The occasional discordant note of the piano, so well overdue for a tuning that nobody could rightly recall it ever actually being tuned before, floated up uninvited into the tiny little bedroom that Lucy Harris could not quite bring herself to call her home. She could not rightly say whether it was the silence or the infrequent crash of the piano that was playing worse on her nerves. Worse, still, was the fact that she wasn't even entirely sure of why her skin was crawling with more discomfort than she had gotten used to ignoring. All she knew was try as she might, she just could not bring herself to settle no matter how many times she told herself that, really, she would feel a lot better after a little sleep. Mornings bringing new days and fresh chances, and all those nice little optimistic sayings that she truthfully could not claim to believe in anymore.
And then the floorboard just outside her door squeaked. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was what she heard, she had spent far too many nights listening out for the sound to not be able to recognise it. Her breath hitched uncomfortably and she skittered as far from the door as she could, drawing the flimsy dressing gown around her like armor.
Then, as she knew it would no matter how much she wished it wouldn't, the door swung open.
The shape in the gloom was only human based on the assumptions of probability. It would probably be a person that opened her door, so the think that lurked in the shadows would probably also be human then. Not that the figure was doing much to confirm or deny her theory. The fact that she, unfortunately, recognised the way the terrible, tacky, tinted round glasses that the Spider wore glinting through the gloom.
But there was something just a little off about the whole thing. She usually had to crane her neck to (pretend to) meet the man's gaze but in that moment, instead, she was actually a little taller than the figure.
The knot in her chest loosened immensely as the woman let out a sigh that did not quite manage to take away with it all of her earthly woes.
"For a moment, I thought it was somebody else!" Lucy exclaimed on the tail end of her sigh. She clutched at her chest to try and still her racing heart now that she was able to acknowledge things weren't as bad as she thought.
"For a moment," came the almost singsong reply from the man, "It almost was."
Edward Hyde, uninvited, made his way into the little room, his lips upcurled in the sort of grin that suggested mischievous and nefarious behaviours. With the sort of theatrical flourish, he flicked his hand out before reaching for the glasses he wore, flickering his fingertips against the glass before removing them from his sickly pale face. He held them out in such a way that made several aspects clear all at once; the bridge was holding together by dear life, one of the arms had been twisted in such a way that he had clearly been trying very hard to balance it, and that his knuckles were bloody and beginning to bloom with fresh bruises.
"Ugly aren't they?" he mused of the glasses, holding them up to the flickering light, "Can't imagine why he was so determined to keep them."
And with this said, Hyde tossed the glasses out the window into the street below to be hopefully trampled into into nothingness by passing merrimakers of the night.
The odd little man's gleeful delight faltered somewhat when he caught the woman's eye, however, and his grinning shifted away into an exaggerated pout. All of his emotions seemed to be exaggerated in one way or another, so Lucy had needed to rather swiftly get used to being able to recognise what was real and what was intentionally exaggerated. In fact, as a result, Lucy had found herself one of the three people out there that could accurately judge the sincerity of Hyde's (and Jekyll's) emotions, the other two being Gabriel John Utterson and Emma Carew.
"Lucy, my dear, you needn't look at me like that," Hyde grumbled (to a Lucy who had not actually realised she'd been looking at him in any particular way), "He's an insufferable bastard that's asking for a hell of a lot worse than what I did this time. I've half a mind to start plucking Spider legs right off next time he so much as looks at me."
"That sounds a bit dramatic." Lucy deadpanned.
"I earned as much drama as I damn well choose."
"Of course you have," she returned he, humouring him, "Now, are you gonna tell me what-"
"You know the sort of man he is, Lucy," Hyde began in what he would have liked to imagine was a dry deadpan, even if it did miss the mark completely and entirely, "And then to make matters worse, he tried to turn it around and act like I was somehow worse than he was! Bitching about how terrible I was for keeping you all for myself and all manner of similar such accusations! First of all, do I not pay more than enough to keep the hounds at bay so nobody puts their filthy hands on you while you're still allowed to have fun! Secondly, who does he think he is, trying to act like he has any moral superiority over me? He's nothing more than a pathetic, weedy little worm that hopes everyone thinks he is better than everyone else because he's rich enough to pay people into believing anything he wants them to."
"The Spider's rich enough to pay folks into believin' him?" a sceptical Lucy questioned, an eyebrow raised with an artfulness that came from a performer.
"Of course he is! He's just a whiny rich kid that's never had to grow up and so now he's making everyone else miserable because he thinks he can get away with it!" The man, erratic at the best of times, threw his hands up in the air in an exaggerated show of exasperation.
"How the devil d' you know that then?" came the reply, delivered (she would like to think) with a far more normal amount of movements and volume.
A dark look crossed the odd fellow's features and Lucy found herself wondering if she might have crossed some boundary she didn't know about or understood. This was as terribly common issue, for she was not entirely sure of whether Hyde, himself, knew what was going to set himself off until after the fact. Trying to talk with him was a massive guessing game where if she guessed wrong (on a guess that may have been right on any other day) he might explode.
As for Hyde, himself, he could not help but recall far too many conversations where he (or technically it was Jekyll, not that there really was a difference when they were to look back at a time before the doctor's great big and terrible and fantastic mistake was made) and Emma were forced to remember that Simon Stride (which was somehow no more or less fitting than the title of Spider that he claimed was) existed. Emma's bemoaning over the fact that she had simply thought of them as friends and he had gone and spoiled it, refusing to accept her own feelings and, more importantly, lack thereof as just as valid as his were, leaving him to be just a looming creep that would not leave her alone no matter how many times she informed him on no uncertain terms that she did not have any romantic feelings for him. Henry's annoyance over the man's unworthy belittling of him, a refusal to accept that they were equals, Stride's certainty that he was better than everyone else because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth that it would have been better for everyone if he had just choked on it and saved everyone the misery.
And now? The bastard still managed to find a way to make his life more difficult. Really, Hyde just wished he had aimed a little higher and broke the man's nose, it'd stop him sticking it in everyone's business for a while if nothing else.
But then the anger left his face as if it never was there at all, and with a swiftness that left Lucy with a little bit of whiplash even as he grinned his wonky, crooked grin at her.
"That's enough of all that, don't you think?" questioned he with a strange lightness, "I've thought about far too many unpleasant things today already and I don't want to think about him anymore."
"How nice," Lucy remarked, careful to not sound too patronising, "To be able to just stop worryin' about him just 'cause you decide you don't want to anymore."
"Lucy, my dear, my heart, if all you think about all day and night are horrible things, then your mind will rot terribly," he replied, "Truly. Dwelling on the miserable means all that you are allowing yourself to see are the bad, and that will make you miserable in turn. Of course it won't be so simple as thinking about better things being all you need to do to solve all your worldly woes, but it'll make it a little easier than giving up and being resigned to whatever fate an unjust, cruel and uncaring universe might toss at you."
Lucy let out an intentionally loud sigh at this, running her fingers through her dark curls. She did hate it when Hyde had arguably good advice, somehow more so because of how rare it was. It was easier to just brush him off as a madman who decided to claim he was her friend for no reason she could rightly explain, then he had to go and spoil the impression by saying something rational.
Having concluded that Lucy must have been ignoring his very good and wise advice, and so reached out to get her attention back on him. He did not consider how unpleasantly cold and clammy his hands were when he tilted her chin (thankfully he leant to be more gentle rather than just jerking her head around like he had in the earlier days) to force her gaze back to him again.
"I mean it, Lucy. No matter what he might want to think, he doesn't own you and he sure as hell does not deserve any place in your mind," a beat, "Just because he's forced himself up there," he paused a second time, tapping at her forehead, "Doesn't mean he deserves to be there."
"Try tellin' him that." While it did seem a little defeatist, there was a ghost of a smile as she said this.
"Oh gladly!" came the reply, laying it on thickly "Hell, if I didn't want to come up here and check on you first, I would have made even more of a scene downstairs just to make sure that every single person who set foot in here knows that he's a gutless worm paying his way into ruining your life, and all their lives, because he does not have any real direction in his life and so has so-"
Before she even realised what was happening, Lucy let out a little flurry of unsteady laughter. There was something in the way Hyde so shamelessly slandered the man that behaved as though he owned her very soul that got to her. It was not necessarily humour that left her laughing, something ridiculous about it all, but it still was a sound that she felt she had not earned but had been gifted.
Additionally, her laughter brought with it a brightness to Hyde's own gaze (a sincere brightness, not the odd and intense look that lingered like coals in hellfire) before his own laughter, louder and shaky and unrestrained joined hers. An invitation to encourage her to laugh without the restraint that damned all.
Lucy's laughter let itself trail out to a natural end while Hyde struggled to catch himself. This, she noted, was very common and so, rather than worrying as she ought, she just patted the man's back until he was able to draw himself back enough to regain himself. He'd suffocate on it one day, she was sure, but it was not going to be now, not while she was there to keep him together. It was the least she could do, really, to repay him after all the effort he went to in order to make things bearable for her, even at the sacrifice of himself, letting people think he was some sort of monster.
It was not the sort of friendship she had expected, but not much of her life was how she expected it would be so maybe this is not so much of a surprise.
"It's nice to see you smile," Hyde, who had come back down a little quicker than she anticipated, remarked, "Let's keep you smiling more often, shall we?"
Hyde was not so naive as to think it was going to be so easy, but his mind, forever racing and sparking and getting away from him, had snagged on the idea. With just too much energy for anyone, he brought his hands together.
"Tomorrow!"
"Tomorrow?"
"Yes, tomorrow!" he confirmed, "Tomorrow you shall join me for lunch. Somewhere nice and ridiculously expensive for no reason. I'll be the perfect gentleman and treat my dearest lady to a fine afternoon and you won't need to think about any of this," he waved a hand about, "And you can share your smile with the whole world. It is, I think, quite deficient in Lucy-smiles so it is only right that we rectify this as soon as we possibly can!"
She blinked at the sudden plans that she was now a part of, a hum that was heavy with amusement slipping through her lips at the whole ordeal.
"I suppose I'll just have to hold you to it then, won't I?" returned Lucy with a teasing twinkle in her eyes.
"I suppose you will!"
With this declared to the universe, he swooped the woman, twirling her about in a clumsy attempt at a dance. She had to cling to him for dear life so that she would not somehow find herself lost along the way. At the very end, he twirled her away and hopped off to the window all in one motion.
"I shall call upon you tomorrow afternoon! Wait for me here, I shan't be pleased if anybody tries to keep you when we've plans." Hyde lifted himself up and onto the windowsill with his arms. "And if anyone is cruel to you, tell me and I shall ensure they suffer tenfold!"
And with this said, the strange creature that was Edward Hyde was off and out into the night that seemed to have woven itself together to create the man himself.
Left with such a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings, Lucy found she could not quite recall what it was that had her so worried that she'd near torn her lips to bleeding. Instead, she was left an odd mixture of amused, confused and generally bemused. The heaviness did not quite leave her heart, but it was no longer all that she could feel, and that was the closest to relief that she hoped for now.
Shaking her head at the mischief of the strange fellow that was in her life, she made her way over to shut the window after him.
Whatever else he might get himself involved with over the course of the evening was none of her concern. No, she had a lunch the next day that she would have liked to be well rested for, and so she felt at last that she might be able to retire to the blissfulness of slumber with the hope that the new day would bring with it a brightness that the day before could not carry.