Never in a Million Years |N.R|

|36| When do we get a break?

Nat was acting strange. She was wide awake when I peeled my eyes open, and frankly she looked like she'd barely slept a wink. I wanted so badly to kiss that frown off of her face, but doing so would only make it deepen. Because my morning breath was even worse than usual and not for no reason.

She'd certainly taste my late night wrongdoing.

I'd honestly only gotten up for a glass of water in the night. My mouth was bone dry and I just needed something to get rid of the feeling. But when I stepped into that kitchen my resolve crumbled. It'd been doing that a lot.

Sat there, glaring back at me, was the bottle of cheap vodka that I'd so stupidly gotten Nat to buy. I knew very well that I was giving into temptation the second I plucked it off the shelf in that store, but temptation was a tricky thing. It often persisted longer than discipline, and that's how I fell into its dark grasp once more.

I stood stock still in the middle of that room for near half an hour just staring at the clear glass bottle. I wanted to taste the bitter liquid so badly, but the stark reality of that desire wasn't what held me back. Wasn't what held me prisoner.

Instead, it was the inability to accept what giving in would truly mean.

If I dared to take even a sip I was admitting to myself that I wasn't okay. I knew already that I was far from it but making such a deliberate misstep felt like the final nail in the coffin.

That bottle of cheap vodka meant so much more than I could possibly ascertain. So before I forced my mind into an endless downwards spiral, I did the only thing that my body was so blatantly screaming for amongst all the other noise. I rushed over to the table where Nat and I had just hours before shared dinner, and grabbed the bottle by the neck.

I didn't waste another second on thinking before the lid dropped to the ground and I pulled the mouth of the bottle to my lips. Then the liquid flowed. One gulp became two, which then became three, and I just repeated that process until I was gasping for air.

Like my body needed the sweet release of alcohol more than it did air. Air fed my body and my thoughts, whilst alcohol worked to numb them both.

When I dropped it back down on the table, with it being considerably less full after my cowardly effort, my mind blared loudly before it could be drowned out by the alcohol.

'I'm not okay...'

I knew all too well that I'd come to that realisation after just a drop of the poison, hence why I spoilt myself with gulp after gulp. At least then I could convince myself that the mental torture was worth it, in some twisted way. But my mind was nothing if not twisted.

And that same thought was the one swarming my mind as I looked back at Nat under the warm glow of the morning sun. She looked so ethereal. Her green eyes shone, every different colour highlighted, and the orange glow only worked to compliment her bright red hair.

She was beautiful in every possible way. Both her looks and her mind. And I was lucky enough to call her mine.

How could I keep lying to her? Every time she asked if I was okay my response was a total lie.

"Morning" I rasped, my throat scratchy from sleeping deeply.

She just hummed in reply, eyes focused on some exposed skin on my shoulder where she was circling her fingers. I didn't even have to look to know what she was doing.

That ugly scar from where Clint shot me with an arrow the day they came to save Nat. I hated it. Both because it looked disgusting but also because it was tainted with foul memories. However, Nat seemed to be drawn to it. One time when she was drunk she even went as far as to compare it to a flower; since it has four pronounced petal like shapes jutting out from the centre.