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Three fingers up.
Two.
One.
On the closed fist, you and Piers kick the metal of the door and tear it from its hinges. It clatters noisily into the room, and you’re immediately looking down the scope and into the eyes of a horrified woman. She drops the files from her hands, spilling them onto the ground, and puts her hands up. Footsteps file in behind you and scan the remainder of the decrepit apartment complex.
The woman speaks in rushed Slovak, stepping back on shaking legs as Piers walks her down with slow steps. When the rest of the squad confirms the place is clear, you lower your scope as they set their sights on her. Piers, too, has a white-knuckled grip on his weapon, pad of his finger gliding along the trigger. You’re partly sure Piers sees a different woman in his scope even as he frightens her to the ground. Pieces of the wall fall with her, and the barrel of his rifle follows.
“Please,” is all you can make out before her words slide back into Slovak. Piers drags her by her collar back to her feet and slips a photo from his pocket. The familiar series of questions are yelled into her face, so she cries more, hiccuping and unable to catch her breath. She shakes her head, and Piers shoves her back into the wall. The crack you hear is unkind.
Your attention’s pulled to the folder. More shouting and weeping carries through the air. Impatience and desperation is getting the best of him, but he won’t shoot, scary as he may seem. He hasn’t grown into his fangs quite yet, but the barrel pressed to her head sure as shit makes up for it.
“Piers,” you cut in. “This isn’t her.” You show him one of the papers, and Piers’ teeth grit.
“Shit.” He shoves away from her, and she once again crumbles to the ground. He vaults the table and snatches the police records from your hands. Lana Horváth, former member of some niche criminal group you don’t even recognize and the attached mugshot. Piers waves to the others, and they help her back onto her feet and let her run from the room. “Another bad tip — damn it — we need to track him back down.”
“It’d be a waste of time,” you reply. “He’s long gone by now, and it’ll be just time lost for us.” You holster your weapon and set your arms over your chest. A myriad of emotions wash over him, but it all comes down to simple anger. At himself, inevitably.
“The rest of you, check the perimeter,” he orders. His fangs may not be in yet, but he’s filling into the shoes just fine. His fingers come to his ear, and his voice echoes through your radio. “Alpha to HQ, our information was bad and brought us to nobody. Reporting to evac.”
“Copy, Alpha. Echo’s en route. Over.” The radio cuts, and you’re left staring at his back. Tense and stringent. One strong enough punch and his spine will crack, but you settle for dragging your fingertips up his back, over the Kevlar vest. Piers jumps, breath catching in his throat, then turns to glare at you. You grin, more tired than anything, and notice the picture still in his fist. You reach down and turn over his wrist, prying each finger from the photo.
"Careful. This one’s his favorite.” You smooth out the wrinkles of Chris’ most recent ID photo. Piers doesn’t laugh. His face is hard set on the picture, and god knows what’s swirling beneath those eyes. Except in this instance, you are god, and you know it’s guilt. Because it’s Piers, and he’s felt little else since Edonia. You shove it into his chest. “Hey, we’ll find him.”
“He shouldn’t even be missing in the first place.”
“Piers—.”
“We shouldn’t have let him out of our sight. I shouldn’t have let him out of my sight. Knew his brain was damaged, so of course he’d do something drastic like this.” He crumples the picture — again — and stuffs it into his pocket. “Now we’re desperate enough to bargain with foreign street corner gangbangers just to get a lead.”
“Hey, this one seemed very trustworthy.” Piers glowers, and you change tactics. “Even without his memories, Chris is still Chris. If he doesn’t want to be found, he’s going to make it damn hard on us. I’d meet in some back-alley meth lab without my clothes and weapons if there was even a sliver of a chance we’d find out something.” Piers is looking off somewhere, but the place isn’t anywhere tangible. You wonder if he even heard you.
“What if he can’t be found?
“What? No—.”
“It’s realistic. Without his memory, he’s a walking target for anyone. It’s been months, so it’s possible someone just picked him off on the street, and we’re none the wiser.” You shake your head vehemently.
“No, no , Piers. He’s alive. He’s—.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t just say it enough times for it to be true. He’s human, like me and you. Maybe it’s time to call it quit and focus on—”
"Shut your fucking mouth.” You shove him hard, and he’s forced off-balance, but doesn’t topple. Your nerves are alight, stomach churning with a substance so fiery your eyes begin to water to cool it off. “You don’t believe that. You know—.”
“I don’t know anything. Neither do you.”
"I do know that if we give up, he’s dead for sure!”
“And if we don’t stop, then how many others die while we’re in this wild goose chase? The C-Virus, Ada Wong, Neo-Umbrella, they’re all still out there, and it’s my responsibility.” His voice doesn’t waver, but his eyes do. You just don’t know which responsibility is getting to him, really. “He would want us to focus on the mission—.”
“Oh, bullshit. Chris Redfield would scorch the earth if any of us were missing, and so would you if you weren’t so caught up in your frustration right now. Stop. Just stop, Piers.” You take an aggressive step into his space and sink your nails into his arms. He lets you, but his simmer is on the verge of a boil, so the allowance won’t last long. “Just because you’re captain in place of him doesn’t mean you assume responsibility for absolutely everything. You have to know you’re human, too.”
“Of course it does.” He shrugs your hands off him and sets his rifle in his hands in finality. “That’s what being a leader is about. If I don’t take responsibility, then who will? Reid? Keaton? You? ” Piers shakes his head as if he disgusted himself with the idea. “Alpha team is the most advanced unit in the BSAA. If the safety of its members, of victims, isn’t the responsibility of its captain, then whose is it? Maybe—maybe if you understood that, you’d be in charge. Not just a soldier lost in Chris and Jill’s shadows.”
He thought about that statement. Hesitated, but still spit it out. Your body buzzes in temporary shock that doesn’t subside until after Marco and Jeff reenter the complex. Piers brushes by you — butt of the rifle jabbing your arm. Your eyes shut, a bulkhead for the pressure building underneath until it settles. In through your nose, out through your mouth.
You follow — you guess not so surprising of a notion. Piers avoids you in transit back to the temporary headquarters in Romania, set up in an old convent, as sacrilegious it is to have the backings of an entire army along the walls of a cloister. The BSAA is terse as of late, a direct consequence of Quint being transferred elsewhere, so there’s no one completely illiterate to the room to cut through the thickness in the air. Eyes follow you, but only after you pass them.
Intel is set up in the chapel, but the post is empty this late, left to the night crew back in the States. Sleeping monitors reflect the setting sun gleaming through the stained glass windows above the altar. Rotted pews haphazardly line either side of the carpet that silences your footsteps towards the front. It keeps the chapel in its quiet state of tranquility. You sit yourself on the ground at the foot of the altar with your back against a splintered pew. You groan on the way down.
The hunt for Chris has been nonstop thanks to yours and Piers’ insistence. With eyes and information from every innkeeper, common carrier, and other commercial source you can tap in through the UN, the most reasonable place he could be is somewhere in Eastern Europe still. Edonia, even, but it’s no place Piers is willing to risk without cause. If he’s still there, then Piers is likely right. No good news has come out of Edonia since your mission.
You unlock your phone and redial your most recent call. It almost goes to voicemail before a familiar voice picks up.
“Hello?” You recognize the voice as Claire’s partner.
“Hey, it’s me. Claire there?”
“...No.” You don’t believe them, really, but you’re too tired to press. “Any news?” Your eyes trail up to the rotted crucifixion. Distance voices pass outside the chapel with heavy footsteps.
“No, nothing yet,” you say in a sigh. “But we won’t give up.”
“We know you won’t.” The silence is despondent, and your foot taps.“Claire’s been . . . well, you can probably take a guess. The Redfield genes are–uh–you know. It’s taken everything I have to convince her to stay in the US. It’s only because of what happened on Sein Island she’s agreed, but that fatigue will wear off soon, so,” they inhale deeply, “please. Find him—fuck. I gotta go.” The line cuts abruptly, and the beep breaks the peace.
Dropping your phone to the side, you hug your knees and rest your cheek on the caps. You should call Jill. She was basically razing the country for him, but the BSAA prioritized her SOA duties and she’s trusted the search to you SOUs available. You don’t, though. You think her inevitable anger would push you over the edge you’re teetering on. The edge Piers might be jumping off of.
Your self-pity continues until the only light left are the ones through the side windows from the abbey outside. Too harsh to be a light that was already present. No one’s the religious sort, you guess, and you rise in the same stillness you entered into. Wiping your cheeks with the ball of your palm, you breathe in through your nose, and raggedly out through your mouth.
You stop short of the door, rushed steps cut off, when they open without you laying a hand on them. You inhale sharply and relax when you see Piers coming down from the same scare. His smile is tight, and barely a smile, actually. More like a polite, awkward stretch of his lips.
“Piers.”
“So this is where you were.” He looks beyond you. “You didn’t come to bed.”
“Officially, I sleep in the bunks with the rest of the squad.”
“No fraternization within units is the official policy of the BSAA too.” He tilts his head. “But we’ve gotten away with it so far, twofold.” It’d be lighthearted if he didn’t try so hard for it to be lighthearted. You cast your eyes away from him, and he brushes by you.
When you turn around, Piers is looking up at the altar with his arms crossed over his chest. The BSAA shirt is loose around his form, and his body, too, has loosened since earlier. You watch for a few moments, and Piers feels your eyes on his back. He turns his head and regards you from over his shoulder, a stripe of light streaking across his face. He looks pretty. “I’m sorry.” It’s a real smile this time, small as it may be. Your heart flutters. “I never should have even thought it. I don’t even believe that—you know that, I hope.”
“It’s alright,” you say. He tracks your movements until you stand beside him. “But also, fuck you.” He takes it on the chin, mumbling a fair enough under his breath. “I know what they say in the locker rooms.”
“Not when I’m—.”
“When you’re not around.” The wry smirk on your face is not assuring to him. His brows crease, and he stands a bit straighter. “Think I can handle it after almost 15 years. Have some faith in your elders.” Piers sighs.
“Please don’t call yourself my elder. Makes me picture my grandma.”
“And you certainly don’t do what you do to me to your grandma .”
“And please don’t even put the image in my head.” He pushes the ball of his palm into his eye, and when his hand drops, he turns to face you fully. “I don’t believe anything I said. Not about you or–or about Chris.” This smile is assuring to him, and he relaxes under the hand you set on his shoulder. He quickly tightens back up when you shake him roughly. His head thrashes about. “Hey—!”
“Just trying to shake you out of it.” Piers pouts and rolls his shoulder once it’s freed. “You’re lieutenant because Chris trusts the squad to follow you. Because he trusts you know how much to put on your shoulders, and to know that you’re human. No person is going to follow some . . . idiot who sees himself as the hero who must solve everything—who attributes fault to himself when there is none.” He’s looking hard at the floor, and you tap his chin to bring his gaze back to you. “We’ll get him back.”
“I know.” You scoff.
“Could have saved us a lot of trouble if you just admitted that before.”
“Yeah, yeah—you know everything and you’re better than me.” Piers shrugs your hand off of him, and you find peace in that cocky smirk on his face. The first sign of normalcy in him. “Even if people think you’re second fiddle to Chris and Jill, you’ll always be the sexiest person on the field.”
“...Is that supposed to make me feel better? You did fine the first time.” It’s so bizarre it does oddly make you feel better. You glance away and laugh behind a closed fist.
“Well, that, and to try and segway this into make-up sex.”
“Piers. Come on, he can hear you.” You nod to the crucifixion. He slides his hands up your sides and rests them on your waist. His fingers tap through your shirt, then press in before he pulls you flush to him.
“And he teaches all about penance, right? Let me make it up to you. I can make you feel all better.”
“More like make yourself feel better.” He shrugs.
“Both?”
“...Both.” Piers grabs both your hands and begins to walk backwards with you in tow. His eyes don’t leave yours as the shadows pass over his face, and his smile grows with each step. Boyish, yet tempered. The weight of his responsibilities can’t squash everything, but it presses down on him even now. You could fix that, at least temporarily. You do with Chris, after all.
Piers falls back onto the stairs of the altar and brings you with him. Your knee hits the wood, echoing through the chapel. Piers swallows your hiss of pain and keeps himself upright with a palm on the stair. His other hand stretches along the back of your neck.
You two haven’t done much of anything besides search for Chris. When you weren’t scouring intel, attending briefs, or getting verbally abused by a panicked Jill, you were too exhausted to even think about anything sexual. Even if you’d had tried, it’d be wrong without Chris’ heavy presence — like a room without a hearth. You feel his absence now, but your urgency to be with Piers and rein him back lessens the loss, at least for the moment.
Piers’ own desperation seeps out of his lips. He pushes forward and pulls you closer, and the moan vibrating through his throat gets caught and turns into a whimper. He coaxes your tongue into his mouth and brings the hand from beside him to your back to push you onto his thigh. The seam of your pants catches your clit, and he smiles at your gasp. Thick lips wet with spit stretch into a smile, his eyes gleaming just the same.
He bounces his leg, and you have to steady yourself on his shoulders. He flexes his thigh, so you sit pretty right on the peak of his quad, adjusting your hips to grind down on the muscle, slow and steady. Piers' head falls back, and his Adam’s apple is too tempting. The crucified man’s forced to watch another woman fall prey to the temptation of the fruit. You kiss the bobbing bulge, teeth grazing the skin and breath wafting around his throat.
“Baby,” he breathes out, and brings his head forward after he feels your lips dip towards his shirt collar. Piers watches under heavy lids, feels your hands slip under the edge of his shirt and up the plane of his abs. Your fingertips follow the line up his stomach and between his pecs. He lifts the shirt up and off of him and pulls you into another bruising kiss.
It's s tough press of lips, and you lift from his thigh with a throbbing clit. There’s a tantalizing rise and fall to his chest, his dog tags resting on the dip of his collarbone. Not as big as Chris — simply as a matter of impossibility – Piers is still all corded muscle, thick veins running under his skin and more trailing down his navel and disappearing under the raised waistband of his boxers.
“Lieutenant,” you whisper. You lower yourself, rest your cheek on his stomach and look up at him with doe eyes of the kind that has his dick twitching. You feel it under your chest, and he’s looking down at you with flushed cheeks, a softly opened mouth, and a silent plea. He doesn’t rise to the rank, and that’s okay. Ideal, really. “Tell me what you need.”
“Whatever you’re willing to give.” His teeth drag up his bottom lip, and then it fall back into place with small white lines. “Everything you’re willing to give.” You smirk and kiss the skin right above his belly button. He shudders. “Please give me everything — it’s all I got.”
“You have more than just me, Piers.”
“Do I?” He spreads his legs to let you kneel comfortably between them. The altar has some dusty pads of altar servers of past, and you set one under your knees, but it hardly supports you in its condition. You run your hands up his clothed thighs and settle them at his narrow hips. Piers blinks down at you, and the lines of stress are back on his face.
You’ll never forget his face. This image. This moment. Boyish in a different sense this time — hanging onto your every word and breath and looking so young, yet Chris has entrusted to him so much. In this moment, though, he’s just 26. Just a man born with the unluckiest gene that pushed him towards this life. A blessing and a curse.
“You do.” You mouth down to the straining cloth. It’s hot on your tongue, and you lave over the coarse fabric. Mouthing at the bulge, Piers lifts his hips and presses your head down to grind against your mouth. Desperate, desperate. “Simmer down, Piers," is muffled against his pants.
“Stop teasing.” He pulls your hair, and your eyes land on the dog tags once more, or maybe just his chest. You can’t help yourself — you tease. You kiss the dip between his pecs, his dog tags cool over your nose. The laugh that escapes him is music to your ears. He takes advantage of you being off your knees to smoothly unbutton your pants and yank them down your thighs. The chapel air’s cool on your bare ass.
“Mmm, sorry.” You kiss up the column of his throat and find his mouth once more. He eagerly meets you while you shimmy out of everything waist down. “You’re so beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” He asks between two quick pecks. “Not very manly of an adjective.”
“Oh, shut—,” you gasp. A rough hand cups your pussy, and you rock against his palm. Head falling against his shoulder, your nails dig into his back, and the muscle barely gives. “Fuck you.”
“I’m trying here.” Fingers part your folds, and he slowly circles your clit, and it spasms, so much so it pulses through your body. “Jesus, baby. Relax.”
“Been a while.” You pause. “Or maybe it’s the holy spirit.” Lest you forget where you both are. You glance up to the altar, panting slowly. Piers laughs, kisses your shoulder, and sinks a finger into your heat. Tight, but pliant.
“Goddamn.” You’re sure He will, in fact. You snake a hand between you, bypassing his own to pull down his boxers and pants as minimally as possible. His cock jumps when freed, and rests against your stomach. Veiny, like the rest of him, with a red head and a slight curve. You know you love him when the word beautiful crosses your mind.
Piers adds a second and third finger successively, thick and lovely as your pussy molds around them. You fuck yourself on his fingers as much as he fucks you with them. Peppering kisses up and down his neck, your fingers feel up the prickle of hair at the base of his neck. The smell of his soap is strong in your nose — teakwood, you know. He’s very particular.
You lift off his fingers and from his neck. Your hole misses him as much as he seems to miss it. Piers watches you rise with the same eyes of someone fearful of a scolding. You kiss the silly look off his face. His hands find the fat of your hips and drag to your ass. He squeezes before lifting your shirt from you and snapping your bra off with one hand. “My turn, I think.”
He slots his face between your breasts and kisses your sternum. You reach down to the base of his cock and hold it still. You slip it between your folds, and drag yourself up and down the top half of his length, gliding against you, but not in you. Your wetness clings onto the head, and Piers’ moan comes low from his throat and echoes through your chest. He grazes his teeth over the fat of your breast, and then grins up at you, all teeth. You keep eye contact as you bump the head of his cock against your clit, just so he can watch the spark of pleasure sizzle up your spine and spread across your face.
You set your hands on his chest, squeezing just for the hell of it, and push him back against the stairs. You settle in on the knee pad and bend down. Piers holds the hair from your face just in time for you to take him down to the balls. The head touching the back of your throat naturally fills your mouth with saliva, and you suction your lips around his girth and drag your lips upwards. Teakwood, sweat, and a bit of yourself on your tongue, you wet his length and pop off. His moan is strangled. “Baby—.’
Now, there's another face that’s branded into your brain, flushed, breathless, wracked by emotion his body at times cannot handle, but he takes it away when his head falls back. His whines make up for it. A new chorus to the church, you suck the head into your mouth and wrap your hand around the base.
Piers, however, had a taste of heaven, and doesn’t allow anything less. With his grip on your head, he pushes you back down to base with a muffled sound of surprise garbled around him. Not so domineering as he is desperate, he holds you there and pushes up, fucking your throat gently. Gently as he could when he’s rolling his hips into your face. You grip his thighs to remain steady.
“Oh, I love you,” he breathes out. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Piers raises his head to see. He has to see. Has to memorize this. Your hollowed cheeks, the warmth around his cock, your stuttered exhales against his pelvis, and your muffled whimpers filling the church. The sound carries into his cock, and his free hand clasps over his mouth. “Fuck, baby. I’m sorry—feels so good. You’ll let me have this, right? Have e-everything.”
Your scalp throbs when he lets go, and you gasp at the first moment of freedom. Thin, clear lines of spit keep you connected until your tongue breaks them with a lick of your swollen lips. Piers taps his cock against your lips, impatiently. “Just a little more, baby. Want your mouth just a little more.” Your breathing is wet and ragged, throat burning, but you oblige. You’ll always oblige. His hand finds your hair once more, but he doesn’t do anything more.
With a semblance of control back, you mouth at the side of his cock, licking around the base. His thighs are shaking on either side of your head. You ghost your lips back up to the head and sink down once more. In the house of God, you worship. Your slobbering, his whimpers, they serenades the sacred space. You fulfill the wishes of your superior, and how beautiful he sounds as you do.
Lost in their shadows, you think wryly. Yet where would anyone be without you between their legs?
“Fuck— fuck.” He rips you off his cock and drags you forward. You catch yourself on the altar steps, looking down at him and adjusting your knees on either side of his hips, knees planted on the stairs. He doesn’t let you linger. Piers grabs your hips, and you quickly angle his cock so when he shoves you down, you take him to the hilt. You muffle your cry with your hand.
For a few seconds, it's all Piers. Feet planted on the foot of the altar stairs, he fucks up into you. Your breasts and stomach bounce with each rise and fall he forces. "God." His hand's back on your neck, and you're painfully pulled forward to him. It's like kissing during an earthquake - lips dislodging and reconnecting as your body jerks with each thrust. Your hand extends forward, towards the altar, and your nails scratch the old wood, reaching out to nothing. The other is hopelessly clinging to him, wrapped around his neck. When your mouths part, Piers shoves your head to his chest and holds it there. Thank god.
His heart beats erratically in your ear, and the dog tags jingle against each other. Your senses are full of him — you're full of him, but in his moment, you think of Chris. Piers is enough, and you're enough, but you miss him. He'd be praising you gently, coaxing you through the intensity when he's not the instrumentality of it. He'd just be here. A tear lands on his dog tag, and rolls down the crevice of his pecs.
You have to move, rein yourself in now. You begin to meet his thrusts, the wet slap of skin echoing, and Piers' moan is strangled, and - and weird. Different. Taking a few moments to gather the will, you lift your head, and his hand allows you to look at him.
Oh, Piers. When did he start crying too?
You smile down at him through your own red cheeks and puffy eyes. You cup his face and wipe his tears with your thumbs. Or maybe they're your own that fall onto his cheeks. Mutual sniffles and gasps and pathetically sad laughs sound out. Carefully, Piers sits up, supporting your back, and lets you slowly ride him to orgasm. Forehead to forehead, it's a slow gallop to your high, and Piers is holding himself back, you know. He won't let himself go without you.
His hand seeks out your clit to help, working it just as slow as you move.
"Piers," is all the signal he gets, gasped out.
"Y-yeah, I got ya."
When he cums in you, it's familiar. Warm, or maybe that's just how he holds you through it. Your own orgasm has you lax against him. Tucked against his chest, you wind down in tune with his heart. The dog tags catch your eye again, and . . . oh. Oh, Piers.
One is his, but the other is engraved with the name Chris Redfield. You hold it in your hand, and Piers' hand joins yours. He nuzzles into your hair and kisses the top of your head. You both stretch the moment for as long as you could, up until the computers set up in the chapel all begin to light up, and you remember where the hell you are.
You scramble off his dick and redress on the way to the monitors. Piers logs in and scans the messages coming through. You read along with him.
"Oh my god." Eyewitnesses spotted Chris in a bar in some small down in the neighboring country. It's accompanied with a picture. You know that body, that turtleneck. "Piers—."
"I see it, I see it." He stands up straight and smiles. Assuredly. Like someone you'd want to follow and would follow wherever he lead. "Let's go get him."