someone: i'm jekyll/hyde!

me: 🤔 a middle-aged, repressed, gay, victorian socialite who developed a drug addiction in a vain attempt to regain your lost youth?????

the year is 1889

i’m not sure who you are but. i’ve read the book. i’ve read it many times over the past five years, as i first fell in love with the book when i was still in high school. i’ve seen many of the film and musical adaptations. i’ve read the plays. i’m even wearing a shirt with the full text on it as i’m typing this

baby

In the early hours of the morning, while the rest of the world sleeps and dawn is still far in the distance, Lucy Harris lays awake beside Edward Hyde, who dozes peacefully. She smiles. Like this, it’s easy to see him as his old self, the kinder persona who first greeted her those weeks ago in the Rat, and she reaches out to brush loose hair from his face. 

He stirs, turning this way and that, before those piercing eyes open, causing her to pull her hand back and stiffen. Gentleman prefer their sleep, and disturbing them—whether to get water, or get food, or just get air, going out to stand under the stars and wonder at them—is a surefire way to earn a scolding, if not worse.

“I–I’m sorry,” she says, but there is fondness in his gaze that gives her the courage to ask, “I was just wonderin’—how do you do it? Change your face, I mean. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

He sits up and averts his gaze and her heart thuds in her ears. 

“—I’ll show you”, Hyde finally says, pushing himself out of bed. “But it’s not something for the faint of heart.”

She tilts her head back, meets his gaze, and with a smile, says, “you’ve found the right audience, then.”