The first thing Sebastian installed in the new studio was a dark room. He hadn't produced film photography in a decade, at least, and he missed it. Much to his chagrin.
Few things elicited the passion of demons—a backwards kind of irony given the fact that they were some of the most single-minded, obsessive creatures in existence. Most of them focused on obtaining their next meal, otherworldly abilities poured into the hunt and the base things required to snare their prey. So much energy—life, passion—wasted unartfully chasing after souls.
Sebastian had not had to participate in that chase for over a hundred years now, thanks to Grelle and that deal she'd struck with the Shinigami. No, Sebastian's meals were practically delivered to him—dangerous souls the reapers wanted destroyed—so he'd had to find other outlets for that demonic passion.
Grelle was one of them, naturally. He poured so much of himself into her, but Grelle could only contain so much. She was an autonomous individual, a creature with her own needs and will, desire and passions. To have put every ounce of his being into her would have destroyed them both. They'd worked out the right balance over the years, and their devotion ran deep—deeper than either of them could put to words—but Sebastian had always been restless in other ways.
He'd tried countless things to keep himself occupied—interior decorating, furniture building, pigeon breeding, taxi driving, mill work, meat processing—and had held countless jobs—elevator operator, river cruise guide, clerk, haberdasher at Selfridge's—but none of it had ever stuck until photography. Until Grelle had bought him that MPP Micro Technical and ordered him out of the house and out of her hair for the afternoon.
It was meticulous work. Detail work. Composing the shot. Adjusting the aperture, the shutter speed. Shielding the lens from the sun or perhaps reflecting light onto his subject. It was work that could consume him—so he let it.
He left the house that day as James Fentz, his latest alias, Leica M6 and tripod in hand, no particular goal in mind outside of shooting some images of the city that he would develop in cyanotype. He walked an hour all the way to Westminster, came to a stop on the corner across from the Houses of Parliament, at the end of the bridge, his back to the Thames, and spent a moment observing the ebb and the flow of the crowd as he slowly set up his equipment. Tourists, mostly. Might make for an interesting subject.
The deliberate and purposeful way he went about the business of adjusting his settings and framing the shot inevitably drew attention from the humans around him. Fentz was known for his meticulousness and quiet smile. He looked like he belonged there. Like he was doing something important.
He was.
And he wasn't.
Since the nineteen fifties, Sebastian had pursued various careers as various artists in the field of photography. He had long since learned the formula to look convincing. The Tate Modern even had a few of his pieces in their collection. Not on display, of course, and not under the name "Sebastian Michaelis," but the works were his and they might emerge from storage eventually. In fact, he'd been weaving quite an elaborate tapestry throughout the years—fabricating new artists to use as aliases, intentionally linking them together through rivalry or influence. Leisel van Gott had trained Jeffery Nash, and Jeffery Nash had inspired Frederick Dowd. Dowd had opened the studio from which Sam Whitehall had emerged, and the line continued, iteration after iteration. They were all Sebastian, and it was his intention that someday the Tate Modern would curate a special exhibition collecting works from all those influential photographers together. So many artists—but every picture taken by his own hands.
He stood in that spot at one end of Westminster Bridge for several hours, periodically taking photographs dominated by an out-of-focus crowd in motion, Parliament behind them, in-focus but overrun. Yes, he could do a whole series like this. London landmarks obscured by tourists. Eventually, he ran out of film and made his way to the new studio.
In the dark room, the white cotton tea towels he had prepped for his experiment had dried after their soak in the appropriate solution. He readied his film negatives, careful and quiet, absorbed in the work of developing and processing each reel.
He was about to start the contact sheet when there was a knock at the door.
"Mm," he responded, knowing it was Grelle.
She slipped in, only opening the door a fraction and squeezing through like she was worried about letting the darkness out.
"So this is where you are," she chuckled. "You could answer your phone, you know."
"What time is it?" Sebastian asked.
"Half eight," Grelle replied.
Sebastian turned to apologize, the time had completely escaped him, but he found Grelle inspecting the reels of film hanging from their hooks along the wall for drying and the view of her illuminated only by the red light of the dark room was so exquisite, it actually forced him to take a step back.
"These are interesting," Grelle said as she observed the negatives. "Are you going to print them on those tea towels?"
She turned to look his way, a smile on her face, and Sebastian's heartbeat staggered. She was red, she was red—all over red. The color of her aura, her very soul. It was mystic. Red skin, red clothes, red eyes, red teeth. A thousand shades of nuance, but red. He'd never seen her in a dark room before. He'd never seen her so beautiful. So…pure. It was like she'd been boiled down to her essence and reformed from that vibrant solution alone.
"You could make mock souvenirs," Grelle said and laughed. "Like those tea towels they sell in tourist shops."
He stepped toward her, eyes roving over every inch of the figure she cut in the cavernous light. It was then she finally seemed to notice the state he was in, and she chuckled again, her brows drawing together in amusement.
"What's got into you?"
In answer, he brushed his fingers across her cheek, took hold of her neck with his other hand, drew himself near to her and studied—studied hard—trying to lift that red light from her skin, to separate her from it and turn her back into the creature he was familiar with, but he could not. She had melded with it, and he would see a flash of her in red every time he looked at her from that moment on. The image was too perfect, too impactful, to forget.
He slotted their lips together and pressed her between himself and the table against the wall. She made this little noise in the back of her mouth that curled that heavy grip of desire in his abdomen even tighter than it already was.
He would swear—and he knew that it was only his imagination, but he would swear—that she tasted red.
She pushed against him, kissing, but forcing his face away so they could look at each other. Her hands rose and rested on his chest. He leaned toward her, and she leaned back, smiling, scrutinizing, curious and so maddeningly seductive, Sebastian almost lost the ability to see straight.
"And how was your day, love?" she asked—casual, dismissive, and teasing.
Sebastian let out a low whine.
She chuckled and lifted herself, running against him like water over a smooth stone, onto the table. Two of her fingers hooked between the buttons of his shirt and she drew him forward. He fell to her, his own fingers fluttering to find a hem of hers, but she stopped them, gripping low on her back. Sebastian whined again.
"Answer my question, hm?" she said, lifting her knee to nudge his chin.
"Good," he said, but his voice was hoarse.
"And ask me how my day was."
He eased his hips between her legs so he could lean into her, run his nose, then his tongue, along the skin of her neck. Grelle made that noise again, and he almost went insane.
"My darling, how was your day?" he whispered.
"Good," she replied, and he could hear the grin in her voice.
"I'm glad."
She released his hands, massaging them into her hips—an action he promptly took over as she put her arms around his neck, let her fingers drift down his back and around to his front where they slipped beneath his collar and unhooked a single button. He brought his hands beneath her legs, and she locked them around his middle, ankles crossed behind his back.
"May I?" he asked.
She smiled, kissed him. "Of course."
So Sebastian lifted her from the table and took her to the floor, where he was reminded why it was Grelle that he had chosen to pour his passion into before anything else.