His Lullaby {Eddie Gluskin x Waylon Park} {Outlast}

Chapter 22: The Stranger

Miles meets an unexpected ally in the asylum. Waylon and Eddie make a new 'development' in their relationship.
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WARNING!
There is suggestive material in this chapter that might be dubiously consensual.

I am SO sorry for the long wait, but I do hope you know that I spent EVERY moment I could perfecting this chapter for you guys :) More is to come with an exact continuation in the next chapter. This time, the wait won't be so long. I promise!
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Miles's POV

The heat that followed the anger after Miles woke up was throat-drying and suffocating. The only thing in his senses was smoke, smoke, smoke. The dusty, overwhelming smell of burnt wood along with the sick, pungent smell of decomposing corpses. It invaded his nostrils, and he sat up abruptly.

He was fucking pissed that he'd been straight up stabbed in the throat by that joke of a priest. His neck ached from where he'd been laying, on a rusty old slab of metal that was being treated like some sort of dish pit. It was bare and had presumably been swiped clean of its contents, if the broken glass on the floor was anything to go by.

But he was also incredibly confused and alarmed by the state around him. Everything was burning.

It was on fire.

Miles hopped off the table and stormed out of the small kitchen he'd been set in. Luckily, there had just barely been enough room for him to make it through the mess of broken glass and out a door that had been left ajar.

Once he found that damned priest, he'd-

A burst of hot cinders caught Miles's attention as a board from the ceiling fell down into the fire. He rushed to protect his face, throwing his palms up in front of him. Cinders rained down on the back of his hands, and he flailed, getting them off his skin before they burned him. It was already bad enough that he'd lost his fingers...

Miles narrowed his eyes, trying to make sense of the smoky room he'd walked into. Everywhere he looked, there was fire. So much of it. It was becoming harder and harder to breathe by the second, so he'd have to find a way out quickly.

Luckily, there had been a small path that hadn't burned. It swirled and swiveled its way around the room, and he had to hurdle over a cart that had blocked the narrow passageway. The smoke had gotten more intense the more he wandered into it, and he was starting to wonder if he'd been purposely trapped and left to burn by the priest when he heard a voice.

"I had to burn it. All of it," the voice said, husky and thick.

Miles whirled around to find the voice, only to see a man sitting on the end of an unburnt table. His head was bowed, but he was talking to Miles.

They were the only two in the room.

It was possible he was talking to himself, as Miles had seen many people who'd done that in the asylum. There were plenty of people who would cower in a corner or talk to something off in the distance that no one else could see. Hell, even a guy who'd kept on referring to Miles as 'silky' had been wandering aimlessly in one of the cell blocks.

Fucking maniac... Miles thought, sneering at the arsonist before him. He was about to walk away, to let the man wallow in his craziness, when the man talked once more.

"Murkoff took so much from us. Used us," the man murmured. He refused to look at Miles, and the way his voice slightly wavered suggested that he was likely crying. Or at least tearing up. Miles didn't know how to feel about that.

"They turned us into these things..." the man trailed off, his head turning to the side for a moment in thought before lifting his head just enough to make eye contact with Miles.