Title: Angitia Green and Jadis White.
Summary: A necromancer is concerned with the dead, but not always in the most hands on fashion. A vampire is concerned with blood, but it is not always on his mind. There are too many other things to do in a day. AU, slashy one-shot.
Warning: Be warned of one TINY mention of intercourse and mention of nudity. This isn't rated 'M' because the act itself was skipped over.
Dedication: For Kirra Kills, because of missing a certain birthday and not finding out until later. This is what was asked—a fic between Ghoul/Terry, because nobody else seems interested in it. It's AU, because that's my specialty and was specified, even if I am a little displeased on how this came out in the end.

-:-
My eating habit, I must point out, is horrible…
-Antonya Nelson.

i.

Sunlight gave him such a fierce headache when he wasn't prepared for it, but really, he needed that painting from the artist downtown or his boss was sure to fire him and then it would take forever to find another job with employers that could tolerate a vampire of Terry's birthright and personality.

He was lucky that the message from his boss (Maxine had called him, Bruce, Terry's "master" in jest often enough, but he didn't care for the word falling from her lips like droplets of blood that froze on contact with the air—that he could pick up and place on his tongue—that never tasted any better than old candy made from the worst flavor of rotten grapes; though because she was a mystic, she couldn't fully understand the bile that word brought up) had come when the clock in his dining room rang out strong chords for six in the evening. Had the message carrier (a young boy with hair dangling in his face and eyes and in the new color dye that adolescents seemed to be enjoying among the populace recently—blue as clear water turned to ice at first snowfall) rung his doorbell a moment sooner, Terry was certain that he would have actually broken the lid of his coffin to thrash his way down the marble hallways and greet the quivering young man with teeth bared in a threat to kill. He couldn't have that when the wood of the lid cost him half a month's payment from working for the old man and was made from some of the only black ebony wood left after he had torched the warehouse it was kept in on Bruce's request (something about a manifestation of demons that had been dwelling in the basement where it was damp and smelled like vagrants from the Black Plague of London some few years back) a month ago.

Terry was lucky that he could wear his black top hat and evening cloak in the twilight, otherwise he would be grumbling up the streets that turned and twisted in their ways to a little studio kept in between a cathedral that had been poorly placed through contributions by the Pope (and not a very good cathedral as it was made mostly of graystone and didn't have nearly as many angels as a church would need to attract more followers—"Sheep, the lot of them," his former girlfriend of fifty years had stated before their relationship went downhill) on the right side and a mortuary for plague and syphilis victims. Bruce had helped finance the particular artist that lived there ("He's a young necromancer. A little rough around the edges and unpleasant as most of his people are, but he's getting better to warm up to now that he's left that family of his," Bruce had explained the first time Terry had been sent to pick up a portrait from the studio to find it wrapped in blotting paper in the foyer with the door leading inside locked and bolted) and mostly just sent Terry to pick up things to remind the young man that Bruce basically owned him.

Terry tromped through about four mud puddles when he finally came short of an incline in the brick streets that allowed for the sun to be blocked out enough that he could look up and at least make sure he was on the right avenue. The blue of his irises adjusted onto a street sign made from that tacky wood they also had in London the year he and Bruce had been required to reside their on the request of that damned goddess with the blue eyes and black hair that shamed the night sky when it tried to compensate in making fear when the moon couldn't show itself. He would think in a town that was as advanced as Gotham (they had built into most buildings the new electric light recently, and most wealthy families had installed sewer systems for toilets that had been built into their homes so they didn't have to use chamber pots and outhouses anymore) they would have better signs, but alas, he couldn't dwell on the thought as he found himself in the entrance of the studio.

"I hope he answers the door this time," Terry muttered to himself, hand finding the twine cord attached to the bell up and into the abode that he pulled twice and heard easily fifty feet within chime at the motion. It almost added to his headache, but not quite as he was greeted, to his minor joy (well, joy wasn't the right word, but he could never think straight when his head throbbed and he hadn't even been able to sip some of the boar's blood he'd bought the previous evening and left in his basement ice room) by the sounds of feet without shoes shuffling to the door beyond the one Terry was looking at. When he heard the bolts and locks click open, he formed his face into some more pleasant for the necromancer he had never met. Bruce said he always made himself scary if he didn't at least smile without teeth showing.

The door opened and the when Terry looked upon the blonde man with stringy yellow hair and tired eyes, the first word that came to mind immediately was: Gaunt.

The man was in a grey nightshift and a black house robe, but even with those on it seemed as if he was all points and grey skin and the absolute picture of poor health. Though Terry refrained from considering over that much further; all necromancers, as he had been told, were pictures of poor health even if they had a proper diet and maintained a pleasant lifestyle of walking a mile or so each day in sunshine. All of them had that blonde hair, those dark eyes, that skin that was even worse off than most vampires; as though they were rotting from the inside out despite being more alive than a vampire of any sort could ever hope to be.

"You're earlier than Mr. Wayne said you would be…" the man in the door muttered, opening the hardwood wide but motioning with one hand (Terry could see his skin clinging right and tight to the bones underneath; it was like he hadn't taken a drink of water since he was five and his body only retained the bare minimum from everything he put in his mouth) to be quick and come inside. There were eyes all around and even walls had ears. "I'm not done with what he asked for yet."

"How long will it take for you to finish the painting, Mister…uh…"

"Just Ghoul," the artist replied over his shoulder as he locked the two doors and started creeping back into the abode, his robe breezing over the stone floor and his feet as light as a cat on snow, leaving no sound and no trace, "I just have to finish inlaying the spells and codes, and then you can be on your way. I have some tea and your kind of food out, so just take a look around my studio while you wait."

"…Codes?"

ii.

He should have known that he would come back more often after Ghoul told him that, yes, his paintings had undercurrents and it wasn't as if Bruce Wayne—vampire to rule all vampires if he saw fit; even more than that if he was in a bad mood—actually kept the paintings in his private study because they were particularly pretty.

Though, they were pretty, Terry admitted the second he walked through the door to the single—extremely large—room Ghoul spent about seventy percent of his time inside. Actually, in the young vampire's opinion, the paintings were downright beautiful and fully captured the emotion and visage of his "models" (never did another living person besides Terry and Ghoul step into the room, but Ghoul had photos sitting all over the place so he could get the anatomy right and didn't have to care whether or not the person he was painting was comfortable) and the backgrounds they were set within.

Necromancers dealt with the dead, but not in the way, Terry had been told after a few times coming back and just spending time with Ghoul as he bristled and moved paint onto canvas so they made little hissing noises and splatters that made Terry think of blood rushing onto the ground after a vein had been popped. To be a necromancer like Ghoul was basically just to be a male witch who dealt with souls either inside or outside of a body, reading it, calling it out of air and fire where it had resided in either its own heaven or its own hell, and then doing what he would with it.

Terry didn't like that Ghoul ("Can't I call you something else? Surely you have a Christian name to give?" Silence. "I'm not really a person, so I don't have to follow human etiquette in having a Christian name of all things. I barely believe in God, how could I suppose he or she had a son? Anyway, you're hardly one to talk, bloodsucker,") kept a couple souls in glass bottles inside stole hovels in the back of the fireplace at the far end of the room, two of them spinning around in their prisons and screaming profanities that no human could hear.

"Set me free…"

"I've done nothing wrong…"

"Is this my punishment for trying to destroy time…?"

"ANSWER ME, YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD…!"

It made Terry's ears twitch and the skin along his nose crinkle at their noise; but the silence from the last one (a blue jar it was kept in, violets printed on the cork and canvas paper advertising perfume on its outside) was far more disconcerting. Bruce had told him not to bring it up; it was Ghoul's decision for three very bad and troublesome bogeys. So Terry ignored them and focused on other things.

All of the people in the paintings hanging or sitting about the room existed at one point or another and Terry entertained himself in the recognition of a couple of the figures. Ghoul helped him out when Terry picked them up for closer inspection without asking.

(A pair of blondes stood naked in the middle of a ten-by-twelve foot canvas that smelled very much like Terry recalled from the white plague of some two centuries ago, but didn't feel right for that particular time period when he placed his hand on the corner highest to the left, his fingers tracing some of the paint that had congealed there to be forgotten about.

The woman on the left was tantalizing and almost exotic, eyes a dazzling blue with pupils that slit into themselves and told Terry plenty about vampirism of quite some old power and wealth and family; her sunshine yellow hair was done up like those women Terry often saw Mr. Wayne off with after a night out at one of the balls he threw to add to his popularity—not like he needed it when he was over five thousand years old and still looked like one of those Greek gods on vases—with sausage curls and red ribbons to balance what must have been quite a lot of bulk on the top of her head. Her teeth were sharp and Ghoul had mentioned that it had been especially difficult to place the codes Mr. Wayne had wanted into the lining of the fingernails Terry could see as her hands held some roses like a bride that had just come out of being a whore.

The other blonde stood like a crane, one leg leaning into the crook of her other knee, dainty figure like those ballerinas Terry had to pass every third evening to get to the concert hall and help Mr. Wayne organize more horrible orchestras; her head looked to the sky and there was little remarkable about her other than her hair being long enough to pass for Rapunzel flowing down along her spine and around the foot pressed to the ground, her eyes almost human—Ghoul guaranteed with a sad grin that she was not mortal—as they traced the lining of the full Harvest Moon above both figures. It was such a pity that it was the one that looked like a tramp was the familiar one to Terry; a vampire of the second order in the Jester coven that Terry had fought on three occasions for information and for stealing things from Bruce on behalf of the family head. He was smug that he could only ever remember that both her first and last name began with a D. It gave the impression that she left no impression.)

The painting he was currently curious about was a little two-by-two foot canvas with a black backdrop and what looked like a Werehyena in a very proper blue cloak and gentleman's three-piece suit. A top hat was placed down beside the beast ("Man," Ghoul had crowed from where Terry couldn't see him behind the behemoth of a painting he was working on at present, "He may not look it, but he has better manners than most of the white coats over in congress these days. Such a shame that most people think he's as likely to gut them like the whores over in London's White Chapel district as to look them in the eye and smile. I think you'd like him,") and Terry could just barely make out the soul Ghoul had tucked into the spots along—Woof, Ghoul supplied a couple of times; a name and not a mockery—the werehyena's hands and neck.

Terry couldn't imagine where Bruce found these beings and what thought process went on that he would use them as instruments to carry secrets from place to place so easily, but it seemed to do both Wayne and Ghoul good to do so. Terry wouldn't question it, if only it meant he could keep coming back on…occasion…

'Where did that thought come from?' The young—enough—vampire inquired of himself, eyes of blue oceans and those gems that kings and queens wore so often to jubilees, glancing over his shoulder and catching the sight of Ghoul's grey skinned pointer finger (fingernail; skin could never be so precise) tracing the visage of his new masterpiece (it was Maxine in all of her finery of fox fur gloves, mongoose winter cloak and her beautiful nude body under the silver of moonlight that Ghoul had painted as a sliver to the direction of the East above her head; Terry not to take note of the way Ghoul have perfectly darkened the lines that were her clavicle and shoulders. His mouth watered at the sight of her slender neck and those richly earth colored breasts. She sat like a real royal in a plush and red lion fur chair he'd seen kings in, one knee atop the other) and words slipping out from under his breath to place both a code and a soul into the paint of pink hair.

iii.

…Sex with a man was an uncomfortable and unfamiliar thing to Ghoul, but it seemed to get better after Terry finally took his teeth out of the necromancer's throat muscles.

The act that had been going on had lasted a little over three hours since Terry stumbled into Ghoul's home, completely wasted and aroused; the time in which Ghoul had reached finality once at the end of each hour while the vampire only managed once. Ghoul didn't think it was fair to Terry (he had done all the work the entire time; he had been good at it and clever with that stiff appendage as well as the pale muscle in his mouth that had experience and purpose with lapping up liquid that came out in bursts) so when he passed out on top of Ghoul—finally—the blonde made an executive choice to slither out from under the taller man and set up his paints and a canvas that wasn't too big or too small and just proper enough when he would finish for Terry's own home with the empty wall just waiting to be filled up.

While he chose his colors and glanced occasionally at Terry as he continued to snore against his mattress (hair swaying in front of his eyes and the cheekbones that were sharp but rounded with what could sometimes appear as healthy skin when he was blushing; his eyelids almost blue in the half-light that was always the ambiance of the artist's home, and lips still plump from Ghoul biting at them during the act of sex,) Ghoul allowed a free hand to touch the punctures in his throat that stung like a cat scratch and would be just as difficult not to rub his fingers against until they healed.

He didn't know what he was doing, getting involved with a vampire. He had done it before some years ago and hadn't liked it (it wasn't a particularly pleasant thing when a bloodsucker wanted to be bound together through eternity by changing Ghoul into one of their kind—and without his permission, too) very much anyway.

But…

"You are cute, I guess," Ghoul mumbled, showing much more dull teeth as he smiled lightly when Terry twitched and turned in the bed, against the pale blue sheets, turning his stomach upwards so the necromancer could count the ribs waving along the inside of the flesh, recalling an hour ago when Ghoul's own long fingers had rolled up and down the ribs like they were musical instruments. He could have sworn that, at the time, they had echoed inside the other's belly with something of a 'B' chord of a piano or mandolin.

The sight of Ghoul's own suction marks and scratches on Terry's torso helped lift his mood and make his mind more clear on their relationship. Very much so.

Ghoul hummed, again brushing his hand over his puncture wounds as he also traipsed through the studio to get more paint, "You deserve fresh Angitia Green and Jadis White. I shall place you in the snow country of Jotenheim along a turquoise river and sleeping in a snowdrift, if nothing else…"

His voice echoed in the halls, so unlike when he spoke anywhere else and with anyone else but Terry.