Friendly Advice

A/N: This story has NOTHING to do with any other Resident Evil continuity I'm writing currently. I, too, can live in the land of one-shots and vignettes. … I may have been listening to Weezer at some point during the writing of this.

So.

My girlfriend's hot.

This is not me flattering myself. Everyone ought to think their girlfriend is hot, in my opinion. But this isn't even me just being confident that I'm attracted to my girlfriend, and though it's nice, this isn't me being nice.

If I were being nice, I'd say she's a beautiful woman.

I'm nice to my girlfriend. In my opinion you should be nice to your girlfriend too, if you possibly can help it. Especially if you want her to keep being your girlfriend. I'm rather fond of my girlfriend, and I want to keep her that way. So I'm nice.

I pay for dinner (which you don't technically have to do all the time, but I do anyway). I call her when I can (thankfully my girlfriend understands the fact that when I'm on a mission, calling isn't an option), and by that I mean that once I crawl back out of the exhausted, half-dead state post-op, she's at the top of my calling list. If you're wondering why I don't call my mother, the answer is simple.

I don't tell my mother that I'm going to fight the undead. I may not have gone to college, but I'm not stupid.

I could go on about how I'm nice to my girlfriend, but this really isn't a primer for you on how to treat your lady. Your lady isn't my lady, and so being nice to yours the way I am to mine may not work.

See there's a difference.

My hot girlfriend throws her own punches.

Don't argue. I don't. She'd throw one at me if I did.

Of course she knows that she doesn't have to if she's not in the mood. I'm more than happy to put a nice, growling knuckle-full of hurt into anyone that looks at her the wrong way.

I try to be nice, but we've argued about that one. Over a bottle of peroxide, actually. No, not to drink. The asshole in question split my lip before I broke his nose for him.

She doesn't do things to get me into fights, but the woman is hot. Sometimes there's not a lot to do to avoid that sort of thing.

In solution to the argument we compromised. We have this look, kind of like a pro-wrestling tag-team trade off. I thought she was going to give it to me about you, but… well. You gave it for her.

I'm not too terribly surprised. Annoyed, sure, but surprised? Nah. When dating a hot woman, sometimes these things happen. Don't worry, I'm sure she's rinsed her mouth out with bleach by now. She's probably over it.

Hell, I'm over it. I can only hope you learned a lesson, but I don't care about you. I'm feeling a little smug at the moment. I stood up for what's mine. My undeniably hot girlfriend.

Mine.

I probably sound pretty boring and broken-record-like about saying that. So I guess I oughta give a few details on it.

Take a woman however you like – short hair or long, curvy or slender, well-endowed or modest – and give her confidence. In this case, confidence and electric strawberry lip gloss. I have no idea what's electric about the flavor, but whatever the company claims makes it that way… it is.

My lady's… five-six, one-fifty. I'm not going to give you, you slobbering pig, any definite measurements. That's not part of being hot. That's a qualification.

Or rather a quantification.

Knowing what size her breasts are doesn't tell you the way she leans them into me when she puts her arms around my neck. She knows what she's doing to me when she does it… how to get my attention if I'm distracted by something stupid. It can't tell you how warm she feels, or how she'll bump her forehead gently against mine and sing along no matter what the jukebox is playing.

I won't even talk about her at karaoke, I don't want to share those memories with someone like you.

The distance around her hips doesn't measure the way she slants them when she's leaned over a pool table, or the wink she throws over her shoulder when she knows she's winning and is rubbing my face in it. A number won't tell you how warm she is underneath my hands… and she's the kind of warm you can feel through her clothes.

And even if you know the color of that lip gloss… the label's name for the flavor of it won't get you a hint of the way it lingers on my lips when she kisses me. It's something she does so often that I had to ask her to stop getting the colored stuff. It looked like I was the one wearing it instead of her.

Nah, I can't tell you what makes her hot in a way you'd understand.

That's pretty obvious.

I did have to break your front teeth for you.

Just be glad it was me and not her. She'd probably have put a cold piece of steel against your balls and pulled the trigger.

She doesn't get the confidence from the Browning that she carries, she doesn't load it in with the .9mm slugs she puts into it. That confidence is there without the gun, when it's only a mean left hook and a stop-you-in your-tracks glare from those beautiful baby blues of hers.

Under normal circumstances, I can be considered a law-abiding, reasonable citizen.

Now normally no one has to see me grapple monsters or repel down ravines … knife fight on catwalks, aim a sniper rifle across a gorge or fire rocket launchers.

I was having a normal evening. I was looking forward to finishing my one and only beer, getting beaten in pool by a beautiful woman who was playing anything but fair, and taking her home with me.

I didn't get my normal evening.

I got you.

As a matter of fact, I got you in the solar plexus, the left kidney, and your front teeth.

Probably the reason she's so firm about throwing her own punches is because she has seen me do some of that stuff I just mentioned. That and she knows I've got a job that doesn't look kindly on assault charges showing up on my record.

You know what my hot, loving girlfriend doesn't know? Don't look at me like that, she doesn't. She's waiting out in the lobby, prepared to bail me out when the statements fall out. I bet she's flashed her CCW three times by now to make the duty officers calm down about the Browning that she's fidgeting with. And she's completely unaware.

Oh she knows we're both back here.

She probably doesn't think I'm talkin' to you. Why would I? I just made you swallow one of your own teeth. Nah, she doesn't think about this part. She's just worried I'm going to get in trouble. Probably wondering how long before she can take me home and check to see if I need stitches in my hand.

But even though my lady is tough, and knows a lot – she's grappled monsters herself, and when the bullets ran out, she pulled a knife and kept going – she doesn't know this.

That monster-grappling job of mine tends to erase things like you that end up on my record.

So do what you want. It's a free country. You're allowed to press charges. And you may get me stuck here overnight.

But tomorrow I'll be out, and headed home to my blue-eyed vixen.

I don't think the people at your house will have blue eyes. Or if they do, I don't think you'd call any of them a vixen.