Welcome!

"Ch—chris—unngh!!" You cried, back arching at the feeling of his cock piercing deeper into you as he forced your knees to touch your chest, a guttural growl leaving his lips.

"Piece of shit was damn near dry humping you, and he had not an ounce of shame. Fucking b-bastard. Should've punched him." Chris grumbled, his frustration bubbling in his chest as his hands dug into the back of your thighs. You choked on your own moans, eyes rolling back.

Chris heaved, but as soon as you tried to grab him and he felt your pussy clamp down, he pulled out, leaving you empty and gaping, a garbled sob of frustration leaving your throat.

"No. Not until I've made it clear you're mine. 'm gonna make it so you'll be dripping for fucking days." He snapped. Not anger, never, but his jealousy and possessiveness getting the better of him. "Don't act like you're not having fun. I can feel you every time I put another load into you. You're like a dog for it—constantly begging for more." He leaned down, fingers coming between your thighs so he could scoop up his cum and push it back into your pussy, causing a small whimper from you, your walls clamping around his fingers.

"Please—God," your body melted as he kept you plugged momentarily with his fingers, lazily curling them just to tease you and give you a glimpse of what you could have.

"Not God. Say my name." Chris huffed, fingers curling deliciously, tearing it right from your throat.

"Fuck, Chris!" Your eyes rolled back, and for a moment, you thought he'd give mercy, he'd let you cum.

No.

He pulled his fingers out and lined himself back up, but instead of bottoming out, mean and rough with his thick cock stretching you out, he slipped only the tip inside of you. You sniffled, looking up at him as he took one hand and started stroking himself to work himself back up to a peak. You whined, hips trying to shuffle up to his for more.

"Stay still." He said, a small hiss leaving his gritted teeth as he gave slow, shallow thrusts that were barely there, nowhere near enough to get you off as you watched him mix the shallow, barely there thrusts with his own hand stroking the rest of his length.

"'M sorryyyy," you whined, back arching. "Just lemme cum. Please, I'll be good! I need it—Chris!" You twitched, eyes rolling as his other hand came back down, thumbing roughly at your puffy, abused clit.

"You'll cum how I want. When I want." He huffed. "Since you're so okay with letting pervs hit on you, you need a reminder." He grumbled. God, he really was such a jealous asshole. He'd make up for it later, you both knew. This was rare for him, and with how cautious he normally was during sex, you took it more than willingly, even when he wasn't letting you cum.

Chris doubled the speed of his thumb circling your clit, his cock hardly moving, barely deep enough to reach and drag the bulbous tip along your g-spot. You cried, back arching. Your orgasm built, slow and bubbling in your lower belly like a pot ready to boil over. "Please—pleasepleaseplease!"

Chris didn't stop you this time. A collection of sobs and gasps mixed together as the coil snapped, finally rewarding you with a deep thrust of his cock, burying himself to the hilt and letting himself go as well, cum spilling with thick, long spurts that you felt right against your cervix. He didn't stop his finger on your clit, pressing forward to kiss and bite at your neck and collarbone. After a minute or two, your body jolted, smacking at his chest and arms desperately for a break. He pulled his hand away, cock pulling out slowly before he brought two fingers to scoop up the mess once more, bringing his sticky fingers to your lips.

Your lips parted, accepting his silent push for you to clean the mess you two had made. "Mmh," you whined faintly, watching as he slotted himself between your thighs again. You realized, much against your body's need for a break, Chris wasn't done.

"Still gotta get it through to you, pretty girl. You know what I'm proving?" He withdrew his fingers, bringing both hands back down to lift your thighs up to your chest, your thighs burning with the position.

You shook your head. Chris waited. "No.." you barely muttered, almost like you were embarrassed that he'd fucked his original idea right out of you.

"I'm gonna make sure you know nobody could fuck you like I do. Especially not those pervs your age who think they know how to pick up a date." Chris explained, steady and firm as he leaned down to kiss you, tongue slipping lazily past your lips to get a taste of the mess you'd cleaned from his fingers. With you distracted by the kiss, he took that and lined himself up, pressing his cock forward. You whimpered, core squeezing around him almost immediately as he bottomed out roughly. He looked down, biting at his lip.

In your lower belly, he could see a faint bulge. He had to point it out every time, just to remind you how big he was. God, he was huge. In many ways. He worked out, and he'd been doing so for most of his life, and he tried his best to take care of the muscle. He was tall, too. He towered over almost everyone, often even engulfing many people if he were hugging someone.

You looked down with him, only to drop your head back and roll your eyes. "Chris, please." You sniffled. He lifted his head, easing his hips back.

"Relax. No more rejections. You can cum all you want and more, pretty girl." He mused, leaning down to nip at your neck. He started without hesitation—almost immediately finding a mean, fast pace that elicited a squeal from you, back arching eagerly. Your walls clamped, and he hissed, fingertips digging into the back of your thighs.

Chris, despite having finished twice already, was hard like he had been the one who was denied three times. He was relentless, rough, like an animal. "Fuck, you're still so tight." He almost growled, nose scrunched like he was trying desperately to focus on not busting so soon.

Your hands came to grasp at his biceps, nails digging into the tense muscles. "Oh, my god!" You mewled, eyes rolling into the back of your head as your pussy fluttered around his girth, making his cock twitch. He bottomed out, halting for a moment as he brought one hand to grasp at your cheeks, squishing them together. "Chris?" You whined, slightly slurred.

"Tell me who makes you feel good." He demanded. His hand wasn't rough, nor threatening. Just a tight enough hold to make sure you can't look away from him as he starts moving his hips again, pumping his cock back and forth.

"Fuck! Mmh—'s you, Chris! You!"

"And?"

"Only you! Ahh!" You squealed, unable to warn as you clamped around his cock, gushing around his thick girth. He hissed, pushing himself to hold a steady pace, even as he felt his balls draw tight to his body.

"That's right. Me. I'm the—fuck—only one. Only one who gets to touch you. To flirt with you. To push you onto the bed and slam my cock into you." His teeth gritted, hand leaving your cheeks as it came to the pillow beside your head, a grasp that would've been bruising. Chris looked down, and the sight of your own fluids making a white, creamy ring around his cock pushed him just perfectly over the edge. He slammed into you, cock snug against your cervix as he pumped his cum into you, pleasure getting the best of him as he let out a choked whine and an actual moan, rather than his usual grunts and groans.

"Oh, my god." You sobbed, a small hiccup leaving your throat. Your nails dragged along his biceps and shoulders, hips jolting with aftershocks of overwhelming pleasure. Much to your shock, he didn't soften either. Usually, if he lasted multiple rounds, he'd only last three, if he was lucky. His cock often needed a break at that point.

Not tonight. He pulled out slowly, flipping you onto your stomach like you weighed nothing to him. You whimpered, face burying into the pillow. "Gonna fill you up 'til I'm content. 'Til I'm sure I've left my mark." He panted, mouthing sloppily at your neck and back as he slipped back into you. You gasped, feeling so much fuller. With him straddling your thighs, keeping them shut, and keeping you pinned face down, something about the position made it harder for your body to steadily accommodate his girth.

You couldn't properly form full sentences at this point. Your moans muffled in the pillows as he immediately found that brutal pace. He had to be almost done, right? You hoped. Because as he fucked into you, your walls felt raw, overused, yet you couldn't say no to it with how good it felt. Chris was losing it rather quickly. He slid in and out so easily, his cum spilling from your hole with the most nasty, lewd squelching accompanied by the 'plap! plap! plap!' of his balls slapping against your puffy, soaked pussy.

His face nuzzled against your neck, finding its place to press his nose to your pulse point with his lips pressing sloppily along the curve of your neck, only to bite down. You squealed, nails clawing at the sheets in a desperate attempt to find some semblance of support to grasp onto something.

"Fuck. 'M gonna cum, pretty," he hissed. You didn't know whether to be shocked or thankful. He usually didn't reach a peak so damn fast. You whimpered, hips lazily trying to fuck back against his cock, eyes rolling to the back of your head as your vision blurred and your hearing became fuzzy.

You weren't too far behind, and as Chris reached his own peak, you followed, a scream ripping from your chest and being muffled into the pillow as he fucked you through your orgasm, his own cum spilling out of you from the pressure and amount of it. By the time he came to a halt, he collapsed on top of you, arms wrapping tight around your waist as one palm came to feel your lower belly, where he was nestled deep, snug inside your used cunt.

He could hear you crying into the pillow. He shushed you, lips peppering along your neck and finding their way to your jawline and cheek. "Look at me, pretty girl." He murmured. It took a moment of coaxing, but you did. You turned back to him, sniffling.

"'M sorry, Chris." You babbled quietly.

"Oh, my beautiful girl." He cooed, leaning in to kiss your lips. "You did so good for me. Took me so well." He purred. "I'm sorry I got so mean, but I had to prove a point." He feigned pity. Of course, he felt bad. But not bad to the point where he felt bad about spilling his cum into you for multiple rounds and fucking you raw.

"'M so tired." Your head dropped to the pillow, eyes fluttering shut.

"Sleep. I'll get us cleaned up, gorgeous." He purred against your pulse point, slowly pulling out as he lifted you with him, getting out of bed. You were in and out of consciousness as he cleaned everything up—he started with wiping you down and ensuring you were all clean. He figured the proper shower could wait. He set you in the desk chair beside the bed to get you dressed, followed by changing the sheets and cleaning the surrounding mess.

Once everything, including himself, was cleaned up, he lifted you from the chair and found his way to the bed, curling himself around you. He snuggled close under the blankets, letting you get comfortable in your half-asleep state.

Chris hated the idea of dating apps. He thought they were absolutely foolish. He was old-fashioned, in that sense. He preferred meeting naturally, in person, at work, or at a common coffee shop, etc. He didn't shame those who used apps, but he refused for himself.

Until Claire forced him into the dating pool. Claire downloaded some stupid app on his phone and set up an entire profile within the 20 minutes he was finishing their dinner for their weekly get-together with Leon and Jill. Chris didn't find out about the app until the next morning when he woke up to an unusual number of notifications. He immediately thought he was late for work or he'd missed a huge meeting or—

'Hey, Sexyyy😋'

sent 1:04 a.m.

The first message read. He blinked, eyes refocusing. "Eh?" He grunted, scrolling through.

'Helloooo, sailor 😍😍'

received 3:00 a.m.

'What are you looking for on here?'

received 4:53 a.m.

'Let's meet up?'

received 5:12 a.m.

'Wowowow🤤'

received 6:01 a.m.

The notifications kept going, all vulgar or objectifying him in some way. Never in his life had he been objectified directly.

"What the fuck is going on?" He groaned. He unlocked his phone and found the app. Bumble? Seriously?!

He swiped the notifications and clicked his way to call Claire. He called her four times to get her to pick up.

"Claire Redfield." He started, rough with exhaustion.

"Good morning to you, too, Chris." She barely squeaked, yawning. Chris could hear her shuffling around to get comfortable, followed by giggles, likely caused by Leon.

"Why is Bubble on my phone?"

"Bumble?"

"Whatever. Bumble. Why is it on my phone?!"

"Because you're lonely, and you need a girlfriend. Please, just give it a try! If it doesn't work, I'll do all your paperwork for three months."

"That's not allowed, Claire." He puffed.

"Then I'll do your laundry for three months. Your nasty laundry." She shuddered at the thought.

"I told you I'm not into the apps." Claire could hear the frown on his face.

"If it doesn't work, I'll admit defeat and set you up with someone in person. But just try it, please? Just for a couple of weeks." She persisted.

Chris had a soft spot for Claire's urgency. He trusted her. He had to trust his little sister. He sighed. "Fine. If it doesn't work, you're buying our next get-together dinner." He huffed.

"Deal."

"Now hurry up and get out of bed. You're gonna be late for work." Chris reminded her. She groaned.

"See ya." She shuffled out of bed.

"Be safe."

"You, too."

Beeping filled his ear as Claire hung up. Chris huffed as he got out of bed and readied himself for work. A quick shower, lazy effort at breakfast, bad coffee, and his usual briefcase he'd drag to work when he wasn't on a mission or training.

Chris ignored the app for two days. The flood of notifications slowed but didn't stop. On day three, he gave in. 60% of it was young girls who just wanted sex, 10% were men whom he wasn't all that interested in, 15% was men and women his age who gave strong vibes of gold diggers or toxic lovers, and the rest were bad profiles or weirdly robotic greetings that gave him an uncomfortable gut feeling.

He responded to only a few, one of those being you. A younger girl with the prettiest eyes he'd ever seen, the most gorgeous hair, and a profile that really gave him a good grasp on who you might be. He noticed how rare it was to find a good, full profile on this godforsaken app.

'Hello! How are you? I hope this doesn't sound odd, but do you go to the 48 hour gym on Kippler and 6th? You look so familiar, I just can't place it, and you seem to work out.'

received 11:06 a.m.

He raised a brow. That was one of the only decent starters he had come across yet. He was still unwilling. He clicked your profile again, head tilting. He leaned over his kitchen counter, scrolling mindlessly along your photos and text boxes. You truly were beautiful, he couldn't deny. Your profile gave you an air of confidence, despite how he hadn't even responded to you yet. He was at a conflict—you seemed lovely, but could he ignore the age gap? You were likely just finishing college, at best.

He sucked it up and texted back. He took Claire's advice and let himself take a risk for once. If you weren't into him even slightly, why would you have texted?

'Hello. I'm doing quite alright. It's not odd at all, but no, I don't go to public gyms. Working out is part of my job and routine at home.'

sent 8:11 p.m.

It was dry, maybe too blunt of a text that gave away his age and hatred for texting. He double texted.

'If you figure out why I'm familiar, I'd love to know. They say that the human brain can't make up faces, nor completely forget the ones they've seen. Maybe it's a subconscious memory.'

sent 8:12 p.m.

Chris wasn't sure if that was boring to say. He tilted his head at his own text, but he shrugged and turned away as he set his phone down and returned his attention to the bowl of leftovers he was in the middle of warming up for a poor effort at a decent dinner, despite his exhaustion.

An hour later, his phone dinged just as he was exiting the shower, toweling his hair dry.

'Really? That's a pretty interesting fact! I'm honestly not sure why you're familiar. What part of town are you in? Maybe I've seen you at the store? A coffee shop?'

received 9:15 p.m.

Another ding.

'Can I ask what you do for work? No push, though!'

received 9:15 p.m.

The text felt welcoming, smooth, something he appreciated. He waited a moment, turning eventually to respond.

'I visit the coffee shop on 3rd often. It's close to me, on my way to work.'

sent 9:17 p.m.

'Forgive me, but I prefer to avoid work conversation. It's tiring.'

sent 9:18 p.m.

Your response came through much faster than before, so he assumed you must have just gotten home or finished being busy.

'The one across from Fauna's Flowers? I think it's called Connie's Coffee, or something. I love that one! I visit it every now and then, but I've been trying to cut the coffee intake. And of course, it's no worries. Work isn't always a fun topic for all of us :)'

received 9:18 p.m.

Chris found himself huffing a small laugh at your tone over text. Excited about the flower shop and the cafe, both of which had silly, cliche names. Your first thing in common—a cute cafe. He liked that thought.

'My sister recently encouraged me to drink tea instead. The coffee shop has tea, as well. It's decent, though I think I make it better.'

sent 9:19 p.m.

'Oh, do you? What kind of tea?'

received 9:21 p.m.

'Lemon or chamomile, most times. Sometimes, I'll make the sleepy time tea for bad nights.'

sent 9:23 p.m.

'Maybe I could try your tea one day :) I'm not big on it myself, but I'm willing to try anything. I had a roommate a year or two back who drank tea like it was her religion, so I know the good and bad brands.'

received 9:30 p.m.

The conversation slipped back and forth, smooth and clear, friendly and light. There was no pressure. Chris almost felt bad for having to end the conversation so he could sleep for work the next morning. He sighed as you two said goodnight, rolling over and falling asleep relatively easily.

The only other conversation he had on that app ended within a day when he declined a woman's offer for a hookup. Now, you were the only reason he had the app. Nothing developed yet, just the initial conversations to get into the groove of talking to a new person. Chris held low expectations for you, never getting excited about anything, even if he knew he enjoyed the conversations.

You were overjoyed that he was so consistently engaged in your conversations when he wasn't busy. You two often messaged early in the mornings or late evening into the darkening night. You learned about Chris' sister, his job at the BSAA—although vaguely detailed—, his favorite foods, the way he liked his coffee, the reason his last relationship ended, his dog he recently adopted that was shown in one of his profile photos, and so much more. He learned about you, as well, making a mental note of everything he could.

Your favorite restaurants, favorite foods, your hobbies, details about your family and your cat, and more he kept at the back of his head. You two switched off of the app and texted over regular messages after two weeks, when Chris started to feel okay with the developments. He deleted the app three weeks in. Claire knew none of this yet. He didn't care to give her reasons to be smug while he, for once in his seemingly miserable life, enjoyed himself.

After hitting a full month of talking over text and phone calls, Chris found the time and energy to make plans with you. He regretted not getting to meet you sooner, but each time he apologized for his lack of time, you always reminded him that you had no rush. Chris hoped—one day—he'd be as eased as you about letting time pass so easily, being okay with letting days go by with nothing happening. Maybe he'd learn it from you, he found himself hoping.

'It's a lot of fun talking to you. I'd like to have you over for dinner on Saturday, 4 p.m.'

sent 6:30 p.m.

Chris had already memorized your schedule by the vague details you'd given him, so he chose Saturday since you both had the entire day off and you mentioned Sunday was your errands day.

'I'd love to have dinner! What should I bring with me? I haaate showing up empty handed :('

received 6:31 p.m.

'Just bring yourself, make sure you're comfortable, too.'

sent 6:36 p.m.

'Are you sure, Chris? I can bring wine, or dessert. Or I could help you cook.'

received 6:37 p.m.

'No, it's quite alright. I'd like to do this for you. 4 p.m., Saturday, here's my address.'

sent 6:45 p.m.

He sent over his address, and his firm stance on doing all the work made you giggle. You knew it wasn't a lot, especially by today's standards, but it made your heart swell that this guy was being so kind. You'd learned he was a little messed up, unaware of the details, but aware enough due to the few phone calls you had with him, late enough to where he'd started babbling from exhaustion as the clock ticked closer to midnight, yet he denied your offers to end the call as he went on about how it was nice to listen to you, even if you were in and out of consciousness on your end of the call.

You two had one more phone call on Friday night. He stayed muted while you showered, and you two talked as you got ready for bed and went through your routine. You talked about music, food, animals, past experiences. So much seemed to spill out between you two, effortless and soft, and steady for Chris, who'd become accustomed to the wobbles and jolts of his job, all too used to the risk of losing someone or having to give something up for the sake of his work.

"I look forward to seeing you tomorrow night. Is that too forward to say?" His voice rumbled through the speaker, and you could tell he was getting tired already, at only 9 p.m.

"No, of course not. I'm excited! It's been so fun talking to you, I haven't even looked at that silly app since we started chatting." You told him, honest and warm.

"I deleted it last week. I found no reason to keep it once I got your number." He chuckled.

"Aw, really?" You asked, Chris could hear the smile on your face.

"Yes. Everyone else was... unsettling, to say the least."

"God, you're telling me! No matter the time or place, men are animals. No offense, but yeesh, the number of guys I had that sent me random nudes... eugh." You mimicked a gag, to which he let out a louder laugh. "They weren't even visually appealing." You added, hardly audible to him.

He chuckled faintly. "I saw my fair share of unsolicited naked photos. And I was only on there for two weeks or so."

"Maybe women are animals, too. Or maybe they're just animals because of you." You giggled.

"You flatter me," he mused. He'd grown to accept your flirtatious compliments and jokes, sometimes even returning them with his own. You learned that, despite his age and closed-off attitude, he was quite the flirt.

"I mean it, though. I really am excited for tomorrow. It means the world that you're inviting me over." Your voice softened.

"It's the least I can do for a first date. I'd take you out, but.."

"I don't need to be taken out, silly. A home-cooked meal is more than any guys given me before." You scoffed a small laugh. "Besides, it's our first date. I think staying in is a good test for a first date, and it's more intimate."

"You've not been cooked for?" You heard him shift, likely sitting upright in bed.

"Uh.. no," you laughed. "I usually do the cooking. It's how I've grown to show care, besides physical affection, but I can't really get physical on a good first date." You explained. Chris could hear you shuffling around your apartment, phone pressed between your shoulder and your ear as he listened to the ruffling of fabric, wondering if you were getting dressed or crawling into bed. He shook his head.

"All more the reason I'll cook. I hardly ever get to cook for anyone who isn't my sister and our two friends." He said. He didn't want to dwell on your poor treatment that you'd already vaguely mentioned on previous calls.

"I can't wait to be the new addition." You said, unaware of how permanent and intimate those words sounded to him. The phone went quiet, only for a moment, Chris processing the implications and possibilities. You clearly didn't hear it yourself, so he tried not to stick to it.

"I think you'll be a good addition. You and Jill would get along quite well, I think." His voice softened just a touch, and you could hear him lie back down.

"Jill, huh? Maybe. She sounds nice, from your stories." You mused.

Chris gave a low hum, head shifting against the fabric of his pillow as he listened intently to your soft breathing as you found the silence as an opportunity to regulate your breathing after how you'd been running around your apartment for the last two hours while you called him.

"Are you laying down?" He broke the soft silence.

"Mhmm. Are you?" You hummed back.

"Yeah. I was waiting for you to get comfortable before we said goodnight."

"You don't have to wait. I take way too long." You giggled, touched by his kindness to wait despite how sleepy he sounded.

"I want to wait. I like talking with you."

"I like talking with you, too, Chris." You curled up, exhaling deeply as your muscles finally released the tension of the day. "Is it weird that I don't feel like hanging up yet?" You asked, quieter as he heard the click of your bedside lamp darkening.

"No. Not at all." He murmured.

"Is it okay if I don't?" You sounded smaller, almost shy to ask.

"Yeah, of course."

"Promise?"

"Promise." He chuckled, sleep lacing the deep sound.

"Goodnight, Chris." You breathed, and Chris relished in the sound. Soft, slow, allowing himself to relax at the knowledge of your comfort on the other end of the call.

"Goodnight." He murmured back, eyes falling shut as he kept the phone on speaker next to his head. You were both quick to sleep, soft breathing and shuffling of sheets and blankets heard in the comfortable, meaningful silence.

You woke up the next morning around 9 a.m., Chris having hung up. He texted an apology.

'I wasn't going to hang up, but I had to run to Claire's for a small emergency. Call you when I'm home?'

sent 5:00 a.m.

'Is Claire alright? Call me when you've got the time, I can wait.'

received 9:46 a.m.

It was noon by the time Chris responded, and you were eating lunch on your couch when you heard your phone rang across the living room. You stood, padding across the hardwood floor. Chris was calling. You swiped the green button, putting him on speaker.

"Hello?"

"Hey, sorry about this morning." He huffed.

"It's okay. Is everything alright?" You asked, coming back to the couch.

"Yes. Claire had a rather... upsetting morning, and Leon hasn't been home in days due to a mission, so she just needed some help."

"She's okay now?"

"Yes. She's alright." He sighed, like he was also confirming it to himself.

"I'm glad. Are you alright? You sound exhausted." He could hear the frown in your face.

"I'm okay, just tired. But I have things to do. I just wanted to call you like I said I would. Are you still good to come over tonight?"

"Yes, absolutely. I'm actually just about to shower, and I'll be getting ready soon after that."

"Perfect. I'm.. I'm excited." It sounded clunky coming from him, talking with such an enthusiastic wording.

You giggled. "I'm excited, too. I'll see you tonight?"

"See you tonight. Be careful on the way here, it'll be starting rush hour." He reminded you.

"Got it."

"Goodbye."

"Bye-bye!"

Chris hung up, and you both went on about your day. Chris spent the day tidying his organized mess, doing laundry, and preparing the house for your date. You spent your day similarly, though instead of cleaning, you spent an entire hour before leaving, just picking an outfit. You listened, going for comfortable yet presentable. You couldn't decide on a shirt. The tube top screamed eager, the t-shirt screamed lazy and sleepy, sweats screamed pajamas, the shorts screamed easy. You had to call two different friends to settle on a simple tank top with a nice pair of jeans. The tank top had lace around the hem, a small scrunch of fabric beneath a cute bow at the center of your chest. You fixed your hair and hung up the phone before texting Chris.

'I'm leaving now!'

received 3:45 p.m.

He replied with a simple thumbs up. Another thing that he did—always giving away his age with how he texted. It made you laugh.

It was only a ten minute drive, just enough time to blast your music and ignore all of your anxiety leading up to the moment you knocked on his door. It was a little chilly, and you hadn't brought a jacket. You cursed the weather as you shivered on his porch, shaking from anxiety and hoping you could shrug it off as being cold. Chris came to the door moments later, rag in hand as he peeked out and opened the door fully.

"Hi." You greeted. Chris ushered you inside, taking note of the goosebumps along your arms.

"Hi." He chuckled lightly at your shy greeting, closing the door behind you. "Sorry that took a moment, I had to turn the burners off so the food didn't burn."

"No, it's okay. I would've waited way longer than that." You shrugged it off, looking around. Out of the many guys you'd been on dates with in the last two years, Chris was one of the few who lived alone and in his own home.

"You can set your purse anywhere. Food is just about ready. You can make yourself comfortable anywhere."

Just as Chris was turning to walk off, he was greeted by his large dog marching down the stairs, shaking his head from the nap he was taking.

"Hi, Buddy." He greeted the dog with a wide grin, crouching down. The dog spotted you a foot or two behind Chris, sniffing the air. "This is Buddy."

"He's friendly?"

"Very." Chris assured you, gesturing you to join him in his crouch. "He's never bit a welcomed guest, but he might be a little obsessive with the sniffing."

You crouched beside Chris, holding a hand out for Buddy, the dog, to sniff. "I think he smells my cat." You laughed, watching the dog sniff up your arms and towards your chest and torso, then down to your ankles, where your cat had been rubbing at your jeans.

"He's a good dog. Before I adopted him, he was training to be a K-9 dog for the local police station."

"Yeah? Why did he have to stop?"

"They didn't need him by the time he was about to be done, is that I was told. Doesn't seem true or valid, but he's a good boy."

"He's a very good boy. Most dogs aren't this sweet to complete strangers." You giggled as the dog pushed you onto your butt, nuzzling into your chest. You responded with thourough scratching behind his ears and under his chin.

"I'll leave you two while I finish the food." Chris chuckled, leaning in to pat the dogs head as he rose to his feet.

You remained on the floor for five minutes, taking in the surroundings while the dog got a feel for you and your personality. He didn't seem too alarmed or threatened by the cat scent, but he definitely liked to lick. You weren't used to that, being a cat owner. You snickered each time. Chris had a lovely home, you noticed. Weak on the decor, but it was his, nonetheless. Tidy, organized in his own manner, bits and pieces of him left along the house like his keys that sat on the door-side table with a keychain from Jill, his work boots, freshly washed and waiting to be used at the door, the small photo frames around the living room of photos of him and Claire or him and Leon or Jill, some consisting of the full group.

It was homey, very much his. You liked that. It smelled great, even beneath the strong scent of spices and meat cooking in the kitchen. Clean, but like he'd recently sprayed cologne or showered in the last hour. A woodsy smell lingered where he'd been next to you, spicy yet smooth, perfectly calculated in his spritz.

Chris came back, reaching a hand out to help you up from the dog. "Stay, Buddy." He demanded softly, and the dog listened, prancing to the couch and laying in the dog bed next to it. He led you to the small dining area in the kitchen, pulling your chair out for you and pushing it in once you sat. You looked down at the food, the sight mouthwatering as you took it in. Lemon pepper chicken with a side of thick-cut potato wedges with a butt load of spices and seasonings.

"This looks amazing." You complimented, eyes tracking him as he crossed the round table to sit across from you.

"I hope your tastebuds agree with your eyes."

"I bet they will." You hummed. He waited, taking a sip of his water as you stabbed a bite of chicken onto your fork and tried it. He wasn't a bad cook, but he tended to get nervous with new people trying his food.

You nodded, swallowing the bite. "This is really good. I don't think I've ever had chicken this good." You could see the relaxation in his face as he breathed out and took a bite on his own.

"I'm happy you like it. I wasn't sure what to make, but you said you liked chicken, so.." he trailed off, taking a sip of his water. "There's some brownies in the oven, as well, if you'd like some later. Claire came over to help me bake them."

"Mmh, I can't wait." You smiled, cheeks slightly puffed out due to the food you were chewing now.

Dinner went well. It was not nearly as scary as you both thought it was going to be. Chris felt more relaxed with you across the table, but he didn't dare mention it yet, unwilling to verbally attach too soon. Unknown to him, you felt it, too. A comfort and ease throughout dinner. Maybe it was the fact that all you two had done was call, but he was more charming in person. He cracked quite a few cheesy jokes and even threw out a bad attempt at flirting that made you howl with laughter, only to counter it with an even worse flirt. It was much harder to be flirty in person without the option to hang up or mute yourself if you said something too dumb or too flirty.

"Let me see your plate, I'll deal with them." You said, leaving no room for him to argue. He hesitated, but he accepted your demand. You dealt with the plates while he grabbed you two a brownie to split, finding his way to the couch with you trailing behind him. Buddy found his way to lay at Chris' feet on the floor, a low 'gruff' being heard as he plopped into the floor and went right back to sleep. The dog made you giggle.

"Do you want to watch something?" He asked, reaching for the remote.

"If you want to." You said, nodding.

"We can keep talking. I don't mind, truly."

"Let's find a movie first, and if it's boring, we can keep talking." You compromised, to which he smiled at. He stood up and walked over to his DVD shelf, listing off the ones he wanted.

"You ever seen The Terminator?" He asked, peeking over his shoulder.

"The what?" You raised a brow, head tilted.

"The Terminator. With Arnold Schwarzenegger? Yknow," he paused, "I'll be back." He said, mimicking the iconic accent and phrase from the old movie. You cackled at the bad impression, head thrown back in a fit of giggles. "Hey, I'm serious!" He laughed, contradicting his own words. "You've never seen it?"

"No!" You snorted, gasping between giggles. "That's something my dad used to watch when he was younger, but I never watched it myself." You shook your head, fighting off the giggle fit.

"Fuck, I forgot how young you are." He chuckled, but as he turned his back, you saw the small slouch in his shoulders.

"Let's watch it. You like it, don't you?" You proposed.

"I do, but I don't want to bore you with old 80s movies."

"You're not boring me, Chris." You stood up, hand brushing his as you came to his side and looked for the DVD. "Put it in." You said, handing him the disc. "The disc. Put the disc in." You immediately added, your own cheeks warming at your poor wording.

Chris snickered. "If you insist." He joked.

"I do insist." You smiled wide, all teeth and pride. He listened, putting the disc into the DVD player as you went back to sit down and get comfortable.

Chris pressed play and found his spot next to you, sitting close but not close enough to have things feel too quick for either of you. Neither of you thought that the other wanted to touch. Not in a sexual way, not yet. Chris merely wished to have you lean against him. You wished to lay your legs over his lap and get comfortable. Neither of you moved, though. Which was good because Buddy crawled up and laid across your laps, his head in yours with his butt over Chris' thighs, tail resting curled against his leg.

The movie itself was good. Chris had to explain a few things, clear up some of the lore, and before he knew it, you were asking to watch the second one.

"We have to watch the second one! We can't just watch one of a franchise and move on." You insisted, gently lifting Buddy's head from your lap so you could scurry to check his DVDs. "It's only 7 p.m., do you have time to watch the next one?" You asked, realizing that you didn't fully know what he had to do the next day.

"Of course. Pop it in, I'll refill our waters." He said, patting Buddy to get him to crawl into your spot. He retrieved more water from the kitchen, returning to find you standing at the couch, next movie already playing. "What's wrong?" He asked, looking at the couch.

"I'm not sure there's room with Buddy. I don't wanna wake the baby." You said, pointing to the dog, who was still absolutely slumped, curled into your previous spot.

"That's okay. I'll sit on the floor." He gestured for you to take the couch.

"What? No way."

"Do you want to squeeze?" He raised a brow, setting your water glasses down. "I'm not exactly small, in case you haven't noticed."

Oh, you definitely noticed. Noticed it perfectly the moment he opened the door and you squeezed in past him, arm brushing his. You swallowed. "We'll squeeze." You said. "Sit, get comfortable." You demanded.

He laughed. He wouldn't have agreed if he thought you'd actually find a food position. He sat down, amused by your stubbornness and refusal to let him sit on the ground. His arm laid over the back of the couch, fingers tapping. You shifted carefully to squeeze between Buddy and Chris, pressed right up against Chris' side, legs leaning onto his. He subconsciously eased, arm falling over your shoulder.

"Are you comfortable?" He asked softly.

"Mhmm. You're warm." You murmured, hiding your face by looking down to pretend to check your phone. Chris didn't say anything else as you two turned to watch the movie. It was a comfortable switch. Buddy circled around and laid against you, pressing you closer. After you let go of your anxiety, you let your arm relax over his waist, head falling properly onto his shoulder. Chris' thumb absently soothed over the soft skin of your shoulder.

Chris found it funny when he looked down, just as the movie reached its peak, to find you fully asleep. You were drooling onto his t-shirt, curled into his hold. He shifted, letting you lay more comfortably over his chest as he turned the TV down with the remote. Buddy yawned, finally rising from the couch to scamper off to get water, claws clacking against the hardwood floor.

An hour passed, movie long forgotten as Chris laid beneath you, watching the clock. Just after 9 p.m., not too late, he thought. It ticked closer to 9:30 when you finally shifted, your phone ringing on the coffee table. You sat upright, inhaling deeply.

"Shit. I'm so sorry." You yawned, stretching your arms over your head as you looked at your phone. Just one of your friends. You let it go to voice-mail.

"No, don't apologize. I don't mind." He shook his head.

"I really didn't mean to fall asleep. We can rewatch the movie. I'm.. fuck, sorry." You breathed, hands rubbing at your face. He reached out, fixing your shirt to cover your lower belly as he sat upright.

"Don't apologize." He repeated, firm and unwavering. "Everyone needs a little rest. You deserve to relax."

"But I—" you frowned. "It's our first date. It feels mean that I fell asleep."

"It feels like you felt comfortable enough to let your guard down tonight. I'm not offended one bit." He reassured you, watching you fix your hair with another yawn. You checked the time.

"I guess that means I should get going." You mumbled.

"Probably. It's not safe to drive too late, especially if you're too tired." He advised, rising from the couch. He reached and handed you your half full water glass. You accepted it, taking a sip to satisfy your dry mouth.

You watched him return the glasses to the kitchen as you retrieved your purse. Standing by the door, you crouched down to put your shoes on, Buddy came to nudge you for more attention. He could tell you were leaving. He whined.

"Oh, baby," you cooed at the dog. "What'cha cryin' for?" You spoke to the dog like it was an actual baby, and Chris laughed at the sight and sound of your baby talk. Buddy gave a cry.

"He likes you." Chris said, tapping his thigh to get Buddy to leave you be. Buddy gave you one more lick at your hand before he padded away, curling up where you'd been sitting on the couch.

"I'm glad he does. He's a sweet dog." You looked up at Chris as he approached and opened the door, towering over you. You swallowed harshly, cheeks warming as you subconsciously took in his height and muscle, reminding yourself of how big he was. His cologne wafted subtly past you, and you had to bite back a grin from how good it smelled. You struggled with liking men's scents, but whatever Chris wore was perfect. Woodsy, natural, with a touch of... vanilla? Oh, he knew how to pick a scent. Maybe the vanilla was that lotion you saw him use on his hands after dinner. You wondered just how he smelled so right.

"I'm glad you came over tonight." He said quietly as you two stepped onto his porch. The cold night air bit at you, and he tensed. "Wait a second." He stepped back inside, looking around before he grabbed a zip-up jacket from the back of the front door. He handed it to you. "Here, borrow this." He said, placing it over your shoulders.

"Are you sure? I-i don't need it. I'll be in the car in a second.." you looked up at him.

"I'm sure. You can bring it back next time." He said, lips curling into a kind smile.

"Next time?" Your lips stretched into a wide grin. "You want another date?"

"I do. Do you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do." You nodded, eager and unashamed of your excitement.

"Good. I'll call you in the morning, then. Let's get you to the car." He said, leading you down the sidewalk to your car at the curb.

You stood for a moment, car beeping with the unlock button. You looked up at him again. "I had fun tonight." You said.

"I did, too."

"Call me tomorrow?" You asked, seeking confirmation.

"Of course." He smiled.

You leaned up, lips pressing to his stubbled cheek. "Thank you, Chris." You whispered. He looped an arm around your waist, offering a hug. He would've returned the kind kiss, but he didn't want to push his luck.

"Goodnight." He hummed.

He pulled back first, watching you get into the car and waiting for you to leave before he went back inside. Buddy came to his side.

"She's great, isn't she?" Chris grinned. Buddy gave a sharp yip, a noise of eager agreement. "Yeah, Bud, I know. She's... somethin'." He breathed, finding his way to his bedroom.

Things only went uphill for you two. They remained slow, innocent, and hopeful. Over three months, Chris either took you out or had you at his place as often as his schedule and energy would allow. Every date with you made him happier. For once, he didn't fear loss. He feared nothing with you next to him. You two barely started goodbye kisses at the end of two months, Chris' excuse being that he wanted to make sure you two were mentally and emotionally equal before anything physical outside of cuddling or hand holding or hugging. His slow pace made you giggle, gave you a special jump in your heart every time he reassured you that he wasn't being slow out of dislike, but out of need for certainty.

The first time Chris spent the night at your place, he was beyond excited. There had been too many times over the last four months that you two fell asleep together, but you two never stayed overnight out of respect for the other's schedule and needs. You two took the time to secure a few days for each other that lined up perfectly for him to stay at your place.

"Hello, little kitty." Chris mused at your cat, watching the small kitten stretch next to him on your bed as he waited for you to change, back turned to you.

"She's showing her belly." You giggled.

"Mhmm. But if I touch it, she's gonna attack." Chris squinted jokingly at the small cat. He poked her belly, proving himself right when she bit and pawed at his finger, playful.

"Alright, miss meow, it's bedtime." You picked up the cat. "Let's go, baby." You purred to the cat, bringing her over to her own bed in the living room. She had her own nook and area in the living room with a pee pad, a litter box, and two bowls of freshly filled food and water. She was still being trained, so you couldn't yet sleep with her in the bedroom. You returned to Chris, grabbing a jacket—which he had yet to take back—from your bed and hanging it up on the back of your door.

"We gonna lay down?" He asked, shifting on the bed.

"You ready to?" You asked, crawling into bed next to him. He nodded, shuffling underneath the covers to get closer to you as you both laid down and got comfortable. Chris was awkward, to say the least.

"This is easier when we aren't thinking about it." He admitted, earning a laugh from you.

"It's okay. I'm a little nervous, too." You reassured him, bringing yourself closer to him, an arm wrapping around his torso. He returned the gesture, tugging you closer, just enough to feel you against him, your leg laying over his thigh.

"I could get used to this." He murmured.

"I think I already am." You smiled, hand gently tracing along the muscles of his shoulder blades.

He huffed a laugh, letting silence fall. He took a moment to watch you, brushing his thumb back and forth against the revealed skin beneath your tank top that pinched around your waist. He took a moment to absorb your details. He took in your eyes, the gorgeous color of your irises, your pretty lashes that you'd bat at him and giggle when he'd ask what movie you wanted to watch and you'd say "whatever you'd like" and he could only chuckled and pat your shoulder with an exaggerated, fond eye roll. He loved watching you trace his features with your eyes. He loved taking you in.

"You're so unbelievably beautiful. Have I told you that?" He blurted out. He loved watching you giggle at his compliments, your cheeks warming.

"You have. But I'm okay hearing it again." You mused, hand tracing up his shoulder, up his neck, jawline, and finding home on his stubbled cheek. "You're not bad yourself, Mr. Redfield." You teased. "Very handsome. Very easy on the eyes."

"Don't.." he laughed faintly, an uncertain sound. "Don't call me 'Mr.' It makes me sound old." He eased out, a little hesitant. You shifted.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that." You promised, leaning in to kiss his cheek.

"No, I know. It's.. It's still a little hard to get used to this. Not only the fact that you're my girlfriend, but... you're so young. You're more than an adult, and you're not immature or anything, and it's definitely not illegal.."

"But age gaps get a bad wrap." You added. He nodded. "I don't care that you're older." You reminded him.

"I know you don't care."

"But?" You prompted, earning a chuckle from him due to how well you knew his tone.

"I worry." He said simply.

"Why?" You sat up, turning to him.

"It's not the worst that I'm older. It's the fact that I'm so messed up. I have a lot of.. extra baggage. My job hasn't been kind to me, in physical or mental terms." He explained, sighing quietly. "I'm afraid that I'll... I don't know, corrupt you somehow. Make your spark go out." He looked up at you.

"Corrupt me? Make my spark go out?" You asked. "Chris, oh god," you scooted closer, shaking your head. "I don't think that would be possible with you. You've brightened my spark, if anything." You told him, to which he couldn't help but smile.

Chris sat up, trying to think of a proper response. You scooted into his lap, holding his face in your warm, soft palms, a sensation Chris had become all too weak for. "I'm sorry. Now I feel I've ruined the moment."

"Never. The moment is never ruined with you." You leaned in to kiss his cheek. "Tell me you'll relax. I'm aware of the base troubles you deal with. You're aware of mine. I'm choosing to explore this with you. I want to be with you. Ups and downs, sickness and health."

"Sounds like marriage vows." He chuckled.

"Well, not yet. But I do mean what I said." You mused, finding his lips with yours to soothe him with affection without shutting him down.

"Thank you." He sighed, curling his neck to lay his forehead in the crook of your neck, tugging you closer. "You're amazing. Best I've ever had." He muttered quietly. "I love you." He breathed out.

It wasn't the first time he said it, but he struggled with saying it directly, so hearing him say it meant the world to you. "I love you, Chris." You squeezed him, one hand cradling the back of his head. Chris felt safe. Comfortable. Eased. He hadn't felt this with someone in a very long time, not in such a permanent way. He could fall asleep like this—he almost did before you had to move after a while, hips burning from the stretching of your thighs straddling his hips.

He rolled onto his side and curled himself around you, spooning you from behind. "Goodnight." He murmured, nose pressing to the nape of your neck with his lips lazily pressing to your back as he relaxed.

"Goodnight." You hummed back, falling into a soft silence as he leaned his weight onto you, providing a comfortable pressure to let your body go completely limp.

Chris spent the weekend with you, his attention tearing away only to respond to Claire or work. You two spent it at your apartment, switching between your bed and the living room. Saturday morning was spent relaxing over breakfast that you made, leading into some craft thing that you wanted to try, following into lunch and then some time for you two to sit in the same room and not interact but still enjoy each other's company. Before dinner, you showered, and after dinner, Chris showered. He had agreed to stay the night again.

Sunday night, just after dinner, you two had about an hour and a half before Chris needed to go home. Claire had only agreed to check on Buddy for the two days you'd originally planned, and he had to go to work early in the morning.

He was laid on top of you, hugging you tight as his head laid on your chest. "Think I'm getting too used to you." He joked faintly.

"'S that a bad thing?" You asked, brushing your fingers along his short hair.

"No. Unless you're sick of me."

"Could never be sick of you." You mused, lifting his head up to have him scoot closer to kiss you. Your thumbs brushed over his cheekbones, palms feeling his scruffy, unshaven cheeks. He hummed into the kiss, letting you lead it as you deepened it as a slow, experimental move.

"Hope not. I think I'd go into withdrawals without your kisses like this." He shifted up closer, one hand coming to cradle the back of your head as his body slid between your legs, a move that you eagerly, almost subconsciously accepted with a soft moan against his lips. Chris almost hesitated, but the soft moan that slipped from you made him shiver.

You giggled faintly, legs coming to wrap around his hips, ankles loosely hooking together. He exhaled roughly through his nose, a shuddered sound that made you pull back. "What was that?" You raised a brow.

He shook his head. "Nothing. Sorry." He tried to play it off, but as he leaned back in, the hesitation worsened. You were saddened to open your eyes when you didn't find his lips on yours.

"What's wrong?" You persisted.

"Is this okay? Do you feel okay like this?" He asked finally, words spat out like he was suffocating himself to not sound so anxious and concerned.

"Yeah, I feel okay. This is okay."

"This being..?" He prompted, hoping to pull more from you to get confirmation of being on the same page.

"Making out?" You laughed faintly at his strategy of asking so vaguely, but it worked.

"Okay. Cool. Good." He murmured, nodding. "And.. if it were to... advance?"

"I'd be okay with that. Do you want that?"

"Only if you do." He said, voice soft yet firm in his stance.

"Then let's see where it goes, yeah?" You mused, letting yourself lean in to initate the kiss once more. Chris melted, body weight pouring into you as he returned the kiss, still pressed innocently between your thighs. His hand remained on the back of your head, the other venturing downward to grasp at the bare skin of your thigh where your sleep shorts had ridden up, leaving little to his imagination. He grunted lightly at the way your thighs squeezed around his body, like you were encouraging him.

"You're gonna be the death of me, y'know that?" He huffed, listening to you giggle at his agony.

"Oh, I hope not. Then I'd be all alone, no one to kiss, no one to love.." You teased, head diving downward to kiss at his jawline and neck, nipping at his adam's apple. His breath hitched, head tilted back.

"Jesus," he breathed. "can't leave you all alone like that, huh? That'd be cruel.." He mumbled, gently nudging your head back to return the more heated gesture of nipping at your neck, going lower toward your collarbone.

"Oh, fuck.." you breathed, head falling back onto your pillows with a small huffy laugh. He didn't hesitate this time. It was convenient timing—you never wore a bra to bed, so it was easy for him to see the way your nipples pebbled from goosebumps along your skin, caused by his kisses.

"Is it okay—"

"Don't ask. Just go ahead. I'll tell you if I need you to stop." You interrupted him, and he felt a strong sense of pride that you felt so safe with him, comfortable enough to give him full control and trust. He nodded. He worked slowly as he worked your shirt up your body, pressing it higher and higher until he hesitated just below your breasts. He glanced at you, but you had nothing but calm in your eyes. He continued, pushing the fabric higher so it bunched up above your tits. He leaned down, pressing an experimental kiss between the two mounds.

When you didn't object, he moved further, lips finding their way to wrap around one of the nubs, the other being palmed gently with his rough palm. You gave a small whine, head falling back again. Chris pressed his tongue to your nipple, circling slowly and flicking back and forth every few seconds. One hand came to the back of his head, encouraging him to continue and even go further with his stimulation.

"Chris," you moaned softly, and you felt him tense above you. His biceps flexed as one hand gripped at the sheets, the other hand unintentionally becoming rougher with the groping of your breast. You didn't object, and Chris didn't catch himself, so it continued that way. He finally parted from your breasts, kissing back and forth from your collarbone to just below your breasts.

He worked his way down, pausing at the waistband to look up at you. You didn't stop him, but you did pull him back up, eager to kiss him and distract yourself from the nerves that began to bubble. Chris pushed your shorts down, and he was both pleased and shocked to find your lack of underwear. He stared, and for once, you looked away, cheeks warming bashfully.

"Do you always sleep this way?" He asked bluntly.

"It's comfortable. And good for the body." You murmured.

"I'm.. I'm not teasing." He promised, looking back up at you to catch your lips with his once more. "Just can't believe it. It's a little shameful to admit, but it's making sleepovers a lot more tempting." He gave a chuckle against your lips.

"You're such a perv!" You giggled, but it didn't deter either of you. Chris used both hands to shift your thighs and spread them further, his right hand coming to hover merely an inch from your folds.

"This is okay?" He asked quieter. You nodded, hips shifting. Chris took that consent, deepening the kiss as he brought two fingers to slide between the wet folds of your core. You shivered, and so did Chris. He spread your arousal, slow and gentle, his middle finger and ring fingers coming together at the top to meet and apply a delicious pressure to your clit that pulled a soft whimper from your throat. He groaned, leaning his head down to your neck.

He didn't hesitate this time, not with how your hips bucked into his touch. He spent another minute or so spreading the wetness and massaging your clit before his fingers finally dipped lower. His middle finger circled the hole before it dipped in at long last, slow and cautious. Coincidentally, he'd recently cleaned up his nails of all jagged and uncomfortable points, so it came in handy. The insertion of his finger made your body tense, but not from discomfort. Your head fell back, a soft sigh leaving your lips.

Slowly, his finger pulled back, only to press back in. He worked on pumping the one finger, allowing you to feel and adjust while giving himself time to figure you out. It took a moment, but he got the hang of it once he curled his finger and got a small mewl from you. He kissed his way back down to your chest, lips latching onto one nipple again as he worked in a second finger alongside his first one. Two fingers pumped into you, speed increasing slowly as he pulled more sounds of pleasure and satisfaction from you. He knew what he was doing, and you seemed to enjoy it, so he continued, fingers curling and pressing perfectly into the spongy spot inside of you.

A louder moan pulled from you, eyes rolling back as your body arched off the bed and into his touch. Hips ground against his fingers, chest pressed further toward his hungry mouth. Chris lifted his head, earning a whiney groan from you. "Just relax. I'm not going anywhere, gorgeous." He mused, lips finding yours in a deep, messy kiss of all teeth and tongue.

"F-fuck, you'd better not." You barely huffed, eyes fluttering shut with an eye roll. Chris chuckled at that but didn't stop. "Mmh, Chris," your head fell back, brows knitting tight together. "Do o-one more." You panted lightly.

Chris blinked, but he obeyed. He worried he'd hurt you, fingers slowing so he could gently work a third finger into the tight warmth of your cunt. He hissed lightly, a sound of concern as he watched your body tighten, muscles taut. Much to his satisfaction, you melted seconds after, another loud moan following.

"Chris, 'm gonna—" You gasped. "Gonna cum!" You mewled, nails digging into his shoulders. He found your lips again, groaning into the kiss as he felt you come undone. The coil in your stomach snapping, gushing around his fingers with an accompanying cry of pleasure that made him impossibly harder. He worked you through it, peppering kisses from your lips to your breasts, and back up.

Once you gently pushed at his wrist, he let up. Fingers retracted slowly, and he reached over to the bedside table to grab a tissue and clean your slick off of his fingers. You blinked, vision finally clearing as you looked up at him. Instead of moving to ask for more, Chris laid next to you, smiling warmly and engulfing you in a secure, comforting hug. "You feel alright?" He murmured.

"Mhmm. Feel better than alright." You mused, rolling over to curl into him, mouthing lazily at his neck. Chris stiffened lightly. "Yknow, I can go again." You said quietly, an indirect proposal.

"We don't have to, pretty girl." He chuckled faintly, leaning down to kiss you softly, more controlled this time.

"But you're still.."

"It doesn't matter. Unless you want to, I don't matter until you want to." He shook his head.

"I want to. I do." You urged, nodding. "I wouldn't offer if I didn't want to."

"Are you positive?" He asked, brows furrowed faintly. "I really, really don't want this to be caused by any pressure just because I've got a boner. I'm not gonna complain about 'blue balls' or any—"

You cut him off with a deep, disarming kiss. He melted on the spot, eyes closing as he exhaled shakily, a hand resting on your hip. "Shut up and let me fix your problem." You muttered, muffled in the kiss.

"Yeah, okay.. I can do that." Chris mumbled, watching you pull away and roll over to your side of the bed, rummaging for a condom. He watched you grumble for a few seconds before you pulled out a condom, clearly old. You inspected it carefully. You barely uttered something about it not being expired and there being no signs of sabotage before you were crawling back into his lap, letting him get comfortable, laid back against the pillows with his hands finding their way to your thighs, still bare.

With a small tug of your hand against his shirt, he was discarding it to the floor in seconds. It was humorous—how quickly he went from denying his pleasure to being as eager as a dog in a rut, eager to get the attention his body craved. He hadn't gotten lucky like this in a while, and he was beyond grateful that it was with you. He made that clear through the soft, slow touches of his hands moving all along your body, from your thighs to your chest, stopping occasionally to grope and squeeze.

You undid the tie of his sweats, tugging gently as you lifted your hips and he did the same, helping you push down his sweats and boxers just below his mid-thigh, just enough to let his cock properly spring free, a sight that made the heat boil in your lower belly once more, almost like it was never satisfied in the first place. Thick, heavy, clean and well-groomed with a base coated with thick, coarse hair that led into the happy trail you'd grown to love catching glimpses of. You kept your hips hovering as you reached down and slowly rolled the condom onto his cock until it was fully stretched over the thick length, snug at the base. You shifted, lining him up to press the tip to your entrance. Chris held your hips, almost like he was bracing you for impact.

"I can do it myself, Chris." You snickered, grabbing his hands and intertwining your fingers with his, holding sweetly before you eased onto the first inch. Your thighs trembled, a small whine leaving your lips with Chris' hiss.

"I don't doubt you.. I just... ah, I know I'm a little above average.." Chris mumbled. He didn't brag about it, but rather he seemed bashful by mentioning his size, which was definitely above average.

"I can take it." You looked up at him, hips relaxing as you eased your way down, inch by inch, until you were seated fully on his cock, watching him throw his head back.

"Jesus Christ." He breathed a laugh, brows knitted together as he took a moment to recover from the long awaited feeling of being stuffed inside of you. When you lifted your hips barely an inch, he let out a low moan of your name, biting his lip as he held your hands tighter. You eased into deeper thrusts, taking more as time went on. Your moans melted with his, a harmony of high and low pitches, accompanied by chokes and whines and gasps. Chris looked down finally, watching your pussy completely engulf him, like he wasn't the biggest you'd taken.

"Chris, oh God," you whimpered, dropping onto his cock completely, and Chris' lips parted with a deep moan as he watched the faint imprint of his cock in your lower belly, gaze torn between watching you implae yourself on his cock, watching your face, or watching how your tits bounced as your picked up the pace, despite your shaky, unsteady thighs.

His hands found your hips again, halting you momentarily. "Let me do this. You're shaking."

"Of course, I am. I've got a fucking monster inside of me." You huffed at his words, only earning a chuckle.

"You flatter me." He mused, only to lift your hips and keep you hovering as he moved his own hips. He began to thrust up into you, grunts of effort and moans of pleasure filling the room, alongside the sound of skin against skin, soft slaps of his balls hitting your ass. Your head fell back, one hand coming down to find your clit as you felt your orgasm build up, desperate to get there as soon as you could, eager for your own peak.

"Fuck, you're so beautiful. Wish you could see yourself." He gave a faint, choked whine, but neither of you processed the whine. All you heard was his pleasure, and that encouraged your own high. Chris picked up the pace, head falling back as his cock twitched inside of you.

You tried desperately to fuck back onto him, to meet in the middle with each thrust, but it became harder and harder as your thighs couldn't comfortably hold you up anymore without burning at the effort. Chris' fingertips dug into the flesh of your hips, a guttural groan tearing from his throat as he searched for a deeper angle. You shifted slightly, leaning back and using his thighs to hold yourself up, fingernails digging into his thighs as his thrusts faltered momentarily, the slight shift in position causing a tighter sensation as you practically sucked him in deeper.

You looked down at him, watching him blink and have to recalibrate himself. "Did you—"

"No. God, no." He huffed, almost offended. "Can't yet." He said, but before you could ask what he meant, he was already back at it, thrusting up into you with a mix of caution and desperation, curses and moans falling from his lips.

He kept your hips steady with one hand, and the other came to find your clit, circling it roughly to encourage your pleasure. You mewled, melting slightly as you struggled to hold yourself up with your arms.

"Chris, I can't—ah!" You gasped, thighs jolting at the way he doubled his efforts.

"Come on, pretty, just a little more." He panted heavily. He could feel you were close, and the fact that he felt it so easily only turned you on more, combined with how easily he held you up like a fucking ragdoll. You couldn't even get another word out before you were coming apart in his grasp, and he was only seconds behind you. Whimpers and moans mixed together as he spilled his cum into the condom, your pussy gushing and pulsing around him. He slowed, hands sliding up your body and gently pulling you to lay on top of him. His cock twitched, and your walls clamped with aftershocks. You panted heavily, face buried into his shoulder as you groaned.

It was quiet as you two came down. He let you fully ease before he pulled out and discarded the condom in the bedside table. He rolled onto his side, keeping you close as he peppered your shoulders and jaw with kisses, soothing your shivers and shakes.

"I'm gonna get you some water and call Claire, 'kay?"

"Why are you gonna call Claire?" You asked, letting him untangle himself.

"I can't just leave you. Not tonight, no." He scoffed. "I'm gonna see if she can check on Buddy one more time for me. If not, I'll run home and be right back." He leaned over you, kissing your forehead and brushing your hair out of your face.

"Chris, you don't have to stay.." you mumbled. "I can clean myself up, and I'm fine to sleep alone. Don't you have work tomorrow, anyway?"

"Yeah. It's only a ten minute drive from here, so I'll just leave early so I can get home before I need to leave for work." His words made you melt, your heart pounding no longer from adrenaline or sex, but from the sheer care and love he was showing. "Stay here, yeah?"

You nodded, curling into the blankets to get comfortable, watching him grab his phone and walk off. In your previous relationships, your partners hadn't been as caring. If sex happened on a night where they hadn't planned to stay over, they were perfectly fine to leave you on your own, unwilling and blind to your emotional needs once they'd gotten their fill. You felt yourself tearing up, but as you tried to wipe your eyes with the blanket, Chris came back, clicking a button on his phone and crawling back into the bed with you.

He heard you sniffle, and he leaned over to find you desperately trying to stop the tears from flowing. "Hey, what—what's wrong? Are you hurt? Did I do something wrong?" He panicked, gently rolling you over to face him so he could help you sit up. You looked away from him, choking on your own bubbled cry.

"No, I.." you hiccuped.

"Do you want me to stay? I'll leave if you want. What do you need?" He asked, his hands no longer touching you to avoid physically overwhelming you.

You sniffled, wiping at your cheeks. "Nobody stays unless I ask them to." You barely got it out before another cry bubbled in your throat, and he reached out to help wipe your tears.

"It's the bare minimum, honey." He murmured. "I'm sorry nobody else has done this for you." He tilted your face to look at him. "But I'm not gonna do that unless it's what you want."

"Don't go yet." You hiccuped, finally looking at him properly.

"I won't." He waited, and once you were ready, you leaned in and found safety in his arms, the skin-to-skin providing a warmth and comfort that you hadn't been offered in a long time. "I'm here all night. And I won't leave without telling you." He promised, tugging you into his lap. Thankfully, he didn't have to go. Claire had agreed to check on him one last time for the night to ensure he had food and water and that he could be let out one more time before bed. So he was set to stay the night.

When you finally pulled back, he gently wiped your tears, allowing you to breathe for a moment before he spoke up, "Do you want to shower before we go to bed? Or just a quick clean up?" He asked, brushing his fingers through your hair.

"Shower. I'm sweaty, and I don't wanna stink in the morning." You sniffled.

"Drink some water while I warm the shower and get you some clean pajamas." He said, gently patting your hip and pecking your lips one more time.

He kept his word. He stayed the whole night, and at 5 a.m., when his alarm went off, he was reluctant to go. You didn't have work, so he felt horrible when you stirred all too early. You curled into him, rolling to lay on him.

"Good morning." He whispered, voice hardly audible as he yawned.

"G'mornin'." You yawned back, shoving your face into his neck.

"I gotta leave soon." He warned gently.

"I know." You whined.

He let you wake up slowly until his second alarm went off, making you grumble and sit upright, tugging your blanket around you. He chuckled. "I know it's early. I'm sorry." He leaned up, shifting behind you so he could gently kiss at the nape of your neck and shoulders, pushing your hair aside and soothing his rough palms along your waist and ribcage.

"It's okay." You melted into the touch, letting his hands roam as they pleased.

"You ready to get up? Or do you wanna stay in bed while I get ready?"

"I'll make you some coffee. Maybe some eggs, too." You murmured, shifting slowly to crawl out of bed. He followed, craning to kiss you from behind as you gave a lazy, sleepy peck in return.

You went to the kitchen, yawning as you greeted your cat, carrying her around as you readied the coffee maker and heated a pan for making him some scrambled eggs. The cat slept comfortably in your hold, and you managed to cook with one hand. Chris came out, laughing quietly at the sight. It had been a long time since he woke up to such a domestic scene. His cold, old heart had softened so much since meeting you.

"She's just like you." He joked, referring to your clinginess in the mornings that he'd noticed just the last couple of mornings he spent with you.

"She's a baby, of course she is." You snickered. Chris went over to the coffee maker, pouring himself a small mug and using some of your creamer from the fridge. Another thing he'd gotten used to with you—coffee with creamer. Yes, he was still trying to lower his coffee drinking, but he felt less guilty about it when you made it for him. After a few minutes, you and Chris basked in the silence of the morning, the eggs finished cooking, and the cat finally let you set her down once you got her fresh food and water as well.

Chris sat to eat the eggs, and you sat to eat some toast, both still groggy and exhausted. You were sore, Chris wasn't. He spoke first. "Do you feel okay?" He asked, looking up at you. "About last night, I mean. The sex." He said, more bluntly.

You looked up at him, nodding. "I liked it, Chris. I don't regret it, if that's what you're asking. And no, it didn't make me uncomfortable."

"Okay. Good. That's the last thing I wanted." He relaxed, shoulders visibly dropping.

"Though, whenever we do it again, it's gonna be a while before I'm on top again. That hurts." You said bluntly. Chris sputtered slightly, choking on his food like he wasn't expecting you to say 'do it again'.

"Yeah, I.. I figured." He laughed quietly, clearing his throat as he sipped his water.

"Other than my thighs being sore and wobbly, it was good." You reassured him. "Do you feel okay about it? It goes both ways, Chris." You reminded him, reaching out to take his hand.

"I feel good. I'm.. I'm glad you trusted me with it, considering the stories you've told me about your previous partners."

"I have no reason not to trust you. You've been nothing but perfect with me." You reassured him, smiling softly. He squeezed your hand.

He wasn't sure what to say next, but he was startled by his final alarm, reminding him he had to leave in the next five minutes or he'd be late. "Shit." He sighed, rising from his chair to deal with his plate, taking the final two bites to quickly finish the eggs. You stopped him from washing the plate.

"Go get your bag. I'll wash it later." You urged him, not letting him argue as you walked to put your slippers on so you could walk him out to his car. Chris was quick to get his overnight bag and slip his shoes on before he met you at the door.

"Stay here. It's early, the sun is hardly up yet." He said, unwilling to let you roam your apartment building so early. He didn't like the look of some of your neighbors he'd seen in the few times he'd come by. You snickered. You would argue, but you knew he was right.

"Be safe, okay? Let me know when you get to work." You raised onto your tip toes, pecking his lips gently. He wrapped you into a tight hug, pecking along your shoulders and neck before he found your lips again.

"Go back to sleep. I'll text you."

"Promise?" You looked up at him, mostly jokingly.

"Promise." He pulled back, gaze lingering before he had to unfortunately turn and open the door. He turned back for one more kiss, a longer one this time. Chris was big on kisses, especially before you two had to part for however long until you two had the time to meet again.

"I love you." He stepped back.

"I love you, too. Go on, don't be late." You ushered him out, giggling as he exaggerated his heavy footsteps, like it weighed him down as he left. You blew him a kiss, and he caught it and 'saved it for later' in the pocket of his jacket.

He was so cheesy, so mushy, and it never failed to make your heart swell. It kept you warm, happy and settled for the days he couldn't see you.

Once threatening hulking monster with massive, bone-crushing claws and exposed muscles, now lying on the ground in a large lake of it’s own blood all leaking profoundly from that massively enlarged, pulsating heart Leon had too much joy in striking down repeatedly with his hatchet.

The perfect way to unleash all the wrath that had built up in him at witness that matrix-clone man dressed in all white steal you from him along with Grace’s unconscious body.

The Tyrant’s knee had buckled from a clean shot of Leon’s Requiem and the chest cavity yawned out into the dim air, that grotesque, surgically-stitched opening where the Umbrella technicians had welded the ribs apart and reinforced the ventricles with some black cabling that pulsed wetly along with the beat.

The heart sat there fully exposed, swollen to roughly the size of a man’s skull, slick with a film of mucus-thick fluid. Each beat made it lurch forward against its own webbing of veins, fat arteries throbbing and visibly distending with every contraction, surface twitching with smaller spasms beneath.

The hatchet in Leon’s hand came up from his hip in a drawing arc, blade still wet from earlier kills and catching light and the first swing landed dead center of the heart.

Blade sinking past the outer wall and into the dense, thickened myocardium beneath and a fat jet of arterial red geysered up out of the split, slapping across Leon’s forearm, his chest, the underside of his jaw. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink. He just twisted the haft, ripped the blade free with a thick suctioning pop that dragged a long ribbon of clotted tissue out with it, and brought it down again.

The second swing took out a chunk of heart wall the size of a fist and it slapped onto the floor beside the Tyrant’s knee.

Blood spurted out of the new crater in long, pulsing waves timed to the failing beat below and Leon stepped right into the spray as it hit him across the face.

The Tyrant tried to lift its arm and Leon shifted his weight, pivoted half a step left without ever taking the hatchet off the chest and brought the blade down a third time at an angle that split the upper chamber wide open.

A great fat bubble of blood bulged up from the wound that rose rapidly, dome of it stretching the ruptured pericardium outward as the failing pump shoved everything it had through holes that couldn’t hold pressure anymore.

The membrane stretched and then it burst with a wet pat that drenched Leon from collarbone to belt buckle in a sheet of copper-stinking fluid.

Yet he didn’t stop, rapid strikes of his hatchet that rose and fell with a metronome cruelty, each impact carving deeper as the blade kept hitting saturated muscle.

He chopped at the heart, knuckles going white through the leather of his gloves.

A coronary artery, ruptured by the third hit, hosed a thin pressurized thread of blood up across his cheek.

The Tyrant’s body jerked hard and whatever pseudo-life kept the thing animate started to flicker out behind the eyes, filmy gray-white globes losing focus.

By the tenth there was nothing left to call a heart, more a churned-up slurry of fibrous strands and hardened myocardial tissue mashed in with blood clots and stripped vein casings.

A final swing, harder than the rest, drove the hatchet head straight through what pulp remained and cracked into the spinal cord behind it.

That was when the Tyrant finally went all the way down, impact pressing what was left of the heart out the front of the cavity in a thick, paste-like extrusion that oozed across the floor.

Blood spread in a lake that widened out from under the body, finding and filling the low spots in the tile. The hulking thing that ten minutes ago stalked Leon through the ruined RPD station was now no longer moving again.

Leon stood over it, chest heaving and blood dripping from the hatchet head in heavy, syrup-thick drops.

His shoulders rose and fell, jaw working as the corner of his mouth had pulled up at some point during the assault.

It dropped just as fast because you were gone and that was the only thought that made him lower the hatchet.

All the rage hadn’t cleaned anything out of him, it just made a hole big enough to see clearly through and what he saw on the other side was the empty space where you had been pressed up against the wall with Zeno’s hand on your throat.

He turned and ran.

Raccoon City was still a corpse the explosion hadn’t buried but almost finished decomposing.

The streets here were worse than where you had ridden in, blast punching whole blocks down into themselves as he cut across the courtyard of the RPD without slowing, vaulted a chunk of fallen façade, hit the cracked street running.

He keyed the comm without breaking stride.

"Sherry."

A click. "Leon, where—"

"Zeno took Grace. He's headed underground, has to be, there's nothing else this far in."

A pause on her end as he could hear her typing on her keyboard.

"The blast site exposed sublevels, an old Umbrella infrastructure. There's a lab on the schematic I pulled, I can route it to your HUD—"

"Send it, Sherry."

She sent it along with also saying something else and he didn't answer, boots carrying him toward the exposed crater two blocks east where the road had collapsed into a ragged mouth in the earth.

Get him back.

That was the only sentence in his head and it kept saying itself in different voices,

Don't think about Grace, you'll get to her, get him back first. Don't think about how long it's been, don't think about Zeno's hand on his throat.

Get him back.

He reached the lip of the crater and didn't slow, drop of sixty feet at least, vertical.

There was a rope left by someone, BSAA probably, who had bolted an anchor into a slab of standing concrete and let a thick fibrous line trail down into the dark.

He went down hand over hand fast enough that the friction burned through the leather in his palms before he was halfway.

The drop swallowed the daylight in stages, pale yellow at the top, gray a third of the way down, then nothing but darkness.

The thought he didn't want crawled up through him on the run.

Whatever they had been doing to you in that care center, whatever they had been growing in your blood, was the entire reason a man like Zeno had moved at superhuman speed across a room to put a hand on your throat.

Gideon had to hunt you across half a city for it because of Spencer's research.

You were carrying something but he didn't know what Elpis was, just that Umbrella wanted it and he knew what the protocol was, on paper, for a confirmed bioweapon vector.

The thought made him grind his teeth so hard a muscle in his jaw spasmed.

No, if you were a weapon you'd have used it anytime he had lowered his attention like when his arms locked around you or in the back of the bike with your face pressed between his shoulder blades and your hands flat on his abdomen.

Could have used it in the kiss when instead you leaned in, breath shaking, lips chapped as the whole of you tilted toward him.

Failed experiment.

The phrase formed and he winced visibly, alone in the dark, jaw clenched.

Failed implied you were a prototype they'd thrown out and that had survived in the trash.

He hated the word the second it touched the inside of his skull and take the hatchet to his own neck for thinking it if he wasn't the only set of hands you had left in the world right now.

So he kept running.

The vines started about a hundred yards in, hanging in thick black-green ropes that swayed slightly in air, whole growth alive in the wrong way and he could see the long fibrous bodies of the vines pulse the way a throat pulses when it swallows.

One of them moved and he brought the hatchet up to drive it through the base of the strand where it joined the ceiling and the cut released a hiss of pressurized sap, dark green that splattered across the floor in a hot puddle.

The vine dropped, twitched, curled in on itself like a worm.

The next two snapped at him and he cut through both in a single sweep.

As the corridor narrowed and the vines thickened, he stopped using the hatchet for individual strands and started using it like a machete, blade rising and falling in rough, economical arcs that cleared a path two feet wide and left the floor behind him slicked with sap and severed lengths of twitching plant matter.

The thing at the heart of the growth was huge, flower-mouth the size of his bulky body, so many vines-tentacles everywhere as he unloaded everything he had on the plant and behind it, a row of red barrels were stacked inside a canister.

Leon drew the Requiem and lifted it two-handed, settled the front sight in the soft pulpy dead-center of the bloom and started firing.

The third ammo he put square in the stamen, which split lengthwise, made the floor under his boots slick with green liquid.

The smell was somewhere between rotting fruit and ammonia and it crawled into his sinuses and refused to leave.

Ninth shoots in, the flower tried, one last time, to lash a vine at him and a great wet bolus of green bursts out of its mouth, fully exposed now red barrels now.

He swapped the magnum for his sidearm without taking his eyes off them and fired one round and the world went orange.

The blast climbed the wall, found the vine system and went up everything at once. Fire raced up the strands of plant matter in fast bright capillary lines, every vine that had been hanging from the ceiling becoming a fuse, the whole organism igniting in a chain reaction that swept along the corridor.

Leon stood there for half a beat in the heat of it and watched until the plant collapsed and he stepped through.

Fluorescent emergency lights glowing past the large door of the lab located underneath Raccon City, the Ark.

Cold and sterile air rolled up out of it.

The first thing that came back was the cold.

Your fingers were the first to register it because they were the furthest from your heart and the closest to the metal of whatever you were lying on and, the second your nerves bothered to acknowledge them they reported back that the table beneath you was the same temperature as the air.

Eyes opening in pieces from the light overhead particular flat white that meant fluorescents. It needled into your retinas through lashes that felt glued together and for a long moment all you could do was lie there blinking up at a ceiling made of perforated white panels, every one of them identical.

Then you tried to move your hand but your wrist was held.

A wide cuff of dark, padded restraint had been buckled across the joint, attached by a short tether to a ring welded into the side of the gurney.

You tilted your head slowly, both wrists and ankles along a wider strap across your hips, one thinner across your sternum under the collarbones.

The clothes Leon had thrown you outside the gas station were gone, now in something thin and pale gray, hospital-issue, paper-fragile, slit down one side to give the cannulas access.

Two thick translucent tubes, one in the crook of each elbow, taped down with that yellowish surgical adhesive that always left a sting when it came off. The tubes ran from your veins to a pair of small upright machines on either side of the gurney, both humming faintly and with a glass collection chamber on the front that was already three-quarters full of blood.

The chambers were still filling.

You watched, for a second, as a fresh thread of red eased down the tube on your right side, traveled the loop and dropped with a small wet pat into the collection vessel.

A headache had taken up residence behind your eyes.

The room was empty, no lab coats pr guards.

Whatever had been done to put you under had been considered sufficient so they had sedated you.

You weren't supposed to be awake at all but something in your blood disagreed.

You worked your right hand first because it was the better hand at the moment, cuff padded but the buckle was on the outside, near the edge of the table and if you turned your wrist hard against the strap, twisted the meat of your forearm until the skin burned and the cannula tugged sharply at the vein, you could just barely angle your thumb enough to reach the prong of the buckle.

It took three tries before your thumb caught the metal lip and shoved, strap slackening with a quiet leather sigh.

The machines were still humming and an headache was still drumming as you pulled your hand free.

The first thing it did was go to the cannula in your other arm. You didn't trust yourself to pull the needle out of your own vein with the elegance the situation deserved, so you didn't try for elegance.

You braced two fingers above the insertion point, pinched the skin to hold the vein in place and drew the cannula out in one slow, queasy motion. The needle came clear with a small sucking pop and a fresh bead of red welled up out of the puncture as you clamped your thumb over it immediately and held pressure.

The pump on that side kept trying to draw for another second before it registered the loss of fluid and gave a small mechanical chirp of confusion, the indicator light blinking yellow.

You found the power switch on its housing and slapped it off before working the strap on your other wrist with the freed hand, then the chest strap and hip strap before finally freeing both ankles.

Your fingers kept fumbling and losing instructions halfway through, you had to keep stopping to breathe, slow and deep, against the rising static in your head.

The second cannula came out the same way as the first and the room went quiet without the pumps.

You sat up and that was when the headache became a real thing instead of a background noise. Sitting up sent it surging forward into the front of your skull in a sloshing wave and you had to brace both hands flat on the gurney and just exist for a moment while the world reassembled itself around you.

Your stomach turned over once and decided, generously, not to do anything about it.

Easing your legs over the side of the gurney, the floor was the same nothing-temperature as the table.

You kept one palm pressed against the inside of your elbow, holding pressure over the puncture there and you used the other hand to push yourself upright onto your feet.

The first step almost put you on the floor as you caught the edge of the gurney with your free hand at the last second, knees buckling and stood there shaking until your legs remembered what they were for.

The hospital gown swayed around and the slit down one side let a draft of the cold air touch your hip in a way that made you very suddenly aware of how little of you was being protected from anything.

The room was big, white walls and floor, every surface either tile or polished metal.

There were three other gurneys in the room.

Two were empty, one was not.

But before you let your eyes go to that one, your eyes went down, because your foot had landed in something.

Up close, you could see the long dark smears along the tile leading from somewhere out of sight, curving past the foot of your own gurney, disappearing under the third bed.

Some of the smears were almost black, dried in tacky films that had cracked at the edges while others were fresher, sitting in shallow round pools that hadn't lost their gloss yet, surface tension still intact as a faint reflection of the overhead fluorescents trembled.

Blood in the wrong volume.

Someone had bled here recently and at length.

You raised your eyes slowly and made yourself look at the double doors at the far end of the room. White metal, taller than they needed to be, set with rectangular green panels at chest height that pulsed faintly.

An exit.

You took a step toward it and your free hand stayed clamped over your inner elbow because the puncture there kept thinking about leaking and you didn't have the resources to spare.

You made it three steps before you saw the figure on the third gurney and stopped.

The frame was small, child-like and curled slightly on their side in sleep.

Gray-white hair, longer than you remembered, fell across the pillow in tangled waves that had clearly not been brushed in a while.

"Emily?"

The word came out of you before you'd checked it. Soft, cracked at the edges from a throat that hadn't spoken in hours and you moved toward the gurney faster than your legs really wanted to, headache swinging behind your eyes.

It wasn't Emily, the realization came in pieces the further you looked.

Face the right shape but the proportions were wrong, face sharper in the cheekbones and very pale, the blue tracery of veins visible at the temple and at the inside of the wrist.

You stared at her jaw because her skin sat slightly loose at the hinge, in the faint pucker of scar tissue along the line of the lower mandible, as if the mouth had been stretched to a width that the muscle remembered even after the bone had retreated.

The proportions had pulled themselves back from something with teeth too wide and the soft architecture of a child's face had been reassembled on top of the damage with the visible seams of the repair still showing.

Her arms lay long at her sides, forearms longer than they should have been on a frame that small and the fingers were tipped with dark nails.

Silvery scars running in fine parallel lines across the side of her neck, fanning out over the collarbones and climbing the inside of the forearms.

A monitor at the head of her bed traced a steady green sawtooth across its screen. The number above it reads 64, a child's heart should beat faster than that.

She was healing.

"Marie," you whispered her name and she didn't wake.

You moved fast as you could with your blood three-quarters of where it belonged and the headache pulsing in time with your steps.

The cannulas in her arms were smaller than the ones that had been in yours, child-sized and more careful, tubes running to a smaller version of the same machine that had been bleeding.

You went to the right side first, pinched her skin the way you'd pinched your own and eased the needle out.

The pump chirped its little confused chirp and you shut it off before doing the same to the left.

The straps you couldn't do because they had been pulled tighter, with the extra holes in the leather worn dark from frequent use along a small steel padlock through the buckle on each wrist.

Someone had decided that whatever she had been was bad enough to warrant the lock even after she'd stopped being it.

You couldn't get her out and the realization sat in your stomach.

Crouching down beside her bed there were notes scattered, several pages of them had clearly been clipped to a board and dropped when the board was set down too quickly, white sheets fanned across the tile under the gurney, some of them face down, some of them face up, a few of them spotted with rust-colored droplets at the corners.

You gathered them with your free hand, careful to keep your other hand pressed to your elbow as you sat back on your heels and the fluorescents overhead buzzed while laying the pages out on the floor.

ARK RESEARCH COMPLEX DIVISION OF ADVANCED BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS INTERNAL RESEARCH MEMORANDUM

FILE ID: ARK-ØØ-77A SUBJECT: Experiment ØØ / Elpis Expression Event AUTHOR: Dr. Adrian Gideon CLASSIFICATION: DIRECTOR ACCESS ONLY

The activation event observed in Experiment ØØ following exposure to Subject 170 has fundamentally altered our understanding of the entity designated ELPIS.

For decades, recovered Spencer archives suggested ELPIS represented a biological weapon system. All available documentation implied it was designed to interact with Progenitor-derived organisms in a manner significant enough to warrant extreme secrecy.

We now believe this assumption was incorrect.

Current evidence suggests ELPIS is not a weapon.

At least, not in the conventional sense.

The original Elpis Host Program was built around a simple hypothesis: If ELPIS was biological in nature, then Experiment ØØ’s blood would eventually become its production source.

This appears to be exactly what occurred.

Analysis performed before the Subject 170 exposure event showed only dormant genetic structures embedded within Experiment ØØ’s hematopoietic stem cells.

These cells reside primarily within bone marrow and function as the source of all blood cell production.

Following infection exposure, those dormant structures activated.

Since activation, every blood sample collected from Experiment ØØ has demonstrated continuous production of previously unidentified proteins not naturally occurring in humans nor do they resemble any known viral structures.

Instead, they appear to function as biological regulators.

They identify abnormal cellular activity and selectively target infected tissue while leaving healthy cells largely unharmed.

This process is extraordinarily complex and appears to involve several mechanisms acting simultaneously.

Because of this, blood extraction became the primary focus of Ark personnel.

SUBJECT 170

UNEXPECTED RESPONSE

The greatest surprise occurred during testing on Subject 170.

Prior assumptions predicted one of two outcomes.

Either:

ELPIS would destroy infected tissue entirely.

Or:

ELPIS would accelerate mutation.

Neither occurred.

Instead, Subject 170 began recovering.

Repeated exposure to proteins extracted from Experiment ØØ’s blood produced measurable changes.

Aggressive cellular growth slowed, abnormal viral replication decreased and damaged tissue began reorganizing itself.

Most importantly, healthy human cells started outcompeting infected cells.

The process resembles guided healing rather than eradication.

This finding forced a complete reevaluation of ELPIS.

CURRENT THEORY

We believe ELPIS appears to function as a biological correction system.

ELPIS identifies what a cell was originally supposed to be.

It then encourages damaged tissue to return toward that state.

Normal antiviral drugs attempt to destroy pathogens.

ELPIS appears to restore biological stability.

Subject 170’s recovery strongly suggests ELPIS was never intended to create stronger monsters.

It was likely designed to prevent biological collapse after infection.

If this interpretation is correct, Spencer may have hidden the greatest antiviral technology ever developed inside a human host, ready to set anarchy.

CHANGES OBSERVED IN EXPERIMENT ØØ

Activation has not occurred without consequences.

Experiment ØØ no longer presents entirely baseline human physiology.

The following alterations have been consistently documented.

Increased Cellular Repair

Minor injuries heal noticeably faster than expected.

Cuts close sooner.

Bruising fades more rapidly.

Inflammatory responses resolve in reduced time.

This effect remains limited.

The subject is not immortal.

Severe trauma remains dangerous.

However, recovery rates exceed normal human averages.

Elevated Metabolic Demand

The continuous production of ELPIS requires substantial biological resources and subject now consumes significantly more energy than before activation.

Expected symptoms include:

frequent hunger

increased thirst

fatigue

accelerated exhaustion during periods of stress

Laboratory personnel have compared the effect to running a small factory inside the body twenty-four hours a day.

Chronic Low-Grade Fever

The immune system remains in a partially activated state.

As a result, body temperature trends slightly above standard human averages.

Most individuals would interpret this as a mild persistent fever.

The subject may experience:

feelings of warmth

occasional sweating

increased sensitivity to dehydration

These effects are expected to persist indefinitely.

Neurological Adaptation Period

The activation event appears to have placed extraordinary stress on the nervous system.

Weeks or months of adjustment may follow.

Reported symptoms include:

dizziness

headaches

temporary confusion

sensory overload in crowded environments

disrupted sleep cycles

Fortunately, these symptoms appear to lessen over time.

POSSIBLE LONG-TERM RISKS

Several concerns remain unresolved.

Autoimmune Activity

Because ELPIS actively monitors cellular abnormalities, there is concern that the system may occasionally misidentify healthy tissue.

If this occurs, autoimmune complications could develop.

Current evidence remains inconclusive.

Bone Marrow Exhaustion

Experiment ØØ’s bone marrow is operating at activity levels never observed in an ordinary human.

Decades of continuous production could potentially result in cellular degradation.

Whether ELPIS can compensate for this damage remains unknown.

END OF FILE ARCHIVE STATUS: LOCKED LAST ACCESSED: 03:17 AM

You read them twice, the second time slower, mouthing some of the words to yourself because your brain kept wanting to refuse what you were seeing. By the time you reached the bottom of the last page the headache had spread from behind your eyes into the base of your skull and your hands had started to tremble.

You folded the pages and slid them inside the front of the hospital gown, against your skin where the strap of nothing held them in place but the press of fabric against your chest. You stood and had to brace yourself on Marie's gurney to do it from headache and dizziness.

You reached down and took her cold hand, smaller than yours.

"I'll be back," you said quietly. "I'll bring help, I promise."

For a long moment she didn't move until her fingers, slow and weak as your own, closed around yours.

Something hot pushed up the back of your throat and you forced it down because it was the only option available.

Turning away from the gurney before the turning got harder.

There was a stainless steel tray on the cart beside her bed, the kind labs use to hold instruments mid-procedure. On it, in a foam holder, were two small glass tubes.

Each one was capped with a small clear plastic housing that held a thin retractable needle, the kind that was meant for fast field injection. Inside each tube, dark and slow, was a finger's-width of your blood, drawn off and prepped for testing.

The logic came to you in stages.

They had been draining you in volume for a reason. Whatever was in your blood was, apparently, the thing keeping the small girl on the table from being a monster anymore.

Whatever was in your blood, then, was a weapon you were already carrying, whether or not you understood the shape of it, whether or not you understood the cost of using it.

If something with the wrong biology came at you in the next hour, the tubes would be the difference between dying and not, hence why you took them.

One went into the small pocket sewn into the side of the gown while the other you held in your right hand, cap clicking shut and the needle retracted.

You started for the doors and doors registered your presence when you got within a meter of them.

The green panels brightened from standby to full and the doors slid open with a soft pneumatic huff.

You walked through and stopped as the corridor held many incubator tanks very tall, each one lit from inside by a steady, sullen red glow and inside each one, suspended in a pale, viscous fluid that was somewhere between water and oil, floated a thing.

A brain was fully exposed at head level, its grey-pink folds visible through the red-tinted fluid.

Beneath the exposed brain, a mouth wide and hinged too far back along the jaw, lined with rows of thin, glassy fangs.

Lickers that felt alive to you as you walked and kept your eyes forward.

Some of the things in the tanks shifted as you passed and made you increase your movement speed as much as possible.

Past the elevator, the corridor continued through another set of double doors and, as you closed the distance you could see the green panels at chest height on those doors brighten from standby to full.

The doors slid open and two men stepped through, black tactical gear and gas masks on.

The lenses of the masks were dark and turned their faces into smooth, expressionless ovals. Rifles slung loose at their fronts, held in the relaxed grip of two men in the middle of a conversation.

They saw you and the change was instant.

Hand that had been gesturing came down, two rifles coming up in unison and the red dots of two laser sights bloomed against the front of your hospital gown.

"Hey—"

"What the fuck are you doing out of containment?"

"Get on the ground, now!"

The shouting hit you like harshly and you broke sideways on instinct and whatever scrap of adrenaline your bloodstream had been hoarding for an emergency, putting the nearest incubator between yourself and the rifles before either of them had finished the second word of the next command.

The first burst of rifle fire cracked through the chamber and chewed a line of impacts along the wall behind where you had been standing as you ran.

More a staggering, lurching forward motion that approximated running closely enough to count and you kept the bulk of the incubators between you and the soldiers, threading the gaps where you could, the red light from the tanks washing over you in pulses as you passed each one.

The shouting kept pace behind you, two voices now, splitting up, one moving along your left to flank, one staying on your right and firing in disciplined controlled bursts whenever he had even half a sight picture.

A bullet hit the glass of the tank to your immediate left and didn't punch through, glass thicker than civilian glass.

The thing inside the tank jerked, its long tongue snapped tight inside its mouth.

The elevator was thirty meters away but you couldn’t keep up.

Your eyes scanned and they caught on a panel mounted to the side of the incubator three to your right.

DRAIN / RELEASE.

You hit the green button as you passed it and ducked behind the next incubator, pressed your back against its base and listened.

The tank behind you began to drain in a loud, mechanical gurgle, suspension fluid being sucked out of the bottom of the cylinder fast, red light inside the tank flickering as the level dropped and the thing inside crouched at the bottom of the glass on its haunches, brain dripping, lipless mouth working, eyeless face turning in slow blind sweeps.

The glass at the front of the tank hissed and split along a seam and the Licker came out of the gap before the seam had even finished opening.

Its head whipped toward the soldier on the right because he had just opened fire on it, muzzle flash strobing across the wet exposed brain.

Long tongue whipping out and around the man's neck on the way in and the impact took both of them down into the gap between two tanks in a tangle that made noises you did not stop to identify.

The second soldier swung his rifle to cover and the wild burst went high to the side and stitched across the front of the next incubator down the line.

That glass cracked and broke apart in a sheet of red-tinted fluid, what tumbled out of it was a pale-skinned humanoid shapes covered in clusters of swollen white pustules that ruptured wetly on impact with the floor, spraying milky pus across the tile.

A genocide started as more capsules broke down and revealed many more creatures.

The elevator door was right there and you slapped your free hand against the call panel, doors opening immediately, already on this floor.

You stumbled inside and hit the first button you saw on the panel without reading the label and you watched through the closing gap of the elevator doors as one of the soldiers came staggering backward into your line of sight with his rifle gone and his sidearm half-drawn and a ring of the pustuled humanoids closing on him.

The other soldier came briefly into view as well, except he was missing most of his right arm at the shoulder, limb torn off and lying several feet from his body.

The elevator doors finished closing and the screaming cut out.

You stood there in the small bright box of the elevator, alone, hands shaking, blood beading slowly at your inner elbow where the gauze you didn't have wasn't doing its job, leaning your back against the wall and slid down it a few inches before catching yourself and forcing yourself upright again.

The headache had a fever now, feeling the heat building behind your eyes.

Elevator stopped suddenly and the doors opened.

You stepped out and almost went to your knees.

The room beyond was vast, ceiling high, vaulted and lit by a single huge pulsing orange light at its apex.

The walls curved outward into a roughly circular shape and set into those walls, dozens of them, hundreds maybe, were dark glass orbs, each one inset flush with the wall.

In the center of the room, raised on a low circular dais, was a device with Zeno standing beside it.

White suit, untouched by the violence of the city. His head was tilted slightly downward toward the device on the dais, gloved hands at his side and yellow glow behind his lenses visible from across the room.

You took a step backward without meaning to, elevator doors already sliding shut behind you as you tried to bring the syringe-tube up in your hand into something resembling a defensive posture.

A hand clapped over your mouth from behind hard.

Tactical glove with fingers that spread wide and pressed your jaw closed before you could draw enough breath to make a sound.

At the same time something cold and sharp settled in against the side of your throat just under the angle of your jaw.

A grey hatchet, not Leon's.

"Got Experiment ØØ. Alive. Holding position, awaiting orders." The voice that spoke beside your ear came muffled through a gas mask, electronic at the edges, calm in the middle.

The radio crackled against the side of the masked man's helmet and a second voice came through.

"—negative on neutralization. Subject is needed intact. Bring him back to harvest. Repeat, bring it back to harvest. Sedate if it gets aggressive."

The man behind you made a single low grunt of confirmation in the back of his throat and then his mouth came close enough to your ear that you could feel the warmth of his breath escaping the mask's exhaust port against the rim of your skin.

"You heard," he said. "On your feet. You walk where I walk and if you so much as twitch in a direction I don't like I take a leg off at the knee. Are we clear."

He didn't wait for an answer as the hand on your mouth slid down to clamp across the front of your throat instead, fingers spread wide enough to circle the column of muscle there and the hatchet came off your jaw, ready against your back.

He turned you with a small twist of his hips and made you face the hallway.

Another set of two doors that opened and revealed a long white corridor on the other side of the room with the windowed wall stretching down its length.

What was directly in front of you was Leon standing maybe ten meters down the corridor.

His face, always closed and flat, had his mouth softening the second his blues eyes spotted you, brow knit forward.

Pure hatred while looking at the man holding you.

"Let him go," Leon said. "And we can talk about your pension."

The man behind you laughed drily, processed by the mask's electronics into something flat and unpleasant.

The hatchet in his off hand slid back up from your back and he raised it slowly until the flat of the blade was pressed against the side of your neck again.

You felt the skin part as a thin warmth slid down your throat, traced the line of your collarbone and disappeared into the slit of the hospital gown.

"I'm going to neutralize the target," the man said into his radio, eyes locked on Leon over the curve of your shoulder. "Send the second team to recover the asset. Out."

He didn't wait for a response, his hand snapped up to the back of your neck instead, fingers digging into the muscle there, finding the knot of nerves at the base of your skull and pressing on them with practiced precision.

He used the leverage to walk you, one stumbling half-step at a time, directly down the corridor toward Leon with his hatchet staying against your neck. He kept his body angled behind yours, head tucked down behind the curve of your shoulder, chest plate flush against your back.

Using you like a meat shield all the way down the corridor, Leon's gun wavered because he didn’t have a clear shot on the way.

The man behind you reached the last few meters in a sudden burst and shoved you forward brutally.

Leon caught you, arm coming across your middle in a single clean sweep, bicep underneath the leather of his jacket bunching tight against your stomach, flat of his forearm settling under your ribs in the place a man's forearm settles when he's scooped someone out of a fall a hundred times before and the rest of him met the rest of you.

He was warm through the layers of his clothing and through the thin paper of your hospital gown, chest a wall, plates of his pectorals hard under his shirt as they met the side of your face for a single second as he yanked you in tight against him and you could feel the slow heavy thud of his heart beating against your cheekbone.

His other arm, the one with the gun, locked around your shoulders to keep you from rebounding off him.

It lasted a second or maybe less as his head jerked up over your shoulder and his entire body went rigid against yours, he made a small noise in his throat and his arm uncoiled from around your back, hand on your shoulder shoving you hard sideways into the wall to your right.

You hit the wall with your shoulder too hard with the way he put more strength into the throw than he'd meant to and the impact slammed the breath out of your lungs.

The commander had taken the distraction you caused by trying to slice Leon's neck with his hatchet and the blonde caught the descending haft of the weapon against the slide of the pistol with a metallic crack.

You watched a fight occur from the floor.

The man in the mask was younger and faster, but most importantly not carrying a deadly virus in his system.

Hatchets swung in tight arcs that didn't waste motion and every arc had to be parried by something on Leon.

The third exchange ended with the hatchet's haft slammed across Leon's collarbone and the pistol jarred halfway out of his grip with Leon's back against the windowed wall and the glass exploded outward in a sheet of fragments.

The two bodies vanished through the gap and some of the glass came down with them.

You tried to move, hand finding the floor and your legs accepted the request of getting up as you slumped sideways against the corridor wall.

The door at the far end of the corridor opened and two men came in, same gears as the others

"Show me your hands!"

Raising both of them as high as your shoulder would let you, palms out and fingers spread and you stayed on the floor because standing was no longer something your body would do.

"Don't move," the closer one said.

He approached slowly, rifle steady while the other one held his line at the door and covered the angles.

When he was close enough he reversed his grip on the rifle and brought the stock around in a short, professional arc and it cracked into the side of your head above the ear.

Awareness came back in layers.

Someone was carrying you from the way you were swaying up and down repeatedly and a hard ridge of bone was digging into the soft pit of your stomach.

Boot steps on concrete, dry electronic chatter of a radio on someone's hip.

The smell you registered was so bad that it dragged the rest of you up out of unconsciousness whether you were ready or not.

Old and new blood, the particular sweet-rotten reek of something dead, burnt cordite under all of it.

You stirred.

"Subject's awake." The man carrying you said, voice flat through the mask filter.

The other man, walking a few paces ahead, half-turned without breaking stride. You saw the rifle in his hands, muzzle pointed politely at the floor and over the top of his mask his eyes found yours where you hung limp over his partner's shoulder.

"Already?" he said. "It's been, what, six minutes." He stepped closer, peered at your forehead. The barrel of his rifle drifted up enough to flick your hair away from your temple with the front sight. "Cut's already gone. Look at it… fucking freak."

He turned back around and kept walking while you let your head loll from lack of strength.

The vast warehouse alley with the shipping containers stacked into walls on either side, was wrecked.

Containers split open, some of them caved in from the outside and the floor was a slick of dark fluid pooled in the low places of the concrete.

Three Lickers lying flat with their long red bodies opened up by gunfire and their tongues lolling slack across the floor in pale wet ropes.

Zombies, more than you could count, sprawled in heaps where they'd fallen, some still twitching in the small involuntary way bodies twitched when their nervous systems hadn't gotten the news.

The man carrying you stopped in front of a heavy double door and went down on one knee with practiced care, your bare feet found the cold concrete underneath and you swayed when he let go.

There was a split somewhere on the inside of your cheek where the rifle stock had driven your teeth into the soft tissue and iron sat heavy on your tongue.

"Move," the one with the bored eyes said and gestured with the rifle. "Don't get clever."

The doors hissed open at your approach and you walked through them with the small shuffling steps of a person whose balance had not entirely returned.

Your eyes went to Marie before they went to anything else.

She was still on the gurney exactly the way you had left her.

"On the bed," the man behind you said. "The one with the restraints."

He gestured with the rifle and as he did, the small red dot of his laser sight flickered across the wall in front of you.

Then it vanished between your shoulder blades.

You took a step toward the bed before a sound came from behind you.

A slicing followed by a dry crack of bone giving way along a yell that got cut off halfway through by the mask filter and came out muffled and gurgling.

You spun and found Leon standing between them.

He was standing between the two soldiers and the arm of the soldier who had been pointing his rifle at you was very wrong due to Leon’s hatchet that had come down at the shoulder, splitting through the joint at an angle that had taken the limb most of the way off the torso and now it was hanging by a rope of muscle.

Blood was coming out of the wound in a continuous pour from the severed artery.

The other soldier had started to raise his rifle and gotten it halfway up before Leon moved his hatchet free from the first man's shoulder in a fast clean yank that opened the wound wider and sent a second arterial spray fanning sideways across Leon's chest as his wrist rotated to take the soldier’s throat at the level of the larynx.

The mask filter on the front of his helmet caught the spray and redirected it sideways out the exhaust ports.

Leon let the hatchet drop as he drew the pistol from his hip in the same motion and put two rounds into the back of the first soldier's head.

Both soldiers flopping across the floor, one growing lake of blood.

The shock kept you still for about three seconds before you crossed the floor and both arms came around his ribs, face into the front of his jacket, side of your head jammed up under his collarbone.

He huffed and underneath the leather you felt his ribs flex against the press of your forearms.

The arms that came up around your shoulders to hug you back were strong.

"That's, uh. That's a hell of a lot better than the last greeting I got from you." He murmured into the top of your head and you laughed into the side of his throat.

"I thought you were dead," you said into his shirt.

"I get that a lot."

You pulled back, wanting to look at him but he was already turning, taking your hand in his gloved and large one that engulfed yours completely.

He did not tell you what had happened to the commander like the moment that he had pinned the masked man to the catwalk grating with one knee on his sternum and worked methodically.

First the joint, wrist coming out of his body right after and the blade had to be brought down twice to get all the way through the radius.

The second joint, elbow and the shoulder followed after.

Leon had not stopped working until there was nothing left attached to the torso except the head and he had taken it off last, kicking it through the railing.

What he told you, as he pulled you along by the hand, was the operational picture.

"We don't have time," he said. "Zero's got Grace at the console. He's going to walk her through inserting the password into Elpis. We have to break it before he gets there."

"How does she know the password?"

"She doesn't." A small huff of breath that was almost a laugh, almost. "That gentleman and Gideon have convinced themselves she does. They think she's the key. They'll get a code into the system one way or another and once it's in, Elpis is loose."

He kept walking as you kept up, hand around yours tightening a fraction when you stumbled on the edge of a tile and loosened again the moment you found your footing and the small unspoken attention of it, did something to the part of your chest that was still burning from thinking he was dead.

You reached the elevator and Leon hit the call button with the side of his fist as he pulled you in.

It began to ascend.

In the close quiet of the small mirrored box, with the floor numbers ticking up and the soft hum of the cable above you, you looked up at him and said, "Leon. What if everything we know about Elpis is wrong."

His eyes came down to you.

"Define wrong."

"What if it's not a weapon? There is this little girl I know, Marie, that was turned into a monster but Elpis—"

He was listening and opened his mouth to say something but coughed instead.

Small one at first, throat-clearing, before it doubled and his shoulders hunched in around it, he turned his face away from you in a sharp instinctive motion and when brought his free hand up to cover his mouth, you saw the blood come through his fingers before he could stop it.

Bright red, so arterial.

A lot of it.

His knee went out from under him, the hand that had been bracing on the wall now bracing on the wall lower down and his shoulders shook with the next cough, more blood came through his fingers and a thin runner of it escaped his palm and tracked down his wrist before disappearing into the cuff of his glove.

You went down with him, both of your hands on his shoulders and the leather was fever-hot under your palms.

"Leon, breathe, slow—"

He spat, a red wad of it onto the floor of the elevator.

His head came up, eyes finding yours, whites of them had gone a faint yellow around the iris in the last few minutes, you could see it now in the elevator light and the veins at his temples stood out darker than they should have.

"M'fine," he rasped.

"You are not fucking fine."

"Noted."

The elevator dinged, doors opening on the orange light.

Zeno was standing at the console with a cigarette held loose between two fingers, an orange tip glowing in counterpoint to the orange of the column and Leon fully collapsed.

He went forward out of the elevator and his left knee folded all the way under him and he went down onto both knees and then onto his palms.

You stayed with him, getting an arm under his shoulder and trying to lift but you couldn't on your own.

Grace was already moving the second she entered the place as well and when she got to him she dropped to her knees on his other side without a single second of hesitation.

"Leon. Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh, get up, get up, come on—"

He grunted while placing one palm against the floor and braced the other around Grace's shoulders. He pushed and got one foot under himself followed by the other.

Between you and Grace, with most of his weight distributed across both of your shoulders and almost none of it on his own legs, you got him standing.

Together you walked him, head bowed between his shoulders and his breath rattling wet in his chest, toes of his boots dragging at the polished floor with every step.

Zeno watched without moving or putting down the cigarette, taking a quick drag of it and letting the smoke out through his nose in two thin streams and his eyes behind the dark glasses followed your progress.

“Any wrong code will do. It’ll destroy Elpis.”

“Let’s try.” Grace mumbled to Leon as you all got closer.

“I can buy you some time.” Leon breathed before coughing once into the side of your hair and you felt the heat of his breath along a small spray of something against your scalp but you didn't flinch.

“Are we sure of what you have in mind to do?” You tried to call out despite how you yourself had no clear clue of what Elpis was fully capable of.

Zeno was eyeing you in particular as you all approached the center and Grace reluctantly let go once she saw you had full grip on Leon.

You sank together with him down on one knee on the ground, his body half-cradled against the front of yours, head dropping forward to land in the curve of your shoulder. He weighed so much more than you had been ready for, muscles still on his frame even with the virus eating him from the inside, settled against you and your arms came around his shoulders to keep him from going further as he stayed there, breathing.

“I-I know the password.” Grace mastered all the courage she could hold as she told Zeno those words and his face, even while wearing sunglasses, lit up.

“Fulfill your destiny, and all will be forgiven.” Zero mumbled while eying the computer.

You held Leon as another hard set of coughing hit him. One hand cradling the back of his skull, other arm locked across his upper back and felt him slowly lean further in, tension going out of his neck, head settling against the curve of your throat.

He liked it.

Small and almost imperceptible nuzzle of his jaw against your collarbone, an unconscious turn of his face deeper into the place between your shoulder and your neck, the wet of his bloody mouth caught against the line of your jaw and dragged when he turned.

A man at the end of his strength taking, for the first time in years, the comfort of being held and not caring anymore who saw him take it.

His stubble was rough as it scratched your throat with every small shift of his head, blood on his lips smearing a sticky warm line from the hinge of your jaw down to your collarbone and his breath came in small wet bursts against your skin.

He was so fever-warm, the heat of him soaking through your gown and through your skin and into your chest where it sat behind your ribs like a stone.

“O-only if you let Leon live.” Grace mustered again all bravery she could.

“Very well.” Zero only spared Leon and you a quick glance before turning to the computer.

He took a final drag of the cigarette and crushed it out on the edge of the console.

"Better be quick, he has little minutes left" Zeno said, eyes moving over you in a single flat sweep. "And the experiment—" the corner of his mouth lifted again, the small private smile, "—is a failed prototype anyway. Aren't you? The connection had hopes for you but your output is unstable, concentration is below threshold. We were going to harvest you to dry and discard the husk."

He gestured at the column of orange light pulsing beside him.

"But now we won't need to. Once Grace inserts the key, we'll have access to the direct font. Elpis itself. The pure article. You—" the smile widened a fraction, "—were a stepping stone we don't need anymore."

Leon's head moved in a slow effortful lift of his chin off the curve of your shoulder and when his face came up into the light his eyes were half-lidded, entire lower half of his face was painted red.

"You put a hand," Leon said, voice rasp as each word came out individually.

"You put a hand on him, I’ll cut every finger off your fucking hand."

He coughed and sprayed a fine red mist across the front of your gown and across his own chin as he hung in your arms with the cough's weight, his shoulders convulsing and when it passed he was heavier than before as his head sagged back down into the crook of your neck of its own accord.

"Leon," you breathed, both of your hands coming up to his face and cradling it, stubble of his jaw scraping your palms, rough warm drag of two days of unshaved beard against the skin of your fingers.

"Leon, save your strength, please."

He breathed a laugh and it lifted one side of his bloody mouth into a crooked sideways grin, white of his teeth filmed with red and his lower lip was split somewhere on the inside and there was a stripe of blood drying into the line of his jaw under your right hand and he looked at you with a half-lidded heavy gaze.

"You're cute," he murmured, "when you worry."

His eyes traveled down your face and settled on your mouth.

"Shame," he said, softer, almost to himself, "I won't get to see it again."

He was telling you, with the matter-of-fact resignation of a man who had done his own math and didn't like the answer, that he was about to die in your arms and he was sorry he wasn't going to get more time to look at your face.

Something inside your chest broke and then, in the broken place, the notes from the room with Marie for Elpis.

The principle had been a cure and you had two ampules stored in the pocket of your gown.

You thought you knew what to do now with Leon's weight collapsing further into your arms by the second and his eyes already starting to drift unfocused on yours.

"Leon," you said and his eyes tracked back to yours with half a second of lag.

"Hmm."

"Can I try something?"

His mouth moved, crooked grin coming back as his pupils were blown widen, eyes on your mouth again and he wasn't tracking the conversation anymore.

"Sweetheart," he murmured. "You can do whatever you want to me."

You leaned in closer, forehead pressed lightly against his and the heat of his skin against yours was alarming. "I want to thank you for getting me out of that Care Center and letting me see all of those new things in my life, even the bad parts. Especially the bad parts. I never—" your voice caught, "—I never had any of that and you gave me a whole day of it."

He made a small contented sound, low in his throat and you felt his hand one curled into the fabric at your hip tighten.

"Best day," he murmured. "Of my whole goddamn life. You believe that?"

You kissed him, mouth finding his and the blood on his mouth transferred immediately onto yours, slick and metallic but you did not care.

His mouth was so warm and so soft and you felt him try to kiss back with how little he had left.

The small fluttering effort of his lips against yours with a half-second of pressure before his strength gave out and he just rested his mouth against yours and breathed.

Your right hand stayed cradling his face while the left hand slid down across his shoulder to your own hip, into the pocket of the gown, fingers closing around the cool slim glass of the first injector.

You worked the safety cap off against the heel of your own palm without interrupting the kiss, finding the line of his carotid by touch, warm pulse of it still beating under his stubbled skin and you set the tip of the injector against the muscle of his shoulder where it met his neck before pressing.

The red dark amber went into him in a single fast pulse and he jerked, a startled flinch against your mouth and for a second nothing happened.

His hand on your hip tightened hard and his other hand came up off the floor and found your shoulder.

A change happened over the span of three seconds as his lips pressed more firmly, opened and his head tilted before he kissed you back more passionately.

The other hand let go of your hip and came up to your face, leather of the glove rough against your cheekbone and he cradled your jaw in his palm to angle your face the way he wanted it and kissed you like.

You felt his weight come off you without noticing how much of it you'd been holding until it was gone and he shifted on his knee, planted his foot, straightened and the weight that had been sagging into your shoulders pulled back as he kissed you harder.

His mouth opened against yours and his tongue traced your lower lip and you opened for him as his tongue slid in.

It tasted like copper and the small surprised noise he made into your mouth as the kiss deepened was the most alive sound you had ever heard out of him. The hand on your face had moved to the back of your skull, fingers spread wide in your hair, holding you to him and the other had found your waist and was gathering the fabric of your gown into his fist as if he didn't know he was doing it.

He pulled back fast, eyes snapping open, breath coming in one sharp clean inhale.

You looked down and his glove came off by your hand, there were once dark spider-web of necrotic veining climbing up from the back of his hand toward his elbow, black branching pattern of the infection spreading through the tissue.

It was gone.

You watched the last of it whiten as you stared, dark lines retreating up his arm in real time, fading from black to gray to a faint shadow to nothing at all, skin beneath them returning to its ordinary color.

It didn’t take much convincing getting Chris to accompany you back to your apartment for a night cap. By the end of dinner, though the two of you talked for what felt like hours without pause, he wanted more. More of your voice. More of the way you look at him, eyes glimmering like the sun’s reflection on the sea.

You gave him a tour of the kitchen, the living room, and he enthusiastically watched as you showed him all the tchotchkes you have displayed on the shelves, the photos lining the mantle of you with friends and family. After the drinks ran dry, he proposed that the two of you settle onto the sofa and watch a movie. You proposed something else entirely. 

“How about you kiss me, Chris?”

He doesn’t waste a second before his hands rise to cup your face, but he hesitates before leaning in, wanting to savor the moment he’s been thinking about since the night you met. His chocolate brown eyes fall to your mouth, plump and fleshy, then his lips follow. 

It’s the kind of kiss that engages each sense, alerting every nerve in your body, the tingling wires shooting off like sparklers on a summer evening. His large arms wrap around you, pulling you closer into his chest as his tongue continues to dance around your mouth, inviting your own into a passionate tango. 

“Taste so good,” you slur into his mouth and he kisses you deeper, his hands squeezing your waist with all the more power. 

You test him every step of the way as the two of you tumble down the hall and into your bedroom. Every time you say his name or tell him how good his hands feel on your body, he lets out a sound neighboring that of a whimper, so low it almost goes undetectable. 

It’s humorous, you can’t deny. The paradox between the bulging muscles that flex beneath every movement, and the whiny moans that leave his lips the more you tease and taunt him. Hands wandering up and down your thighs as you straddle him, you can feel his need grow beneath you as he lifts his head off the bed to try and catch your lips in a kiss. You quickly pull away and his brows cinch together, his lips curling into a frown. 

“You’re so pretty when you pout like that,” you say, bowing down to whisper into his ear, nibbling the lobe. His cock twitches against your thigh as you draw slobbery lines up and down his neck with the tip of your tongue. “Now are you going to be a good boy and let me ride your face?”

“Oh fuck,” he mutters. A rolling, rumbling growl leaves his chest, and as you pull away, you can see that his cheeks are flaming crimson, his eyes as wide as saucers.