Work Text:
It was blasphemous not to leave one’s abode on a sunny English day, even more so when the day transpired in the middle of January and connected the bleakness of winter with the vibrant exuberance of spring. Henry Jekyll was certainly not an exception to the rule.
Since he had decided to lay Hyde to rest forever, Jekyll had regained his high spirits. His charity work further calmed his conscience, and the return of his friendly visits soothed his predisposition to loneliness. The past few months had been wonderful, and there was little, he thought, that could change that now. He hardly ruminated on the murder nowadays, and the prospect itself had become dull to the public, overtaken by newer, more exciting crimes.
It was on this bright January day, when the frost from the night before melted into the sprouts of grass and coated the blades in an iridescent shine, that Jekyll took a walk through Regent’s Park. It was comparatively empty, bar the usual people on a stroll, also enjoying the warmer weather.
Jekyll listened to the chirpings of the birds, loud to his ear and a melody to his heart. He could recognise some of the warbling notes, and smiled to himself when he passed by a tree with a considerable number of yellow and grey birds perched atop, half of which burst forth in a spring of bright colours and painted the sky.
He came by an empty bench a few scores ahead and decided to rest upon it for a while. It was sturdy beneath him and large enough to lean back and observe the sky above.
The sun was a burning yellow and high in the sky, occasionally covered by a wispy, translucent cloud, but otherwise alone in the vast blue sea. The light breeze lapped at his hair and at the trees’ leaves, rustling them gently and adding to the song of nature that could be heard throughout the park. Somewhere, Jekyll could’ve sworn he could smell the distinct scent of roses.
The scenery was incredibly peaceful, and it poured out a wave of serenity that could be felt throughout the park. It was simple enough to let oneself get lost in thought, and as Jekyll’s eyes wandered, so did his mind.
It was harmless at first, remembering his most recent aid at a church gathering, and one a week ago, where he delivered crucial medicine to a group of dying children. These sedated his conscience in the most pleasant of ways, allowing his thoughts to indulge a little more.
His first hazard was trailing the pathways of his mind into his dinner parties and friendly meetups. They had been tame for the majority; however, his latest excursion with his close friends, Lanyon and Utterson, had been more on the wild side.
It started with a fruitful dinner between the three, reflecting that warm, genuine friendship they shared for so many years together. Jekyll remembered Utterson looking around with the slightest hint of a smile on his face, presumably at ease that everything seemed to be back to normal. He engaged in conversation more than any acquaintance would expect of him, as he was most comfortable around the pair.
It had been incredibly nice, and they shared the finest vintage the doctor owned after dinner. Well, vintages. They had gotten through two and a half of the burgundy bottles together, which ended up how it usually did: slurred words, an argument between Lanyon and Jekyll, and Utterson having to break them apart.
Utterson’s disappointment with the other two gentlemen was not a new affair, but it never failed to annoy the lawyer a considerable amount. Especially when he was a little more inebriated than usual, and had the confidence to reprimand Jekyll for it whenever Lanyon would leave early out of spite.
“You really ought to get along better with our dear Lanyon. We’ve been close friends for so long, I cannot fathom as to why you’re so adamant on stirring strife every time you see each other.”
“We’ve never gotten along, Utterson,” Jekyll had answered, somewhat gruffly from the amount of liquor he had drunk.
“Well, sometimes I wish you did.” The lawyer’s response had been more melancholy than expected, and Jekyll looked at him with an odd expression. The two had stared at each other for a long moment, the air filled with an unnamed tension that had been felt between the pair before. Once, a long, long time ago, on a night just like that one.
On that bench in the park, his mind turned onto an avenue that had long since been abandoned and riddled with cobwebs, paving its way down the lane that had once been deliberately forgotten.
Down to that forsaken evening, where the wine had been sweeter than sugar and the two students, fresh into university, had also stared into each other’s eyes. As Jekyll’s mind strayed, the animal within him licked the chops of memory; of how he had leaned in and how saccharine his darling Gabriel’s lips had tasted, stained a deep, lusty red from the drink. How soft the man’s skin felt beneath his touch, evidence of his rising status in the world and stately build.
Involuntarily, Jekyll hummed to himself, remembering the way his hands had delicately removed the buttons of the other’s shirt to reveal the vast, warm skin underneath. Gabriel had never once been so vulnerable around another man, never once whispered so deeply and smoothly to another, and it spiked a surge of pride inside the young medical student’s heart.
If he thought long and hard about it, Jekyll could just about imagine how it must feel endeavouring to reinitiate such an action again. The lawyer had aged handsomely, with his soft hair always in order and a rugged face that shone with a gentle and reputable disposition. Not only that, but his voice had roughened in consequence to his pipe use, and only a saint could refrain from imagining the sounds that could be coaxed from the lawyer.
Sounds that would rival the harmonies of the birds around the doctor in the park, sounds that he would do anything to recreate from that fateful night in the dorms. The fateful night when he had touched and licked and kissed and worshipped his divine archangel of a gentleman. The gentleman who had allowed him such an honour and instilled in him the pride of a lifetime.
At the very moment of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over him, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. It was sudden, and it was quick. These passed away, and left Jekyll faint; and then, as the faintness subsided, he began to be aware of a change in the temper of his thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, even worse than those he had just plunged into.
When the doctor looked down, his clothes hung formlessly on his shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on his knee was corded and hairy.
He shuddered in terror, as he was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before, he had been safe of all men’s respect, wealthy, beloved—the cloth lying for him in the dining room at home, a dear friend of Utterson himself— and now, he was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.
He should have blamed himself, but Hyde blamed Utterson. It was Jekyll’s only weakness; it always had been. Since the moment those soft, warm eyes lay upon him in grade school, there was no viable manner of turning away from such a strong temptation. It had sparked the first of that duplicitous life he led, and grew to the point where not even the single debaucherous encounter between the two would satiate the drooling jaws of his desire. He would always crave more, and it would never be enough.
With a dissatisfied grunt, Hyde drew up his clothes to the best of his ability and made haste to find a hansom. Enough thinking about that damned lawyer; he had to find safety before he was spotted by Scotland Yard. There was hardly any way to indulge in such pleasures while hanging by a rope. Perhaps another day.