Author's Note: This was a request. ;) Also, it's pretty suggestive, but not explicit. Enjoy!
Sew Me Up
Their disdain was mutual, and yet they saw more of each other than either would have liked.
With Mikaila, there was always some loose bandage to patch or rotting gash to sew. As the only doctor in Delilah, Jezebel was of course in charge of mending her and seeing to her medical needs. As a member of the Major Arcana, as Death, he was one of the few worthy enough to tend to her; she was the vessel, she was the jewel.
She'd come in from time to time, as she did now, with one dressed hand covering a spot on her limbs - today, it was her right arm - and her shoulders raised in apprehension.
"Ah, Mikaila," he said, looking up from the desk at which he'd been neatly jotting down notes. Jezebel laid his fountain pen to rest and stood, adjusting his glasses as he pushed back the chair.
"Do come in." He mustered a vague smile and gestured to a leather-covered lounge. "And please, have a seat."
Mikaila did as he encouraged and flounced onto the long chair, flanked by waves of dark velvets and light petticoats. Jezebel sauntered toward her, deep blue eyes already fixed on the spot of her arm she was trying to conceal.
"Now, what seems to be the problem?" he asked, gaze flitting pointedly between her face and her protective hand.
Mikaila visibly stiffened, tightened the grip of her fingers around her arm, and looked up at him with defiant, narrowed eyes.
"The same problem as ever," she said defensively, shifting a bit in her seat.
One of the bandages must have come undone. "So I suspected," said Jezebel, that same enigmatic smile fixed on his face. Loose gauze was her most frequently recurring complaint. He took a step forward and pulled up a chair from a nearby worktable, slid it neatly beneath him and made himself comfortable.
"Let me examine it," he said, poised ready with a pair of tweezers from his pocket.
Her glare intensified and she didn't move. Mikaila withdrew further, pushing back defiantly into the chair, shoulders raised in apprehension.
"Come now," said Jezebel, sighing under his breath. Her stubbornness was so vexing. It never ceased, even when they'd done this multiple times before, even when she was completely aware of the fact that she would have to submit to his care if she wanted to stall the decay. "I can't treat what I cannot observe."
A moment's pause, and she begrudgingly released her arm. The bandages that had laid beneath her hands were hanging in limp, dirty spirals, leaving shorn the delicate skin they'd covered. The dermis itself was ripped and bleeding profusely, the dying wound surrounded by angry, red, inflamed patches.
He sighed again.
"What have I told you about irritating your condition?" he said, annoyance reading on his face as his eyes scanned the lacerations. "You're only making it worse."
Mikaila recovered the area immediately.
"You don't understand!" she insisted, her pale cheeks growing warm and pink. "It hurts! It hurts all the time!" She scowled and and pursed her lips. "And sometimes it itches."
"Nevertheless," said Jezebel, rising to retrieve a jar of balm and a stitching kit, "you shouldn't touch it."
When he was seated again, gloves on his hands to prevent infection, he smeared the soothing emollient over the black and red wound, threaded a needle and began to sew. Mikaila flinched, but he held her arm tight in his grip to keep it steady.
The gloves protected his fingers, but he could feel the warmth of her flesh and blood as he sewed. He knew that logically she would be heated to the touch - she was a living being, after all; a creature born from death, but nevertheless alive - but somehow she always managed to mildly surprise him. The reason behind that was hardly an enigma; one had only to look at her to understand why. Her skin was pallid, a corpse-like white, made to appear all the more cadaverous next to her contrastingly lucid copper hair. With pale aquamarine eyes and a body as fragile as a bird's, she looked every bit the doll that she was.
It didn't seem probable for her to be a breathing entity, and yet she was.
Jezebel continued to stitch - in, out, in, out - ignoring her wincing. Her wound bled from the relatively tight hold he had to maintain to keep her still whenever she jerked. The sanguine fluid ran swift and slick over her skin and against his fingers, sinking into the porous bandages and trickling down to drip on the stone floor. He pressed a wad of gauze beneath the cut, hoping to soak up as much as possible.
In, out, in, out-
The needle continued to disappear and reappear, dragging the line of thread behind it. The stitches curved smoothly and tightly across the gash, pulling the two sides of skin taut over the fissure, tight until it puckered.
In, out, in, out-
The surrounding flesh grew heated, tinted rosy red. The bleeding was quickly ceasing, stifled by the crisscrossed line of stitches, but what remained pooled against the tips of his fingers, thermal of course.
In, out, in, out-
He raised his eyes to her face, mildly interested in Mikaila's reaction. Her brow was furrowed and her eyes squinted against the stinging pain, eyelids fluttering with each pull of the needle, teeth pressing firmly against her lower lip, face still flushed, tiny beads of sweat glistening on her brow.
Jezebel returned his gaze to his work.
In, out, in, out-
He paused momentarily to swipe the back of his hand against his mouth, needle still clenched between his fingers. Nothing new - same routine, same response on her part, but-
He resumed sewing.
In, out, in, out-
A mew escaped her throat, a whimper, the softest of cries, just distinct enough for him to pick it up. He clicked his tongue and continued along, basting, basting, just a few more stitches.
In, out, in, out
Almost finished now.
In, out, in, out-
She was so warm.
In, out, in, out-
Done.
Jezebel sat back, sighing vehemently, glad to be finished. He secured the thread and snipped the extra with a pair of small silver scissors.
"There," he said, "all finished."
"Finally," she said, "I thought it would never end."
Jezebel mended her bandages, and then she was off.
Mikaila slid from her perch. "Thanks for that," she remembered to say as she headed for the door, her eyes distracted by pouring over the new, clean fabric entwined around her arm.
She paused with her hand on the door frame. The short heel of her shoe tapped accusingly on the floor. "Sometimes," she began, let out a huffy breath, and began again. "Sometimes...I think you enjoy sewing me up more than you let on." And then she was gone.
Jezebel did not dignify that remark with an answer, did not deign to call after her. He was no sadist. That was not how he operated. Did he feed all those vain girls his beauty poison merely for his own amusement? Hardly. He'd had a higher purpose. A sadist needed no such thing.
He stood, letting his abandoned chair slide back behind him, and took the few steps necessary to retrieve a piece of cloth from his desk drawer.
Did he enjoy it sewing her up? No.
He wiped off the needle that was still in in his hand, then dropped the small, silver trinket into a wastebasket. The rag remained crumpled between his fingers, a bit of red peeking through. Blood, her blood.
He remembered the needle flashing as it pierced her flesh and slid back out, only to dive in again, and the sound of her whining each time it did.
Did he enjoy sewing her up?
Jezebel dropped the fabric into the waiting mouth of the drawer and firmly shut it.
She would never know.