#resi 7

Imagine if Clancy was a teenager that wanted some extra bucks and that's why Peter Walken reacted like that when he saw Andre Stickland brought in Clancy instead of his predecessor. And then he ended up being killed via burning to death by Lucas Baker who was probably a psychopath/sociopath that wasn't diagnosed—considering he killed a poor kid named Oliver when he, himself, was a kid by trapping him in the attic from April to May.

Ethan Winters x Mia Winters (Resident Evil Biohazard)

Warnings: Swearing

Genre: Romance, Fluff

Summary: A year after the events that took place at the Bakers’ residence and the three years of Mia being missing, the Winters spouses have finally been healed enough to start getting back into a regular lively rhythm, nevertheless haunted by the nightmare they lived through. 

Requested by Anon. Hi dear! Sorry you’ve had to wait so long for your request but here it finally is! They deserved so much better and I’ll never stop saying that! Sorry for the brief rant, still, hope you enjoy the read! Love, Vy ❤

Holding Ethan’s hand tightly, Mia follows his instructions to keep her gaze down at the ground and avoid looking up as much as possible. She’s been having a hard time containing the smile on her face, biting her bottom lip a lot to prevent it from showing. Same as she’s had a hard time keeping quiet with her guessing games of where Ethan’s taking her. The man’s unbreakable though, never once was he tempted to let her in on what he’s planned.

It’s been a year since the Baker incident and all the couple has done is switch from one coping mechanism to another. They got stuck in a sort of therapy-work-therapy cycle where they threw themselves in their work and periodically went to their psychiatric appointments, never daring to nudge the topic at home amongst themselves. It was enough that the whole night has remained as a dark cloud hanging over their heads, addressing it has simply been to painful so they’ve steered clear of the topic the best they could.

However, an important thing to note about this coping cycle they created is that it drove all the other mechanics in their lives and their relationship to become routinely and mechanic as well. There was little to no feeling in all they did - not that they ever did much together except have dinner and sometimes breakfast, both of them fully indulged in their work the rest of the day. Work became their therapy eventually, leaving little time for one another and for fixing what’s been broken between them. This conclusion bothered them both to no end but neither wanted to address it out of fear of disturbing the other.

Luckily, Ethan didn’t feel the need to bring it up before taking action.

“Here we are!“ He announces eventually, causing Mia to snap her head upwards without a second to spare, curious eyes doing the best they can to take in the dark surroundings. 

Surprisingly enough, she doesn’t have any problem with the dark. What happened back in Louisiana didn’t give her a phobia of the dark or of ships as her therapist initially thought she’d develop. However, she’s got a huge fear of bugs and insects now - especially mosquitos. Count on her husband carrying anti bug spray wherever they go - now is no exception.

As her eyes slowly adjust to the darkness of their surroundings, it doesn’t take her a while to realize they’re in an open yet secluded field. She’s not the slightest bit surprised by where he’s taken her, in fact, she recognizes it immediately. It’s the spot of their first official date.

The Deep of the Burning Sea at Moonrise

Four months later.

Emily, Dion, and Charlie, signed up for training Mia, while Chris, Rolando, and John took over Ethan’s ‘apprenticeship,’ as they called it. Emily had decided to help Mia build up strength and endurance, both of which she was lacking after living in that fucking house for so long, scared half (and some days, all the way) out of her mind. She’d receive weapons training as well, but she’d already warned them that she didn’t wish to know more than the absolute basics. Dion would focus her on defence and disarming techniques rather than having to do the shooting herself. Chris still had to keep himself from wincing when he remembered her telling him, through sobs, how she’d cut off Ethan’s hand with a goddamn chainsaw. And even though no more than a faint line on Ethan’s skin remained to remind them of the injury, Chris had the feeling it still troubled him, anyway — perhaps precisely because there seemed to be no lasting physical effects.

Ethan said he’d never been much for guns, but he had no choice but to find his way around them in the Baker mansion. Chris suspected his bravado now was partly an effort to balance his wife’s reluctance when it came to firearms, but Ethan readily agreed to all the weapons training Chris and John could give him. Charlie was in charge of physical recovery and strength, building Ethan up from a somewhat spindly computer nerd into someone who could credibly nudge a boulder. Chris jumped in on Charlie’s days off to go running with Ethan first thing in the morning, though, and together they explored the woods around the house. During those runs, Chris did carry a comms link to the base, just in case, but he took care to make sure they weren’t listening.

Sometimes, he and Ethan talked; about Dulvey, about Mia, about Ethan’s own recovery. It was on a run just after dawn that Ethan confided in Chris that they were having nightmares, both of them, verging on night terrors. That they were still frightened of the Mold — not just of creatures finding them in the night, but of the infection inside them.

Chris had ordered as many tests as there were protocols for the Winters when they’d gotten them out of Dulvey, and regular check-ups ever since. He’d seen the results, too — promising, and stable. But he understood that fear never quite went away. He knew the same was true of Claire, who’d had her own brush with one of the viruses; and so it went for Jill, for Carlos, and for Leon.

“What about you?” Ethan asked, keeping pace with Chris more easily than he’d managed a month or even just a week before; though Chris still slowed down a little for him. Ethan had joked that they should go weight training together, and Chris had carefully reacted with nothing more than a noncommittal grunt. Being Ethan’s spotter, when Chris already had difficulty dealing with sweaty, wrung-out-after-a-run Ethan stretching to cool down and in the process revealing the more and more toned muscles of his back where his shirt rode up, wouldn’t be a good idea. (It hadn’t helped that Ethan had playfully pinched Chris’ bicep where he could reach him across the table, much to Mia’s amusement. Chris had managed not to flinch away, instead lightly batting at his hand; only making Ethan grin wider.)

Here, now, Chris shook his head at himself. Ethan was telling him about the horror that kept visiting upon the two people in his charge, and he was… fuck, he had no idea what he was doing.

“I’ve seen my fair share, and some nights I still see it,” he said, and perhaps it came out more wistfully than he’d meant it to, because Ethan looked over at him with something gentle in his eyes.

Read on AO3 ⟶

Disclaimer here, that I watch a lot more lets plays of horror games than I do play them myself, because I’m a big wuss, so these recs are based on atmosphere and story more than they are gameplay mechanics. That said, I haven’t recc’d anything where I know the actual mechanics to be miserable.

I’ve given a content warning for one game which deals with mental health issues in a way I know to be triggering for some people but it should go without saying that as horror games all of these contain at least some potentially squicky or triggering content. If you want more detailed warnings, hit me up and I’ll be happy to provide them. Oh, and I won’t say that there’s no jump scares in here, but there’s no games which rely on jumpscares as a regular mechanic, because that’s just lazy writing.

Soma

One of the rare games that really is as clever as it thinks it is, Soma is a hauntingly creepy slice of hard sci-fi with a lot to say on the nature of consciousness, hope, and nihilism. It also has an optional no monsters mode, which I’d recommend personally. It doesn’t detract from the atmosphere one bit, and it makes the game accessible for people with motor issues by removing the QTEs.

Resident Evil VII

I’m not usually an action-horror fan, but this is brilliantly atmospheric and charmingly weird in a way that’s uniquely Resi. Fun gameplay and a story that’s just the right balance of compelling and utter nonsense blend surprisingly smoothly with an atmosphere of old school horror.

Outlast

I know I know, horror set in asylums has been done to death and has some really fucked up origins, but hear me out on this one. Outlast takes genre tropes and character beats that have been done a million times before and elevates them. Mostly by having a main character who makes entirely reasonable decisions. Yes he sneaks into the creepy hospital at night (albeit for a good reason) but the minute he figures out he’s in a fucking horror story, his only motivation is to gtfo and that makes everything he goes through relatable in a way horror protagonists rarely are.

Little Nightmares

I have limited patience for the use of child protagonists in horror stories, but like Inside (below) Little Nightmares gets around this aversion by having some of the best art direction I’ve ever seen, no cutesy child dialogue (no dialogue at all in fact) and atmosphere by the bucket load. It’s Limbo by way of Gormenghast and I urge you to try it for the stunning art if nothing else.

Pathalogic 2

My mutuals will already know how much I adore the Pathlogic series (I may or not be planning to get a Pathalogic tattoo). Honestly the original is a more effective horror game, but it’s also badly translated and janky to the point of being more or less unplayable. 2 fixes most of the jank, and only those few weirdos who actually remember the first one would ever think it was lacking anything. This is a series totally unlike anything else you’ve ever played, and it’s worth your time. It’s unlikely you’ll ever play another game with quite this much thought behind it again.

Verde Station

This game was made in response to a challenge - to make a horror games that doesn’t use darkness. It’s also the only one of these recs that comes with a major content warning - if you suffer from false memories, lost time, or dissociation, take care when playing this game. It’s only a couple of hours long, but it’s probably the greatest use of gameplay mechanics as storytelling I’ve ever seen. The Charnel House Trilogy

This is probably the game on this list the least people have heard of, but it’s well worth checking out. Great voice acting, plenty of black humour, and the best representation of what it feels like to be at home by yourself with only your paranoia for company since Gone Home.

Deadly Premonition

Did you watch Twin Peaks and think “wait I thought this was supposed to super weird, and also I really wish the main character would stop hitting on highschoolers’? Good news, Japanese auteur game director Swery is here to show David Lynch how it’s done. It holds the Guinness world record for the most polarised game reviews ever, so when I say you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it, I really do mean that. Personally I love it.

Pony Island

Yes IMSCARED did the meta horror first, and Doki Doki Literature Club did the reveal better, but Pony Island is a brilliantly weird not particularly scary little meta horror game, full of nicely realised little details and fun puzzle gameplay.

Inside