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dopehorsesposts · 22 hours ago

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CONFLAGRATION

THE PITCHER/READER

SUMMARY: You are a somewhat-seasoned Reagent, just trying to get through another round of Kill the Snitch. The Pitcher is feeling particularly tenacious today. Getting out of the trial and maintaining a good grade requires some out-of-the-box thinking.

WORD COUNT: 10k

WARNINGS: 18+, explicit PWP, dubcon, canon-typical violence. Vaginal fingering, finger sucking, penetrative sex, temperature play, crying, overstimulation, reader gets burned (it's pitcher let's be real), cig smoking, mentions of vomit. Reader is fem but written mostly GN, no descriptors of appearance, and no Y/N used.

You were not a habitual smoker. At least, you wouldn’t be, if not for this fucking place. Sweat slicked your palms as you fumbled for one of your squirreled-away cigarettes, hand jammed deep in your pocket.

It had started some time ago — days? weeks? months? — when you’d been tossed into a trial in the police station. A familiar area, sure, with a very familiar Prime Asset; you had lost count of how many times you’d made a stupid mistake and ended up with the prongs of Coyle’s baton pierced through your skin and 860 cold-crank amps crackling over your nervous system. But that time, as Coyle leaned over you, cackling and sneering about justice at your battered form, you saw it — on his belt, individual cigarettes, holstered one-by-one in a little line-up of deeply personal vice. You’d gotten away from him with help from a fellow Reagent, but his belt hung on your mind heavily.

Reagents got precious few personal allowances. Even your room wasn’t private, with its enormous, bulbous window and Easterman’s voice purring over the radio. Sure, you got books and magazines, but they were all Murkoff-vetted; pages were ripped out or redacted at company discretion. Pleasures of any kind that Easterman didn’t know about were strictly prohibited; after all, this was supposed to be about getting better. About leaving the temptation of bad, indulgent habits behind. Murkoff knew what was best for you. Easterman knew what was best for you. Something like that, anyway, if you were to believe what the man said.

Christ, you could barely even jack off. You’d seen other Reagents do it countless times as you passed their bedrooms — especially the ones who had been in Sinyala longer, because they were so broken that they simply didn’t care — but seemingly could never shake the heavy shame that pressed upon your shoulders. You had swiped a Futterman-brand sex toy from the factory during a previous trial, hidden deep under your mattress, but the pervasive feeling of being watched stayed your hand, even on restless nights.

Overall, you were denied. Many things — sunlight, personal safety, a sense of humanity — but especially things that would make you happy. Easterman seemed hellbent on ensuring that every emotion Reagents felt was due to his orchestration and nobody else’s. Fear and misery, usually, but pleasure and relief were also on that roster.

Unfortunately, you’d always had a rebellious streak.

So, on your next rotation into that hellhole passed off as a police station, you concocted a hare-brained plan that somehow, unbelievably, worked. You’d slunk around in the shadows, having volunteered yourself as a distraction for Coyle while your companions worked on searching for keys and lugging gas. With a few well-timed bottles (and one accidental trip over broken glass), you’d lured him into a pitch-black room, and with the advantage of your goggles, plucked a cigarette from his belt. Just one. It was all you could get away with; when he’d felt the tug, he’d whipped around on his heel so quick that you had to sprawl backwards to avoid getting smacked in the face by his baton.

Stupid, ill-planned, reckless… but it was successful. You had left that trial splattered with blood and limping from a Night Hunter’s machete, but deep in your pocket was evidence that yes, you could have things that were outside of Murkoff’s control.

Dorris had given you a light and had even let you sit with her as you told her of how you procured it. She hadn’t been impressed — nothing ever seemed to faze her, good or bad — but she had definitely been amused; the gravel of her voice rolled out in staccato beats as she had chuckled at your story.

“Tell you what,” she had rasped, lips closing for a moment around her own ever-present stub for a quick drag. “If you show up in one piece with another one, I’ll get you a lighter.”

And so you did. You volunteered yourself for more trials with Coyle, much to Easterman’s delight, and pulled your trick again and again. Coyle was many things — deeply evil, deeply charismatic, and batshit insane to name a few — but particularly smart was not one of them. Even if he was, his incredibly short fuse lent him towards his well-known fits of explosive rage, and no matter how many times you led him into the same set-up of a pitch-dark room and deft hands, he always, always fell for it.

You were certain that your luck would run out one day, of course. Coyle would eventually figure out just where his precious smokes were disappearing to and put a stop to your scheme right quick. But it hadn’t yet, so you nursed your little habit with intermittent smokes with Dorris and downplayed it as best you could. Your recent trial performance had been good enough that you didn’t think Easterman would give you more than a slap on the wrist for your contraband, but you didn’t want to push it.

This trial, though, had been going terribly. You were back in the police station — the winding rooms and cluttered underground now beyond familiar considering how many times you’d been chased through them. Another round of Kill the Snitch. A repeat of your very first trial. The first time you’d gone through this wringer, it had been hellish. Bare feet on broken glass, the Snitch pleading for his life, the smell of old blood, burnt plastic, and ozone in the air — it had haunted you for days after. You’d left that first trial trembling in every limb, vomit and blood splattered over your ESOP, and a B- grade. Easterman’s disappointed tone — God, you hated when he chose the stick instead of the carrot for motivation — had crawled into your ears and settled heavy in your stomach.

Now, though, it was just a blur — a crimson smear past your eyes as you chased down objectives alongside fellow Reagents. Just going through the motions. One of your comrades had whacked the Snitch up the side of the head to quell his sobbing. All of you were tired.

That being said, even your familiarity did not save you from everything going tits-up all at once. Coyle had seemed particularly pissed off today; he snarled out obscene threats that sent spit and ash flying from his own chewed-on stub of a cigarette, slamming his baton straight through doors as he bashed them down in hot pursuit of you and your companions. You had already delivered a hard kick to his side once to pry him off one of the other Reagents — something he absolutely did not take kindly to.

“Got us a real fuckin’ party, shitbirds!” His words hurled at the back of your head as he stomped down the corridor behind you, gore-flecked leather boots squealing on the cracked tile. “’m gonna fry every last one of ya!”

You believed him, as theatrical as he was. Everyone on your team had been on the business end of that wicked baton at least once. He had already caught you earlier and fried your rig — it was still coming back online, painfully slowly. Fire tore into the depths of your lungs as you hooked a hard right and all but fell into a dark room. Willing your body to listen, you carefully elbowed the door shut behind you and flicked your goggles down; the electric whine as they came online gave you a slight comfort. The rigid mannequins, some still smoking with evidence of Coyle’s toying, of the dispatch department greeted your green-hued vision, and you drew the flesh of your cheek between your teeth. It was cramped in the room, which was not conducive to outmaneuvering pissed-off crazies in the dark. You had the advantage for only as long as you had battery.

Rhythmic, rapid thuds stilled your breath. Coyle stomped past the dispatch depot without even a sideways glance, growling to himself about all of the things he intended to do to everyone’s smoking corpses in lurid detail. Clearly, he was hot on someone else’s trail; you did not intend to change that any time soon, merely wishing a mental good luck to whoever he managed to spot first.

And then there was quiet. Of course, the machinery ever-present in the trials hummed on, and a few of the mannequins jerked stiffly around on motorized joints, but otherwise an uneasy hush fell over the room. Exhausted from running and ducking swipes of fists and batons and gas nozzles, you slumped against one of the tall desks. This was not going well.

The routine had been changed. Something had changed. Perhaps it was the gradual increase of difficulty of the trials themselves, or maybe your other Reagents were simply not good enough — Easterman’s voice sneered in your head — but either way, you felt your grade slip lower and lower the longer time dragged on without moving the snitch forward on his track.

And so you were there, hand shoved into your pocket, fishing for something that would ground you, if only for a minute or so. Your fingertips brushed the beat-up cigarette, buried deep against a seam, and relief surged through your chest. Just a quick smoke, then you could be back on your game. The trial was still recoverable. It would be fine.

Or not. Blaring klaxons filled your ears, and a bright, revolving light assaulted your eyes through your goggles. The pit of your stomach dropped to the floor, and you whirled on your heel to come face to face with a set of horribly familiar Murkoff-brand metal doors, adorned with their characteristic flashing yellow light. Fuck. Fuck. How had you not noticed? Maybe Easterman was right about chasing personal vice, after all. In your hunt for a stupid fucking cigarette, you’d completely missed the release doors on the opposite side of the dispatch depot.

Smoke abandoned, you sidestepped around the towering switchboards and pressed your back to one, peering around it through green haze to see what new hell you’d be dealing with in close quarters. Hopefully the Pusher, or just a regular old Grunt. Something that would give up the chase easily. Just not the—

The orange glow seeping from the darkness beyond the sliding doors silenced your train of thought immediately.

It was the Pitcher. Of course it was the fucking Pitcher. Your eyes widened behind your goggles and you immediately slipped back behind the switchboard, holding your breath in your lungs to keep it from trembling. Boots clunked on the tile, accompanied by the gentle clink of bottles. A pause. Then an enthusiastic wail, the sound of air rushing over ruined vocal cords. The Pitcher’s drawn out shriek bounced off the walls of the depot; the sound wrenched your heart rate up several dozen beats. You knew he could see better in the dark than the others with the help of the lit molotovs he brandished. The room was tight. There were exactly two doors, one leading to the bright hallway you’d just escaped from and another leading deeper into the darkness of the station.

He moved. You moved.

Dropped into a crouch to keep from making sound, you crept the other way, down the line of desks, praying silently that he wouldn’t turn or change his path or see you.

Silly you. You should have remembered that there was no God in Sinyala except for Easterman, and he wasn’t feeling particularly kind.

Your boot tread crunched on a few errant shards of broken glass.

A sucked in gasp, and a snarl from the chest, and you knew you’d been caught.

Before you could even stand up, the molotov exploded over your head against the wall you’d been moving along. A sharp yelp of surprise left you on instinct, and you stumbled forward into a run, shoving the nearest door open with your aching shoulder. Behind you, the Pitcher shrieked, baited into the chase immediately. Fear danced up your spine as you bolted into the next room, terrible anticipation building in your gut — like you could already feel the way the bottle would shatter against your back, the way the fire would eat at your skin and clothes. You had nothing. A lockpick you’d swiped from a desk earlier and your fucking cigarette. Your rig was still offline. No bricks, no bottles, no nothing.

The Pitcher stayed hot on your heels even as you crashed through pitch-black rooms. Where were the others? Why were you alone? Your lungs burned from exertion, a painful stitch running up your side that only worsened with each step. Leather screeched on linoleum as you scrambled around a hard turn and nearly tripped in the process; seconds later, another molotov shattered right where your head had been. The flicker of the flames edged your night vision as you sprinted away; angry, ragged caterwauls from behind you signaled the Pitcher’s mounting frustration.

You crossed a dark hallway and stumbled into— a dead end. A boarded up door in a closed room. One exit, which was back the way you came, which was currently being filled by the Pitcher’s body. Shit.

His breath dragged like your own, his bare chest heaving in the tremulous glow of his ever-present flame. The planes of his mask were shadowed ominously, and you knew exactly what would happen if you didn’t move — you would burn to death in this room and your charred corpse would remain here, a warning to every Reagent that would come after you. His arm was already in motion, wheeling back to hit you with the molotov point-blank.

So, in the spirit of your poorly-thought-out plans somehow working, you did the only thing you could, and rushed him.

Something that sounded like surprise ripped from his chest as your body weight crashed into his; you both stumbled as you grappled, fingers digging into scar-smoothed flesh with all of the tenacity of a Reagent that wanted a good fucking grade. Dying was failing. You wouldn’t fail. Easterman needed something to be proud of.

The Pitcher was so much stronger than you. Corded muscle flexed as he shoved you back against a wall; the air knocked free of your lungs as you stared at him through your goggles. For good measure, his fist cracked across your face and snapped your head to the side; tears welled instantly in your eyes as pain exploded over your cheekbone. Seeing double, your gaze slid back upwards; his eyes were wide behind his own mask, but they were dead. No light, no flicker of humanity, just the wet sheen of sclera to signify that something was in the socket. He snarled, and a metallic click rang out in your ears. The nozzle. The nozzle on his mask— the gasoline— he was going to burn you alive face-first—

You kneed him in the crotch hard. Not dead everywhere, it seemed. He yelped and folded, the fine mist of gasoline wheezing out into negative space, fine particles glowing green in spiraling trails across your night vision as you shoved him off. He stumbled and righted himself after a few seconds with a groaning gasp, whipping up and lunging at you. Better prepared this time, you met him halfway, your aching muscles fighting his own as you fought in the dark of the hallway. A whoosh as the lit molotov he held swung upwards, aiming for your skull — you tried to catch his wrist and failed, but managed to knock the bottle out of his hand. It fell to the floor and shattered; brightness washed over your field of view as flames spread across the cracked tile. An incensed, gargling noise tore from him and his hands went for your throat instead, the material of his gloves creaking as they tightened down like a clamp vise.

Clearly, you had pissed him off beyond the point of using fire by shattering his beloved molotov. The metal tips on a few of his fingers dug into the delicate skin just atop your trachea, and you gasped and writhed in his grasp. Nails scraped over leather as you fruitlessly scrambled for air, for respite, for—

There were bottles on his belt. Unlit molotovs. They clinked as he moved, swayed with the motion of his hips. If you could just grab one—

Your nails raked over his skin as a distraction, black spots dancing at the edges of your vision as he literally squeezed the life out of you. Blood vessels popped under the strain, red blooming under his grip. Your other hand sank down, reaching blindly for his hip. Either your diversion was working or he was so pissed he didn’t care — either way, he didn’t notice when your fingertips brushed the neck of a bottle. With your last gasp, you grasped the smooth glass and yanked it up and away from his belt. The Pitcher snarled, his dead eyes trained on your face as your lungs burned. High-pitched whining started up in your ear, threaded through by the sound of your stunted bloodflow.

Smash.

The bottle shattered against the side of his head; gasoline spilled over you both, the acrid scent stinging your nose. He gasped and stumbled, hands slackening and slipping from your throat. Air rushed back to your lungs and you heaved, sucking in oxygen with unbelievable fervor. Fed by the fuel dripping to the floor, the fire licking at your boots blazed, and you took the opportunity to scramble away from the dazed Ex-Pop, disappearing back into the cover of darkness.

Exhausted, hurt, and with aching lungs, you opted for stealth over speed; you kept to a crouch as you slunk through rooms. Mutilated mannequins and brutalized bodies studded the floors and walls as you passed; par for the course, especially with Coyle reigning over this station. Fuck. Coyle. The snitch. Jesus, how long had your escapade with the Pitcher been? Had any progress been made towards the objective?

You stilled in a room, listening with strained ears. No distant crackling of the baton, no stomping of feet, no maniacal cackling of the Pusher. No shrieks from the Pitcher, either. You must have lost your pursuer.

A cursory sweep of the surroundings revealed you were in some sort of conference or meeting area. A solid wooden table with chairs pulled up sat squarely in the center; half of the seats were filled by battered mannequins that looked about as good as you felt. One hand came up to your bruised cheek; the soft flesh of your palm was a minor respite from the now-fiery ache. Nothing felt broken. Whether or not that was true would remain to be seen. If you made it out of this fucking trial.

The windows of the conference room were nearly all barred, blocked, or so smeared with various human stains that they let little light through. What could slip past the glass was the rhythmic pulse of the cop cars’ lights outside, a steady red-and-blue flash that gave little to see by. You flicked your goggles up. It was dark (go figure), but not pitch black. The vague shapes of objects were visible, and things closer to the windows caught the flare of the lights well enough.

It seemed like a suitable enough spot to take a breather. There were no release doors in the room either; you had very much learned your lesson.

You tucked yourself in the darkest corner and jammed your hand back in your pocket. You should be focusing on your objective and getting the hell out, but your nerves were so fried from almost dying that you could barely think about what room you were in. With little preamble, you pulled out your sad little cigarette and fished in your other pocket for your lighter. Just a minute. Just a minute, just a few drags, just something to soothe your frazzled mind.

The filter pressed between your lips. Leaned heavily against the wall, you ducked your head. Sweat from fear and exertion slicked your thumbpad, and it slid off the lighter more than a few times. Frustration curled in your chest, the tears from earlier pricking at your eyes unbidden. Embarrassment followed soon after; the lack of control you felt was sending you spiraling. This wasn’t how the trial was supposed to go. You weren’t supposed to get caught. All you could think about was how disappointed Easterman would be at your poor performance today — how your grade slipped lower and lower with each fuck-up. You couldn’t bear the thought of having the lowest individual grade out of the group.

Nightmarish. It was nightmarish. And your lighter still wasn’t fucking working.

The door to the conference room creaked open. For a stupid, misguided second, you thought it was a fellow Reagent coming to regroup. Your thumb pressed down on the spark wheel one more time, and the little flame flared to life.

You looked up, and your stomach sank.

The Pitcher stood in the doorway, gloved hand still wrapped around the doorknob. His eyes zeroed in, not on you but on your lighter; glassy irises tracked the dance of the flame with fervent intensity. This wasn’t real. Out of all the Ex-Pops, why did they have to release the one that tracked Reagents the longest? The Pusher would have given this up ages ago. You could have lost any Grunt around all the twists and turns you took. Hell, even a Night Hunter could have been shaken off by darting into a brightly-lit room. Why this? Why him? Why now?

He nudged the door shut with his boot and stalked closer; the gentle clink of the bottles at his hip rang melodic through your head. A quiet beep from your ESOP signaled that finally, your stun rig was back online; that gave you some relief. The orange wash of his molotov flickered over everything it passed until eventually it settled on you. Everything metal on your person was bronzed by the light; it was so bright up close that you had to flick up your goggles with your free hand to actually see.

You kept your thumb pressed down. The Pitcher was an arm’s length away; your pulse took on a speed more suitable for rabbits than humans. To be honest, you were beat to shit. If you could use your stun rig, you could get away — but if and only if you could use your rig. Another fight with him would not go well.

Glottal breaths wheezed from his chest as he studied the little flame, head tilted as the reflection danced in his dull eyes.

“I need it,” you muttered, and his eyes snapped to yours. Your heart leapt to your throat out of raw fear, and it took several seconds for you to swallow it back down. “To smoke.”

You gestured to the cigarette that hung from your lips. The lighter, as beat-up as it was, finally sputtered out, and the Pitcher let out an agonal gasp that made you jump. You knew… some things about him. Obsessed with fire to the point of religious fervor was a sticking point in a document you’d swiped from some other trial. It was probably why shattering his molotov had pissed him off so bad.

“I can get it back, the lighter’s just— hold on—” you started, an errant tremor in your hand as you attempted to spark it back to life.

Failure. Over and over again. The Pitcher’s breathing increased in severity as you struggled, and something like embarrassment prickled at your cheeks. You really, sincerely hoped that no Murkoff scientists were watching this. This being your last moments captured on tape was not something you wanted to consider.

There was a snap, followed by a shower of sparks. You jolted, eyes widening in the dark. Illuminated from below by the flicker of the molotov’s flame, the Pitcher leaned closer, holding his free hand near your face. Your cheek pulsed with pain as if to remind you what exactly having that hand in that location felt like — but he didn’t swing. Something between a growl and groan bubbled from his throat, and he snapped again. Your eyes caught it that time — the middle finger and thumb of his glove on his free hand were tipped with metal. Sparks flew again, but scattered to the floor uselessly; you flinched backwards.

A frustrated noise ripped from him; before you realized, his hand fastened securely around your jaw. The metal caps were still hot from the spark, and you sucked in a sharp gasp at the singe of your skin. Message well received: stay still. Gaze sliding to his, something turned in your stomach at the way he watched you. Everything felt balanced on a tightrope as thick as sewing thread. One wrong move and you’d be left as a smoking pile of unrecognizable meat on the station floor.

You kept still. He released your chin.

Snap. That time, the spark caught; you tried your best not to cringe away from the burst, even as a few settled hot on your skin. A thin tendril of smoke curled upwards from the end of the cigarette, dispersing the multicolored flashing from outside across its haze. Success. Although your breath still shook, you sucked in a lungful of smoke; relief coursed through you and you damn near slumped against the wall. The Pitcher’s eyes flicked down to the cherry-red end of your cigarette, head tilted minutely.

It felt like taking drags at gunpoint. There had to be some record for fastest cigarette ever smoked, and whatever it was, you were definitely beating it. Whatever tenuous peace this strange act of consecration via flame had garnered was straining under the weight of what the two of you were. You pulled it down to the filter, and went to stamp out the stub — but the hand of your pursuer caught your wrist. Eyes wide, you offered no resistance as he shoved your hand back up towards your mouth. A groan, high and reedy, dragged from his throat and filtered through his mask.

The message was clear enough. Keep smoking. But keep smoking what? There wasn’t anything left. Regardless, you put it back between your lips out of fear of the consequences and took another drag. Pain wrinkled your face as you felt the embers of the tip nip at your fingers. Every time you pulled, the flare of the cherry drew a noise from him. Nothing pleasant. Just those shredded growls and shrieks, flecked with spit and gasoline. Eventually you burned your fingers, and dropped the stub purely out of reaction.

Mistake. The Pitcher snarled and shoved you back against the wall, and you yelped out of surprise. Fuck. God fucking damn it, you needed your rig—

Gloved hands snatched your wrists and slammed them to the peeling wood so hard that your bones ached. You swore loudly and bucked as hard as you could, body writhing in the Ex-Pop’s iron grip desperately. Not like this. Not like this. You were not going to fail.

Your boot connected with his shin through his blood-spattered jeans and he shrieked, grip loosening a fraction — just enough for you to tear yourself free and stumble for the shut door of the room, your hand scrambling for your primed rig, you were so close—

Fingers curled in the back of your shirt and yanked, a garrote of fabric that closed around your already bruised throat. You tripped and were shoved, hip banging painfully off wood, catching yourself on the conference room table with both palms splayed flat on the surface behind you. The Pitcher lunged — and stopped.

Fear was not an unfamiliar companion anymore. Not in this trial. Not in Sinyala at large. That acrid tang of terror, like live batteries on your tongue, the way your breathing quickened and shuddered, the slam of your heart against your ribs… All of it was commonplace now, nearly monotonous — nearly boring. You wondered, vaguely, how long it would take for Murkoff to beat your flinch reflex out of you entirely.

But now… it wasn’t just fear. Something else, something sinuous and heavy, curled deep in your gut. The rapid thrum of your heart couldn’t be blamed on only panic. The thought alone was disgusting, and you shoved it away with a vengeance. The Pitcher hung over you, his body solid, so much stronger than you. Each muscle-padded limb had scarred, shiny skin stretched over it, and his fine, full-body sheen of sweat caught the flickering of the molotov’s flame, worked up by the chase and the fight.

Your heels gently shifted a few more inches apart, every nerve tuned and primed to fire. Grime, grit, and miniscule shards of broken glass crunched quietly beneath the tread of your boots. Those dead eyes held your own behind the hollows of the mask, steady on your features as the Pitcher studied your trembling reactions.

And then… a push. Hip-level. You jolted, a half-gasp leaving your lips as the unfamiliar sensation registered. It had been so long since you’d had human contact with another person that wasn’t violent. It took a few seconds for you to realize what had happened.

The Pitcher was pressed against you. He held his hips against yours with undeniable insistence. Behind his mask, his breathing quickened, the raspy sounds coming out nearly tortured as air filtered over his shredded larynx. A slight creak of leather off to the side signaled the tightening of his fingers around the molotov in his hand.

You swallowed so hard it hurt. No spit in your mouth to aid the motion, your dry, tacky tongue pressed against your teeth as you tried and failed to come up with a plan. Or something to say. Bewilderment and fear and oh, God, was that arousal? Muscles in your thighs twitched; your eyes flicked from his own to his chest to his crotch, hidden beneath the battered canvas ‘skirt’ draped over his hips. This was not fucking happening. This was so not happening.

A wheeze from behind his mask. He pulled back — and ground forward again. The weight of his body pushed your own back against the table, the lip of it digging into your ass. Quiet rasps of canvas on denim floated up to your ears, a steady undercurrent to the Pitcher’s gargled breathing and your shaky panting. What the fuck?

Those eyes tracked your every motion — every twitch, every blink, every breath — as he found a steadier rhythm. With each rock of his hips, there came a new sound. After a moment, it clicked — it was the gentle slosh of gasoline in the molotov bottles, disturbed by his motion. Back and forth. Back and forth. The bottles tied to his hip clinked against each other errantly.

The lit molotov he held swung up from your side, and you flinched away with a sharp gasp, conditioned by all the other times you’d had one smashed against the side of your skull or shattered at your feet. This time, though… he just held it. The heat from the flame edged on painful, held just a few inches from your cringing expression. Orange washed over your face, heat and color illuminating your features. An excited little noise — a high-pitched half-yelp — tore out from behind the nozzle. Your gaze flicked to the flame, then to his obscured face, the haunting features of the mask limned in gold. His hips picked up their pace, rocking against your own, and oh, fuck, you felt it.

Trying to keep yourself grounded, your eyes sought something that wasn’t the Ex-Pop currently grinding against you. The motion of the dark liquid inside the grime-flecked bottle hanging over your head would have to do. Nauseatingly, it was in time with his movements, and it filled your ears, your skull — even your nose, the harsh smell of it stinging your sinuses. Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Revulsion speared you. Clearly, the pursuit and the instance with the cigarette had gotten him worked up, but you didn’t— you couldn’t—

Fire brushed your skin. Pain radiated outwards instantly, and you spat out a string of swear words as you attempted to duck away from the encroaching bottle. His free hand snatched your jaw again, keeping your face still even as you fought. Terror warped your features as the heat seared your flesh; the smell of burning hair filled your nose atop the everpresent note of gasoline.

“Please don’t, please, please—” Your cries were pitiful. You may as well have said nothing at all. Skin reddened and welted on your cheek, blistering under the flames of the molotov. Tears sprang to your eyes, swelled on your waterline, and spilled over your lashes in quick succession as your body squirmed helplessly. His frame kept you pinned and his hand kept your head still; your heartbeat soared in agony as he burned your bruised flesh from where he’d clocked his fist across your cheek. It just kept ratcheting up. Burning and burning and burning, white-hot heat down to your bone, and you might have been screaming.

It was excruciating. Then it was over. Trembling cries turned to sobs as the grimy air of the precinct rushed to meet your charred skin.

“What the fuck?” The three syllables struggled to escape your throat.

His hips rocked against yours with more insistency, his breathing having picked up during his little demonstration. Delirious with pain, you stared up at him; tears tracked clean lines through the dirt and blood spattered across your features. His eyes were still heavy and glassy — that would never change — but his pupils were blown; the slate gray of his irises was reduced to a thin ring around abyssal black.

Sweat slicked your palms so badly that you started to slide where you were propped up on the table. You knew. You weren’t stupid. It was clear what the Pitcher sought from you, and the thought made your head spin.

There were whispers, sure. People bargaining their freedom with some of the more lucid Ex-Pops, offering the only currency they had — their flesh — in exchange for escaping a trial. You’d even heard tell of a few that had managed to get away from Coyle by offering themselves up as sacrifice. Could you do that? Give yourself up as meat for a pyromaniac to rut into? There was no telling if you’d even get out of this alive. Unharmed was already off the table; your cheek pulsed dully, the nerves blackened and useless.

Before you could decide, the Pitcher chose for you. The lit molotov was holstered — still smoldering — and gloved hands swooped down to grab at your thighs; with shockingly little effort, he hoisted you onto the table you were crowded against. You yelped, hands flying to the slope of his bare shoulders to steady yourself. Skin-on-skin contact hit you like a punch to the gut; it had been so long since you’d had normal human interaction. The best you got was Easterman’s spiraling rambles over the radio, interspersed with languid, liquid praise that had you curled under your blanket wishing for the stuttering in your chest to go away.

He was hot. No surprise there. The Pitcher’s skin was smooth, scrawled with raised veins and long-healed burn scars like a roadmap to Hell. Your damp palms skated awkwardly over his flesh until you found purchase on the meat of his shoulders; he let out a sound behind the mask that sounded less like a groan and more like a purr.

“I’ll do it if you let me go,” you said hoarsely, voice still shaking from tears, and his eyes snapped to yours. Like you even had a choice. For several long, horrible seconds, the only sound in the room was his gargled breathing. The noise made you cringe; as much as you wanted to close your eyes and pretend, there was no getting away from what you were doing and with who. You felt less like a willing participant and more like the guy in the Futterman goose mask that you cooked alive in the factory some trials ago.

A huff left his nozzle; you felt errant droplets of gasoline mist your face. Leather rasped over your pants with interest before his hands tugged your thighs apart, fingers pressed into the plush give of your flesh. No confirmation. He pushed ahead like you hadn’t even spoken; fearful of retribution, you kept your mouth shut and hoped that he would keep your last-ditch bargain in mind as he groped at you.

Nervousness and adrenaline surged through your veins — the unending march of cortisol wrung your body dry of any further stress response. Already exhausted from the chase and the pain, you merely let the disgust and terror wash over you, a black tide ebbing at the fringes of your consciousness. Easterman wanted you empty. If you were empty, nothing would hurt. Nothing could metastasize inside your husk if it was hollow.

Empty. The word stuck as the Pitcher slotted his lithe body between your spread thighs. Your lungs were already full of cigarette dregs, the black tar residue proof of disobeying Easterman’s word. What was one more thing filled? Your track record was already marred.

A hand slid down in jagged motions and stopped over your inseam; a wheeze rattled from the Pitcher’s chest as he cupped your cunt over your pants, the motion rough and awkward with excitement. You shuddered, torn in two between the overwhelming touch and the latent terror still threaded through your limbs. Goosebumps prickled over your skin; everything felt primed, ready, cutting through your constant haze of numbness.

His hips swiveled, the bottles adorning them clinking with the motion, and he ground his swelling cock against the crease of your thigh with ragged huffs; his hand began to move, harsh little rubs over your inseam. It didn’t feel good, but it was better than ripping your jeans down and fucking himself into you dry. Credit where credit was due.

His spine curved over you as you dug your nails into his shoulders; the plane of his abdomen rolled steadily as he rocked his hips into yours with increasing intensity. The pressure on your cunt slid upwards, and for a brief, incredible moment, his fingers pressed the inseam of your pants right into your clit through your panties and rubbed, and a broken noise fell from your lips. It sounded wounded, and the Pitcher froze. Heat spread over your face in a slow, damning crawl.

The angular planes of the mask swung low as he stared at your face. Again. Slower the next time around. Unyielding pressure, directed right into an area you may as well have forgotten about since coming to Sinyala. Your reaction was watched with lidded, dull eyes, tracking the way your eyebrows pulled together in shameful pleasure. He sucked in a breath that sounded like it hurt and sped his fingers up; the rough fabric of your Murkoff-provided pants bit into your cunt through your panties. It wasn’t good. Just clumsy. Just happening. Every other beat, he managed to push at your clit, which just barely toed the line of pleasure.

You rolled your head back and gritted your teeth. You didn’t need it to be good. You just needed it to be over.

Unfortunately, the Pitcher did not seem to care about what you wanted. Lost in the sensation of a warm, somewhat-willing body to grind against, he held your thigh up and apart with his free hand and curled over your form with painful-sounding wheezing groans. For one hopeful second, you thought that maybe he would just dry hump himself to completion and let you off easy. Of course not. There would never be an easy way out. Not here.

A choked growl filtered through his mask — accompanied by an ugly, clawing gasp for air — and he pulled his hips back only to work his free hands into the waistband of your pants.

“Wait, I can—” No unbuttoning necessary. It took a few tries, but he yanked your bottoms off with comparatively little effort. The fly snapped; you heard the button ping against the marred wood of the table with a sinking feeling in your gut. It was happening. Thick air, hazed with cigarette smoke and free-floating aerosolized gasoline, pressed invasively against your cunt, and your thighs immediately attempted to close.

The Pitcher snarled and forced your legs open again so hard that your hip popped. Fear lanced down your spine and you accepted the reprimand, letting his hands splay over the plush flesh of your thighs without further complaint.

“My shoes,” you croaked, sitting up further. The Ex-Pop stilled, glancing at your grime-splattered boots. Before you could say anything else, he was already wrenching them off with frustrated grunts, tugging and pulling your legs into easier positions so he could scrabble at the laces with rabid intensity. Heavy clunks bounced off the walls as your footwear was discarded, followed shortly by your pants.

Now bare from the waist down, an uncontrollable shudder coursed through you at the thought of what, exactly, you might be sitting in on the table. Leather passed over your thighs, groping and squeezing at your flesh with groans that whittled down into passable purrs. Your heartbeat stuttered treacherously, eyes flicking from his downturned mask — staring directly at your cunt — to the slope of his shoulders to the way his gloved hands indented your skin. You could do this. You had to do this.

It could be worse. It could be Coyle, who no doubt would have simply fucked you raw and bleeding and then electrocuted you for the fun of it.

His hand slid down to the crux of your thighs again, brushed through the thatch of dark curls there; prodding fingers eventually found your folds and trailed inexpertly through them, expecting a wetness that wasn’t there. Your hips jolted at the touch; the leather slid, smooth and foreign, over your most sensitive areas, and you couldn’t tell if you wanted to cry or moan. Something was wound tight behind your sternum, and each rabbit-quick slam of your heart threatened to crack the bone and set it loose.

Another rattling purr from the Pitcher. His knuckle bumped your clit accidentally; however, when he felt your hips jump, he doubled back and circled it again. Intentional now. Not gentle. There was nothing gentle within a hundred miles’ radius of this place. There was just a little too much pressure — just a bit too hard on your clit, just a bit too tight on your thigh — but your exhausted brain filtered as much pleasure as it could out of the touch anyway. One pass of his fingers pushed beneath the hood and you swore out loud, stars flickering for a second behind your eyelids.

Regrettably, he ventured further. One finger prodded experimentally at your entrance; finding it dry, he let out a chest-deep groan and switched tactics. Before you could respond to his poking — or even blink, really — he had brought his hand up to your mouth, resting his fingertips heavily on your chapped lips. A cringe pulled at your features at the thought of just what might be on those gloves, but he took advantage of the way your lips parted to breathe and shoved two fingers in up to the knuckle.

Instantly, you gagged, throat spasming around the intrusion, but he didn’t let up. Of course not. Why would he? The muffled sounds of complaint you choked out around his digits buzzed in your head, vibrating your jawbone and making his eyes flick wide with interest. You sucked in air through your nose, fighting the vomit that threatened to rise in your throat; fresh tears glistened on your lashline as his fingertips splayed over the back of your tongue.

An excited shriek of a gasp tore from his chest as you struggled around his gloved digits. The metal cap on his middle finger weighed heavy in your mouth, bumping and brushing against your hard palate painfully. Fire — or the taste of it, rather — bloomed over your tongue; old metal shavings and char from the little strike-cap on his finger permeated on your tastebuds nauseatingly. Your hands came up to brace on his shoulders, nails pushing into his solid flesh; if anything, the pain seemed to spur him on. His fingers started to move, sickeningly enough; little pumps into the clutch of your mouth that made soft sucking noises spill into the hazy air. Humiliation seared over your cheeks, and, even worse, you felt blood start to drain elsewhere as he fingerfucked your mouth.

Drool pooled beneath your tongue; without even thinking about it, the muscle curled around his pumping knuckles, tasting gasoline and dirt and the iron tang of blood. Eyelids fluttered shut. Thigh muscles twitched. All you could hope for was that none of your fellow Reagents stumbled in here and saw you like this, naked from the waist down with the Pitcher’s fingers down your throat.

With a wet pop, he yanked his fingers free of your mouth. Your chest heaved beneath the weight of your ESOP, strings of spit hanging from your bruised lips; a few glossy strands connected his hand back to their origin. Something rattled in his chest as he examined the glisten of the freshly-cleaned leather. There was no time to decode it. Down his hand went again, sliding between your folds, hooking on your entrance, and pushing in.

You shrieked, aroused but unprepared, and instantly tried to squirm away from the intrusion. He made a similarly ugly noise back at you, his other hand coming down like a clamp on your hip; with an iron grip, you were forced to perch on that grimy table and take it. The worst part was that you started to like it.

It wasn’t your fault. You could almost hear Easterman assuaging you for your lapse in judgment. Just a stumbling point in the progress of your therapy. But the Pitcher’s foray into your mouth had left you feeling dizzy and violated and aroused, and his fingers pushed into you with considerably less effort than you had expected. Your cunt stretched painfully to accommodate, but the thick coat of spit helped a fair bit. Still, the burn of the stretch felt like fire running through your deepest parts, and you let out several pained whines as your head lolled backwards. Tremors lanced up your arms as you struggled to hold yourself up.

Either he mistook your groans of pain for pleasure or just wanted to keep going — regardless, his fingers picked up a punishing pace. The heavy metal cap of his middle finger scraped against your walls, an odd, foreign object that felt distinctly different from anything else you’d ever had inside of yourself. His breathing sputtered in his throat; rapid, glottal wheezing that only intensified as he pumped his fingers into your cunt. Oh God, and it was starting to spill over the thin line that separated pleasure from pain, blurring it incomprehensibly into spikes of pure sensation that sent your muscles quivering. Wet, steady noises crawled up from between your thighs, accompanied by his strangled huffs. Full. You were full. Slick arousal started to mingle with your own spit, glossy stains creeping up his glove with each push of his digits.

He cupped your sex, and the heel of his hand ground into your swollen clit, and you moaned; a high, reedy, desperate noise that ratcheted him up into full-blown animal panting. Breathing sounded like it hurt for him, but he was far more invested in the writhing, crying mess of your body than any of his own discomfort.

Something heavy and hot started to wind tight in your gut — a fly in a spider’s web, wrapped taut in tension-laden silk — and whimpers eked out from your lips. The meat of his hand crushed against your clit punishingly hard, and coupled with the steady shove of his fingers, you could feel it, could feel it creeping up from your cunt—

Empty. You were empty. The Pitcher yanked his fingers out of you and you sobbed, confused and in pain and distraught at the lack of sensation.

Fabric rustled violently, like it was being yanked around. You drew yourself up on shaking arms, morbidly curious and nerves still frayed. He pulled at the fabric he wore with frenetic intensity, snarled huffs leaving his chest as he tore off the canvas draped over his hips and shoved the waistband of his pants downward. The material struggled for a second, snagged on the obstruction of the obvious tent, but he worked it down near-instantly, and his cock bobbed free, glistening in the low, pulsing light.

There wasn’t time to admire. With a crescendoing groan, he wrapped a leather-laden fist around his length and guided it to your still-twitching cunt. The dripping head nudged at your entrance for a moment, hot and insistent, and you sucked in a tremulous breath… that was immediately punched out of you by the sharp shove of his hips as he slid straight home. Your nails scraped against the table beneath as he gasped, filtered through the mask with a spray of gasoline, and planted one hand flat on the wood by your hip to keep himself upright. Through your own flickering lids, you caught the way his eyes rolled back in his head, lost to the way your cunt clamped around his cock. The stretch was incredible, pushed far into the territory of pain and pleasure, and he remained seated fully inside of you for only a second before he withdrew to the tip and pressed forward again.

You kept yourself upright for about three thrusts before your arms gave out; your back hit the table, lungs fluttering as you slapped a hand over your mouth to keep the worst of your moans in. The Pitcher let out a near-feral growl, wheezing for air at the end of it, and slammed his hips against yours with desperation. One hand remained flat on the table, supporting his weight; the other locked on your hip, pulling your body down to meet his thrusts. The head of his cock nudged the deepest parts of you, hot skin dragging over the silk of your walls at a brutal tempo. This was loud, you knew it was loud, but for once, you physically could not care about consequence — not about Reagents catching you, or Ex-Pops, or Coyle, or even Easterman. All that mattered was the drive of the Pitcher’s hips and the damp slap of his skin against yours.

Moans crawled out from behind your palm; your eyes screwed shut as sparks flew behind your eyelids. That coil in your gut was back, white-hot and heavy, and you felt yourself grind towards it with each saw of his hips. Through the punishing stimulation, you dragged your free hand over to your lower stomach, then lower, brushing past the nest of curls on your mound and finding your clit with a practiced familiarity. At the first pass of your fingers over the swollen bead, your hips practically jumped off the table. Your cunt clenched spastically around the Pitcher’s cock, and he felt it, judging by the groan that spilled from behind his mask. He drew your thigh up higher, notching it over the taper of his hip, and pushed his body closer; his movements changed from full thrusts to jackhammer-esque, incoherent humping.

The clear want in his motions had your eyes rolling in your sockets, and your fingers really started to circle your clit. Pleasure spiked over your frame, starting from your cunt and working its way upwards, leaving a searing hot trail behind. Strangled little noises that matched his tore from your throat, and you felt your own orgasm coming up on you startlingly fast.

A few more deep grinds of his hips and frantic circles pushed into your clit and you were gone. The coil in your gut snapped and pleasure fanned upwards and out from your cunt; whines spilled from your lips as your body jerked and writhed, laid out on the table like some of the battered mannequins you’d seen dotting the station. Sweat from your palm smeared over your bruised lips; you tasted salt.

Wheezing purrs escaped from behind his mask as you came, his hips never ceasing — always rocking, always pushing. It drew out your pleasure for a painfully long time, but too much ecstasy was better than too much agony, and you had experienced the latter in spades.

Something wet dripped on your stomach where your shirt had ridden up — staccato droplets that made your skin twitch. You looked up blearily, cunt still spasming errantly, and realized he was drooling on you, the gasoline-infused spit seeping out around the nozzle of his mask. In short order, you also realized that he was still fully hard, seated inside your cunt up to the hilt, balls soaked with your arousal and twitching against your swollen flesh. Every minute motion made your sensitive walls twitch; remnants of your orgasm still came and went in aftershocks that sent tremors down your inner thigh.

An obscenely wet noise made embarrassment prickle over your cheeks all over again as he pulled out. For one deliriously stupid second, you thought that maybe it was over. He’d jerk himself to completion on your thigh, or make you suck his cock, and then you’d finally be free of this fucking trial. No. Perhaps the biggest lesson you should have taken from your therapy was that nothing here was ever that easy.

Hands locked around your hips and, with worrying ease, flipped the weight of your body. Your weight crushed into your ESOP as you were pushed against the table, cheek mashed against the whorls of the wood. No, he simply wasn’t done. Ropes of drool, filtered through his nozzle, spilled over your back as he settled his hands on the flare of your hips and kicked your feet apart with a heavy boot. Fear swooped low in your gut at the feeling of another round; your cunt still buzzed with hypersensitivity and you weren’t sure how much more of a beating you could take.

The ESOP dug painfully into your chest as he tugged your hips into place. Humiliation threaded with terror — or maybe arousal, your fucked-out brain couldn’t decipher anymore — prickled hotly at your skin. One gloved hand smoothed up your back, smearing over his spit, dragging the fabric of your shirt up until it was hindered by the straps of your ESOP. An irritated snarl curled from behind you, and you felt fingers prying at the leather until — snap. The buckles gave way, and he tugged the equipment off you with little care. It was sent sliding down the length of the table, discarded in favor of pushing your shirt up; you felt the weight of those dead eyes on the skin of your back, felt the heavy press of his soaked cock on the curve of your ass.

Pitiful whimpers slipped from your bruised lips as your cheek pressed into the body-warm wood. The exploring hand slid from your back to your front, groping at your chest with interest under your shirt; your nipples hardened under the rough touch, and a tweak of one of them had you yelping like a dog. Unintentionally, your hips squirmed at the touch, smearing pre-cum and leftover arousal over your ass; the minor twitch sent the Pitcher jumping into action.

With a strangled, excited groan, he slid his hands down to your ass and spread you. Fuck. Heat swarmed over your face, spilled down your neck and over your collarbones in a searing-hot flush. Distantly, you wondered if there was a camera catching this all on tape right now. Your eyelids screwed shut.

There was maybe half a second of his slick cock pushing at your swollen folds before he caught on your still-twitching entrance and shoved it in. You choked, knees weakening at the intrusion. Bent over the table as you were, you felt him all the way up in your lungs, like the head of his cock was brushing your diaphragm. He let out a delighted, broken snarl and ground his hips against you while fully hilted; the motion dragged his tip against what you assumed was your cervix, and it hurt so fucking bad that it teetered over into the territory of feeling ridiculously good.

“Oh God, no,” you groaned out deliriously, the first audible words you’d managed to get out since he’d taken your pants off earlier. Your nails dug into the smooth lacquer of the table. More drool dripped onto your exposed back, and you shivered helplessly. Sensitivity seared through you; every twitch, every pulse inside of you felt like it was magnified tenfold.

And then he started to fuck you. Again.

He moved like a machine, sharp, staccato thrusts as he fucked into you from behind with harsh panting filtered through his mask. Slick leather creaked under strain as his fingers tightened on your hips, holding your pliant body up to meet his motions. The metal caps on his thumb and middle finger pinched your already-twitchy flesh, and you gasped at the nips of pain, hips writhing in some dumb, animal way. It wasn’t like you were getting away.

The harsh slap of damp skin on skin, cut through by the clink of bottles bouncing off each other, filled the tight space of the conference room, a steady undercurrent to your weak, desperate moans and his gargled panting and yelps. Your vision seemed to phase in and out in time with the flash of the police lights filtered through the window; everything melded together into a haze of pain-pleasure. Your limit had been found, pushed, and broken a while back. Now, you just held on for the ride as the Pitcher used your body for his own end.

A rustle from behind you. Dizzily, you attempted to turn your head and see what it was — only to be greeted by a blaze of fire over your head. You let out a half-shriek, half-moan, fear causing your inner walls to clench spastically. Out of the far corner of your eye, you caught him holding the smoldering molotov to the nozzle of his mask; the flames danced in front of his face, washing his eyes from slate to gold.

Horror seeped down your spine. Oh God, please no. Being burned alive while your organs were getting pulverized from the inside out was not how you wanted to go. If the trial cleanup crews found your body half-charred and half-clothed, you were going to die a second time from embarrassment.

But no flames crawled up your back. Your hair did not burn. Your skin did not bubble. The slam of your heart in your chest matched the pound of his hips — he didn’t stop for a second throughout the entire display — but there was no pain.

Until you felt his bare, sweat-damp chest pressed against your naked back, and then a searing hot nozzle pressed into the skin of your shoulder.

You screamed. Tears welled instantly in your eyes and spilled onto the table beneath; nails scrabbling for purchase, you attempted in vain to buck him off. Ignoring your writhing and still fucking you, the Pitcher pressed the metal of the nozzle into your skin over and over, trailing in a haphazard line from your shoulder to the crook of your neck. A horrible, torturous imitation of kisses; the sizzle of your own skin as he effectively branded you reached your ears and just added to the overstimulation threatening to shatter your mind.

Pleasure raked you inside and out, your hypersensitive cunt fluttering and spasming around the steady plunge of his cock; coupled with the pain as he dug the white-hot nozzle of his mask into the delicate skin of your neck and the overwhelming sensation of his solid, slick body pinning yours to the table, your brain and body threatened to give out.

His noises started to ramp in intensity — as did his thrusts. Your knees wobbled treacherously; the only thing keeping you up at that point was the table you were bent over and the vise grip he had secured on your hips. Something like sobbing tore from your throat as agony and ecstasy blurred in your beaten body; unbelievably, he had dragged you right to the precipice of another orgasm, and you teetered on the edge, jaw slack against the wood of the table.

Another hiss as his nozzle shoved into the junction of your neck and shoulder, burning the skin for the dozenth time. That time, though, he pressed in hard, bearing his weight down on your upper body as his hips humped against yours, bouncing off your ass as he chased his own release. Raspy purrs poured from the Ex-Pop, vibrating the hot metal driven against your skin. Drool seeped out, irritating your fresh brand marks, and the spike of pain threw you over the edge. Like a conflagration in your gut, blazing heat swelled and snapped, dragging over your body in blistering-hot waves that left your nerves charred and twitching.

In tandem, he drove his hips into yours one-two-three more times and then held them there with a broken groan; his cock kicked and pumped inside of you as he came, plumes of heat spilling against your abused walls. For several long moments, you both stayed like that — him by choice, you pinned below him. Both of you sucked and heaved for air. Pain and latent pleasure sparked all over your body — your new angry red marks, your battered cunt, the fingertip bruises you were sure had now been dug into your hips.

The sweat-damp, scarred skin against your back felt odd as it slid off you. You stayed, bent over the table, attempting to regain lucidity and failing miserably. Sweat had collected on your body wherever skin touched skin, and you literally had to peel yourself off the table on trembling arms. Shaking violently, you tugged your shirt back down as if the modesty meant anything. You reached out, hooked a finger in the broken strap of your ESOP, tugged it over. It slid back onto your chest alright, but hung at an odd angle.

When you turned around for your pants and shoes, the Pitcher was already dressed. Only the sheen of sweat and the heave of his chest signified that anything had changed — his mask remained as impassive as ever, his eyes still dead behind it. But his pupils were still blown, and when you looked down, there were new stains on his pants… and two fingers on his glove had been cleaned till shiny.

Purrs still rattled out from behind his mask as he considered you, leaned against the table with legs shaking like a newborn fawn. You opened your mouth to say something, do something, when a voice interrupted you.

“New objective.” it called over both your heads. “Please exit the trial.”

Mortification seared down your spine at the realization that you had disappeared the entire trial and left your fellow Reagents to do all the work. The Pitcher, clearly, did not seem to care. He straightened up with a spitting huff, shook his head, and turned on his heel to exit the conference room, though he cast you a lingering glance, highlighted by the glow of a freshly-lit molotov as he slunk out the door.

You gathered your bottoms shakily and slid them on with haste, more than excited to leave; the fresh brands on your shoulder throbbed with your pulse, and you were not looking forward to having to explain them to Nurse Barlow.

He had left the door open for you on his way out, which you noted with a scoff.

Luckily, the conference room was near the front of the police station, and you met up with the rest of your team — all thankfully still alive — and they cast sympathetic glances towards you as you scurried for the shuttle together.

“Jesus, you look like shit,” one of them said, pressing a small medicine bottle into your still-damp palm. “What happened?”

“Oh, you know,” you croaked, voice haggard. “Just a run-in with the Pitcher.”

#outlast #reblogging again because I actually feel fucking crazy 😭

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