In a class a few weeks ago, our professor mentioned that fanfiction is a viable way to get your work seen. As may or may not be known, I was quite the fanfic writer back in the day. I cringe at about 98% of those fanfics, of course, because I was between 12 and 15 when I wrote them and they were objectively terrible. However, there’s 2% that were written when I was older, and this is one I’m still exceptionally proud of.
I’ll get right to it, or else I’ll go into too much teary detail about how fanfic writing shaped me into the writer I am today. This one was written for the Lucifer Box series by Mark Gatiss, which about 14 people have heard of, and hopefully it reads well enough without context.
If anyone were to ask Lucifer Box if he was a sentimental man, the most they would get would be a light scoff, a toss of his long, dark hair, or possibly a simple raise of the eyebrows that (very obviously) showed his doubt in his questioner’s intelligence.
In Lucifer’s eyes (and they were very fine eyes, he would tell you so himself), sentiment was only useful in situations where one was to be won over. Need to get some information out of the man working at the bank? Ask him about the family and tell him (or make up stories) about your own. Running a bit low on cash? Keep chatting up the old bird at that charity luncheon who mentioned you look like her deceased husband; nine times out of ten, they agree to sit for at least one portrait to help keep you fed, you poor dear.
As for Lucifer himself, he had no need for real sentiment. He could fake it beautifully, of course; the RA had made sure he could, and there was something romantic in playing the sympathetic artist. But really, if he allowed himself to be sentimental, then he opened himself for attack.
Which is precisely why Charlie-and anyone else, for that matter–never knew about the time Lucifer painted his eyes.
It started, of course, by pure accident. When customers were low and Lucifer ached to paint something, Charles Jackpot, valet (and secret lover, to some degree) to Lucifer Box, was often trussed up in period costume or, as he preferred, draped nude around some curtains and sheets, and Lucifer would paint to his heart’s delight. Young Jackpot really was a delightful study, save for when he grew bored and began fidgeting. Then, he would fix those impossibly blue eyes on his boss with every ounce of impudence he could manage, and more often than not the painting was left unfinished, and the sheets would end up in the wash.
It was one such day, when Lucifer’s fingers were practically twitching for want of a brush, that he decided to do a study in blue. Blue drapes in the background, blue jacket on Charlie, and Charlie’s arse in blue velvet and set in a blue chair. Lucifer took a moment, making sure everything was adjusted just so and giving Charlie a light box to his ear to get him to hush, and then he began to paint. He sighed in relief, the feel of oils gliding from brush to canvas as good a release as any drug, illicit or otherwise, and very nearly as good as other illicit acts. And it certainly helped that blue was a wonderfully flattering color on young Charles. The contrast between his dark hair and brows vs. the brilliant blue vs. his pale skin was superb and his eyes…
At this, Lucifer did something he did not often do. He stopped painting, and he simply stared at his subject. He didn’t notice the smug smile his valet gave him, no doubt assuming his employer was ready to forgo the piece and have a tumble in these blue sheets. He didn’t notice when Charlie’s charcoal-dark brows drew together curiously, or when his face softened into a look of somewhat hopeful confusion. And what Lucifer Box definitely didn’t notice was the fact that his own expression had become soft as well, and he simply took in the boy’s beauty (and yes, even on his most callous days, he would assert that Charlie was indeed beautiful in a wonderfully impudent way.) and pondered over those impossibly blue eyes. How long would they be here? Manservants, Lucifer learned, were frightfully fragile. How long before a bullet brought this one down? Before a knife slashed that lily-white neck, or a bomb blew the whole man to pieces? Would he even get a chance to see those blue eyes before they shut forever? Something unpleasant twisted in Lucifer, but before he could address it, he was broken out of his reverie by an uncharacteristically soft, “Mr. Box?” and his vision in blue starting to get to his feet.
“Sit down,” said Lucifer briskly, pulling the canvas off his easel and going to find another. “And sit up straight. Your slouching’s thrown off the whole piece.”
Grumbling in his usual manner and none the wiser to Lucifer’s thoughts, Charlie acquiesced and sat up straight as he could, blue eyes fixed in a glower and full lips in a petulant moue. Lucifer sent him a smirk and a “Good boy,” then ducked behind his easel to mix his colors, then, with more care than he’d ever taken, painted Charlie’s eyes, making sure there was just enough blue, white, and that touch of green only seen in bright sunlight. This, he was determined, was going to be his best painting yet.
And it was, though no one ever saw it. Once finished, Lucifer threw a tarp over it to make sure Charlie didn’t see, citing the piece was a failure and he’d throw it out in the morning. No need for the boy to get a big head, he was already too confident. And, young thing that he was, he might take it as something more than artistic interest. Which, of course, it was not. It was so incredibly not that that Lucifer couldn’t help but remind himself of it over and over as he shut the painting away.
It was fifteen years later when he next looked at it. The Great War was won, the boys were back home, and Lucifer was recovering after the terrible affair at Lit-de-Diable that stole something dear from everyone involved. For Christopher Miracle, it was his good looks and peace of mind. For Lucifer, it was the boy with the impossibly blue eyes. They hadn’t even found Charlie’s body; now he was nothing more than a name on a granite stone a hundred miles away.
Lucifer Box was not sentimental. He would defend that to the end of his days. And yet…in those quiet days after coming home, and several more over the course of his life, he found himself stealing to that little cupboard where he kept the best piece he’d ever painted. And, for a few moments, those beautiful eyes fixed their impudent gaze on him, brilliant blue under coal-black brows, and perhaps Lucifer’s met them with something that was more than artistic interest.
Assorted Scribbles and Jots 