Drifting

"I swear that emptiness lives inside your chest."
Anchor Down / Real Friends

He pauses, hovers over her. Her fingernails are sharp points of pain on his back, reminders that this is as alive as either of them will ever be.

"Fuck me," she breathes.

He grins, wicked like the wolf. He kisses her sloppily, lets his tongue slide over hers.

"Johanna," he says against her skin, savoring her name like wine.

"You bastard," she laughs. "Get inside of me."

He obliges, feels a surge of power at the sound of her gasping and the feel of her accommodating him. He starts to move, in and out, and he thinks about how strange it is to make love to someone who has nothing left to lose.

He can feel her self-hatred in the carelessness of the sex, they way she acts as though she wouldn't care if he tore her apart. She lives without thought of consequence, not caring if anything happens to herself and having no one else to care about. It's so strange, so fettering, so liberating.

He thrusts harder and faster with her screams of pain and pleasure.

To both of them, this is living because it's feeling. To him, it's the height of feeling. To her, this is the only way she knows how to forget herself. It's not happiness – she lost the ability to be truly happy years ago, when she lost the last of her loved ones – but it's as close as she can get.

Johanna feels him inside of her, feels his teeth on her neck, feels the eventual explosion of his cum, feels his fingers dig into her skin, feels his chest press against hers. She feels the sweat and the humanity, feels everything but the bliss she craves.

He slides out of her, kisses her bare body. She lies silently, chest heaving, eyes closed. He kisses her eyelids, collarbones, nipples, stomach.

"Johanna," he whispers against her clit.

No response.

He tries, "I love you."

She sits up, cross-legged on the bed. There is a throbbing between her legs. She is filled but oh so empty. He mirrors her position, looks her in the eye.

"You don't love me and I don't love anything," she says. "Everything I've loved I've lost."

"I never had anything to love," he tells her.

"Maybe that's better."

"Maybe."

They both fall silent. He watches the way she gazes out of the window at the city below. Her hair is plastered with sweat against her forehead and neck. She is motionless, but he knows the way that her head spins, fighting to find the line between fabricated feeling and true emotion. He has long since given up trying to tell the difference. She's still trying to be real, and it's destroying her.

"I haven't felt anything in a long time," she says after a while. Her eyes are still on the city. "Not really."

"I stopped trying."

"Why do you hate yourself so much?" She turns her head, locks her eyes on him.

He shrugs. "Why do you?"

"I don't know. I barely remember being any other way."

"Just stop remembering at all. It's easier that way."

She's silent a moment. She wants him to fuck her again; she wants him to leave.

She settles on the latter: "Get out."

When he does, when the door closes behind him, it's as though the room is unoccupied entirely. Johanna's lack of substance eats her alive.