doomsday

nine: detrimental

the room has fallen silent.

all I can hear is him, and the soft breathing falling off his lips in a way that seem to make the rest of the world irrelevant.

the corner of his lips curls up slightly as he runs his fingertips gently over my shoulder.

I take a deep breath.

"I don't ever want to be like her."

confusion spreads across his face. he runs a hand through his hair.

"Who?" he asks softly.

the darkness hides my discomfort.

"The one who broke your heart. The girl who left you aching for years. The only person you've ever known to have had so much of your soul taken with them. I don't want to be like her. I don't ever, ever, want to be that girl."

his thumb brushes across my cheek.

"Sometimes that's what love is."

"Then I don't want to love you."

his chest falls in a soft sigh.

"And I don't want to be the girl that comes after her. The one you take home just so you can forget. The one who has to leave in the morning. I know how it goes. I know that all those girls are nothing more than pretty faces for you to use, that their only purpose to you is to be a temporary high."

his lips close in on mine.

"Stop," he whispers, "I promise you'll never be like that. You're the only one I want to love."

his lips are dripping with an aphrodisiac he knows I can't resist.

I pull away, my fingers dragging slowly across his jaw as I move.

"You're all I want..." I begin.

he smiles.

"But not like this."

----

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

she groans softly under her breath, cursing as her target selfishly decides to empty his blood all over her hands.

"You fucking idiot. How fucking dare you let yourself get shot in the throat when I'm trying to fucking kill you." she mutters, pressing her palms over his overflowing wound.

she looks up, then around, heavily lined eyes searching every corner of the room for an answer as to how someone managed to kill her target in front of her own eyes.

"I can't believe this is happening," she whispers, glaring into the panicked eyes of the wealthiest socialite in London, "what the fuck am I supposed to do? And now- fuck, Conor, shut up! What are you even trying to say?"

Conor Mayfield wheezes, struggling to stay alive. "How does it fucking feel, Natalia?" he manages to choke out.

her eyebrows narrow. "You're going to use your last moments of life to mock me?"

"I know something you don't." his bloody lips curve into a half smirk.

she relaxes her grip on his neck. "You know what I'm going to do if you don't tell me what it is, right honey?"

he attempts a laugh, but instead chokes a splatter of blood all over the glaring assassin's thousand-dollar dress.

"You fucking bitch," she whispers, looking down at the stain, "tell me what it is."