50 shades of Red (gumshall/ Gumlee fanfic)

The roses in daisy's garden

sorry i have not updated in awhile. i am going through allot in my life currently. i will update as soo as i can. Thank you all who still follow me and still love this fanfic! (if you get my reference in this tittle you get a digital hug.)

I was sitting with marshall at his kitchen table. Sipping warm, comfortable tea in the awkwardly ordinary mug he pulled out for me. I was finally, after a few more minute of use bickering on the cold kitchen tiled floor, allowed to change his arm bandage for him. And dear glob did that bandage needed to be changed,, A good portion of the once blinding white bandage was now stained a crusty yellow from pus and dark and bright red from fresh and old blood. It dawned upon me that this would be  my first time seeing the wound in the flesh.

I went slowly peeling the bandage off, like one would when opening one of those zinc cough drops that make your mouth unbearably dry and your tongue the texture of sandpaper grinding on rough wood. Or perhaps it was like petting a pedal on flower with slow fluint motions. When the bandage was finally removed and discarding thrown into the kitchen trash bin, I noticed that Marshall's cuts were rather deep and the multitude of them.  Sure, the enraged cuts were hesitantly healing healing but there was yellow and clear puss coming out from them like leaf milk. There was so many of them. They obviously were not done carefully either. From the ridges and the ragged lines of his gray flesh one could conclude that the cuts were synthesised with a rather dull kitchen knife. Perhaps a steak knife. The tissue around the cuts were inflamed painfully red, an obvious indication possible infection. There were so many of them. I didn't want to count them. Vampires heal fast these cuts...they should have been gone by now. Vampires are known to bruise but cutting vampire flesh requires an exceptional amount of expertise, knowledge, and has to be done by another vampire. These cuts must have been terrible since I was only seeing a fraction of what they really were that night.

 

I cleaned the wounds as gently as possible and (more so) as quietly as possible. I ran my pink fingertips on his soft blanket skin, touching his forearms as I sanitized. The quite, curious morning light spilled in filling the kitchen,  giving a soft shine to the tile floor and the counters. The light seemed to adore Marshall's face, a ray draped on his cheek like a thin sheet giving his skin a life like furnace warmth creatures of the dead are not meant to have. His cheek begged for me to touch it, in that ray of sunshine, the kind of sunshine that makes you want to sign into something. The light caught his eyes too you know. They twinkled a brighter red in subtle whispers, a fascinating flourish of conservative emptiness about them.

There was an unspoken twilight between us, an illogical infinite fabric of space.

 

So I decided to speak."Marshall?" I asked cautiously glazing his cuts in herbal ointment with a couple of fingers. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"

 

Marshall grew tense, shocked rigidly smooth as wall, at those words and tried to hide his red eyes in his dark black bangs ,casting a curtain. Sometimes, I forget but marshall is indeed very handsome. Too handsome for his own good most certainly. I took another sip of my tea, letting the warmth go down my throat throughout. Marshall drew in a breath through his nose, slightly puffing his chest, before speaking.

 

"Ashley lost it... Again. Last night and threatened to kill herself." Again? The way he said again. Again. In itself implies multiple times rather than one occurrence. Did that mean marshall has been hurt like this before? To this extent? Threatening to kill herself. To actual take her life and fall from this world and sink into the depth of black afterlife.