1 . Name: toxo !wf5JJ352J. @ 2012-08-24 03:09

“Hop up here, and we will go over the checklist.” Medic pats the sterile paper on his exam table, his other hand wielding a clipboard.

“You are feeling fit? No pains, fatigue, headaches...” he scans the form, glancing up to check Pyro’s shaking head at each inquiry. “...Weight gain or loss? Change in appetite? Good. Arm giving you any trouble?” Repetitive stress injuries are perhaps the only really worrisome affliction on the whole team. But Pyro shakes his head, and curls his arm up in a mock-flex, slapping the bicep and giving a thumbs up. Medic smiles.

“Well then. All accounted for. You may tell--” Medic flips the top sheet up, checking the next record-- “Scout, that I am ready to see him.” He busies himself with a note, then looks up. Pyro stands with one hand on the doorknob; a hesitation. Medic tucks his clipboard under his arm and takes his spectacles off. “Herr Pyro, I understand you are in a difficult situation, here. I do not pretend to understand the specifics. But I want to assure you--once again--that anything you disclose in this office, anything at all, it will stay here.”

Pyro nods once, but makes no move to depart, that huge glove still enveloping the doorknob. Medic cannot tell if Pyro is looking at him or not, and never can.

“I do worry about your wellbeing. I wish you would let me examine you, if only for my own peace of mind.” He tries to smile encouragingly, but bedside manner has never been his strong suit. “Respawn, of course, takes care of almost everything, and refusing care is every patient’s right, but if there is ever anything you need from me--” Pyro nods again, then seems to busy himself with patting down his person, making a vaudeville of looking for a misplaced object. Finally he fumbles a piece of paper out of a pocket, and ragged as it is, Medic can see it has been torn from a book. An old book. The vanilla scent of aging pages mixes with the Pyro’s usual atmosphere of dust and accelerants, and he takes the scrap as it is offered.

...occurs when the female patient, of a sensitive disposition, is subjected to certain stresses, some self-inflicted, others environmental or even derived from the society she keeps (one hysteria patient influencing or even infecting the other), resulting in...

Medic clucks and shakes his head, grinning. He looks up into the big, round lenses, but sees no mirth there and stops himself from laughing. “Pyro, this is quite, quite old. The condition of ‘hysteria’ only affected women; it has been completely debunked. It is, of course, quite sexist, and has no basis in science. I appreciate being shown this interesting artifact, but I am not entirely sure...” He is interrupted by Pyro’s big gloved finger rapping the page, indicating...what? That he should continue to read? He returns to the text.

...a variety of symptoms across many different types of patient, including but not limited to: depression, giddiness, delirium, sleepwalking, ague, tremors, impetuousness, impulsivity, a sudden loss of social grace, lack of appetite...

Medic looks up again, sure this is a joke, but not sure how to join his teammate in enjoying it. Pyro isn’t laughing. “What is--” he begins, but Pyro rolls his head, and the mask briefly inflates with an exasperated sigh. The scrap is jerked from Medic’s fingers, his clipboard from under his arm, and Pyro is scribbling something. The lenses find Medic’s eyes again, and he is reminded to put his glasses back on. The firestarter stands close to him, their shoulders touching, and Pyro offers him the clipboard with its annotated page, pointing with the pen.

Underlined, several times, with arrows indicating the exact passage, is the paragraph Medic knew would be farther down the page. The one that outlines suggested treatments for the silly old “condition”, but not the ones involving straitjackets, cold baths, or leeches.

The doctor’s eyebrows shoot up, and even in the dim black glass of Pyro’s gaze, he sees himself blushing. The clipboard is taken from his hands and set aside, and the cool pressure of the gloves close over his own, firmly, the two layers of rubber somewhat blunting the sensation. Then his hands are at the top of the suit, just under the mask’s filter, and Pyro is guiding his clumsy fingers to a hidden zipper, and--

“On the table, please. If this is going to be a proper examination, I cannot have you standing in the middle of the floor.” He is surprised his voice is so steady, because it is still not quite clear what is happening, here, only that Pyro is in charge, that Medic is being asked to provide care in a way that he cannot quite pin down, yet. Acting on suspicions without proof is not scientific, and patients must be in charge of their own treatments, ultimately. This much he knows, and he allows the little mystery to pull him to the table. The paper crinkles as Pyro hops back on and, taking his hands away from his collar, Pyro leans back on his own palms. The doctor’s fingers remain at the juncture of the suit.

“Surely you should--”

Pyro shakes his head, then lifts his chin to make the zipper more accessible.

But Medic fumbles, his gloves stymying his attempts to grip the little tab in those red folds. After wrestling with it for a few seconds, the zipper slipping his grasp again and again, he steps back in exasperation. Pyro’s face dips, watching him pull at his clumsy gloves, and the sudden air feels strange on his damp palms. He never removes his gloves in examinations, of course, and their bare pallor make him feel vulnerable now, when his patient is still so sheathed. He approaches again, smiling a quick apology, his nervous sweat leaving streaks on the surface of the suit.

With his gloves off, the zipper’s tab is shockingly cold, but slides as smoothly as if it has been oiled. It is to his patient’s sternum before it occurs to him to stop, to look up. Those lenses gaze steadily back, although at this distance he can hear--and feel, now--the rapidity of Pyro’s breaths. Under the zipper is thin, white, ribbed cotton--the standard-issue undershirts, and at the juncture between shirt and mask...bare skin. Medic forgets to hide his shock, and the sharp intake of breath seems to make the living breastbone flinch from him, and at first he thinks the Pyro is just young, younger maybe than Scout, to be so hairless, but the brown skin is too soft, too smooth. A rubber glove covers his hand, and pulls the zipper down to the navel, and the sudden, sharp slope of the small breasts is definite. Medic takes his hand away and shakily, chastely places it on Pyro’s shoulder. He cannot find her eyes, of course, but he looks into the glass anyway.

“I will not tell anyone. You can trust me, is that clear?”

Pyro nods, then reaches for his hand again, but he stops her. “Pyro, the page you gave me, it is not a real diagnosis. If you are experiencing dysthymia, dizziness, any of those symptoms, it certainly will not be because of--” But his hand is in her grip again, and she is laughing, the sound muffled but unmistakable, the alto tones more pronounced now that he knows, and he finally shuts up, ashamed to be caught lecturing someone who knows better.

The zipper is as smooth in the next ten inches as it was at the start, and the white underthings are so bright, blazing behind the metal teeth. She smells like the soap they use in the showers, he realizes, the scent caught and concentrated in the airless rubber sheath. There is the soap, the clean skin, the rubber and canvas, the sand, the fuel and ash, and then, Medic tries not to notice, the smell of her, her skin yes, traces of new sweat and--unmistakably, although his medical ethics are screaming in his head to ignore it--her excitement, her response, and whether it is for him, or she simply felt he was a convenient way to treat an existing condition, he realizes--with a slight sting--he will never know. An ego is such a burden, he muses, watching her recline farther back on the table, spreading her still-suited legs. She props one boot on the table and reaches under herself, continuing the unzipping completely around the inseam and a ways up the back. He sees now that she fills the suit more than he had assumed, that her hips are broad and strong, her legs built to spec for lugging seventy, eighty pounds of steel and accelerant across miles of red wasteland, day after day. She reaches for him.

He realizes, as soon as she has her legs around his waist, that he is embarrassingly erect. Her big gloves are on his face, mussing his hair, thumbing his throat, and she is making little hums of appreciation as he is turned and tousled and examined. Her hands trace his back, cup his ass, pulling his pelvis into her own as she finds her own ideal angles, the proper pressures, and just as he is beginning to feel slightly superfluous to the entire exercise, she releases him. When he catches his breath she is supine on her elbows, her legs open to him, the white cotton translucent and damp. She says nothing, simply breathing through her mask, a slice of woman between the open jaws of something faceless and fierce. The roundness of her lenses makes her expression seem eager, somehow, though he reminds himself that it’s not a face.

“Pyro,” he begins, speaking low. She shakes her head, slowly. They both hear the rustlings and chatter of bored teammates piling up in the waiting room outside, Scout’s voice stridently demanding a tattered National Geographic, and Medic freezes, remembering his appointments. “Pyro!” he whispers more urgently, eyeing the door, patting his coat, trying to smooth his hair.

She has him in hand before he can sidestep her, one huge glove closing on his tie and giving him a yank. He stumbles forward, catching himself to either side of her on the exam table. His breath fogs her lenses and her body arches up from within the split rubber, electrifying him through the last, thin fabric. The pulling on his neck leads him to her collarbones, delicate against the broad strength of the rest of her body, and he finds himself tasting the borderlands of her shoulders, inhaling her neck, even pressing under the seal of her mask, but he is allowed few explorations before the tugging brings him down, down, traversing her breasts with their thin cotton skin. He is not permitted to linger there, either, and finds himself sinking to his knees in front of her, the paper tearing as she slides her hips to the edge.

Voices are again audible from the waiting room, and he tries to stand, but she is strong, insistent, and deadly patient. There is a knock at the door. “Doc?” He lunges for the handle, managing to hit the lock.

“Ein moment! I am not done with my examination!” He hears Pyro snuffle and laugh, and when he turns around she has not moved. She simply waits, intractable, grandly arraigned, the pattern of white-red-white forming around her with cotton, rubber, and paper, and when he returns to her he is pushed down immediately, and this time she has his head in one giant glove, and with the other she hooks the soaked cotton to one side, and then he is utterly lost.

The heat is the first thing he notices consciously, his mouth working without him, her gloved fingers sliding thickly alongside his tongue. This observation feels trite, even just to himself. He has the inane thought that perhaps she is feverish after all, but this worry merely flickers through his mental tumult before dissolving. Her burning softnesses slide aside under his tongue, and give up still more insistent features, and when he feels the swollen stamen of her clitoris pass under his tongue, she sighs, and arches into his mouth. He begins counting her heartbeats as he tastes them, her elevated pulse gratifying him, urging him on. She allows him to embrace her thighs, to reach into the suit and under the underclothes, to caress her breasts and flanks.

When Pyro presses herself up more insistently, craving more, he slides his tongue down and presses the tip into her, meeting her enthusiasm with greater penetration until that is not enough, and he replaces the tongue with one long finger, then two, sliding them gently at first, fucking her, then curling them in the beckoning gesture he knows will target old Dr. Gräfenberg’s marvellous discovery, although, he reminds himself dreamily, working with both tongue and hands, the good doctor discovered nothing so much as it was revealed to him. The thought gives his free hand more boldness, and he strokes one iliac crest that surfaces from his patient’s arching exertions, wondering at this hint of an even more private skeleton, under her secretive muscles and skin. His attention wandering, she grips his hair and urges him on.

They both make muffled sounds, then, and Medic chases a stiffening of her thighs, a tension in her grip on his neck, the precise, needy gesture as she presses herself open to his tongue. He finds this thread, and follows it, not daring to drop it or draw it out, to toy with her, to experiment, but pursues this pressure singly, this pattern, until she seems to seize and arch, and he sucks hard as she utters a long, last, high sound, and goes limp.

Medic stands unsteadily, listening for any sign of awareness from the waiting room, but the chatter continues undisturbed. Pyro lolls, and he watches aftershocks set her quivering. The table is too narrow for two bodies, but he stands awkwardly over her, stroking her as best he can, watching her recover, trailing his sensitive fingertips through the sweat beaded on her clavicle, her thighs, the dark slope of her stomach. He tries to form an image of her face, and fails to do so.

Presently she sits upright, and slides an arm around his waist. His belt is tugged open, his trousers undone, and conscious thought is nearly obliterated as he remembers his own arousal, his own response to this insane scene. And she leans back again on her elbows, and he advances, not surprised when she brings a knee up, and he’s already reaching into his trousers when her boot settles on his chest.

He stops, and looks up into her mask. In the years they have fought side by side, in the firelight glow of her thrower and his medigun, through the dim tunnels and blinding sterile hallways of one facility after another, he feels he has learned something of his teammate’s mask. It is not a face, no, and never will be; but the angle of her head, the glint on her lenses, even the clenching of the rubber around the slender neck--these things impart something to him, something he feels he can read. He swears, now, at the end of her boot, breathing her ashes and orgasm, tasting her salt and strangeness, that she is smiling. And gently, gently, she puts him down. She presses him onto his knees, until he is under her, kneeling, sitting on his heels with his hand foolishly stuck under his waistband, and she does not look away.

“I do not know what you want,” he whispers. He feels his teeth clenching on the last word, wonders if this frightens or amuses her. She lowers her mask, peering at him, waiting, listening to his ragged breathing, to the rowdy men beyond the door. And she nods.

Even as he feels his face grow hot, he knows what it means. He knows he has been given permission, and that taking it will signal his agreement, his willingness, his consent to this arrangement. His face feels naked in front of her blank, black mask, his skin itchy under her tread. She lets one glove travel to her thigh, then to the soaked gusset, which she carelessly pulls to one side, and her slow, dreamy movements as she watches him are both soothing and shocking, and he follows suit. Her boot drops from his chest as he leans into his own hand, fixated on her body, on her own motion, on her gaze. Fixated on his own erasure into this little scene that she has arranged, her consumption of his pleasure for her own, and he knows, knows not to let himself come before she does.

And Pyro does--the second time easier, faster, more intense, and he dimly thinks how interesting it would be, as a physician, to observe the female ejaculatory reflex close at hand for the first time, but this bit of rational thought is obliterated as soon as it is formed, and he follows her in seconds, desperately covering his own mouth to stifle his cry.

Pyro’s gloves are gentle as she dabs at both of them with paper towels from the scrub sink, Medic looking at the floor more than at her, trying to straighten his tie, his belt, his lab coat. They stand, shakily, leaning on each other, Pyro’s muffled laugh breaking through Medic’s mental fog. He reaches to her mask and she does not flinch, but lets him lay one long, white hand on the smeared black rubber. He circles one lens with his thumb, looking down into the undisturbed, glass pools.

“Kleines Feuerchen,” he murmurs, leaning close to her, seeking the slight rise of her ear under the tight hood. She grasps both his hands, dwarfing them in her gloves, and he wonders if she can even feel him, has she ever really touched him, or does she operate by sight alone, isolated from him and the world by the rubber armor she lets him zip closed. But he cannot make any of these weaknesses, these lonelinesses, stick to her. She seems exuberant, vital, even loud beneath the muffling of the suit.

“Bitte--please, let me--” he begins, but she releases him, her zipper invisible once closed, untouched, unchanged, untouchable. She gives a cheery little wave as she passes Scout on the way out into the waiting room.

“What the hell took you so long?” Scout demands, without rancor. He snaps his gum and pulls his shirt off. It’s over his head and on the floor before he bothers to really look at the doctor.

“Doc, yer hair’s all fucked up. And what’s that all over your glasses?”

Medic takes his spectacles off, and polishes them slowly on his sleeve.