#christopher redfield

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The cage was barely big enough for the two of you. Six feet by six, maybe less, the kind of reinforced steel box they used for high-value assets in whatever abandoned Umbrella facility this was. Bars on three sides, solid plate on the fourth, a single flickering bulb somewhere down the corridor casting long, sickly shadows through the gaps. The floor was cold concrete under your ass, and every shift of your weight sent a fresh ripple of ache through your bruised ribs and the raw scrapes along your arms. Your tactical vest was gone, your boots too—taken when they dragged you in. All you had left was your torn undershirt, cargo pants stiff with dried sweat and someone else’s blood, and the constant, metallic taste of exhaustion on your tongue.

Chris sat opposite you, back against the bars, leg stretched out as far as the cramped space allowed. One knee was bent, the bad one, propped on his boot like it might stop the throbbing. His jeans were dark with old and new blood; the makeshift bandage he’d torn from his own shirt was already soaked through at the edges, a slow, dark bloom spreading outward. He hadn’t moved much in the last… God, how long had it been? Hours. The kind of hours that felt like days when every breath hurt and rescue was a maybe that no one was betting on.

You’d stopped counting the drips of water from a crack in the ceiling somewhere outside the cage. Stopped trying to pick the lock with the broken zipper pull from your pants. Stopped everything except watching him not look at you.

The silence had weight. It pressed down like the humid air, thick with the copper smell of his blood and the faint ozone stink of old electrical wiring. You hated how aware you were of him. The slow rise and fall of his broad chest under the torn black tee that clung to every ridge of muscle. The way the stubble on his jaw caught the weak light, turning silver at the edges. The faint sheen of sweat on his forehead that he refused to wipe away because wiping it would mean acknowledging the pain. Chris Redfield didn’t acknowledge pain. Not to you. Not to anyone.

You’d been like this for years. Ever since you transferred into the BSAA’s North American branch, eventually landing on missions under his command. He was the legend—Raccoon City’s Arklay Mountains mansion incident, the Antarctic facility where he’d gone after his sister Claire, the Caucasus village outbreak in 2003 that helped solidify the BSAA’s early days, Kijuju in Africa where he’d partnered with Sheva Alomar to stop Wesker’s Uroboros plot, Edonia during the civil war bio-terror outbreak, Lanshiang in China against the C-Virus chaos. Every nightmare the world had thrown at him, and he’d walked out breathing. You were the sniper who’d earned her spot the hard way: long-range quals, urban CQB, and a mouth that didn’t know when to stay shut. He called you reckless in briefings; you called him a glory-hog in the field. He thought you second-guessed every order; you thought he charged in like he had nothing left to lose. Partners on paper. Oil and water in practice. The rest of the team placed bets on how long before one of you got the other killed.

Turns out it was you who pulled the trigger.

Not on purpose. Never on purpose. The lab had gone sideways—B.O.W. prototypes loose, security drones everywhere, your team split. You’d had the shot on a licker that was about to drop from the ceiling onto Chris’s back. He’d moved at the last second, lunging for a civilian straggler you hadn’t even seen. Your round caught him just above the kneecap instead. Grazed the bone. Enough to drop him. Enough for the guards to swarm. Enough to end up here, locked in a cage with the man who’d saved the world a dozen times and now couldn’t even stand because of you.

Your throat burned. Not from thirst—though that was coming—but from the words you’d been swallowing for hours. You couldn’t take the silence anymore. It felt like drowning in the same air he was breathing.

"It’s still bleeding," you said quietly. Your voice cracked from disuse. "Through the bandage. I can see it."

Chris didn’t move at first. His head stayed tilted back against the bars, eyes half-lidded on the ceiling like he was watching something only he could see. When he finally spoke, it was low, rough, the barest scrape of sound.

"No shit."

That was it. Two words. The first he’d given you since the guards slammed the cage door and walked away laughing. You felt them land like a slap—sharp, dismissive, exactly the tone he always used when you tried to tell him something he already knew. Part of you wanted to laugh. The other part wanted to scream.

You shifted, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. The movement made your own bruises protest, but you ignored it. "I’m just saying, if you let me look at it—"

"Don’t." The word came out flat. He still wasn’t looking at you. "I patched it. It’s fine."

"It’s not fine. You’re pale, and you’re sweating like we’re still running from those things."

A muscle jumped in his jaw. That was the only reaction. Chris Redfield holding back was a wall you’d slammed into more times than you could count. He did it with the team when things went FUBAR. He did it with you every single day. Anger, exhaustion, pain—he locked it down behind that granite face and those storm-blue eyes and dared anyone to try cracking it. Right now the lock was straining. You could see the fine tremor in his hands where they rested on his good thigh. The way his breathing had gone shallow, like every inhale cost him.

You hated how much you noticed. Hated how the sight of him hurting twisted something ugly and guilty in your chest. This was supposed to be simple: you two hated each other. He thought you were a liability. You thought he was arrogant and self-destructive. End of story. Except the story had never ended, had it? It had dragged on through continents, a hundred near-misses, nights in safehouses where you’d both pretended not to notice the other staring when they thought no one was looking. The kind of tension that had nothing to do with guns and everything to do with the way his hand had once brushed your waist steadying you on a swaying catwalk during an extraction, the way you’d once caught him watching you laugh with the rookies after a debrief, expression unreadable.

You pushed the memory down. "Fine. Bleed out if you want. See if I care."

He let out a sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t been so bitter. Still no eye contact. "Wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to put me down."

The words hit harder than they should have. You flinched. "It was an accident. You moved."

"Yeah. I moved." His voice dropped lower. "Because there was a civilian about to get torn apart. But sure. My fault."

Silence again, heavier this time. Your pulse hammered in your ears. The guilt you’d been carrying since the shot went off flared hot behind your eyes. You blinked it back. Crying in front of Chris Redfield was not an option. Not ever.

Minutes crawled. Or maybe hours. The bulb flickered. Somewhere far off, metal groaned—settling or something worse, you couldn’t tell. Your mouth tasted like copper and dust. The cage felt smaller every time you breathed, the space between you shrinking even though neither of you had moved. You could smell him now—gun oil, sweat, the faint iron of blood. It should have been repulsive. It wasn’t.

You watched the way his fingers flexed against his thigh, like he was fighting the urge to press on the wound. Watched the slow bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed. Watched the way the dim light carved shadows under his cheekbones and made the scar through his left eyebrow stand out white. He looked exhausted. Not the field kind—the bone-deep kind that came from carrying the weight of every life he hadn’t saved. You’d seen that look before, after Kijuju, after Edonia, after Lanshiang. You’d always told yourself it was none of your business.

Right now, in this steel box with death waiting outside, it felt like everything was your business.

You broke first. Again.

"I could tear a strip from my shirt," you said, softer this time. "A clean one. Just to cover it better. Stop the bleeding so you don’t pass out and leave me here alone with these assholes when they come back."

He was quiet for a long moment. So long you thought he was ignoring you again. Then he sighed. A full-body shudder that looked like it cost him everything. He still wouldn’t meet your eyes.

"Save your shirt," he said, and the words were so weary they didn’t have any bite left. "Not much point."

A chill went through you that had nothing to do with the cold concrete. "Don’t say that."

He turned his head then, finally, and the look in his eyes was something you’d never seen before—not anger, not the usual professional irritation, but something raw. Something that had been buried so long it didn’t know how to stay down. "That it’s pointless? You see a way out of this I don’t? You see a rescue chopper on its way? Because I’m looking, and all I see is a cage and a bum knee and a sniper who can’t tell the difference between a B.O.W. and a friendly target."

It was a low blow. Dirty. Designed to hurt. And it did, like a knife in the gut. You felt your face heat, shame and anger warring for dominance. "I didn’t see the civilian. You know I wouldn’t have taken the shot otherwise."

"Wouldn’t you?" He pushed himself up a little, wincing as he tried to shift weight off the bad leg. The movement made the bandage shift, and a fresh, dark wet spot bloomed on the denim. He grimaced. "You’re always so quick on the trigger. So sure. You think it’s all about the shot, the perfect angle. You don’t think about the moving parts. The people. You see a target, you take it. End of story."

"That’s not fair," you shot back, your own anger rising hot and fast. "That’s not how it is and you know it! I’m the one who’s been covering your back for the last three years! I’m the one who—"

"Who got cocky and nearly got half the team wiped out!" he snapped, cutting you off. His breathing was ragged now. Pain and fury mixing into a toxic brew. "I read the reports. I know about the alley. You went in without comms, without backup, because you thought you could handle it alone! Just like always!"

"You weren’t there! You don’t know what it was like!"

"I don’t need to be there to know your file! It’s a long list of 'I had a clear shot' and 'no one else was moving fast enough!' You think you’re the only one who can do this job? You think the BSAA would fall apart without you?"

"At least I’m not trying to get myself killed because I think it’ll make up for what happened in Africa!"

The words hung in the air between you, ugly and brutal. The second they left your mouth, you wanted them back. You saw the impact in the flash of pure, unadulterated agony that crossed Chris’s face before it hardened into a mask of stone. Kijuju. The one thing no one ever said out loud. The one thing that had turned him from a soldier into a ghost haunting his own life. The reason he never slept. The reason he volunteered for every suicide mission that came across the desk.

You’d gone too far. You knew it. The silence that followed was worse than any yelling. It was a silence that broke things.

Chris just stared at you, and for the first time, all the anger was gone. All the irritation, the professional distance—it all evaporated, leaving behind something shattered. He looked away, down at his bloody knee, then up at the flickering bulb. His shoulders slumped, the fight draining out of him so completely it was terrifying.

"You’re right," he said, and his voice was so quiet you had to strain to hear it. "You’re right about that."

You were speechless. The confession, stripped of all context, felt heavier than anything you’d ever prepared for. You’d weaponized his pain to win a fight, and here he was, handing you the victory like it was a piece of shrapnel he was finally ready to dig out.

You swallowed hard, your throat tight. "Chris… I didn’t mean…"

"Yes, you did," he cut in, but there was no heat in it. Just exhaustion. A profound, soul-deep weariness that went beyond the current situation. "It’s fine. It’s the truth."

He shifted again, a grunt of pain escaping through clenched teeth. He pressed the heel of his palm against the wound now, trying to stem the bleeding with pure, brute force. His knuckles were white. You could see the fine tremor running up his arm, the way the muscles in his back and shoulders were locked in a constant battle against the pain. He was breaking right in front of you, and the sight of it was a physical blow to your own chest.

"Let me help," you whispered, the fight gone out of you completely.

He shook his head, a short, sharp gesture. "Don’t."

"I’m sorry," you said, and the apology was for more than just the last five minutes. It was for everything. For the rivalry, the arguments, for not seeing past the asshole commander to the man underneath. "Please. Just… let me."

He didn’t answer. He just closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the bars, and kept pressing. The non-response was all the invitation you were going to get.

You moved slowly, deliberately, your body screaming in protest. You didn’t want to startle him. You knelt in front of him, the cold concrete seeping through the thin fabric of your pants. The space was infinitesimal. Your knee brushed his uninjured leg. You could feel the heat radiating from him. Up close, you could see the intricate pattern of scars on his arms, a topographical map of a life lived in the crossfire.

You reached for the hem of your shirt, a faded olive green tee. The fabric was soft, worn thin from a hundred washes. You ripped a long strip from the bottom, the sound harsh in the quiet room. You bunched it up, your hands steady for the first time in what felt like days.

"I need to take the other one off," you said softly, your gaze fixed on the makeshift bandage. "It’s too soaked. We need pressure."

He didn’t open his eyes, but you felt him tense under your hands. A slight, almost imperceptible stiffening of his shoulders. He gave a single, clipped nod. That was all.

Your fingers were gentle as you worked at the knot tied over his knee. His skin was hot, almost feverish, and you tried not to think about the risk of infection, about how deep the bullet had gone, about how far you were from a real hospital. You focused on the task. The knot was tight, slick with blood. You had to lean closer, your breath ghosting over the exposed skin of his thigh. He flinched, a sharp intake of breath that he tried to hide. You stilled your hands.

"Sorry."

"Just get it off," he gritted out.

Finally, the knot gave way. You carefully peeled the saturated fabric away. The wound was worse than you’d thought. A clean entry and exit, maybe, but torn and swollen, the flesh around it an angry, bruised purple. A slow, steady well of blood pulsed from the hole in his jeans.

You didn’t hesitate. You pressed the clean strip of your shirt hard against the wound, right over the fabric of his pants. He jerked, his hand flying out to grip the bar above his head, his knuckles turning white. A low, guttural sound of pain was forced from between his clenched teeth. It was the most honest sound you’d ever heard him make. It was raw and unguarded, and it did something to you, something you weren’t prepared to examine.

"Hold it," you commanded, your voice low but firm. "Hold it right there. Tight."

You took one of his hands—his right one, the one that wasn’t clinging to the bars—and guided it down, placing it over the compress. His fingers were cold despite the heat of his skin. You pressed your own hand over his, showing him the pressure needed. For a moment, your hands were intertwined over the center of his pain. His grip tightened, and for a second, you felt the sheer, brute strength of him, even weakened and in agony. Then he took over, pressing down himself, and you let go.

You sat back on your heels, watching him. The effort of it was etched onto his face in every line. The sweat on his brow had beaded and was now trailing down his temples. His eyes were still squeezed shut.

"Better?" you asked, your voice barely a whisper.

He let out a long, shuddering breath, the kind that comes after holding it for too long. He didn’t open his eyes. "It’s something."

You didn’t know what to do with your hands now. You rested them on your own knees, the torn edge of your shirt hanging awkwardly. You watched the slow, measured rise and fall of his chest, the way the muscles in his forearm stood out as he maintained the pressure. The silence returned, but it was different now. The old, charged silence was gone, replaced by something fragile. A silence born of shared pain and a sudden, jarring truce. You’d broken him, and now you were trying to piece him back together with a strip of your shirt and your bare hands.

You found your gaze drifting from the wound, up the powerful line of his thigh, to the worn denim, to the tear in his shirt that revealed a slice of the hard, flat plane of his stomach. Higher still, to the bicep flexing with the strain, the cords of his neck, the sharp angle of his jaw. You’d seen him a thousand times in training gear, in tactical vests, in the field, but you’d never let yourself look. Not like this. Not at the man behind the soldier. He was just Redfield, the commander, the obstacle. Now, he was just Chris.

And he was hurting.

You were caught staring when he opened his eyes. The blue of them was almost grey in the dim light, cloudy with pain and something else. Resignation. He looked right at you, really looked at you, for the first time since you were thrown in here. He didn’t look away. The intensity of it made your breath catch. There were no walls left between you now. You’d seen too much, said too much.

You didn’t realize you were leaning in until you were already doing it. A slow, infinitesimal movement, like you were being pulled by a string you couldn’t see. You told yourself it was to check the bandage, to see if the bleeding was slowing. But you knew it was a lie. You were drawn to the vulnerability you’d uncovered, the crack in the fortress you’d spent years trying to breach. You wanted to know what lay inside.

His breath hitched as you came closer. You could feel it now, warm against your cheek. You could see the individual gold flecks in his irises, the tiny white scar that cut through his left eyebrow, the way his pulse beat a frantic rhythm in the hollow of his throat. You were close enough to kiss him. The thought hit you with the force of a physical blow, so unexpected and powerful it made you dizzy. You stopped breathing.

Chris didn't move. He didn't flinch away or tell you to back off. He just watched you, his eyes darkening, his gaze dropping to your lips for a fraction of a second before snapping back to your eyes. The air crackled, the space between you charged with a current that had been building for years, buried under arguments and mutual resentment. It was all coming out now, here, in this filthy cage, with death just outside the door.

The flickering bulb overhead chose that moment to die, plunging the corridor into near darkness. The only light came from a faint, red emergency indicator down the hall, painting everything in shades of blood and shadow.

The sudden darkness should have broken the spell. It should have sent you scrambling back to your corner. But it didn’t. Instead, it amplified everything. The sounds were louder—his ragged breathing, the distant drip of water, the hum of the emergency lights. The scent of him was stronger—blood and sweat and something uniquely him that you could never name. The space felt smaller, more intimate.

You didn’t move away. You couldn’t. You were frozen in place, your face inches from his, your hand still resting on your own knee. You could feel the heat of him, a furnace in the cold room. You could feel the faint vibration of the building, the steady, thrumming presence of the enemy outside.

His eyes had adjusted to the darkness. You could see them, gleaming in the faint red light. They held a depth of emotion you’d never seen before—pain, exhaustion, a flicker of the old anger, and something new, something you were afraid to name. Longing. It was there, clear as day, and it stole the air from your lungs.

You were too busy watching him to remember the placement of where you were kneeling. One small shift later—instinctive, trying to ease the ache in your own legs—your knee pressed directly into the wound.

Pain exploded across his face. He hissed sharply, body jerking involuntarily, the compress slipping under his hand as fresh blood welled up. The sudden motion threw off your balance; you yanked back, hands flying up in horror. "Shit, I'm so sorry. Are you—?"

He didn't give you the chance to finish. The second your head turned down to check the damage, something in him snapped—not anger, not calculation, but pure, unfiltered reaction to the spike of agony and the proximity you'd both been dancing around for too long. One of his hands shot out, not to strike you, but to wrap around the back of your neck. His fingers tangled in your hair, the grip firm but not painful. It was a hold that said, stop running.

Then he pulled.

There was no hesitation. No preamble. He just pulled you to him, and your lips met in a collision that was more desperate than gentle. It was a kiss born of pain and exhaustion, of shared trauma and unspoken desire. It was a kiss that tasted of blood and regret and a desperate need for connection.

You were too shocked to react at first. Your hands flew up to his chest, intending to push him away, but they ended up fisting in the fabric of his torn shirt as he started to pull back, doubt flashing in his eyes.

He thought he'd misread it. He thought he'd crossed a line. "Sorry, I—"

Your overcorrecting came so fast it cut him off. You surged forward, the momentum sending the back of his head thudding softly against the metal bars. He couldn’t even reach up to rub the spot—his hands were full of you. You climbed into his lap like you'd been starving for this exact moment, careful of the knee but not careful enough. He let out a guttural moan into your mouth at the contact—the pain from the shift, from your weight, from everything blending into a symphony of agony and bliss.

He kissed you back with a ferocity that matched your own. His other arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you flush against him. The hard lines of his body pressed against yours, a perfect, painful fit. You could feel the steady, frantic beat of his heart against your palm, a drumbeat of life in the midst of all this death.

The kiss was a mess of teeth and tongues, of desperate breaths and shared pain. It was a years-long argument finally being settled, not with words, but with a raw, primal need. You were both bleeding, literally and figuratively, and this was the only way to stop the bleeding.

His hands roamed your back, tracing the curve of your spine, the dip of your waist. Your fingers dug into his shoulders, holding on for dear life. You were drowning in him, in the taste and feel of him, and you never wanted to come up for air.

The kiss deepened, became slower, more exploratory. The initial frantic energy subsided, replaced by a languorous, tender intimacy that was somehow more intense. His thumb brushed against your cheek, a gentle caress that was at odds with the raw need of the kiss. You leaned into his touch, a soft sigh escaping your lips.

He pulled back then, just enough to rest his forehead against yours. His breathing was ragged, his chest heaving against yours. In the dim red light, you could see the raw emotion in his eyes, the vulnerability he tried so hard to hide.

"Why’d you stop?" you whispered, your voice hoarse.

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "I've gained more than enough new injuries tonight." He winced as he shifted, a clear sign of his discomfort. "Plus, I'd rather not put on a show for our friends outside."

You raised an eyebrow at his words, confusion briefly clouding your mind before you realized what he was referring to. His gaze flickered to the spot right above your head, and yours followed. On the ceiling, a small, unassuming security camera stared back at you, a single red light blinking in the darkness.

A wave of cold washed over you, as you were brutally reminded of the situation you were in. You were trapped. You were being watched. And you’d just kissed your commanding officer in a dirty cage in god-knows-where.

You were instantly mortified.

And with the mortification came a searing, white-hot anger. Anger at yourself, at him, at this whole fucked-up situation. You pushed yourself off him, stumbling back to your corner of the cage, your back hitting the cold metal bars with a clang that echoed in the silence.

There was only one thing that came to your mind then, one that repeated itself over and over again in your head: