A/N: This was originally published at TC under a different pen name back on January 30, 2006. Hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or anything General Hospital related. I receive no money for this.

Title: Faded Blue Denim
Prompt: 5 am-race to the finish.

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Elizabeth Spencer stared at the nearly completed canvas in front of her. It had been ages since she had painted anything at all, or so it seemed. She had tried to paint off and on throughout the years since her first marriage had ended but everything ended up flat, emotionless and she had usually scrapped it before completion. But this painting...this one was different.

She had gotten off her shift at the hospital at seven, come straight home to an empty, quiet apartment. Her husband, Lucky was out on the late shift, her son Cameron was visiting his great-aunt Bobbie for the next few days so she was all alone. It was the solitude that prompted her to paint, she mused as she added a bit more of the beautiful midnight blue color she had so painstakingly blended to the top left corner of the canvas.

She had not really been alone for – well, she wasn't even sure how long it had been. She was always taking care of her family or working until she nearly dropped so she never really got the alone time she used to crave. Her best paintings had always come out of an all night painting bender. And tonight was no exception.

She had given herself a deadline to finish the painting for the night. First it had been midnight. She told herself that she could begin the preliminaries for her vision and then come back later and finish it another night but once she started applying the paint to the canvas, she had become like a woman possessed. She needed to keep going. The deadline had changed throughout the night first the midnight deadline then one in the morning, then two until finally she realized she wouldn't be able to rest until she finished.

Her husband would be getting home a little after five a.m. and she allowed herself until five exactly to work on the canvas. Lucky, although he would smile at her when he learned of her mad painting spree, she knew he wouldn't really understand why she needed to paint like she was in a marathon. Once she held that brush in her hand, nothing short of an emergency would pry it from her fingers.

Elizabeth ran her paint splattered fingers through her chocolate colored hair, not caring that specks of color now lodged in between the strands and surveyed her work. It was almost done. All it needed was a little something more, but what? She glanced to her left and saw the little wall clock that Lucky had mounted on the living room wall. It was four forty-five.

She had fifteen minutes until Lucky would get off his shift at the police station.

Fifteen minutes to figure out just what she needed to add to the painting to make it perfect.

Fifteen minutes until she had to hide what she had done.

It hit her at that moment what she needed to add while she stared worriedly at the lacquered black clock hands. She needed to add just a little more color to the middle of the canvas and she would be done. She smiled as she grabbed her tubes of blue and white and began to blend. She needed a softer color than what she had already mixed. It needed to be just the right shade, she mused as she swirled her paintbrush in the new hue she had blended and quickly dabbed the tip of the brush on a spot to the middle right of painting. She took a step back and smiled at her work. She never really felt particularly cocky about her work. Her painting of the Wind was her favorite painting that she had ever done and no matter what whenever she saw it she felt a surge of pride but she had never felt exactly this way about her work before. She felt...an odd sense of completion when gazing upon it.

Elizabeth had obsessed over it all throughout the work day. One moment she was filling out some mundane paperwork at the nurse's station and the next she was interrupted by a low voice saying her name. Her eyes met and held with a pair of startling clear ice blue eyes that were pleading with her to listen.

The shock of seeing him so close to her, his face a mask of concern, was quickly overridden by the warning in his voice. He wanted her to be careful of Manny Ruiz. He warned her of the danger other man posed, saying he seemed a changed man but in actuality he was still a danger to all that came near him.

"Be careful, Elizabeth," he had said in that soft voice that she used to find herself helplessly drowning in. Strange, it still had the same effect. She had nodded, focusing fully on his eyes trying to decide just how many different shades of blue one man could have in his irises. She had almost forgotten how arresting his eyes could be up close. As soon as he left her, the muse had struck and she had grabbed the first blank sheet of paper she could find and jotted down some words, phrases that would help her later that night to remember precisely what she wanted. She fully intended to paint after she got home and had a quick dinner.

Now standing before the completed canvas she could not stop herself from grinning. It was the last bit of color that did it. It was that last addition that made her painting complete. It was like the color of faded denim and the exact shade of the little flecks that appeared in his eyes.

The vast arrays of blues that crisscrossed across each other like shooting stars, some almost seeming silver in certain lights, were to her at least an obvious homage to him. She hoped deep down that her husband would not see the similarities. She would play hell trying to make him understand that another man's eyes had been her inspiration.

Elizabeth was putting away her supplies and had just finished cleaning her brushes when she heard a key in the front door. Lucky came through the door quietly, as though uncertain if his wife were awake. "Hi," he called out with a warm smile. She smiled back. "I saw the light on from outside but thought you might have fallen asleep with the light on again."

She was about to reply when Lucky took a few steps toward her, stopping momentarily to drop his coat and some folders on an empty sofa cushion before reaching her. "You've been painting all night," he stated rather than asked, all the while staring at the now drying canvas. "Inspiration struck?"

"It's been a while," she murmured under her breath, hoping that the true inspiration of her artwork was not so apparent in the slashes of color on the canvas.

Her husband chuckled softly and slid his arm around her, pulling her form flush against his. "Very abstract. I didn't think you liked those...?"

Her smile was weak. "I do sometimes."

"This color," Lucky told her, pointing in the area of the soft blue denim color that the fleck in another man's eyes had inspired. He did not notice his wife's slightly worried expression. "It's beautiful." His voice was full of wonder as he kissed her temple and pulled her into the warm embrace of his arms.

Her head was angled on his shoulder so she could still look upon her newest creation. She thought of Jason's eyes filled with concern for her well being and she somehow felt like crying. "Yes," she whispered in a choked voice. "Very beautiful."

-The End

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