Burning With You

Author Note: Hey everyone, hope you enjoyed my last work ("Juice for Juice"). This is set in the same universe, and deals with philosophy, the reality TV show Terrace House, and climate anxiety. I like to think I'm improving my craft, so any ratings and comments—even anonymous—are more than welcome. Thank you for reading this. I love you.

Content Warning: some cheating, kind of.

#

"Good evening." Reina Triendl is first to speak, each week, cheerfully setting the tone.

"Good evening," reply her colleagues, the other five members of Terrace House's panel of comedians.

You, the longest-standing panelist, introduces the show.

"Terrace House is just our observation of six strangers living together. All we provide is a snazzy house and a sick ride. There is no script whatsoever."

The panel, seated around a large couch, nods in sync at this last line. Reina starts the recap.

"Let's see, last week..."

#

"Maaaaan." Tokui Yoshimi smiled at his co-panelists. "They really went for it."

Reina Triendl and You burst into giggles as the couch reacted to the latest indignity on Terrace House. Yamasato Ryota glowered at us from the wall.

"I'm bored," he said simply, prompting more laughs in the studio.

"I'm bored," Hesther echoed, fidgeting with the remote.

The sage and citrus candle sputtered.

"We really did just grind through most of this episode drop," I pointed out.

It was getting late; we'd been watching Terrace House nonstop for something like five hours. Hesther paused Netflix and looked at me.

We were best friends, fast buddies from kindergarten who'd shared everything for two decades. When she came back from her out-of-state college, we picked up where we left off, killing time together with middle-of-the-road reality television.

Looking at Hesther was like looking into a mirror. Sure, we looked pretty different—she had short hair, short lashes, a square jaw, all the things I'd wanted back in middle school—but I mean in terms of familiarity. I'd doubtless looked at her face over the years about as many times as I'd seen my own. It reflected my interests, my feelings. I, too, was bored.

The sky outside was dark, not only from the night but from the smoke and ash. The Gullet of Hell, most recently opening across the estuary in Georgeville, was ravaging the coast. With the bridges down, with the entire East Estuary in apocalypse mode, with the moon and stars snuffed out in soot, there wasn't that much to do. Our city was "safe," surrounded on three sides by water, but it wasn't unaffected. Masks were rationed to the utility workers on the other side of the estuary, and we were locked up. There was no school, no work. No public transit. The wireless infrastructure was disrupted by anomalous weather, so you couldn't even Lyft or Uber. Google's fiber kept us connected to the outside world at home, so we had Netflix, but when a typical night in of Great Britannian Bake Off turned into an endless impromptu sleepover, even me and Hesther found the limits of our interest in TV.

Hesther fiddled with the remote in silence for a moment, staring into my eyes, then dropped it on the rug.

"What if this really never ends?" she asked.

"The Gullet always closes eventually." It was common wisdom, the only thing preventing mass suicide across Stewardland.

"And it always reopens," she said.

She was right. Paradise, Lady Rose, Leather Valley, Moon Valley—and those were just the most recent hotspots in Northern Stewardland. The fires burned around Angels, too, two hundred days a year. Diabolists ran the private utility companies, it was said, using the grid to perform satanic rituals in an effort to merge our world with Hell.

As always, I saw my feelings reflected in her expression: my uncertainty, my teetering fatalism.

"What's the point of eating another can of tuna and making it another day if this is what life is?" she asked.

We'd avoided the topic until now, somehow, a true feat of will in the face of circumstance, but now there was no avoiding it. Hesther had dropped a bomb in the room, and the room was changed forever.

Wordlessly, I picked up the remote and placed it on the coffee table.

"I hate when you do that," she said.

"What?"

She swept her arms wide, gesturing to the tidy living space. "Everything in order, always. All of Seven Hills is going to suffocate and you're worried about crumbs on your couch and a misplaced remote."

There was something new in Hesther's expression, something alien.

This wasn't the first time Hesther had complained about my tendency toward the immaculate, but it was maybe the first time she hadn't done so in a reflection of my own dissatisfaction with said tendency. In the past she'd rib me about it and I'd feel like justice was being served, because my need for control was beyond my control and I secretly agreed with her. This was different. There was a provocative spark in her eye, and she looked genuinely displeased.

"Sorry," I said. It wasn't a real apology. Neither of us was good at those. It was, like so many sorries, a filler word akin to um or like, a foothold in the conversation while I scrambled to figure out how I felt.

She broke our lengthy eye contact, standing and pacing around the room. "Three weeks already, dude. How can you stand it?"

"I can't," I admitted. "I'm at my wits' end, Hesther."

"Then DO something about it."

I shrugged at her. What was there to do? We were stuck in my 500 square foot studio apartment, with nothing to fill the space or time but my second-hand Ikea furniture, a six-month supply of earthquake rations, and my smart TV. Well, I had reading to do. In theory. Martin Heidegger's Being and Time sat on the coffee table next to the remote. I was supposed to teach it this coming semester, use it to bludgeon the spark out of the aspirant pre-laws in Georgeville's rhetoric department, but reviewing the text seemed next to pointless when the university across the estuary had been reduced to ashen rubble.

"Don't you have a bucket list?" she asked.

"Most of the things on it require leaving the house."

"Sure," she said, "but all of them?"

I thought about the list, not for the first time today. I wanted to see more of the big parks in the other provinces. I wanted to visit one of the old Terrace House sets, to see the sun rise out of the Peace. I wanted to do the Bourdain Memorial food pilgrimage. I wanted to make it to Southern Stewardland, to try the world-famous smoothies at Juice For Juice.

It was all travel, travel, travel. Except for the sex stuff, of course, but that, too, required leaving the house and finding a partner.

Standing in front of the TV, blocking my view of Yamasato's bespectacled grimace, hands on her hips, Hesther gazed into my soul, that mischievous spark growing as she read my mind.

"You're horny," she said.

This wasn't the first time Hesther had identified my horniness, either. I wasn't infrequently horny, and neither was she, and we weren't shy about it with each other. We were always open about which people on TV we found attractive, and about what sex things we'd done with other people. We'd had long conversations in middle and high school about porn, about masturbation, about her struggle with and conquest of her vaginismus. All that openness had never translated into the crossing of any lines in our sibling-like relationship, though. But when she called me horny this time, when her eyes lit up and the beginnings of a smile played on the corners of her mouth, something was different. She was bored. I was bored. And we were going to die. If not this time, next time, or the time after. Stewardland was doomed. The utility diabolists were winning.

I shrugged again, trying to absorb my shiver in the gesture. "These things come and go."

"Like the Gullet."

I almost said, "like the Gullet," but that seemed unfair, both to myself and to its victims. Instead, I said, "hopefully my erections kill fewer people." Still horribly inappropriate, but Hesther giggled.

"What's on the list?" she asked. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

I wrapped myself in one of the fleece blankets I kept on the couch. It was a flimsy defense against Hesther's inquiry.

"Fine, I'll go first. Starting with acts," she said, "we can ease into this."

I rolled my eyes. "Hesther, YOU'RE horny."

"No shit. I haven't rubbed one out in three weeks."

"Maybe you should take care of that."

"You'd like that, perv."

"No, I mean, whatever. Like go to the bathroom or whatever." I was on my back foot already. "I mean. Whatever."

"Whatever indeed. What about you? You been 'going to the bathroom?'"

"Yes," I said simply.

"That work for you?"

"Always has, as you well know."

"Always doubted that, you know."

"Doubted what, exactly?"

"Jerking it into some toilet paper and flushing it down the toilet is as good for you as sex?"

"I mean, an orgasm is an orgasm."

"Dude, it so isn't."

"Maybe I'm just really good at handling myself," I said.

"Or maybe you've only had shit lays."

"I don't know why we're arguing about this." I had always had a hyperactive libido, but limited desire to seek sexual relations. In my mind, this was a virtue. I wasn't pushing my horniness on anyone else. I was self-sufficient, and that was certainly helpful during this quarantine.

"It's fun," she said, as if that was the only reason we needed to do anything. "We agree about too many things."

"I guess we do," I agreed.

"See?"

I smiled, despite myself.

Hesther plopped down on the ottoman, back still to the TV. "Now for something else fun. I wanna have a vaginal and clitoral orgasm simultaneously, or near enough, without touching myself or using toys."

This prompted an extremely graphic image in my head. My imagination unshackled from physics or spatial concerns, I saw Hesther taking a cock and being eaten out at the same time. I saw her belly undulating, her splayed legs twitching. I hardened, my pjs tenting under the shroud of the blanket. She continued.

"I wanna fingerfuck a woman to orgasm in public."

Another image, another scene in my head. I was the woman in my imagination, Hesther's hand up my skirt, three fingers in my fantasy pussy as we rode a crowded elevator. I was dripping on the floor of the elevator. Hesther's other hand covered my mouth, a contradictory stealth measure meant to suppress my moans but clearly signaling that we were up to something.

"I wanna eat cum out of a pussy."

Again, the pussy was mine, but so was the cum. I closed my eyes, hoping to sever our connection, but turning off my visual senses only amplified the detail of the scene in my head.

"I wanna try anal." She spoke quickly. Her list was longer and more detailed than I expected. The images flashed incessantly. "Give a dude a rim job. Peg a dude. Spitroast him. Get spitroasted. Standing missionary against a wall somewhere public."

I was achingly hard under my blanket now, head swimming with lewd images.

"Your turn," she said.

"You're done?" I asked, still with my eyes closed, still enjoying the vision of her with her back against the mural across the street, legs spread, on her tiptoes to allow her partner easier access to her pussy.

"I said I'd start with acts," she said. "I can go into scenarios next, but I really think it's your turn to name a few things from your list."

"This feels wrong," I said.

"Not the first time we've discussed our fetishes."

"Occasion is everything." Rhetoric 101, an old friend and fallback. I opened my eyes. She rolled hers. I continued, hopeful that some good old mansplaining might cool her down and end the conversation. "The context here is a little different from the last time we talked about these things. For one, we're trapped with each other at the end of the world. So looking at your diction, when you use words like 'dude' and 'rim job'—"

She cut me off with a wave of her hand. "Yes, yes, you're a dude and my tongue is the only one in the entire world right now that can job your rim. I get it, Prof. Get on with your list."

I sighed, and her expression melted.

"Sorry, dude." She turned away. "I went too far. I was just bored, and in a bad mood. I don't want to make you uncomfortable, especially when you can't exactly get away from me. I'll, uh, I'll go calm down."

She left for the bathroom. My walls aren't so thick that I couldn't hear her moaning. Unsure whether or how to process the entire exchange, I stared at Yamasato's face on the TV, idly rubbing my cock through my pjs.

#

"Maaaaan." Tokui smiled at his co-panelists. "They really went for it."

Triendl and You burst into giggles as the couch reacted to the latest indignity on Terrace House. Yamasato glowered at us from the wall.

"I'm bored," he said simply, prompting more laughs in the studio.

"I'm bored," Hesther echoed, fidgeting with the remote.

The sage and citrus candle sputtered.

"We really did just grind through most of this episode drop," I pointed out.

It was getting late; we'd been watching Terrace House nonstop for something like five hours. Hesther paused Netflix and looked at me.

We were... friends. There was a hunger in her eyes. Something that usually lurked beneath the surface, something I'd forced myself to ignore on so many occasions, was stirring. And who was I to deny her? She'd loved me since the seventh grade, maybe longer. We were going to die—if not this time, next time, or the time after. Stewardland was doomed. The utility diabolists were winning.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay what?" she asked.

"Just, 'okay,'" I said.

I didn't want to fuck Hesther, I wanted to BE Hesther. But she'd mistaken my fascination for romantic interest, and allowed herself to be completely consumed with a twelve-year crush I simply didn't return. We were friends, on and off, for the duration. Sometimes she would proposition me and I would stop returning her texts for a few months. My other friends always raised their eyebrows when I let slip that I was meeting her for coffee—why, dude, why, you know what she's about—but the thing about Hesther was that she was fun, when she kept it in her pants.

Maybe this is the scary thing about creeper friends? They're still, like, our friends? They want things they can't have, and they do bad things, but they still care, in their own way. And Hesther cared. She made me feel special in ways that none of my other friends did. She made me feel special in ways even romantic partners didn't. I would try to dismiss her friendship, every time, remind myself she was obsessed. But we had good times together. And I kept falling back into those good times, giving her openings.

I made sure to get what I needed out of our friendship. Someone to gossip with. Someone to watch reality TV with. Someone to share my art with. And beyond that, a mirror: I could peer into her and see the woman I wanted to be.

She texted me three weeks ago. She was in Seven Hills for her grandmother's funeral. Her uncles were unbearable, she said, and she Snapchatted me one of them saying some not-quite-incomprehensible-enough shit about "orientals." Her vomit emojis mirrored the feeling in my stomach, and I took pity on her.

"Want to get dinner tomorrow?"

Hesther was always good at turning an inch into a mile. Dinner became drinks, and drinks became Netflix on my couch. We were two episodes deep in Great Britannian Bake Off when our phones started buzzing with outage alerts from across the estuary. Georgeville was burning.

"Shit," she said, when the lockdown notice hit minutes later.

She looked at me, sheepish. But she didn't need to be. This wasn't boundary-pushing. She didn't plan this. She didn't open the Gullet of Hell in Georgeville. I told her it was okay, showed her my supplies and told her she could have the bed. I was on guard that first night, and the next, but eventually I was just glad I wasn't alone at the end of the world. Hesther was on her best behavior. I found myself wondering if she was maybe finally over me.

And then she got bored.

I wasn't bored. I was never bored when Yamasato was bored. He grew weary when there wasn't enough strife on Terrace House. In contrast, I enjoyed the harmonious times. Whenever the whole house did activities together, I felt a little glow in my chest. Yamasato would deride me, but he was just a personality in a little box on the wall. Whatever.

I was even less bored than normal, though.

"I need to hear more than just 'okay,'" said Hesther.

"I don't know if I can say more than that," I pleaded.

How could I explain my fatalism to her? My morbid curiosity? My caveats? What if we survived this—what if I was crossing a line I couldn't redraw? I liked Hesther, but I didn't love her. She was attractive, hot, even, but, but—

"Let's drop it," she said, finger on the play button on the remote. "I've worked too hard to ruin this friendship when there won't be time left to apologize."

Something snapped in me. Maybe it was that I'd never considered the fact that I wasn't the only one putting up with her feelings: she was, too, and she rebuilt our friendship every time I let her. It was real work. And it mattered to her, the woman I wanted to be. And after years of therapy, I loved the woman I wanted to be: was I so small that I couldn't love Hesther?

I took the remote from her.

If we didn't die, if there was time to regret giving Hesther what she wanted, then there would also be time to apologize. Not just time for her to apologize—time for me to apologize. And time enough for both of us to forgive each other.

"Dude—"

I shook my head. "I can't say everything you need to hear, but I can give you more than just 'okay.' Trust me?"

I wasn't unused to Hesther shaking nervously. She always did, before confessing her love. This time, though, I didn't just see it. I felt it, my hand on her flushed cheek. Not only there, I realized, as I leaned in to kiss her. The shaking was mirrored in my own body, emanating from deep within my chest. My heart was racing in a way it hadn't in three weeks. With the destruction of the university and the realization that my preparation for the fall semester was no longer necessary, I'd taken a deep breath. Relief had slowed my heart.

Now it sped up again. Hesther's lips felt nice.

#

"Maaaaan." Tokui smiled at his co-panelists. "They really went for it."

Triendl and You burst into giggles as the couch reacted to the latest indignity on Terrace House. Yamasato glowered at us from the wall.

"I'm bored," he said simply, prompting more laughs in the studio.

"I'm bored," Hesther echoed, fidgeting with the remote.

The sage and citrus candle sputtered.

"We really did just grind through most of this episode drop," I pointed out.

It was getting late; we'd been watching Terrace House nonstop for something like five hours. Hesther paused Netflix and looked at me.

We were lovers, high school sweethearts, engaged to marry. She was doing that thing as we held each other's gazes where she fiddled with the ring on her finger. Our timeline weighed on both of us. We were twenty-five-year-old virgins, bored of waiting, eager to officiate and consummate.

"What if we die without making love?" she asked, mirroring the thought that had hovered in the back of my mind for the last two weeks. The Gullet of Hell had been open longer than usual, and according to what news we had it wasn't even close to contained.

"That was always a possibility," I said. "Every street crossed in the last eight years was tempting fate." I wasn't confident that this made sense, and even less confident that it was any real reassurance, but I'd thought about it a lot, and it's what I'd settled on, for myself. "We've made it this far."

She just shook her head. She was an epistemologist.