The Glass Scientists micro-fanfictions

Rumours

Robert very much wished that he was surprised to hear that Henry had spent yet another night at the Society rather than going home to sleep, or even really going home to fulfill the very basic human needs that he so consistently denied himself. In fact, if he were to stretch his memory, he couldn't even recall the last time he had seen the man drink a simple glass of water. He was concerned for the man, and if the vaguest snippets of conversation he had with others over the matter were anything to go by, his concern was rightly placed.

With these concerns fresh in his mind, he strode purposefully towards the office of the man in question. His strides were almost exaggerated in their length, but he had gotten it into his mind that if he didn't get this over and done with quickly and right that very minute he might not have the chance to in the future. Robert did not want to think too long on the implications of this.

He didn't even think to knock, he knew the man long enough to skip the pretenses and formalities of this.

The very first thing he noticed was the clothes scattered about the floor with no real rhyme and reason. There was a scattering of both day and evening wear, waistcoats - one of a familiar red, the other of a gaudy green that he couldn't say he recognised - and all manner of layers that one really ought to be wearing in a setting like this. If that was all he had seen, then perhaps he could have come up with some innocent sort of explanation.
But then he saw him.
On a lounge that he had, himself, spent many a good hours seated upon, was a shape covered not all that well by a familiar coat. The fellow, as much of him that he could see, was as pale as a corpse, so much so that he could have assumed him to have been no longer in the world of the living had he not been snoring up a small storm, and smaller than he had anticipated. There was not all that much in the way of facial features that he could identify, though this was more due to it having been obscured by a mess of oddly bring yellow that he would have had to call hair. One of the man's legs swayed as he breathed, poking out from the coat that was not offering nearly enough cover, looking obscenely bare.
Before the thought that the man before him, who he could only assume was the elusive Mr. Edward Hyde that he had yet the misfortune to meet, was completely and utterly nude, a coat being the only thing to protect his modesty, the horrible little fellow shifted.

"Get the hell out of here, you bloody bastard," the man growled, his words slurred somewhat from sleep, raising his head in just away that permitted Lanyon a glance of eyes that were far too large and green, and, worse still, of the teeth that he flashed, too sharp and in a mouth that was far too wide, "Can't you see we're tryin' to sleep in here?"

Of course, he had said we in an innocent enough Freudian slip, but that was certainly not how it was taken.

Robert slammed the door shut in a display that showed little regard for those he had disturbed from a much needed slumber.
His mind was abuzz with thoughts that he really did not want to be having. Dreadfully ungentlemanly thoughts of jealousy, envy, and a strange sort of anger that he had not been expecting to have come on quite as strongly as it had done.

The man's retreat was not as careful as his arrival had been, but it was certainly faster. He wanted to get away from the room, the den of sin that he had certainly not anticipated, his face flushing in an odd combination of rage and flustered embarrassment. His skin felt as though it was crawling with these, yet for the life of him he could not understand why this was so.
Henry was his friend, and he could spend his hours doing whatever or whoever he pleased! But that made him feel bad in a way he couldn't place name to the feeling.

It was convenient that at that very moment, a small collection of Lodgers just happened to be milling about in the corridors, not quite ready to start their day of work. Robert approached them, putting on a good show of appearing casual and nonchalant, two things that he most certainly was not.

"Excuse me, fellows," he began, not noticing how pleading his tone was, assuming he was sounding wonderfully cool and collected, "What do you know about Dr. Jekyll and that Mr. Hyde of his?"

"Well," spoke up one of the men, Mr. Griffin, who had taken to donning clothes that covered him to an excess, a recent addition of a large, floppy hat making it hard to tell that there was a man underneath all the clothes at all, "I've noticed that Hyde sneaks into Dr. Jekyll's office late at night when he doesn't think anyone was around to see him, and I still haven't seen him leave afterwards, and this has been a reoccurring occurance." A beat passed before he added a nonchalant, "Not that I have been watching them or anything nefarious like that." Behind his dark glasses it would have been easy to think there was a flash of mischievousness in where his eyes logically were.

"Oh yes!" continued another, as if this had reminded him of something else. The speaker of this was Mr. Luckett, who seemed to be consistently smoke stained, the occasional ember he hadn't extinguished making its presence known, his facial hair seeming to have been somewhat scorched. "I've seen him crawling out of the doctor's office window at all hours of the night, don't think he comes back that way, but it happens. It's like they don't care what happens to the lad as long as he's able to come back the next night."

"And I have heard," a third began as soon as the other had fallen silent long enough. Any exhaustion that Dr. Helsby might have had in regards to being awoken long before he was ready had vanished, pushing his glasses further up his nose in an oddly conspiratorial manner, "That Hyde fellow has been receiving a good chunk of Jekyll's money, and has been throwing it around all willy-nilly at the Society's expense!" For one that was not fond of the talk of money woes, he knew there was good gossip to be had from it.  He always was one for a good sharing of gossip, even when he did not necessarily know who it was about. "Even with everything as it is he is still more than willing to give his kept boy enough to keep him happy! Oh, how I'd love to read what goes on in their mind!"

"Now, I ain't heard no claims that grand," the final man spoke up, sounding less conspiratorial, "Bu' I 'ave heard the two bickerin' somethin' fierce late at night." Mr. Bird seemed somewhat reluctant to continue, but the others watched him too eagerly to fall silent. With his big, floppy sunhat and grandfatherly disposition, he always did seem to be of the trustworthy sort. "Bu' then I always sees that Hyde stridin' off all smug and lookin' like he won the Crown Jewels, all swaggerin' and happy like."

This was all too much for poor Robert. It was precisely what he had been expecting, but he wished very much that he hadn't asked.
"Very well," came Lanyon's response, his mouth so straight against the emergence of emotion that one could rule a line with them, "Thank you, gentlemen. Now, I must be off. Good day to you."
He walked away from the group with a heart far heavier than it had been, and an excess of questions buzzing around his mind like a swarm of angry bees. There were some questions, he reasoned to himself, that really were better off remaining unanswered.