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dragonmuse · 2 years

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(In light of Ao3 being down I am posting the first chunk of a new fic that will eventually go up as a one shot. It’s a Lucius/Izzy modern au featuring non traditional student Izzy.)

The backroom of Jackie’s bar was startlingly quiet. Izzy was fairly sure she’d installed soundproofing at some point for her own reasons and he was steadfastly not asking about those reasons. What it meant, as far as he was concerned, was that he could sip pretty decent whiskey for free while he fixed her inevitably bookkeeping problems once a month without hearing the general cacophony of the front room

:readmore:

Her arrival was heralded by the sharp smell of cigar smoke,

“Find it yet?”

“Yeah,” he held a receipt out that was very wrinkled and had a mysterious brown crust stuck to the bottom. “Danny has been buying all your limes from the grocery store instead of the bulk order.”

“Why?”

She sat down beside him at the long table she used in lieu of a desk. It had a lot of nicks, scars and graffiti scrawled on it. Too many years being handled by too many careless people.

Izzy could relate.

“I don’t ask for reasons, just hunt down the money. You’ll have retrain him on the ordering system.”

“I’ll get Geraldo to do it,” she waved that away. “He and Danny get each other.”

One empty headed fool to another, that checked out.

“Organized the receipts, should be ready for the taxman next month,” he told her instead of risking his neck saying that out loud.

“Thank fuck. Honestly, Hands, why don’t you just get certified already and then I can just pay you proper to do the taxes and things. Make my life a fuckload easier.”

“And you know I do everything for your convenience,” he rolled his eyes.

“Maybe you should. What the fuck else are you doing?”

Izzy picked up his whiskey and took a long sip.

He had this waking nightmare, an anxiety dream that played on loop in his head while he stared sightlessly at his walls at the apartment. In it, he’s walking down a sidewalk with no where in particular to go. He sees Eddy across the street. She spots him and before he can hide, she’s waving, cheerful as anything. She looks happy, full of good news and good things that have happened since he was unceremoniously ejected from his life.

The worst part of it is that after telling him about every good thing, including every detail of Bonnet’s ass-ugly mansion and collection of gold appliances, she asks him sincerely,

“So what’ve you been up to?”

And Izzy will have to say ‘nothing’.

He doesn’t really need to work. The jobs they ran may have been questionable in their legality, but they’d paid in real money. If he lived frugally, he could be retired for all his days and he’d never really wanted for much. But he didn’t have hobbies, never had time to cultivate any, didn’t have any old friends to spend time with, most of them were dead or in jail or had taken Eddy’s side when things ended, and he wasn’t in the market for new friends which seemed complicated and kind of nauseating.

He’d spent the last six months fixing Jackie’s books because she’d never much liked Eddy and had always been his friend alone (and lonely in that job) and trying to get the feral tomcat that lived in the alley next to his brownstone to get close enough that he could nab it and have someone castrate the damn thing so it’d stop caterwauling at all hours of the night.

“You need a degree,” he said into his whiskey. “To get certified.”

“Didn’t you go to college?”

“Dropped out after two years. Started the business instead.”

“Bet they’d still take the credits,” she shrugged. “Throw in some ‘life experience’.

“Yeah,” he scoffed. “Tell them I graduated from the school of hardknocks.”

Bonnet was a professor of something, he was pretty sure. He’d had a lot of books and talked about classes anyway. English, maybe? That sounded right. Eddy had liked how he spoke.

“Should be worth something to someone,” Jackie’s cigar smoke curled out of the corners of her mouth. “Can you imagine? I’d already have a degree in business if they took it out in years in.”

“And in matrimony,” he raised his glass to her and she laughed, fortunately. In a good mood.

“A full on masters in missus,” she grinned and he chuckled, the first time he’d even come close to a laugh in sometime.

Izzy walked home not much later. She’d stuck a cigar in his jacket pocket on his way out with a wink, so instead of going all the way inside, he sat down on his stoop and lit it. It was a mild summer night and he hadn’t actually sat out here in some time. It was a good cigar, but mostly it just made him miss cigarettes. He’d given them up fifteen years ago and sometimes he still craved the taste.

Mostly he craved how it had tasted bleeding into him through Eddy’s lips, but that wasn’t worth thinking about. Think about how the smoke reached for the cloudy night sky. Think about the warm air on his face. Think about how grocery shopping, meal planning, laundry, all the things that life required to keep the wheels rolling forward.

The tomcat padded up to the stoop, just out of reach. He was a big fellow, orange as anything with a ragged ear and proud bearing.

“You’re a son of a bitch,” he told the cat, even as he reached into his coat and pulled out the treats he’d started keeping on him as a bribe. He placed one on the bottom step then returned to his spot at the top.

The cat could clearly smell it, nose going and tail lashing, but he didn’t move from his spot until Izzy got up and opened the front door. Even then, he just darted in, nabbed the treat then ran off back into the alley. Figured.

He watched the news, barely taking it in. Went to bed and didn’t sleep.

In the wee hours, he got his laptop and opened up a website.

***

“Annnnd there we go!” His advisor beamed at him. The guy was maybe twenty-five and he said ‘nontraditional student’ like he meant ‘geriatric dumbass’. Izzy had had to draw on every minute of his ancient court-mandated anger management class tips to keep quiet.

“Yes,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “I know how to get into the system. Got myself set for the next semester, but I’m closed out of anything that satisfies the arts requirement.”

“Ooooh!” His advisor blinked wetly at him. “Why didn’t you just say that?”

Breath in. Breath out. I don’t want to go to prison, I don’t want to go to prison, I don’t want to go to prison. It probably wasn’t what Cindy, his anger management trainer, had meant by a mantra, but it had done him a lot of good over the years.

“What can I take that’s still open?” He said through only slightly gritted teeth and, more remarkably, without swearing.

“Let’s see! Ooooh there’s ceramics!” He said after some clicking. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”

I don’t want to go to prison. I don’t want to go to prison.

“No.”

“It can be very therapeutic, my Nana loves making pots.”

I don’t want to go to prison. I don’t want to go to prison.

“What else is there?”

“Uh...closed...closed...” The bright smile started to dim a little. “Closed...wow, the arts are popular...mmm. There’s Drawing 1 still open. Do you want to learn how to draw?”

“Is quartering involved?” he muttered.

“Hm?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Great!”

Which was how Izzy found himself walking into an airy room filled with color-splotched surfaces, and the smell of paint hanging in the air. There were a few students milling around already, settling in front of easels. Some of them were chatting with each other or fussing over their supplies.

In the first semester, Izzy had attempted to gravitate toward the back as he would’ve with Ed back in the day, but quickly it became apparent that he needed to be closer to the front to read the slides and it was easier to pay attention that way anyway. If he wanted privacy, the front tended to be better for that anyway. No one wanted the very front. He usually had the entire space to himself.

Here it meant that everyone behind him would probably be able to see his work, but what the hell did he care about a bunch of kids knowing he couldn’t draw worth a damn? He just needed to get this class out from under him so he could fill his schedule with math and some of the engineering courses that he could begrudgingly acknowledge sounded interesting.

So up front it was. He set down the required sketchbook and pencils, tossed his much battered leather jacket over the back of the seat, set his travel mug to one side (just water, but he preferred it as cold as possible for as long as possible) and settled in with the expectation of suffering.

One of the students was buzzing around at the front of the class, clicking around on a laptop and then moving to shuffle papers. He was tall and dark-haired, dressed exactly like Izzy imagined a flighty art major would be: fashionably loose striped shirt, wide legged pants and a ridiculous silky bit of material tied around his throat. He was wearing an actual watch though which was unusual. The kids around Izzy seemed to either rely on their phones, smart watches or just not know what the hell time it was at any given moment.

“Hi,” the maybe-a-T.A. chirped right at him. “Thanks for sitting up front. I start to worry that I smell the way people avoid it.”

“I like to actually see shit,” Izzy shrugged.

“Important in any class, but doubly important in this one.”

“Think there’s a lot of powerpoint?” He asked, resigned.

“Nah,” the guy smiled brightly. “Why do you ask?”

“Something about the words on the screen gives me a headache.

Izzy waited for a comment about his age which seemed to be everyone’s go-to conversational topic, but the guy just nodded.

“Everyone needs a screen break sometimes. One of my friends uses these blue tinted glasses or something, swears by them to help screen headaches for what it’s worth.”

Before Izzy could ask a follow up question, a student ambled up to maybe-a-T.A.asking something about paper weights that Izzy didn’t care to follow. He checked his email on his phone, and then googled ‘blue tinted glasses’ they looked ugly as fuck.

“Okay!” maybe-a-T.A. said from the front of the class. “Nice to see a few familiar faces, but most of you are new to me. I’m Dr. Lucius Spriggs, welcome to Drawing 101. If this isn’t where you’re supposed to be, take the opportunity to find the exits located at the back of the room.”

Izzy closed his eyes for a second. This kid was the fucking professor. He had been fortunate enough in the first semester to at least be in the same age range (even once notably younger) than the teachers.

Maybe they handed out art degrees faster than ones in accounting. Izzy re-opened his eyes and accepted his fate. At least the syllabus made sense, set up practically as Dr. Spriggs went over it. He sat on the edge of a table as he did so, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankle.

“So that’s the boring stuff,” Dr. Spriggs tossed his copy of the syllabus over his shoulder with an impish smile. “Here’s the important thing. Art is all about creativity and experimentation and I love all that. I encourage it in any of your free drawing assignments, but here and now, in this class, my job is to teach you some fundamentals. That means I’m going to give you bowls of fruit and all that jazz and I want you to draw bowls of fruit. You can’t experiment until you know what you’re experimenting with.”

Izzy sat up a little straighter. That seemed remarkably straight forward.

“Art isn’t just making beautiful things,” he went on. “It takes dedication and practice like anything in your life you want to be good at. This class focuses on that part of it for your benefit. You know all that stuff about learning outcomes? That matters to me. I want you to leave knowing you can draw....yes?”

A girl timidly put her hand back down, “What if we can’t? I’ve never been able to draw anything before.”

“Then I get to look particularly impressive,” he said with a grin. “You will draw something before you leave my class, okay? But only if you put the effort in. Promise?”

She nodded shyly, pinking up. Izzy’s initial hopefulness faded. He was going to die of boredom or of triteness here.

“Cool. Okay, we’re going to do attendance to make sure everyone is actually in the right place and so I can put faces to all your names. If I get the pronunciation wrong, please correct me. If your pronouns aren’t in the system or recently changed, let me know either during roll or shoot me an email if you’d prefer.”

And then it was the tedious listing off. When Dr. Spriggs said, “Israel Hands?” He just lifted his hand enough to be acknowledged.

He assumed that be it for today. Most of the professors seemed to prefer their setup classes to be short and sweet, but Dr. Spriggs put down his laptop and picked up a pencil.

“So for today, we’re going to start out humble. Let’s talk sitting and saving our wrists.”

Izzy hadn’t thought about his posture in a long time and how he held a pencil hadn’t been a conscious thought since kindergarten. It felt good to stretch a little though and then Dr. Spriggs went around the room as the made lines on an initial sheet of paper to guide them a little more.

“Oh, good,” Dr. Spriggs stopped by him last on his way back up to the front. “You’ve got a good natural hand position, but you can turn your paper to get a good angle instead of your wrist.”

Izzy frowned, but adjusted his page. “Yeah?”

“Great! Israel, right?”

“Izzy,” he corrected absently. Moving the paper was easier. Huh.

“Izzy,” Dr. Spriggs repeated. “Did you use a ruler?”

“No?”

“Wow,” the laugh was gentle. “You’ve got a good eye and a steady hand.”

The compliment landed like a worm in his gut, squirming and wriggling uncomfortably.

“Thanks,” he muttered and almost hunched his shoulders, catching himself at the last second. Thankfully, the professor moved back to the front of the room and started wrapping up, talking about their first assignment.

He escaped without further incident.

The tomcat didn’t show up when he sat on the stoop that night. He’d taken to doing that more, even as it got colder. Sometimes the cat would sit just a few steps beneath him now, waiting patiently for the mouthfuls that Izzy would provide.

Alone, he went through the homework for what the school called ‘Corporate Finance’ and Izzy had already mentally dubbed ‘Rich Fuckers Get Richer’’ class. Jackie would love it. It was now how he pictured himself at fifty, sitting on the stoop like his father used to, chewing on straw instead of smoking, doing homework like he was the obedient teenager that he’d never been.

Then again, he’d pictured himself in a grave at fifty for most of this life, so what the fuck did he know? This was probably better than that.

#Ofmd fanfic #izzy hands/lucius spriggs #Izzy hands #lucius spriggs

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