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“Green Stripe or Royal Glendee, Gabe?” Jekyll brandishes two near-empty, cheap, whisky bottles.
“What’s closest to being out?”
“Green Stripe.”
“Then that. Might as well finish it.”
“It’ll be a large measure.”
“Thank god.”
Jekyll laughs and pours out two tumblers of Scotch whisky, both fuller than they possibly should be.
“Ah… it’s been that sort of day, I see.”
Utterson steps inside the door of their tucked away dormitory. He’s braced himself for the change in temperature from whistling hallways to the whip-cracking fire, but it still makes him shiver. He rather ungraciously deposits his satchel on the floor and drops onto his single bed, the metal frame croaking a complaint at having to hold his weight.
He reaches a hand out for the promised drink, to which Jekyll sighs out a wry laugh at, before handing the fullest tumbler to the law student. Utterson turns his head to the side in order to tap his glass to Jekyll’s, then the floor, then mutter a cheers, all before taking a sip. It burns his oesophageal tract enough to know it’s working, and is tame enough in the pit of his stomach to know it’s cheap. He lets his eyes land on the other body in the room with him, a certain, familiarly specific interest in his gaze which follows Jekyll in his saunter across the room. He squints at the other man’s shoulders — the ‘glenohumeral joint’ as Jekyll taught him — as if in preparation to speak.
“You gave me the bigger measure.”
“You look like you need it.”
“How awfully observant of you… you don’t need it then?”
“Hm? No, I had a glass before you got back.”
“Harry…”
Jekyll raises a pale palm in surrender (the other still clasped over the top of his glass) and sits on the creaky bed opposite — a replica of Utterson’s — having discarded his tailcoat on a hook.
“It was one glass, Gabe.”
“But you know what happens. You’ll have another with me, then another, and…”
“And what about you?”
It comes out sharper than Jekyll had intended, he knows it, he regrets it, but neither of them want to address the conjunctive left lying in the open. ‘And’ what? Both men know what Utterson is referring to, both men know why it wasn’t answered.
‘And then you lose yourself, Harry.’
Utterson sighs and concedes. “I know, I know… I do the same… I’m sorry.”
“No I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to come across like that; it was harsh.” Jekyll shakes his head in firm denial of Utterson’s apology, speaking quickly and animatedly. “And we’ve both had bad days, we’re both a little stressed and tired… it’s fine.”
“We’re just… blowing off steam together.”
Utterson immediately rethinks what he’s said, realising the undercurrent of innocent words and wanting to take the blasted things out of the air, but looking over to see the soft red bloom on Jekyll’s cheeks makes him fumble his desired apology, resulting in silence.
Instead, studying him as he would a textbook, he watches the way Jekyll swallows; sees his Adam’s Apple bob as he downs more of the burning whiskey.
He watches the way Jekyll runs his fingers around the tumbler rim; hears the slight shine of the glass against flesh.
He watches the way Jekyll swills the orange liquid round in his tumbler, like he does with test tubes of hazardous bromine; smells the rich odour that mimics the burn in his throat.
He watches the way Jekyll knocks back the liquor with barely a wince; feels the coarse cotton sheets scrunch under his palm as he sits up.
He watches the way Jekyll crosses the room with purpose; tastes the scalpel-edge tension and opens his mouth to comment on its metallic flavour.
But Jekyll has gone in the other direction. He walks to his desk and pulls out a stack of papers from the drawer. He can only watch with dying light in his eyes as the other man begins writing, some form of study or other. A practical essay, maybe.
Utterson’s hands unfurl from the starched sheets, his glass hits the wooden side table and he’s sure he sees Jekyll flinch just a little.
Or maybe that was his pen starting a new line of doctor’s jargon Utterson wishes he understood, to be able to talk to the solely purpose-driven man, to be allowed into his life.
“Harry… you know I didn’t… I didn’t mean…”
“There’s nothing for it to mean, Utterson, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
Utterson’s heart drops, mingling with his liver; Jekyll never calls him by surname. Not in their own privacy. In his thoughtless haste, he fails with words again. “Harry, please, you know what I’m referring to .”
“I don’t, Utterson.”
“ Harry, please, that’s not… that’s not my name… that’s not what you call me…”
Jekyll puts his pen down. His lungs push out air so forcefully that his shoulders draw in, and he turns in his chair with a gaze that lets on a little too much of his emotions; hurt, mainly, and a mild anger that seems alien in the usually placated man. He tries his sentence again. “I don’t know what you mean, Gabe.”
Utterson can’t comment on it now — for fear of seeming selfish — but the clipped tone with which his name is spoken isn’t quite natural either. He glances up at the chemist with an appreciative half smile, before looking away with shame. “…I’m sorry Harry, I really am…”
Jekyll sighs, laughs slightly regretfully and stands up, finally coming over to Utterson’s bed and sending the other man shuffling back on it to make room.
“Okay, I understand… we’ve both had tiring days, and we took it out on each other, and now we feel guilty.” Jekyll muses, apologetically.
Utterson sighs with relief and reaches across the bed in a rare display of guiltless physical affection, pulling Jekyll into his arms and cradling the glenohumeral joint he watched so intently before.
“You’re right, and I’m sorry.”
“Okay Gabe, stop saying sorry now.”
Utterson laughs.
“Alright, sor-“
“I swear to God above, Gabriel.”
At some point between laughter, they make it back over to the aptly named ‘liquor desk’ (because all it is is a drawer in Jekyll’s desk that holds varying liquor bottles of varying emptiness). Once there, more glasses get poured — perhaps unwisely — and more faintly delirious laughter ensues.
The tableaux scene that unfolds is all-too-familiar for it to be dismissed; waistcoats loosely unbuttoned. Coloured slips of fabric making graceful whispers as they fall from around their necks. Shirts open just a little lower than acceptable. The faint clinking of glasses being discarded with dregs of liquor still left in them. The further knocking of said glasses as a body is hauled up to sit on the desk. Heavy breath laboured against delicate skin and jolting awake goosebumps that tingle through both men like static shocks. Belts undone with hasty hands and enough noise to serve as a startling reminder.
And the play ends in the same way it always does, warm bodies tucked up in starched sheets — the same starched sheets — and each other.