Ephemeral Permanence

Ephemeral Permanence

by Ticklefish

dedicated to barb

*****************


I'd failed.

I'd tried so hard to ignore my feelings for Chris, this man whose very presence sent shivers into my soul and I'd failed.

He had kissed me and instead of pushing him away, rejecting him like I should have done, I'd kissed him back.

So help me, I kissed him back.

He was my sub-ordinate, he was a man, he was inebriated.

But I kissed him back.

Our lips parted, I felt his tongue on mine and I returned every probe it made.

I should have been thinking of where we were, anybody passing by would quite easily see what was going on.

I should have been thinking of my career, my reputation.

I couldn't think of anything save for how good I felt at that precise moment.

At one point, he broke away. His eyes were sparkling and his mouth was smiling. On an impulse, I grabbed him, pulled him back to me and was lost in him again.

Eventually, we had to break, to regain our breath if nothing else. He and I sat in our respective seats. I felt numb and yet my whole body was on fire.

A voice inside me was yelling that I needed to stop. That I needed to stop right now.

That voice became quieter and quieter with every beat of my heart.

"Do you want to come in?" he asked boldly.

I didn't want anything of the kind. We had gone too far as it was. My career lay in tatters around me but I could probably regain the lost ground over time. I could blame it on the alcohol or I could say that Chris did all the work. It would hurt his career but he would recover easily enough. But me, I would be doomed if I did anything more. I absolutely could not go any further.

"Okay." I said.

His apartment was smaller than I expected. S.T.A.R.S. pays its members well. There was a small, simple kitchen, a tiny living space, a clean but functional bathroom and a single bedroom.

There was no decoration. He clearly just used the apartment to sleep in, it was very stark and impersonal. The only bit of colour was a small, framed picture of Chris and his family on his bedside table.

That night, I had a lot of opportunities to study that picture closely. I came to know every inch of the frame, every wave of the grains in the wood. From underneath the glass, four faces stared out at me.

The two adults looked proud and very much in love. A young girl was shown beaming widely, a gap showing where she had lost a tooth. And an older boy sulked off to the side. He looked every inch a person who dearly wanted to be anywhere else.

I looked at that boy as his older self made love to me.

I'd never been with a man before. I hadn't even thought about it. I'd had sexual and romantic dalliances before, but they'd always been with women. The very idea of being with a man just wasn't me. It wasn't my scene.

And yet I lay on the comforter, staring with eyes half-focused at Chris's picture as he wrapped his mouth around me.
I could not have been happier.

When it came my turn to pleasure him, I returned the favor with no hesitation at all. I was not Captain Wesker, leader of S.T.A.R.S., he was not Chris Redfield, member of the same unit. We were just each other.
Eventually, we weren't even that. We became one. There was no longer any chance of my career surviving what we were doing.

And I no longer cared.


***


"So this is my punishment, is it?" I growl.

"Albert..you didn't think it might be mine?"

"Yours?"

I hadn't really thought about the fact that she was down here too. I'd never really thought about her at all.

"Of course. I'm the one who took the bite out of the apple, darling. I'm just as guilty as you are."

I don't know what to say. For the first time in a very long time, I can't think of anything to fire back at her.

I want to regain control of the situation. My mental reflexes are fighting hard to think of some way to get me back on top.

But there's nothing to get back on top of.

I'm dead.

It's over.

Even the rage is lost.

And now I know why.

I know what is missing and I feel naked without it.

I'm missing the virus.

My virus.


***