Archive of Our Own

The food in the cafeteria was never good. Mindless whispers from Reagents too far gone swirled around your head the same as the tinny music from the radio did as you leaned on the counter; the bored-looking chef behind the glass slid you a tray with warm MRE packages and did not spare you another glance.

Dorris eyed you warily as you sat at the same table. Jutting your head in an acknowledging nod, you tore open the foil packaging and ate with little excitement. Her foot slid surreptitiously beneath the bench and nudged her shapeless bag of contraband further out of sight. No stranger to the black market trade of performance-enhancing gadgets and drugs she supplied the Sleep Room with, you didn’t mention it or even try to speak to her, more intent on finishing your food as quickly as possible. The cafeteria gave you the creeps with its looping radio and constant cast of Reagents that always seemed to be looking at nothing in the distance. You maintained a wide berth purposefully.

When you had first shown up in Sinyala — before Easterman had exposed you to physical and mental traumas you’d previously never even thought possible — you had done the reasonable thing and tried to talk to them. Introduced yourself, waved tentatively. It didn’t matter. No matter what faces they wore, there were some in the Sleep Room that were just too broken. They always disappeared after a time, but the numbers never dipped; even when one silently vanished, another one took their place. Disconcerting at first, sure, but you learned to ignore it. They didn’t bother anybody, but they were unsettling tchotchkes in a place that was skin-crawling enough on its own.

Maybe you should have been worried about how apathetic you were towards… everything, and how quickly your attitude dulled, but it worked. Your ennui was a protective shell that kept you from caring too much about what you were doing and who you were doing it to. Detachment shielded you from the worst of the nightmare; now, all you were focused on was getting those coveted stamps. Materialism had been a quality that people in your previous life had frowned on you for. Here, it was the only thing that kept you alive.

Some found motivation in obsessions with Easterman, the enigmatic man that puppeteered it all driving their fixations, both good and bad. They hated him, they loved him. Either way, they’d do anything for him. Others took delight in the cruelty — did their trials solely for the reward of human suffering — or sought inspiration from the deluded hope that someday they might leave. You, personally, had always considered yourself more of a realist. You, and some of your comrades, found your own drive in more tangible things. Stamps, tickets, coins. Physical proof of a job well done.

Indifferent security guards pushed packets of reward to you over sterile counters like drugs from a pharmacist. You were the delighted addict, hands almost shaking as you collected your recompense, mind already racing with where it could be spent. To say that you had the best-decorated room in the Sleep Room was an understatement. Clothes, posters, trinkets, bedsheets — even new decals for your ESOP and new additions to your goggles. Having things made you something. With how badly Easterman wanted you hollowed out, a physical representation of you felt like the next best thing to there being a you.

Or something like that. You weren’t the type to wax philosophical.

Food finished, you returned your tray and departed swiftly from the cafeteria, leaving the mumbling Reagents behind; a wisp of cigarette smoke followed after you. As per usual, people played chess half-heartedly and crowded the arm wrestling table downstairs. You glanced at them for a moment as you passed, but ignored the brief temptation to join in favor of approaching the terminal.

You’d been here long enough to have done most of the trials, both long and short. Some were easier than others, both in terms of mental burden and physical workload; any Reagent worth their salt knew that Sabotage the Lockdown was ten times easier on the brain and body than Spread the Disease. You needed tickets — your stun rig was itching for an upgrade — and there was a new catalog available with a few nice new shirts that would look much better on your person than on a page.

Release the Prisoners seemed a safe bet. If you were fast enough, you could probably do it in less than five minutes. As long as the key wasn’t somewhere stupid you’d never think to check, that was. You selected it with a few button presses. To your relief, nobody else rode on your coattails when the time came to step into the shuttle. You didn’t mind working as part of a team, but when you wanted to be in and out, being liable for another Reagent was not ideal.

This would be quick. Blessedly so.

You zoned out as you sat down in the familiar leather seat, eyes nearly glazing over as the screen swung down an inch from your face. Easterman’s prerecorded impassioned rant filled your ears through tinny speakers. You are the hand of freedom. When you release others, you will find release yourself. Unlock the prison and release the guilty, then we will forgive you, and let you out. An immature snort left your nose at the mention of finding release.

As practiced as you were, you still flinched at the spray of green gas into the room. The hallucinations were just as intangible as ever, but that didn’t mean you didn’t shy away from the blurry figure of an imagined Coyle thrusting his sparking baton in your face. Eventually the shuttle rattled to a stop, and you were thrust into the familiar environment of the derelict police station.

Ozone permeated the stale air, the metallic scent born of the various mangled bodies outside and the exposed, sparking car batteries of the cruisers they were shoved into. No matter where you went in the station, it followed; as soon as you stepped out of the shuttle, the hair on your arms raised to attention from the latent buzz in the air. Countless brushes against live, exposed wires and unfortunate mishaps with humming floor traps had left you wary of the ubiquitous high voltage that Coyle so loved.

A haphazardly stenciled B stared you in the face upon your arrival to let you know which sector you were in. Easy. This would be so easy. With a quick swivel of your head to make sure no errant big grunt had gotten the drop on you while you were outside, you headed into the yawning dark of the precinct through an open door. 

Almost immediately, you were greeted with a grunt marching towards you; you sucked in a sharp breath and flattened yourself to a wall in the pitch black. She raved as she moved, swinging her Murkoff-provided machete around wildly to punctuate her nonsense sentences. Your eyes followed the edge of the blade as it waved in the dark until she disappeared out the door. Relief relaxing your muscles, you continued onwards and hooked a right.

Maybe you shouldn’t have picked psychosurgery as the difficulty level (but it paid out the most!). It seemed every time a grunt stomped past you, another one followed. They all snorted and rambled and gibbered just the same, duplicate content in different voices. Sparks flew off their headgear as they sought their prey, hopped up on drugs and fear and shock just like you. At least there wasn’t a Night Hunter prowling around. Counting blessings, you shuffled slowly forward in the dark. The longer you spent in the trial, the higher the likelihood of the Jaeger stopping by for a visit became, and you did not want to be around for that. An icy shiver ran down your spine.

Still, even for psychosurgery, this seemed an inordinate amount of grunts. You slowly pushed open a door; an electric hum greeted your eyes with the motion, and you pivoted on your heel to tug the battery out of the trap bolted to the doorframe. Static buzzed over your hands as you swapped out the supply hooked to your ESOP. Shouldn’t there be a specialist out by now?

Whatever. If the scientists observing you weren’t going to administer extra torture, you weren’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Wooden creaks, metallic thuds, distant screams — the white noise of the trials bled into your ears as you continued on into the dark hallway you’d just gained access to. Even with fully powered night vision, the gloom was almost impenetrable. A psychosis mine beeped somewhere off to your left. Hissing and zapping made you jump — for a terrible moment, you thought Coyle and his trusty baton had somehow shown up — but you realized quickly that it was just an electric trap on the floor. Standard. All of this was pretty standard, even for the difficulty being cranked up so high.

No key. You swept the hallway painfully slowly, well aware of the unseen timer ticking down above your head. Like a specter, the imagined thud of the Jaeger’s footsteps hung over you, accompanied by that damn robotic voice that told her exactly where to go. Exactly where to find you. You didn’t want to linger. This was supposed to be quick.

Hastened by your own worried mind, you stepped into the nearest room. Damp sweat had begun to gather on your palms. It slicked the doorknob, cool and uncomfortable, as you gripped the metal. Not ideal, but a grounding point of sorts. As best you could, you attempted to restructure the police station’s floor plan in your head. Where was this damn key? Where were you?

Bad move. Your thought process was interrupted by the floor itself trembling under the shambling approach of a big grunt; your eyes widened behind your goggles and you released the doorknob in a hurry as you felt the presence rush up behind you.

“Open you. Make you… better.” Slurred, angry words with the viscosity of pitch and the venom of a cobra hit the back of your neck. Whether or not she had seen you didn’t matter. Pure, cold fear shot down your spine. Like the animal you were, you bolted forward a few steps — prey flushed out of hiding.

Unfortunately, you didn’t catch the cans dangling from the ceiling until a moment too late. You collided with them ESOP-first, sending them jangling off each other with a noise that might as well have been a gunshot. Alerted by the sound, the big grunt spun on her heel with a growl and spent less than a second considering it before she was charging forward in the dark.

“Hear that!”

 You couldn’t help your reaction. It was difficult enough to keep your cool without eight feet of hormone-grown muscle lunging at you in the pitch black. A short shout ripped out of you, the noise chest-dominant. In one practiced motion, your hand shot to your ESOP and yanked your rig free before flinging it at the grunt’s torso. 

Brilliant sparks showered before your eyes on impact, washed green by your night vision. Static buzzed over you — your goggles had gotten some battery back from the latent voltage discharge — and you scrambled away on jittery legs. She shouted something after you, angry and garbled, but you did not stick around to parse it.

Heart in your throat, you made it through two more rooms before you calmed yourself enough to take a breath. Every hair on your body felt as if it were standing at attention. You paused, sucking air in and holding it in order to strain your ears for the big grunt’s approach. Several moments dragged by. Nothing. The floor did not shake, nor did the walls echo with her enraged snarls. The stun had done its job, thankfully.

Your lips twisted into a frown as you glanced down at your ESOP. The little timer tacked to your rig read four hundred seconds. Christ almighty. Alright. Your stun was essentially out of play for the rest of the trial, then, unless you happened across a lockpick and a container with a rig recharger. Judging by the fact you’d seen neither during your entire sweep of the place, it was safe to say it wasn’t a reliable option.

Fine. Whatever. You could still do this.

As if to prove you wrong, a familiar klaxon blared nearby. Through the green hue of your night vision, you caught the rhythmic pulse of the light atop the insertion gate. Pneumatic doors whooshed, and you prayed for… well, you didn’t know, maybe another grunt.

Stupid. You’d been here long enough to know that it was never that easy. No flickering orange glow accompanied the doors opening, and you knew in your gut that it was—

“This is the fucking trip, man!” Hoarse, manic, completely fucking crazy. Your eyes fell shut for a moment. Irritation, chiefly, washed over you, tinged with dread. The Pusher was so goddamn annoying. 

On less serious difficulty levels, he was a complete joke. Hobbling around on gangly, tumor-riddled legs and supported by rickety metal braces screwed through his limbs, he always seemed to show up at inopportune times and ramble to himself with wild amusement, looking with undiscerning taste for somebody to gas. You had noticed he was lazy. Or rather, less committed to his job, especially when compared with other specialists like the Pitcher or the Night Hunter; he always seemed to shuffle out of trials faster than they did, eager to go… wherever Ex-Pops went when not on the prowl.

Now, though, he was absolutely not a laughing matter. On psychosurgery, he could very well kill you without laying a single finger on you. That vile gas would drag the Skinner Man from the depths of Hell and slough away your vital functions until you were a shaking, sobbing mess on the floor. You’d seen it. You’d felt it. You were not interested in doing either of those things again.

His body cut a pale crescent in the dark, long and hunched under the weight of the gas tank on his back. Jitters twitched over his gangly form as he hobbled forward. If you were more sympathetic, you might have even felt bad for him. The braces screwed through his limbs looked uncomfortable, and the tumors dotting his body couldn’t have been sourced from anything good. His perpetual good mood must have been a side effect of the drugs, because his existence seemed just as miserable as yours.

Not that he seemed to care. He rambled and laughed to himself just the same as he shuffled forward in the room, jostling his nozzle occasionally in a loose grip of curled fingers.

“Now comes the adventure…” he rasped, trailing off into a wheeze of air and intermittent spritzes of gas. You followed at a distance, trying to get a sense of where he was headed. You couldn’t tell, and neither could he, apparently.

He swung his head around — the gas mask seemed pointed directly at you, and you froze with a sharp inhale. Lucky guess. He shook his head and turned away.

“Can’t see squat in here.” The mumble of his voice muffled slightly by the rubber affixed to his face. His hip bumped an empty trash can and he pivoted to peek in it, waving the nozzle inside to probe for any squirreled-away Reagents.

“Knock knock,” he drawled, tapping the nozzle against the side of the can with a soft metallic clink-clink to emphasize the words. “Exterminator.”

How ironic. He was pest control sent to fumigate the rats. Or, rather, rat. Singular. You. It would have been insulting earlier in your tenure. Now it was par for the course. Rat, bitch, whore, commie — the litany of insults thrown at you in every trial had long since filtered into white noise. At least the Pusher called you baby in some crude facsimile of lovers’ pet names. It sweetened the deal a little when he was flooding your faculties with bitter psychosis gas.

Your thighs burned from holding the crouch for so long. Honestly, you weren’t really sure why you were still tailing the Ex-Pop, but his muttering to himself was at least entertaining. And you still hadn’t found your key, so really, following him around was just another way to scope out rooms. That was all.

He left the derelict bullpen and limped into the hallway, leg braces rattling. You glanced over the shadowed room one more time — no podium holding up your key — and scoffed quietly before rounding a desk to leave the opposite way of the Pusher. So caught up in your casual dismissal and simmering annoyance were you that you missed the broken glass scattered across the floor.

God damn, were you five years old? Normally avoiding sound traps was easy enough. This was the second one you’d set off in this trial alone. Your grade was in danger, and you really didn’t want anything less than an A+. You needed those stamps, after all.

Your heart sank as shards crunched beneath your boot. A noise of interest rang out from the hallway, and you knew exactly who you’d alerted. Hobbling faster now, he limped into the room, still bowlegged, his gas mask swinging around in the dark as he looked around. As he looked for you.

“That sounds like withdrawal,” he croaked, knuckles twitching where they were wrapped around the handle of his nozzle.

Although your muscles were on fire from the uncomfortable squat you’d been holding forever, you shuffled sideways in an awkward crab walk until you moved around the pile of broken glass and slid along the wall backwards, away from the deluded Ex-Pop who lurched just a few feet away from you.

“Come on, baby. Every itch is worth a scratch. Lemme help you…” he cajoled, turning his head from side to side like a bird, as if to hear your breathing better. You struggled to quell your panicky lungs; your diaphragm felt as if it were physically fighting your brain’s order to stay quiet.

Your back hit the wall. Literally cornered, you froze in place. He took another step forward, neck jerking from side to side as he attempted to make out your shape in the dark. You had to leave, you couldn’t stay there, if he took a few more steps forward he was literally going to bump into you—

In one motion, you straightened up. Your shoulder slid up the peeling wallpaper — and hit a framed photo of some bullshit police officer that probably wasn’t even real. Jostled out of place and off the nail hanging it up, the picture fell to the floor with an obscenely loud crash.

Oh, fuck me.

“Come here, you!” The Pusher’s sandpaper voice pitched up in excitement as he lunged forward. One pale hand, fingers spread like talons, jutted out of the dark toward you and you yelped, feet already moving before your brain had the chance to catch up. Long, bony fingers gnarled in the meat of your upper arm, and you gasped in unadulterated terror as he yanked you back with force disproportionate to his thin frame.

“No!” you shrieked, catching sight of a bottle laying on a nearby desk for less than a second. As he swung you around, your hand darted out and clasped the smooth glass. In a smooth arc, movement made fluid by fear, your arm swung up and the bottle in your grasp smashed right into the side of his skull. He didn’t even get the chance to lift the nozzle.

“Oh, that smarts!” His yelp was brusque as he released you in order to cradle his temple with his free hand.

Sensing opportunity, you fled through the nearest door. Less than a second into running and you already felt out of breath from how panicked your gasping was; God, you did not want to get gassed. You hadn’t seen any antidotes. The very real threat of death hung heavy overhead as you stumbled through the dark and nearly tripped over a psychosis mine. Two awkward half-steps and an almost-fall later, you skirted it in order to continue fleeing.

He recovered quickly. The splints screwed through his limbs jangled under stress as he gave chase. “Be cool, bitch, be cool!” Exertion turned his words into a strained snarl.

Panic flooded your senses and turned you stupid. Your boots crunched over broken glass, your shoulders brushed dangling cans and rattled them accordingly, and the spontaneous vaults you did over desks and through shattered windows all combined to leave a breadcrumb trail of inescapable noise that the Pusher followed with the excitement of a bloodhound.

You nearly tripped as you hooked a hard right around a corner, bolted through a room with a few shabby desks in it, and then wheeled a sharp left into an open doorway. Light. A little bit, anyway. Hopefully the twists and turns your path had taken offset the bull-in-a-china-shop levels of noise you’d made during the chase.

Some kind of office, set apart from the rest. One big, heavy desk sat squarely in the middle. A uniformed mannequin was bent crudely over it, plastic lower half blackened with evidence of Coyle’s boredom. Files and papers were scattered over the floor. You nearly slipped on one as you hastened further into the room, crossing it to crowd yourself into the darkest corner. Had you been in here yet? You could see outside — even a glimpse of the shuttle doors where you came in — through the grimy window. How had you missed this?

Breathing rapid from the adrenaline surge, you swung your head around wildly, eyes scanning the darkness of the room from your vantage point. For a few seconds, you even sucked in air and held your breath to hear better, ears straining to catch the familiar sputter of his nozzle or the gentle clink of his braces. You’d gotten lucky with that bottle, but luck was a fickle goddamn lady down here. Good fortune had a habit of going down the drain in Sinyala faster than the blood they hosed off the shuttle floors.

A jingle from across the room. You turned, and your face fell behind your goggles.

“Well, wouldja look at that.” He dragged out the last word, let the rasp of his voice harshen his vowels.

You have to be fucking kidding me.

Green and pallid in the wash of your night vision, the lanky form of the Pusher stood across the office, a step through the doorway. In one hand he clutched his nozzle like it was an old friend. In the other, he held up the key you needed. The podium was right next to the fucking door. Slowly, he lifted it into the dim shaft of light that cut through the swath of phthalo dark. Although his face was covered, you understood immediately the way that he considered it for a long time, then turned to look at you. How someone conveyed trite smugness so well through a gas mask was still a mystery to you.

Jaw clenched so hard that your teeth nearly cracked, you fought to keep your voice level. You just wanted your fucking stamps. “I need that.”

“Oh, do you?” he drawled, massaging the key between finger and thumb absentmindedly. “Need it bad, huh? How bad?”

You couldn’t stand these games. Like this was fun for him, like he was enjoying having you trapped without even having to touch you. Easterman played enough mind games with you. You didn’t want to have to deal with it from the Pusher, of all people.

“Just fucking give it to me.”

“Ouch, baby, harsh. Y’know, I’d be much more inclined to hand it over for something in return.” A lilt entered his gravelly tone, pitched-up trail-offs that made you squint with suspicion.

What the hell? “I don’t have anything you want.”

Amusement laced his words. “Oh, baby, yeah you do,” he sleazed, and gave your body a long up-and-down so obvious that his mask pitched and raised with the motion of his head.

Your eyelid twitched. Blood rushed to your ears in irritation, in disbelief, in some concoction of unpleasant, shocked emotion at his flagrant insinuation. The Pusher was scummy, yes — you had gathered that from being unwillingly privy to his many delusional ramblings as he limped through trials.

Oh, baby, if I was going where you're going…

Fill her up. We're gonna take a ride.

I'm your doctor and your lawyer and your priest, baby. Screw you three different ways.

…Well. Screw you four different ways, evidently.

Even before Sinyala, you had been no stranger to men’s unpleasant advances and leering. You heard it all out there, and you heard worse down here; mostly from Franco and Coyle, but occasionally side comments from grunts that made even you turn your head.

This, though, was the first time that you’d been really, actually propositioned.

Your stomach turned as you stared in shock at his gangly form. He still dangled the key you needed to finish the trial in his hand. Bait. Shiny, necessary bait, and you were a terribly self-aware fish.

“You’re not serious.” Your voice came out uncharacteristically uncertain.

“Deadly,” he countered immediately, and you heard the way his crooked grin stretched across his face behind the mask. “C’mon, babe. Help me, help you. Quid pro quo. Tell me ya ain’t done worse. I’ll wait.”

Wheedling aside, you couldn’t imagine being near the man, much less fucking him. Tumors gnarled the skin of his legs and arms, uncomfortable looking pustules that split his pale skin. Blood spattered across his apron and exposed sternum. Was it his? Did that distinction even matter?

Tell me ya ain’t done worse. Maybe the worst part about all this was that he wasn’t wrong. How could you refuse this knowing what else you’d done to achieve objectives in the past? You had lowered people into meat grinders, put drills through people’s spines, burned them alive… any horrific, torturous way of dying you could imagine, you had probably done to another human at least once. This was simply just a different exchange of flesh, but somehow it seemed an egregious insult. To what? Your dignity? You had been stripped of that the moment you stepped foot in this hellhole. It was the most lucid you’d ever heard him, which was the irritating cherry on top.

Your stun rig still wasn’t up. A quick downward glance let you know there was still a ridiculous amount of time left before it would be ready, and you had the sense that this offer was for a limited time only. Play your cards wrong or attempt to bide your time, and the Pusher would retract his deal and instead give your poor lungs the usual treatment. You really were not interested in that, and if you got a bad grade, your reward would go down, and that wouldn’t do.

Fuck.

Fist pressed to your lips, you really tried to come up with a plan that was anything but the option staring you in the face. Credit where credit was due. You had nothing.

“...Damn it. Fuck.” you muttered quietly, and closed your eyes for a moment to steel yourself. “Okay. Just don’t… gas me.”

“Knew you’d come around,” he said, victory evident in his voice, and God, you wanted to hit him. “Don’t be shy, baby, I don’t bite. And you better not either.” He beckoned with a vein-riddled hand, long fingers crooking, and a wave of nausea hit you hard enough to make you flinch.

Feet leaden, you cautiously neared, eyes trained on the nozzle still hanging loosely from his other hand. Every ounce of survival instinct in your body was warning you against getting close, but he seemed… serious enough. Not trustworthy or even reliable, but the promise of a sexual favor seemed to calm his usual mania enough to where his fingers didn’t even twitch near the trigger when you got within arm’s length.

“There ya go,” he sleazed, dropping the nozzle in order to snare your wrist in one hand. You jolted so badly you almost slipped free from his grip, but his fingers tightened hard enough around your arm to hurt. “You’re pretty cute close up, aren’tcha? Quit hiding behind these, lemme get a good look at you.”

He deposited the key somewhere you didn’t see — his apron pocket, maybe? — and used his now free hand to flip up your goggles. You cringed and blinked several times, eyes widening in the dark, greedy for the dim light that shafted through the stained window. The huge, dark lenses of his mask stared down at you, impassive and menacing; his breath came in elevated huffs through the nozzle. The height he had on you was surprising. Some of his usual hunch had been straightened out into extra vertical inches.

One big hand gripped your jaw, and you swallowed hard enough to the point of audibility. “Looking good, sweetheart. Nice mouth. Smile for me, will ya? I wanna see something.”

Smile? Like there was anything to fucking smile about here. Hesitantly, you bared your teeth in a grimace, the worry on your face evident. A wheezy chuckle oozed from behind his mask, as grimy as the rest of him. His thumb slid over until the pad of it pressed against the wet bone of your gritted teeth; the long jut of his nail scraped against your gum, and you made a noise of complaint.

“Shh, shut up,” he muttered with an uncomfortable tinge of glee. “C’mon, pop the hood.” His index finger dug hard into the joint of your jawbone. On reflex, your mouth swung open. Your eyes flicked apprehensively to his obscured face. Immediately, his thumb shoved into your mouth; you choked out a surprised mm! around it, and he chuckled at the vibration.

It was the most humiliating dental exam you’d ever received. The rough thumbpad swept over your gums, massaging where meat met bone with sick enthusiasm, then slid down over your molars, feeling each bump and crag of your teeth. Grime bloomed over your tongue as he moved there, pressing the muscle down so he could fake a critical look into your mouth. Somehow this was so much worse than him just shoving you to the floor and fucking your throat; some part of your brain just wished you were there already so that you could get it over with. No other reason.

“Got some great pearly whites in here,” he commented, punctuating the remark with a manic little laugh. Unable to do much other than stand there with his thumb in your mouth, you stared up at him with a face that you hoped communicated your disgust well enough. “Matter of fact, let me check your teeth real quick.”

The thumb popped out and was instantly replaced by two long fingers. The bony length of them swept the interior of your mouth with depraved delight, splaying over your tongue and pinching the muscle just for fun. You groaned with discomfort around his knuckles, which he either mistook for approval or just found amusing, considering the way his fingers ventured further.

“Don’t fight me, baby,” he laughed. “It’s routine! I do it with all my patients.” To add insult to injury, he wiggled his fingers inside your mouth, watching the way your cheeks bulged and drool eked out around the plug of his knuckles. Nostrils flared to regain lost oxygen, all you could smell at this range was the metallic tang of psychosis gas and the familiar scent of sweat and skin. The stale air of the office and its carried odors irritated your sinuses to the point of tears.

And then, of course, he shoved them further down. His fingertips jabbed against the back of your throat, harsh and insistent, and you gagged with an ugly sound. Burning started up at the bottom of your throat, and your muscles spasmed wildly around his fingers as you fought valiantly to not throw up on his hand. Surface tension on your lash line broke, sending wet tracks running hot down your face, damn near sizzling on the humiliated flush that had settled on your cheeks.

“There we go,” he cooed, words raspy and bedside manner so obviously an act. “Everything checks out alright. Good specimen all around.”

You did not hear him, too focused on stumbling backwards half a step; your boots clunked on the beat-up hardwood flooring as you fought to maintain your balance through the overwhelming feelings of violation and… God, you did not want to talk about it. You absolutely in a million years did not want to discuss the faint warmth that had begun flickering between your legs, hidden securely beneath a layer of frayed denim.

Maybe he really had gassed you, and you were just too far gone to notice.

One of your hands rose shakily to your mouth, scrubbing at your bruised, wet lips with the back of it. You just barely caught the way he shoved his fingers under the seal of his gas mask, presumably to suck your spit off his own fingers. A muscle twitched above your lip. Still lacking fine motor control, your trembling hand slid downward a few inches to loosely clutch your throat — as if the external massage would soothe the internal soreness wrought by his invasive prodding.

He pressed his advantage, maintaining the lack of space between your bodies with perhaps the most persistence you’d ever seen him demonstrate. It took everything in you not to flail and kick and dart away as he neared. Every ounce of muscle memory screamed at you to flee, but he didn’t so much as twitch for his gas nozzle as he lurched closer. Christ. It had been a long time since you’d done anything of this nature, but you didn’t doubt that it had been at least double that time for him.

Spindly fingers reached for your neck, jutting out of the dark. Excited breaths wheezed from his chest as his grip snared your wrist and tugged your hand away from your throat. Instantly, the pressure returned — this time with rougher skin and poorly-hidden excitement. Fingers still wet with spit flexed around the column of your neck and squeezed lightly.

“Poor baby,” he crooned mockingly. The gas mask tilted, leaning far into your personal space. “All choked up.” The sort-of joke made him swallow a manic giggle; the noise and subsequent stifling made the long line of his bony shoulders jump.

His grip shifted a little, dampened fingertips skittering over your neck until he found the wild flutter of your pulse. And then… further over. He sought something with his thumb, long fingernail scraping over your skin, and you swallowed hard to maintain composure. The motion seemed to give him an idea. A fingertip of pressure dug into the front of your throat until it indented your windpipe, and you barely had the sense to turn your head so you didn’t cough in his (covered) face.

“Something tickling your throat?” he rasped, nauseating amusement edging his words. He massaged your trachea through the delicate skin over top hard enough to the point where it edged on choking. The pad of his thumb dragged over each individual rung of cartilage. Little steps of hyaline tissue, a stairway to heaven that led all the way to your overworked brain. You kept coughing; he remained stubbornly on target. “Relax, baby. Just breathe for me. Work those lungs.”

Your inhale croaked in your throat as he relented for a moment; his head jerked to the side to face his ear towards you, as if to better hear the struggle in your windpipe. From this angle, you got an even better (worse?) view of the knotted tumor that crowned the back of his parietal bone. Veiny, discolored, spattered with blood and fluids like the rest of him. It should have made you sick enough to shove him away.

You didn’t. You couldn’t. His curious prods at your throat kept you very, very still in that dark office. So shell-shocked were you by the entire situation at hand that you didn’t even dare reach for your night vision goggles. The blue-hued shafts of semi-obscured industrial lighting that made it into the busted window were good enough.

Besides, if he was a little hidden by the dark, you could get through this a lot easier.

“Can we just get this over with?” you gritted out, voice hoarse from the on-and-off choking and invasion of your mouth.

He huffed out a laugh behind the mask. A puff of stale air hit your warm face. “Calm down, bitch. Don’t gotta rush, unless you got a hot date I don’t know about.”

This was your hot date. It was the hottest date you’d had since entering Sinyala, compared to the half-hearted lingering glances you’d given the more attractive Reagents in the Sleep Room. How humiliating was that? And the worst part was that you were responding to it. Sick warmth started to buzz right under your skin. The hottest parts drained southward, settling deep in your gut. It couldn’t be him that was setting you off. Or rather turning you on. It just had to be the whole… dry spell.

That was the story you were going with.

“Please, take your time,” you retorted, hating the warm flush that crept over your face as he loosely massaged your throat. “Hopefully that way the Jaeger kills us both.”

He snorted. “Good one, baby! Got a real smart mouth on ya. Feels great, too.” He added the last sentence with a wiggle of his spit-damp fingers in your face, close enough to make you flinch back. 

Like the cat that caught the goddamn canary, you thought derisively. Those huge black lenses — unnerving bug eyes — stared into your soul as he hunched over you, body long and pale and sickly. 

“Fuck you.” Irritation made you brave. The heat that gathered — slow and steady, molten honey — between your legs made you additionally restless. Real venom was in your tone, forced through gritted teeth, but something a little slicker ran under the two words you spat out.

Another laugh wracked him, short and high and manic — hyena cackles that zigzagged their way out of the long column of his neck. “Sure baby, fuck me.” 

His hand disappeared from your field of view for a moment. A familiar glint replaced it, and you jolted back, eyes widening impossibly further in the dark of the office. The nozzle. Rust-flecked metal waved in your face, and a dry swallow knotted your throat as you stared at it with immediate terror.

The tip tapped against your closed lips hard enough to hurt. “Open up. Say ah for your doctor.”

You shook your head rapidly, then turned it slightly to the side to keep your mouth away from the offending tool (and the annoying tool wielding it). “That’s not— that’s not part of the deal.” You could almost smell the gas already, sharp and metallic as it seared over the virile tissue of your sinuses.

He clicked his mouth in not-quite-disappointment. “Aw, baby, don’t be a bitch about it. Gotta give me something to seal the deal. I’ll even letcha suck it a little.”

Each breath from behind his mask was shaky and hastened; the tremors spilled into the rasp of his voice and even made the nozzle rattle in his hand. Everything about him radiated stupid, drug-addled excitement. And fuck, maybe you really were just as crazy as him, because that infuriating throb was still there, right beneath your inseam, and drool started to pool under your tongue.

Tap, tap, tap. The knocks of the nozzle against your lips vibrated your skull from your teeth up. It liquefied your brain enough to make you relent before he did. Your shoulders slumped fractionally. The glare you cast at him was harsh. “Don’t fucking spray me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he rasped, much more interested in the way your teeth pried apart and your lips parted with a quiet noise. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep those pretty pink lungs real safe. Just get this wet for me.”

You didn’t believe him, but you didn’t have a choice. Metal slid into your sort-of willing mouth, the hard lines of it shoved obtrusively against the yielding meat of your tongue. Rust bloomed across your tastebuds. Whether or not it tasted worse than the cafeteria food you’d choked down earlier was up for debate. Spit welled up around the depression of your tongue and glossed the length of the nozzle; a noise of complaint vibrated the obstruction in your mouth and made him snort with amusement.

When did it get so hot? The trial environments never seemed to be the correct temperature. Always too cold or too warm and always stale air, despite the industrial-sized fans they had set up around the fringes of the sets. It had been chilly in the office when you’d stumbled in earlier. Now, though, you were definitely on the upper end of the thermometer and climbing. Every wave of heat that radiated off your worked-up body seemed as though it reflected off his gangly frame and redirected right back to you.

It didn’t help that your cheeks felt like they were hot enough to cook your brain. He watched raptly as your lips secured around the nozzle. Some defunct instinct in the back of your head shrieked at you to get the goddamn thing out of your mouth before you got a lethal dose of gas. It was summarily tamped down by the burgeoning want that was swelling in the deep pit of your gut.

“Fuck yeah,” he groaned, dragging the vowels out salaciously and pushing the nozzle further in. “You look great with something in that mouth, baby. I tell you that yet?”

Your tongue curled around the piping. He inched it forward until the tip tagged your uvula. On reflex, you gagged; tears instantly blurred your vision and you jerked your head forward. More metal pushed down your throat. That acerbic esophageal sear started again, more persistent this time, and you tried to yank your head back to keep from vomiting.

He laughed and palmed the back of your neck with his free hand, keeping your mouth firmly on the nozzle. To relieve you, he tugged the nozzle back a few inches… then slid it in again. In. Out. With excruciating slowness, he fed and retracted the metal into and out of your mouth; spit shone on the length of it. Humiliating. This was humiliating. His fingers twitched on the nape of your neck, and he tilted his head to the side with a sharp, bird-like jerk as he watched you. You’d never felt so violated without taking a single article of clothing off.

True to his word, he did not gas you. After what felt like several years of getting face-fucked with that nozzle like some ersatz cock, he pulled it free of your mouth with a wet pop. Thin strings of spit hung between the metal and your bruised lips as you gasped and hacked for air. His grip tightened on the back of your neck for a moment, squeezing at the flesh there.

He discarded the nozzle with poorly disguised impatience, free hand instantly darting to his crotch to squeeze unabashedly at the obscene tent of his battered leather apron. Despite all of the shit he’d done already, you still coughed and glanced away out of some pretense of decency. Nudity was everywhere in the trials — the big grunts, the victims (objectives?) you killed, hell, even the mannequins. You could at least discount that. Ignore it.

Now, though…

Rough callouses dragged over the nape of your neck before settling heavily on your shoulder. Your eyes flicked wildly between both his hands, unable to pick a location to fixate on and purposefully avoiding the impassive black discs of his gas mask.

“All loosened up there? I’m just itching to get this party started, baby!” Every sentence oozed out of him — caustic honey, gritty with sleazy want. Sweet and viscous and sticky. You felt dirty for even hearing it.

Spit was drying, cool and tacky, around your mouth. Sweat had started to collect under your clothes and along the nape of your neck. And God, despite it all, you were still feeling hot under the collar. He was so disgusting. That part you could not get away from; the gnarled pustules that split his skin and the raised blue veins that seemed ready to burst out into open air filled your vision. For being so thin, he sure took up more than his fair share of your field of view.

In lieu of a verbal response, you let out a sigh of defeat and began to slowly sink to your knees. To help, the hand on your shoulder pushed downward, weighing heavily on the socket joint until you hit the floor. Looking up at him was worse, somehow. He hunched further, spine curling forward in order to stare down at you from behind his mask with obvious delight. Mysteriously-splattered leather nearly brushed your face. He squeezed at the print of his cock again with a groan before fisting his hand in his battered apron and tugging it aside.

“Aw, don’t look so put out,” he chuckled, tilting his head from side to side as he considered the sight of you on your knees. “Whaddareya, nervous? You shouldn’t be. I’m your doctor, and you can trust your doctor, baby.” The bulge of his frayed white briefs was so obscene that you blushed on sight of it like some fumbling teenager. Even in the low light, there was a dark wet spot in the stained fabric.

“You are not a doctor,” you muttered under your breath, but your hands were already moving to his waistband. All he did was laugh. Probably because he knew he won.

The fabric gave way easily enough. It snagged for a moment on the obvious tent; you tugged with more effort and his cock came free, nearly tagging you in the face. Long. Upsettingly so. Long and thin and curved somewhat to the side, and the tip was so flushed it was red. Clear strings of precum dripped from the glossy head, and you stared at it for a second with no small amount of trepidation.

“Best tongue depressor on the market,” he wheezed, snaking a spindly hand down to grip the base. With a jut of his narrow hips, the sticky head smeared over your parted lips, and you jolted. “Alright, baby, you got the gist of it, don’tcha?” To emphasize his words, he tapped the head against your mouth. You wished desperately for another bottle to break over his skull. Why was this working for you? What had Murkoff done to you to make you enjoy this?

Stamps. You thought of stamps, and not the steadily worsening needy throb between your legs, as you opened your mouth and let him slip the head in. How long had it been since you’d given head? God, it felt like ages. He threw his head back with a downright pornographic moan of relief as the wet, hot clutch of your mouth sucked around the tip of his cock. Reflexively, his hips jolted forward a few inches; you nearly gagged, but he got control of himself.

“Thaaat’s it, bitch,” he drawled shakily. He released himself in order to secure a grip on your flipped-up goggles, long fingers tightening on the hard edges of the equipment. His nails scraped along the metal with a noise that rattled in your skull. Veins jumped against your hard palate as he pushed inch after inch into your mouth. Sweat and grime — the taste of being unwashed — spread sour over your tongue and you cringed, even with your mouth full.

Tears welled along your lash line as his hips jerked forward. The stretch in your jaw was unfamiliar, but the jury was still out on whether or not it was unwelcome. It burned just like your skin did. Just like your cunt did beneath the fly of your jeans. Your knees splayed further on the floor, aided by a stray few papers under your leg that helped them slide apart. Warm exertion burned upward from your hips.

Foreign wet noises eked out around his cock, wrung from your struggling throat as he began to buck against your face in stiff thrusts. It took him a very short time to bump against your uvula, and you gagged around the intrusion; your hands flew up his long, thin legs, nails scrabbling over the pale, exposed flesh of his thighs for support.

“Yeah, baby, scratch me up!” he groaned, voice pitched up in delirious want and ropey muscles twitching and shuddering from stimulation as your throat muscles spasmed around the tip. Drool slid down your chin in excess, leaking around the plug of his cock as he fucked your face in staccato thrusts.

It didn’t matter what you did. He was gross enough to like it all. Even your nails clawing into his vein-riddled thighs just spurred him on, the bite of pain pushing him to return it to you in kind with rough shoves of his hips into the welcoming allowance of your mouth. Tears ran hot down your hollowed cheeks, and at some point your jaw failed you — but even with teeth scraping against the flesh of his cock, he didn’t stop.

Dirty, humiliating, shameful — a thousand adjectives ran through your mind, and none of them were strong enough to stop the way your cunt twitched and throbbed at each slick noise he wrung from your throat. His hand slid from your goggles to the back of your head, palming it for a moment with nails scraping your scalp in order to hold you steady as he used your mouth.

Your tongue curled along the underside of his length and he jolted, groan melting into a wheezing laugh as you worked him. You were just doing this to get the key. That was all. Gaze sliding up the long line of his body, you watched as his concave abdomen rolled and flexed with pleasure. Tumorous scarring rippled up the side of his visible ribs. Deliriously, you wondered what the texture would feel like under your tongue.

You didn’t even realize you’d cupped a hand over your cunt until your own hips jerked at the pleasant pressure of your palm. A groan tore up from your abused throat, vibrating around his cock and sending a shudder down the contours of his legs. He swore raggedly and his head lurched forward from its thrown-back position of ecstasy in order to observe you for whatever incited your reaction. When he spotted where your hand had wandered, he chuckled again, although it was barely coherent through his gasping breaths.

His hips yanked backwards, cock pulled free of your mouth, and you lurched forward without the length impaling your throat. Thick strings of glossy spit hung between your bruised lips and the length of him, and you hacked for breath with ugly coughs; the stale air of the office did little but irritate your raw throat.

“Up we get,” he rasped. Dizzy from the combination of lack of oxygen and facefucking, all you did was sit there and stare up at the impassive gas mask through tear-blurred eyes.

“Wh— what?” The single word was more of an exhalation than anything else. Errant spit drooled down your chin. 

“No time to waste, baby! Don’t wanna go soft over here.” With that, bony fingers snatched your wrist where your sweat-sticky palm still rested on his thigh and yanked you upwards. Following the direction (because what else could you do?), you stumbled to your feet, taken aback by how needy you felt.

Not that he was unaffected. The gangly man was literally shaking as he dragged you to a standing position, and his pallid skin was damp with sweat. You watched rivulets of it dripping glossy down the desaturated skin stretched over the jut of his collarbone and the apex of his hip. Or at least — you did, until he manhandled you over a few steps, away from the central desk and against the wall of the office. Right next to the fucking empty podium. God. Your key. Where had he even stowed it?

Your hazy thoughts were cut short by the length of his body pressing against your back. He crowded you against the wall until the front of your ESOP bumped into the mold-spotted wallpaper; the nozzle of his gas mask brushed the damp nape of your neck, and you shuddered. Since when was he so tall? He must have straightened out the perpetual hunch of his back in order to take up your personal space better.

Bony hips shoved hard against your ass through your pants, coupled with his still-exposed cock. Precum, alongside your own leftover spit, smeared over the denim and stained the bottom hem of your shirt. You wished that you hated the thought of having a souvenir of this… encounter.

One hand pressed flat against the wall near your head, protruding knuckles looking fit to burst through his sallow skin. The other snaked around your stomach and slipped down to cup your cunt over your jeans with an accuracy and immediacy that made you gasp. He must have felt the heat through the denim, because he squeezed, long fingers digging into the yielding flesh of your sex hungrily. You couldn’t help it. Not after being so worked up and so denied for so long.

“Shit!” you gasped, hips rocking once into his touch. Heat seared over your face, and your lips parted to suck in shaky breaths in order to fan the vicious throb of arousal in your gut. I want, I want, I waaaaant, your brain supplied helpfully.

“Oh, you liked that, huh?” he rasped with immense interest. Puffs of air from the nozzle of his mask huffed over the back of your neck, chilling the gathered sweat there. Never before had you felt so aware of your entire body. Or someone else’s. “Sweet. Let’s see how much you really like it.”

“Please shut up,” you groaned, not meaning it at all. His tone was sleazy, his words were disgusting, and you couldn’t get enough of it. Maybe it was his unabashed glee at getting to fuck someone, or maybe it was his ability to make anything sound sort-of charming in a scummy way.

Regardless, your hands jumped into action faster than you could even admonish yourself for. Sweat slicked your fingers to the point of uselessness as you fumbled shakily with the button of your jeans. Quietly, you swore, leaning back slightly for a a line of sight that you didn’t get. With the ESOP blocking your view and your brain stupid with need, somehow this task had become monumentally difficult.

“Lemme help you with that,” he offered mockingly, amusement evident in his tone as his fingers tugged your hand away and deftly unbuttoned your jeans in what felt like less than a second. You blinked and knuckles were digging into your lower stomach as he yanked your pants and underwear down in one fell swoop. “There we go.”

You’d seen him unlock doors before — seen the way his fingers danced over the latch and flicked it down with worrisome speed — but never in a million years had you expected that kind of coordination from shaky, drug-addled hands. It was too much. Sinyala had a unique way of stripping personhood from everyone that walked through its doors, and you were no exception. Despite your love for material things keeping you afloat mentally, Easterman’s conditioning had done a very good job separating the wheat from the chaff when it came to your brain and body.

This, though, had dragged you right back into physicality with shocking immediacy, and you were left reeling as needs that you had otherwise suppressed and ignored since the start of your Reagency made themselves known, and loudly. Every part of your body was working, and all you wanted was more, more, more. You didn’t care that it was the Pusher, or that he was disgusting, or that you were only doing it because he was holding your fucking key hostage. This had snowballed into something else entirely that you really did not want to acknowledge.

With the heavy denim bunched at your knees, you were effectively hobbled. Not that he cared, and not that you were going to do anything about it. Your palms splayed on the wall in front of you as you struggled for breath. Open air rushed to meet your flushed, blood-warm skin; the feeling of being bare in a place like this was so wrong that a shiver danced down your spine. Make too much noise and a too-curious grunt would spell your death. Wait too long and the Jaeger would happily tear a fistful of internal organs from your torso. All you had for the moment was the Pusher’s eager wheezing and straining cock shoved against the exposed curve of your ass.

A low whistle from behind the mask. “Loving the view back here, baby,” he commented, and cut your hazy musings short with his crudeness. 

Lava might as well have been flowing under your skin. God, as if this couldn’t get any more embarrassing. “Stop fucking around— ah!”

The sharp sound of a slap hit your ears before the pain registered, and you gasped in shock at the realization that he smacked your ass. You felt the print of his palm burned on your skin. For a moment, you hung your head — tilted slightly to keep your goggles from tagging on the wall — and forced yourself to breathe through your humiliation. Great amusement was obviously being taken at your expense; fingers dug into the flesh of your ass and squeezed, and your cunt clenched around nothing in response.

Despite his casual and flagrant obscenity, wanton arousal still wracked you, and you had already swallowed enough pride and cock and fingers and metal to get past the initial reaction of disgust.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re shy.” He pulled and kneaded at your ass while he mocked you, tilting his head behind you to observe your cunt as he gave himself a better view. Vulgar noises started over your shoulder, and you didn’t need to look to know that he was pumping his cock with his free hand as he unabashedly groped at you. 

“I’m not shy,” you seethed through gritted teeth, embarrassed and aroused and impatient. You turned your head to glare indignantly at him over your shoulder; even through the mask’s blank black lenses, you felt his eyes slide up to yours as he lazily worked his dick.

“We gotta get that mind out of its cage, baby. See what the body really wants,” he purred, releasing your ass in order to push two exploratory fingers along your cunt from behind. “I think I might know…” he added, raspy words lilting in a mocking singsong.

Wet. You were so wet. Slick arousal soaked his fingers as he spread your folds with obvious, unashamed interest. Jaw hanging slack with agonized breathing, you rested your temple on the wall — as best you could, with the screws of your goggles sticking out of the sides of your skull — as he probed your needy cunt with shocking familiarity. He was touching you, he was touching himself, he was doing things that you hadn’t done since the first time you’d woken up on your Murkoff-provided mattress with surgically attached night vision and a stunning lack of identity. Too much was cementing itself as the theme here.

Too much and not enough, actually, because he kept sliding his fingertips around your aching entrance in favor of dancing over your clit and making you jolt and gasp with shocks of pleasure. Even the bite of his long nails against your swollen sex just ratcheted the want in your gut up and up and up.

“You know, I’m always saying a proper probe is an input,” he started, and pushed two fingers into your cunt right up to the knuckle for emphasis, “and output,” back out they went, retracting with a slick noise, “device both. Same for a drug. ‘cept you won’t let me show you that last part. Buzzkill.”

You groaned at the feeling of being filled, cunt spasming around his knuckles as he drove deft fingers into you over and over and over. It was impossible to discern whether the wet noises at hip level were coming from your dripping cunt or his own cock, but it didn’t really matter. He curled his fingers inside of you languidly, dragging his touch over your upper walls, and you downright whined.

“Please just fuck me.” Your gasp was pitiful over the sound of your own nails scraping against the wall. Shabby wallpaper peeled and pilled under your desperate scrabbling. At least the flimsy backboard was cool against your blood-hot cheek.

“Sure, baby, since you asked so nicely,” he rasped, his own breathing heightened as he felt the physical proof of your desperation soaking his fingers to the knuckle. “Party’s already started down here. Lemme lube up and we’ll give you a real physical.”

He pulled his hand away with an obscene noise and your legs trembled. Driven by something not entirely lucid, your knees shifted apart as far as they could within the confines of your bunched jeans. Something hot and wet pressed at your cunt from the back, and a harsh exhale left you as you realized it was the head of his cock smearing precum over your swollen folds. Lightning crackled down your spine in hungry anticipation. So close. So close.

A push… downward. He slid his cock along the length of your cunt, running it between your folds with a short push of his hips that ended with the tip rubbing over your swollen clit. You gasped and swore, jolting on reflex, and one of your knuckles cracked as you clawed at the wall. Lemme lube up. He was collecting the arousal seeping from your needy cunt and using it to slick up his cock, which was a realization that made pure, hot want shoot through you along with immense irritation.

“You are so gross,” you hissed, contrary to the way your hips shimmied on his rock backwards in an attempt to catch the head of his cock on your entrance.

“You got no fuckin’ idea,” he muttered in response, sounding surprisingly lucid for once, and notched the head of his cock successfully. Pleasurable static fuzzed up your limbs as the tip popped past your entrance; out of pure reflex, your cunt spasmed hard around the intrusion and you let out a broken-sounding moan. “God damn, you’re tight. Relax, baby, lemme get it in ya before you rip the skin off it.”

A few stiff motions forced the rest in until the sharp jut of his hip bones dug into your ass; you both heaved for air. Jesus, you had forgotten how good it felt to have something inside you. Drool, unbidden, was starting to bead at the corner of your slack mouth. He groaned lasciviously, the noise all gravel and pleasure, and started to move.

Clearly, you were both out of practice, but it didn’t hinder either of you much. Fighting the tight restriction of denim, you forced your trembling knees apart, greedy for sensation. Spindly fingers dug into the meat of your ass hard enough to bruise as he pulled your hips back to somewhat match his thrusts, as offbeat as they were, and you could feel the soreness mounting below your belt. Whatever. You didn’t care if sitting down tomorrow hurt as long as he fucked you like this.

Either muscle memory kicked in or he was a fast learner, because he ratcheted up into a real rhythm that had you swaying and gasping against the wall, grateful for its support, as his long body hunched over yours. The nozzle of the gas mask dug into the sweat-slick nape of your neck. His rough panting grated in your ears, sounding odd sieved through the mask’s filter. One hand locked on your hip, and the other slid over the soft fat of your stomach and ran up your shirt until it was blocked by the obstinate harness of your ESOP. The equipment jostled on your chest with each thrust, wedged between your body and the wall.

“Lift this fuckin’ thing up,” he wheezed, retracting his hand as his hips still worked. “Wanna feel ya breathe while I fuck ya.”

What the hell? You barely managed to parse his words through the fog of base pleasure that had descended on your slurried brain. As bewildering as the request was, you peeled a shaking hand off the wall and reached back for the straps of your ESOP’s harness. It was slow going, considering the relentless shove of his hips did not stop once and each thrust felt like he was shoving his cock all the way up between your lungs.

“Just— fuck, slow down,” you panted through a thin rope of drool, unable to catch the fine metal buckles under your sweat-damp fingers.

“Multitask, baby! That’s what they pay you for!” Amusement and lust melded in the gravel of his voice, clearly enjoying the way you struggled to loosen the straps under the steady saw of his hips. Eventually, you worked them free; the leather slackened noticeably around your ribs, and only then did he assist in tugging it up and over your head so quickly that he nearly banged the underside of your jaw on the metal box before he tossed it aside.

Instantly, that hand returned to your stomach, sliding up and over the soft fat before pushing between your breasts and settling heavily over your sternum. His other hand left its post on your hip and snaked around to your front, sifting through the nest of wiry, arousal-slick curls between your legs before finding your clit with frightening accuracy. He pressed down on the swollen bead and you gasped. The hand splayed over your chest twitched with excitement.

“There you go, baby, just breathe,” he groaned, fingertips digging into your sternum as he started to circle your clit. “Work those little lungs.”

Every gasp and pant and suck of air that dragged past your lips seemed to heighten his enjoyment. You had the sense that if he could have dug his fingers all the way into your chest, past your skin and muscle and ribs, and gotten direct access to your internals, he would have. He pinched your clit between two fingers to make your inhale sharpen — the harsh noise made his cock twitch inside of you.

That theme of too much returned in force. His clutch on your chest and forearm across your hip in front kept your spine arched as he ground his hips against your ass, and your knees started to tremble with the hot spikes of pleasure that each harsh circle rubbed into your clit sent lancing through you. He hunched over you further, resting his jaw on your shoulder, the gas mask visible in your periphery. The tilt of his head confirmed that he was straining his ear next to your mouth to listen to you gasp in time with feeling it rip through your chest.

“Oh, God, please, I—” You could barely get the words out. With those calloused fingertips laser focused on your clit and digging into your chest and his cock relentlessly grinding into you, it was a struggle to remember to breathe correctly. He pushed under the hood of your clit, seeking full contact, and you made a noise like you’d been stabbed.

Hot. It was so hot. Hot and tight. There was a molten knot winding up in your gut and you knew exactly where it was going and Jesus, fuck, you wanted to cum so bad.

“I’m close, I’m— I’m so close,” you stammered, in shock that those words were even being uttered here of all fucking places. Stars flickered behind your screwed shut eyelids. Drool dripped errantly off your chin, and you’d long stopped caring about it. What was one more wetness added onto the damp slap of skin-on-skin coming from between your thighs and the sweat beading all over your body?

“Yeah? So close?” he croaked, pitching his voice up to mimic your desperation in mockery. You squirmed weakly, body attempting in some dumb way to escape the punishing stimulation. Characteristic manic glee crept back into his tone (though it never really left). “You gonna finish like this? Scream those little lungs out?” 

“Yes, fuck, I— mmnh!” Whatever poured from your mouth sharpened into near-sobs as he dragged you right into your climax, hand still clawing at your chest to feel you breathe. You didn’t scream, for what that was worth. Your jaw hung open and you heaved for air, broken moans spilling from your drool-slick lips as he fucked the breath right out of you. Searing-hot tension in your gut finally gave way — a fiery bowline snapping — and pleasure rolled over you in a wave of staggering relief.

He slowed down for maybe a second or two, alternating from thrusts to deep, filthy grinds against your ass as your cunt fluttered around his cock, before really digging his heels in and fucking you. Euphoric afterglow ratcheted up to something blinding and painful as his fingers remained stubbornly on your clit, working the swollen bead with brutal precision.

Too much. Overstimulation crested in your cunt and you slumped against the wall, entire body sagging in his grip. His palm flattened even further against your sternum, seeking every ministration of your lungs with fanaticism.

“It’s too much, I can’t, I can’t,” you slurred, voice foreign to even your ears. Your brain became just another liquid leaking from a hole on your face. Tears, spit, gray matter… did the distinction even mean something at this point?

“Be cool, bitch, and let it happen,” he snarled, voice harsh with exertion and excitement as the bony jut of his hips slammed against your sore ass.

Pain was no stranger in Sinyala. It, alongside fear, became your greatest motivator to do trials quick and painlessly. It was, in essence, the primary driving force behind whatever your therapy was shaping you into. But pain intertwined with pleasure was something else entirely, and you found that discerning between the two was nearly impossible normally, and especially impossible with the Pusher’s cock stuffed in your cunt and his fingers working your clit relentlessly to force you to gasp and sob under his hand. All of it swirled down the drain of your fucked-out brain into a slag heap of sensation.

He sped up some, losing his rhythm, and gave you one-two-three more solid thrusts before he slammed his hips against yours and held them there with a long, shuddering groan. Fingernails bit into the delicate skin of your chest hard enough to draw blood as he wheezed through his orgasm; his cock kicked and pumped inside of you, the sensation enough to make you flush all over again.

Ironically, he was more reluctant to peel his hand off your sternum than he was to pull out. Lucidity came back to you in slow washes with each successive blink until you regained your entire field of view and the static in your ears subsided some. Errant trembles still danced through your limbs as he tugged his cock free of your still-twitching cunt with an obscenely wet noise. It took tremendous effort to straighten up off the wall and turn around to face him.

The visage of the gas mask up close still made you flinch. He lingered in your personal space even as you righted your shirt and reached down to yank your jeans back up over your hips. The expression you wore — a sort of fucked-out glare — must have amused him as you scooped your ESOP off the floor and tugged it back over your head, the weight comforting.

“The key.” you croaked, voice shredded from the general abuse of your throat. You held a palm out expectantly.

“Relax, baby, I’m good for my word,” he drawled, still panting somewhat. He slipped a sticky hand into the pocket of his apron and retrieved that troublesome goddamn key, letting it dangle from his fingers for a moment before dropping it into your palm. “Tell ya what—”

Fist tight around your key, your free hand flew to your long-since-ready stun in one smooth motion and flung the primed explosive right at the Pusher’s feet. Sparks exploded before your eyes as he stumbled backwards so hard he nearly fell on his ass, hands waving loosely in the air.

“Oh, you bitches!” he groaned, and you actually laughed as you scrambled away with your key, delirious victory in your voice and a definite ache between your legs.

The rest of the trial was, expectedly, easy. You ducked around some snarling, machete-wielding grunt and crept past a rambling Coyle with little issue. The Jaeger did not so much as make an appearance. Even getting back to the shuttle was easy; you skirted around the wandering big grunt and Coyle and slipped into the safety of the pod with relative ease.

As you settled into your seat and felt the familiar weight of the automatic pneumatic cuffs close around your limbs, you closed your eyes and thought of the packet of stamps you’d be receiving for successful trial completion upon return. Then the shuttle car jolted as it rattled over a bump in the tracks, and hot soreness lanced up your body from your pelvis, and your face warmed all over again.

Yes, you liked getting stamps for trials. But maybe during your next trial, you’d be a little more amenable to other sorts of payment, especially if you were haggling with a certain someone in a gas mask.