He never liked red; he always found it too garish and bright, offensive in its clarity. The color brings back harsh memories of blistering agony, his wife's screams as she gave birth to their child, blood pooling and spreading, filling the air with its metallic scent until all he could see was red.
But then, he met her and suddenly the color took on a whole new meaning.
There's an alluring quality to the shining crimson of her lips, the deep scarlet velvet of her dress. He imagines how the silky smoothness of it would feel beneath his hands as he mapped her curves, pulling her in for a lingering kiss, smudging the perfectly slicked on paint coating her mouth.
Everywhere he goes he seems to be haunted by it now, these glimpses of red in various shades, each one reminding him of her.
The apple tree that rests in the courtyard, ripe fruit winking around clusters of leaves waiting to be plucked. The tempting red flesh giving way as her pearly white teeth sink in, breaking the skin; a single bead of juice running from her lips down her chin, taunting him to lean in and lick it away, sampling the taste of her skin mixed with the sticky sweet liquid.
The blistering redness of her back, drawn tight and painful from the harsh rays of the sun. Forcing him to hide his amusement as she gripes and complains, cursing corsets and elaborate costumes and mumbling something about the uses of aloe and lotions she must have had in her other world.
A menacing spark of flame bursting from her hand, warming her face with a soft amber glow casting shadows across the planes of her cheekbones and the high elegant arch of her brows. It should be terrifying, the way the light reflects in her eyes, madness creeping in at the edges, but there's a fierceness to it, a determination to protect what is left of her family and her kingdom.
Watching her, as she soothes and quiets his boy, a hand shimmering with magic erasing the brightness of blood from his scraped knee with whispered assurances and a soft smile; he admits he has a certain fondness for the shade now. Slowly she is removing every bad connotation, every painful memory associated with it, until all he sees is her in a world wrapped in shades of red. Before there was only silence, an empty hollowness, that is steadily being replaced with the renewed pounding of his heart, life rushing through his veins in a tide of flames, apples, blood and Regina.