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Jul 24

CICATRIX

THE PITCHER/READER

SUMMARY: Feeling all sorts of awry after your previous encounter with the Pitcher, you come to the conclusion that you need to take some frustration out on him. He agrees. Enthusiastically.

WORD COUNT: ~14k

WARNINGS: 18+, explicit PWP, very mild dubcon, canon-typical violence, and gore. Vaginal fingering + penetrative sex. Smoking, lots of derealization (reader is going crazy, more or less). Femdom, sub Pitcher. Graphic depictions of burning and physical fighting + spitting. Reader is fem but written mostly GN, no descriptors of appearance, and no Y/N used.

[This is a continuation piece to Conflagration!]

READ ON AO3 HERE

You were way, way, way off-kilter. Water ran, lukewarm, over your uninjured shoulder as you leaned your forehead against the damp tile of the communal shower wall. Even the humid air felt like it was too much on your still-healing burn scars; harsh little presses, acerbic and invasive, right against raw, sensitive flesh. Time was irrelevant in the bowels of Sinyala — not like you had access to calendars or clocks anyway, and your sleep was so fragmented that you couldn’t use it meaningfully to track anything — but it had been a stretch since you’d stepped into that shuttle. Errant spray misted the half-scarred tissue of your shoulder blade, and you winced.

You hadn’t been back in since your… encounter with the Pitcher. Encounter there being a tasteful substitute for what had actually happened — getting fucked senseless on the gore-splattered conference table of the police station — but your fractured brain was too scared to approach it any more directly than that.

Immediately after it, you had limped back to the shuttle with burns scorched across your face and back, coupled with a more sinister warmth settled deep in your pelvis. Fear had cooled whatever latent desire that still lingered in your system as you strapped yourself down to the shuttle seat. Surely Murkoff, in its boundless gluttony for delivering punishment, would have some specific reprimand for your circumstance. That’s what you had thought, anyway. But when the shuttle car had rattled to a stop and the pods shunked open, nobody pulled you aside. Easterman had delivered canned criticism, tinged with paternal condescension as always, via tinny speakers as the UV lamps blazed blue across your battered form. The researchers watched, masked faces impassive behind two-inch-thick glass, as you shuffled down the hallway; you had eyed them right back, clearly uncertain of your fate. Surely something. It was always something.

…Nothing. You’d stepped back into the Sleep Room without incident. You received your reward — a packet of stamps, two green tickets, and a familiar sheet of paper — with nothing besides the standard indifferent treatment from the guard stationed at the counter. Morbid curiosity had plagued you, had driven your steps as you brushed past your fellow Reagents on a straight path right back to your room. You hadn’t even taken your ESOP off — standing, you had opened your evaluation sheet, dying to know what comments your clinical voyeurs had scribbled down while watching the methodical dismemberment of your dignity via leather-gloved hands.

Prolonged incapacitation; behavior suggests hormonal imbalance, increase gonadotropin blocker dosage?

Prolonged incapacitation. Your grip had tightened slightly on the paper. Was that all that was to them? They must have watched. They did watch. All they did was watch. They watched you grapple with the Pitcher, watched you smash a molotov against his temple, watched him hoist you onto a table, watched him pull you into pieces from the inside out. Watched you as you disintegrated under his rapacious touch, fragile mind splintering from the head rush of endorphins and overwhelming physical stimulation.

The dismissive commentary was a blessing and a curse. Knowing what they did to misbehaving Reagents — the frantic pleading from the miscellaneous judges, snitches, and drug mules you’d continually maimed and murdered clued you in — perhaps you should have been grateful that a single line of commentary was all you got. But still. Really? It was unsurprising that the Prime Assets got free rein over their respective domains to do as they pleased with the sorry bastards deposited by the shuttle pods, but the Ex-Pops seemed to be on a shorter leash. Cowed and submissive by the endless cocktail of drugs and fear Murkoff distributed, you’d figured that something would have been done. Not in the moment, but shouldn’t there have been punishment at hand?

And why did you want there to be?

The thought struck you like a fist, so much so that you straightened up out of your slouch, unfocused eyes sharpening. You wanted there to be one. Something bitter curled up from your diaphragm, harsh smoke seeping up your windpipe, thick enough to choke on. Ironic. Maybe it was some delayed sense of injustice, finally catching up to you after however long you’d spent down in the concrete guts of the facility — some desire for retribution, angry and mangled like the rest of you.

Pointless. Whatever you felt was pointless — Easterman’s voice nagged in the back of your head that you were better off feeling nothing at all. Weapons didn’t need emotion. Weapons didn’t need to feel. You would be the scalpel of the American century, the proctor of the bleeding edge of progress, if the continually looping announcements in the Sleep Room were to be believed.

So why didn’t you feel like it?

A harsh knock made you jump so hard that you nearly slipped. The guard standing outside the showers sounded bored (as always).

“Five minutes. Wrap it up.”

Right. With six syllables and an immovable demeanor, he had reminded you of your place here. It didn’t matter what you wanted, or what you felt. The only thing that mattered was who told you to jump and how high your feet came off the ground. That was it. You shut off the water with a resigned sigh, and tried to ignore how your shoulder stung. Nurse Barlow had been kind enough to slide you a little tube of ointment the last time you’d been by — you were certain the burn across your cheekbone had spurred her sympathy — but even that didn’t dispel the pain in full.

Maybe that was the most humiliating part. It was a point you mused on as you scrubbed your body dry with your towel, careful to avoid twisting or stretching too much, and pulled your hard-earned clothing back on. Bare feet damp on metal flooring, you padded past guards every few yards from the showers back to the Sleep Room. A few Reagents looked up as you returned, but said nothing; their empty eyes slid right past you. Just another form of detachment. You were familiar with it by now.

Stray droplets of water ran down the nape of your neck unchecked as you shut the door to your room behind you. You didn’t feel clean. You never felt clean. You could have scrubbed the epidermis right off your hands and you still would never have been able to rid yourself of the feeling of intestines slicking past your fingers as you sought a key buried deep in some rotting corpse’s guts. Keys, doors, carts, snitches. The police station. The Pitcher.

Your eyes squeezed shut for a moment as the entire room swayed around you. However long ago it had happened, it had not left you. You were starting to doubt that it ever would. At every hour of the day, errant phantom touches would slide up the inside of your thigh, over your hip, across your jaw. It only worsened when you weren’t preoccupied, but there were only so many matches of tennis you could play before it too faded into that endless black sea of ennui. As painful as the burns across your face and shoulder were, the worst part perhaps had been the realization that your impromptu rendezvous with the batshit-insane arsonist had been the best you’d felt since arriving in Sinyala. Physically, mentally, all of the above. Not a good series of checkboxes to fill, but you’d be lying if you said otherwise.

Satisfaction was elusive down here, and Easterman knew it; it was how he kept you and your compatriots on tenterhooks, chasing half-truths and praises that blurred the line between sexual gratification and familial pride. Now, though, you were grappling with a revelation that had you struggling under its weight.

You had liked it.

You had liked it enough that you’d tried to masturbate after returning to the Sleep Room, once the initial pain and shock had worn off. Unsuccessful, of course. Shame had nearly smothered you, but even its crushing sensation couldn’t stay your hand; once the activity outside your window had died down some, you had snuck fingers into the waistband of your underwear and tried desperately to haul yourself to another orgasm, itching for a recreation of whatever the hell the Pitcher had just put you through. Even your memory hadn’t been sufficient; your efforts had been fruitless, resulting only in a sore wrist and a groan of frustration from your bitten lips. No matter how you tried, you couldn’t replicate the sensation of burn scars against your skin or the feeling of metal strike caps dragged along the inside of your cunt.

What the hell had he done to you?

After such immense emptiness, the sensation of being full, in more ways than one, was addicting in ways you could barely articulate. Under Easterman’s thumb as you were, it was so easy to lose grip on what made one human — sensation, emotion, pleasure — that being thrust right back into the proverbial fire (ha!) was staggering beyond belief. The shell you had so carefully built up over your weeks (...months, maybe) here had cracked under the strain, and you felt as though some red, raw part of you had been exposed. Wet meat. A soft underbelly, you heard Easterman sneer in the back of your head. He was a constant companion there these days. Pitiful, flagrant, reminiscent of the untrained mutt you are, rolling over to expose yourself to the nearest firm hand.

But you couldn’t help it. Regardless of whether or not you were a mutt, you were still just an animal. A deeply, deeply abused animal who had been shown… well. Not kindness. The Pitcher hadn’t shown you any kindness besides making you come (and multiple times at that), but he had shown you that the conditioning had not burrowed as deep into your skull as you’d originally thought. Not that you were going to thank him for it.

In fact, you felt… restless. Something with many legs crawled up your shins, some jittery sensation that had you pacing in your room, bare feet pressing into the thin rug. Warmth seeped up your legs, and it took you a moment to recognize the emotion, as beat out of you as your feelings were. Irritation. Real, true irritation. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. None of it was. This whole fucking thing wasn’t. That thought from the shower came back in force, crowding out the rest of your reasoning, filling your skull right up until it bumped against your night vision goggles.

You knew you were meat. You’d learned that lesson well enough. Your understanding of the part you played in this game was crucial to your survival; other Reagents died due to their lack of comprehension of the very simple point that they were not the apex predator here, and they were never meant to be. But you felt less than sacrificial now. That stupid goddamn trial report stared at you from your desk. Prolonged incapacitation. Your humiliated ecstasy had been broadcast live for their greedy eyes, their avarice for the data that could be wrung from your suffering blaring with every blink of the red dot on every active camera. Always recording. Always on.

And what did the Pitcher get? He had his fun, had his bout of wrestling with his prey, got his dick wet. Moved on. Back to wherever they kept the Ex-Pops penned up when they weren’t set loose to prowl trial environments. You were sure he didn’t get a stupid fucking note condescending his prolonged incapacitation. At some point long ago you’d stopped feeling sympathy for the Ex-Pops, but you could still, to some degree, recognize that they were suffering too. They were just granted weapons as outlets of their frustrations. You had heard their ramblings, as maimed and twisted as their bodies and faces, as they prowled the fake halls and fake streets and fake rooms.

Somewhere in the archives is a picture of my son.

Hurts. Like family.

They wouldn’t work with me. I just wanted to help. I'm a get-along guy.

This felt different. This was different. You just felt used. More so than usual. It was like this thing, this encounter that had left your belief in your therapy shaken to its core, had just been a footnote. Increase gonadotropin blockers? Just a blip on your record. Was it this common? Sure, you’d heard the whispers, but you’d never put much stock in them. Everyone in the Sleep Room was half-crazy anyway, all passengers on the same train headed straight for a thousand-foot-deep canyon. He had used you, the researchers had used you, everyone had. Maybe you’d never been an active agent in your therapy in the first place, but it was at least nice to pretend, and you couldn’t even do that anymore.

Your feet were carrying you upstairs before you could really think about it. The cafeteria was shadowed like normal. Thin arabesques of smoke curled through the beams of the overhead lights. Relief, as slight as it was, lightened the strange gnarled weight in your chest. An irrepressible twitch ran through your fingers. Dorris leaned against the table in her normal spot, and while she didn’t look surprised (you doubted she was physically capable of the expression), she did turn her head towards you more than usual when you rounded the corner.

A quick check over your shoulder confirmed that the only Reagents in the cafeteria were too far gone to care about whether or not you lit up. You sat down heavily on the other end of the bench from her, trying and failing to come up with something to say.

“Been a while, kid,” she offered after a moment of silence. Her good eye tracked you from behind the curtain of her graying hair. “Thought you kicked the habit.” Or the bucket.

“...No. No, not quite,” you mustered as a reply. Your fingers tapped along your thighs; the magnitude of the urge to light up surprised you. “You have an extra?”

A pause hung between the both of you. Smoke pooled in the weight of it.

“What, the cop finally gave you the what-for?”

“Just don’t have one.” You thought of where your last cigarette was laying, crushed on the floor of the police station in that conference room.

Quiet stretched between you for enough time that you really thought she might say no. But she must have taken pity on you, because she let out a sigh that was all gravel and reached into her pocket.

“Bleeding me dry,” was all she said as she passed a fresh one over.

“Thanks,” you muttered, and leaned in for a light. The little Zippo snapped to life — she shielded it with a scarred hand from the eyes of the chef, but he didn’t seem to care — and the end caught after a brief moment.

Inhale. Smoke flooded your lungs. And just like that, you were there, you were there with the Pitcher’s hand around your throat and your back flush to a wall, you were there with the fire licking at your boots as he clutched his temple, you were there breathing in all the smoke and gasoline, you—

—flinched back to reality with a startle that made even Dorris side-eye you.

“Jesus. You been huffin’ sterno or something?”

You sure felt like it. After a beat, you realized that your hand was shaking, vibrating the thin plume of smoke as it wisped up from the end of your cigarette. Little trails of turbulence curled up and away from you, lost to the haze of the cafeteria.

“Sorry,” you croaked, though it sounded hollow.

“Don’t gotta be. Just give it a rest, you’re stressing me out.”

It felt like your face was burning all over again. Embarrassed. You were embarrassed. When was the last time you’d really, really felt that? All the blood rushing to your head irritated the still-healing burn across your cheekbone. Spidery tingling webbed down your jaw, and you clenched it on reflex.

“How do you do this?”

A beat. “Do what?”

“Live like this? They don’t… make you go in?”

She shrugged. “Got a business relationship. Somebody always wants something.” A long drag. “I just get it to them.”

Did you want to go back in? Could you go back in? All that scabbing you’d worked so hard to build up had been ripped away, and you weren’t sure if you could bear another trial feeling so raw. But it wasn’t like Dorris had it great, either; you had lingered enough around her, puffing on your own pilfered cigarettes, to hear snippets of her storied past. Homeless on the Bowery at twelve. Whatever she had going on with Henrietta— the Jaeger, now.

You saw how empty her eyes were. Not that yours looked much different in the mirror, but still.

“You don’t want to leave?”

Oops. Wrong thing to say. It was like you felt the wall slam down on the foot or so of empty bench between the both of you with how her body stiffened and her eyelid twitched. A sharp huff through her nose sent smoke jettisoning out in twin flows.

“Don’t say that shit to me. With how many of you fuckers are out there in the world, maybe I don’t wanna leave. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it. Time bombs, all of you. I don’t wanna be around to see what shit happens when you finally flip your lid. You got a problem with that?” Her brusque rasp hurt like sandpaper across your heart. Clearly you’d struck a nerve.

“I guess I don’t.” Knowing how to pick your battles was a skill you’d honed well here.

She softened somewhat after a few minutes of hard silence. The lines of her body were still tense, but some of that energy wrung itself out in the rough bounce of her leg, the shift of her weight on the bench.

“...She used to say that I liked it here. Was the last thing she said before…” A shaky drag this time. The movement of her elbow was sharp. “She said I never wanted to leave. I think maybe she was right, I just didn’t wanna admit it. But I guess that doesn’t matter now.” It wasn’t an outright apology, but you understood the olive branch in your face well enough.

“Worse places to be,” you offered. “Free food and board here, at least.” Free at the cost of your soul, sanity, and self, but oh well.

“Bullshit. Look around you, kid. You really think anywhere’s worse than this?”

“Well, you’re not a snitch or a drug mule yet.”

“Doesn’t matter. It comes for everybody eventually.”

“Death?”

She looked at you like you were stupid. “Murkoff.”

“Mm.” Same difference.

You finished your respective cigarettes in mutual silence, pulling them down to their filters and letting the smoke be a balm to your soul for a brief moment. Grinding the stub into the metal beneath you to put it out, you gave her another sidelong glance, gauging whether or not you should continue shoving your foot in your mouth with the only real friend you’d made in the Sleep Room thus far.

“Thanks.” Trite, but a safe bet. Not like you had anything better to say. You rose from the bench.

Her good eye lingered on the wound marring your cheek. “Keep your head down out there, kid.”

Something tight caught up in your throat, and you had to swallow hard to will it away. Your reply was a nod, soundless and jerky, and you pivoted on your heel to leave the cafeteria, your appetite tamped by both the cigarette and the conversation. You weren’t like Dorris, as much as you liked her. You couldn’t be. The woman was all shadows and ghosts and smoke, held together by the straps of her busted ESOP and a business agreement that you were sure would fall through someday.

That wasn’t you. Not now. Not after what had happened in your last trial. Having a taste of being full in every sense of the word after being empty for so long had you jonesing like an addict, and witnessing how hollow Dorris was had only worsened it. One big study in trapped energy, all aggravation and nowhere for it to go, nothing for you to take it out on. Your shoulder brushed another Reagent’s on the stairs harder than it should have. Even the cigarette didn’t help. Some new craving had raised its head, fighting past whatever bullshit hormone blocker they were feeding you and pushing sweat through your palms and restlessness through your limbs.

You stepped off the stairs and were halfway across the central lobby when a voice stopped you.

“Higher-ups said they’re culling the Sleep Room soon.”

Bored. Male. Monotone. It took you a moment to place it.

The guard sitting at the Rebirth station. While you didn’t fully face him, you turned your head far enough to catch a glimpse of him; he was reading a clipboard. Or at least pretending to. Nobody else was around — rather, nobody else lucid enough to care. One Reagent with bloodshot eyes pawed at some TV screens a few feet away, but her jumbled muttering was reason enough to disregard her.

“Something about freshening up the place. New faces. Freeing up beds. I don’t know. But they’re taking the unproductive ones. You know, that haven’t gone in in a bit.”

Your adaptability and quick thinking had saved your ass in trials more than once. It stood to reason that it was about to save your ass again. While processing the words took a few seconds, you understood very well what he meant by the “passing” comment. They’re taking Reagents that don’t do trials. And you also understood very well where those Reagents were going: the snitch’s chair, the judge’s seat, the prosecutor’s stage.

You looked at the Rebirth guard one more time — he was still engrossed in his clipboard — and nodded once before continuing back to your room. Warning received.

It made that funny feeling in your throat return, that tight snarl of thorns that swelled up in your trachea and chest. Someone was looking out for you. Multiple someones, actually. Both Dorris and that guard. Honestly, you hadn’t expected it — he’d always seemed callous whenever you passed, waving you off with various dismissals.

No, not you, not yet.

Hard pass.

Not you. Definitely not you. Crazy to think that you could still be surprised after all the shit you’d done. And all the shit that had been done to you. But considering that you’d had a hole fucked into your head and all your carefully sealed away, disgustingly human feelings were seemingly spilling out every which way, maybe you shouldn’t have been.

Too much. It was all too much. Whatever agitation that plagued you was still knocking around in your chest; you couldn’t even sit down on your bed. Not like you were going to sleep. No, you had to go somewhere, you had to do something, you… had to do another trial.

All roads led to the same damn destination. All of you on that same train, careening down the track. You pulled on your boots and buckled the straps of your ESOP, feeling unbearably close to everything and far away all at once.

Not too much but too human, you thought with no small amount of irony as you beelined for the terminal. Your brain was a mess, thoughts feverish and fragmented, half-formed and chasing after each other. Hot exasperation and inexplicable bittersweetness clawed at your diaphragm and solidified into a mass in your throat. Others looked out for you even now, even after the grinding of your body and soul into dust, even after you’d done horrible, horrible things to other human beings in the name of some ersatz Abrahamic father-god-lover. Horrible, horrible things for a grade, a good grade, some tangible quantifier of your performance. A measurement of how high you could jump.

Bullshit. Utterly so.

And after you’d been violated in the most intimate way, after your body had been beaten and burned and pulled in every direction and wrought with mangled rapture for a legion of clinical voyeurs, all of your efforts had culminated in a single line of mildly annoyed condescension and a below-par grade.

You flicked through the trial list and selected one at random with more force than necessary.

And they were going to kill you. That little cherry on top didn’t escape you as you leaned against the terminal, a sudden wave of nausea sending your head spinning. They were really going to drag you from your room and sedate you and fucking bag your head and throw your stupid, sorry ass in a trial as a victim. You wouldn’t even get to go out on the side of your Reagency. Would you have begged like the rest? Pleaded for your life, worthless in Murkoff’s eyes, through rough burlap and been met with stony silence?

That ill feeling in your gut sharpened and heated into something more recognizable. Frustration, teetering on anger. All of it molten. A shaky exhale left you as the lights above the shuttle pod flashed red, accompanied by a low, familiar tone. Ruby washed across your face in pulses, and you didn’t even have time to hear the scientist announce that the shuttle was ready before you were inside the pod.

Before you sat down, you caught a glimpse of your destination printed on the placard above the opposing pods. Downtown. Great. You loved none of the Prime Assets (and liked them even less) but Franco was well and truly near the bottom of your list, considering his whole man-baby schtick, vulgar commentary, and propensity for dead-on accuracy regardless of distance or the direction either of his eyes was pointing.

It was kind of electrifying, feeling like this. Feeling anything at all, really. Irritation crackling up and down your limbs felt novel after going so long without registering anything but faint satisfaction with a good grade and complete emptiness for everything else. Well, that and total, utter exhaustion. You were never chomping at the bit to do any trial, but even now you felt… energized? No. Antsy was better. Deeply, deeply antsy. Your leg attempted to bounce, even with the cuff of the shuttle seat holding it still.

Green flooded your vision with a pressurized hiss, accompanied by the acrid tang of psychosis gas blooming over your tongue and sinuses. Good morning to you too, you thought sardonically. By this point you’d lost track of how many times you’d been gassed while immobilized in the shuttle, but Murkoff still couldn’t quite beat that specific flinch response out of you. All the details of the empty car hazed over, lost to blurry hallucinations of Franco prancing around with his shotgun and nude mannequins in varying sordid positions. For a few humiliating seconds, you caught a wobbly glimpse of a mannequin bending another over a table, and you squeezed your eyes shut immediately.

Not that it helped all that much. Even as the shuttle ground to a halt, you still remembered in lurid detail how the lip of the conference table had felt digging into the tops of your thighs — how your drool had smeared over the wood grain — how spit-slicked leather had slid over your back and settled, heavy and wanting, on your hips—

Pneumatic thunk. The shuttle pod door slid open, and you all but flew out of your seat. A bite of pain lanced down your back, the half-healed burns across your shoulder blade aggravated by the twist of your motion. They were not pretty when you had looked at them in the mirror; a spattering of overlapping circles, terrible little Venn diagrams of burnt flesh peppered across your upper back. At the very least they had cohesive shape; that blister across your cheekbone was simply ugly for the sake of being ugly, and you had to shake off the memory of the Pitcher holding your head still as he pressed the flaming mouth of the molotov bottle to your face.

Why? Why? As you progressed into the cool air of Downtown, your still-racing thoughts dogged your step. What a dick, you thought bitterly, reaching up to brush light fingers over the wound on your face. It was certainly purposeful. Methodical. He had watched with blown pupils as the flame ate greedily at your flesh, blackening the fat of your cheek and scorching through delicate nerve endings. Just the same as when he had shoved the white-hot nozzle of his mask into your shoulder and you heard your skin sizzling over the sound of his hips smacking against yours.

No amount of burn ointment would ever diminish the scar. That was yours to keep.

Great.

The trial itself would be fine. Kidnap the Mistress was okay. Nothing too difficult, but not one you could sail through either. Shaking yourself off like a dog, you proceeded into the police station and up the stairs, boots clunking on the flimsy wood. Mess with the radios, get the codes, grab the right mannequin, and you’d be home free. The phrase made you snort humorlessly as you twisted the amplitude dial back and forth. Home free. Sure. Two lies back to back.

It was difficult to rid yourself of the slowly-mounting disbelief that was rising in your gut. You just couldn’t make sense of it anymore. You were never one of Easterman’s most devoted acolytes — you knew some Reagents that had flung themselves completely off the deep end in pursuit of his love — but you had wanted acknowledgment of your efforts. Something that said that someone had watched you try and was rewarding you accordingly. Now, though, it felt empty. Baseless. You were to wander around in this elaborately constructed set and toy with radios to get a code to pick up a mannequin to throw in a fake police car. A fake downtown and a fake prostitute and fake cops. Simulacra upon simulacra.

“Fuck,” you said, dragging a hand down your face as you poked around the Irish Pub.

Yes, it was disbelief. Disbelief and exasperation and defiance, which was perhaps the scariest of them all. A want to disobey, which was new. You’d been good at putting your nose to the grindstone — good at dodging swings of machetes and fists as you completed objectives, good at recognizing when you had to cut your losses and leave your fellow Reagents behind (not that it didn’t sting), good at… this. This stupid, pointless, fucked up game where viscera was the chief currency and every parlay was paid in blood and tears.

Footsteps made you pause; you instinctively dropped into a crouch behind the counter, breath stilling in your lungs as a grunt wandered into the dark building with you. He rambled pointlessly about claws in his spine and communists; soft scraping accompanied his uneven steps as the blade of the machete dragged along nearby surfaces. You were sure Franco would make his debut soon, too. You hated the way your body responded every time you heard the insertion gate klaxon, well-trained like the mutt you were. You were good at this. Practiced. Seasoned. And for what?

The grunt left the area, having found nothing of interest. With a quiet exhale, you stood and continued onward, straining your ears to listen for the pre-recorded snark of the arguing mannequins that accompanied every radio. Gaudy storefronts burned into your eyes, all garish colors spattered with old blood and semi-dressed mannequins meant to mimic a lively urban area. All it did was make you scoff with rising annoyance.

You were angry, you realized, because the world you had lived in before that damning run of Kill the Snitch no longer existed. How could Easterman’s praise ever live up to real, actual physical release? All of his canned appraisal only worked on someone so hollow and deprived that they would debase themselves enough to chase after patronizing scraps. It was flimsy, hell, even paled in the face of the comparative firestorm that was the Pitcher. It had been so much and not enough all at once, all eager, clumsy touches and harsh pain administered in the throes of pleasure, and it was maybe the only genuine thing you’d experienced in this godforsaken facility so far. For once, it was just an action for the sake of action. No intent to manipulate, or deceive, or “guide.” How ironic was that?

And you were doubly angry because the primary victim of the fallout was you. Nobody else. You had to suffer the consequences. And how could you ever go back to the way things were? Not after that conversation with Dorris. Not after what that guard had told you. And certainly not after your… incident. How were you supposed to play your part now, knowing none of the rewards were real and none of the ways out were either?

Un-fucking-believable.

The worst part was that you couldn’t even say that you had wished it had never happened. But now that it had happened, you were… ruined. You wondered if Easterman knew. No, scratch that, he knew. You wondered how angry he would be for flouting his love-orders-gospel. You wondered if that actually mattered. You wondered if anything did.

You still hadn’t found any of the mannequins, as lost in your simmering displeasure as you were. Franco had shuffled by a few times on his patrols along the streets, muttering to himself per his usual flavor of derangement. Easy enough to avoid, as long as you ducked behind a corner and resisted the urge to peek out until his congested breathing subsided.

Having found yourself in front of the motel, you figured there was no better place to go than up. Go through, scour it room by room, then you could cross it off your list, so to speak. Honestly, you were just putting off the sewers for as long as possible. It sprawled across the field of your vision, studded with mannequins in varying states of undress and painted in peeling, gauche yellow. You brushed shoulders with those plastic facsimiles, eyes passing over painted smiles and ill-fitting polyester clothing and various splatters of human fluid, stark against white plastic.

Leaning on the railing, you climbed the two sets of stairs to the upper portion of the motel, pausing only briefly to scoop up the two bricks that had been tossed on the landing. They’d come in handy later; besides, you were really, really itching to hit something. If nothing else, maybe Easterman would pathologically sense that you were really trying to hit him, or whatever psychobabble bullshit related the Ex-Pops back to him. Some phallic totem or another. It was always fucking phallic with him, judging from the loose documents you’d found scattered around trial environments.

Familiar blaring made you jump out of your skin — loud, which meant close — and you wheeled around wildly to search for it. Your eyes widened some realizing that it was right on the landing beneath you, and you instantly ducked around the corner of the motel walkway, white-knuckling the brick in your hand as you waited for some audial cue to tell you who you were dealing with. Maybe the Pusher again, maybe some other grunt.

Or maybe, just maybe, it would be the object of your frustrations.

A nasty little thrill ran through you at the proposition, undercutting your mounting agitation with something that wasn’t so much irritation as it was anticipation.

One, two, three seconds. The klaxon faded out. You sucked in a breath, and—

That familiar wail rang out around the corner, eroded vocal cords struggling under the intensity of the sound. You damn near dropped your brick. Whatever had been hot and writhing behind your sternum returned in force — all that mounting anger, all the indignation, all of it compounding with nowhere to go. It was really his fault, wasn’t it? All because your prolonged struggle back in the police station had elicited that wayward reaction out of him. And now you struggled to care about your therapy at all, unmoored from your shorings and left at the mercy of your nascent humanity. Desire for a good grade eclipsed by a desire to get even, you swung around the corner to meet your maker.

The Pitcher snapped his neck to look at you as soon as you moved, back straight from that habitual military posturing. A sharp noise ripped from his chest — maybe interest, maybe recognition — but he stilled momentarily at the sight of your face.

Just as you remembered. A heavy glass bottle rolled in his grip — you could see fuel dripping off the soaked cloth wedged into the mouth — and you ached to shatter it against the hard planes of his mask. Sweat, or maybe gasoline, shone across the burn scars that webbed over his skin. The stretch of his exposed abdomen paused alongside his breathing as you both stood in quiet standoff. Light caught on his mask as his head tilted fractionally, and you had the distinct impression of being sized up.

Prolonged incapacitation.

He moved so quickly that it blurred; there was a brief snap (Dorris’ lighter, the Zippo cradled under the end of your cigarette) as he swung his hand to light his molotov with a shower of sparks, and then he was wheeling his arm back to line up his throw. Good. It was good that he wasn’t feeling sentimental. Mutual antagonism sparked something nestled between your ribs, searing threads weaving in and out of rungs of bone.

You ducked back behind the corner, and the bottle exploded against the railing behind you with a wave of heat, fuel-soaked glass shattering into a thousand suns on the upper walkway. Heart doing a terrific leap in your chest — still just an animal, you thought — you swung a hard right into the room immediately nearby. Dark, sectioned off. A bloody mattress on the floor, broken vases scattered around. A dead end. That was fine. You could work with that.

Heavy footfalls clunked up the adjacent outside stairs as the Pitcher shrieked and gave chase. He had definitely recognized you. Those few, brief seconds where you had stared at each other, separated by a flight of stairs and Murkoff’s god-given designations of predator and prey, had proven that much.

As you ducked into the single storage closet at the back of the blown-out motel room and held your breath, you wondered how different you really were. Two different leashes, same master, same bitch fucking walking you both, same bitch telling you to do your stupid, stupid tricks. Not that you thought he ever really considered the ramifications of his situation. As he stalked into the room, painful wheezes rolling out of his burn-gnarled chest, you watched him from your vantage point in the closet. The brick in your hand bit into the skin of your palm.

You wanted him to hurt because you wanted him to know what it was like for you. Maybe it could be somebody else’s turn to be meat. Maybe you could be the one manning the grinder.

He pivoted on his heel with a huff, rolling his shoulder in a movement that was so uniquely human that it almost made you hesitate. Almost. As soon as he turned away from your hiding spot, you threw the door open, sloppy in your haste to level the playing field. Maybe you shouldn’t have discounted his preternatural reaction time; as you lunged for him, brick raised, he threw his elbow back with a snarl, catching your ESOP hard enough to feel like a punch to the chest.

Bashing his elbow against a solid block of metal didn’t seem to faze him. You let out a grunt on reflex, lungs spasming briefly under the shock of impact, but inertia carried your motion through. As he spun around, the brick in your hand slammed against the forehead of his mask. A jolt lanced up your arm. The poor-quality clay broke apart in your grip under the force of the blow. He yelped, the noise from the chest and deeply reflexive, and stumbled backwards; one gloved hand came up to clutch at the now-marred equipment adorning his face.

You recovered faster than he did, your own received blow comparatively light, and oh, you were not done. The burn wound on your cheek throbbed as exertion and adrenaline heightened your blood flow; all the capillaries near the surface of your skin expanded, that loose, jittery warmth sending throbbing pulses of pain up your nervous system from your healing burns. Throwing your weight forward into a kick, the sole of your boot connected with his hip.

It was so satisfying to hit something. His body was solid, all lean muscle and heavy fireproof canvas beneath the force of your blows.

…It was less satisfying when fingers wrapped tight around your ankle. Your eyes flew wide — the gasp that tore from your chest mimicked his own as he righted himself with a violent shake of his head. Unsuccessfully, you attempted to wrench your leg free of his grip, wobbling violently in the darkness; his gaze snapped up to yours, those dead gray eyes enormous behind the mask and breathing labored.

“Fuck you—!” Even your insult was cut short as he yanked, all that lean muscle working in tandem to pull your leg up and into his body. Fuck, you’d forgotten how strong he was. The world spun around you. Your stomach dropped, and then you did, too — stars exploded across your vision as you crashed to the floor back-first. All the air left your lungs, and you gaped like a dying fish attempting to regain it.

On the floor, with one leg hoisted up in the air, you had to blink several times to get your bearings. The Pitcher heaved above you, long body curled over your supine form as he stared down at you with… you couldn’t discern. Ugly noises ripped out from his throat — but you caught the slight sway of his head. That brick to the skull must have really knocked something loose. Not enough, considering that his free hand went for one of the molotovs slung across his hip.

No, you weren’t done. Not by a long shot. You writhed angrily in his grip, planting your palms on the shabby wood of the “motel” flooring to get more leverage. He snarled at you, something high-pitched and irritated filtered through the mask. For a brief second, you thought he was going to abandon the plan of setting you on fire in favor of just smashing a molotov across your face for your impudence—

Aided by the planting of your hands, your other foot swung off the floor. Your whole body leapt off the wood for a moment, and you slammed the sole of your boot into his knee. He buckled and yowled, leg bending awkwardly, and released you. After a brief scramble to right yourself, you stumbled backwards, back flush to the storage closet you’d been hiding in at the start; he turned on his heel with a guttural sound of affront and lunged for you, clearly intending to snag the front of your ESOP.

You threw yourself to the side, hip banging painfully off a nightstand to avoid his outstretched hand. He crashed into the closet behind you and instantly turned; leatherclad fingers snared in the back of your shirt. Just like last time.

Just like last time.

“Get off me!” It didn’t even sound like you, all rage and exhilaration. Your sweat-slick palms slid over the nightstand, nails scratching the wood as you were pulled backwards — a familiar green bottle in the ajar drawer caught your eye, and you snatched it without a second thought.

Kicking out wildly behind you, you caught the bone of his shin and he shrieked. Not much of an allowance, but enough for his grip to loosen and for you to spin around. Acting purely on instinct, you swung your arm up and smashed the bottle of medicine across his temple, snapping his head to the side and sending his body following. Just like last time.

How many times had you struggled for your life like this against whatever monsters Murkoff threw at you? You’d never been on such equal footing before. It was always them winning. Always you barely escaping with your life and limbs intact, and sometimes not even that. This felt different. Real. Not a predator with its prey, but two people really, really fighting, despite the fact that he was so much stronger than you and your muscles were already screaming with exhaustion.

It hurt. It hurt, but you didn’t have time to think about the fact that it hurt, because he was already right back up; this time, he didn’t lunge for you, but he did wrench a molotov free of the rope belt across his waist. Oh, shit.

The idea came to you, brilliant and blinding as a firebomb — your rig. How had you forgotten? Your hand flew to your ESOP and disengaged the primed stun rig right as he ignited the bottle in his hand.

You were the quicker draw.

Sparks showered across your field of view, lighting the dark room up briefly in stark orange relief. He gasped for air, free hand coming up to cradle his burning eyes as he swayed dangerously on his feet; the bottles on his hip clinked gently against each other with the motion. His grip loosened on the lit molotov in his hand enough that it dangled dangerously from his fingers. You wanted to steal it, smuggle it back to the Sleep Room, set the whole goddamn thing ablaze.

But this would have to do.

There wasn’t a thought going through your head other than the desperate need to get even. When he hit you, when he burned you, when he strangled you, when he groped you, when he fingerfucked you, when he—

You threw yourself at him and slammed your fist into his diaphragm, right above that little square of leather, and his already unstable body folded and collapsed atop yours. You damn near crumpled to the floor under his weight — to keep from toppling, you sidestepped and let him slump to the floor with a pained wheeze. He groaned where he fell, shuddering gasps wracking his body as the stun from both your rig and your fist worked him over.

He recovered right as you flipped him over. Awareness surged through the Ex-Pop beneath you, and a ragged noise tore from his ruined throat as he hooked a hand around the back of your knee and yanked. You shrieked as you fell again, crumbling like a building with no foundation; he hauled you right down on top of him with a snarl, and you hit the ground with enough force that one of the suspiciously-posed mannequins in the corner of the room fell over with a clatter.

You swayed to a halt atop him, thighs awkwardly straddling his body and exertion dripping off your brow. His bare chest heaved — great, painful-sounding sucks of air tore through his torso, made those burn scars shimmer with pooled sweat and old blood. There was momentary eye contact — that hollow gaze staring up at you from behind the mask — before his fist snapped up and cracked across your jaw. White-hot pain exploded across your cheek, enough to make tears spring instantly to your eyes, and you lurched on top of him. With agony throbbing in your cheek, you reeled for a second — he bucked under you viciously — before remembering the other brick you’d stowed away.

Retribution came in the way of shoddily-fired clay. You tore it free from the pocket you’d wedged it into and brought it down across his face in a hard arc. Like its predecessor, it split apart, scattering shrapnel like blood spray across the floor beneath his head. He jolted and gasped, the sound raw, and you caught his wrists before he could bring a hand to cradle his head.

Brief stillness. The tendons in his neck stood in stark relief as his head lolled; his locs fell every which way, fanned out on the floor beneath him. Harsh white light washed in from the doorway of the room, hazed over the planes of his mask and glinted on the scratched area where you’d clocked him with the brick the first time. Warm blood welled on the side of your mouth where he’d punched you; you let the iron and saliva collect in your mouth before spitting directly at his mask.

You’d intended the action to be one of blatant disrespect — he flinched minutely and sucked in a guttural breath, eyes flaring behind the mask as he stared up at you — but then you leaned your weight back. Hard. He was hard, hard enough to feel pressing through both his pants and overlying canvas skirt, and something warm and welcome flickered in your lower stomach. Recognition, desire, maybe anger. Maybe all three.

Whatever it was, it made you gather a shaky breath, your hands still pinning his wrists to the floor. Bloody spit had splattered across his mask, flecks of red decorating the grimy white metal. Terrible and beautiful all at once. His pulse slammed beneath your palm where his shorter glove had ridden up enough to expose his wrist. So alive. So real. Nothing like the rest of this place, nothing like the prolific, stiff mannequins or Easterman’s empty praise or the faux-sympathy Barlow plied you with.

Something basal made you move. Hips perched atop his own, you rocked forward once, the motion awkward and unpracticed. Not like you’d gotten much chance to work on this in the Sleep Room. He groaned, the noise chest-deep, and writhed under you. If you had been any more lucid, you would have laughed at him — so pathetic, so needy. The words carried the tinge of Easterman’s voice, and you shook your head like a dog attempting to flick off water. Not him. Not here. This was the one thing he couldn’t have.

“I hate you,” you breathed, and it was so deeply false that you almost laughed. The words fell out of your mouth, airy and tremulous, and were accompanied by a harsh exhale as you started up a steady rhythm. Back and forth. Back and forth.

The Pitcher tucked his chin slightly, enormous gray eyes watching your face with all the interest and appetite of a bird of prey. An errant droplet of reddish saliva slid from the forehead of the mask downward and dripped into his eye; his eyelid only twitched, didn’t close, before snapping wide open. Boots planted heavily on the floor, he did his best to match the deep rocks of your hips, pelvis pushing up with an unbelievable amount of strength and agonized noises tearing out of his throat.

“I can’t— I can’t go back,” you continued, heart thudding in your throat as you ground down against the bulge of the canvas over and over again. “I can’t do this shit anymore— fuck.”

But you would. You had to. There was no other option. You saw what happened to those who gave up. You happened to those who gave up, you punished them with electrocution and buzz saws and great swinging sledgehammers. You were no Amelia. You were just you. The jut of his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed back spit and wheezed up at you, as if it substituted for a response. Right. You would get nothing back from him. And he was going to enjoy this, wasn’t he? No matter how much you fell apart, this would just be another chance for him to blow off excess steam before being recollected by the stewards of your suffering.

Frustrated tears welled in your eyes. You shoved your hips downward hard enough for him to jolt, pressing your weight down harshly on the outline of his cock. And even despite all of that, your body — your stupid, stupid body — was responding in turn; your cunt throbbed painfully, needy and stupid for touch. Still just a fucking animal.

All that blood rushing through your veins, every last one of them dilated to their limit, brought warm pain throbbing through the burn on your cheekbone and shoulder blade. It stung, stung like the shine collecting along your lash line and the stretch in your adductors. You wanted him to feel it too. You wanted him to feel everything, and you wanted him to feel it with you.

Sweat dampened the back of your shirt, collecting especially under the tight straps of your ESOP and where the waistband of your jeans dug into the fat of your stomach as you folded over him. Raspy little puffs of air left your parted lips. Even despite the light spilling in from the trial environment outside, his pupils were blown — huge black voids had reduced the slate of his irises to thin rings. You had no doubt that yours were too.

“I swear if you move, I’ll kill you.” The threat grated out of you, thick with need. You jostled his restrained wrists for a moment, palms slicking over bunched up leather and burn scars, before releasing them and planting your palms firmly on his chest. An agonal noise tore out of him, but he stayed put, hands twisted into fists above his head.

Your fingers tightened, knuckles threatening to burst through your skin with the force, and your nails dug into the bumpy texture of his bare pecs hard enough to tear the scars open. Harder. Harder. Lost to the sensation of fibrous tissue giving way, you rolled your hips against his with a whine that was half-frustrated, half-elated. He made a noise that matched and then exceeded yours, especially as you felt warmth welling beneath your nails. Skin and scarring rolled back as you used your hands for leverage, snarling your fingers into the freshly opened wounds on his chest with desperation.

The thought struck you again. So alive. Even when you had had to dig your hands into corpses to collect keys, they’d long since gone cold, their internals all mush and slick with occasional firm organs and harder structures resisting your tactile exploration. And when you’d had to stuff sacks of drugs into the writhing bodies of the mules, you’d been so focused on finishing your trial and chasing after a good grade that you hadn’t had time to care about how it felt to touch the inside of another living human being. Now, though…

Every cicatrix you ripped open, every mark of a previous self-inflicted burn you desecrated with your angry, needy touch, sent the Pitcher gasping and whining. The noises he made were ugly, guttural and agonized as if they hurt to produce, but he obeyed beautifully — his hands remained balled into fists above his head, shaking slightly as his body bucked underneath you out of wanton pleasure. Red shone up to your knuckles, and thick maroon rimmed beneath the crescents of your nails. Your jaw hung slack, body still rocking against his desperately. Each pitch and drag of your hips pushed the tent of the canvas right into your inseam, pressing it directly into your swollen clit, and even that simple friction had you seeing stars. So long. It had been so long, and he had ruined you otherwise. Bastard.

Blood had collected in your mouth again from where he’d punched you earlier. You pulled a face at the iron blooming over your tongue, and turned your head to spit. It happened so fast that you didn’t have time to react — one of his hands shot up and fastened around your jaw. Incensed, you attempted to rear back, but he held you firm — even with his chest gashed open, his strength was unwavering. The fact he had capitulated so well otherwise was a fucking miracle.

“What are you—” You had to stop yourself, considering the blood and spit pooled in your mouth. And then you realized. He wanted you to spit in his face. Again. Arousal burned a hot path all the way down your spine and settled deep in your pelvis, to the point where you shifted your weight atop him out of sheer restlessness.

When you didn’t bash his brains in for disobeying your order, he figured it safe to move again. His other hand came, slowly, up to his face, gloved fingers skating along the hard edge of his mask until they hooked under the lip and tugged upwards. Not far. Just enough to pull the entire contraption up to his nose, exposing surprisingly full lips wreathed in the same scar tissue that webbed over the rest of his body. The same scar tissue, ironically, that was slowly knitting itself together on your cheekbone and shoulder.

Oh. In his mouth.

Yeah, you could do that.

Your fingers curled around his wrist and for a moment, his own digits twitched in a minute flinch at your touch. Unsurprising, considering your fingers were still wet with his own blood and you’d done nothing but beat on him otherwise. Neither of you moved for a moment, both of your breathing labored and your own respective heartbeats slamming in offset, rapid rhythms. When you leaned down, a shiver ran through the lean body beneath you; the hand he’d used to tug his mask up fell away, obediently returning to its position on the floor.

The smell of him filled your noise, lingering blood atop the striking scent of gasoline and sweat and skin. Not pleasant in any other situation, but here all it did was thicken the desperate fog of your brain.

With his hand still gripping your jaw and your fingers still secured around his wrist, you pressed your mouth to his in the first kiss you’d experienced since your arrival in Sinyala. No fireworks, no earth-shattering revelation, but the shock of pleasure that went through you was certainly not negligible. He froze, then relaxed, opening his jaw. Pleased with his acquiescence, you gathered the bloody mess in your mouth and dripped it into his, dragging your tongue along his teeth to push it in as far as you could. He groaned helplessly, the noise reedy and teetering on unpleasant (though you were starting to get accustomed to the way he sounded), and you tasted the gasoline lingering on his tongue. Distinctly disagreeable, but the way he sputtered as he swallowed and rocked the hard line of his cock up against your cunt made you forget all about that.

Thick threads of spit connected your mouths as you pulled back, and you released his wrist to scrub the back of your hand across your lips. There was a bed within reach, but neither of you were going to make it there. The floor was good enough.

His hand remained on your jaw for a few more seconds before loosening; it slid down until it rested, lax, on the front of your ESOP, his gloved fingers hooked over the lip of the metal. You scoffed and shook your head, brushing his hand away — it fell to his chest, his own blood smearing the leather — before reaching behind yourself to fumble with the buckles holding the contraption in place. With dried blood cracking over your skin, it took a moment to pull all the fastenings apart — you remembered distinctly how he’d broken the buckles in his haste last time — but you got them undone eventually and peeled the equipment off your torso, tossing it aside with a clunk. Distantly, some part of you still conditioned to care shrieked at you about alerting any other nearby Ex-Pop or hell, even Franco, but you paid it no mind. Not with the Pitcher laid out beneath you like this.

His hand came up to the bottom of his mask again, thumb curling along the bottom of the mouthpiece to pull it back down — to watch you — and your own hand flashed forward, fingers snagging his wrist and squeezing as a warning. Frenzy had been mounting in you from your pelvis upwards, and had finally hit its breaking point near your sternum; you felt pressure on the inside of your ribs despite the loss of your ESOP, as if something were threatening to break loose.

“Don’t,” you croaked, and he listened, though he made a noise of what sounded like displeasure. You didn’t care. You had a much better idea anyway.

Hazy with need, you leaned away from him and scooped up the molotov he’d long since discarded — back when you’d stunned him earlier. The bottle had gone out, smothered by its fall to the floor, and your fingers nearly slipped on the gasoline-damp glass. It sloshed gently in your grip, its weight unfamiliar; the bottles they provided Reagents were much smaller and empty. Go figure.

Rasping wheezes puffed from his mouth as he waited, occasional creaking sounds accompanying his inhales as his torn-up lungs complained under duress. Spit and blood still shone on his lips, shiny in the pale wash of light from the doorway. So beautiful. Beautiful and terrible. You would have given anything to feel like this — alive, so unbearably alive, even with pain burning along your nerve endings — forever, considering you’d already given everything to Murkoff.

Still buoyed on a wave of arousal-induced insanity, you leaned back slightly and swung the bottle to your lips, remembering a line you’d read in his specific classification document seemingly forever ago.

Speech is all-but-impossible, as every Molotov has a severely damaged larynx from past, dedicated imbibing of gasoline and/or denatured alcohol.

Burning. You jolted atop him, face immediately pulling into a pained wince as the strongest substance you’d ever had the displeasure of tasting invaded your mouth. Far past alcohol — you’d bartered for wine from Dorris occasionally — and into the territory of ethanol. Chemical flavoring flooded your faculties; your sinuses burned, and tears welled in your eyes. Oily slick washed over your tongue and inner cheeks, and you damn near just spat it out next to him. You folded again, desperation and slight panic jarring your movements, and crushed your mouth to his.

When he tasted the gasoline on your tongue, he surged upwards, one hand flying to the back of your neck to keep you both connected and the other one instantly dropping to your hip and squeezing. He moaned then, really moaned, and drank the fuel straight from your mouth, greedily swallowing and licking along your teeth and tongue to catch any remaining dregs. You nearly choked — your throat burned from the fumes — but returned the kiss as best you could, teeth raking along his bottom lip as you began grinding against him all over again. Your front pressed hard against his, dried blood from his torn-up chest flaking against your shirt and joining the legion of other various faded stains there.

Maybe it was blood passing between your mouths, maybe it was spit, maybe it was the mucosal tissue of your cheek sloughing off from the gasoline burns. It didn’t matter. Everywhere his skin touched yours had you spiraling; the sensation of the gnarled burn scars sliding against your comparatively smooth extremities made you groan against him. And he was so loud, wheezing and gasping and half-shrieking as he squirmed and bucked under your weight. His gloved fingers squeezed the back of your neck desperately as his jaw worked against yours. He was more than strong enough to unseat you, too, which was arguably the best part — his obedience had arousal seeping through every one of your limbs, drunk off the power trip of finally, finally being able to boss somebody else around.

You pulled back for air, your throat still burning from chemical fumes, and scrabbled at the edge of his mask; you tugged it back down harder than necessary and he blinked feverishly at you when you came back into view through the eyeholes. Maybe you were just going insane from huffing fuel, but you swore his pupils had gotten impossibly larger.

“Light it,” you snarled, voice raw, holding the molotov in front of his face and still rutting your hips against his.

Without hesitation, his left hand flew upwards, snapping the strike caps of his fingers together with a shower of sparks. They singed wherever they landed on your exposed skin, but all it did was send a prickle of fresh want down your spine. In a blaze, the molotov went up, burnishing both your face and his mask in warm gold. The heat made you cringe back for a moment, but it didn’t keep you away for long. Both of you watched, enraptured, as you lowered the bottle to his chest. Distinctly, you remembered how it felt searing across your cheek.

I want you to feel it, too.

Superheated glass pressed into the fresh wounds you’d torn open across the striations of his burn scars and he wailed, dead eyes rolling back in pleasure as the flame blackened the shredded flesh. The scent of burning skin filled the air and you felt yourself drooling — not from the punch to the face but from hunger, sheer and unabashed — but made no move to stop it. His hands settled heavily on your hips, pulling them down hard as he shoved the bulge of his cock up against your inseam desperately, seeking as much friction as possible.

You remembered another line from that damning little classification file.

Displays deeply masochist gratitude for pain caused by burns.

Enamored with his reaction, you pressed the mouth of the bottle in harder, sliding the lip of the glass and the burning cloth along the gashes, smearing blood across both along the way. Everywhere the flame touched bubbled and darkened, scar tissue warping even further and the raw, pink flesh blistering beneath the heat. He was damn near fucking you through your clothes, his breathing intense and labored and his head thrown back against the floor. The long line of his somewhat-scarred neck caught the light, his tendons flexing as garbled moans poured from his ruined throat.

In your haze, you twisted your wrist too far and put the molotov out against his chest; it sizzled in the presence of fresh blood and eventually sputtered out, drowned by crimson. The Pitcher wheezed and there was only a second of tense silence before his hands flew to your waistband, scrabbling along the denim desperately.

“Fucking hold on,” you gasped, barely keeping up with him. Smoke and fuel and burnt flesh commingled in your nose. It was enough to bring tears to your eyes, but clearly it was nothing new to him.

You had barely unbuttoned your fly before his hand — still gloved — wedged into your pants. The zipper creaked and then snapped as the intrusion forced it down, and you smacked his raw burns out of irritation. He jolted and moaned raggedly, but the push of his fingers didn’t stop. They wormed past your underwear and found your soaked cunt buried in an equally-slick nest of curls, and with now-practiced familiarity, slid up to center on your neglected clit. You gasped, buckling atop him as the still-warm strike caps circled the swollen bead. Fuck him for remembering exactly where it was, observant bastard.

To really drive that point home, his eyes tracked your face as he rubbed your clit relentlessly; the leather of his glove squeaked against your sweat-damp skin and you made similar noises in response to his focused ministrations. Perfect. So perfect. Hot pleasure fanned from your cunt outwards, sparking all the way up your spine and down your strained legs. Your thighs and knees ached from being splayed atop him on the floor for so long, but it was nothing compared to how each pass of his fingers over your clit made you feel. The obstinate metal of the strike cap pressed hard into it, hard enough to hurt, and you gasped atop him. One of your hands grasped weakly at his wrist to anchor yourself. The other rested hard on his chest, and every time you pressed into his fresh burns he gargled and whined, all the sounds glottal and painful.

“Oh my God,” you gasped, knowing he was far, far away from here. Your lids fell shut as you rocked into the Pitcher’s touch, toes curling in your boots as warm ecstasy tightened in your gut. For a brief moment, he paused — you whined, ready to snap at him to get back to it — but it was immediately rectified by the slide of damp leather downwards and the exploratory push of not one but two fingers inside of you.

“Fuck!” The single syllable was wrung out through gritted teeth and flecked with spit. Your nails snarled into both his wrist and his mangled chest, and he groaned in tandem with you, his eyelids flickering at the fresh spike of pain.

God, you were full from his fingers alone. They were longer and thicker and better than yours, able to reach places you couldn’t and scrape in ways you weren’t able to with the help of the strike cap. Your jaw hung slack, eyes squeezed shut as your hips pushed hard against his hand. He cupped your cunt, grinding the heel of his hand into your needy clit and flattening the leather against it. His fingers crooked and pulled inside of you, a steady curl that resulted in a rhythmic drag along the ceiling of your cunt that had you panting like the animal you were. Despite the mounting ringing in your ears and the hot fist tightening in your stomach, you pulled at his wrist, barely able to retain your senses.

He paused, obviously in a similar state. His chest rose and fell in laborious breaths, the tacky blood and fresh burn blisters shining in the ashen light from the doorway, stark against the darker wash of his skin. Wide gray eyes stared up at you from behind the mask, impatience coloring the twitch of his fingers inside of you.

“Take it off,” you managed to gasp, pulling his hand free of your cunt with a hard yank and missing it immediately. He paused for a second, processing your command through the fog of arousal in his brain. “Now.”

The snap of your added word got him in motion; you slid off of him for a brief few moments, enough to hook your bloodied thumbs in the waistband of your pants and underwear and rip them both down your legs at once. Your boots were kicked off somewhere in the darkness of the motel room — you heard one hit a mannequin with a plastic-sounding thump. Cool, stale trial air rushed to meet your superheated skin, cooling the sweat almost immediately and sending a shiver down your limbs. In a state of similar mania, the Pitcher wrestled the canvas of his skirt and his work pants down his legs, just far enough to expose the length of his cock and the tops of his predictably-scarred thighs.

You weren’t sure who was more eager for you to get back on top of him; his gloved hands, one shiny with you, reached for you in blatant hunger, but you were already sliding a now-bare thigh over his lap and hissing at the sensation of skin-to-skin contact. Warm. He was unbearably warm. Burn scars and hot skin kissed the soft meat of your inner thighs, and you shuddered. Straddling him, you rocked your slick cunt up his cock and he almost gagged on the moan that shredded his throat. Wiry curls brushed his own — though the hair dusting his lower stomach and further down was sparse from his enthusiasm for fire — and you fought your own desperate whines at the sensation of blood-hot, pock-marked flesh against your aching cunt.

Your hand came down and settled atop the precum-sticky head of his cock — he hissed and shivered — in order to press it down to his lower stomach and hold it in place with your thumb; delighting in his torment, you rolled your hips forward along the length of it, grinding against his cock with a harsh exhale. His hands found your hips with familiarity and squeezed the flesh there hard enough to bruise. Your clit slid along the textured flesh of his dick and you hissed, stars flickering somewhat behind your closed eyelids at the sensation. No good grade would ever, ever amount to this. You wondered, vaguely, if Easterman knew that. Wondered what he would do to you after flouting his love so blatantly.

Then the Pitcher bucked upward slightly, and you stopped caring.

Movements jerky with want, you moved your hand down his cock, grasped the base of it, and held it in place; your other hand balanced on his chest, the texture of raw burn wounds and blood no longer dissuading you or really even registering. Especially not when the slick head prodded at your equally-wet entrance and then popped in with the aid of gravity pulling you down.

You damn near smacked his chest out of reflex, needing an outlet for the sudden spike of hot pleasure that lanced upward from your cunt. Full. So, so blissfully full after being empty. Opting for a slightly less abrupt method, your nails snarled into the mess beneath your palm and he whined, his own hips jumping upwards in response to the continued torment of the fresh burns. Down, down you went, cunt slowly sucking his cock in as you worked it in, inch by inch. Something raw and needy poured from your mouth — maybe a moan, or a sob — and when you finally settled at the base of him, you took a moment to suck in air.

Not that he was much better. Wheezes punched out of his chest as he stared up at you with those dead, dead eyes, clearly struggling with each flex of your cunt around him.

Out of energy for witty comments or snarled commands, you merely moved both hands to his chest and anchored your thumbs in popped blisters. Heavy hands squeezed hard again in response to the pain, and you hung your head. Sweat dripped steadily off your brow and ran salty into your mouth from your upper lip. And then you started to move, and, oh, there were the fireworks.

However full you’d felt when he’d bent you over that table last was… markedly different compared to now. The jut of his cock pressed up and in and forward, dragging along the wall of your cunt directly behind your clit as you started up a jerky rock of your hips. Whatever it was, it was fucking phenomenal, and had your jaw hanging slack as you ground yourself down against him. It wasn’t really for his pleasure, though that didn’t seem to matter. All you were focused on was getting yourself off. The burn in your thighs was nearing a boiling point, and you really, really wanted to come before you got a cramp in your leg.

He helped. Sort of. His bruising grip on your hips — which at some point wandered back to focus on your ass — pulled you up and down his cock in time with your motions. His lean body rolled beneath you, desperate, glottal panting filtered through his mask; you could see the spit now, leaking out around the seal of the mouthpiece and running in clear, sluggish trails down the sides of the face.

Up. Down. Forward. Back. A messy, jagged circle that had your abs complaining from the exertion and your cunt throbbing in straight, white-hot pleasure. It crawled upwards from your core, fanned by every drag of his cock up and down your walls, and weaved through every one of your vertebrae with searing, sticky fingers. That edge was approaching, though it was nightmarishly slow — you could still feel it, distant and impending, swore you could smell it like an incoming thunderstorm (when was the last time you saw real rain?)—

The Pitcher jolted and shuddered and groaned beneath you, his hips jumping up and stilling and his hands pulling you down in tandem. You blinked out of your mindless, pleasurable reverie, realizing after a beat that he was coming. Now. Plumes of warmth spilled inside of you, accompanied by a desperate snarl and twitches of his hips, flush to your cunt.

Dread came over you in a sobering, icy wash. No. No, no, that wasn’t how it was supposed to go. You weren’t there, but you were getting there—

He lolled beneath you for a moment, sucking in glottal breaths as you reeled with realization, still warm with latent arousal and a quickly unraveling orgasm. It was only when he went to pull his hips down, when he went to pull out, that you kicked into gear. Desperation was the primary driver behind your movements, as sharp and fast as they were, coupled with hunger and still-simmering anger.

“No— no, don’t you fucking dare,” you snapped, and one hand twisted in the gory mess of his chest while the other slid instantly to the corded column of his throat. He startled, clearly shocked out of that easy lax of post-orgasm, and looked to you with wide eyes. Warm blood welled up around your fingers all over again, accompanied by pus and other fluids you had no care for or interest in identifying. “Keep going.”

A few seconds of silence; he looked between you and where your bodies joined. You might have been crazy, but you swore there was an incredulous air around the action.

“Keep going or I fucking kill you,” you added helpfully, voice hoarse enough to make the threat real. To persuade him, your fingers found a deep gash in his chest and pushed right into it, digging beneath his warped epidermis with no small amount of savage, desperate glee.

He shuddered and gasped his way through a moan, and his body obeyed before the rest of him got in line. Despite his cock softening inside of you, he rocked his hips up against yours, warm body sliding between your thighs with errant shudders running down it. Even like this, you still felt full, and you understood now why Easterman was so adamant in shepherding you away from pleasures of the flesh. Obscene sounds seeped from where you rolled against him, all filthy slick and sweat. Chest-deep moans ebbed from your throat atop them, your hips pushing down to grind your clit against the jut of his pubic bone.

Agonized noises joined the collection, ragged gasps and half-shrieks as your cunt sucked around his sensitive cock; the Pitcher’s body jumped and spasmed beneath yours like a dying animal as the stimulation wracked him painfully. Just like the molotov and the bricks and your blows before, though, he bore it, his exhausted body seeing him through even though oversensitivity was actively liquefying his brain behind that mask.

You knew how that felt. You knew exactly how that felt.

Your hand tightened around his throat, bearing down more of your weight on his trachea, and he wheezed but didn’t stop — if anything, his hips jumped even further, desperate for whatever punishment you were administering as you worked yourself towards orgasm. Burn scars, old and new, splayed beneath both your palms, and you spread your thighs as far as they would go to grind your clit down one more time. It sparked something hot, something that caught on all that kindling from before—

Good enough. Your body locked up with a hard shudder as you came, warm pleasure fanning out from your cunt upwards and all the way down your aching inner thighs. Maybe you moaned. You couldn’t tell, just rode it out with your eyes squeezed shut and jaw hanging open. The only way you could tell you were still breathing was from how your raw throat burned with each intake of air; your cunt spasmed hard around his cock and the Pitcher really shrieked then, one of his boots kicking against the floor out of pleasure-pain.

It took a long, long while before the ringing in your ears subsided. When you blinked back to lucidity, the Ex-Pop beneath you was still gasping, eyes unfocused for once behind his mask. You pried your fingers off his throat and out of where they were buried in the wounds on his chest — a wet noise accompanied the unsticking, and you watched with mild interest as thin strings of what was maybe blood connected your fingers to the splay of fresh gashes and burns. All of the manhandling had left you stained in red up to the wrists, and the dried fluids cracked and flaked as you moved.

The Pitcher stared up at you with gloved hands still settled on your hips, eyes as hollow as always, and you returned his gaze with… something knocking around in your chest. Not affection. Not here. Maybe appreciation. Mostly exhaustion, and the impending feeling that Easterman had watched this entire thing and had you scheduled for termination very, very soon. After all, what were you besides a wayward lamb, corrupted from the flock?

The thought made your stomach twist, chasing away the warm dregs of your orgasm and replacing it with something cold and heavy and deeply, deeply unpleasant. You pulled the Pitcher’s hands off you without resistance and slid off his lap, thighs burning beyond belief and sweat cooling rapidly all over your body. Your boots were found where you’d thrown them, followed by the tugging on of your pants and general resituating of your clothes. Your jeans sagged near the front where the Ex-Pop — still on the ground — had snapped the zipper, and your face twitched.

Fabric rustling from behind you as you scooped up your ESOP and rebuckled it across your chest. By the time you turned around, dressed, the Pitcher was already clothed and standing. Fast enough to make you jump. He still stared, his back as stiff and straight as always, and his hands flexed in and out of fists at his sides as he considered you. The guy was fucking crazy (weren’t you all?) and you wondered, vaguely, how he saw you. Did that matter?

Did anything matter?

Not that you had time to worry about that. After all, you still had three radios to find, and a prostitute to collect. Without thinking too hard about it, your hand swung up to your rig, long since recharged, and flung the small device at the Pitcher’s feet; another explosion of sparks washed you in warmth and light, and the Pitcher yelped in surprise and stumbled back, cupping his head in shocked pain. He made some kind of noise as you brushed by, maybe just of bog-standard pain or maybe of betrayal, but you didn’t pay it much mind. In fact, a touch of exhilarated glee lightened your movements as you booked it down the stairs (and nearly ate it, considering how wobbly your legs were) outside the motel and ran for the cover of the garage. A few seconds later, an infuriated caterwaul rang out from the upper floor of the motel, and you almost laughed.

All things considered, you were a good Reagent. Good grades, good performance. But you were sure Easterman wouldn’t be pleased with your… infidelity so to speak. And you were sure that it was going to have painful consequences for you someday. The way you saw it, though, if you were going to inevitably end up as gory set dressing for Murkoff to pose and play with as they pleased, you figured you might as well have a little fun while you were still kicking.

#my beloved pitcher

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