Grelle Sutcliffe's hair was inhumanly long. This, of course, was only natural, seeing as she was no longer human.
It took ages to gather every lengthy red lock into a suitable bun on the top of her head—one that wouldn't tangle too much, one that was balanced and wouldn't slip out. By the time she had it pinned up there, the bun was nearly the same size as her head. She'd thought about cutting her hair for over a decade now, but that was the thing with an immortal life. One could spend a century making a decision and feel no loss of time for it.
Grelle climbed into the claw foot tub, the bathroom floorboards of the Kings Cross terraced house squealing with the concentrated weight of tub, water, and reaper. She settled carefully, resting her back against the raised slope on the one end. The water was stingingly hot, though she hardly felt it. Something about being dead and cold that she hadn't really listened to during the lecture she'd received after she'd killed herself and woken up a reaper. Grelle clicked her tongue at the memory. She'd gone out in a bathtub not unlike this one. Warm water. Open wrists. Had the scars still—though not all Shinigami did—deep but delicate zigzagging lines down the insides of both her forearms. She'd thought it was quite romantic at the time, so very Roman, to wink oneself out of the world like Seneca had, but the truth was cold.
Death was never romantic.
Grelle slipped a little deeper into the water. The floorboards squealed again.
They'd let the flat for over a month now, a little two bedroom thing on Keystone Crescent with a door the color of a robin's egg. Grelle had fallen in love with the place on sight, and she blamed the door. The rest of the property was ancient, creaky like the floorboards. She was hungry for a remodel, but they were renters, and the building was in a conservation area. Damned Victorians and their damned adorable Victorian architecture. Council wouldn't even let them have a car port. Had to preserve the street's aesthetic charm—well, enjoying the charm was one thing, but having to be the one keeping it up was another. Grelle hadn't really considered the cost when she'd insisted that Keystone Crescent absolutely, positively was the place that they must live. Sebastian had laughed at her, always having more foresight, but agreed.
The picturesque street was good for his image as an up-and-coming artist. Just the right balance of starving and expensive, bespoke and conformist. When he'd first dipped into photography in the nineteen fifties, Grelle never would have guessed that he'd stick to it for so long. How many names had he taken? How many shows had he put up in galleries since then? Grelle had lost count during the mid-nineties when he'd had five aliases, two of which he'd crafted into bitter rivals. She hummed a light, close-lipped laugh that echoed in the porcelain confines of the tub.
It was quiet, though if she concentrated, Grelle could make out the noise of cars and buses and pedestrians several streets over. Kings Cross was one of the most notoriously busy traffic areas in London. The tube station was close, at least. Since they couldn't keep a car and all that. A few birds twittered outside the window, darting forms flashing shadows across the lacey drapes. Another shadow flickered briefly, and with a sound scarcely louder than an exhale, Sebastian arrived in the doorframe.
Silent, he stood and stared at her. Grelle observed him out of the corner of her eye for a moment, then closed them, smiling to herself. She liked being looked at. He liked to look. The room seemed to warm as he stepped inside, leather shoes clicking on the floor, carrying with him the furnace-ember heat of Hell itself. She shifted almost unconsciously, her toes curling, thinking of the intense pleasure it was to keep a demon.
Sebastian sat down on the edge of the tub and the floor groaned in protest.
"Weakest place in the whole house, and they decided to put a bath on it." Grelle flicked open her eyes to smile at Sebastian. "Damned Victorians."
"You know perfectly well the bathtub isn't original," Sebastian replied. He dipped a hand into the water, testing the temperature. "Besides. Being a Georgian doesn't give you the right to criticize our Victorian planning."
"Your Victorian planning?" Grelle laughed. "You're Victorian now?"
"I have always been a Victorian."
Grelle cocked an eyebrow. "Says the man who was summoned to construct cultic temples in Jerusalem ten thousand years ago."
"Mm." The noise was a strange kind of laugh that thrummed through his chest and throat. "He was not Sebastian. This iteration—this Sebastian, your Sebastian—is Victorian."
Sitting up, Grelle leaned over to place a kiss at the base of his wrist, taught as he braced himself against the tub. Those black nails at the tips of his fingers were trendy now, and he displayed them freely. As a Victorian—the word still made her laugh—he'd had to cover them up, but those gloves had driven Grelle no end of crazy. Sometimes she missed them, though there were many more things in their collective pasts that she would not have welcomed the return of, even if it meant the gloves would come back.
"My Sebastian, hm?" she asked, looking up at him.
"Mmm."
That sound was deeper, guttural, purring, generated somewhere within that perfect belly of his. A sound she knew he'd only ever made for her. She kissed his wrist again and Sebastian leaned down, peering into her face for a moment before linking their lips together. He kissed with such sinful, expert skill, his hand in the water rising to take a tentative, slippery hold on her throat. The touch was gentle, lending support to her neck, and she let it slip away as she settled against the sloped side of the tub again, kissing the tips of his fingers as they passed her lips.
She grinned when she lifted her eyes to his face and found him taking her in with hungry fascination. Her head dipped back, the bun weighing heavy, and she settled her shoulders and arms on the rim of the bath.
"No sense of propriety," she said. "Where are your Victorian values?"
Kneeling, Sebastian removed himself from the side of the tub and placed himself on the floor. He took stock of her hand, running his eyes over the curve of her knuckles and the bend in her wrist, before touching a delicate kiss to its back. He touched another to her wrist, then her forearm, then her elbow, and he kissed his way up to her throat and behind her ear, where he let his tongue whisper briefly across her skin.
"I have none," he purred.
Grelle turned to him, rising a little to meet more comfortably across the lip of the tub, pressing a kiss to his warm mouth. As her hands came out of the water to run wet and slick through his hair, his hands dipped in, tracing black nails across her middle and pressing fingers against her ribcage. He dipped a little too far and the water in the tub sloshed dangerously.
"Careful," Grelle said, pushing him back, leaving a hand on his shoulder as she laughed and watched the water settle. "You'll make it overflow."
Sebastian's eyes had not left her face, and when she looked back at him, he maintained that eye contact as he stood and raised his leg over the tub.
"Don't you dare," Grelle said.
A grin slipped onto Sebastian's face as he put both his hands on the side of the tub and leaned further over the water.
"No. Sebastian, no. No."
But her protests meant nothing to him. He put his leg, fully-clothed, shoes, socks, everything, into the tub, raising the water level right to the lip. Then he knelt down and brought his entire body into the bath on all fours, sending the water cascading in a massive splash that seemed to go on for ages over the rim. By the end of it, the little bathroom's floor was covered in an inch of water. Sebastian was soaking wet. Grelle sat shocked, her mouth open.
"This is a rental flat," she gaped.
Sebastian just smiled—that wicked little smile that always made her knees go weak—and skimmed forward through the water to wrap his arms around her and kiss her mouth. She let him, the limited space in the tub pressing their legs and bodies close together. Sebastian turned his lips to her neck, his fingers against her spine. Her own fingers slipped under the wet collar of his dress shirt.
"If that water weakens the floor and we fall through, you're paying for the damages," Grelle said, her hands sliding to his hips.
Sebastian chuckled, lifting his lips for but a moment to murmur, "Damned Victorians," before slinking entirely under the water.