Burning With You

There was no point going over everything—our families, their expectations, God, Hesther's inability to use tampons and the decision to plan our wedding only after she'd made enough progress with her dilators—so I just sighed.

"You know what I'm bored of?" she asked.

"Not Terrace House?"

She put a hand over my crotch. I immediately reacted. "Kissing. Well, I'm not bored of kissing you, but I'm getting a little tired of stopping at kissing. I'm bored of leaving you stiff in your pants. You're my oldest friend. We've been together longer than my parents were. Why were they allowed to fuck and make me if I'm not allowed to give you a handjob?"

Hesther didn't usually talk about her parents' divorce, but I supposed we'd exhausted most topics, cooped up together for three weeks as the world across the estuary burned with nothing but Netflix, abortive kissing sessions, and our overly-intellectual inclinations to keep us entertained. I mean, I had reading to do, prep for the start of the semester at Georgeville, but it seemed so pointless with the university reduced to ash.

Her hand lingered on the swell in my pjs, eyes still locked on mine. I shared her frustrations, expressed most obviously in the ease with which she got a rise out of my dick. But while we were on the same page in so many ways—not limited to the fatalism with which we regarded the current fires—I was a step behind her here. I didn't think the pseudo-apocalypse invalidated our previous engagements.

Well, I wasn't doing my reading, but that was different. The world hadn't met its end yet, but the university had.

"What if we're already dead?" she asked. "This could be Hell."

"Okay, JP," I joked. "I don't think we hate each other that much."

"Not a Sartre reference." She bristled. "Well, not intentionally. And of course I don't hate you."

Her hand had yet to wander from my crotch. I tried to deflect.

"Shall we continue?" I asked, gesturing to the TV.

I reached to take the remote from her, and she pulled back. My leg cramped and I lost my balance. I didn't have far to fall. I was on top of her on the couch, my body light and curved against hers. My dick pressed hard against her thigh.

"Let's," she said, with a smile, before lifting the neck of her shirt just enough to slide the remote between her breasts.

My sexual restraint was not the natural product of a low libido. I was almost always horny, and the only release I'd ever known was at my own hand. Just the prospect of reaching into Hesther's shirt hardened me almost painfully inside my underwear.

She smirked at me as she felt me twitch against her leg, and I scrambled to get away from her, no doubt some shitty apologetic look on my face. But I couldn't get away. She clung vice-like to the front of my shirt, a ball of bunched-up fabric in her hand.

"What if we want different things for once?" she asked, tone almost dreamy.

We didn't. Not fully.

"Hesther—"

"I want to fuck," she said simply.

"I look forward to making love on our wedding night."

"Dude." She pulled me closer. I wasn't sure if she'd always been so strong, or if I was already giving in. I could feel her breath steaming up my face. "I'm capable of changing my mind."

"I haven't changed mine."

"Then do," she said, pushing me back. "I'm horny, and I love you, and I'm scared the world will end without us ever touching each other."

"It won't come to that." Of course, I didn't know that. In fact, I knew the opposite. We were going to die—if not this time, next time, or the time after. Stewardland was doomed. The utility diabolists were winning. But there was a strong resistance in me, a need to cling to the plan. And once I realized that, I had to be honest. "Hesther, I'm afraid that if this dam breaks, there'll be no turning back, no waiting. If I touch you now, I don't think I can stop touching you."

"That's how I feel when we kiss, but we stop every time, and I hate it."

I blinked. She was trembling.

"Hesther?"

"I'm scared it'll never be enough," she said. "It's been so painful. I haven't been dilating regularly. What if I'm never ready?" The tears came. Her body shook horribly as she sobbed on the couch next to me. I tried to hug her, but she shoved me away. She fought to steady her voice, and continued. "I was relieved, dude. When the Gullet opened. I thought, maybe this time the world will really end. We'll die before our wedding night, and none of this will matter. It's fucked, but there it is."

I'd been relieved, too. I'd put my Heidegger aside, glad to have that weight lifted. Glad to just have time with Hesther, outside world be damned.

I handed Hesther a tissue, gathering my thoughts.

"I love you, Hesther." That was the first thing that occurred to me, the truest and most pertinent piece of information. "I've loved you for eight years and I don't see myself stopping. None of that is predicated on some promise that I'll be able to put my penis in your vagina someday. None of it. How do you feel?"

"Like I don't deserve your love," she sniffed.

"See, that's part of what scares me," I said. "If you feel undeserving, that's a power imbalance. You'll push yourself. How can you consent to something if it's under duress?"

"You've never pressured me."

"You're pressuring yourself, love."

"Where do we draw the line between pressuring oneself and simply acting on one's desires and needs?" She looked at me like I was supposed to be able to answer that question, even though those kinds of inquiries were firmly in her wheelhouse. Realizing the futility of waiting for an answer, she cleared her throat. "Look, the fucking world is ending. I feel like I don't deserve your love, but that doesn't mean I think I don't deserve your love. I'm sure I do. I know you love me. And I know I love you. And crass as it may seem, I know I don't want to die without feeling your cock. Can I just hold it, please?"

There was no sense making her beg.

I stood, dropped my bottoms, and planted myself back on the couch. I took Hesther into my arms as she wrapped her fingers around my penis. We held each other, quietly, for a while. She might have cried more. I might have cried, too. I stroked her short hair, and she sniffed, and then she raised her face and kissed me. Her grip tightened and, inexperienced and horny, I came, first spurting on her shirt, then dribbling into her hand. She kissed me harder as I moaned into her mouth.

She pulled back after a minute, beaming at me, then looked down at the mess on her shirt, in her hand. My cock, hard again almost instantly.

"Thanks," she said.

"Can I do something for you?" I asked.

"You just did."

"I mean, you know. Help you get off. I could like, touch you, or lick you."

"I don't want to pressure you into anything," she giggled.

"Then don't pressure me into stopping," I said as I reached for the waistband of her leggings.

"No insertion, okay?"

"Of course." I rolled her leggings down and kissed her halfway between her belly button and her vulva, marveling at the smoothness of her skin and the tender warmth of her soft pubes. Her breath was shallow gasps as I wandered lower. "Fuck, Hesther. You're divine."

I pushed her back on the couch and settled between her thighs. Her fingers found their place in my hair, and I kissed her labia. I hadn't been exactly sure what to expect but they were soft, and warm, flappy, salty. The tastes and textures would have been pleasurable in their own right, but the best part was Hesther's writhing body. Her pain and her wall were purely internal. Her vulva was receptive, eager. She grew wetter faster than my saliva could account for. She moaned my name, pressed my face against her pussy.

I wasn't a prodigy. She didn't come for me. But she did rip off her cum-stained shirt and play with her nipples as I went down on her. I took a couple brief breaks just to behold the beauty of her body. The third time I looked up from my position between her legs, she took advantage of my absence to drape one hand over her mons. Presently, she was rubbing her clit. I tentatively licked the backs of her fingers as she masturbated, just enjoying my proximity to her pleasure, and she surprised me by lifting them from her pussy and shoving them into my mouth. I sucked them deep, rolled them on my tongue, moaned at this simulacrum of fellatio.

And then she surprised me again when she took her saliva-drenched middle finger and curled it beneath her clit, between her lips, gently easing it into her vagina.

"Hesther!"

"Sssokay," she mumbled, on another planet. "Little a insertion's juss fine azz a snack."

I watched in awe as she fingered herself shallowly, frantically. I was achingly hard. I didn't know what to do with my mouth or hands so I just watched, until she asked me to kiss her, and then I learned over her and frenched her through two orgasms. Her kisses became sloppy, gaping affairs. Neither of us relented until her body stopped trembling.

Her thighs and the couch were both drenched. She took my cock in her hand, the one soaking wet with her juices and my saliva, and she jacked me off onto her belly. My sperm glistened in the light from the TV.

"We fucked," she chortled, running a finger through the mess.

"I guess we did, in a sense."

I felt faint, like I couldn't keep my eyes open. My heart felt so full I needed to use my eyelids to keep it from overflowing. Georgeville and the ruins of my job felt so far away. The only thing that mattered was that Hesther was lazily rubbing my cum between her pussy lips, the engagement ring glinting bright in contrast to her pubes.

#

"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 exes. She had knocked on my door fifteen minutes after the lockdown went into effect, out of breath, scared. She'd been dressed in something that clearly had been a nice dress before she sweated through it. She had explained that she was out on a date when the Gullet opened across the estuary, that she ran to the nearest place she thought she might be safe. Things hadn't ended well for us, but I had let her in. I'm not a monster.

We had fucked that night. I wasn't proud of how it went down. Hesther had made a comment about paying me back for my hospitality, claiming that I owed her nothing and it only made sense for her to make it up to me. I'd turned her down, she'd started crying, and I'd given in. It had been a pity fuck but not an unenjoyable one.

After that, we just watched TV, and watched TV, and watched TV. With our limited options for entertainment, it was easy to fall back into the pattern that had led to our breakup. Joint unimpassioned time-killing.

We'd always been too comfortable with each other. We were too alike. Being with each other was like being alone. There was never any effort to change or appeal to each other, and there was always a loneliness. When Hesther said she was bored, I knew without interrogating my feelings that I was bored as well.

"Me too," I said.

"Isn't that weird?" she asked. She was dressed in one of my old XL t-shirts, and, as far as I could tell, nothing else. Her legs were tucked under her, and her thighs glimmered in the light from the TV. "We're twenty-five, and the world is on fire. Isn't that, like, too close to the end, too soon, to be bored?"

"Does seem weird," I admitted.

"There've gotta be something novel, right?"

"Well, we could try that show Circle?"

"I don't mean TV, dude."

She slumped away from me on the couch, falling onto her side. Her feet were still beneath her butt, but they didn't block the entire thing. I caught a glimpse of vulva before I looked away.

"Not much else to do."

"We've got two healthy bodies," she said, yawning. "Isn't there anything you haven't done?"

I thought about my bucket list, a long series of travel goals and a few sex things.

"I guess," I said.

We'd made it three weeks without coming back to the topic of our bodies and what we could do with them, and I supposed that was a pretty good run for us.

We were cheaters, with each other. We'd broken up officially once, but we'd had countless encounters since. We were always friends, and we were always horny. We assuaged our guilt with the formulation that we were so similar, the formulation that being with each other was like being alone. Our partners couldn't fault us for masturbating, we reasoned. We were assholes, and that's why I'd initially resisted her overtures when she turned up at my door three weeks ago. The apocalypse across the estuary felt like a reckoning, a time to repent, a time to be better.

"I've got things I want to do," she said, "and I can't do them all here, with you, but I can try a few."

"I've got things I want to do, too," I said.

"Maybe there's some overlap."

"Maybe." The word I wanted to say was "probably," but I couldn't fight the mirror.

She stretched out, extending her legs and placing her feet in my lap. "Remind me what it's like to have your ass eaten before I eat yours?"

I felt myself hardening against the arch of her foot. My shirt was riding up her waist. My eyes wandered from her toes to her ankle, to her calf, to her knee, to the juicy bulge of her thigh, to the twin temptations of her ass and mons. She looked great in profile, lying lazily on her side on the couch.

I wasn't going to argue with a good thing. I'd tried that, once or twice. It usually ended in fucking anyway, like it had three weeks ago.

I rolled onto my side alongside Hesther, then planked over her. I squeezed her legs between mine, enjoying their softness through my flannel pj bottoms. She looked up at me, her face a mirror of my lust. It was always there, always burning in both of us. We'd ruined each other. Mixed in with the want was the boredom—not just with Terrace House but with us, with our predictability, with the melded nothingness of our togetherness—and also a bit of a dare. She was challenging me, pushing me. I couldn't resent her for it. I pushed her, too, on occasion. We were just like that with each other. As with the cheating, we assuaged our guilt with the formulation that we were just masturbating. How can you push someone else out of a comfort zone if you're just masturbating on your own?

The fabric of my old t-shirt was starchy and rough under my fingers, a harsh contrast from Hesther's skin as I forced her shoulder into the couch, turning her onto her tummy. Wordlessly, she raised her ass. I backed up and lowered myself slowly with a hand on each cheek.

She had the best ass. Well, one of the best. Mine was up there. That was the thing, again: this was my ass. It felt like mine in my hands, it responded like mine to touch. Its shape and springiness were the same. As I reached out with my tongue, I was rimming myself.

Hesther moaned, but I felt the moan in my own throat, in my own mouth. She wiggled her ass against my face, deepening my licks.

One of my hands wandered. I found her dripping pussy below my chin. Some of the wetness had to be my saliva, dripping down from her asshole, but that couldn't account for all of it. She had to be turned on—after all, I was.

"Duuuuuude," she breathed into the arm of the couch.

I pressed onward, tongue circling and probing Hesther's asshole, one thumb slipping into her pussy. Nail up, bending at the knuckle, curving downward. She was overflowing, receptive. But this wasn't new, and after another minute she reached back and shoved my head away.

"Okay, I think I got it," she said. "My turn."

My thumb was reassigned to pants-removal duties. I dropped my pjs and boxer-briefs in one motion as Hesther dragged two fingers the length of her labia.

"You're wet," she said, before my cock, messy with precum, presented itself. She understood. If she was wet, I was wet.

Yamasato's face remained on the paused TV as I turned on the couch and presented my ass to Hesther.

I shivered as she took my hips in her hands. Her weight shifted behind me and anticipation filled me. I wasn't bored. She wasn't, either.

Hesther's tongue was cold at first, wet on the crack of my ass. The heat followed as she brought her face closer, her breath searing my flesh. The contact tickled and then it was pleasurable, in short order. I'd had my ass eaten before, but not by Hesther. She wasn't gentler than expected, nor rougher than expected. Her approach was wholly predictable: it was my approach. I pictured her ass and my tongue. The pace of the rim job, the moan that escaped my lungs—perfect mirrors of the moment prior. It really was like I was rimming myself, out of temporal sync.

I panted, weight heavy in my arms as I pushed my ass back against my ex. Hesther reached forward with one hand, digging her thumb into the base of my scrotum. Her other fingers brushed my cock, and it twitched.

"I'm close," I said.

"Me too," she said.

The thought occurred to me that I was usually more fastidious, that I didn't want to have to deal with cleaning my cum out of the couch. But in that moment of pleasure, I just couldn't care. We were going to die—if not this time, next time, or the time after. Stewardland was doomed. The utility diabolists were winning. I let go, coming in frantic spurts.

Behind me, Hesther had a quiet orgasm.

We lay in silence for a moment, heaving in the light from the TV.

"Not so bad, huh?"

"Not so bad," I agreed.

Hesther rubbed one of my feet gently. "I can't help but wonder if this is fate," she said. "This is the closest the Gullet's been, the darkest the estuary's been. And at the end of it all, despite our best efforts, here we are. You and me."

I raised an eyebrow at the idea that we'd made our "best efforts," but there was an inescapability to what she was saying. I didn't know how to respond, and she continued.

"We're not kids anymore. I think I wanted something wilder, something vaster. Now I just want something that works. We work. There's no superficiality, no needless efforts or games. Being with you is like being—"

"Alone?"

"In all the best ways."

"And the worst."

"No," she said, squeezing my foot. "The world is a little less cold when we're together."

"The world could do to be a lot colder," I laughed, with a gesture to the window. Fires raged on up and down the East Estuary.

"Dude." She slapped the sole of my foot. "Ever think about how we just hurt the people around us when we pretend we're through?"

I did, most days. "Won't matter when we're all dead."

She shook her head. "The Gullet isn't a reason to stop living. If anything, it's a reason to start. Think about the thousands who've died. We owe them."

"Finishing my plate doesn't help the starving kids in Africa," I said darkly.

"It's like I'm arguing with myself," Hesther complained. "You're exactly like the voice of depression in my head."

"And you want what? To go back to dating? You want to romance your depression?"

"I do aspire to love myself, you know."

I did. I did, too. I didn't need to be giving her such a hard time.

"Sorry."

"Me too."

I studied her face. It was so kissable. If I kissed it, I'd be kissed. Time would sync up.

I cared just enough about tidiness still to notice the Heidegger slide off the coffee table as I scrambled forward to kiss Hesther.