Work Text:
“You really did a number on yourself.”
It’s said lightly, appraisal and mild amusement floating on the surface of Octavio’s tone as his careful hands feel out the damage to your shoulder, but you have been his long enough to sense the frisson of something more lurking beneath. Something that feels like a warning.
You squirm a little in place, uneasy. The socket of your shoulder has not housed bone for quite some time, and currently it sits entirely empty, the ball joint given to you by him shattered and broken as a result of your own recklessness. The remains of your arm lie carefully disassembled on Octavio’s desk beside you, spattered with flecks of the corrupted ichor that now oozes from your shoulder like coagulated blood.
“Your forearm is salvageable, at least,” Octavio continues clinically, ignoring the way you flinch as his firm fingers probe the wreckage of your socket. “The hand, too. That’s something. It suits you quite nicely, you know—it would have been a shame to have to make another.”
Idly, Octavio releases you to slot his fingers between those of your own disembodied hand on the desk, inky black against stark white porcelain. You don’t feel it, not with the connection to the rest of your body severed, but seeing it still makes you shiver.
If Octavio notices your reaction, he doesn’t show it on his face. A moment later he releases your hand.
“This, though…” Your shoulder again. He’s closer now, his cool breath on the wound, the soft ends of his braids tickling your bare skin. “This will take some time to repair. New joint, new upper arm… you certainly made sure I’d have my work cut out for me.”
That tone again, something pulled-taut and tense rearing its head. Octavio’s grip on your shoulder tightens. Through the strings that bind you to him you feel the hum of tempered, controlled anger. Always controlled.
“Did you stop to think about that for even a moment, poppet? That when I order you to do as you’re told, I’m trying to spare both of us from unnecessary pain? That when you allow your body to get bruised and broken, you’re breaking what’s mine?”
His voice is so, so gentle, low and intimate and it would be comforting if not for the intensity behind it, if not for the cold focus in his bright eyes where he forces you to meet his gaze—not with the strings but with a gloved hand on your jaw. You can’t shy away, as much as you might want to with the shame of knowing you have failed him eating away at you.
“Well?” Octavio whispers, so close you can taste his breath. “Answer me, poppet. Did you forget who it is that makes you whole?”
“N-no,” you force out, near trembling in his grasp. “I didn’t, I couldn’t, never.”
A dangerous gleam flickers in his eyes. He’s going to make you say it. “Then why did you do it?”
“I made a mistake.” Your unnatural heartbeat is roaring in your ears, pulse rising to kiss Octavio’s fingertips where they splay over your throat. “I should have trusted your control, and I didn’t.”
His perfect mouth stretches into a smile, soft as a blade wrapped in velvet.
“Are you going to do it again?”
You exhale shakily, pinned by his hand on your jaw and in your mangled shoulder and by the clean cut of his gaze slicing straight through you to the bone.
“No.”
The bladed edge to the smile drops, clatters to the ground. A hint of warmth colours Octavio’s face, and suddenly, he is human. The grip on your jaw softens, slips around to cradle the nape of your neck instead.
“Good poppet,” he breathes, brushes the words against your lips. “Obedient, too. I suppose you deserve a reward.”
His kiss is kinder than you had expected. Your gasp of surprise is lost as he gently captures your lips, fine nose nudging yours and finer eyelashes grazing your cheek like a ghost of the kiss itself. He isn’t warm, but you haven’t been warm in so long you scarcely notice the difference, and letting him take what he will from you is reward enough in its own right.
But your one good hand still finds its way to his lapels, involuntarily fisting in the dark linen of his jacket for fear of being swept away by him—and immediately the kiss changes. Octavio’s fingers dig hard into your exposed shoulder socket, making you cry out into his mouth, but he pays you no mind as the hand at the nape of your neck snags on the fine hairs there and presses you closer to him. Every drag of his lips and tongue on yours is controlled but forceful in its intent, his blunt teeth grazing your bottom lip enough to make you whine. It’s overwhelming. You’re barely given pause to breathe, and when you are it’s only for a second before your maestro recaptures your mouth again, and again, and again.
By the time Octavio releases you, the barest hint of a flush staining his pallid cheeks, you can’t even remember what led you to disobey him in the first place. Your ruined shoulder still aches, but it’s distant, smothered by the lingering taste of his lips on yours.
He seems to notice your discomfort with the injury all the same as he sets himself to rights and fixes you with a smile that is as bewitching as it is unnerving.
“Not to worry, my poppet—I’ll have you back together again in no time.”