Albert Wesker Big Naturals

The sound of terminal secretions was a newer experience for Wesker.  After all, he’s never exactly seen a life end in the more… natural way.

“Oh.”  Came your weak acknowledgment of the situation.

He radios for an ambulance.

You take a seat beside the man’s makeshift bed, taking his limp hand in yours.  “Hi, Mister Larry.”

Wesker observes.  The time between breaths is relatively far, each one amplified by the infamous death rattle.  He comes closer and places his fingers over the man’s pulse point.  It won’t be long at all.  He looks to you as if to convey this, but it’s as if he doesn’t exist right now.

“There’s lots of people excited to see you when you head home today, yeah?”  You reach your free hand to the man’s forehead, smoothing over pallid skin to the oily mess of his sparse hair.  For a moment, you part from him and remove your S.T.A.R.S. branded windbreaker, resting it over Lawrence’s chest, taking his hand once more.  “Should be a little less cold for you now, hm?”

But that isn’t the case at all.  Lawrence would not feel this.  At this stage, a person is in a deep state of unconsciousness.  Lawrence would not know if he’s cold, nor would he necessarily know if someone is at his side.  The ambulance won’t arrive in time before he is little more than a corpse.  Not that there is anything to be done.  He more or less already is one.

It doesn’t faze Wesker.

But you do.

How many times have you done this?

“It’s gonna be a nice trip, you know?  Heading home.”

You hold his hand like you’re meant to guide him there.  

“Nice and easy.  Like falling asleep.  Think you’re already asleep, but that’s okay.”

You speak like there’s a point to it all.  He’s not blind to the way your fingers press to Lawrence’s wrist.  The pulse beneath was already extremely weak when he checked at the neck.  It must be near nothing now.

“I’m proud of you, Mister Wallace.”

When it finally happens, you simply smile and bring Lawrence’s hand up, pressing a single kiss to his knuckles before gently releasing your hold.  A tear rolls down your cheek.  You’re crying for a stranger.  For an old man whose hand you held as his life expired.  And you’re doing it with a smile on your face.

A deep discomfort grows deep in Wesker’s chest…  He cannot name it, nor does he want to, so he focuses instead on updating the situation over the radio.

Despite it all, you look… different.  Strange.

Terribly, beautifully strange with a sorrowful glow the likes of which he’s never experienced.  Like you’ve seen something otherworldly—no, like you were part of something otherworldly.  You personally ferried a stranger across the river as if it were second nature.

He does not like how it makes him feel, knowing you’ve done this before.

You both watch the body retrieval.  He walks out with you, a hand between your shoulders as you make your way through the ruined factory.  The only noise to be heard is the crunch of debris and shattered glass underfoot. 

Wesker doesn’t know why he keeps a hand on you.  You aren’t unsteady.  You aren’t in hysterics nor are you incapable of standing on your own two feet.  Even once you’ve both stepped foot outside to the commotion of emergency lights and protocol, he does not separate from you.  Not until you’re gazing up at him from the passenger seat after he’s leaned across and clicked your seatbelt into place, offering you his own jacket.

You’d left yours with Lawrence.

He takes his seat beside you, slipping the key into the ignition of the patrol car.  He should bring you back to the station so you both can begin the proper paperwork, but a glance over to where you’re bathed in the golden light of the setting sun dissolves the thought immediately.  Why should he make you?  Why should protocol take priority right now?

Can he really look at you with your head resting against the window, eyes distant, mind elsewhere, drowning in something he’ll never understand, and say that you must put yourself aside for the sake of reports?  He’s never been one to abandon his duties…

He knows his answer once he shifts gears and begins to coast from the scene.

He knows it when he looks over and sees you haven’t quite moved.

It doesn’t take terribly long for you to return to yourself, or perhaps an echo of it.  He lets you fiddle with the radio without care or criticism for what you choose.  Duran Duran’s ‘Ordinary World’ was not what he would have gone with himself, but he finds appreciation in its alignment with recent events and potential soothing properties.

Curious.  Do you find expression through music or is it just noise to distract?  He should ask you, but perhaps another day is best.  He takes note of what songs you skip, deducing your preferences with ease and mentally comparing them to his own.

Over the course of the hour, you exchange only small talk with him and hums of amusement here and there.  Sometimes you hold his windbreaker close, the shuffling of it audible over the songs that fill the gaps, each crinkle causing a strange twinge in his chest that he’s come to associate with the oddity of your existence.

“Hey, wait—”

“We’re not going back tonight,” he says matter-of-factly as he drives past the station.  “I will pick you up tomorrow.  You won’t have to worry about transportation.”

“But there’s reports, and…”

“Nothing that cannot be handled tomorrow.”

“But…”  You look at him as if he’s grown a second head.  

He wonders what you must be thinking.  Even Wesker knows he has a reputation for being uniquely strict about procedure.  

“I am… making an exception.”  He murmurs.  It is all he has left to say on the matter as he navigates to the outer edge of the city where your apartment complex is located.  He can tell you want to ask how he knows where you live, and he probably should have thought ahead and asked for your address outright to mask that he already has this information.  “I make it a point to know of important locations,” he says when the question finally emerges.  “I apologize if I’ve overstepped a boundary.”

“Hm, important huh?”

“Yes.”  He pulls into the parking space marked with your apartment number and exits the car to make his way to your side, offering you a hand.  He is pleased when you accept it.  “May I walk you to your door?”

He should probably let go.  For once, he wishes he’d gone without his gloves.  Still, the feeling of your skin against his fingers is pleasant.  He’d like to feel it in his palm as well.  Strange…

“Y-Yeah,” you nod in the direction of your apartment.  “C’mon.”  You lead him there, your hold never faltering even as you arrive at your doorstep.  

There is an anticipation brewing with every step closer.  Something suppressed.  Thoughts he’s shooed away many times.  Some are innocent.  Others are… not.  None of them are permitted beyond the confines of his skull.  Your key goes in the lock, hand still in his, and he holds his breath as if doing so could freeze time.

Perhaps in another life…

“D’you want to come in for a bit?”  

The question stuns him for a moment, his eyebrows raising above the ridge of his sunglasses.  Does he want to enter your home?

“You don’t have to, I just—”  You nod your head softly from side to side.  “Long drive, long day…”

“I…”  He falters.  It isn’t often that he comes up short for words.  He wants to.  God, he wants to, but he shouldn’t.  He shou—  “Yes.”  Not have said that…

But you smile so brightly when he agrees.

You flick the lights on, hand still in his, and lead him to the living room.  Everything in here speaks to some aspect of your person whether it be the lighting, the color choices, or even just the throw blanket tossed over the back of the couch…  He takes in every detail even as your hold on his hand finally leaves, settling on something in particular as you head elsewhere.  

“Want anything to eat or drink?”  You call from the kitchen.  “Not to brag, but I’m really good at heating up frozen pizzas.”

He steps carefully toward it.  “Sure,” he answers absently, barely registering what you’d even asked.  Before him atop a table stand is a box urn with an engraved plaque.  Beneath the name reads ‘Beloved Grandfather.’  Next to it is a photo of you and an old man in a wheelchair.  Wesker lifts it for closer inspection, removing his sunglasses with his other hand and hooking them into the dip of his collar.  The man is visibly frail, one arm curled close to his chest.  His smile matches your own.  Big and bright…

The photo is recent if your appearance in it is anything to go by.  The date on the urn confirms that the man had passed just before you’d joined S.T.A.R.S..

“That’s Papa.”

He didn’t hear you return to the room.

“Apologies.”  He says, immediately placing the picture frame back in its original spot. 

“No, it’s okay.”  You set two cups on the coffee table and come closer, reaching for the box urn to gently swipe your fingers over the top a few times.  “Sorry.  You kinda just reminded me to dust him.”

At that, Wesker hums.  “You were close, I take it?”  These are the questions people ask in these moments, right?

“Very.”

He swallows thickly.  “My condolences.”  He glances at you, finding you once again stricken with that strange glow.  Something he could bask in just as easily as he could suffocate in it.

“It’s okay,” you turn and head toward the couch.  “I have the oven pre-heating, by the way.  Do you want to stay to eat?”

“You were serious about frozen pizza?”

The smile you give him flicks at that odd sensation in his chest again.  Like a frayed thread being pulled tighter.  That thing he shouldn’t acknowledge.

“I’m always serious about frozen pizza.”

And serious you were.  Not quite half an hour later, you’re both on the couch with plates of not-so-terrible pepperoni pizza.  He’d wanted to object to eating anywhere other than a proper table, but he decided to let one more rule be broken for the night despite all of the etiquette teachings of his youth screaming in protest.  In the background, the TV plays some nonsense that has managed to pull a chuckle or two from him while you both exchange banter not unlike the comforting kind that has been shared over countless lunches.

And then the subject of Lawrence comes up again.  Normal.  Inquiries about when he needs your report submitted and such.  But he takes it further—perhaps too far—with a single question.

“You’ve done that before, haven’t you?”  The curiosity had been overwhelming, but he still didn’t intend to pry so directly.  Suppose you’ve always had a way of making him more honest than he means to be.  “Sat with someone like that.”

You don’t scold him, nor does your demeanor sour except for the near-inaudible crunch of pizza crust beneath the tightening pinch of your grip.  “Mm’yeah.”  You nod, then gesture toward the stand where your grandfather’s remains rest.

“What’s it… like?”  He really doesn’t know how the words came out before he could stop them.

At that, you raise a brow and he understands why.  The question is absurd but your eyes soften, gaze falling to the plate resting on your lap, nodding absently.  “Why do you ask?”

There is no accusation in your question.

“Because I…”  He looks up to think, to choose the words properly.  “I don’t understand it, I suppose.”

“Have you never lost anyone before?”

“It’s a curiosity of mine,” he shakes his head.  It’s better to say that than to somehow appear sorrowful that he did not, in fact, have anyone to lose at all.  It’s not a shameful admission, but perhaps it feels too… soft to discuss it.  Inappropriate.

You keep a brow raised at him, not a single speck of pressure to be found in your gaze—anticipation, perhaps, that he’ll continue—but he caves anyway.

“I haven’t lost anyone before.”  Not even in the Executive Training School, where fellow students became test subjects, did the impact of death strike him.

Your head tilts.  Of course it does.  A man in his late thirties having never experienced the woe of loss?  Such a thing would certainly breed curiosity.

“I don’t,” he averts his gaze momentarily, steeling himself for a perfectly direct delivery, “have any family.”  Or friends, he wants to say.  But perhaps you may find that hurtful.  After all, he’s unsure of exactly what you’ve labeled your relationship.  “I was an orphan.”  The words feel hollow on his tongue.

“Oh.”  You seem stunned and he hates that.  He hates that you may look at him differently from here on.  “I’m sorry.”  It’s precisely why he doesn’t discuss such things.

He shakes his head and hums.  “No need.”  The circumstances of his youth are not yours to apologize for.  

“Well, uh…”  You begin, and you tell him all you can.  How you’ve seen so many people go and have known so many who are no longer among the living.  That you were born to an older family and the consequence of that is knowing death like a familiar friend.  How the agony of it burns for months—years, even—and it doesn’t end for a lifetime.  That it sneaks up on you in the middle of a random day and suffocates you from the inside out.  You tell him how the first person whose hand you held was your grandfather’s and how, prior, you’d seen death but had never felt it.  You speak of how you sat at his bedside for two days straight, wiping drool and applying chapstick to him because you’d thought he’d be uncomfortable were he awake to know that his lips were so dry.  Holding his hand, watching the way his heart worked so hard that it pushed against his chest and made every beat visible.

You tell him how you cried the entire first day, holding Papa’s hand while telling him over and over again that you didn’t know how you were going to get through it as if saying such a thing could undo what nature had demanded.  How much you would miss him, how you’d miss his hugs and his silly little voice.  How, despite the movement being involuntary, he would tense and squeeze your hand in return sometimes and his eyes would flutter open and roll forward—things that could only happen at all because machinery kept him alive.  Reminders of what would never happen again.

You tell him that the last life you saw in Papa was the push of his heart one final time against his chest, and that your last words to him were how proud you were that he fought so hard for so long.  You say that you felt him go.  Something that, to Wesker, makes no sense.

Then you reminisce on all that the old man meant to you.  And sure there was the occasional tear or two, but you mostly smiled.  You reflected upon a life that gave joy to your own, that brought love and kindness into your world and shaped your very being into the person you are today.  The very same person who seems to be doing much the same to Wesker these days—one of those thoughts he intends to keep confined to his mind.

In the end, that strange glow makes sense.

“Sorry,” you chuckle as you wipe your eyes.  “Didn’t mean to talk that long about it.”

“I would prefer you don’t apologize for educating me.”  Wesker says.  “Especially at my own request.”

A beat of comfortable silence settles, each of you opting to focus on your food.  He takes note that you don’t eat the crust of the pizza.

“You were really an orphan?”  You blurt.

He was certain you would ask.

“Indeed.”  He knows you’ll want more detail.  “I was raised in a boys’ home.  There isn’t terribly much to tell.”

“Well…  I hope they took good care of you, at least.”

He’s hit with the urge to tell you that they didn’t.  Instead, he nods.

“Did you have friends?”

He chuckles at that, letting himself dance back through the memories of what is no longer.  Perhaps he should say yes.  Birkin’s existence is the only thing keeping it from being a lie, but he isn’t sure their relationship constitutes true friendship.

“Hmm…” you hum to yourself, eyes narrowed the way they do when you analyze things.

His lack of a legitimate answer seems to be enough of one for you to understand.  Still, he thinks you would somehow know even if he did try to lie.  Perhaps you know that his last answer was one as well.  Whatever the case, it serves as yet another example of your strange ability to bypass his walls.  He’s lied to you, yes—he’s lied to everyone in S.T.A.R.S. every day—but it’s harder when it’s you.  Hell, he’s sure if you went quiet for long enough that he may just blurt out something that he has no intention of saying at all.

He both loves and hates it.  In a way, it makes you his greatest adversary to know that you may see through his deceit so easily.  He’s had a lifetime to practice a stoic demeanor—something that works on everyone else all the time—but you seem to have found some sort of tell he isn’t aware of.  Being known was always the danger of accepting your kindness, but then… he’s known.

He reaches for the fastener of the glove on his right hand, tugging at the velcro.

If he’s known…

He pulls at the finger openings, working them up over his digits.

If he’s known, and you’ve shown over and over again that your understanding of him results in care, then that means something unfamiliar.  Something he didn’t know in the dormitory or the courtyard.  Not even the classrooms.

He begins to pull the glove free.

Something he most certainly did not know in the laboratories…

He bares his hand, turning it so that the light catches on his knuckles just right, revealing the faded pale of where disciplinary action had broken and shredded his skin many times.

You glance back and forth between the scarring and the ice of his eyes, your own hands rising to take his so that you may run your thumbs over the remnants of damage.  Your brow furrows.

“They were generous with physical punishment,” he tells you.  Why he’s saying this or even showing you is beyond him.  Perhaps you’d just gone quiet and pulled the truth free.  

“Is this why you wear gloves all the time?”

What an endearing question…

“No.  I am… selective about who and what I touch.”

“Oh.”  Your grip begins to loosen.  “Sorry.”

Wesker curls his fingers tighter around yours to stop your departure.  “The gloves maintain a boundary.”  He glances at the TV, watching the animation of yellow characters and their strange features go about their shenanigans, then back to you.  “This,” he nods to your joined touch, “is acceptable.”

Your eyes flicker to his for a second and your lips fight a smile, but it’s a fight you quickly lose as a gentle laugh forces a beaming grin to the surface.  “Acceptable, huh?”  Your amusement is noticeably tainted by a fascinating fondness.  Something almost perfectly contagious that he won’t let show on himself.

You’d fallen asleep not terribly long ago.  

He carries you through the hall toward your bedroom door, angling just right to slip through the threshold without disturbing you.  He couldn’t leave you to sleep on the couch.  You would be terribly sore when you woke from that position you were in.  

Wesker lowers you slowly onto your unmade bed and it occurs to him that he really should explain to you sometime that it is a kindness to the self to make one’s bed in the morning.

You’re still in your uniform, but it would be improper to alter your state of dress even if it was done to preserve your comfort.  He chooses the lightest blanket to cover you, then takes a moment to look around.  Your desk is littered with scattered mail and documents, and a laptop sits askew atop the chaos.  There is a laundry basket piled up with folded clothes that need to be put away.  On your nightstand sits a bottle of pills that he reaches for carefully so as not to rattle them.  He’d seen this in your medical files, courtesy of his privileges at Umbrella—the same company whose logo is stamped at the corner of the label—though holding the bottle of antidepressants is more impactful than reading the name on a screen. 

Each corner of your bedroom appears as organized chaos.  The mark of a workaholic, which he can only confidently conclude due to the fact he writes your schedule and knows you stay past your time nearly every day.  A workaholic.  A gentle soul.  Forthright in your kindness…

His fingers squeeze tighter around the pill bottle, eyes locked on the rise and fall of your chest as if they could see through to that beating, living thing within that’s led him to stand in this very spot.

He thinks in systems.  Structure, organization, categorization…  Everything has a place and purpose.  If it doesn’t, then it should be discarded.

So why then does he feel so at home in your chaos?