Work Text:
This was pathetic of him. For such a fickle thing as love to do Albert Wesker in was entirely absurd. Even so, he sat as his desk, and as he choked on the bloody petals lining his throat and desperately clung to what little life he had left, someone knocked at his door.
He couldn’t open the door— and, frankly, he wouldn’t have even if he could have. No one could see him like this, bent over the solid wood of his desk with his nails dug into his throat, where they left crescent-shaped depressions in his pale skin as he scrabbled to find some way to breathe past the intrusions that had made themselves at home in his esophagus. Not a soul, let alone the soft imbeciles that were his coworkers, had a right to encounter him in this state. At least he wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of his own stubborn actions when his consciousness had long departed from his body.
“Captain?” came a small, uncertain voice. Wesker gagged on the petals filling his mouth and spat a few out. He drew in an eager breath and did not reply, as if remaining quiet would have ever discouraged Chris from opening the door to his office.
“Captain, I— oh god.” Chris fumbled with the doorknob and pushed the door hard enough for it to make contact with the wall. Wesker immediately shuddered when Chris walked further into the room, not only because everyone could see his embarrassing display of helplessness, but because he was so close. He ached for his touch, and was briefly convinced that he could breathe easier if he just had Chris. “Someone call for an ambulance right now! Barry, help me lift him up! Rebecca, can you take a look at him?”
In rushed, to Wesker’s dismay, more people. Rebecca Chambers was the first to enter the room, and upon her arrival, her eyebrows furrowed and she bit her lips. She hesitated for a moment before she approached him, but stood back to make way for Barry and Chris.
“Jesus Christ,” Barry mumbled, and the two of them nodded to one another. Gentle hands grasped at his shoulders and another pair wrapped underneath his knees.
“You’ll need to lay him down on his back. He’s a bit tall but it should be fine to sit him on his desk. Just be careful not to tilt him back when you lift him, or you could make it even worse.” She snapped on nitrile exam gloves and withdrew her mixing kit. “I doubt this’ll come in handy, but just in case, I need you two to make some room for me to work. Can’t patch him up if you’re in the way. Oh, and Captain?” She patted him on one of his broad shoulders. “You’re gonna be just fine.”
“On three?” Barry asked. Chris nodded.
“One, two, three.”
His body was held straight as it was hoisted into the air, then placed on top of hard, polished wood. At once, Rebecca was upon him. She put her ear to his mouth and angled her head down at his chest to observe him breathe. He had the odd urge to bite at her, but he understood that she was only trying to help— it wasn’t her fault that he felt like a caged animal on raised haunches. The only thing he could focus on aside from his ragged breathing was the thought of how humiliating he must have looked.
Jill peeked her head into the door’s frame. “Christ. Hospital’s sending an ambulance right now. Rebecca, you think you can keep him stabilized until they get here?”
“I can try, but…” she trailed off, noticed a cluster of bloody petals lying on the floor, and pinched them between her fingers. “I think this might be out of my hands. He needs medical intervention as soon as possible.” She removed her gloves and placed a delicate hand over Wesker’s own. “I’m sorry, Captain.”
Wesker gurgled. The blood in his throat was growing thicker as he felt more and more pinpricks in the lining of his throat, no doubt more blooms sprouting.
“There’s really nothing you can do, Rebecca?” Chris panicked. “Can’t you do anything for him?”
“I’m sorry, Chris, but I… I can’t. There’s nothing I can do for him now. Not when he’s this far along.”
“So, what, we just sit here and twiddle our thumbs while he chokes on these… things?”
“Chris,” Jill warned.
“No, there has to be something we can do. I… I’ll pluck these damn things out myself. He can’t breathe around all of them!”
“Chris! Stop it! You’ll only make it worse!” Jill screamed. She nearly leapt into the room to stop her partner, but he bucked her off of his back.
Rebecca jumped back, clearly horrified. “She’s right. Come on, Chris, you know this won’t work,” she pleaded.
“I’m not giving up on him,” he snapped. “Get out of my way.” Wesker felt his mouth get wrenched open and thick fingers poke into it. Petals were dug out of his open mouth and deposited wherever Chris’s fingers would fling them to. They littered the floor and the top of his desk, still bloody and wet with spit. Despite the removal, he was still choking on Chris’s fingers, red with blood and prodding as far back into his throat as possible.
Wesker nearly fainted when Chris grabbed the first bulb and ripped it out. A muffled scream escaped him when the pain ripped through him, white-hot and debilitating. Jill charged back at Chris, and this time it was more effective. “You’re hurting him!” she huffed.
“We don’t have time for this!” Chris yelled, still determined. He managed to get one hand past Wesker’s lips again and cleared the still accumulating petals from his mouth.
“Look kid, listen to Rebecca. She’s the professional here, and she says that we can’t help him anymore. We’ve done all that we can for him,” Barry croaked. He looked like he was about to get sick on the carpet.
“No, you listen! I’m not going to sit back and watch him die.” Once again, he managed to break from Jill and tug a bulb from his throat. Wesker moaned in pain and felt his eyes well up with tears as his throat spasmed, too weak to yell.
“Stop it!” Barry cried. He launched himself at Chris, and Rebecca retreated further into herself until she was curled up into a ball in the corner of the room.
Chris went down and was easily pinned to the ground. Jill rushed for Wesker and tried her best to reassure him. “It’ll be okay, cap, don’t you worry. They’ll be here soon. I’m sorry about Chris, I know it hurts.” If he was in better shape, he would have kicked her in the shin. Perhaps he would have even snatched her stupid beret.
“Stop,” he tried to murmur, but instead it came out as something more like ‘so-op’. Everything burned. He was starting to get light-headed.
“Get off of me! Jill! Jill, tell him that he has to let me go. You have to let me go!”
“Not until the stretcher’s here,” Barry grumbled. “We all know that you care about the Captain, and that you’re scared, but you’re killing him!”
“No, no, no,” Chris chanted. “No, please.”
“Stop,” he tried again, but with no success. Even through the pain and his own pride, he yearned for Chris. It hurt, but he needed his touch. Needed him to be close. “Chris,” he rasped, but once again his speech failed him.
“Dear God, move,” Jill groaned. She had peeked down the hallway to find paramedics rushing toward them. “Barry, let him go. We need to clear the way. They’re coming.”
Still wary, Barry climbed off of Chris and gave him a stern look that was to signal something along the lines of ‘just let them do their jobs.’ EMTs in white crowded around the doorway and a small bed was pushed into the room. He was lifted once again and laid onto the soft, padded bed.
“Please, you have to let me go with him,” Chris pleaded.
“You family?” a female technician asked.
“Well, no, but—“
“No exceptions. You’ll have to follow behind us if you really want to come.”
Wesker made a noise of protest, only to have an oxygen mask placed over his mouth. It was almost worse now that dry air was being pumped into him, where it mingled with the wet slurry of blood and saliva inside of his mouth. He tried to concentrate on diverting the airflow into his nostrils only, but keeping his mouth closed was unbearable. He was exhausted enough to will the cool darkness of unconsciousness to overcome him, though he wasn’t so lucky. The floor was still moving underneath him, and bile rose in his throat. He forced it back down and closed his eyes to the bright lights in the hall— his sunglasses had been removed for what felt like hours now, and even as he felt that his life was slipping away, annoyance bloomed in him when a migraine began to creep into his head.
By the time he was out in the parking lot, Wesker could already hear Chris’s bike idling. The sound, usually far too loud for his liking, lulled him into a dreamless sleep.
———
Chris’s mind raced as he waited for Wesker to arrive. Despite the anxiety he felt at being separated from his captain, he had rushed ahead of the ambulance in anticipation of his arrival. He couldn’t bear to be too late. Not again.
He shook away memories of his parents, of how scared he had been when he got a call from the hospital staff. He had herded Claire into his busted-up car, a fixer-upper that he had bought with his own savings shortly after getting his license, and the two of them drove in silence to meet their parents.
He had this gut feeling then, one that told him in no uncertain terms that this would go badly. He held his sister’s hand in his and kept one hand on the wheel while he explained what had happened to her. She had only been ten then, so small and unaware of all of the ugliness in the world. Despite the car crash his parents had just been in, he was tearing through the main roads in an attempt to get them there sooner. In the end, it had been too late, and he couldn’t let it happen again.
If his Captain was going to die, he couldn’t let him die alone.
As if on cue, the ambulance pulled into the emergency lane. He was off and burst into the emergency room before the rear doors even opened.
“I’m here for Albert Wesker. He’s coming in right now, in an ambulance. I need you to tell me what room he’s going to be in.”
“Sweetheart,” the receptionist cooed, her mouth pursed in an expression that reeked of annoyance. “He hasn’t been assigned one yet.”
“Like hell he hasn’t! That man is dying, and I need to know where they’re taking him right now.”
“Are you family?”
“Yes,” he hissed, and the lie slipped off of his tongue like condensation off of a cold glass of whiskey on a summer day. She regarded him for a moment, as if she could see right through him, but sighed and gave him a room number anyway.
He trudged through the hospital and sat at the door for minutes before Wesker was rushed into the room. He entered behind the emergency technicians and stood to the side as they transferred him into a hospital bed. They took his vitals and left, their gazes not shifting to Chris once.
He couldn’t tell if Wesker was even awake, but he hoped that he was. That would make this all so much easier.
“Cap— Wesker,” he corrected himself. He couldn’t be so impersonal with a man on his deathbed. Bright blue eyes flickered open and searched for the sound ringing in his ears.
Wesker said something, but it was unintelligible. A burst of petals escaped his lips when he coughed, and Chris leaned forward to brush them away from his pale face. Tears collected in Wesker’s eyes again, most likely caused by the sudden expenditure of energy.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to talk. Just listen.” Chris sighed. “I don’t know if this changes anything, but I just want you to know how much I look up to you. It’s like you always know what to do, except for this time, and I fucked up, and I’m so sorry. Captain, please, just make it through this. I can’t imagine that you would ever feel the same for me, but I love you, and I need you to make it through this.”
Wesker blinked. No more sprouting. No more splitting pain in his esophagus. Sure, the petals were still there, and his throat was still clogged, but the assault on his throat had seized. He weakly gestured to Chris’s left, toward a trash can.
“Need this? Yeah, I can… I can get it for you.” Chris opened the cabinet the trash can had been stashed inside and fished it out, then handed it to Wesker. He spit copious amounts of blood and petals into the trash. In an awkward motion, Chris stood and helped him sit up straight, his palm reassuringly planted on Wesker’s lower back.
He retched until nothing else would come up. Bulbs still clung to his raw throat, too stubborn to give up their nutritious diet of his flesh, but he was truly in awe at the lack of new sprouts and the pain that came with them. Just how long had it been since they had stopped growing in? Since they weren’t there to begin with?
“Chris,” he rasped, finally able to speak.
“Captain. Oh, God, you idiot.” Chris laughed, nervous. “Christ, Wesker, are you serious? How could you ever think… you had us all worried sick. All because of me.”
Wesker offered up a weak smile.
“I thought for sure you knew. All I ever hear from anybody else is how much I follow you around like a lost puppy. I’m pretty sure Jill’s completely seen through me. There’s only so many times you can brush it off as just finding a guy ‘cool’ or ‘inspiring’.” Chris paused, and his face took on a pink tint. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this.”
Wesker hummed in amusement. “Perhaps I should have caught on earlier to the fact that you always happened to be the last to pair up for combat training.”
“Um, yeah, I guess.”
“Are you embarrassed, Chris?”
“A little. But not because of you. Because of me.”
“I should be far more embarrassed. I nearly died tonight because I was too foolish to ask for assistance. Or, it would seem, to confide in you.”
Chris laughed. “Back to your talkative old self, huh? You must be feeling much better.”
“I would hope so, Christopher. Although I have the strangest feeling that maybe I would feel more at ease if I had your touch.”
Wesker nearly jumped when Chris’s hand came down onto his head and stroked his hair. He would have wheezed out a laugh if the adoration in Chris’s eyes had been any less palpable. “If you say so,” he replied.
“You don’t have to call me by my last name, Chris. Or ‘Captain’. Not outside of work.”
“I guess not. Just feels… I don’t know, weird? Like I’m slipping up.”
“Please, just call me Albert. I’d rather not think of work right now, as it is.”
“Okay.” Chris continued to pet his slicked back hair. “It’ll all be okay, Albert.”
“Why don’t I take you out sometime?”
“If anything, I think I owe you dinner. I figure I hurt you pretty damn bad.”
“On your salary?” He arched an eyebrow and Chris laughed.
“I think I’ll manage. Think we’d better take your car, though. I don’t think both of us will fit on my bike.”
“Oh, Christopher,” he purred, “there was not a chance that I would have accompanied you on it.”
“Never say never,” Chris shrugged. His hand finally snagged Wesker’s own, and their fingers intertwined. “Now why don’t you get some sleep? I’m sure they’ll be rushing back in soon, but you look like you need some rest. I’ll take care of it if I can.”
“Many thanks,” he mumbled. The warmth of Chris’s hand in his combined with the weariness from his current circumstances were more than enough to once again welcome sleep into his mind.