𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐬 | VMINKOOK✔

The Pocket Watch

A/n: this chapter cost me way too much time to write lmao

He sat upon the dinner table, his feet petulantly dangling above the floor when he raised his shirt for me, a landscape of smooth creamed curves I once worshipped, now defiled by terrible abuse.

The man averted his eyes at first, seeming almost embarresed when he showed me the bleeding wound inflicted right on the side of his ribs. Battered skin, clouds of black, purple and blue that made him more grey than the milky complexion he once had, were interrupted by a deep, nasty slash that cried bloody tears.

It looked like the man had suffered a gunshot wound, but the bullet had scraped him instead of punctured, doing less damage but damage all the same.

I felt vomit rise in the back of my throat, repulsed by the cause of this mistreatment. I cringed before I'd even touched the man, afraid that if I let my fingers graze his tortured skin and accidentally caused him pain, I would hurt like that myself.

"I could stitch it..." I suggested, my stomach twisting and stretching with nerves.

"Wait here..." I ordered, walking off like a mindless servant only to return with a first-aid case in one hand, and a wet cloth in the other.

"You should lay down," I said, hurriedly clearing the table of it's sad and lifeless decorative pieces.

The man shot me a frightened glance, his eyes crazed as if horrors were still being committed right in front of him, playing out over and over again inside those dark, mystifying pupils.

His apprehension softened mine, and I carefully touched his shoulder, pushing him backwards to make him lie down on the table. His lips parted when I did, his expression wonderous as if I were Jesus who had come to baptize him in the shining waters of the Jordan river.

He seemed disconnected from everything around him, moving at an uncomfortable pace as one without a clock sometimes did.

Even when he was lying down, he seemed dazed, such adoration in his widened eyes. The guilt stored inside of me did not allow me to receive it. I wished he'd stop giving me that amazed stare. I wished he'd stop biting his lips along with it when he revealed to me his body, as a look that innocent was not befitting a man of his conscious.

I tried my best to ignore his glorification of my being, and brought the wet cloth to his wound, cleaning it with the most delicate touch and letting it soak up the spilled blood. It was almost too sensual, the way I tended to him, and the weight of the breaths leaving my lips were not allowed to be so heavy.

"It isn't swollen, it doesn't seem infected... I can stich it but only if you agree to it."

I glanced at the man, who barely nodded when I asked him the question, and so I picked up a needle and a thread of silk, squinting as I brought it's pointy end to the damaged skin. I took a deep breath before piercing through the flesh, my face automatically twisting in distaste of the sight.

After carefully weaving the silk through the cherry coloured edges of the wound, I checked up on the man lying still on the table as he hadn't made a sound yet, his eyes closed with a serene expression painted on his marble face.

Like this I worked in complete silence, closing the his wound with a neat and simple suture that would turn into a nice scar.

I wasn't a doctor of course, not by far, but as a watchmaker I found that the core of our work was allowed to be seen as nearly identical. We fixed things that needed mending, and I saw no difference between healing the broken things that were alive and those that had never lived. They were both fractured in the end, and it would be a crime to leave something shattered forever.