Crimson Kiss
by: raileht
Summary: A descent into madness leaves more questions and little answers.
Disclaimer: The ones you don't know are mine, the ones you do aren't.
Rating: T
Spoilers/Timeline: nothing specific.
Warning: Disturbing themes. Violence, blood and graphic details. Possible character death.
Note: Just something I dreamt about. I make no promises. Blackout is still the main priority in my list of works in progress.
-o0oo0oo0o-
ONE
It doesn't feel real.
Nothing feels real.
But it is.
And it was a nightmare.
-o0o-
"Where are you?"
"I'm home, where do you think?"
"I thought…never mind."
Her dry laughter slipped smoothly through the line, "You thought I would still be at work. Thank you. That says so much about your faith in my word."
"I have faith in your word," he answered evenly though his smile could easily be heard in his voice, "It's just that I also know that sometimes things get in the way and…you know."
"Oh, come on," she said and he could actually see her roll her eyes in his mind, "I already apologized for canceling before. I promised I won't tonight and I haven't—and, as said, won't."
"Just checking," he chuckled. "I'm on my way."
"Someone's a little eager."
"A little eager? Of course not," he grinned, "Try a lot."
She laughed, "Okay that earns back those points you lost for actually thinking I'd cancel…"
"I lost points?" he asked, laughing. "You're scoring me?"
"Sure," she said simply, "How else am I supposed to know whether I should keep you or not?"
"Okay, I see the point," he grinned, "How am I doing so far?"
"Hm," she hummed, "Hard to tell…"
"Uh-oh," he played along, "Should I be worried?"
"I don't know," she said playfully, "I haven't decided yet."
"Fine, take your time deciding, just make sure you don't leave me hanging tonight," he chuckled.
"Keep thinking I will and I just might."
"Oh, come on, don't be like that," he chuckled then let his face morph into a smile even though she couldn't see him. "I've been thinking about you all day."
Warm laughter filtered through the line, "I bet."
"Yeah," he grinned, "I can't wait to see you."
"Hm," she hummed again, "I would say the same, but I don't want your head to swell…"
"It won't," he grinned, "What else can I do to earn more points?"
"Get here on time and we'll start from there, cowboy."
-o0o-
A man burst through the doors of the hospital, but he barely noticed until he's standing right in front of him, pale and out of breath, eyes wide and looking more than a little shell shocked. He doesn't know how he looks, but something told him he shouldn't have been the first thing the other man should've seen.
But it's too late, he's been seen.
In fact, it's too late for a lot of things that night.
-o0o-
The melodious tinkling of the doorbell echoed throughout the house and for a moment, he stood there, grinning to himself as he checked his watch once again, just to make sure. The hand indicating the seconds ticked just passed five and that made him grin even wider. He wasn't late and he was, in fact, early.
And he thought that should earn him a few more points.
The next time he checks his watch, the same hand just past the number five again and this time, the grin faded a little. She'd wanted a proper date that night, complete with him picking her up and going to the door instead of waiting in the car. By now, she should be ready—she'd given herself enough time after all—so where was she?
He rang the doorbell again.
The tinkling came, but the door stayed closed.
-o0o-
"Is she…?"
He looks down at his hands and for a moment, he feels his stomach churn. He hadn't fully realized just how he would appear, so to actually see the state of his hands…
The bile rose to his throat and he felt himself beginning to feel the early signs of choking.
Dark red, almost brown and he's seen enough in his line of work to know what dried blood looks like. He's never had a problem with them, but tonight, it's enough to make his head swim and his stomach lurch in the most sickening ways.
It's hers, all of it, the blood.
Her.
On him, on his skin was her blood, her life.
Dry, dark and in the most nauseating combination of stale brown and red and they stand out as he holds them just a few feet above the glaring white floors of the hallway. They're dark, but they're even darker as they caked along the lines and creases of his palms and they're dark enough to appear almost like they've turned black under the bright lights.
Each wrinkle, each fold and each line of his hands had been traced by lines so fine, they might as well have been painted on by sable brushes, beginning with the splash of crimson, drying into brown then the black.
He closed his eyes and tried to will them away, but of course, they won't leave. It's real, all of it, and he was really there, stuck in a nightmare he couldn't wake from and probably won't wake from for a long time.
Maybe not ever.
"Talk to me."
His words are spoken roughly and it's enough to remind him there was still someone standing in front of him, waiting for an answer he only seemed to want to get from him. He looked up at the younger man, unable to full comprehend what he could say to make sense of what even he couldn't understand.
"Is she…is she gone?"
He swallowed, though not easily as his throat was so dry. He can't remember the last time he had anything to drink, but the mere thought of anything liquid didn't appeal all that much to him at the moment.
What can he say? His mind refused to aid him properly.
There wasn't much to say, not right now and he couldn't make himself say anything except the most honest words he could come up with. His mind, along with most of his body, felt as if it had shut down.
"I don't know."
The other man nodded, glancing at the set of double doors they both know they won't be able to go through unless they both magically manage to acquire a degree in medicine in two minutes to see for themselves exactly what was happening beyond those doors. He's younger, but as he runs his hand down his face roughly, he appears as if he's aged since the last time he'd seen him which was just a week ago.
For once, the expression aged overnight almost makes sense to him now.
Not that it matters.
The frustration and confusion is clear on his face, the other man, and he nods, as if he was in conversation with someone other than this crumpled being on the chair that was him.
"God…what-what the hell happened?"
He looks down on his hands and his stomach lurches again, harder this time and he actually chokes now, just in time to catch the words as they leave him. It's enough to make his voice crack as he manages to utter another honest answer.
"I…I don't know."
-o0o-
Music spilled into the empty hall as he took the final steps that led him to the second floor of the elegantly designed brownstone. He smiled to himself when he recognized the familiar sounds of Sinatra, singing a song that always made him think of her. He promised her a dance that night, but not really when and a thought struck him that made him smile just a little bit more.
With that song playing, it felt like the right moment and he could dance with her right then.
He didn't need to see her to know that, as Ol' Blue Eyes sang, he would love the way she would look that night. It wasn't much of a choice anyway because loving her and the way she looked would always be one of the most effortless things he'd ever done in his life. She made it too easy and too impossible to do anything else otherwise.
Stepping closer to the main bedroom, the music became louder, clearer as it filtered through the small crack between the double doors and he could see that the lights were on, brighter than the dimmed lights of the hall he had been in.
He couldn't help but find it cute, imagining her getting ready while playing Sinatra in the background, maybe singing along with him. She had a lovely voice, much as she tried to hide it, which was a damned shame and he hadn't been able to help himself and told her so. She laughed him off and accused him of being a brown noser.
Contemplating whether he should knock or announce his presence, he ended up deciding on doing both, knocking gently three times and called her name. Ever the gentleman.
He hadn't gotten an answer and the music kept playing, the strains of the band climbing into the joyous crescendo perfect for lovers. He assumed he hadn't been heard so he decided to enter anyway. He would probably lose points, but who cared? He wanted to see her already and there was still the possibility she was playing with him by pretending not to hear.
Pushing the doors open, the music came at him, louder, clearer and Frank's singing about laughter and a wrinkling of a nose—the part that especially reminded him of her—and he couldn't help but roll his eyes as he took in the sight of a beautiful red dress laid out on the bed. On the floor, right under it, a pair of black high heels sat waiting as well and in the air hung the alluring smell of her perfume.
In that moment, his mind expressed the typical male's frustration with women and the seemingly eternal lack of time whenever it came to preparing for a date. She didn't usually make him wait, but he hadn't really put this behavior past her because, as he had discovered, even she could be such a girl sometimes.
Spotting the bathroom door open, he shook his head when he spotted the lights were on there as well. Of course, she would still be in there, he had thought wryly.
Passing the bed with the red dress, he headed towards the door, intent on letting her know her date had arrived on time, as she had requested.
-o0o-
He had chosen to wear something dark that night, but even he could feel the crispness that had settled on his shirt and he knew it wasn't the material itself. He'd gotten blood on his clothes as well, seeping into his shirt and his pants, drying up the way it did on his skin, sticking to his flesh in the most dreadful manner.
The crimson couldn't fight the deep dark blue of his shirt, but it made the material stiff and dry, almost scratching against his skin whenever he made the slightest movement.
A part of him told him to change, wash up even, but he couldn't really think of anything at the moment, not when his mind couldn't even seem to fully grasp what was happening and what had happened.
He couldn't move, not really, so he sat there, ready to curl within himself, but unable to while the younger man still stood in front of him, towering over him and dressed in his usual impeccable suit. He was wearing something dark too, but that was just his suit. His button-down shirt underneath was a very light shade of lavender and somehow, he couldn't help the melancholic thought that if he had been the one to be there, he would look a more gruesome sight that he did at the moment.
This thought was enough to make him wonder if he was losing his mind, thinking about clothes and what it could look like when the reality of the situation warranted more attention than anything else. He was ashamed suddenly, for letting his mind entertain such useless thoughts and he felt even more compelled to curl within himself, but he still couldn't and his body, however shut down it felt like, wouldn't permit it.
It would have been so easy to just fall into himself, but he couldn't.
Not until he knew what exactly was coming next.
-o0o-
He entered carefully and almost quietly and the first thing he saw were the lit scented candles on the marble sink, glowing against the dimmed lights. As always, there were products near the faucet in front of the mirror, the same girly stuff he'd long grown used to seeing around. Turning away from the sink with not even a glance at the mirror itself, his eyes drifted to the body soaking in the tub.
And what he found will be the image that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
On the edge of the tub, a pale arm hung limp and unmoving, blood dripping from the tips of the fingers down to the steadily growing pool on the marble tiles. Her head had lolled to the side, blonde hair appearing darker as it usually did whenever it was wet. He couldn't see her face, but he'd been sure her eyes had been closed.
Not that he had time to look when the moment he'd managed to unfreeze himself, he was at her side, reaching into the half filled tub and pulling her out. His arms hadn't hesitated to slip into the cold water, slipping under the knees and behind her back, the sleeves of his shirt getting soaked almost immediately, but hadn't had time to notice or care about that.
It barely registered in his mind that she was soaked through the skin in the silk robe she was wrapped in, not when he was suddenly in a frenzy, laying her down on the ground and reaching for the small towel that had been left on the sink.
He pressed the fabric against the bleeding cut on her left wrist, stemming the flow as best he could while pulling out his phone to call for help. He tried to be as coherent as possible, reciting her address after explaining the most basic facts of what was happening. He hadn't been able to stay on the line when he'd been asked to as, instead, he pressed down deeper onto the cut, stopping the blood flow while at the same time calling her name over and over again.
It would only be later—much, much later—when he would realize that at that moment he had been screaming at her to wake up, his hands wrapped tightly around one wrist as she lay there, unmoving and both of them covered in the cold bath water and her blood. He would not remember how, but he had moved on from holding her wrist to cradling her head in one arm, holding on tightly as if that would stop her from leaving him altogether. Her skin had been cold, but until the end, he would refuse to think it was anything else but the water that made her cold to the touch.
He had screamed for her to wake up, shaking her every now and then, unable to help the hysteria that had overtaken him at the sight of her life leaving her body one drop after another.
But try as he might, his efforts had been in vain and before he knew it, he'd been thrown deep into the bowels of a nightmare he couldn't explain, let alone foresee.
And it was only beginning.
-o0o-
"They…they said she…"
He was unable to go on and he can understand why. They're both in shock, sitting in the waiting area of the busiest section of the hospital. They must have made quite a pair, one impeccably dressed lawyer and a an older man, covered in blood. He knows he must inspire a mix of feelings—shock, horror, disgust, maybe even pity, but he won't even begin to guess what the other man inspires in the strangers that surround them. He didn't care.
"She wouldn't do this…she wouldn't."
He doesn't say anything, not because he doesn't want to but because he doesn't know what to say. They both know this—she wouldn't do this—but the way the whole thing looked, she did do it. But why? They'd had plans, she was waiting for him and he'd spoken with her only hours before. She was happy—at least, she sounded happy—had she fooled him? Too many questions for too little time with too little explanations.
It was hell.
"Kurt?"
He turned to the man next to him with is cheeks gaunt and his eyes hollow. He suddenly felt older than he'd ever felt in his life and he knew it wasn't just from exhaustion and shock. He felt heavy, like there was a weight pressing down on him everywhere and even moving just his head felt like a mighty effort. He felt like he's become dead weight.
Dead. The word made his blood run colder and he felt his heart stop beating for a moment.
He didn't say anything, and instead just stared at the man next to him.
"What happened?"
He breathed in then stopped midway. Was that blood he smelled? The thought made his heart stop again and he felt even colder. His stomach gave another lurch and his mind began to swim in the most dizzying manner. He might just really get sick. The smell was everywhere and it was enough to make his heart leap to his throat.
He didn't want to breathe anymore.
What happened?
"I don't know, Will."
He turned his head towards the double doors at the end of the white hall. People passed, in and out, dressed in different garbs, but he didn't see them. He just saw the doors and nothing else.
She's in there, something whispered inside his ear and he couldn't help the image that flashed in his mind again. It's a variation of colors, all connected to different things with meanings that would forever be altered in his mind now.
The puddle on the floor, deep red and for a moment, in his memory, it's almost black. He could be wrong, he hadn't actually been looking. The pale arm hanging over the marble edge and in his mind, it's almost surreal, with the pale skin seemingly whiter than the petals of the lilies he'd left lying on the passenger seat of his car. The beautiful cornsilk hair turned a darker shade of golden brown, wet and sticking to pale white skin that was cold to the touch in the eeriest manner.
And it's only when his eyes bolt open that he realized he had even closed them and it's only then when he's able to comprehend that his heart is beating much too fast for his own good. He was barely breathing and his chest felt dangerously tight. He's never had a heart attack, but he could have one at that moment.
He could die.
But he won't, he can't.
Not until he finds out why.
He needed an answer to why this nightmare had begun in the first place.
Too many things didn't make sense that night and he was a man who liked answers.
And once he had them then maybe then he could die.