Archive of Our Own ^beta

There's only one cigarette left in the pack.

Truthfully, he makes the quiet choice to share it before you ask. Wesker has been feeding you cigarettes for a while, now, getting to know you in the quiet space of nicotine nights and early morning conversation over coffee. It's all professional, of course. It's part of work, too, this aching social mirage he maintains.

You're fallible. Too fallible. Everyone is. But you are also so wickedly intelligent that he can't help but drawl on. You are one of few to rebuke and win, one of few to rebuke and walk away.

You catch his wit in excited, animated palms and his attention in your ideas. You know as much as he does about what he needs and a little more about what he will need. You are striking. Fine manipulation is not wasted on you.

A perilous line to walk, maybe, unless you know more about how lax he's been with you than you let filter through your innocent, guileless gaze.

It's just a little bit. Just this once.

Your hands move across the planes of his body experimentally, the taut fibers of muscle and the adipose that joined them. There is a reverence, too. They move with an ease that betrays the danger of the situation you simmer yourself in.

You whisper a sweet nothing into his ear that he acknowledges with a low, pleased rumble, as if he ponders it. Truthfully, he wasn't quite paying attention to your voice as much as he was your hands and some bubbling sense that wouldn't leave him, even now.

It would be so easy to end you. He does not. He should, realistically - and end this little tryst, his goals too grand to halt - but he doesn't. You are such a good distraction, after all - each day of flasks and alcohol wipes, mass spectrometers and ultracentrifuges ends in a carefully constructed safety.

It is this carefully constructed safety tonight.

With simpering, you're going to have to do it with unhealthy reverence, an air of religious worship about the way your hands move across his body: he demands the utmost attention and respect, nothing less is appropriate for a man of his stature over you–

Come equipped with those candles and petals, add goat's milk, black orchid oil, an expansive tub... keep it purple and black to stay on the safe side of color association - or black and red if you fancy.

–however, if your hands are soft and kneading and you can bare the weight of his louring and idle-minded dour critiques, you'll be the captive audience of his passive monologuing, afforded a small measure of his inner voice. From him will slither out a low growl of tone cataloging incompetence and tedium, husky in its' delivery even as he's dropping half-veiled references to the unnamed who fail to meet his impeccably high standards.

The huskiness is for you, the payback you get when you press your knuckles just right into his shoulders. You are allowed the space to comment, but he expects it to be short: you are there to absorb his stressors, no pretense of true reciprocation at hand.

It'll become routine if you're a talented masseuse and a sopping sponge.

If he finds you interesting, it's easier, even a little reciprocal. He'll see just how far your hands are willing to roam across him when he leans into your touch so willingly.

He still expects the candles and petals, but he's willing to forego a tightly refined experience if you're the main course of his intrigue. There is a sharp curiosity in the way his eyes follow your microexpressions when you pad around him, body meeting your hands before your fingertips splay on his skin, demanding of your presence – the tide of his interest a force of its' own.

It's a game: if he acts the part of need, will you quench it, or will you fall towards the wayside of safety in bashfulness? He can playwright it, make it larger than life, encroaching on you like a slow tide that sweeps you into himself.

In what way are you most manipulable if it were necessary, and what variety of favor will curry you? There are several to be offered in this environment: he can pull you in with him, or he can put on a show of tone and exaggerated sound to your gentle massaging between the backdrop of back-and-forth chatter, or...

Be wary: his own hands are deft and as precise as the instruments of infliction he uses, no movement they make is accidental, and you are a fantastic vessel for the weight of his unadulterated need.

You bite your lip trying to suppress a sob.

Wesker’s hand lands behind you, near your back, sinking into the plush of the bed as he sidles closer. A large and angry part of him wants him to say ‘that’s life,’ and ‘get over it,’ but his sense and the softer, wetter thing you drag leaking from the caved-in cavity of his chest holds back. Instead he puffs an affected sigh from his nostrils and recounts what he’d do during the Arklays.

He slips his gloves off and to the side. His perfectly-ironed tuxedo doesn’t bleed intimacy, but to bare his hands to you is its’ own breed.

And he sits there with you, beside you, respectful – and listens. He listens as you’re racked properly with the weight of sobs, and he listens when you wipe your runny nose and burning eyes, and by the time you’ve gotten to reigniting yourself he’s done the only thing he could think of – even if it sprouts such deep, aching discomfort in him stronger than being the voyeur of this, feeling so conflicted and lost in what humanity calls for – and wraps his arm around your back, pulling your face against his chest.

The movement is stiff and mechanical, but you allow him into your little world nonetheless. Perhaps it had been the gesture of vulnerability in abandoning his gloves?

No one prepared him for this, the times when it’s someone you love. Perhaps he had never been loved enough to experience it, this kind of sharing. A burden shared is a burden halved, or so the radio dramas and old movies had said. He fears his intimacy is too artificially approximated to do that.

He experiences it now. This will give him brooding pause later.

As soon as he pulls you, you cling to him, and it is a wicked thing, perhaps, for him to enjoy your decision to trust him with this in this moment, but, then, you’re not privy to the way his expression shifts.

He cannot relate to your plight – that part of him is fossilized and preserved only as scar tissue and warning signs. Wesker relies on other means to act. He does you the silent, automatic favor of sparing you the signs, and he does not expect you to thank him. Some part of you knows, and if it does, you don’t care – the effort is appreciable to you in your time of need, so rare.

“I’ve got you,” he says, arms holding – caging – you close with necessity, running the fumes of empathy through the enrichment of possession to guide him. He recalls movies, a little, but much of this is real.

That’s how he prefers it with you – that’s what he can offer you, now, hands sliding up and down your back in repetitious strokes as he angles his head atop yours, protecting you from the unseen forces that mean your undoing. You brush your nose against him, safely surrounded in him, and whimper.

That he can relate to, being afraid to come undone at the seams by someone else's pulling.

Too easily, perhaps, as he holds you tight and pets you and forces his breathing to even and slow into a lull. Yours follows the pattern laid out before it subconsciously, and eventually you settle down against ruffled, tear-stained fabric that bleeds warmth into you, even if the source of it is saccharin.

A moment of saturating silence.

Then...

"Thank you," you say, weak but resolute and real.

Ah, there you are.

Imagine sleeping in a little later than Wesker - something that likely happens terribly often, considering. One morning, you're awoken by the sudden press of gentle, prickly, insisting stubble against the side of your cheek. You think it's just part of the waking sensations of a dream, but you feel it again, a little lighter, the other side... a little lower.

And then the fanning descent of morning coffee breath curling into a guard-dog sigh you'd never hear if he knew you were conscious. It's deep and rumbling, soft - unbecoming if you're cold and clinically calculated.

Then, finally, you know he leaves your side by the sound of fabric softly, gently gliding away and off, footsteps near-silent as he regards your apparent unconsciousness with reduced volume.

Is it deceit? You'd do it again.

I think it depends. Arklay era? He'll ask for help easily if your knowledge eclipses his in a topic he's researching, especially if you're a virologist-bacteriologist whose lean is genetics - after all, his papers are often co-authored by several people, not just himself or him and Birkin. This is, however, a purely professional ask - you won't get coffee at your desk unless he's trying to start a conversation in his favor.

Emotionally? He asks without directly asking. His body language suggests it for him - perhaps not deliberately. I can imagine that Wesker would've copped all-nighters and seventy two hour benders during the Ashford days. He would've witnessed for himself the effect of the Executive Training Facility's psychological torture on his closest companion, Birkin - and during these benders, it is more than possible he might reach out. It isn't intentionally for help, but when he's been awake for fifty six hours the way he truly feels slurs and leaks through the cracks in the cap he's haphazardly tightening around his emotions.

That said, he doesn't react positively if you try to provide him emotional help - he sees it as an insult, as a powerplay - because he's lived his entire childhood being taught that's all it is, and that the weak serve the strong - and he applies this to his fellow researchers, especially the ones he doesn't know.

If you've fielded papers with him in the past without volatility, and you two got along without much of a hitch or sycophancy, the basis of respect he has for you not lording your knowledge over him and yet offering it so purely (a trait reminiscent of Birkin before he... before he began to...) might be enough to lure him in for an emotional talk. You would have already proven your reliability - and honesty. He'll still frame himself as indispensable in the exchange... the subtle manipulation serves to discourage you from taking an action that will have his head. However, he is likely to avoid you after he vents out of a genuine and real fear for you bleating and getting him reprimanded (or even murdered). You must remember - during this time he is being subtly reminded of his place, that there is no out for him and that he, too, can be killed if he becomes a liability - so he's developing a paranoia and fostering a hatred. For others... for Spencer... for himself... and humanity.

It depends. What do you mean to him? Where (and how) are you biting him? What's the context?

Let's assume you've bitten his fingers when he's offered you something - a pill, food, a 'treat', or some other reason fingers breach lips that doesn't implicitly carry suggestion. You mean to deny him his share of dopamine in whatever you-related pursuit he has taken to.

Mean a lot, and he'll chuckle (a little delusional chuckle, the kind you give when you're disconnected from reality), investigate his hand, and then stick his gloved fingers in your mouth after propping your jaw open. Come now, show him what you're really made of - do some real damage (spoilers: you can't.)

Your audacity will be your savior, then, because amusing him is the ticket to safety - play along, or you'll get muzzled for your 'oral fixation issues' and as a 'behavior modifier'.

...you'll probably be muzzled regardless of whether or not you can meet his entertainment-over-punishment quota, which you will absolutely require for your blind insolence. Wesker enjoys punishing you - he's a sadist, do you expect to get off freely for such a heinous crime?

If you're a researcher who he has yet to flit towards like a moth quite so entirely in breadth, well... it was nice knowing you?

The second your lips hit his skin, teeth bared, tongue laving, Wesker turns rapidly and pushes you against the table by your wrists. It's a move practiced to pin enemies, not friendlies; it's half instinct and half irritation, maybe even a little surprise.

It's all spectacularly unfortunate timing, though — your elbow knocks over a series of clattering tubes filled almost-to-tipping with trichloroacetic acid you'd been working with. Before he can reach past you, the TCA within has spilled across your lab coat, colorless white liquid seeping in past fabric and onto delicate skin.

You suck a breath in past your teeth as a sharp stinging sensation blooms, biting at your upper arm. "Ow! ... fuck."

Wesker rumbles a clipped scoff as his grip eases, a 'hmph' under his breath as he draws back from your little game. You're so fragile, so human - sometimes he forgets. "You shouldn't have tried to sneak up on me like that. See what happens?"

Immediately, you disrobe your coat, peeling your undershirt off as quickly as you can without responding. He watches the scene unfold with folded arms, tapping his foot, arched brow of impatience as you scurry off towards your sink.

The second the water is on, he's decided to forego his brooding to sidle back up against you. He grips your arms and angles your body over the sink with sheer strength, a stiff, forceful motion. You thrash for a second, squirming — "H-Hey!" — but you go still as cool water begins to wash away the acid nibbling at your composure.

He's only helping.

"Oh." Relief...

He crowds himself far too close to your back, though, pressing you further against the sink, forced to hunch against him the way he's grappling you - to an outsider, you'd look apprehended. You're vulnerable, the back of you flush with his abdomen. In response, you twist around as much as your neck will allow to try to peek an eyeful of his intention. "Al, what are you doing?"

Wesker tuts in response, humming innocently as he nudges his thighs against yours with more of that intention. It keeps you pinned beneath him. You swear he takes the open opportunity to lean in far enough to appreciate your cologne as rivulets relieve your skin — "You looked like you could use a little direction," he offers, a lame & wholly unnecessary excuse; his tone reverberates through your back.

His immunity does prove useful, though, sparing your hands the same fate.

There is a few tense minutes of rinsing and a little bit of pressing & nudging before he finally lets you rise, having been rather keen on keeping you. Your cheeks have splotched in pops of shameful, revealing red. He dries you off wordlessly with a spare towel like a prized object before he disappears just as quickly to fetch a fresh lab coat.

You're getting tonal whiplash.

You sigh, crossing your arms over yourself as goosebumps rise across the surface of your cooled skin. Your upper arm is red and itchy, now, and it'll be a while before the sensation passes. All for a little nibble. Not even a successful one.

Wesker returns within the minute, proffered coat spread wide. "Turn around." Not a question, an order.

You obey, embarrassed, arms spreading. "I could've—"

"Ah ah ah," he chides, "You were reckless. I'm simply ameliorating."

You cave with a huff and he slips the coat in one arm and then the other, delicate like you're porcelain, circling to your front to adjust the collar himself. You'll have to do without an undershirt for the rest of your shift, though the way his head tilts is all you need to know his gaze lingers lower than your face, shameless in the indulgence of your consequences.

"Consider time and place in your future avenues," he remarks, finally backing off to circle around to nursing the platters he'd abandoned in pursuit of you. You'd commanded his attention for an impressive amount of time, now - he's lucky nothing was particularly time-sensitive. "perhaps outside of our lab."

You feel your face burn at the casual claim levied in 'our', returning to your own bench with a heavy heave.

It's going to be a long rest of your shift, isn't it?

Their combined weight will push you so far down on the ground into a stress position (intentionally) that your voice is muffled. Red dirt, iron-caked, rubs into your wrinkled attire, no doubt sourced from the dips and rises outside of these catacombs. When did he find the time to make the romp? You have to think of something, anything, to distract from the climbing, raking ache arcing up your arms and burning down your back.

This is your punishment, the result of your legendary, if well-met, bravado.

Every passing minute will see your resolve crumbling while he taps away at his keyboard, guileless and ignoring of your petulant pleas. Not a word of your predicament, good or bad, escapes him. It's as if nothing unseemly is happening beneath the hollow office desk at all. The only indicator is that there's two sets of legs, not one - and arms, too. What if someone walked in? Would they even comment — and better yet, would he? Deep in your heart you know he'd find himself enjoying the hot, scarlet embarrassment that would stain your face and roll down your cheeks being caught like this – he would live in your shame and maximize it if only to live in it a little more. The problem is that you enjoy it, too.

Not so quick to nip now, though, are you? Can't you tell when work and play must remain separate? "Hm."

You will be released when you cry enough, not when you beg – the internal limit is unknown to you. Every sound that isn't involuntary crackling up from your parched throat is to be met with no reply at all as he reviews a toxicology panel. If you're lucky, he'll entertain you with a tired monologue and ignore your replies.

You'll learn your manners by the end of this little lesson, he's sure of it.

"Sweet-" Wesker presses a slow kiss to your lips before you can complete your first word, suffocating them enough to force you to repeat yourself, perhaps intentionally. He had been doing something within his lens, reclined in his office chair, computer screen inactive at its' login previous to your arrival. "Sweetling, I'd very much like to maul you..." you finally begin, fingertips trailing from the back of his head down, down, over the sides of his carotids, then splaying to roam again, "...if that's alright?"

Like he'd consider it at all. Like he isn't considering what he'll do to you afterwards.

You didn't seem to understand the delicate difference between work and play.

It had grown from a game to distraction, one he had no place for regardless of the many inches you'd moved him - he could only tolerate so much before the use of time became wasteful; thirty minutes of play stalled the speed at which your usefulness preceded you.

That's alright, thinks Wesker, a thought that would be uncharacteristically soft if not for the surrounding circumstances from which it sprang, I'll teach them.

It took little else for punishment to be conceived by a mind that found it often drifted to the ways at which he could have you at his mercy. He found his own distraction between print waits and protein folding simulations, and not terribly much to his own chagrin more than it was his fancy.

In hindsight, Wesker recognized that this would only serve to worsen wastefulness. Better, then, to lance the boil and be done with it - that was his golden excuse, one that polished into a gold-lined convenient lie.

He ignores that.

. . .

If you're getting 'rewarded' for your hard, hard work and you ask the 40-something-odd virologist (who primarily approaches others utilizing social engineering and behavioral conditioning) for a "cuddle", I'm unsure if he's going to take your request literally. After all, everything has subtext.

Who would ever ask a god for something so menial? You must be dancing around meaning, frazzled nerves & fragile expression.

Wesker might ask you if you'd prefer a hotel for your rendezvous. Is his chair really the proper place for such an activity? If you hadn't already picked up on the way he took your humble request, the exchange prior will make intentions abundantly clear.

Yes, you will get cuddles. Sure, he'll recline in his chair - you can recline in his lap with him. He will reward you, though he never claimed he'd be fair or gentlemanly. The real question is for how long you'll maintain even breath, a steady heartbeat, your pallor; he's not so oblivious that he doesn't understand your attraction.

After all, he assumes you're using his to you as he is yours to him.

The shot of Versed and something else disappears in your shoulder before you have the chance to scream. You clutch your arm and try to pull it out, but your assailant is faster, always faster, and you curse as your clutching turns into drunken fumbling and morphs into disgruntled staggering. Your life flashes before your eyes even as the drug pulls the strings of your consciousness as a faintly familiar figure approaches you from the inky darkness of dimly-lit Tricell.

Instead of ending your pitiful, pathetic life, Wesker sighs, grunting with effort he barely expends as he lifts you up and into his arms. Distantly, you acknowledge it: the smell of vetiver rolling over your delayed olfaction, leather, gunpowder, a day's lab work abandoned to... to- your hindbrain names the man, but it slips as quickly as the reel develops. What were you doing? It seemed so important. Labwork, maybe... another night of labwork, and now you're relaxing. Your jellied arms weakly grab onto him for support as he transports you elsewhere, coattails trailing behind him as the overhead tungsten lights shine two times too brightly for you; every dip in luminosity is a sacred shadow, and every shadow draws you deeper and deeper into the bowels of a facility you know more by habit than any true map.

Tilting your head down to avoid the shine, you hear a coo that lands somewhere between the uncomfortable territory of chastising and adoring. "Settling in already? You took to it rather quickly, you know. That's a rather inconvenient neurochemical profile... for you."

You vocalize back from a thick throat that won't let more than a squeak pour out, molasses seeming to roll over your gums.

A sickening chuckle erupts near your ear as your head rests on his chest. Or nearly sickening, you think. You don't remember why you thought it was so bad, but your mind is begging you to consider circumstances that simply cannot spring to your prefrontal cortex, benzodiazepine receptors flipping the switch of your common decency and crippling your capacity for higher thought.

It feels like time is a gooey and malleable thing to you right now. Before you know it (definitely before), you feel a gloved hand press on the back of your head. You expect it to be harsh, but the pressure is gentle, and Wesker sits in a chair before he repositions you sideways in his lap. His free hand is hitting buttons on the arm opposite of your back, and you blindly reach your useless phalanges towards the perceived activity out of curiosity. That chuckle returns to you far more softly than it had been prior before the presser seems to teleport near to your face, the back of the glove pressing softly against the side of your cheek before slipping down to splay out, allowing both of your hands to delight in grasping blurry digits. You make a sound of distant acknowledgment that earns you a fluttering of his digits, and your gasp makes his nose press into your hair while you haven't the business to question the closeness of his actions, nor how terribly and uncharacteristically kind he's being.

"Do you even know what you do to me?" Wesker questions, drawing a deep breath that makes your cheeks pop pink. The hand he's offering as your complementary fidget twitches before it returns neutral, as if to punctuate whatever it must be with a temporary loss of control. You have no clue how deeply your needling humanity weighs on him, this attraction. "Such a fool. But, then, what am I?" Finally, the offending hand darts out and grabs your jaw and you yelp, which he hums curiously at as he inspects your guileless, glossed-over gaze unashamedly - like he owns you. You can't tell if he approves or not as your vision swims.

"This is only fair, you know," he continues, looking upon you mildly as you tilt your head and his grip softens, letting your head droop in his open palm. The other is at your side, dutifully keeping you upright, fingers splaying on every inch of fabric he can grasp, "no one can know I've gone soft. They'd all have my head." You make a worried sound, but he shushes you kindly, a secretive 'shhhhhh-shh-shh-shh'. "Except you... now, isn't that curious? What's a thing like you doing here? Insurmountable debt..." his digits dance on the underside of your jaw, and you wriggle with the ticklish sensation, "...a desire for more," and they dance further, near the delicate center of your chin, "for stability... what is it, hm?"

They reach the other side, tapping against it more insistently, and your left eye twitches shut as your brows furrow. "You must be exploitable. Outside of the pharmaceutical realm, of course, but..." You've gotten used to it, so now you don't yelp when his grip tightens again, "...nobody has to know about this." His volume goes hush as he whispers silver, certain conspiracy: "No one will. But there is so much I could offer you." Heh-hehh-huhmm...

Your world spins on the axis he sets it, and the digits at your jaw shift to press into your hair, head shifting up and away as his hand frees you, only to card through your hair and press you most insistently against a broad, dark chest. "If only you said the words... but you can't do that right now - heh - can you?"  

What leads you to retain your humanity where he has lost it? In a place like this, fluorescent lights that mark the bars of Tricell like they work to keep you in as you'd passed them? You nuzzle up into him and he hums deeply, the sound reverberating through you, which makes you shiver politely. Your consciousness is difficult to grasp, a thing sinking like you're in quicksand. "Silly creature. Annoying little thing." He encourages you, petting your hair down from its' agitated position. 

You have slipped right under his dermis, and you have festered there like an infection - his and his alone. "Let go, hmm? I won't bite..." An amused hum lines the statement, a half-truth; Wesker bites everyone eventually, whether metaphorical or literal, though he's in no mood to messy his turtleneck right now. You're like a shelf stabilizer.

Wesker has decided the only way to quell this ache is to lance it with more, more, more of your aching presence made entirely pliant for him. You feel the blurry pressure of something sharp again, but you don't even rise to meet it.

Your body begins to go slack as he abandons the illusion of professionalism to sigh with aching repression, breath warm as it cascades over your sleepy form. You feel like you're floating away, unable to tell your position. Everything is so distant, like you're under blankets, limbs getting more and more syrupy. You can't move - you can't move at all.

You make one last quiet sound as your eyes finally drift shut. 

"Promising results indeed..."

Runs too hot all the time. The T-Virus fucks with the expression of UCP1 (Uroboros adds UCP2), which are usually found in brown adipocytes and contribute to a mammal's ability to remain warm (UCP1 is the primary uncoupler for thermogenesis, allowing the adipocytes to expend their energy as heat). Part of the result of this is also that he's hungrier than normal - Wesker eats a truly ridiculous amount and a specialized diet, though there are many contributing factors to this phenomenon.

Any time you rest on him, you find him feverishly warm. Though his cheeks bare none of the splotches they should if Wesker were sickened, all of him save for his extremities are awfully toasty.

His gloveless hands, however, suffer from peripheral cyanosis and are frosty, frosty, frosty - there's a reason those gloves are so form-fitting. Sometimes his fingertips ache, but he powers through it with the power of sheer spite and an unhealthy amount of adrenaline.