The last place Ronald thought to check was the bath. He'd never actually been deep enough into Underaker's house to see this part, or really any of it beyond the shop's front salon (which sometimes doubled as sleeping quarters) and the kitchen (which sometimes doubled as embalming quarters).
He was sort of surprised the place even had a working bath, although short of being a repurposed coffin, this one perfectly suited the aesthetic of the rest of the building: deep, claw-footed, looked about a hundred years old and ready to crack into pieces. There were shelves on the walls, as there were every other room, littered with bottles and jars, each a different shape and colour with labels marked in indecipherable script. Most importantly, there was the bath's occupant, mostly obscured by a nimbus of floating silver hair. Only the top of Undertaker's head was visible, the faint yellow glow of his eyes apparent from behind his soggy fringe as he peeked out of the water like some lurking bath monster.
"Blrlblu blurb blllrblbrlbrb-" said the bath monster, through the bubbles rising from his mouth.
"Seeing as I'm not a dolphin," Ronald said, hands planted firmly in his trouser pockets, "you're going to have to send that one by me through the air this time."
Undertaker's head rose a few inches, revealing the usual toothy grin.
"I said weeeelcome, my little lamb."
"Dunno why I even bothered with the doorbell if you were in here all along."
"I bequeathed you my spare key for a reason, dear."
"Thought we were going out tonight. Did you forget? Or's your clock busted?"
"We have an engagement this evening, yes, but I do not recall you specifying that it had to be 'out'."
One thing was true, Undertaker was not among the most... 'outgoing' kinds of people. For Ronald the opposite was the case: he was hard-pressed to think of any given day when he didn't head straight from work to some soiree or another; he needed people. He needed to be around some sort of action or he'd go stir-crazy. Undertaker, it seemed, could spend days on end with the doors and windows boarded up and nobody to talk to but the rats in the walls. (Make no mistake, he did talk to them.)
"That's sort of what going on a date's all about, you know?" Ronald scratched his head.
Undertaker's laughter in response started as a whistle through his teeth, turning to a breathy chuckle and a sigh.
"Oh Ronnie, my little lamb, you needn't court me like one of your lady friends. I am no blushing virgin; I require no cosseting to earn tiny favours of flesh. Look, I have even greeted you naked on arrival this evening. No flowers or dinner needed." His spindly fingers rose up and separated floating strands of hair. Crossing his forearms, he splayed his palms over the newly exposed collarbone like a mummy at rest.
Over time, Ronald had learned to take Undertaker's eccentricities as a matter of course, and it was testament to the bizarre nature of their relationship that it only occured to Ronald just then that Undertaker was indeed naked and that, holy hell, he'd never seen him naked before. He tried to be discreet about his wandering eyes, though Undertaker's ridiculously long hair and the deep water still left a great deal to the imagination. And his imagination was quite busy.
He'd never in a million years have imagined himself getting hot and bothered over a little peek of a man's pale scar-stitched legs, but there were a thousand other things he'd never have believed himself capable of before this little adventure of a relationship had started. All along Undertaker had always taken a shameless, almost perverse joy in corrupting him with these new experiences.
He put on a cheeky grin.
"What's that tub full of anyway, embalming fluid?"
Undertaker chuckled.
"With this city's water, it may as well be."
He delicately lifted a foot out of the water, flexing his absurdly long toes, then deftly employed those toes to pick up a thin blue bottle, uncork it, and pour its contents into the water. The smell of sandalwood filled the air.
There was another surprising aspect of Undertaker - his smell. With the state he kept his shop (and his wardrobe) in, one might expect him to smell like a year's worth of mildew and filth. And yet the first time Ronald had dared lean in close enough to get a whiff of his hair (rather, he was compelled to do so by a sudden and inescapable embrace), he was greeted not by formaldehyde and rot, but a pleasant- if medicinal- scent that Undertaker later explained to him was myrrh. There were still traces of disinfectants and dust about him from time to time, but more often than not, it was some bizarre herb or potion whose detailed history he would be delighted to explain if prompted.
When they first kissed, his tongue had tasted of nothing more unusual or frightening than fennel seed and black tea.
"Would you care to join me, rather than just stand and stare?"
Ronald almost choked on air.
"Wha-what kind of joke is that? We wouldn't even fit."
"This bath is quite spacious, actually."
"Well you... I thought tonight we were going to, uh-" Ronald searched for words and found none. Odd how he could talk his way in and out of a tricky conversation in any other situation and yet when it came to this one person, he suddenly became this awkward... kid.
Maybe because with Undertaker, there simply were no words.
Undertaker chuckled softly.
"I know quite well what it is that you truly desire, Ronnie dear. In honesty, I am quite surprised that you in all your youth have held back from it so long. This shall not impede your wishes. Indeed, I find it is much more satisfying to first become clean before getting thoroughly dirty."
No. Words.
Ronald stammered for a moment, feeling his face heat up.
"Uh, th-"
"Join me."
Ronald didn't object this time, just looked away as he started tugging at the knot of his cravat and undoing the buttons on his waistcoat while bubbling half-underwater giggles echoed from the tub. It was official- Undertaker was definitely the strangest person he'd ever dated, practically the strangest person he'd ever met full stop. And even though the sensation of stripping in front of such an eccentric creep was one of the oddest feelings ever, it was also... God help him, really exciting.
"What are you looking at?" He said, once his trousers were off and folded over the baroque dressing screen in the corner.
"You of course, little lamb," Undertaker replied, leaning over the lip of the tub, tapping his long black nails against the porcelain, "I've waited quite long enough to have a look, wouldn't you say?"
Ronald pushed a heap of bottles aside on the dresser to rest shoes and there. He hesitated with the buttons of his shirt.
"You're kind of a pervert, you know that?"
"Oh, but you were planning to show it all to me this evening, were you not?"
"Well yeah, but... with what I had in mind we wouldn't really have time to sit and stare."
Another breathy chuckle.
"Ah, young men must learn patience," said Undertaker, "It is much more delightful to slowly savor a moment. Or a lover."
"Ch. You sound about a hundred years old when you say that."
"Oh my dear, I am much much older than that."
Ronald carefully set his glasses aside and undid the last of his shirt buttons. His plan of action was to leave as little time as possible between shedding the last article of clothing and getting into the tub.
The expedited trip to the water was not such a brilliant idea.
"Jesus Christ!" He shouted, suddenly immersed and wide-eyed in shock, "That's fucking cold!"
"It is merely room temperature."
"Well the room isn't that hot either. What the hell?"
"I find the sensation simply exquisite."
Ronald gripped the side of the tub and somehow managed to awkwardly negotiate the positon of his legs against Undertaker's while at the same time adjusting to the 'jesus-bugger-fuck-that's-cold' stimulus. Still, he wasn't going to back out, no matter how much it would make Undertaker laugh (and probably coddle him later). He had some modicum of pride to maintain.
"I find it crazy."
"An epithet that has indeed been used against my humble self many times."
He wasn't denying it.
"What, so you like feeling cold as a corpse?"
Undertaker giggled.
He wasn't denying that either.
Christ. Why was he so enamoured with this freak?
"Come, little lamb. You needn't position yourself so precariously," Undertaker poked at Ronald's shin with his toes, "Lay against me and we shall enjoy this experience together."
The promise of body heat overrode the potential embarrassment of getting so close for the first time. It wasn't as if they were complete strangers to one another physically, but there was a difference between groping someone through layers of clothing in a dark library corner and spooning completely naked in a cold bath.
"Ah, how you shiver, my little lamb," Undertaker said against his ear, as his clawlike fingers crept around Ronald's torso, "Does this intimacy really frighten you so?"
"I'm cold!"
"Ah, but you are also nervous, are you not?" His nails skated over Ronald's stomach. "Have no fear, little one. I have had many lovers before you, and I know how to treat you with utmost care."
"Did you keep all your old lovers this cold, or did they come that way?"
Undertaker chuckled from his throat.
"So those petty rumours still spread amongst the Reapers, do they? About some allegedly untoward interests I have in my new career..."
"Well... there are jokes."
"Heh. Narrow minded sods still can't see beyond the rims of their own spectacles. Can't be bothered to even try and comprehend why a legendary Reaper would really quit such a 'prestigious' job for a lowly place amongst mortals. I assure you, I have never had a customer become a lover... although from time to time a lover has become a customer. Such is inevitable when keeping the company of humans."
Undertaker kissed Ronald's neck and pinched the flesh on his arm,
"Besides, you are far too soft and warm to be mistaken for a corpse. The shivering also gives you away."
"Yeah," Ronald lifted his arm from the water, regarding state of his skin, "And the gooseflesh."
"Actually..." Undertaker wrapped his fingers around Ronald's wrist, further provoking the tingle through his skin the cold had started. "Gooseflesh is a reflex of the muscles surrounding the body's hair follicles. It can be a living reaction to stimuli, or it can be triggered by rigor mortis. Not exclusively an indication of vitality."
"Ugh." Ronald pulled a face. "That's rather disgusting."
"Can you really maintain such ignorance and disdain for the dead, as an emissary of death yourself?"
"Well, it's not really part of our job, dealing with the body once the soul is gone."
"Indeed. Perhaps that is why I find it such an... incomplete vocation. There is more to life and death than that moment of dying which we Reapers are so extensively trained to oversee."
Ronald shrugged.
"Doesn't really matter. Reaping's just a job. The rest's got nothing to do with me."
"Oh but it does. For your body is the same." Undertaker walked his fingers up Ronald's arm, across his clavicle, down his chest, "Every inch of it, a perfect facsimile of a mortal human's. Rather, it more resembles a prototype. The way man was before Original Sin dictated that he should grow old and die."
"But that's the difference, isn't it? We don't die."
He felt Undertaker's lips spread into a smile against his neck.
"We dont grow old, no, but death can, and indeed has, come for many of our kind before us," He dragged his nails again over Ronald's navel, up along his ribs. "And when it does, there is no difference in the way our bodies rot; not from any other man or beast. Isn't that splendid?"
Undertaker prodded at one of Ronald's nipples with a long fingernail as he spoke. Ronald shuddered.
"Ah, little lamb, you shiver again. Are you afraid?"
"N-no."
"Hmm, but you feel something just as strong and visceral." Undertaker's tongue touched Ronald's earlobe, traced a path up around the shell. "Aren't they marvelous, these pleasures of the flesh?"
"H- hey. Watch the tongue." Ronald stammered as Undertaker ventured further into his ear, "That's gross."
"Would you rather I stuck it elsewhere?"
"Mnnh..."
He was pretty sure that by "mnnh" he meant 'yes', but couldn't quite place the word amidst the sudden distracting idea of the place that 'elsewhere' might be.
Undertaker manoeuvered around Ronald, setting him back up against the edge of the tub, and licked a trail down his throat.
"It was that same Original Sin, you know, that made Adam and Eve ashamed of their nakedness," he said, and Ronald grasped a handful of his silver hair, wondering why he was blethering about things that everyone learned in primary school when he could have been putting his mouth to better use, "Perhaps in some ways, there are vestigial traces of that Sin's effects within our kind as well. After all, even you seemed awfully shy about undressing just now."
"Aren't most people?"
"Maybe so. However, if we are so different from fallen mankind, one must wonder why."
"I don't really think- ah-!" Ronald's breath hitched as Undertaker employed his teeth, "Don't think Eden has much to do with us these days."
"Hmm, this is why young people are ever so amusing."
Before Ronald could counter with a cheeky comment, Undertaker grasped his cock, effectively stealing his ability to speak coherently.
"Then again, there are many human-like things about our kind that are superfluous. For example..." there was a flash of those entrancing eyes from behind his silver fringe that Ronald would have savoured had he been in a more collected state of mind, "that whole breathing business is merely a force of habit. They might not teach you this in school, but, it is quite possible for one of us to stop breathing and survive."
Ronald had no choice but to believe him.
After all, he proceeded to spend an awfully long time with his head underwater entirely.