Life sucked. She had probably said it a thousand times during high school and during the few months that had counted as her college career. There had always been too much homework, not enough attention, not enough free time, too much free time and all these indefinable empty places that longed to be filled. That sucked. But nothing sucked like this.
Life.
When she was at home, she wanted more than anything else to be somewhere else. The house was too small and she could feel the air grating against her skin. All these tiny molecules pushing her into clothes and into spaces where she did not belong anymore. Make Dawn's lunch, tell Willow to get out of bed in the morning, check to see if the electric bill got paid this month. She had to breathe deeply when she did all those little things that felt so big, because there was not enough air left after it all pressed up against her and forced her into those roles and forgot to let her breathe. She had not been breathing all that long, not like she had for all those years until she suddenly stopped. Then with that one, harsh, gasping, struggling breath she had to start again. Sometimes she wondered if there would ever be enough air to make her feel like she had gotten used to doing it again.
Living, that is, not just breathing.
When she was at work, it was easier for the first few minutes. Nobody knew her there and nobody expected her to feel anything. She could keep trying to breath and not worry about the thousand new (but old, she had felt them all before, she knew she had) feelings that crowded her and made it too hard to breathe. Soon, the air became thick with grease and desperation as customers crowded the restaurant. The feelings she had got buried beneath the rush of thoughts and words she needed to keep up if she wanted to keep her job. And she wanted to keep the job. She needed to keep it, because she needed to make sure the bills got paid that month, and that Dawn had something to eat for lunch and that Willow would get up in the morning, not the afternoon or the evening, or not at all. As long as they all paid the bills, ate the meals, went to bed at night and got up in the morning it would all be normal.
It would be like being alive.
There was this small space when she was not at work and she was not at home. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty depending on who was in charge at the Doublemeat Palace that day, when she could slip around to the alley. No more taking orders, no more giving orders. There was dirt, damp, and dark back there and it filled her lungs. She could breathe again because he was there. He covered her and smothered her with a hotness that pounded through her veins and her lungs, twice as hard because it never pounded in his. No breath against her throat when he kissed her, no heart pounding against her chest when he shoved her against the wall. She did not care about that, she never had. He tasted faintly of Angel (was his first lover her first lover?) and though she never told him, she liked it. It made her think that maybe she had never been in love with life, that when she fell in love it was with cool fingers that struggled to touch something that was alive.
Neither of them was alive.
But when he moved in her, she could breathe again. She could take long, deep breaths that hurt her chest as her fingers scrabbled against the rough brick wall, pain in her lungs to match the pain in her fingertips to match the pain in her cunt to match the pain in the space where she knew she still had a heart. His fingers dug into her hips (she wished there would be bruises, but they would fade before she could slide the polyester trousers off), his hips pressed to hers, as he thrust up into her without a sound. His trousers unzipped, hers pulled down over her thighs – but they were naked in the grime and stench of the alleyway, nothing forcing them into smaller (or bigger, those were just as difficult) spaces. She knew what he looked like without the clothing; she had memorized the lines of his body and the lines of her body pressed to his in that one motionless moment before climax.
It hurt when he fucked her this. No foreplay, no kisses, no touches or murmured words to tell her that this was love or life or anything close to it. A crash of lips against teeth against tongues, desperate and struggling, as they made their way to the darkest, smallest corner. Then the fumbling of quick and needy fingers and in a moment, he buried his face in her neck, shoved his cock inside her. She forced him in deeper, wanting the relief that pain brought. It hurt so much she had to gulp down air and hold it inside until her lungs burned. She let it out with a long, sighing sound that filled the alley as she came. She was still breathing, this time with the scent of blood, sweat, come and a thousand memories and feelings filling her.
The ache and dampness between her thighs faded too quickly. She held onto it as long as she could, as long as she had to stand behind the register, make her way home, and into the small spaces that life had given her. If she could somehow keep it inside her, the knowledge and feeling of what it was like to take in long breaths, she could stay alive.
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