The Echo Principle | Albert Wesker x Reader Pt. 5
Pt. 4
2100
February in Vancouver was aesthetic but cold; thick clumps of snow glowing from streetlamps overhead drifted onto the whitened streets. From inside McConnell considered the snow for a moment and pulled her coat tighter before sliding her focus from the ornate window to the small shelf at the front desk full of pamphlets: Food, attractions, maps. All useful. However, the bag Cassandra had chosen for the whole ensemble did not comfortably fit three pamphlets. It was a bag for standing around in a five-star hotel’s Banquet hall and laughing—not for adventure.
Albert materialized at her side with a colder air than usual. Gloved hands smoothing a dark suit, then drifted to the small, ornate cufflinks in something that could be considered fidgeting or self-soothing and likely was not either for him. He looked nice and she noted this distantly then regretted not noticing earlier. “I neglected to mention you look nice tonight, doctor. I had begun to assume all you had were lab coats and dress shirts.”
The man merely adjusted his glasses and made some sound of acceptance to her comment without the usual dry quip.
Her head tilted up to study every tension, tick, and furrow of his usually stony expression she’d spent eight years deciphering. He was, in fact, not returned in the condition she had left him in.
Annoying.
For something to bother Dr. Albert Wesker enough to produce that angle in his brows and that tension around his mouth meant Steen had done something. Fortunately, McConnell was not one to pry where she wasn’t being benefitted.
Instead, she picked two pamphlets off the pile of three and held them up for his opinion. “What are we feeling?”
The folded pieces of cardstock were plucked from her fingers and thumbed through attentively then tucked into his breast pocket. “Allergies?” Albert asked, already walking in the direction of the restaurant he’d chosen.
“No. How thoughtful of you to ask.”
The comment seemed to lessen the tension in his shoulders, earning a quirked brow and a sound that meant something synonymous to a positive reaction. “An allergic reaction at dinner would prove to be rebarbative.” He commented in that all-too-familiar even tone that suggested his mood had increased incrementally.
McConnell lagged behind enough to tug her coat tighter and start with a skip after him. Snow gathered in styled hair and the Vancouver streets were lively for a Friday night. The silence remained just as comfortable as it had within the eight years of voices on screens and earpieces.
“You’ve only looked at the Map once. Are you sure we’re going the right way?” She questioned skeptically, already reaching for his arm to angle the map to her gaze.
Albert allowed this because they were going the correct way and he was not going to argue with Dr. McConnell over directions.
It took her approximately twenty-two seconds—which is too long to read a simple map—before her brows furrowed deep with thought. “We missed a left,” She had decided and made a 180° turn.
Albert took a moment to consider the map—even sliding his shades down his nosebridge to properly absorb the grid, a gloved finger slid over the cardstock and traced the path before eyes flicked up again to the silhouette of his coworker making her way back down the snowy street. She was irrevocably wrong for a woman so capable in everything else. He filed the directional weakness somewhere it was acknowledged and fell into step behind her.
Watching his shadow engulf her own, McConnell hummed—a sound he knew meant she intended to say something odd and unprompted. “Did you know Vancouver has Canada’s largest aquarium? I saw it in a pamphlet earlier—I’m going to skip the marketing conference and go tomorrow. You know how the marketing conferences go: Nobody actually listens to the scientists.”
“I don’t frequent aquariums.” Albert disclosed, which was honest in the way he saw no appeal in fish tanks and was not raised to find that appeal. He did not address the choice to skip a conference in favor of fish and addressed the fact they were going the exact opposite direction before they were far enough that correcting the path felt tedious.
Albert leaned down slightly so his lower tone carried easier over the din of the street and explained in a way that was neither patient nor unkind: “We did not miss a left at all, Doctor.”
“Really?” McConnell laughed, cheeks flushing much to her chagrin. “How wrong was I?”
“Catastrophically.”
McConnell received this. Accepted the embarrassment; accepted the correction; and swore inwardly to never look so stupid again.
The restaurant was a welcome reprieve from the February cold, evident in the way both sets of shoulders fell and hands came out of pockets upon setting foot inside. The chosen restaurant wasn’t something that required a reservation a week in advance or a special dress code but it wasn’t McDonalds either.
Meals and drinks were ordered, served, and eaten over the sort of conversation that wasn’t corporate or clinical for once.
“What time are you going to the aquarium?”
“Pardon?” The food just nearly at her lips lowered and her eyes darted up to his face, searching for any reason behind the question. “Do you want to come?”
“Nobody listens to the scientists.” Albert reminded with cool certainty of a man who had also been at a marketing conference and found it just as intolerable.
McConnell’s expression bloomed into a smile at his roundabout way of asking to join. “I would love it if you joined me, Doctor. I’m going around two… I intend to sleep in and enjoy the free room service until then.”
Albert noted the faint dark circles under her eyes mirroring his own hidden behind purposefully dark shades; it was a signature look staple for people in their field. He hadn’t really considered the toll it may have taken on her as well. “Your sleep patterns remain—”
Before he could finish the dry comment she shot him a look. “Don’t act like you’re any better—those shades probably do wonders: Light sensitivity, dryness, eyebags. All hidden. We’re both up at odd hours. And whose fault is that but our own?”
The scolding was recognized then accepted with a nod and a wave to a waiter to bring more water.
“Around two then.”
Over the din of children doing their best to be quiet for the sake of the fish Albert observed one of the tanks, finding it a grating reminder that he should be back at the labs working on the B.O.W.s sitting in similar but not at all similar tanks. With a few months remaining in his time as an Umbrella Scientist meant precious hours that could be used to improve the uncoating process of the T-Virus was instead being spent on following a woman through dark halls blanched in blue light.
He acknowledged the sequence of his decisions then placed them somewhere unvisited.
In the brief moment Albert had taken to stare at a child who had run full speed into his leg then stared wordlessly at the parents, Dr. McConnell had gone missing. Following a short search he found the woman bent over a plaque describing a fish and drifted closer until the woman glanced up and smiled, clearly finding enjoyment in the same trapped fish, low ceilings, dark carpet, dim lighting, and faint musty smell that children found particularly stimulating.
“Listen to this and just guess, okay?” She didn’t wait for an answer and began to read from the plaque: “Longhorn cowfish are tropical fish in the boxfish family, closely related to pufferfish. Like boxfish, they have a rigid, boxy frame that gives them their unique appearance. The cowfish get their name from the long, horn-like spines on top of their head—and they’ll even charge like a bull if they feel threatened.”
Once finished McConnell turned to search her companion’s face, waiting for the precise tell that meant he had identified the fish. Albert held her stare for a second too long, debating if this was something worth entertaining before coming to the conclusion that he had willingly joined the excursion and brushing this off would not get him back to the Arklay Labs any faster.
The fish was, for lack of better words, utterly disappointing.
Finding that single precise tell—the slight curl of a lip, the tilt of a head as if a different angle could make the yellow cube floating by more exuberant—McConnell made an unguarded, genuine sound and stepped around him to follow the small square. “Silly, right?”
People did not often laugh so earnestly in his presence. People did not do half the things she did in his presence and he filed that away in the same spot he’d been filing everything about her and was finding, with increasing difficulty, that he visited that spot more often than he’d ever like.
Instead, Albert focused again on the tank and made a vague gesture. “It’s a misleading fish.”
For the rest of the excursion through the array of tanks and enclosures and increasingly sickening blue light for two scientists whose eyes had become significantly weakened by their own environment, McConnell angled herself in the precise spot Albert could now confidently find her at if he chose to: The right side, close enough to brush occasionally when she found it impossible to walk straight; close enough that a slight lowering of his head was enough to hear her better in crowded environments; close enough that specific action had become habitual.
She enjoys it. Albert concluded distantly, his focus ostensibly on something long and hiding in a porous rock while she said something he wasn’t entirely listening to but could recall if prompted. He made a comment about the creature, she made a bad joke about it and her gaze once again came up to his profile. The small action further confirmed the hypothesis: Dr. McConnell enjoyed the access that came with real proximity, she enjoyed being able to search her peer’s expression for reactions his posture and cadence did not allow through.
“It was creative wordplay.” He would give her only that. There was no reason to dismiss it.
In less professional lighting Dr. McConnell was a voluble creature; a fact Albert had known from eight years of late hours and later conversations where the professional topic began sharing a spotlight with unprofessional ones. What he had not anticipated in a face-to-face setting was that her focus on his expressions left very little attention for navigation or spatial awareness.
By now Albert understood she was not incapable of multitasking—he’d heard her manage up to four things at once at her lab—but he was aware of a certain directional weakness and the enthusiasm of finding oneself with a new resource and wanting to use it as much as possible before it’s no longer accessible.
He watched impartially as she once again nearly walked into a supporting pillar, allowing her the benefit of the doubt and a few extra seconds before reaching out an arm to redirect the other scientist. Albert found himself already acclimated to the instinct after the nth time where the conversation no longer even stalled after the correction. He’d taken to a guiding arm, a side-step she would follow, or a hand grasping the back of her shirt’s collar to redirect, slow, or steer followed by a dry remark of some sort.
“Your spatial awareness needs improvement, Doctor.” “Are you this heedless in a lab?” “Eyes forward.”
Accepting the corrections felt easy if not a little embarrassing for the lack of a simple life skill. McConnell made a small internal note on the much-needed improvisation and quieted down, focusing instead on the path in front of her.
Only once the entire aquarium had been thoroughly advanced through and every creature admired did the pair settle at the aquarium cafe for a snack and drinks and a tranquil moment for both to wind down. Scientists weren’t known for their social batteries, after all.
McConnell sipped something warm, her eyes set on the snow-matted trees glowing from the early setting sun of winter without actually absorbing anything from the scene. She liked the lack of social obligation that came with spending time with Dr. Wesker. She liked that, unlike some other individuals, a long break of silence wasn’t someone being upset at the other or one party finding the silence too unnerving and needing to fill it with thoughtless chatter.
The man seated across from her was observing the menu with a coffee he ordered at some point already steaming on the table in front of him while he searched for something to eat. Finally she caught it in this brief moment: The tells he has apparently been working quite hard on keeping away from her and now let slip because he assumed she was burnt out and staring at trees.
The menu he seemed to be ostensibly reading was held at the very bottom loose enough that a faint draft from a vent overhead was wobbling the thing and he had made no effort to correct it, his coffee was ordered but he’d only sipped from it twice, finally the occasional glance at a child somewhere in the space that was making an embarrassing amount of noise, the faint tightening of his jaw at the noticeably unattended spilled juice on the floor some distance away.
“You hate this.”
Albert paused, shifting his posture to a more attentive stance and setting the menu down. “Excuse me?”
“The aquarium. The menu too, apparently.” McConnell gestured faintly at the now-discarded thing on the table.
The man across the table from her clearly considered denying the accusation somewhere in his mind then landed in the precise comfortable spot where he decided such a performance was not necessary here. At least he considered. “What gave it away?” he asked in that smooth, neutral way that gave nothing away in other settings.
Explaining the tells she’d identified quickly could risk being shut out. Or it could risk him thinking she was creepy for paying too much attention. Neither were good. McConnell chose not to explain anything. “You didn’t have to come. The aquarium was… a little childish in retrospect. Especially compared to my career.”
Dr. Albert Wesker had always been a polished man with an air about him that suggested he’d been raised in an antithetical environment compared to her own. He was a man who wore gloves outside of the lab unironically, whose hair was always styled, whose glasses never came off, whose every article of clothing and accessory was from a brand designed to blend in and only made it look more expensive.
She’d assumed from the beginning that he wouldn’t visit an aquarium for any fanciful reason which is why she hadn’t asked until he volunteered last night. Again she had assumed—wrongfully this time—that perhaps he enjoyed this sort of outing.
She was wrong.
“Next time you can choose where we go.” It was an attempt at extending an olive branch or perhaps making up for the grating evening.
His coffee was picked up and placed down again in a different location on the table. An entirely unnecessary action that anyone outside of him performing the action would have been nothing but this was Dr. Albert Wesker and this was something.
McConnell paused, a faint frown forming—not because of him but because of a discrepancy she’d just caught. From all she knew and all that she had observed in the time they'd been face-to-face, he'd been oddly abiding. Her eyes shifted up, once again scanning his face for the answer to a question she hasn’t asked yet.
“You’re acting like this is the last time we’ll be seeing each other.” Albert turned to face her fully and said nothing. It was confirmation enough.
Mb for disappearing without notice lol. I posted a notice on my AO3 that I was gonna lock in for finals and then forgot to post one here
when i was free from school I immediately tried to do all my hobbies at once but also had writers block and art block so I played videogames