Work Text:
Albert's house is almost too clean.
Every surface is spotless, every window crystal-clear, every floor scrubbed to perfection, every little trinket and possession either out of sight or organized with an overly intense amount of precision. Even the bedroom, you find, is lacking in any kind of warmth. Every time you end up here–and you end up here a lot these days–you can't help but think of how wrong it feels to disturb it in any way. Whether it's the neatly pressed sheets, the perfectly organized closet, or the strangely bare bedside tables, something about it feels too meticulous to touch.
It used to drive you crazy–yet another reminder of how much of a perfectionist he is. You don't mind it as much anymore though, safe in the little routine you've built with him after all this time.
It's his job to shake you of that out-of-place feeling when you find yourself here.
Albert does this in a variety of ways. Sometimes he takes your shoes and coat off for you and puts them neatly away himself, assuring you that while you're here, you are part of this place, as much as he is. This ecosystem is your ecosystem, too. Other times, he pushes the sheets of the bed aside for you. You think he's trying to be messy when he does this, but he can never quite manage it. You don't know that he can let himself. Despite this, it achieves a very specific purpose; to make space for you. To let you know, without words, that your affect is wanted, regardless of the imperfect and sometimes messy consequences of your presence here.
Sometimes, he simply picks you up at the door and carries you to bed.
This, too, serves a purpose, though not one quite as sweet as the others.
The purpose here is to remind you that he wants you–your time, your gaze, your touch, your focus, your attention. Any little bit of you there is to have, is one that he wants. It is one of the few things about himself that Albert Wesker cannot explain away. He simply wants you. Of all the things in the world he wants–all the things he very much plans on having–you are at the very top of his list. In many ways you drive him crazy; you are messy, disorganized, and despite your work at Umbrella there is still something akin to hope that lingers in your eyes when even the barest of kindness is offered to you. You are imperfect, to say the least. By all accounts he should hate you. He doesn't. Sometimes, he wishes he did. He can't. All he can do is want you, desperately and always with an air of confusion hidden somewhere deep in his chest.
Lucky for him, then, that you want him too.
On the surface, you shouldn't be bothering with Albert at all–he's too meticulous, too controlling, too eager to see the flaws in everything (including you). While you punish your subordinates plenty enough for mismanaged work and idiotic experiments, no one matches him in terms of pure revulsion when it comes to mistakes. You find this to be a poor way to produce favorable results; you reprimand your subordinates when they're making mistakes that are stupid. Albert reprimands his subordinates when they breathe the wrong way.
Though there's no one he berates more often than you.
You don't really care who does or does-not know about you and Albert's torrid affair. As long as it doesn't interfere with your work, you see no reason to let anyone else know. You think he probably feels the same.
Despite this, you're sure no one suspects a thing.
If your ocean of personality differences wasn't enough, his borderline badgering would certainly throw anyone off the scent. Every time you're forced to work together–which is astonishingly often given your shared focus on the T-virus–all his perfectionism aims itself directly at you. He criticizes your ideas, your methods, your notes. Any little detail you curate, no matter the effort, no matter how sure you are of success, is brutally scrutinized.
You never take this lying down, of course.
At first, you very nearly got yourself fired. You aren't totally sure what kind of immunity Albert Wesker has that you do not, but it's you on the chopping block if your spatting hinders progress–always. Snapping back and cursing at him only got you meetings you hated and threat of suspension. Eventually you cooled down on your responses, but he never let up. Over time you developed a sort of apathy to him; he could berate and insult you all day, but this was your work as much as anybody else's. You could do anything you damn well pleased as long as you go the results you were after. You could blow yourself up if you wanted to. You could wait until he was with you too, berating you about the much-too-fast way you're stirring those chemicals, or the clumsy way you're using those machines. You could take the both of you out of this equation, and Umbrella would be down two scientists.
That thought calmed your venom for him, in the end. The thought that you're the only one who can control what you do. He can say whatever he likes, even if it annoys the hell out of you. It won't change anything. Not in the long run.
Besides that, much to your abject horror, he is mostly right.
He's an ass, and notably shameless about how he treats you and those around you, but to his credit, he's usually right.
That, more than anything, drives you crazy.
Perhaps that's why you want him like he wants you. In some illogical opposites-attract kind of way, you are alike–you both think things should be done a certain way. He wants control more than anything, and it's as clear to you as the nose on his face. It's why it's always you in his house and never him in your apartment. The setting can be controlled. You cannot be controlled. You have no ties to Umbrella besides the research you're already working on. You have no stakes in the morality of what you do, you just desperately want to know more. You want to know what the human body can take, you want to know how many viruses you can make until you get infected with one yourself. It makes you nearly immune to manipulation–you cannot be tricked if your genuine goal is so broad. At a fundamental level, you have no structure.
You don't know when you started meeting yo after work, you don't remember why or how he convinced you to stay. But two things you know for certain;
Albert Wesker wants control, and he'll spend the rest of his life trying to control you.
You want to know more; to take a drink from the well of infinite knowledge, and you will spend the rest of your life trying to figure him out.
"Still there?" He drags his knuckles softly along your cheek bone, brushing your hair back so you'll refocus on him. Despite the endless potential in finding you off-kilter or unfocused, there's no bite to his words now. Any bitterness between you is sitting at the foot of the nearest Umbrella headquarters, waiting to be picked up tomorrow morning when another work day begins.
"…Barely." You say, shifting closer on the bed until your nose is almost touching his. In the process of the movement you catch a glimpse of a houseplant sitting alone in the corner. Even that is too thought-out, sitting in just the right corner of the room so as not to look even the slightest bit out of place. Like a house pretending to be lived in.
He hums, low and quiet, fingers reaching to tease at the hem of your shirt.
You're wearing his shirt; one of many black button-ups previously hanging neatly in his closet, dry-cleaned and ironed to perfection. You wonder if he likes that you're messing it up. Wrinkling it by putting it on to sleep. You wonder if it drives him mad.
If it does, he doesn't show it. Instead, he drags the tips of his fingers down your cheek and along your neck, down down down until his palm is resting on your thigh. His other hand sneaks underneath you, curling around to pull you gently forward by the small of your back until you're almost flush with one another. You reach up to lay your hands on his chest automatically, and he seems pleased with how habitual the motion is by now.
Then, he kisses you. The hand on your thigh drags itself higher and squeezes you in a way that makes you dizzy. The other hand snakes up through your hair to cradle your neck–not a grab by any stretch, so much as an excuse to rub his thumb along your jawline and pull you deeper into the kiss.
You can't explain why you pull him closer. You don't know why you reach up to cup his face and run your fingers through his hair. The day had been hell, but although he was the biggest contributor to your exhaustion and frustration, he was also your escape from it.
Away from the sterile lab lighting of Umbrella, away from prying eyes and incompetent lab assistants, he's yours.
He pulls away, but just long enough to reposition himself lower, to your jaw instead of your lips. You make a noise–an involuntary intake of breath–and you feel him smirk into your skin as he shifts to find purchase on your neck.
Here, in the light of the alarm clock on the bedside table, in a house that feels all too perfect, you're his.
He shifts, printing lingering kisses on your neck in the dark until he finds your pulse, where you feel his lips part, and his teeth begin to graze your skin. He hesitates for a moment–teasing you, waiting to see if you squirm–before diving back in, cupping your face with one hand while the other pulls your leg over his side. You feel a shudder course through your body, and you close your hands around fistfuls of his hair as if to anchor yourself. You feel his tongue dart out and touch you before you push him back.
"Albert." Your hands slide away from his hair and back down to his chest, creating space between you where there wasn't a moment ago.
"Hm?" His lips are still pressed to your pulse, though he starts trailing lower at the sound of your voice, teeth and tongue teasing at your collar bone until you cup his face and physically pull him away.
"You'll mark me up before work tomorrow," It feels wrong to bring up the labs here; to acknowledge the more bitter reality outside of this one. "People will talk."
"Are we keeping this a secret?" The tone is as close as Albert gets to verbally teasing you.
You scoff. "I don't care, if they know," You almost roll your eyes at the though. "but the idiots I work with have a hard enough time focusing without wondering about their superiors love life."
He chuckles at that, low and rumbling, and you wonder if he can see the red on your face through the dark. "I see."
A moment of stillness passes. Your hands on his chest, your leg over his side. His hands on your face and thigh. Ever so slowly, you reach back up to his face, holding him in your hands like a thing to be admired; a trinket, or treasure. You let your thumb trail up and down his check bone, eyes grazing over his face with the precision of an infatuated scientist.
His eyes are so blue they almost glow in the darkness, and they watch you silently as you trace his jawline with your fingertips. It's you who leans in for the kiss this time, though it's much gentler than before. A quick press, soft and chaste. Lingering, but only long enough to leave warmth when you pull away. Your thumb pads softly over his bottom lip when you do.
After a moment–in which, you think, he decides not to try and convince you to go further–he takes a hand off your thigh and places it heavily onto yours. Now he's holding your palm to his cheek, turning to press a featherlight kiss to your palm without breaking eye contact with you.
You could lie like this forever, you think. You just might, if given the chance.
"I'm tired." It's true, though you wish you were awake enough to admire those eyes a little longer.
Albert doesn't say anything in response; he just moves to tuck your head into his chest, running a hand through your hair as he does so.
You fall asleep that way; hands circling around him as the rhythmic beating of his heart lulls you into unconsciousness.
The labs beneath Umbrella are white-lit and sterile, like a hospital without any hope of care. You arrive early, and though you do not do so to make a certain someone annoyed on purpose, you're sure it will. That fact is confirmed when he walks into the room and finds you already there, gathering your notes and sifting through overnight research to prepare yourself for the rest of the day.
"Wesker." You great him without moving your eyes away from the file in your hands. He's not Albert here. Not to you.
Albert wouldn't saunter up to you and scoff like your superior does.
"Your organization skills are lacking. How do you get anything done?" His tone is arrogant and irritated, and the look he gives the mismanaged files in your hands is through a pair of rectangular sunglasses.
"I manage." Is all you say, though you do throw him a look of disdain before turning on your heel and walking away.
Today, you don't look at him and see something that's yours. You don't remember the way his hands wandered desperately over you, or the way his lips pressed fervently against your neck. You don't remember the bright blue eyes beneath the glasses.
No, today you will look at Albert Wesker and see the jackass that haunts you at work. In fact, as long as you live, you're sure that will never change.
At least, not until tonight.
Tonight, when you finally slip past the doors of the laboratory, late into the evening and long after the sun goes down. When you begin your walk home. When his car stops near your route, and he oh-so-casually turns up on a familiar street corner, insisting you stop by for coffee. To make up for what I said, he'll say, though you won't know which asinine thing he means, as he throws a lot of bullshit at you during the day. When, despite this, you agree. When you let him drive you to his much-too-perfect house. When he takes your coat and your shoes, and takes those damn sunglasses off, and becomes Albert again. Your Albert.
Then–and only then–you'll remember that he's yours, and you're his, too.