Work Text:
Euphemia looks at the gate, comparing the address on the scrap of paper in her hand with the number in brass digits in front of her. It’s definitely this house, and it’s definitely the top floor she’s looking for.
She swears under her breath. It’s a garret, for fuck’s sake. A true-blue, genuine garret. She fishes in her pocket for the key she’d been given when she accepted the assignment - it wouldn’t do for a muse to have to knock on the door.
She’s beginning to wish now that she’d put a bit of effort in at Muse School. She’s not a morning person, which, if you ask her, is the root of her problem. She’d arrived at the final exam with twenty minutes to spare, hair a mess, eyes still half-shut. She hadn’t had time to get a coffee, and it turned out that the the only pen she’d brought had fluorescent orange ink. She’s pretty sure that the only reason they let her in at all was that she made her most pathetic, adorable pout at the invigilator.
She’d guessed most of the multiple choice. How was she suppose to know what to do if her assigned artist wasn’t inspired to creativity? Her assigned artist could pull his bloody head out of his hypothetical arse and inspire himself for all she cared.
The door unlocks easily and swings open on silent hinges, and Euphemia tiptoes up the stairs, and then up the steep ladder that leads to the garret room her assignment is renting.
“I hope I get a good assignment,” she remembers one of her school friends saying. “I’m hoping for a dancer, maybe. Or a sculptor. I love sculpture.”
“You love looking at naked men, you mean,” Euphemia had scoffed.
“I appreciate a fine artwork. What about you? What do you want?”
“I dunno,” had said Euphemia. There wasn’t a shortage of employment for muses, what with the proliferation of creative types around in this post-industrial age, but she couldn’t care less what her assignment turned out to be.
Or so she’d thought.
This, on the other hand, this is just ridiculous.
He’s asleep when she comes into the room. He looks to be in his late twenties, she guesses. His face is pale under a mop of dark curls, and his sooty eyelashes brush his cheeks. The moonlight that filters through the small window highlights his fine-boned features: the delicate jaw, the sharp cheekbones. He looks like he needs to eat more.
What a cliche. What a fucking cliche.
Euphemia sighs, adjusts the loose white shift she’s wearing, puts on her most professional inspiring face, and perches on the edge of the bed.
Sure enough, the shift in weight wakes him immediately. Poetic types have to be light sleepers - how else would they manage to write all that shit about starlight and so forth?
He blinks at her, dazed, and she’s completely unimpressed to see that his eyes are like ink, dark and glistening. Fucking window to his writer’s soul, and everything.
“Who’re you?” he slurs. Drunk, thinks Euphemia. Or maybe laudanum, although she vaguely remembers one of her lecturers saying laudanum had gone out of fashion.
“Nathaniel Ravenswood?” she asks. What a stupid name. Whose parents go around naming their child Nathaniel Ravenswood? She’s willing to bet that it’s a nom de plume.
“No no, that’s me,” he says. He doesn’t seem particularly bothered by the pretty, scantily-dressed woman sitting on the end of his bed. That’s artists for you.
“My name is Euphemia.” That sounds professional enough.
“‘S pretty. Is it Greek?”
Euphemia rolls her eyes. Silhouetted in the moonlight, he probably can’t see her expression. Of course it’s bloody Greek - she’s a muse, for God’s sake.
“I’m your muse,” she tells him, because he doesn’t seem like he’s about to ask. “We’re going to write some worldshaking literature together.”
“What, now?”
Euphemia shrugs. “Why not? Find inspiration in the bottle. Probably worked for Hemingway. I dunno.”
Nathaniel rubs his eyes with one hand and rolls out of bed, dragging his blankets with him. Euphemia has the urge to cook fattening foods for him. Look that those skinny ankles.
Of course, his writing equipment of choice is a typewriter. This isn’t even funny anymore. She reckons she can probably guess the rest of his history even without reading the file she’s got crumpled and tucked into her bra. Dropped out of a medicine degree in defiance of his tyrannical father, probably. Or maybe a law degree. The only woman he’s ever loved is probably either dead, or left his to pursue a modelling career or something.
She leaves Nathaniel to fall into his chair, and sits on the desk beside him, craning her neck to read the latest page of his magnum opus. “Why would I even bother?” he moans. “I’m the worst writer since...since ever. I may as well scrap this whole thing.”
Euphemia pats him soothingly on the shoulder. “Can’t be all bad. Let’s have a look.”
She squints at the page, trying to puzzle out sentences between his endless crossings out and margin notes. “You can’t call your protagonist Jimmy. Can’t we have like, Byron, or something? Raven? Something a bit...heavier, you know.”
It’s gratifying to see Nathaniel’s face light up. “I knew he was missing something. I was thinking he could be an English professor. And he writes poetry in his spare time.”
“Byron, then,” says Euphemia. “Like Lord Byron. A reference to the poet, you know?”
Nathaniel gropes on the desk for a pen, and scribbles something at the top of the page. His writing is completely illegible, even to Euphemia, who’s taken classes on reading the handwriting of artists. She can read Beethoven’s original manuscripts, for God’s sake.
“D’you want me to turn the light on?” she asks. “I know it’s romantic, writing by moonlight, but it’s shit for your eyesight.”
Nathaniel shrugs. He’s still frowning at the stack of paper by the typewriter. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m stuck.”
“Writer’s block?” Euphemia’s taken a class on that.
“Something like that. I just have no inspiration.”
“You could add a vampire,” Euphemia suggests. “It’s never too late to add a vampire.”
“Everyone does vampires, though.”
“It’ll be different. Like, he’ll feel bad about it.”
The faces Nathaniel makes when he’s thinking are adorable, to be honest. “I guess,” he says. “Add one, though? Aren’t there enough secondary characters?”
“You could make the protagonist a vampire,” Euphemia points out. “And then he can have an affair with one of his students!”
Nathaniel nods. The weight of millennia hung heavy on Byron’s shoulders, he types. Cliche or not, Euphemia has to admit that there’s something satisfying about the clack of typewriter keys.
Neither of them says anything for a little while. Nathaniel stares speculatively at him work, and Euphemia watches the way moonlight reflects off his hair. She can’t believe he’s actually wearing a nightshirt.
Abruptly, Nathaniel stands up and throws his arms around Euphemia, almost knocking her off the desk. She squeaks. “Thank you,” he says, breathless. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I know what I have to do now. Thank you for everything.”
“Um,” Euphemia says. She pats his hair awkwardly. It’s as soft as it looks. “You’re welcome? It’s my job.”
****
The title of the book in the window is left-aligned and in what Euphemia guesses is Helvetica. Heart of Blood, it reads, Nathaniel Ravenswood. Aren’t all hearts ‘of blood’? Euphemia wonders, but hey, there’s a sticker on the cover that says NO. 1 BESTSELLER.
She’s meant to be on her way to a job, but she can’t resist walking in and picking up the book. She wonders how it turned out. As she flips through it, something catches her eye. To my muse , the dedication says. You know who you are.