Chapter Text
Sex is not usually part of it. Killing and sex make you feel similiarly, but sex is not usually part of the killing, and vice versa. You walk into a hospital with the intention of finding the medicine closet, pocketing some and loading others into a small needle. Konstantin told you to make it look like suicide, but there are quicker, easier options. Getting the nurse’s uniform is easy; no one gives you a second look when you slip into a closet at one end of the hallway and emerge anew.
There are guards in the hallway, nurses on the floor, and you count them before disappearing into a bathroom. There are at least five plans you have come up with when you hear the door open, the soft footsteps of someone else, and you stand very still as they pause in front of the sink.
Public bathrooms, for you, almost always offer a break. A brief, liminal space in time when you are able to hide in a stall and count your blessings, if blessings included your skills, your energy, and your youth. Sometimes, at airports, you like to find a bathroom and sit in it for tens of minutes, letting the shiny grey of the stall hold you in its arms. It’s comforting, and you like putting in headphones and not worrying about who may look at you and see you for what you are.
You worry about that a lot. Because for you, it feels like you are a beast trapped in human skin, just buzzing underneath the surface that is your beautiful face. You wonder how more people don’t notice it, and it surprises you the first few times when you lie, telling people you are someone else, and they believe you.
The British lilt you’ve perfected is the one you use most often because people do not question her. When not speaking English, you tend to lean on French for a variety of reasons, but mostly because you think in French and it is the most natural. You thought it was funny, in prison, that French replaced Russian in your head the moment you watched Anna stand in her doorway and say nothing as the cops dragged you away.
You step out of the bathroom stall in the hospital, your plans populated in your head like the tediousness of language, and you glance at the woman once, look away, and then look at her again.
The plans evaporate.
Of course, her hair is the first thing you notice. She fumbles with it, indecision in her touch as she judges what, exactly, to do with it, staring at her reflection in quiet contemplation. She bites her lip, runs fingers through dark, impossibly dark curls, and you cannot look away.
What were you doing here? You try to remember when she turns and looks at you.
She immediately sees the monster behind your eyes. You can tell, because she looks and looks and looks and she is looking in , right at you and seeing you for who you really are. You swallow uncomfortably underneath her gaze, just as she asks, “Are you okay?”
You want to tell her that you are not, but the words do not come. Instead, you step around her, reaching for the door, because you have a job to do, a job you are incredibly good at, and being seen and remembered like this is not part of that job. She will see you and she will remember you and of course, you will remember her, but you will not want to.
Pause in the doorway. One hand on the handle, ready to leave, ready to release like a spring, but something incorrigible drags you back.
You tell her, “Wear it down,” because she should wear it down. That’s all. That’s all, you tell yourself, after you’ve left and she is still standing in the bathroom with one hand tangled in her hair and the other frozen in mid-air.
She should wear it down because it looks pretty down, not because she reminds you of a past long repressed, and definitely not because you wish your hands were the ones running through her hair. If you didn’t have a job to do, if it wasn’t incredibly important that she does not remember you, you might have stuck around and made conversation.
“How are you?” you might’ve asked, as she casually washed her hands.
“ Merde ,” you mutter under your breath, remembering as you walk down the hallway that you definitely did not wash your hands.
So, she would wash her hands and you would also wash your hands (because you like to be clean, you know, as your hands clench at your sides), and she would tell you that she was here because someone in her family is sick, or she would say she is visiting a friend, and you would tell her that you were off shift soon, so perhaps…?
She would say yes. They almost always do.
When you turn the corner and spot the guard at the end of the hallway, stationed in front of the door you are supposed to be going through, you do not have a plan. All plans have left you, so you resort to your backup plan: the knife in your boot.
One guard, one nurse, a second guard, and finally, finally target. You leave her breathing. You do not have time to watch her die, but the wound you have left will kill her.
You are in the elevator when someone starts yelling. A woman, distantly, calling for help and saying your target’s name.
You do not think of the kill, but instead you think of the woman.
Konstantin has not yet given you a ticket out of London, so you find a hotel and stay there, far, far away from the hospital. You do not go down to the hotel bar and find someone to bring back with you, because sex and killing are similar, yet separate. Instead, you take a bath, as you tend to do, and imagine washing off the blood that you already scrubbed off your hands.
You think of the woman, letting your hand drift between your legs, and imagine bringing her here, pulling her hair down, and running your hands through it while you kiss her. She would moan into your mouth, you would swallow it, and maybe she would let you tighten your grip at her scalp and pull her down to the ground, situating her on her knees and her face in your cunt.
You press a single finger into yourself, moving a bit under the water, while your thumb rubs at your clit with a strong, steady rhythm. You know yourself like you know the French language, impossibly thoroughly. You take your time, the woman’s face painted on the back of your eyelids, and you imagine the different ways you would seduce her, because the chase is most, if not all of it.
You slip in the hotel bathtub a bit when you wonder if she would be loud, a hiss escaping your lips as you work faster. Viens pour moi , you would whisper to her, because in this fantasy it doesn’t matter that you are just an English nurse to her.
She would rock underneath you, and you would smile at her.
Underneath the water, your hand stills. Reverberations rock through you, settling low in your gut.
After a long moment, you sink into the water, closing your eyes and letting the coolness caress your cheeks and your nose and your lips.