doesn’t help that it’s been pretty quiet around here.”

“Until you prove yourself to Schoenberg and his crew, I doubt he’ll let you do much in his territory,” the younger man pondered. “The medical staff is a bit of a clique.”

“Just kiss his ass and make some friends,” Charlie replied, waving his hand dismissively. “And count yourself lucky that we field agents have been short on jobs; you’ll be sewing arms and legs back on in no time, don’t worry.”

Emily rolled her eyes. “And keep telling him how great he is.”

Rolando nodded in agreement. “If there’s one thing Schoenberg loves more than trying to amputate Em’s leg, it’s getting his ego stroked.”

“Yes, Dr. Schoenberg,” John raised his voice a few octaves, puckering his lips and pressing his hands together in what Marion could only guess was an impersonation of her. “Right away, Dr. Schoenberg.”

Dion mimicked his teammate, adding a final touch before the group burst into laughter, “Oh, you’re definitely not compensating for anything, Dr. Schoenberg.”

Marion let out a laugh, smiling fondly at the group of misfits before her. “Thanks; I’ll make sure to do the opposite of all that.”

“No probl – oh fuck.”

Marion followed Dion’s stare past her shoulder to see a very familiar-looking man pushing past the cafeteria double doors. There was panicked shuffling behind her, and she turned around to watch in amusement as Hound Wolf squad shoveled the rest of their lunch down their gullets at an alarming rate.

“I told you guys his meeting ended at twelve-thirty, but no, spaghetti Wednesday was more importa – “

“Oh, can it, Perlman!”

Before anything else could be said, a shadow entered Marion’s peripheral vision, and a certain captain was towering beside her and glowering at his unit.

“Any of you turn your pagers off ever again, and I’ll have you running two-hundred laps of the track,” the older man snapped, voice just as deep and baritone as she had remembered it to be, and she tried to suppress the shudder that ran down her spine from the sheer authority he held in his tone – the mark of a true special operations unit commander. “For now, it’s a hundred when we get back from our debrief with the chief. Get your asses up and to O’Brian’s office. Now.”

A chorus of deflated yes, sir’s and sorry, sir’s heaved from the group of dejected agents, and Marion turned to the man beside her as the squad packed up their things and stood.

Settling into a daily routine at the BSAA had been time-consuming, and between establishing her role with her new coworkers and collapsing into a seven-hour coma after the BSAA’s arduous recruit training, she hadn’t seen much of Chris Redfield. In the rare glimpses she caught of the captain in the halls, there wasn’t a time where she hadn’t seen him in a hurry nor where they’d both had time to make eye contact; getting to see him up close for the first time in weeks was very much welcomed.

He looked the same as he always did – tired, unapproachable, and so very infuriatingly handsome. She’d be lying to herself if she said she hadn’t missed him; beneath that cantankerous exterior, Chris had become a good friend and someone she owed an enormous debt of gratitude. He’d gotten her her life back, and it wasn’t something Marion was going to forget about any time soon. But what had struck her that most about Chris these past few weeks was the way her heart skipped a beat whenever she caught a glimpse of that scruffy brown hair, or the flicker of gunmetal blue eyes. She hadn’t had the courage – much less the time or energy – to acknowledge her involuntary reaction to the BSAA captain, and she had simply brushed it aside.

But now, with him standing so close to her side, she simply couldn’t ignore the way her heart hammered against her ribcage. She found herself wondering just why this man made her palms sweat.

Chris – having to almost doubletake at the shorter woman beside him – looked at her like he hadn’t noticed that someone had been standing beside him the entire time. He looked pleasantly surprised, his eyebrows raising slightly as he appraised her with those blue eyes, and Marion couldn’t hold back a smile at his defenceless expression.

Oh. That was why.

“Oh, Marion.”

“Hey, Cap,” she greeted back, saluting playfully with two fingers as if her heart wasn’t about to beat right out of her chest. “Nice to see you’re still alive.”

“Yeah, you too,” Chris twitched a small smile, and suddenly Marion noticed how exhausted he looked. “Sorry I haven’t come by to see how you’re doing. They’ve been keeping us busy with the Morbilosis investigations.”

“No worries; I’m still kicking,” she replied, taking a drink of her coffee and eyeing him from behind her cup. “Don’t know if I can say the same for you, though.”

Chris relaxed, shifting his weight onto one leg. Narrowly dodging the remark, the older man responded with a small smile instead, “You look good. The scrubs suit you.”

She tried not to make it too obvious when she almost choked on her coffee, instead quietly clearing her throat and trying to pretend that she didn’t notice the butterflies in her stomach at the minute compliment. She involuntarily looked down at her clothes; a light blue set of BSAA issued scrubs over a long-sleeved thermal BSAA branded shirt, topped with a new white lab coat with her new credentials:

Marion Lambert, MD BSAA – North America

She thanked him with a grin, and carefully stored the way her cheeks suddenly warmed under his smile and eyes for later examination. Unbeknownst to her, Chris noticed the way she flushed, and he bit back a smile – and the urge to cuff some of his squad on the back of the head at the snickering that erupted from behind him.

She watched him open his mouth to say something else, but was unceremoniously interrupted by the beeping of her pager clipped to her pants. She checked it – an urgent message from Sophie telling her she couldn’t keep their boss distracted any longer – and looked back up at the blue-eyed agent.

“I have to go get tortured by Schoenberg; promised my colleague I’d bring her back a coffee. But feel free to come see me anytime, okay?” Marion beamed, throwing a quick nod to the rest of the Hound Wolf squad who were making their repentant way away from the table. “Maybe I could even find us a Scrabble board in the rec room. Unless you’re worried I’m going to kick your ass again.”

Chris chortled, “Do I need to remind you who won the last four rounds?”

“Yeah, well,” she stifled a grin, trying not to overthink the fact that Chris had remembered such a small detail. “It’s been a while. You might’ve lost a few brain cells since then; I don’t know how tightly they’re screwed into those big field agent brains.”

Chris rolled his eyes, but the playful glint in his eyes didn’t escape her. With a wave goodbye, she turned on her heels to exit on the opposite side of the mess hall, and the conversation she heard from behind her made a smile tug at her lips all the way to the medical wing.

“You look good? What are you, seventy years old?”

“Canine, move your ass while you still have one.”

“Okay, okay. Jesus.”

༺༻

Taglist: @hellotherekenobi @beautifulcollectivewolf @happygalaxymilkshake @cult-of-enji-todoroki

(reply or send me a message if you’d like to be added to the tag list! and don’t forget to leave me a comment on here or on AO3 <3)

The sound of his footsteps disappeared behind her with a punctuating shutting of a door, and her forced smile morphed into a grimace as she turned her attention back to her monitor. She attacked her task, keys clacking defiantly against the springs in her keyboard. She squashed the long list of berating thoughts that formed in her head to finish up her correspondence and sent the email off after signing it:

Best regards, Marion Lambert, Receptionist From the offices of Robert Stark, MD, Plastic Surgeon

She scanned over the signature, her boss’s comment ricocheting in her head. God,had she really been here for half a year? Her shoulders slumped at the thought, and she reclined defeatedly in her office chair.

She had nothing against plastics. In fact, she had nothing against plastic surgery if it could improve someone’s confidence and wellbeing. Hell, she had seen firsthand how a plastic surgeon had restored a burn victim’s range of motion and quality of life, but the offices of Dr. Stark – cosmetics extraordinaire – didn’t see many lifesaving procedures. And Marion, whether she liked it or not, had been addicted to the rush of general surgery: the eternal race against the clock, the adrenaline pumping through the veins at every cut, the smell of betadine. The moment she could tell her patient’s loved ones that they would be alright.

She had managed to somewhat come to terms with her new life, curbing the withdrawal symptoms of her addiction to her career, but ever since she had set foot in the BSAA’s operating room three weeks ago, she thought of nothing but when she could get a scalpel in her hands again. And in turn, the wrath of her withdrawal had coiled around her in the form of self-pity, undiluted spite, and excessive consumption of caffeine and reality TV.

But alas, fate had rolled its dice, and she had no choice but to bear the outcome. She could let her resentment consume her and spit her back out a bitter old bird, or she could make the best of what she still had. Still slumped unhappily in her chair, she lolled her head in the direction of her coat and purse, and her eyes narrowed.

Today, she reluctantly chose the latter.

Dr. Stark’s coffee wasn’t going to get itself, and with a huff, she heaved herself out of her seat and grabbed her things after locking her computer and setting the reception phone to voicemail. She threw her coat on, doublechecking that she hadn’t left anything important at her desk, and started for the front door. Marion went through a list of coffee shops at a walking distance from Dr. Stark’s office on her phone, eternally thankful that his office was right in the downtown area. She was just about to click on the directions to the nearest Starbucks when she heard the front door open.

She opened her mouth to tell whoever had entered that they didn’t take walk-ins, but her words fell short when chestnut eyes met gunmetal blue.

“You better validate parking here. You know how hard it was to find a spot on seventh avenue?”

Even if she hadn’t seen him first, she would have recognized that smooth baritone voice of his in a heartbeat.  

There in the doorway, closing the door behind him, was Chris Redfield – a face she had last seen three weeks ago when he had dropped her off at this very office. He looked exactly the same; wind-swept hair, a trim beard, and a build worthy of a BSAA captain. He sported a simple sweater and jeans, topped with a black Chester coat, and his trademark lopsided smirk.

“Wh –” Marion’s eyes widened, frozen midstride from the visitor’s appearance. A tentative smile played on her lips, building as her surprise sank in. Chris noticed, his own smile growing at her stunned response, and her gaze flickered to the parking receipt the man held up between his fingers when he took it out of his pocket. She stammered, “Um, yes, we validate parking.”

She motioned him to the reception counter, and with only a couple strides of his long legs, Chris closed the distance between the two and handed her the receipt. Marion plucked the paper from him, reaching over the counter to grab a pen from her desk and filling out the date and establishment on his receipt. As she scribbled on the ticket, Marion watched the captain from the corner of her eye and smiled to herself. Chris stood next to her, curiously studying the waiting area and her workspace, hands in his coat pockets as he waited patiently. When she handed back the filled in receipt, he was reading one of the information posters about Dr. Stark’s rhinoplasty services on the wall.

“You here to get your nose done?”

Chris twitched a smile, taking the receipt back from her dainty fingers and placing it in his pocket. “Actually, I was thinking about getting some wrinkles filled in,” He dragged two digits over the crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes, and Marion let out a laugh caught between mirth and disbelief. “Can you fit me in today?”

It was only a joke – that she knew – but if only he knew that the way the corner of his eyes crinkled when he smiled was one of her favourite things about him.

“Oh, right,” she cleared her throat, matching his smirk with her own. “Your old man markings. Sorry, those are fused to your DNA at this point.”

Chris chuckled – a warm, resonant sound in the otherwise empty waiting room that made those wonderful eye creases appear. Marion averted her eyes before she stared at him too long. A silence stretched between the two, and she wracked her brain for a polite way to ask him why he was here. Chris, enjoying how the burning question was starting to aggravate her, purposefully waited for her to say something.

“How’s Emily?” Marion opted for instead.

“Practically back on her feet,” Chris scoffed, and Marion suspected from his reaction that the woman was pushing herself too hard already. “She asked me to tell you that she’d like to buy you a beer for helping her, but you don’t seem like the type.”

“The type?

“The beer type.”

Marion knit her brows playfully and crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, really? What then – pray tell –is my type?”

“I don’t know,” he smirked, mirroring her by crossing his arms in turn. “Probably something that’s ten percent alcohol and ninety percent sugar.”

He watched the arch of her eyebrow twitch – one of her tells that he’d picked up on during his time in the hospital – and the agent quirked his own brow in a question he didn’t have to vocalize. Marion fixed him with a challenging glare, only to give herself away with her refusal to deny his accusation.

Knowing it would push just the right button, Chris added smugly, “It’s pink too, isn’t it?”

With that, Marion’s façade broke, and a smirk replaced her frown – one she attempted to hide by averting her gaze to her feet as she kicked one of her legs out in defeat. “A cosmopolitan has at least twenty percent alcohol, I’ll have you know,” she muttered defensively.

“Mm,” Chris feigned agreement, chuckling as he watched her snicker. “Just don’t let the rest of the guys at the BSAA know; they’ll never let you live it down.”

“Whatever,” she retorted, meeting his eyes again. “I’m not the one who listens to Classic Rock FM.”

Chris smiled, leaning against the counter, “Guess we both have some secrets to keep, huh?”

The young woman let out a soft laugh at the double meaning, and the pregnant pause that fell between them prompted her to ask what she’d really wanted to know.

“Chris,” she finally said, noticing how he stared at her in amusement. “Why are you actually here?”

“What, a guy can’t get some plastic surgery without being judged?” He joked, his hands reaching into a pocket somewhere on the inside of his jacket. “I thought you were better than that.”

Marion rolled eyes, watching him pull out a manila envelope the he had tucked inside his coat.

“I’m here to give you this.”

Intrigued, Marion took the envelope he extended to her. “What is it?”

“Open it.”

She did as he said, opening the envelope and pulling out a few documents. The first paper had the BSAA crest printed alongside a red, CONFIDENTIAL stamp. She leafed through the pages, her eyes falling on a few very important key words.

BSAA Department of Health RE: Offer of Employment – M. Lambert - Surgical Program

Her eyebrows shot up so high they almost merged with her hairline.

“Wha – ” Her mouth fell open at the papers in her hands, and brown eyes snapped up to his. She couldn’t help the way she fumbled for words, unsure which question to ask first, “But I’m – how?”

Chris nodded, as if understanding her shock. “The BSAA put you in an impossible situation and turned your life upside down. And still,” his expression steeled. “You kept your word and the outbreak at your hospital confidential, and even came through for Tundra despite having no obligations to any of us.”

She watched him bring a big, heavy hand to her shoulder, and her heart raced as she processed both the information and the warmth of his hand.

“I owe you, Marion,” he stated earnestly, giving her a look full of significance. “I pulled some strings and called in a few IOUs of my own, and got you an offer. It helped that Schoenberg was able to vouch for your surgical skills.”

Dr. Schoenberg – the surgeon that she had assisted in Emily’s surgery... She was baffled by this; she remembered Schoenberg barely giving a rat’s ass about her and quarrelling with her every step of the surgery. But as disgruntled and argumentative as he had been, he was an outstanding surgeon, and she was almost flattered by this piece of information.

But what baffled her more was the fact the BSAA – a highly prestigious and unparalleled international organization – was offering her a spot among their ranks. She looked down at the contract papers in her hands, her skin tingling and her breath caught in her throat. A dizziness seized her when she realized she was holding the papers that would get her her very life back.

“But – I – Joining the BSAA –” she stammered, her voice halting and her eyes darting about the words on the page. “Aren’t you a paramilitary organization? Am I even fit to join?”

Chris let out a soft breath at her hesitancy, his hand slipping off her shoulder and finding its way back to his side. “It’ll be hard work. There will be months of training involved to meet BSAA standards and aptitudes,” he mused. “And you’d have to start as a surgical intern; I know that’s several years backwards for you, but that was the best I could negotiate.”

A flutter bloomed in Marion’s stomach at his kindness; he must have gone through hours of negotiations and meetings to get her this contract, and she knew exactly how much Chris hated bureaucracy. She raised her eyes to meet his, and for the first time, she noticed exactly just how tired he looked. His sapphire eyes – though sharp and attentive – were adorned with deep bags, and she suddenly felt an impossible amount of gratitude for the lengths he had surely gone for her.

“But the job itself isn’t dangerous,” Chris added almost protectively, as if he’d be offended if Marion had thought he would ever subject her to any danger. “You’d be operating from the BSAA headquarters and doing your surgical residency under surgeons in our medical facilities; treating injured agents returning from missions and general medical upkeep of our staff.”

She searched his eyes for the sign of some sort of joke, or maybe a sign that this was a dream and that she was hallucinating it all. After all, military or not, this man was proposing to let her become a doctor again. A surgeon. As easily as everything she had ever worked for had been stripped away, it was being offered back to her with the simple stroke of a pen on the paper she held between her hands.

And at the uncharacteristic ease of it all, an intrusive thought snaked its way between her ears.

“Are you pitying me?”

It was one of the rare times she’d seen Chris completely stunned, as if her words had been so ridiculous, they’d rendered him stupefied. The way his eyebrows rose and the downturn of his lips would’ve made her laugh under any other circumstance; he’d looked just like a child. “Pitying you? What do you mean?”

“This offer,” Marion gestured at the papers in her hands. “Is it out of pity for indirectly getting me fired, or is it because you really think I belong at the BSAA?”

She pinned him with a sobering stare, waiting for an answer, and Chris sighed. He averted his eyes as he dragged a hand over his beard as he deliberated her question carefully. He knew Marion would see right through a lie; not that he’d ever dare to tell her one.

“No one can really know if you belong at the BSAA. Not even me,” he mused, turning his eyes back to her chestnut gaze. “And although I do feel guilty for what happened to you, that doesn’t stop me from knowing that the world would be deprived of an exceptional talent and skill if you weren’t to return to your line of work. If I can offer you a way back to your calling, then I will. Not because I feel sorry for you, not because it would pacify my guilt, but because I know I would be doing the world a disservice if I didn’t.”

Marion couldn’t even bring herself to blink, as if the slightest little movement would interrupt the processing of his words in her mind. She wanted to hold on to every word, every syllable that he had uttered. Not only had he dispelled any doubts she had had, but his honesty had rekindled a flame in the depths of her belly that she had long forgotten since her days tending to a certain BSAA agent at New York Presbyterian

All she could do was let out a breath, her features softening and her shoulders relaxing. “Thank you, Chris.”

With another one of his trademark lopsided smiles, Chris nodded. “The spot is yours should you choose to take it. I understand if you need more time to –”

“Oh, good!”

The two turned at the source of the interruption, and Marion bristled at the sight of Dr. Stark making his way towards them down the hall. She shot a telling look at Chris who instantly understood he was not to say a word to her boss. The doctor nodded at Chris, but not before eyeing the taller man up and down, and greeted the agent with a polite hello, sir before he turned to his receptionist.

“Glad I caught you before you left,” the doctor said, splaying a hand against the reception counter. “Can you reschedule Mr. Irving’s appointment to 2pm today? I have a golf tournament tonight that I forgot about. And since you’ve been such a doll, I’ll even let you do his coffee enema; I know you’ve been dying to get a little more hands-on experience so I figured –”

“Dr. Stark?” Marion interrupted.

The older man blinked at her, snapping his mouth shut at her uncharacteristic intrusion. “Yes?”

“I quit.”

“I – wait,” Dr. Stark spluttered, his eyes growing wide as he watched the young woman calmly fish out her keys, unclipping the ones to his office and cabinets from her keychain and placing them ever-so- diplomatically onto the counter. “Wait, Marion, hold on now. You need to give me two week’s notice!”

From behind the doctor, Chris observed the other man stammer and scoff, but the agent’s smirk grew wide when the young woman unconcernedly gestured him towards the exit. Wordlessly, the two made their way to the front door, leaving a cursing and sputtering plastic surgeon behind them as Chris held the door open for her.

They were greeted onto the bustling street with a waft of fresh spring wind, the sun warm and welcomed on Marion’s skin as she shed the last of her reservations with the click of the office door shutting behind them. She turned to Chris, who was studying her with a look caught between amusement and awe.

 “So,” she began, a grin blooming on her face. “When can I start?

༺༻

Taglist: @hellotherekenobi @beautifulcollectivewolf @happygalaxymilkshake @cult-of-enji-todoroki

(reply or send me a message if you’d like to be added to the tag list! and don’t forget to leave me a comment on here or on AO3 <3)