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Nor the hand that is healing

Summary:

The sweat that grows on the top of his forehead slowly rolls down his face, mixing with the grime and blood. He wonders when was the last time he showered. He tries to point to a time before all of this; he thinks of Mia and how he found her, and he no longer can remember if it was the evening or morning when he arrived in Louisiana.

It’s hot, he thinks.

He can barely process that someone is speaking to him. Chris Redfield is the name of the man that helps him get to his feet, and Ethan thinks how strong the man’s grip around his wrist is.

Notes:

hi! this is my very first work i have never posted anything before so i am sweating. english is also not my first language so if there are any silly mistakes or if something sounds weird my apologies yell at me in the comments if ive messed up somewhere big time

thank you a whole lot to tammy and davi for the beta i love you guys

title of the work comes from the song "not" by big thief

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: 1.

Chapter Text

It starts with blood covered clothes, furrowed brows and dirty fingernails. Ethan can feel the adrenaline leaving  him and his hands going soft. The sound of the helicopter barely registers in his head, and the air that hits his face smells like iron. 

 

The sweat that grows on the top of his forehead slowly rolls down his face, mixing with the grime and blood. He wonders when was the last time he showered. He tries to point to a time before all of this; he thinks of Mia and how he found her, and he no longer can remember if it was an evening or a morning when he arrived in Louisiana.  

 

It’s hot , he thinks. 

 

He can barely process that someone is speaking to him. Chris Redfield is the name of the man that helps him get to his feet, and Ethan thinks how strong the man’s grip around his wrist is. 

 

He holds Mia’s hand in the helicopter, thinking how she sliced off the very hand she’s now holding. He squeezes around her knuckles just to check if he can still really move them after leaving the Bakers’ house, as if the very ground the horrors happened on was keeping him together. 

 

Everything is a blur after that, and he can feel his legs going weak and his vision getting foggy. He shivers and the blood in his body feels like it's boiling. He thinks of the heat and the sound of the wings of the helicopter spinning and spinning. 




Waking up feels like a chore. Ethan swears that his bones are made out of sponge. Then he panics when he can no longer feel Mia’s fingers against his own, his eyes shooting around the helicopter. He jumps, feeling a hand on his shoulder, and when he turns frantically to look at the owner of it, sees Mia staring at him with tired, concerned eyes. 

 

He then thinks of her in that house. Dirty, sweaty, hungry, always in fear for her life. He thinks of how she laid on the dirty rag bed in the cellar and how he wasn’t there with her. How she had to fight for the air to breathe and the tears to cry. Licking at her wounds, she survived. 

 

And Ethan is still so very much in love with her. 

 

Always keeping the tenderness for her in his heart, never being able to leave her behind, he brings his forehead to rest it against her shoulder, and he has to bite at the inside of his cheek, feeling the taste of iron on his tongue, just to stop himself from crying. 

 




The tests that come don’t seem to end. Ethan can only tell the time is moving right along when he’s able to see Mia. Moments of little serenity is all they get with each other. When they’re separated, their daily routine consists mostly of sleeping, eating and getting their bodily fluids collected. 

 

It turns out that The Mold is inside of them. It is a part of them that the BSAA doctors refer to as “undesirable” and so it needs to be removed. The process of the surgery is explained to both of them, but Ethan does not even have the energy to understand; neither does Mia. It seems like they don’t have a choice, regardless. 

 

Ethan thinks of the first time he had surgery. He must have been fourteen, he thinks, osteonecrosis of the knee, which as he remembers is technically nothing serious, but it still hurt like a bitch. Thinking about the anesthesia is not necessarily scary to him, more so the fact that the surgeons will be digging in his guts like there’s no tomorrow and god only knows in how many ways they can mess that up.

 

They get told that the surgery went well. Ethan does not feel well. His body feels like it went through a shredder. His bones heavy like cement, muscles ripping themselves with every move he makes. The scar that’s now healing down his chest a reminder of what happened in the Bakers’ house. He cries himself to sleep most of the time.

 

Each night leads to the same scenario. The bugs crawling out through his rib cage. The liquid that spills out of him now a dead, black color. He looks for Mia, and every time he finds her, she lies in a pool of her own blood. The same blood that covers his palms, and when he looks in the mirror, his teeth are red. His hands and his legs are getting cut off, over and over and over again. His hands and legs are getting reattached, over and over again. For breakfast, he eats cockroaches and caterpillars. He is now one of them. 

 

When he wakes up in a cold sweat, he is alone. 



They get to talk to Chris Redfield quite a bit. As Ethan learns, he is a man worn out by his work. A man that has two cups of black coffee before lunchtime. A man that wants what’s good for people. Winters are just another case of despair that Chris has to go through.

 

On long sleepless nights in his tiny , cold room, he wonders if there’s someone who cares for men like Chris. If there are people that love people like Chris. He wonders if it’s hard to love someone like Chris. Maybe people like Chris spend the night alone, in a tiny cold room, just like Ethan. Are there people who could love Ethan Winters?

 

Redfield explains their situation to them, tells them what to and not to expect. Reassures them that they will not get separated, unless they want to. They don’t.

 

“We will try to let you return to your lives as fast as we can,” Chris promises, sincerity in his voice. “We will have to move you, somewhere where we can keep an eye on your safety and your wellbeing. Somewhere in Europe, most likely.” 

 

Ethan raises his brows and quickly looks at Mia, who mirrors his expression, then quickly furrows her brows and looks back to Chris. 

 

“Where in Europe, exactly?” asks Mia. 

 

“Romania, probably,” says Chris 

 




Mia is eager to start anew. When they open the doors to their new home, it smells like dust covered wood and forest air. It’s much bigger than the place they owned in California. Instead of a small apartment with a city view, they now will be living in a house built on moss and dirt, surrounded by trees and animals. 

 

They work on their furniture by themselves, with a bit of help from Chris. He and Ethan task themselves on the assembly, and Mia paints ornaments and flowers on the tables and chairs and doors. She picks out the music they fill their home with, old records and CDs she found at a local store. The three of them dance to the soft tunes. At first, Chris says no, but when Mia grabs his hand and starts smiling up at him, the man can’t resist. 

 

Ethan thinks Redfield cannot dance at all, his body too big for gentle movements, but he knows that he’s not better either. They hold hands, all of them; Chris spins Mia and Ethan around, their feet tangling with each other. When they fall down and land on their asses and knees, the room fills with laughter. It’s slow and it’s loving.

 

“You want a beer?” Ethan asks Chris, who’s sitting on the couch, one that they brought into the living room today, a soft light brown color. He holds a bottle in his hand and gestures at it with his head. 

 

“I’m driving,” Chris smiles. 

 

“You can stay over if you want,” says Ethan, still standing next to the fridge. 

 

“I don’t think I should.”

 

“Why not? You’re always welcomed here. It’s not a problem.” In all his time that Chris knows Ethan, he realizes that the man is stubborn. Or maybe Chris is not able to refuse the things the other man offers. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. Chris can’t tell. 

 

“Alright,” he sighs. 

 

As Chris later finds out, Ethan gets drunk fast. It’s quick to a point where one beer in, Ethan laughs at everything, and to Chris’ horror gets clingy. He tells him it’s the medication he’s taking, it makes him get tipsy with a small amount of alcohol. When asked if he should mix them at all, Ethan shrugs. 

 

Chris tells him about his work. He talks about his sister too. Anything to not think about how close Winters sits next to him, how he puts a hand on Chris’ shoulder from time to time when he laughs and fills his heart with warmth and his gut with a sweet feeling. 

 

“You know Raccoon City, right?” He asks. Ethan nods as an answer. “Well, she was there, the night of the outbreak of the T-virus.”

 

“Seriously?” 

 

“Yeah. She went there in the first place because she had been looking for me. I think about it often, how she risked her life to find me. I think getting in zombie bullshit is in our blood.” 

 

“Or maybe you’re just good people?” Ethan asks and cracks a grin at the man besides him. 

 

“She is.” 

 

There’s a beat of silence, only the crickets outside playing their tunes and the hums of frogs can be heard. 

 

“Can I ask you something?” Ethan is the first one to speak.

 

“Alright.”

 

“Have you ever thought about… not doing this,” Ethan gestures wildly with his hand, “the whole bioweapon fighting thing? Doesn’t it feel like it’s too much sometimes?”

 

Chris is taken aback by this. There were moments in his life, in his so-called career, that made him want to leave it all behind, to screw it all, to go live in the middle of nowhere and not talk to anyone in hopes of never having to deal with this shit ever again in his life. Then he thinks of Clare, of Jill, of Leon even. He thinks of their work, of their struggle and of their pain, and how leaving them alone to it would be selfish. He thinks of Piers and how he would never forgive himself if he let his death not mean more than just the sacrifice he made for Chris. He thinks of people like Ethan and Mia and how it must be worth something, anything in the end. 

 

“I thought about it. But here I am.” He makes a face – a smile, but not quite. When Ethan does not respond at all, Chris turns to him and finds that he’s looking down at the almost empty bottle of beer in his hands. 

 

Chris then gazes at the scar around Ethan’s wrist, not yet healed, the skin pink and fresh, the marks of the staples still there. Maybe it all is worth something in the end. Maybe it will be worth something. 

 

The blonde rests his head on the other man’s shoulder and sloppily puts a hand on Chris’ arm, right around his wrist. Redfield holds his breath. There’s nothing weird about affection, and there is nothing weird about touch between men; what is weird is that the wife of the man laying himself down on him is sleeping upstairs. 

 

“Thank you, Chris. For everything that you’ve done for us.” Ethan's voice has a note of laughter in it, but it’s soft and gentle. He brushes his thumb over the spot his hand is resting on. 

 

It’s all too sudden when Ethan gets up, puts the empty bottles on the kitchen counter, and helps Chris unfold the couch, so it can actually fit him. When he returns with pillows and a spare blanket, the bigger man reaches out and holds onto Ethan’s hand. He feels foolish when they look at each other, and he feels foolish when he says, “Always happy to help.”