#pitcher x reader

Muscles up your side cramped with a vengeance as you willed your legs to continue onward. Pain, hot and insistent, stitched through your ribs, and flared every time you took a gasping breath. God, why had you ever picked this trial? Vindicate the Guilty was never a cake-walk — you should have just done Cancel the Autopsy, something that was brainless and easy — but the allure of extra reward that Easterman promised had been too much. If only you hadn’t been so greedy, you wouldn’t have been caught up like this. Your boots slammed on the ground, green-hued vision swung wildly from side-to-side as you attempted to make sense of where you were. Somewhere dark. The flayed skeleton of the courthouse’s still-in-construction section rose to meet you on all sides, bare wood and jagged nails threatening you at every step.

Ragged breathing matched yours, alongside incensed, guttural shrieks that echoed behind you. Your pursuer.

An angry Southern accent, spat out around a cigarette. “Hold it right there, shitbird!”

Scratch that. Two pursuers. 

Your wildly pumping heart sank. You cursed everything you could in your head; the trial, the courthouse, your teammates, your misguided altruism, yourself— though stopped shy at mentally shit-talking Easterman, because you swore he knew what you were thinking. Somehow. Always. Why had you offered to run interference while the others grabbed the acid? Putting your life on the line so carelessly was going to cost you one day, and with every painful, exhausted step, it was starting to feel like that day was near. Maybe even now.

Your fist flung out, snagged around a floor-to-ceiling wooden beam, and you hooked a right, using it as a pivot point; somewhere behind you, a molotov exploded against the battered scaffolding. Terror spiked in every limb. The distinct feeling of being closed in on began to crush you like a steel trap, and you fought the dumb, primitive urge to scream and run blindly. You were better than a prey animal. You had a brain, damn it, even if it was being flushed with cortisol and adrenaline to its physical limit.

A yawning gap of darkness beckoned you. Without question, you followed; although your thighs burned from exertion, you dropped to a deep crouch and duck-walked through the little gap in the slats. It opened into a dark hallway, littered with crates and miscellaneous detritus, the same as all the rest, and added further to your disorientation. At the top of the green wash of your field of view, your battery life blinked down ominously. The clunk of leather boots, offset pairs to indicate that both were still hunting for you, rang through the thin walls and peeling insulation. Still hunting, yes, but you had seemingly lost them. Not that you were going to leave anything up to luck. You needed to get back with the others and regroup. Hopefully your fuck-up had provided enough of a disastrous distraction that they’d been able to scavenge the acid from the other nooks and crannies of the upstairs construction zone. If not, your chances felt slim to none; your progress in the trial had been hard-fought, shoulder already aching from where the Berserker in the downstairs lobby had clipped you earlier.

You turned on your heel and speed-walked blindly to the next door, hoping against all hope for a way to loop back to the front. All that you knew was that you were still being hunted, still pursued, and you were running out of time and chances to get away—

Thump. The door flung backwards just as you reached it, and you collided immediately with the person opening it. Not a Reagent. Why would it be a Reagent? No, it was the last Ex-Pop you wanted to see in such a tight, winding space. It was the fucking Pusher.

At least he sounded similarly winded. There was some small comfort in knowing that the Ex-Pops were — questionably — also human; not invincible, just drugged damn near close to it and provided with real weapons that weren’t pilfered from back alleys and construction sites. The Pusher seemed a particularly egregious example, with his metal-braced limbs splinted to high heaven and his tall, thin frame hunched over in a permanent hobble. A “Doh!” wheezed out of him as your chest thudded against his own, ESOP smacking against the bone of his sternum, exposed by the loose flap of his apron.

Whatever bullshit relief you felt was instantly eclipsed by rightful trained fear, especially as he seemed to realize who you were at the same time you realized who he was. 

“Don’t be afraid, baby!” Long, slim fingers leapt up at you from the darkness beyond the immediate glow of your goggles, and you couldn’t help the shriek that tore past your lips as he grabbed at your ESOP. Nails, chipped and unkempt, snarled in your shirt above your gear. “The doctor’s in.”

Maniacal laughter bounced in your ears as you stumbled forward, caught off-guard by the strength of his grip. There was a flash of sinewy muscles that flexed along skinny arms, dotted with gnarled pustules and scarring, as he tugged you into a horribly familiar position. You knew this. You knew what was coming. The acrid, bitter spray of gas, turned neon green by night vision, pushing into your nose, your mouth, your lungs. Everywhere. Forever. It settled like a pollutant, permeated every inch of you, and felt as though you were being shoved underwater with a cloth sack over your face. No air to breathe, just pulsing veins along the walls and filling up your mouth and the inexorable march of the Skinner Man, his approach heralded by echoing screams and melting hallucinations.

Fuck no. Fuck. No.

Although you were exhausted from the previous chase, something like a second wind ballooned your lungs, and your hands flung out desperately. One fist wrapped securely around his gas nozzle and shoved it up and away. Anything to keep it away from your face. Your other hand smacked against the side of his jaw, obscured by the thick, cured leather of his gas mask. On instinct, your fingers curled, nails raking over his skin; his entire frame tensed at the sudden, unexpected pain.

“Oh— agh, tricky little bitch, watch the face!” he spat, and you would have laughed at the ridiculousness of how normal he sounded, if not for the gas nozzle swinging dangerously low above your head like a Damoclean sword.

You grappled for long, torturous seconds in the doorway, grunts of exertion and bitter swears exchanged between you both. A tremble started in the arm propping up the gas nozzle — your only warning. Fear sank your stomach. Your battery was low, it was pitch black back here, and you had no idea where the nearest antidote was. The thought of dying to the Skinner Man’s slow, sloughing drain — writhing on the floor and sobbing incoherently until you breathed your last — struck enough fight back into you to give it one final push.

“Fffucking— gh, fuck you, asshole!” you snarled, near incoherent, flecks of spit flying from your bared teeth. You dragged your free hand down, fighting the way he attempted to secure a grip on your wrist, and struck your elbow across his throat.

The prominent bulge of his Adam’s apple gave way, mashed beneath the flat of your arm, and you both felt and heard the air wheeze out of his trachea. Some of it blew over your face through the filter of his mask’s nozzle, stale from constant gas inhalation.

He stumbled to the side just as your arm gave way, and you lunged at the chance. The chance. All you needed was a chance, just a fucking little bit of luck. Weight thrust forward, you made a break for it, battery ticked down to its last, and dove for the safety of darkness. He didn’t have night vision. It wouldn’t matter if you didn’t either.

Or, rather, it wouldn’t have mattered.

It was all just a stupid hypothetical in the end. Your fleeting dreams of escape were crushed as he swung around on instinct, nozzle-first, and cracked you across the back of the head with it hard. Stars exploded behind your eyes, accompanied by a similarly fantastic burst of pain. A pitiful little noise yelped out of your dry mouth and you stumbled forward a few steps before succumbing to gravity and hitting the ground hard, still carried by your earlier momentum. Oxygen was knocked out of you with a noise that was terribly similar to the one that you had wrung out of the Pitcher not seconds before. Agony throbbed across the back of your skull as you gasped on the floor, drained from the chase and the fight and beyond dazed.

You were fucked. Unbelievably fucked.

Hobbled steps. A large, spindly hand slapped down on your shoulder. Fingers dug in and yanked, hard enough that you felt the joint creak in its socket as he hauled you over yourself and flipped you onto your back.

You’d seen more than your fair share of horrors. Who at Sinyala hadn’t? You’d been chased by Coyle and stuck with that goddamn stun baton, hunted down by Gooseberry and had muscle and tendon pulverized with her drill, even had fucking Franco blow out parts of your leg with his homemade buckshot. Been burned by the Pitcher’s molotovs, sliced by the Night Hunter’s machete, had shivs dug into your gut from Ex-Pops masquerading as your teammates. The list of things you had borne witness to — the list of things you had done — was long and nightmarish. All just for the doctors to stitch you up and keep sending you back.

And yet, somehow, this seemed to be the most frightening yet.

Maybe it was because you knew. You knew what would happen, you knew how awful psychosis felt, knew exactly how your body temperature dropped as the Skinner Man drained the life from your aching body bit by bit. There was no horror Sinyala and its team of fucked-up scientists could concoct that could eclipse the ones created by your own mind, aided by psychosis gas. Loved ones crying and screaming as their mouths were pried open around a whirring drill, friends and old coworkers begging for mercy as stun batons violated their most intimate places. Organs and other human offal raining down in an endless parade of suffering. Easterman’s distorted voice above it all, playing in an endless loop of disappointment and condescension. You knew how you would die, terrified and alone, soaked in your own blood and vomit and waste, body gone cold and added to the endless ranks of Reagent corpses ground to slurry. A waste. A waste of Easterman’s time and love, a waste of Sinyala’s resources, a waste of a Reagent.

The Pusher standing over you, propped up by a metal-studded leg planted on each side of your abdomen, inspired more terror in you than anything you’d ever known. Silly. Stupid. Some backfire of Easterman’s conditioning. Not even Coyle seemed to hold this much sway over you. Even then, it drove you to beg, and the desperation spilling from your lips surprised even you.

“Please, God, don’t!” you yelped, and brought your arms up to cover your face. An impromptu mask of your own flesh, like your skin shoved against your mouth and nose would save you.

The Pusher laughed — you saw how it shook his gangly frame — and leaned down; the gas mask invaded your field of view as he attempted to pry your arms away. The gas nozzle waved ominously near. “Be cool, bitch. Goin’ through withdrawal, I can tell. I can alllllways tell.” He dragged out the L, voice rough and raspy as it filtered through his mask with another wheeze of air. His voice dropped an octave as he leaned a few inches closer. “That’s why I’m here, baby. To make it all better.”

“‘m not, please, I’m not. Please, anything— for fuck’s sake, just don’t, I’ll do anything you want, please—” Pathetic. If you weren’t so scared, you would have cringed at how embarrassing you sounded. So far from the confident, efficient Reagent that Easterman wanted you to be. Just a crying, sniveling body. Just an animal begging for its life.

That last part seemed to catch his attention. He loosened his grip on your arm and pulled back a bit — his long, broken nails scraped over your skin as his fingers slid away. Shaking violently, you peeled your arms away from your face and stared up at him; the tears that welled in your eyes blurred your vision behind your goggles. The battery blinked down to red, but it didn’t matter; fingers that weren’t your own flicked them up, exposing your entire face to the leering Ex-Pop. A gentle scraping noise trailed into your ears as his nails skimmed over the metal of your goggles.

Hot tracks ran down your face as the water tension on your lash line broke. Wide-eyed and still hopelessly crying — the little sobs wracked you uncontrollably even as you tried to quiet yourself into something lucid — your gaze met his. Or rather, met the huge, empty voids of his mask’s lenses. There was just barely enough light to see by — enough to determine large blocks of shadow and the pale, near-ghostly tinge of his grayed skin.

“Anything, huh?” he asked, and sounded surprisingly coherent. Then he broke into a delirious giggle, and the facade was lost instantly. Like there was some joke you weren’t in on. “That’s twisted of you, baby. But I get it. Withdrawal makes you do funny things.” The gas nozzle lowered into view, looming out of the darkness, and you flinched away violently — but the spray of gas never came. The hooked metal just prodded at your face, nudged at the curve of your cheek and the flesh of your lip. It was cold against your searing-hot skin. His voice trailed in and out, as if he was musing to himself behind the mask. “Pretty cute, even when you’re banged up… I guess it’s not unheard of for a doctor to have sex with his patients.” 

The last sentence made your stomach sink right through the floor.

He couldn’t possibly— not—

Pressing his advantage by lieu of your lips parting in shock, the sprayer pushed into your mouth. Metal indented your tongue. A fresh sob balled up in your chest and trembled out of you around the nozzle. Anticipation and never-ending stress sang loud and discordant in your veins, but the proverbial shoe never dropped. The gas never clicked on. Just a perverse exploration of your features by an insane goddamn Ex-Pop. Slight movement caught your eye; his mask slowly tilted side to side as he studied you.

“Tell you what.” The nozzle pulled free of your mouth; you caught a glimpse of how your spit shone on the scuffed metal, and nausea rocked you. “Let’s have a little fun, baby. Why don’t we use that mouth of yours? See if it’s good for something besides all that crying.” The last word left him with amusement; you heard the way his grin stretched, lazy and leering, behind his mask. “Scratch my back, I scratch yours. Let you go on your merry little way.”

He spoke so matter-of-factly, like he was discussing a frank business deal, but the manic excitement laced in his tone was hard to miss.

You were many things. Stupidly altruistic, apparently, yes — but you were also a good Reagent. The callousness that Easterman desired had not been beaten into you yet, but you had an unbelievable survival instinct. And right then, your gut told you — for whatever reason — that the delusional Ex-Pop’s word would hold.

And there was no getting out of it anyway. Either you could do it willingly and swallow your disgust or he’d drag your mouth where he wanted it and gas you for the hell of it.

Your eyebrows drew together in disbelief and pure distaste. He laughed above you at the way you cringed; the sound scraped all the way up his throat and filtered through his mask. Still, you managed to force a swallow despite the dry tackiness of your mouth, all the moisture long since cried out.

“Okay,” you said hoarsely. A sniffle interrupted your words. Whatever would have come next failed you, and you just nodded as if to really seal your fate.

“‘s what I like to hear, baby!” came the reply from above. “Not that it woulda mattered either way.” Manic laughter bubbled through his sentence.

Just get it over with. Just get it over with. You’d done worse. Ground bodies up, dug around in guts for keys, sawed living people open and shoved packets of poisoned drugs snug up against their still-beating hearts. Sucking a dick was nothing.

You weren’t sure if he mistook the way you scrambled up to your elbows and then further into a sitting position for excitement, but it delighted him either way. One hand slid down the front of his apron; you watched with no small amount of horror (and some very, very small amount of sick fascination) as his long fingers sank to the junction of his thighs and squeezed at his cock over the battered drape of leather. A long sigh whistled out of him.

“Yeah, ‘s gonna be good, baby,” he huffed, pawing at his cock one more time for good measure before letting his hand fall away.

Movements jerky, you all but lunged forward on your knees now, the gray mist of dissociation hazing over your brain. Your fingertips skated over the leather, touch obviously shaking — slender fingers with bony knuckles snatched your wrist and you jumped violently. Your gaze instantly flicked up to that impassive mask, eyes wildly searching the discs of the lenses.

“Slow down,” he said with a reedy laugh. “Gonna blow my fucking high.” A clatter off to your side made you jolt; you realized after a beat that he’d discarded the gas nozzle entirely. With his now free hand, he gripped his cock again, the tent more visible. “I got time, baby, don’t you?”

The question was sardonic and made you bristle through your haze of fear and exhaustion. Fucking asshole. No, you didn’t have time, you didn’t want to do this, any second Coyle could find himself wandering through this part of the courthouse and catch you on your goddamn knees and deliver a shock right to your brain that would well and truly kill you. The Pusher fucking knew it too, because his rhetorical question cracked himself up again.

His fingers tightened in the leather and he tugged the skirt of the apron to the side with jerky, excited movements. The bulge was much more noticeable through the stained boxers he wore beneath — you tried your best not to think about what exactly was splattered across the fabric — and he at least did you the favor of keeping the apron from falling back in your face. Your lids squeezed shut for a second, and you took a breath to steady yourself; this close, you could smell him, sweat and old blood and the acrid tang of the gas that seemed to linger around him like a miasma. His skin beneath the apron was just as marred as the visible swathes; tumors and scarring stretched across the flat, near-concave plane of his abdomen and trailed up his visible ribs. Veins slunk below the waistband of his boxers. You swore you saw one jump and twitch.

Your fingertips curled in the fabric and tugged it down; it snagged for a moment on his cock but came free easily enough. He was on the better side of half-hard, and the head was flushed a deep, vivid pink with gnarled veins running up and down the sides. It curved off to the left, long and thin.

It was normal.

It was almost sickening how normal it was. If you closed your eyes, you could pretend that this was something else, someone else, anywhere else. But the feeling of the hard exposed wood beneath your knees and the ESOP pinching your chest and the wheezing laughter above your head kept you from actually managing to slip away mentally.

Trepidation stubbornly stayed your hand. The Pusher, seemingly tired of your hesitation, slid his fingers into your hair. “Don’t be shy now, baby,” he crooned, voice tight and rasping on the edges. “Relax. Say ah for me.” A snicker tinged his words.

The grip near your scalp tightened and pulled your head in; you felt the heat throbbing off the tip against your lips before it even touched them. You curled your tongue in your mouth and tried to work up some last-second spit before the flare of the head shoved against your chapped lips; precum smeared over your mouth for a second or two.

You said ah. 

Even though you felt sick, your lips parted and your jaw eased open; the tip slid into your mouth with ease and a full-body shudder wracked the Pusher. Even just the head enveloped by your warm, wet heat had his knees close to buckling, judging by the tremors in his braced legs. His fingers twitched against your head and tugged again; another inch or two pushed into your mouth. The weight of his cock settled on your tongue, the skin blood-hot and tangy with sweat. Unwashed, you realized with a cringe, and the reflexive expression scraped your teeth along his length. He jerked, a moan leaving him, and you reeled for a second.

“Fuuuuck yes, baby, just what the doctor ordered,” he groaned, drawing the first word out languidly. “You’re a dirty little bitch, huh?”

I’m not. You wanted to defend yourself desperately, but with an Ex-Pop’s cock crammed in your mouth (the fucking Pusher, no less), you realized that really any kind of argument that you weren’t some cheap whore wouldn’t stand for long. Still, you made some kind of noise around his length; all it did was vibrate up to him and draw another sound of pleasure from behind the mask.

His hips pushed shakily forward as his hand pulled you closer yet; you were already drooling around the intrusion, and an embarrassingly slick noise eked out around his cock. The veins along him pulsed and twitched as you half-heartedly sucked; salty precum bloomed on your tongue, and the overproduction of drool in your mouth made you swallow it automatically. As if triggered by the flex of your throat muscles, the Pusher groaned again and secured a better grip in your hair — you glanced up at his obscured face for a second, only to immediately choke as he shoved his cock further into your mouth.

Instantly, your hands came up to brace on his thighs; you gagged, coughing around the obstruction in your mouth as tears swelled on your lash line. It was what he wanted, evidently — his cock twitched on your tongue as it slid back just enough for you to catch a snatch of air around it before he yanked your head back down. Every fucking time he managed to hit your uvula, and you choked violently, drool spilling in ropes past the seam of your lips as you tried desperately not to vomit. Your nostrils flared in a helpless bid for air, and tears trickled over the swell of your cheek as the Pusher fucked your face. Obscene sounds filled the dingy space of the half-constructed courthouse hallway; your wet gags, the sound of his balls slapping against your chin, the huffing moans and delirious words that spilled near endlessly through the filter of his gas mask.

“That’s it, bitch, just— fuck, yeah, just take it, relax, take it in,” he slurred, the long line of his body hunched over your kneeling form. All you could do was take it in — although you weren’t doing it well. Coughs wracked your throat, and half-gags and spasms of your jaw scraped your teeth across his length. The flare of his head knocked against your soft palate, dragged back against the roof of your mouth. Drool. So much drool. Down your chin, down the length of him, down to his balls, dripping in long striped stains on your shirt and glossy strands on your ESOP. You all but seized around him; bile rose steadily up from your gut, that low esophageal burn making itself persistent and known, and, oh God, please don’t throw up on him.

Out of pure self-preservation, you fought his grip well enough and yanked your head back, gasping desperately for air with tears hot on your face. Breaths frenzied and disoriented, you barely noticed the way he reached back for something — panting heavily himself — even with a hand still tight in your hair. You should have been watching. Should have been vigilant. Through the blur of tears, you caught only a second of the gray flash of metal before a thin, hooked object slid in your open mouth — and you sucked in air to scream right as the gas clicked on.

“Oh, baby, the things you’re gonna see…”

Everywhere. Everything. The psychosis gas flooded your drool-slicked mouth all the way up to your sinuses and spilled out your nostrils. Hazy green arabesques curled up past your eyes. No sound left your vocal cords. Gas rushed over them just the same, sinking down into your lungs with the great, frantic, instinctive pulls of your breathing. The acrid tang of battery acid, of electric shocks, of pure, distilled fear bloomed on your tongue along with the salty remnants of precum, and you attempted to throw yourself backwards in sheer terror. A ripping pain at your scalp reminded you in very short order of the Pusher’s hand still tangled in your hair, and you didn’t even have time to make a noise past an agonized groan before he was pulling your head back to his cock — standing stiff and proud and completely soaked in your spit, even in the dim light.

The shadows around him, behind him, everywhere began to melt. Sobs wracked up from your chest as he pushed back into your pliant, gaping mouth with a satisfied groan, throwing his head back and letting the long, pale curve of his throat bob as he swallowed. “Don’t wriggle, bitch, or I’m gonna have to— hah, shit, gonna have to manhandle ya.”

You tried your best to focus on the sinewy planes of his body, but it was no use. Your malfunctioning brain short-circuited — visions of his skin melting and his organs sliding out plagued you even when your reddened eyes shut. Keys, gore, meat grinders, saws, the velveteen feel of intestines on your face — you writhed as you cried, desperate for a reprieve from the hallucinations that simply wasn’t coming.

“Cut the— the lid off that, hah, third eye, huh? Seein’ it yet, baby? Isn’t it just— fucking shit,” he bit out, voice jumping an octave for the interruption as he pumped his cock into your slack, drooling mouth. “—just beautiful?”

In your ears, his voice distorted, echoes and rewinds of it crawling into your shattered brain. Droning bass started — maybe it was your heartbeat, maybe it was something else — and then you heard it. The footsteps of the Skinner Man, unbelievably loud and quiet at once. Tentacles flickered into view, and you felt it, felt the tug at your vital organs, felt the steady drain of your energy. Misshapen skulls, melting viscera — all of it danced across your warped vision. And worst of all, the drug danced across your frame, loosened your muscles, and let a weak thrum of arousal start to twitch and flicker between your legs. Not so much stimulation as it was the complete malfunction of your body, but the constant thrust of the Pusher’s hips against your mouth wasn’t… helping? Hurting? Every slick push down your throat made that little flicker run hotter and hotter. The Skinner Man opened a door off to your side, somewhere — or was it behind the Pusher? He was accompanied not by that dark, pulsing haze but by a glow, an odd glow — you’d never seen him with light before—

An almost affronted snarl ripped through the haze. You dragged your bleary eyes up and they shot wide.

Not the Skinner Man.

The Pitcher.

The very one you must have been running from earlier. He hung in the doorway, gloved fingers tight around the glass of a molotov; the flame flickered and spiraled at his hip. Choked, ugly sounds — laughably similar to the ones wrung from the back of your throat — ripped out from behind his mask as he stared at the two of you. Instinct tore the reins from your hands, and you immediately attempted to pull off and run. He wanted you dead.

Didn’t he?

It didn’t matter. 

Around him, the doorway warped and twisted. The locs swept back behind his mask elongated into twitching, writhing tentacles, the gas nozzle that obscured his mouth melted into a tooth-studded skeletal grin. Fuck, fuck, the Skinner Man — as you watched, the Pitcher’s form gave way to the now-familiar suit and tie. It was so dark. Every shadow was alive, pulsing and virile, throbbing in tandem with the Pusher’s cock still deep in your mouth.

The backwards motion of your head was halted by the Pusher palming your scalp and keeping you right where he wanted you; another long groan dragged from behind his mask as your throat muscles spasmed against his tip. Your nails raked at his thighs, but all it did was make him shiver and laugh. You were going to die, killed by the Skinner Man half-masquerading as the Pitcher, burned from the inside out and vitals drained into nothingness.

A snarl from off to your side. The Pitcher was back, the hallucination of the Skinner Man gone, and he made several half-shrieks as he stalked closer. Molotov bottles clinked ominously on his hips as he approached; the flicker of the lit one’s flame made you cringe, even with your mouth full.

“C’mon, man,” the Pusher wheezed, fingers tightening down on your head. “You’re harshing my fucking mellow here.” The words fought to come out, struggled their way through spit and pleasure and the asthmatic pull of drug-shredded lungs.

A guttural huff from the Pitcher — near dismissive in nature, you thought deludedly as your head spun and spun and spun — was the only answer. Heavy boots, long-stained with gore, clunked against the bare plywood floor, until he stood with his hips on your eye level. Ropes crisscrossed the front of his groin, securing the canvas skirt he wore over his jeans and acting as effective holsters for his firebombs. Scarred brown skin overlaid with battered leather straps filled the rest of your vision — his bare torso.

You were far past shame or embarrassment. Struggling to stay afloat, your brain fought valiantly against wave after wave of hallucinations; sluggishness plagued your limbs, and lances of sharp pain up your spine burned as the telltale indicator that the Skinner Man was sapping your strength — rotting you from inside.

Gloved fingers pushed brusquely at the hand secured on the back of your head, and replaced them with little difficulty, although the Pusher let loose several croaking complaints. Leather creaked, the sound echoing in your ringing ears, and the Pitcher’s grip tightened before he yanked your head backwards. You gasped, the sound raw and painful; a thick strand of spit connected your bruised lips to the flushed head of the Pusher’s cock. Every breath in was desperate and agonized; your throat felt as though it was bleeding from the combined abuse of the drugs and the Pusher’s… attentions. You stared up at the Pitcher with reddened, tear-shiny eyes, reduced to a trembling mess on your knees.

Behind his mask, the Pitcher’s eyes were heavy. Dead. No light, nothing to signify humanity. Just slate-gray irises and blown-out pupils, heavily lidded despite the dark. The severe planes of his mask caught and reflected the flicker of the molotov he held, and he brought it close to your face, enthused with how your tears caught the light. Harsh breaths tore out from his chest, the bare, scarred skin rising and falling.

“We had a deal, man,” the Pusher complained, clearly uncaring of literally having been caught with his pants down. “What, you’re just gonna…” He trailed off with a frustrated noise, gestured loosely with spindly hands. “Not cool.”

A minute tilt of the head was all that the Pitcher gave to signify he’d even heard the other Ex-Pop; his eyes flicked to the side for a second before they trained back in on you and your tortured expression. You heaved, wanted desperately to gag, anything. You’d never felt so sick and light-headed in your entire goddamn life. Every second that ticked by, the Skinner Man’s influence grew heavier; you swore your vision was darkening at the edges.

The Pitcher holstered his lit molotov — didn’t even extinguish the flame — and held an expectant gloved hand out to the Pusher, who scoffed like he’d been asked something unreasonable. You sagged in the Pitcher’s grip, eyes unfocused as you saw photonegatives of the Skinner Man’s melted features every time you blinked.

“Tch,” the Pusher snarked, and dug something out of the pocket of his apron. “You people are a real fuckin’ buzzkill. Ruining my high.”

A short growl from the Pitcher. Two fingers probed at your slack lips; you offered little resistance, and in short order they pushed further into your mouth. The metal of the strike cap on the Pitcher’s middle finger weighed heavy on your tongue; the taste of it only added to the flavors of acid and sweat and salt swirling in your abused mouth. Spit slicked along the leather of his glove. Weak groans and drool slipped past the plug of his fingers; pitiful little noises that you were barely aware you were making. At least you wouldn’t die with the Pusher’s cock down your throat. You could handle a few fingers.

And then they hooked on your jaw and pushed down. You heard the creak of your temporomandibular joint under the strain, but he didn’t go further. The digits pulled out of your mouth and another metal tube slid in — in fear of getting another dose of gas, you let out a weak yelp and attempted to sway backwards, your survival instinct still trying its best to save the dregs of your life.

Huff. Gas filled your mouth again, but not in a thick, corrosive blast. Little puffs. Squeezes. A sterile taste bloomed over your tongue, numbed your throat.

Antidote.

Blessed, blessed relief. Lucidity came back to you in cool washes of conscientiousness. The hallucinations melted back to the shadows, inert darkness once more. Screaming faded away, no longer plaguing your eardrums. The Skinner Man collapsed in on himself like a dead star, packed away into nothingness like he’d never been there at all.

You gasped for air; one hand came up to clutch at your raw throat. The emptied antidote was discarded somewhere in the dark, clattering and bouncing against the plywood. Slowly, the edges of your eyesight came back into full view. They had been shadowed regardless, but not having complete tunnel vision was a plus. Exhaustion settled over you in a wave as you regained control of your body; your abused brain felt as though it were on the verge of seeping out of your ears. Every thought was liquid slurry; anything intelligible had to be forced through a mental sieve.

The Pitcher was breathing heavier now. Painful sounds — this close, you could hear the way the air whooshed over his ruined vocal cords, the way his breaths nearly bubbled in his gasoline-charred lungs. You didn’t know what to say. Not that you would have even been able to speak. Maybe thank you, but somewhere, deep in your gut, you knew that it wasn’t altruism. Eye for an eye. Trading your respective pounds of flesh. The Pitcher did not save your life to be kind.

Gloved fingers tightened on your scalp and pushed your head back towards the Pusher’s noticeably still-hard cock.

No, you were pretty sure the Pitcher saved your life so you’d be warm when it was his turn to fuck you, too.

Taken by surprise, you yelped and gagged as the slick head pushed past the seam of your lips for what felt like the thousandth time. Each time he fucked into your mouth, another thread of your consciousness felt as though it frayed to the point of unravel. The Pusher groaned and his hips instantly jerked against your face; the tip slid along the roof of your mouth and nearly tagged your uvula before the Pitcher tugged your head back with an excited-sounding snarl, his interest piqued.

Heady from the remnants of drugs still pumped through your system, you realized with a nauseating throb that the simmering arousal between your legs had not been wiped with the antidote. Not a hallucination. Real. It was real, it was very real, and each time the Pitcher pushed your head down the length of the Pusher’s cock, it pulsed against the inseam of your pants.

You were used. You had always been used. Since the moment you arrived at Sinyala, since that first introductory trial where you’d shredded every vestige of your identity, and, in Easterman’s own words, become “all reamed out” and ready for therapy. All you and your fellow Reagents were just vassals of flesh, empty and ready to be filled by orders. Objectives. Easterman wanted you empty so he could fill you with what he saw fit.

Was it so bad to disregard his command, just this once? Fill yourself with something that wasn’t some gruesome objective? It was base. Primal. More than a little disgusting. But for the first time in days-weeks-months (time was beyond relative and more meaningless here than anything else), you felt human.

Filled. You could be filled. You could be used.

Eye for an eye. The thought came back to you again. Trading your pound of flesh.

At least you could wring a little pleasure from it.

The Pitcher controlled your motions tightly, the movement of his arm jerky with underlying strength. All that practice from chucking molotovs at Reagents’ heads full-speed had certainly amounted to something. Back and forth. Back and forth. Your lids flickered shut as you did your best to relax your mouth — though judging by the way the Pusher groaned when your jaw faltered, he didn’t mind the scrape of teeth along his length.

“Fu-huh-ck yeah, baby,” he laughed, tone as sleazy as ever, wheeling his arms back to prop himself up against nearby scaffolding. The liquid in the tank on his back churned ominously. “Feels good, tastes good, don’t it? Sure feels good to me.”

Some choked little sound eked out around his cock. Your tongue curled along its underside, caught a rivulet of precum just as it seeped from the tip.

Gentle metal rattling caught your ear, and with a start you realized that the Pusher was literally shaking at the knees with the effort of holding himself up on splinted legs against the slick pleasure of your mouth. Close. He was close. At least some part of the nightmare was close to over.

The Pitcher released your skull. You took the chance to suck in air; the head of the Pusher’s cock bobbed near your face, heat radiating off it. The Ex-Pop whined from behind his gas mask, voice croaking from gas inhalation and aborted pleasure.

“C’mon, man, be fucking cool, I was close— hey, watch it!” The Pitcher interrupted the Pusher with a heavy hand on his shoulder — his fingers still wet with your own spit — and forced the lanky Ex-Pop to his knees. He swore as he crumpled, his limbs bending awkwardly to avoid irritating the screws driven through his shins. The tank swirled and churned heavily, the weight winning in his losing battle against gravity, and he settled on the floor with a thump and several more complaints, knees spread out on the plywood.

Now that both of you were in the same position — despite the fact he was just a bit taller than you — you stared into the voids of his mask’s lenses; the warped reflection of your tear-stained face caught your eye.

The Pitcher barked out a snarl — it almost sounded like words, but not quite — and spun on his heel. A heavy hand settled on your shoulder now as he swung a leg over your calves and stood behind you — and then the weight slid from your shoulder to the nape of your neck. And then down an inch or two to your upper back. And then it pressed. Unrelenting, unmoving, insistent. You gave in, a tremulous breath caught in your chest and fluttering like a butterfly with half a wing.

Down, down, down you went, leaning forward until your lips hovered near the Pusher’s cock. Your hands splayed beneath you to support your weight, the skin of your palms abraded by the rough-hewn grain of the cheap plywood. He seemed to get the idea right when you did, because manic delight ratcheted up his voice an octave or two.

“Sure, baby, everybody’s invited,” he sleazed, giving his stiff hips a little thrust that knocked his cock up close enough to smear the head across your lips. “You’ll like this party, sweetheart, don’t worry.” The words cracked and gave way to hyena-esque laughter, and before you could rebut, he splayed thin fingers across your scalp again and pushed your head back down.

On your hands and knees now, you swallowed the Pusher’s cock again; your compliance lasted for all of three seconds before you jumped and yelped at the feeling of fingers digging into the waistband of your pants. Without fanfare, your bottoms were wrestled down over the curve of your ass, yanked down just far enough along with your underwear to reveal your cunt to the stale air of the half-constructed courthouse hallway. A searing-hot flush washed over your face, and you made several embarrassed noises around the Pusher’s cock; he snickered at your fluster and watched shamelessly as the Pitcher pushed your pants down far enough to be suitable — until they bunched at your ankles.

“There we go,” the Pusher cooed, rasping voice laced heavily with seedy arousal. “Not being a little bitch about it now, huh?”

The plywood bit into the skin of your knees.

You’d never felt so violated, and you’d never felt so shamefully aroused. Even on nights where you snuck a hand beneath your Murkoff-designated sleepwear and worked yourself to a silent finish — always visualizing Easterman’s praise as your motivator — you’d never been this wet. The Pitcher sucked in an excited, raw-sounding gasp, and leaned over your back; his weight pressed into your spine as his hand came up to your face.

Still drooling around the Pusher’s cock, you groaned in confusion and arousal and embarrassment. The Pitcher’s fingers pressed invasively at the stretched seam of your lips, and it took several seconds for you to realize what he was doing. He was collecting the spit leaking out of your mouth; arousal jolted through you all the way from your burning face to your twitching, unattended cunt. Shiny leather cupped and curled, collecting spit strands and even pushed in alongside the Pusher’s cock — stretched your mouth to the point where you thought your skin was going to tear — to scoop out enough saliva.

He let out a raspy purr and withdrew, pulling away from your back. When, exactly, he had dropped to his own knees behind you, you didn’t know. All that really mattered was the rustle of fabric as he pulled his own gore-splattered jeans down and worked his cock free. Blind to everything except for the Ex-Pop currently taking up your entire field of view, it took you way the hell off guard when split-slicked fingers slid down your cunt from taint to clit, even brushed through the thatch of curls your sex was nestled in. You moaned, tremors in every limb, feeling your own saliva as it combined with the slick that had started to soak your folds. The metal of the strike cap pushed roughly over the bead of your clit and you choked again, much to the Pusher’s delight.

Leather gloves grasped inexpertly at your ass, movements harsh and greedy, and instinctively you spread your knees apart as best you could within the confines of your bunched pants. One hand left your flesh, and the other slid inward — open-palmed gropes at your flesh until his thumb slid down your cunt, hooked in your folds, and curled. A high, embarrassing moan left you, and in response, the Pusher pressed your head down further, amused by the way you sounded when you choked.

Spread completely open, the Pitcher’s eyes flicked over your waiting cunt for only a few seconds before he, too, succumbed to his impulses; his free hand closed around the base of his cock and the head prodded at your entrance for a few heart-pounding seconds. So slick were you that it slid down, pushed at your clit, and you jolted again; on the second try it found its target, notched on your hole, and slid straight home.

So full. You were so full. The Pitcher’s cock was thicker than the Pusher’s, mottled with veins and errant scar tissue, and it had been so, so long since you’d had anything but your own fingers jammed in your cunt. Pain seared through you at the unexpected stretch, and tears prickled at your eyes. Your nails dug into the flimsy plywood beneath — you felt the splinters already — as you half-groaned, half-sobbed. Burned from the inside out. The Pitcher was an unrelenting force; his hips pushed forward and forward and forward, bullying inside of your twitching cunt. He gasped and groaned like he was being tortured, the sound gargled in his chest. His hands groped hard at your ass, kept you spread for the intrusion.

Every inch was incredible agony, and nothing had ever felt quite so good. Finally, finally, he pushed in all the way to the hilt, and his narrow hips settled against the flesh of your ass; you felt the way his balls twitched against your clit. The burn faded, replaced with the ecstatic feeling of the stretch, and those few seconds of reprieve were all you got until the Pitcher started to move.

Goodbye, sanity. You might as well have been in full psychosis. The Pitcher pulled back only halfway before falling victim to how fucking good it felt to be buried in something warm, wet, and mostly willing; his hips drove forward again in a desperate thrust, and you were knocked forward onto the Pusher’s cock. It slid deeper down your throat, deep enough to make you gag, and fresh tears spilled over your puffed cheeks as the Pusher’s own hips jerked forward in response.

“That’s the fucking ticket, baby!” he groaned, nails dug into your scalp as he fucked himself into your throat. “Good shit, Charlie. Fuck!”

Who the hell was Charlie? It didn’t matter, because the next thrust of the Pitcher knocked every train of thought out of your skull. You trembled between them, dripping arousal and sweat and tears. Palms slick against the plywood, you did your best to stay on your hands and knees. The push and pull of their hips was so fucking demeaning and so, so fucking hot. You understood, now, why Easterman prohibited sex toys, why he spoke so lowly of vice and lust and perversion. This haze of pleasure was beyond addicting. To finally be filled after so much emptiness, so much hollowness — ecstasy to the point of tears. Or maybe it was just because you were choking on the Pusher’s cock.

Fucking sumptuous. A surfeit of flesh and deviancy — you thought distantly that you must have looked fucking perverse to whatever scientist was watching you on tape. Cameras everywhere, they had cameras everywhere. No corner of a trial was left unmonitored. The Pitcher’s fingers curled into the flesh of your ass, indented the fat, kept you open as he fucked into your cunt with an unmatched desperation. His hips moved like a machine, unfailing and insistent, and every forward thrust shoved your mouth further down onto the Pusher’s cock.

He’d been teased enough; every time your mouth had been yanked off his cock, he’d squeezed fingers around his base hard to keep himself from finishing early, but this was too much. His stiff hips fucked hard into your waiting mouth, his hand pressed heavily against the back of your skull — you gagged and writhed, teardrops splattered against his thighs, but your spasming throat muscles felt too good to let up on. So what if you threw up? He’d dealt with worse.

“Fucking take— take it all, take it all,” he panted, voice pitched up in desperation and pure want. “That’s it, bitch, just swallow your p-pills— gh, fuck!”

Some of it muffled towards the end. You looked up through tear-blurred eyes just in time to watch him as he wedged a thin hand beneath the leather of his mask, attempting to silence himself as he neared his own finish.

Another snap of his hips against your face, in time with the Pitcher’s own thrusts, and he held your face against his groin as he finally came. Cum spilled over your tongue, hot and bitter, and you moaned and coughed weakly as his cock twitched in your abused mouth. He pushed his hips up in staggered, slow thrusts as he fucked your mouth through the remnants of his orgasm; his breathing rattled heavily behind his mask, wet and labored. His hand remained heavily on your head until he felt you swallow his cum around his softening cock; only then did he release his grip on you.

When he pulled out with an embarrassingly wet noise, errant cum mixed with spit drooled from your slack lips; some of it bubbled as you hacked for air in between the Pitcher’s movements. His cock sagged between his legs, his own form hunched and panting, and he huffed out his trademark cackle as he watched the other Ex-Pop fuck into you.

“Fuckin’ magic, baby,” he wheezed. “I dunno about him, but you got one happy customer.”

His words meant nothing. Delusional ramblings that drained out of your ears as soon as they filtered in; each hump of the Pitcher’s hips against your ass was enough to knock your mind free of everything but base sensation. The drag of his flared head against the hot silk of your walls, the way his balls smacked against your clit, the sharp bone of his hip digging into your flesh — everything was so much and so good. A heavy hand planted itself in the middle of your back and you were shoved to the floor with zero resistance; your elbows had been wobbly enough already. ESOP pinching your chest be damned, the Pitcher’s hand kept you pinned right to the plywood as he held your hips up with his other hand and really fucked you.

Your head rested somewhere between the Pusher’s spread knees; you heard him struggle for his breath distantly. Moans were punched out of you on every thrust — fucking loud, you knew, but you genuinely couldn’t help it. The position was as humiliating and demeaning as it was hot, and you felt that tight, hot coil as it began to wind deep in your gut. As far as you cared, Coyle could have stormed into the hallway right then and all you would have done was begged for the Pitcher to keep going.

One of your hands scrabbled at the wood beneath for reprieve. The other snaked mindlessly down your front, wedged between your body and the floor, and brushed through your curls to find your neglected clit. A single circle of your fingers made you sob, and the way your cunt clenched around the Pitcher’s cock did not go unnoticed. He let out a chest-deep groan, glottal with desire, and redoubled his efforts; his weight pressed into your back as he curled over your prone form.

You were so damn far gone. Sweat slicked every inch of your skin, hot and desperate, and each pass over your clit had fireworks exploding behind your eyelids. Your cheek mashed into the wood beneath, jaw slack and drool seeping into the grain. So full. So full after ages of being empty. Pleasure crackled up your spine; the Pitcher’s fingers tightened on your ass and he started to pull you back onto his own hips, greedy for the vise grip of your walls.

Close. You were close. Moans poured from your mouth, mindless begs to keep going, harder, need it, please, God—

Another thrust, so hard it kissed your cervix and pain shot up your body, and the spike of sensation sent you over your precipice. The coil in your gut snapped, and pure ecstasy rolled over you in a full wave, fanning up and outwards. Somewhere in your spasming, your voice gave out, and all that filled your ears was the relentless smack of damp skin on damp skin and your own labored gasping. Your fingers twitched against the plywood.

The Pitcher was not done. Your entire body went lax in his grip, loose and pliant, and he huffed at having to hold up more weight. He let you slump against the floor, prone and twitching — your cunt still sucked spastically at his cock as he drove his hips relentlessly against yours. Each thrust was punctuated by a rough, throttled groan; he settled his hands on either side of his body and let gravity do most of the work.

It crested from pleasure to pain quickly, but you were so fucked out that you could do little more than moan and squirm weakly beneath the Pitcher’s lithe body. It didn’t matter. A firestorm of sensation raked over you; the relentless abuse of your overstimulated cunt and the fact that he was fucking jabbing your cervix every few thrusts drew fresh tears over your searing-hot cheeks. But fuck, if it wasn’t so good. This kind of torture was so preferable to the usual methods that you faced in the trials. Who were you to complain if it hurt?

It was good if it hurt. Easterman’s voice curled in your ear. Pain meant that the therapy was working.

The Pitcher snarled and pushed his hips flush to your ass a final time; his own arms trembled with his orgasm as he came, spilling hot and heavy against your twitching walls. A few weak, cyclic motions of his hips followed, mindless little movements as if he were trying to fuck his cum deeper into you. You let out some half-lucid noise, breath fluttering as the Ex-Pop heaved above you. Eventually — it might have been years, it might have been seconds — he rolled his pelvis back and pulled out with a wet noise that made your ears burn.

Cum heavy in your cunt and still staining your tongue, you gasped for air against the floor. Around your head, there was movement; it took incredible effort for you to look up. The Pusher had dragged himself to his feet with the support of the nearby scaffolding, and he stood, still hunched, looking down at you with a curious tilt of his gas mask; his hands were busied with tucking himself back into his boxers and readjusting his apron.

“Take it easy, baby. The hard part’s over,” he said, and snickered at his own bad joke. Even then, he sounded out-of-breath. “Deal’s a deal. Lemme know when you’re gettin’ twitchy. I do house calls.”

With that, he devolved again into maniacal laughter and hobbled off, the rhythmic spray and sputter of his nozzle the only indicator of his presence as he limped into the darkness. You drew yourself shakily to your hands, hips still slumped against the floor — and a throaty huff from behind you made you remember that, yes, the Pitcher was definitely still there, and no, you made no such deal with him to spare your life in exchange for your body.

You looked fearfully over your shoulder, eyebrows drawn up in worried anticipation — but no molotov smashed against your skull. The Pitcher merely drew himself to his feet, his scarred skin shiny with sweat and his bare chest heaving against the leather straps crossing it. He adjusted his own clothing and looked up at you; the eye contact made your stomach sink.

Nothing. No fire, no kick to your stomach. He stared at you for several long seconds, as if considering something, then shook his head with a sharp noise and stalked off. A few sparks signified the snap of his fingers as he lit another molotov for light, and you watched the orange glow as it disappeared into the yawning dark.

With shaking hands, you tugged your pants back up. The Pitcher’s cum leaked errantly down your thigh — something that made you flush all over again — but you dragged yourself up with nearby scaffolding and managed to brush yourself off.

There were very few benefits to engaging in a solo trial but, as a familiar feral scream pierced through the rotten air of the orphanage, you had to admit that there were times where it was definitely better for no one else to be around to see what would follow. In the room behind you, the bubbling vat of various chemicals and poisons which would soon be delivered to ‘feed’ the children of Mother Gooseberry’s orphanage rolled in a violent boil but you ignore it as you slowly make your way towards the source of the scream.

Emerging into the courtyard, the flashing yellow light of the entry door draws your attention and your eyes drop to stare openly at the dangerous man below – his head tilting back as his hands instantly fly to his equipment, ensuring easy access for when he needs to spray fire at defenceless reagents.

You know when the Pitcher has spotted you, the loud, rattling breathing which announces his presence hitching for a moment as he remains standing before the metal door which pushed him into the trial. However, as soon as recognition relaxes his posture, you press your back into the wall behind you as you watch him make his way across the outdoor courtyard to meet you.

His outfit was as familiar as ever. The darkened skin which was freely on show is covered in painful old burns and twisted scarring which spoke of a hell that you were better off not knowing the source of. The pants and apron which make up his costume is pinched in places by the metal apparatus which winds around his exposed body, each component giving him the skill to wield fire with a trained expertise.

It all culminates in the metal mask which covers the lower half of his face, the design such that it gives him the uncanny ability to breathe fire as his black dreadlocks sit wildly atop his head – only accentuating the utter chaos of his appearance.

He stops before you, crazed eyes drinking in your non-threatening stance as you hold up your hands in a universal sign of peace – one which he easily recognises by now.

“Did you miss me?” You keep your voice soft, a never-shifting anxiety making your hands tremble as you hope that the Pitcher remembers and is in the mood to honour the arrangement which time had allowed you to develop. So far you had been lucky, but knowing how these trials worked, you didn’t doubt that at some point that same luck would run out.

Wordlessly and with a quick movement, his body shifts forward to fully pin you against the wall and you gasp at the heat which naturally radiates from his frame to seep into your own. The metal is hard against your sternum but you keep your tone steady as you take his eagerness as a positive.

“Do you want to play?”

He nods at that, his only true way of communicating outside of the animalistic noises which slip free of his lips, and a few of the longer dreads fall past his ear at the motion.

“Show me what I need.”

In a flash, he sparks up a small flame and holds it just out to the side of your bodies – taking a surprising amount of care to not let it catch the dress which clings to your sweat-slicked body. It’s a choice which catches your breath as you think of the many times you have watched him throw molotovs and light reagents up as he stood over their screaming bodies until the bitter end. Gazing into his flame, you pull a small lockpick from your pocket and flick it open to expose the narrow end of the pick itself.

Holding the lockpick beneath the open flame, you keep it there until you know the metal is ripping hot – easily able to melt through skin as though it were little more than butter. Even though his hands are still, you can feel the excitement rolling through the Pitcher as he jerks his hips forward, his cock brushing your hip as his apron bucks against the bone there in anticipation.

Easterman spoke a lot about masochism and sadism, about how you and the other reagents secretly love the horrors which he and his assets rain down of you. That smooth voice, selling you your own destruction, grew sweeter with every successful trial and there was some part of you which wondered if the Pitcher was just another victim; one forged within the flames and sent on to drag as many people into the hellish inferno with him.

You press the tip of the heated lockpick into his chest, only an inch above his right nipple, and your hand jerks as a deep, groaning sound issues from behind the metal mask which covers his face. As far as noises go, it’s unmistakable in its pleasure and you hiss as his hands wraps around the wrist of your free hand and pushes your fingers against the tent of his apron.

His cock is hard, painfully solid beneath the fabric, and you grind your palm into his arousal as he issues another sharp noise.

Despite the terror and the hell which surrounds you, it is impossible to deny the arousal which sits coldly in your own gut – a growing tension which guts you as you smell the flesh burn under your torments.

Pitcher’s left hand, the glove there coated by a rough metal which allowed for him to ignite sparks with a simple click of his fingers, feels deliciously rough against your skin as he loops his arm around your waist to pull you closer. His cock presses heavily into your hand, the new positioning meaning that it is now pinned against your own lower stomach due to the height difference.

The black dreadlocks which sit messily around his head shake slightly as the Pitcher tilts his head down at you, his eyes wild behind the mask as feral, growling noises slip free of his unseen lips. Tired of the tease, you work your hand lower to slip it up within his apron and your fingers fumble messily at his pants until you gain enough purchase to slip your hand within the material and touch his cock fully.

Hidden by the apron, you slide your hand along his cock with a rough grip. His cock as textured and burnt as the skin of his chest, you had discovered previously that a harder touch was necessary to push past the damage and bring him to completion. With the edge of the lockpick now digging into the fresh burn mark which decorates his chest, his noises grow less controlled and you can feel the jerk of his cock within your palm as you rub your thumb along the head of his cock.

With a stuttering twitch of his cock, his release spills over your fingers and the growls from behind the mask reach a fever pitch. His arm around your waist grows painfully tight, wordlessly demanding more from you while ensuring that you were unable to escape without giving it. And give you did, working your hand along his cock as you use his own release to lubricate his length until he pulls your hand away with a grunt.

Breathing heavily, you snatch your hand back from him and bring it to your skirt as you wipe his mess onto the fraying fabric. Your own cunt feels painfully neglected, throbbing and damp with need, but you keep your hands steady as you place them on your skirt – giving the Pitcher time to collect himself and make his next move.

His heavy arm leaves your waist and you exhale slowly as Pitcher untangles his body from your own, the loss of heat quickly forcing a familiar chill into your bones as you shiver at the sudden reappearance of the cold air. His eyes are as wild as ever but there’s a satisfaction in there which forces a thrum of something dangerous in your chest.

The glow of his fire as the Pitcher sparks up a fresh Molotov causes you to flinch but it’s a fear which never truly sparks as he takes a step back from you and turns on his heel before walking away, leaving you standing against the wall. Slowing fading back into the darkness as he saunters down towards the swimming pool section of the orphanage, it’s only when the orange tinge fully disappears that you allow yourself to breathe.

Later, in the darkness of the sleep room when nothing but the beeping of fresh trials being organised broke the silence, that is when you would allow yourself to indulge. Your hand moving between slickened folds as you replay every desperate little noise which slipped free of the Pitcher’s lips, the way his taut chest tensed as you first touched the hot metal to his skin, the heat of his body against your own, the scent of his burning skin as he jerked into you.

⛏ big grunt

they don't exactly work as a cohesive unit. they're petty, always threatening one another. one of them sees you, and suddenly you're the only thing in the trial. they lumber towards you. it isn't the lust of vengeance in their eyes but a need for care. they become panicked about your general status when you aren't in their line of sight, like when a child loses their comfort item.

they swing at you in an attempt to immobilize you. they don't care if you fail your trials or challenges. they're convinced if they show the sinyala facility workers how good they are at their jobs, that they'll get to keep you. maybe you'll even become one of them, and they can coo at your new body.

they despise your clothing. it's odd to them considering they either don't wear any or wear very little. the lack of wires around you is almost disturbing. your esop and night vision goggles make you different than them. they don't like that.

so they tear at you, not into your skin (on purpose), to make you like them. you're even smaller than a regular grunt in their eyes, so you're practically defenseless. you're something that needs to be sheltered and taught how to be a proper ex-pop.

they're easily aroused, so they assume you're the same. it isn't hard to hold you down, and it's even easier to touch you in spots that fluster you. they cum just from touching you and usually don't notice. if the discomfort in their bodies becomes too great, they'll palm at themselves while pawing at you. they expect you to help in some way. you must know what to do.

they back off when prime assets are around but not other ex-pop. they'll scare other ex-pop off. they stare at whichever prime asset is in the trial mournfully, like scolded children. they're disgruntled that the prime assets get to play with you and they don't! but if a prime asset says something, they reluctantly listen. the prime assets and facility workers shouldn't expect them to listen forever. they aren't patient.

⌖ grunt

they can never agree on anything except the fact that the reagents need to die. okay, well, not you. you were a facility worker that was too nice to them and now the scientists have tried to make you bad. you may be a reagent but you aren't actually one! they don't understand why the doctors suddenly want them to hurt you. they can't. they won't.

they follow you around or chase you screaming, "why!?" they still look to you for guidance, convinced this is all some cataclysmic mistake. they may stupidly ignore the directions of other staff or even the prime assets in favor of you. some of them know this may get you in trouble. that's why they keep telling all the staff that they'll be extra good at killing reagents if they're allowed to keep you around!

it's been so deeply ingrained into them to treat facility workers with reverence, to fear them because they hold all the power, that this sudden change doesn't make sense. it hurts their heads. they'll hit themselves to make it make sense. they'll yell till their voices give out for you.

you're the bait that easterman learns he can dangle over the grunts so they jump as high as he likes.

they are like cats. you fed them once, and now they won't leave you alone.

they cower in front of the prime assets but will whine if you are wounded. they will assault other ex-pops if they attempt to debase you.

you can't take care of them if you're battered!

they're like juveniles arguing over a toy. only you are the toy and the parent who has to calm them. they incessantly argue over who gets to touch and/or hold you. a schedule may have to be created. not that they want to follow it. it is so unfair! there are so many of them and only one of you.

it seems you are becoming less a reagent and more a luxury item.

speaking of reagents, your fellow ones are always left as bloody pulps of flesh when with you in trials. they are enraged that those disgusting, evil people dare to be near you! you could never stoop so low as to be a true reagent. and even if you do trials, it isn't your doing! someone is making you do them.

they have to do a good job to keep you, so for once they work together in murderous harmony. they're smiling and even laughing when they cut down another reagent. they're earning their time with you. whichever one finds you chases after you and won't slow. they'll drag you far away from any reagent help and cuddle with you.

maybe you have failed your trials, but you won the hearts of the grunts, and that's more than enough to keep you alive and in murkoff's midst.

ᨖ idle grunt

they aren't a threat; they're paralyzed by what they've gone through. they are in an impossible situation. they are useless elsewhere, so they will either be discarded in a day or further tortured so they evolve into something of use for the facility.

their eyes are always darting around them, categorizing danger even if there is minimal protection for them. they cower when anything gets near. they mutter to not throw things at them. they won't attack as long as you don't hurt them.

that's fair, isn't it? they haven't done anything wrong.

they stare at you like you're the only thing tethering them to this world.

word travels fast between ex-pops, especially idle grunts. since they aren't a threat, they get more free reign with each other. they are herded like cattle into one far too small cage. there's shaky mumbling about how you recognized one or two of them. how you shielded them when one of your teammates tried to hit them. the look of abject horror on your face when you saw them being abused by the other ex-pop changed their brain chemistry. you had to escape, so you couldn't do anything, but it still hurt that you left. your eyes witnessing their torture makes the sharp edges of their distress soft.

in the trials any idle grunts that have been put in there tend to follow you, freezing when you look in their direction. they avoid direct eye contact like it's the plague. if they manage to get close enough they grope you. any part of you they can touch. they want to be respectful, really, they do, but they're also so touch-starved.

just don't yell at them. please, please, please. they won't leave you be. they can't.

⚠︎ imposter

imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! some people even say that attempted murder is an invitation to fuck crazy style. haha.. ha, wonder who would say that.

to truly not only imitate someone but become them requires a certain dedication to the craft. a true love. an obsession with perfecting everything, down to the minute detail. the facial expressions, vocal inflections, speech patterns, and body movements must be eerily similar—if not identical. a poor imposter is a dead imposter so they make sure they are you.

and you will love yourself just as much as they love bloodying reagents with their knife. how could you not love yourself? you're so arduous to imitate. all the reagents are interchangeable, but you're so distinct. you're so you. they're so you.

they get access to limited knowledge from your files, and it drives them crazy not to have more. they have to know everything about you. what if the reagents have a security question and they can't answer it? it'll leave their imitation incomplete! they'll find a way to get more knowledge about you. they're clever. cleverer than you.

they get all your trial footage and even footage of you in your cell! hehe. you're so fucking cute. they just want to wrap their hands around your neck and watch you turn blue. you'd fight back fiercely, but they already know all of your moves. you'd be helpless, and they'd take full advantage of that.

since they have to watch you so much, they have plenty of material to masturbate to. they wished they had footage of you pleasuring yourself so they could really get it down. they chase their own release while scrutinizing their own performance. they map your body in their minds, making their best guesses as to where the spots you get the most pleasure from are. by the time they're done, they're entirely spent. still, they're happy, elated even.

they want to kill all your reagent "friends" so it's just you and them. then they can tackle you, strip you, and properly connect with you. you'll connect on such an intimate level with them that your bodies merge and become one. they're jealous of how close otto and arora are. they want to be that close with you one day.

they're as much of a nuisance in your trials as they are a pervert. who could blame them, though? you're their muse. they get a little distracted sometimes and end up harassing you more than doing their job of the stabbing and killing and blood and guts, oh, the horrors. they can't help but roll their eyes.

they push you into traps, lead enemies your way, and stick their hands in places on you that they shouldn't go. they look so much like you that it isn't really a violation of your boundaries. it's you touching you so naturally you consent to your own touch.

they're masterful too! if only you'd stay still. then they could show you that while they are a perfect imitation of you, they still have a few surprises up their sleeves, and orgasms ready.

𖦹 jaeger

she has survived more than she should with the single-minded mission of reuniting with dorris. nothing else mattered except her until you came along. you've made things, oh, so messy. she doesn't remember if she met you before or if her mind is simply telling her that she has had this deep connection with you in the past. her mind has become so muddled that you are dorris to her. she simply misremembered the name. the finer details don't matter because she's finally found you!

you thought you were about to die when you were caught by her. you've managed to avoid her thus far, but helping a new reagent led to you being grabbed and hoisted into the air. only to then be cradled against her chest and listening to her beg to not have to hurt you. the metal encaging her body has a habit of digging into you but she doesn't notice unless you begin throwing a fit about it. she's confused when you're scared of her. she's hurt, really hurt, but she still can't bare to harm you.

the staff don't want to lose such a valuable asset, so they don't make her kill you. how kind of them. instead, she drags you around the trial while she works on ending the lives of your fellow reagents. don't cry when the new reagent gets their neck snapped. aren't you happy about seeing her? why are you giving someone else attention? why would you want to give someone else attention? it solidifies in her mind that all things that take up your time must be eliminated, especially other reagents.

you have to understand (how much she loves you). she's gone through so much to get back to you.

she's territorial and has killed multiple ex-pops in previous trials because they dared to touch you.

she wants to hold you close and never let you go! so why do the cruel people take you away from her? they tell her that she didn't do a good enough job. they make her wait and suffer, but she's grown excellent at being patient. she imagines you're still in her arms, and it brings her peace. she thinks of all the things she could do with you one day. one day you two will be able to settle down and have a good life away from all the bad people. she just has to listen and do her job, then she'll get her happily-ever-after with you.

and speaking of happily ever after, congratulations! you are now a more protected victim in the trials! how better could the jaeger be twisted to murkoff's whims than by telling her that the reagents turned on you and are now seeking to kill you? so you sit as the prime victim in the trials she is sent into. of course, you are never actually supposed to be entirely killed. the stakes are truly only you coming upon the edge of death, losing a few limbs or brain functions, nothing major. being mutilated does make you more compliant so it's a win-win for murkoff.

it makes her believe that your very life is at stake. if she does so very good then she gets to hold you for a little while. then you're ripped away from her again. they tell her that the reagents have captured you again. the cycle continues, but as long as she can go to the happy place in her mind everything's alright.

how does it feel being truly isolated now? thrown into a cell and stripped of your purpose, only to be programmed with a new one. maybe you and the jaeger have more in common than you first thought.

✦ night hunter

oh, his dear glowworm. he's a nasty man with nasty thoughts and even nastier actions. don't think he won't hurt you if you've been bad. you're supposed to out mauver him. you're supposed to hide and run and escape his grasp. yet you don't. it's almost like you're begging to be punished by him.

there's no better experience than hunting you. you try to silence your own whimpers, but he still hears you. he drags you from your hiding spot and looms over you, drooling. he chastises you. truly, how have you survived this far? you're such a stupid little reagent. it's a good thing you're so goddamn sexy or he would've ended you already like he's done to so many others.

he's a biter, chewer, and scratcher. anything to mark you as his. he's determined to get you to have more scars that are attributed to him than anyone else. he's gotten his fingernails stuck in you multiple times. and he always licks your wounds, intent on getting them to stay open longer so they don't heal properly. they should be visible and ugly to look at.

he has a paradoxical obsession with your face. he craves to destroy it and make it into an image just like this, but also to preserve it as the one pretty thing he gets to look at in this hellish place. he leans towards preserving it, because he knows once he damages it he can never go back, but he'll bruise your face up real good, especially your neck. two black eyes so you can't see him coming, or much of anything really. it's payback. now you understand how he feels when he has to chase you into the wretched light.

he gets extra rough when you decide to lurk in the light, so rudely ignoring him while he is waiting to latch onto you in the dark. if you get an inch closer to a shadowed part of the trials than you should, he snatches you up and throws you around, scolding you for being such a bad reagent. you aren't even willing to come see your old friend, night hunter. maybe he has to teach you a lesson in manners. a lesson you won't ever forget.

he always has a boner when you're around. so don't look below his waist unless you want to see it. he'll relentlessly tease you about it.

"oh, you dirty little thing. here I am doing my job, and you're concoting degenerate sexual fantasies about me."

"my eyes are up here, glowworm."

"you made this problem, so now you gotta fix it."

"hiding, are you? want me to trap you in a nice tight place so I can slip my aching cock into that nice tight hole of yours?"

"open wide. I got a nice, big treat for you."

he enjoys stealing whatever he can from you to get you even more vulnerable and pissed off at him. uh oh, he pounced on you and took your night vision goggles. you'll have to bargain to get them back to even have a chance at completing this trial. if you give him your undergarments, there's a chance he'll give the goggles back. don't worry about what he's going to do with them. you already know.

✸ pitcher

unlike most classes of ex-pop, the pitchers work together as a cohesive unit while all maintaining some form of identity. they are all each devotees that have their own ways of boasting their veneration to the flame. they all worship the same god of fire, and when you come along, their faith and sibling bond grow even stronger. you are clearly the gift their god has bestowed upon them for their vigilant worshipping. they must earn you by participating in the sacrifices and performing well.

you resisting them is because the world has perverted your mind into believing that they are the monsters you must flee from. they are your protectors. they are your lovers. they are the flame that keeps you warm in the cold nights and guides you through the darkness.

you are a thing that was made to be admired, not forced through tribulation after tribulation. it brings them a great sense of sadness and righteous fury when you're injured by virtue of the trials' cruelty. watching you suffer is a punishment from their god. a sign that they have not been doing enough.

they see the other ex-pop as heretics. that same line of thinking extends to many of the facility workers (who now argue over who is to do pitcher maintenance because they don't want to be sacrificed for not pulling you out of the trials). they're putting something so vestal in an incinerator instead of a kiln. it becomes abundantly clear that if the pitchers are out while you are around, other ex-pops should steer clear. even the prime assets aren't necessarily safe from their wrath. anyone can be corrupted in this world. only they see the truth. their mortal allegiances lie with each other and you. everyone else is a spark that may turn into smothering rain.

they make a show out of lighting your fellow reagents aflame. a well-crafted presentation is love. it shows not only their skill but also their loyalty. the flame never licks your skin unless you invite it (accidentally run into one of the pitchers' molotovs or burn yourself trying to put out another reagent). they are torn between seeing you burned as a fundamental failure of their protection and being entranced that the marks bring you closer to their god.

they're shaking when they reach out to grab you. they never hold you in a position to hurt you, but if you thrash, you may hurt yourself. they don't speak. they stare and pet you, hands ghosting along your skin as they wonder if they press down harder if you'll disappear. if they displease their god, they may lose you. if they don't treat you like fine pottery, then they're spitting in the face of everything they believe in.

that doesn't stop them from having desires. they want to nestle their cocks so deeply in your heat that they can feel the tepidness of your soul.

they later regroup and mutter amongst themselves feverishly. any encounter with you must lead to the entire group being informed. they are practically shaking when they speak of you. the ache in their scarred bodies intensifies after one of these meetings. it's a frenzied hysteria. on multiple occasions, several pitchers have passed out. their lungs were rejecting the very air they needed because the fire—their passion—inside them was burning so hot.

they have an altar within their space for their god, and they have collected anything they are able to from you to add: a strand of hair, a piece of your clothing, a brick you threw—nothing is waste; everything is sacred. once they managed to snag a picture of you from a file. that is now the cornerstone of their altar. they will kneel at it and sing raspy, unintelligible praises. some go as far as to kiss your items. although that is a sparse occurrence. it walks the fine line between reverence and desecration.

ﾒ pouncer

why can't you all leave her alone? well, everyone except you. she waits to pounce on you specifically. unlike her bludgeoning other reagents, she clings to you. she begins crying as she nuzzles into your neck. she mutters about mount massive and how everyone is out to get her.

she asks if she's your favorite pouncer—the only pouncer you love.

as a temporary measure, there are no more than one pouncer in a trial you partake in. they'll start beating each other to death, fighting over who gets the better spot to pounce on you.

you quickly learn their personalities and the fact that many of them have adopted the same one. they merely go by "she."

she is your lover, your family, your everything. she'll stop at nothing to find you, but she's so frightened of everything. you remind each of them of someone from their past life. she can't quite pinpoint why it's you, but she's convinced you're a reincarnation or someone that was meant to find her.

she hisses, hoots, and hollers at the other ex-pops, clambering onto you as if you are something she could hide in. she's aware that she isn't the strongest or fastest, but she is the sneakiest, even better than that perverted night hunter. she's seen how he jerks off to you in the dark. she's angrily pounced on him before and beaten him till he managed to knock her off.

they're all against her! everyone wants you, and that's not fair! why can't they see you belong to her and her only?

she wishes she were stronger so she could go against the prime assets. instead, she has to hide and watch as they chase you—attack you. she grows distressed when learning that you've been injured. she's inconsolable.

the sinyala facility would've gotten rid of the pouncer if it were a specific one, but it's all of them. it's like a virus. the facility workers are urgently searching your trial documents to learn who could've been the first pouncer that fell for you (romantically).

she became extremely aggressive towards reagents, which made easterman pleased, until she began attacking the staff and demanding to know where you were. so you're stuck in trials with more pouncers, and now you have the eye of certain facility members as they study what's so special about you as opposed to the other reagents.

☣︎ pusher

oh, baby, you aren't ever going to escape the high he's gonna give you. you're the drug he lives on. the reason he enters the trials. he isn't sure why. he can't remember. it doesn't really matter, though. he has something to cling onto in this crummy place that isn't his gas or asphyxiation kink. hopefully you like masks and spooky skeleton dudes cause you'll be seeing a lot of those when he's around.

the pushers have lost any identity but a single mishmashed gestalt mindset. they are all the pusher, and they'll have you as theirs.

as soon as he sees you, your sanity will be no more. it's become a running joke among the reagents: the pushers babe. you get that sweet fix while some of the others have to beg the pusher to gas them. you may not find it particularly amusing, but it's low on your list of priorities.

he used to clamber up to you like he did with all the others. now he's gotten smarter, which is the scary part. he doesn't barge in anymore. he lurks, grabbing you from behind and spraying you. maybe he gets a handful of your ass or chest in the process; it's a perk of the shitty gig.

maybe—definitely—murkoff adds a new variator that allows multiple pushers in a single trial. you aren't getting out of there without being thoroughly fucked by the lot of them. they'll soothe your anxiety with their sweet gas and massage you until you can think of nothing but them.

he struggles with thinking he's being selfish by giving in to his desires. he's risking your well-being by making you less useful to murkoff.

the more attractive thought is that he's saving you. he's making you see things you'll see no other time. he's making all those walls of yours crash down.

it makes you need him.

he gets a certain amount of respect from the others. not a lot, but he can make their lives a lot more fun with a spritz of his happy gas. so he gets to have his way with you when he can. don't worry, honey. it isn't anything you won't like. in fact, you're always happy after you've been forced to choke down some green. those screams are actually from elation.

yeah, he may not be the prettiest to look at, but he is good with his fingers. he also knows the best hiding spots to keep the pervs and those other reagent assholes away. he gets such a small amount of time with you. he has to make it good and fast. thankfully he's good at cumming fast and making you cum even faster.

come on, man! women, maybe. what were those other things? whatever the hell any of em' identify as. they're a problem that needs to be taken care of. a problem he's more than content with letting the other ex-pop deal with. you always seem to be in some sort of group. you don't want to leave them now since you've gotten wise to his attraction to you. isolating you becomes the only awnser. it isn't easy by any means. if only he had learned that before being pelted with multiple projectiles and stuns.

he's by no means an artist, but he's managed to scrounge together some stray pieces of paper and mostly empty fountain pens to make some drawings based off you. he used to write down old formulas or draw humiliating cartoons of the workers he absolutely despises in this place: he even has one drawn of dr. easterman blowing him. now all his scribbles and sketches are of you. he's even made some notes about you: your looks, habits in the trials, and loadout. they all have a sort of scrapbook of their drawings. even though they all maintain the notion that they aren't artists, some of the pieces are incredibly detailed, clearly done by someone who has an art background.

he really, really, really loves watching you through the cameras when he's able. like right before he enters the insertion gate, and he can get a peek at them, seeing you in all your glory. he managed to haggle to get a shitty screen that he can hook up to watch you in either your sleep room or trials. they all crowd around to watch it. he knows it's just someone—some sinyala facility worker—wanting to placate him. he almost wants to know why, but he's more focused on you.

their lot in life is to stay at the bottom of everything, man, but at the very least they can get on top of you.

𖡎 screamer

getting soothed by a reagent was the last thing he imagined would happen. he was about to shriek after getting hit by a brick, only to feel a heavy weight set against him and begin to rub his back. he still screamed, but you held on tighter, whispering such sweet things to him. you were quaking. he could tell you were petrified of the other ex-pops or a prime asset being attracted to the location and finding you. for once he didn't run off. he merely stood there, paralyzed by indecision.

once you began humming, he relaxed. he sank to the ground and leaned against your stomach purring. it's the first time you've heard one of them purr. you didn't even know they could do that. you almost fell asleep if not for the fact an enemy came in and attempted to murder you.

he let you go, knowing the inevitable, and yelled again to buy you a few seconds. he then ran off. he didn't dare to look and see who he pissed off by letting their prey get away from them.

he's enamored with the couple of minutes he spent with you. it becomes the only thing he thinks about when he has enough clarity to. he yearns to find you but doesn't dare to. if any of the other screamers have had such an encounter with you—they'll try to steal you from him! he doesn't ask any of them. it would be a first if he had talked to any of them. he can't even produce a coherent word.

he can't calm his paranoia. at least one of the others has encountered you. he could tell by the way they were acting. that means they most likely would've screamed or bumped into you. perhaps they've damaged your hearing. oh, no. what if you can't hear? you wouldn't know if he was near. you'd be weaker in the trials, and you could fail and be gotten rid of.

he crouches more in the trials, curling up and waiting for any sign of your presence. he goes mad while imagining your humming but not being able to hear it.

he does something bold, and it makes his fear of punishment almost as bad as his fear of never seeing you again. he screams so loud it short-circuits his attachments, and he attacks a facility member that wanted to get trial cleanup done a bit early. he steals their credentials and doesn't get far in the facility before being spotted. he continues, frantically searching for a place you may be. he continues to meltdown, leaving eardrums popped and workers in a daze.

he yanks a messy set of files out of some scientists' hands and discards them until he manages to find something pertaining to you. he carries the torn papers with him, and he stumbles into your assigned sleep room, curling up outside of your door after you slam it in fear. he waits for them to take him away and do unspeakable things to him as he scratches at your door, attempting to mimic your hum.

› scapegoat

they collectively know you by now. the one reagent who dared to show them kindness and almost became one of them. since then they haven't run when they encounter you in trials. they accept their fate, stumbling towards you and wrapping their arms around you, just wanting to be comforted—maybe, they dare to fantasize, be kissed—before their heads are blown off.

they beg in their muffled way, on their knees with tears streaming down their scarred faces. they know it's a fruitless endeavor, but their survival instinct makes them try. if they're pathetic enough, maybe they'll earn a coveted place in your memory. the thought makes their hearts swell before their craniums splatter everywhere.

they aren't immune from tactless thoughts permeating in their minds. if they run, they get to live another day, but what about you? if you don't successfully complete the trial, then you're at risk of becoming another ex-pop, perhaps even a trial victim. or worse, you could be killed off or isolated. they wouldn't be able to see you for a long, long time! they agree that this is bigger than them.

any selfishness, trying to run away from you or hide, within their ranks is punished with ostracizization from the other scapegoats. that's a death sentence in itself. other ex-pops enjoy beating down on them. franco in particular loves taunting them, threatening to "shoot their shit clean off." that's why they congregate in groups.

“Ooh, you must have been giving these reagents a hard time.” You wince, fingers brushing around the pulsing red spot in his scalp, you don’t know how he’s managed to tank a brick to the head, but then again, you have no idea how anyone - ex-pop and reagents alike manage to take anything in this place. What you get back from him sounds almost like…a whine?

You hum in an attempt to soothe him, bringing an alcohol soaked-pad to the open wound. A pained shriek rings out in your ears, the sound ultimately torn and weak. “Oh, I’m sorry about that, dear.” Stepping back, you grab the bandaging, wrapping the wound a lot more delicately. 

“Now, see, that wasn’t so bad.” Placing your hand over his, you squeeze, a polite and meek smile curling on your lips. “Is that…petrol?” The aroma of gasoline is undeniable the closer you are to his face, the distance between you and his nozzle merely inches.

He lets out a frustrated groan, words lost in his torn throat. Everything coming out in grunts or growls. In the end, he settles for a nod. You can’t quite tell if he’s smiling, but the tiniest squint in his eyes, beneath the gaps of his mask, makes it a darling sight to picture - if only he wasn’t locked up behind that damned mask all the time. 

This is the most reactive he’s been in all your time treating him, and you’d be lying to yourself if you said the change wasn’t appreciated - besides, you’ve always found him quite…appealing. Not to mention, the more time you had spent assessing him had only fueled your curiosity; what did he look like behind that mask? 

Alas, he still has a job to do. “Well, looks like we’re just about done here.” As he disappears behind the doors of the insertion gate, you roll out your palm to find a pair of eyeballs staring at you. Some poor reagents.

Was this his idea of a joke? You’re not sure whether to laugh or scoff - as you step to throw them into the trash, a post card catches your attention. Did he leave this? Tracing the burnt edges, you can briefly make out a finger print, then something scrawled out in ash;