Chapter Text
Thirty one years earlier
Jekyll slipped under the covers and buried his head under the pillow. In the tall yew tree outside, a raven cawed loudly and he groaned.
On his bedside table sat a lamp atop a the two books that Lanyon had gotten for him.
His tensed muscles slowly relaxed as the wind outside screeched alongside the owls, sometimes breaking out of the harsh sound to whistle mournfully.
Jekyll turned over and gazed calmly at the ceiling. Blustery autumn evenings were his favourite time of year. The feeling of knowing that the entire natural world was preparing to sleep and relinquish its grasp on the world filled him with a wild freedom that sometimes felt uncontainable.
Autumn had always turned him into a black hole of sorts. The world was dying, and he was being filled with life. Something about the long hours of darkness overpowering the daylight energised him indescribably. Summer days made the air in his lungs go stagnant, but winter and autumn had such an enticing beauty about them that he couldn’t help but fall in love with the world, knowing that it was sighing its final breaths yet weaving a comforting cocoon of gold and orange for him.
All those memories, encased forever in leaves that would decompose in a matter of days. Jekyll was suddenly seized by a sense of desperation, and it was as if he could feel his entire existence slipping through his fingertips.
He was overcome by the thought that this would all someday end, and he would have to be content with the fact that he had spent his entire life living it for other people, hiding himself for fear of what they would think. He needed an escape. I need more time to work on my research, he thought, frustrated.
***
Midnight struck, as it often did, and Utterson’s shaking hands were wrapped around the neck of a bottle, and he hated himself for it. If he squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated, he could pretend he was throttling his own neck rather than that of the bottle.
He walked over his bed and sat down heavily, back pressed against the wall, watching the laces on his shoes dangle over the edge of the mattress. The dark green glass felt comfortingly cool under his fingertips, which made him feel guilty.
The thought made the room focus around him slightly. Guilty? Guilty?! Why was he feeling guilty, it wasn’t as if he was doing anything wrong. He should be permitted to drink.
Really? Scoffed a small voice in his head. At this hour? It’s past midnight, you’re going to be awfully hungover tomorrow and-
CRASH.
Utterson stared at the crackling glass on the floorboards and the wine that trickled down the opposite wall like blood. If time was working as normal, he couldn’t tell; the way the drink crept along the floorboards was far too slow. It seemed to stroke the ground like red fingers, clawing at the room. He dropped his head to his palms. He hadn’t meant to do that. A cold, shaky sensation ran through his muscles and he felt a slight jolt of anxiety at the thought of the increasingly violent outbursts he was having. The wind hissed outside.
***
A harsh crash made Jekyll jerk out of the dreamy haze between sleep and consciousness.
“Oh, for God’s sake-“ he growled irritably, then his blood ran cold. He stared warily at the small sliver of light that had knifed its way under the door.
Silently, he lifted back the covers and twisted the key of his desk drawers, the soft click sounding impossibly loud, then took it and slipped it into his hollowed out copy of the Bible. The jagged edges of the mutilated pages cradled the key, rustling when he shut the book.
There hadn’t been any further noises, or anything that might cause suspicion, but still his heart raced. Police? Was it his experiments? Had word finally gotten out? No, there wasn’t another living soul who knew about that. And, well, Jekyll thought, curling fingers around the revolver stashed beneath his mattress, if there was, he’d have to see about the ‘living’ part.
He pulled on a shirt and jacket and put the gun securely in the back of his belt, making for the door. Was this behaviour irrational? Undoubtedly. But in a building where the only usual noises were the faint scratching of pens on paper and the muffled thud of books, violence was rare. And, truth be told, Jekyll was itching for a little excitement.
***
Definitely not his finest moment, Utterson thought as he knelt in front of the toilet bowl in the bathroom down the hall.
He retched violently, elbows on the seat and hands clasped tightly behind his head.
“Oh, fuck,” he groaned between heaves. It felt as thought someone had poured liquid fire down his throat and then set about scooping it out by sticking a ladle down his oesophagus. The white tiles around him bit at his knees and he panted, regretting every time he’d ever taken a drink of anything stronger than water.
***
Jekyll peered around the door slowly. Down the hallway, he could see sharp stabs of light bouncing off the walls, glinting off of the doorknobs opposite. He crept down the hall, doing his best to keep quiet and wincing when he felt a board creak in protest beneath the threadbare carpet. As he approached, his hand moved to the back of his belt, feeling for the reassuring solidness of the metal.
The door crept closer, and Jekyll could see that it was unlocked and left slightly ajar. He told himself that he was being irrational, that there was nothing that could possibly warrant this reaction from him.
Then his eyes caught on the splash of red by the wall and it felt was though his head was a pumpkin and someone was scraping out his insides. Without a moment’s hesitation, he yanked the revolver from his trousers and shouldered the door fully open, standing in the middle of the room, turning in circles, pointing the gun wildly.
Then he realised that being the only person holding a gun in a room full of blood was probably not the best idea he’d ever had.
The door hinges squealed.
***
There was someone in his room. That was the first thing that Utterson noticed as he stumbled back down the hallway with the last little shred of dignity he had left. He didn’t know how he knew that. Could be the alcohol, he thought resignedly. He certainly wasn’t usually this paranoid. He door was ajar, just as he’d left it, but the comforting sliver of moonlight that seeped into the corridor had turned cold.
Utterson stepped inside with a boldness that seemed wholly unnatural to him then took an involuntary step backwards as he saw the intruder, cracking his skull against his door.
He opened his mouth to speak but only managed to make a squeak strangled by his state of inebriation. His mid ran through a whirlwind of thoughts, trying to fix a name to the face that he saw before him, finally settling on the memory of the only meaningful encounter he’d had with another human being in months.
He glanced down at the pair of ink-splattered shoes on the intruder’s feet. The man looked at him with the expressionless yet desperate eyes of someone caught red handed. The man threw his hands up in frustration, looking like he was having the worst night of his entire life. “Oh, fuck me,” he swore.
Utterson looked him up and down, taking in his sleep-rumpled hair, his cheekbones, his dark eyes and resisted the urge to-
“Gladly.” Shit. Utterson tried his hardest to look utterly mortified, but he didn’t have the will nor the remaining brain cells to do so. See, these were the benefits of drinking, that his mouth seemed to do all the work without his brain interfering, and he could say whatever he liked, since he didn’t have to worry about the consequences until he was sober again, and sobriety was becoming increasingly elusive.
“What was that?”
A tiny part of Utterson wished that Jekyll had heard him, but he managed to keep himself from allowing his tongue to rob him of his good judgement.
“Nothing.”
“Alright then,” Jekyll said absentmindedly. His brows furrowed as he turned from the red mess on the wall and back to Utterson. He gestured between them, words failing him. Squinting at Utterson, he found it entirely implausible that this scrawny individual was capable of any type of violence that resulted in splashes of blood tainting everywhere he laid eyes on.
Jekyll looked at Utterson, mildly concerned about the way the colour seemed to have been sucked out of his cheeks.
“You- what’s your name again? Ah, Gabriel-“ he started, then realised he was still holding the revolver. He stuck it awkwardly in his belt again. Utterson gaped like a goldfish, which under different circumstances would have made Jekyll laugh. Jekyll looked at the small shards of glass scattered around the room and his brain finally caught up, knocking around his skull reproachfully at the strain Jekyll was putting it under.
Utterson frowned distantly, wondering if he was hallucinating. He’d imagined the gun, that was for sure, because who in their right mind carried a revolver with them indoors, in a place where the most violent thing that had ever happened was the time when one of the students had been hit by a falling tree branch?
“Um,” he mumbled intelligently, meaning to say “Are you real?”
As Jekyll examined the dumbfounded man from a distance, he realised that he was well and truly drunk.
Realising he could twist the situation to his advantage, Jekyll stood straighter and put on a slight smile, though his eyes remained wary and cold.
“Are you quite alright?” he asked kindly, a frown flitting across his face when the words felt more genuine than he’d intended then to be. Utterson nodded jerkily and Jekyll took a smooth step forwards. “You just need some sleep,” he said quietly. “Forget this ever happened, hmm? I was never here.” Utterson opened his mouth to protest but thought better of it.
Jekyll watched with hard eyes as the man collapsed onto the grey sheets of the bed that stood below the wall against the wall below the window.
Once he was certain the Utterson was asleep, he knelt on the floorboards and looked around for something to mop the wine up with. Eyes settling on the sleeping form in front of him, he carefully eased a pillow out from under a mess of dark hair. He stripped off the pillowcase and replaced the pillow, lip curling at the way his hands seemed to act unnecessarily gently.
Jekyll scrubbed at the wine, torn between getting away as quickly as possible and taking the time to observe his surroundings.
The room was sparsely decorated, the only furniture being a wardrobe, a bed and a desk. The walls had no pictures, instead, maps of cracks sprawled over the paintwork. There were no shelves, and Utterson had made haphazard stacks of books against the walls and the legs of his table. No fireplace, either. Jekyll frowned, only then noticing the chill that snaked through the air.
No fire, in the middle of the coldest months of the year? He thought to himself, then distantly wondered why he cared.
He closed the door softly behind him and tossed the pillowcase into his fireplace, watching the flames lick hungrily at the blood-red stains.