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Since I’m still getting notes every so often I thought I’d just officially check in with you guys to say that my trash brain has kind of moved on from this intense writing phase. I’ve developed new hobbies that take up much more of my time (why does knitting take so long??) so like I won’t delete the blog or anything cause I still like having this platform to write on occasionally if inspiration strikes in the dead of night but I’m still very open to interaction if you wanna talk to me or tag me in stuff. I appreciate you guys still following and all of the new people that have somehow found my works though! :))

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Nepotism at its Finest

I’m back on my bullshit, fellas! This time we’ve got something fun. A fic that I wrote based on another TMA AU, ‘Timeline of Theseus’, by @creativitycache.  All you need to know is Jon has been the Archivist since he was 8 because time-travel shenanigans and now Elias is his reluctant dad, I would highly suggest reading ToT if you enjoy this fic and even if you don’t. This also hasn’t been beta-read because this is spoiler-y and my usual beta-reader hasn’t listened to TMA and honestly this is pretty self-indulgent.

--

Jon, despite being an Archivist for as long as he could remember, only got the ‘official’ title of Head Archivist once Gertrude finally died. He knew Jonah was the one that did it, but honestly, Jon was just glad he didn’t call in someone else to do his dirty work for once. He always hated when a random avatar barged in and somehow always left some kind of damage in their wake.

Working as an archival assistant wasn’t so bad, other than that. After a while, just to justify him hanging around the Archives all day reading statements, Jonah had given him a position as Gertrude’s assistant. Not that she ever asked him to do anything. It was just a formality.

At this point he’d given up on only reading statements that included people that were already dead. He’d take one over the newer statements, certainly, but the problem was that there’s only a certain number of people that have had supernatural experiences, and if they survived the encounter, they don’t tend to die as quickly as the ones that didn’t make it.

He still occasionally got odd flashes of things he never actually did, but it wasn’t like they had a manual about how his powers worked. Jonah just half-explained that it was probably something to do with his omniscience filling his head up with blanks that didn’t exist. The fuzziness and lack of detail certainly matched up with that theory. Just one of the perks of suddenly gaining knowledge powers at the age of 8, he supposed. At least he’d finally managed to get a grip on what exactly he Knew at random intervals. The Eye still liked to give him the odd unwarranted insight or two, but he didn’t mind all that much.

Strangely, though, he did ‘remember’ all of the assistants Jonah had chosen for him on his first day as the Head Archivist. Sasha, Tim and Martin, although for some reason Sasha didn’t look like how his ‘memories’ picture her.

—

Jon was weird, to be honest. Tim knew it the moment he walked in and saw the guy. Looked like he’d been raised by wolves then taught how to act like he was a respectable academic. Sure, he looked the part, but you could tell he didn’t care about being a ‘scholar’, he only cared about the statements.

He also obviously had some weird tension with Elias. Whenever Tim mentioned him Jon would always change the topic and refuse to acknowledge the man’s existence. He’d worked here for a while, though, probably just a standard ‘gradual resent for your boss’ scenario.

At least Tim thought that was it until Monday.

They were all in the break room, Jon included, eating their lunch, when Elias wandered in and gave them all a polite smile.

“So, Jon,” He said pleasantly, “I was wondering how you were settling in as Head Archivist.”

Jon glanced back from the coffee pot, “Doing fine, thank you…” he grumbled.

“That’s great to hear,” Tim could hear the condescending tone dripping from his voice, “I know that you’re not used to such an active role in the Archives, is all,”

“What? You don’t think I’m capable of the job? You didn’t need to give me the position you know, I can do what I need to do here without it,”

“Oh, goodness, no, you were fully deserving of the promotion,” Elias said, raising his hands in defence, a knowing smile on his face.

“And as I told you when you promoted me, theres no need to worry about me,” the archival assistants stayed silent and glanced at each other awkwardly.

Elias grimaced, “Is it really so bad that I just wanted to see how you were? I have every right to worry,” Tim didn’t know what the relationship there was, but that was definitely a weird thing for your boss to say in his books.

“Elias, I am 24 and an adult who’s been working here for a while, I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” Jon said sternly, turning to face him with his arms crossed. Okay, that was definitely a weird thing to say. Sasha hid her face in her mug and Martin was fiddling with his hands and staring at them.

“Fine, but you know where to find me if you need anything,” Elias sighed. He turned and walked out the door.

Jon scowled for a moment, the tension in the air thick. He suddenly marched up to the door and yelled down the hall, “You’re not my father, you know!”

Tim was about to ask what the hell that was about before he heard Elias call back.

“I have paperwork that says otherwise!”

Well, that certainly explained a few things.

—

The ‘break room incident’ was still a talking point among the assistants, but at this point it was mostly just Tim complaining that Sasha just didn’t get the job because of nepotism. Jon didn’t even have a degree of any kind, he just got a position as an assistant and then got the Head Archivist promotion.

Martin tried to connect with Jon, though. He’d heard about how all of the old assistants just went missing over time. That must’ve been lonely for Jon. So he brought him tea every day. Sure, Jon didn’t always drink it, but hopefully it helped him feel more comfortable with them.

He did give Martin odd looks occasionally, though, as if they’d known each other and Jon was trying to place his face. He certainly would have remembered meeting someone like Jon, though.

When he wasn’t reading statements, Jon actually came out and spoke to all of the assistants directly when he needed something, which was a bit odd. Not spooky odd, but still odd.

Jon was instructing Martin on some follow-up he would need to do at his desk when Elias made his second appearance of the month. The others stayed quiet, knowing how things went last time.

“Jon, I have some good news!” Elias said, unusually chipper.

Jon seemed unimpressed, “Do tell.”

“Peter and I are getting married!” Martin was about to congratulate him when Jon beat him to it.

“I give it three months,” he deadpanned, not taking his eyes off Elias, who seemed far less offended than Martin would have been in his situation.

“Give me some credit, Jon”

“You’re right, he never even replaced the vase he broke before the last divorce did he? Make it two.” Wait, divorce? Last divorce?

“He’s changed, really, he even said he’d actually replace it once it was official,” Elias defended. Martin spotted Tim in his peripherals jamming his face into his elbow to stifle his own laughter. Sasha had a not-so-subtle smile creeping onto her face.

“Oh, and let me guess, he also promised you he’d ‘start trying to really connect with Jon’ like he does every time, as if he doesn’t literally feed off of doing the exact opposite.”

“No, but he did-“

“No, wait, I’ve got it this time, he said that this time, he’d keep his voyages short and make more time for you!” Jon guessed, intently waiting for Elias’s response

“Yes.” He said curtly. What on earth was happening? Martin wanted nothing more than to be anywhere but this exact position, right next to both of his bosses having a family squabble.

“Let me guess, you came down here to tell me right at this moment because you need me to drive you? Of course,” Jon ran his hand flat across his head to give his hair the gelled flatness Elias’s always flawlessly maintained, “I’m Elias, I’m going to ask Jon to drive me and my fiancee to the courthouse for our tenth marriage! I can’t drive myself, though, because then Peter is going to insult my driving and then I’ll tell him that he has no place to do so since he doesn’t even have a license! Then we’re going to cancel and try again the next week!” He ranted in a tone that was obviously meant to imitate Elias.

“We’re going next Wednesday.” Elias said.

“Fine.” Jon replied without a second thought, turning back to Martin, who hadn’t realised he was holding his breath. Elias silently turned and headed out of the Archives.

The room was silent for a moment. Sasha spoke up first.

“Did you say tenth time?” She asked incredulously.

“Yes, and that’s only the legal ones. I’ve seen them ‘get married’ one night and the next they’ll swear vengeance on each other. Peter gives excellent Christmas presents, though, what with the insurmountable wealth.”

Tim barked out the laugh he was suppressing, “Jon, I just really want you to know, that is the funniest thing I’ve witnessed in my life, thank you,"

--

For the record I’ve changed a few rules of how the whole Jon situation works and I mostly just took the concept of adult Jon and Elias father-son dynamic and sprinted with it.

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Jon is outed as Steampunk

Hello my beautiful patient followers. I’ve returned with TMA content because it’s my latest obsession. I’m proud to say that my first contribution to the fandom is an obligatory Mechs!Jon fic because I find them hilarious.

--

Tim was doing his best to avoid having to go up to the boss’s office all day, but was very disappointed to find he had no choice but to pop in for a visit to give him some of the ‘possibly true’ statements.

It wasn’t like he was going to believe it anyway - what was even the point? The guy was so uptight Tim didn’t think he knew how to have some fun and imagine the possibility that maybe there was something exciting in the universe. Tim supposed that didn’t really change the fact that he needed to give the guy his precious statements, so he groaned and grabbed the pile he’d gathered up.

He approached the door and stopped short of it, wondering if he would even notice if he didn’t give him the statements. He really didn’t have the energy for whatever job he was going to be given if he dared to walk in. Then something caught his ear.

Was Jon… chanting?

He was talking slightly quieter than his speaking volume and that definitely wasn’t English. It couldn’t be him speaking to himself. Jon had specifically told him the other day he didn’t speak any other languages. He tried picking out his words in case he was just mishearing, but the words were very clear and were certainly not anything coherent. He did catch him occasionally switch to humming. Was Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute singing to himself?

Tim made a mental note of the more coherent words and stepped into the doorway.

“Hey, boss!” he couldn’t help but be amused at how Jon jumped at the sound of him. He ripped his hand away from his face, which was pressed up against it, and readjusted his glasses with the hand.

“What did you need, Tim?” he asked, looking up at him unenthusiastically. 

 “Got a fresh delivery of statements for you!” he said cheerily, stepping up to the desk and placing the pile on an empty part of the table with a satisfying slap.

“Later than usual I see. Doesn’t matter I suppose. Would you mind filing away all of these on your way out?” Jon said, gesturing to a pile of statement files that was even larger than the one he’d just brought in. Great.

“Sure thing, boss! Wouldn’t want you having any of the fun, eh?” He joked, which didn’t seem to carry the same amusement for the other man.

“Shut up, Tim,” he deadpanned, returning to his work, signalling that the exchange was over.

Tim wandered back to his desk faster than usual and frantically wrote down all of the phrases he could remember.

What were they…. He definitely said something that sounded like ‘yai’ and he thought he heard a ‘sothoth’. How was he supposed to find anything with this gibberish? With little hope he opened up his web browser,typing in the words, and was surprised to find it wasn’t gibberish at all. It was some Lovecraftian chant. He doubted Jonathan ‘this-statement-is-wrong-because-this-word-is-mispelled’ Sims would be the sort of guy to worship Cthulhu. 

He’d been humming though, hadn’t he? Maybe it was a song. With his impeccable research skills he added ‘song’ to the end of his search and right there on the first page of results was a song called ‘Red Signal’ by the Mechanisms. He clicked on a video and listened to the song. That was definitely the same tune. It was strange, though. He never really pegged the bossman as someone that listened to this sort of thing. It reminded him of a folksy sort of punk or metal? Then the chanting stopped and switched to a spoken verse and Tim froze.

Was that Jon? It definitely sounded like him… Maybe the voice was a bit deeper and gravelly but Tim could have sworn that it was his voice. He frantically searched up the band. After looking through some photoshoots for some old albums he couldn’t help but stare. That was definitely his boss with quite a bit of makeup and dressed in some very over-the-top steampunk getup and flipping off the camera. He suddenly felt someone pressing up against his chair from behind.

“Is that Jon?” Sasha asked, leaning over his shoulder, squinting at the screen with her head cocked.

“Apparently,” Tim said, grinning ear to ear. “Look, I did some digging and it turns out he used to be in this steampunk band,” he continued, showing Sasha more pictures of Jon and his bandmates on the page.

“That’s amazing. He looks quite good in the pictures though, don’t you think?” she said with a chuckle.

“Right? He actually looks like he’d be fun to have a drink with!” He switched back to ‘Red Signal’ and started playing it. “I mean listen to this, he’s actually good, too!”

“How did you even find this?”

“He was singing it to himself and I used my incredibly advanced skills to track it down,” Tim bragged, making a show of readjusting his lapels.

“If only you put the same effort into actually working,” she chided, giving him a cheerful nudge with her elbow.

“Alas, I don’t think there’d be any work left for the rest of you if I did. It’s a public service to you all.” He grinned.

“Riiiight, because this place could run without me around.” Sasha grinned back.

The door to the shared office opened with a sharp creak and Martin stepped into the room.

They looked up and Tim called, “Hey Martin! How was Bexley?”

“Quite nice, actually! No creepy witches sending body parts to people, but there were some very kind old ladies I had the pleasure of speaking to!”

“Sounds like it was fun!” Sasha replied with a warm smile.

Martin was placing his bag down at his desk when he stopped and looked back at the two of them.

“What song is that?” he asked.

Tim grinned mischievously. “It’s called ‘Red Signal’, it’s by-“

“-by the Mechanisms? I had a friend that loved them, played it all of the time,” Martin finished, chuckling to himself at the memory. “I quite like their music, actually.”

Sasha and Tim took a moment to stare at each other knowingly and beamed innocently at Martin as he turned back to them.

Sasha looked at him with the same warm smile she’d given him before. “Maybe you could ask Jon if he’s heard of them while you give him your report?”

“Are you sure? It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing he’d go for,” he wondered.

“People can surprise you all of the time, may as well ask anyway. It’s not like he’s gonna hate your guts any more than he already does.”

Martin made a disappointed wince. “I guess so.”

“Don’t let that grump get you down, Martin, he probably just has a huge crush on you,” Sasha smirked.

“What? N-no! As if, that doesn’t even make any sense!” he stammered, turning back to his desk and sitting down to hide the red that was spreading over his face. 

“Ask him, though, will you? I’ve already had to go up there today and he’s given me a whole stack of files to go through. Not sure I could take another trip,” Tim joked as Sasha moved back to her desk. “Don’t tell him it was me that was wondering, though, he’d probably think it’s a trick or something,” he added casually.

“R-right, sure thing, Tim,” Martin obliged.

—

Martin knocked on Jon’s half-open door later that day, report in hand. Jon spared him a brief glance upwards before looking back down at his work. 

“Did you find anything regarding the Bexley statement?” he asked, not bothering to hide his disinterest as Martin placed his report on the table.

“I didn’t find the woman described in the statement, but I made sure to check every elderly Angela,” he said, a bit disappointed at how useless the trip was. “I did have some wonderful conversations about jigsaw puzzles with a few of them, though!” he added cheerfully. Thankfully Jon didn’t seem to be in a mood to scold him, but wasn’t at all invested in the conversation. Martin was about to leave when he remembered Tim’s request.

“Oh, uh, by the way, we were- well we were talking about it earlier so I was wondering if you’d heard of the Mechanisms? Like that space pirate band that used to play in a lot of London bars?”

Jon froze up for a moment before quickly explaining, “Erm, no I don’t think I have. Not uh…. not a big fan of going to see bands play at shows, you know?”

Martin raised an eyebrow. “Oh, okay? I guess it doesn’t seem like something you’d like… are you okay? You seem… off?”

“I’m quite fine, Martin, just a bit of a headache, I suppose. If you’ll excuse me I need to get back to this,” he said dismissively, returning to whatever he was writing down and setting Martin’s report on a stack.

“Sure! Did you need any tea? I’ve got one that’s really good for headaches,” he offered.

“That won’t be necessary, Martin, get back to work.” 

“Right.” Martin concluded as he left the room.

—

Things had been going a bit too slowly for Martin’s liking in the past few days. That usually meant Jon got antsy about people not doing as much work. It wasn’t like there was anything to do in the first place.

He was at least in the break room with Tim having lunch, who was playing more Mechanisms music, so Jon couldn’t tell either of them off right now. As his mind drifted to Jon, the man himself entered the room with his own lunch and made his way to the coffee machine. 

The song Tim was playing was pretty good. Martin curiously looked at Tim’s phone on the table playing the music.

“What song is that, Tim?”

“Ah, it’s called ‘Loki’, it’s from this great album called ‘The Bifrost Incident’,” he said with an obnoxious grin. Jon looked at them and ducked his head when Martin looked back. 

Martin pulled out his own phone and searched up ‘The Bifrost Incident’ and found a video from a show that he opened up. After a bit of pre-show banter the first song started.

That was when Martin heard Johnny DeVille do the song’s introduction. He’d always thought the lead singer sounded familiar, but the paragraph gave Martin a very vivid recollection of the exact tone of voice Jon always used when he recorded statements. 

That couldn’t be right, no way was that him. He took a good look at Johnny and looked between his own phone at the man with black cracks drawn on his face wearing the most steampunk outfit he’d ever seen and Jon, who was standing there, in his sweater vest, making a cup of coffee to go with his sandwich. Tim was looking at both of them struggling not to laugh and Jon was suddenly VERY interested in the coffee he had just poured out.

“JOHNNY DEVILLE?” Martin exclaimed, prompting Tim to bend over, choking on his own stifled laughter.

Jon picked up his coffee and claimed his sandwich from the table behind him and refused to meet Martin’s gaze. 

“Thats- uh- probably just a coincidence… I’m, uh, I’ll just have lunch in my office today,” he mumbled out, clearly not convinced he’d covered it up at all and left the room without another word.

Tim pulled himself back up and let out a heavy breath. “Oh, ha, Martin, sorry, it’s just Sasha and I were wondering how long it was gonna take,” he sighed gleefully. “Hopefully he’ll face society again. Hard to imagine the bossman was ever that cool, huh?”

Martin stared at the door. “Yeah…”

—

The next day Jon came into the office, but hadn’t shown his face for the whole day. Martin felt bad about yesterday, he probably overreacted a bit. Tim assured him it was fine and that the boss just isn’t the type to take a bit of embarrassment on the chin. This didn’t stop Martin from dropping in with a cup of tea when it became clear Jon wasn’t leaving his office for lunch.

Martin knocked on the door and upon getting a gruff ‘yes?’ from the other side he let himself in. Jon was more dismissive than usual and didn’t even spare a glance at him. Martin wasn’t sure how much of it was his usual grumpiness and how much was because of yesterday.

He set the tea down in the spot Jon usually kept it, right next to his coffee mug from yesterday. Martin waited for any acknowledgement. The acknowledgement never came and Jon’s expression was unreadable. The fact that he was looking down intently didn’t help.

“You know, I think it’s pretty cool that you were in a band. It’s not like you’re a murderer or something actually bad,” Martin said, desperate to break the silence. Jon clenched his pen tighter and looked up at him cautiously.

“That’s… kind of you to say…” he responded.

“Don’t worry about it, we’ve all done some pretty silly things. I will be honest, though, Jon, if being the lead singer for the Mechanisms is the most embarrassing thing you’ve done, I am extremely jealous.”

Jon smiled in a way that looked almost bashful on him. “It was a lot of fun, performing. It was a real shame when we all split after university.”

“I can imagine,” Martin sighed, silently cursing himself at how softly he’d said it. “Steampunk outfits really suit you, though, Jon. The makeup was a nice touch too.” He turned and made his way back to the door. 

As Martin went to close the door behind him Jon grumbled, “Shut up, Martin.”

—

The next morning Martin found something on his desk. It was a Mechanisms shirt neatly folded up and a copy of the Bifrost Incident album, both signed by all of the band members. 

The note lying on top of them read ‘I had a few extras at home - J’ and Martin couldn’t help but feel giddy.

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Vampire AU

1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6  : 7 : 8 : 9 : 10 : 11 : 12 : 13 : 14 : 15 (you are are)

This is finally finished! Good lord that took a while I expected this to be half as long as it ended up being. As usual please leave comments/tags/replies of what you thought of the overall story (its okay you can be honest) and feel free to send any asks at any time if you ever want me to answer any questions. 

--

Jekyll led the way out of the office and stared down the expectant, though well-guarded, crowd before them, courtesy of Rachel brandishing that knife she never seemed to put down.

Lanyon tried not to look weak under all the glares he was getting, but he’d seen how insane these people could be. If this went wrong he’d be lucky to get the chance to flee London. Despite his obviously fake courage, he stood his ground beside Jekyll, who inhaled deeply, about to speak. He held onto the breath for a moment and exhaled it out into his first words.

“I know you’re scared, and confused, and angry, and feeling a lot of strong feelings about the situation, but please hear me out,” he paused, hoping his pleas weren’t falling on deaf ears.

Some people’s expressions didn’t change, but the air of curiosity and general lack of outburst prompted Jekyll to continue. 

“I think we of all people should understand that everyone deserves a second chance,”some heads rose in recognition, “and the opportunity to be a part of a community of like-minded individuals. Individuals who won’t hold judgement against them.” Jekyll glanced back at him, jerking his head slightly to them, still observing. Lanyon took a moment to realise that Jekyll wanted him to speak. Of course. Bloody hell.

He shifted, moving to Jekyll’s side, and could swear he felt himself sweating despite his physical incapability to do so. “I’m… sorry for my… outburst… yesterday. I swear that I didn’t intend to actually harm anyone and was fully aware that Luckett wasn’t in his room that evening,” he insisted, his voice almost breaking from how nervous he was.

“Why’d you do it then?“ called Pennybrygg, who was one of the few lodgers still accompanying the now less frazzled Luckett.

“I was… er… acting on… some…. personal issues…” Lanyon attempted to get out, mumbling the end in shame. He directed his gaze towards Luckett, who was looking quite annoyed at him. “I’d be happy to help you restore your room, however, Mr Luckett.” He was relieved to see him ponder on it for a moment and grumpily nod his head with a grunt. Lanyon’s lacklustre explanation earned him some unimpressed faces, but Luckett’s acceptance of the offer seemed to stop anyone from protesting.

Jekyll cleared his throat, drawing attention away from Lanyon, who was clearly not used to speaking to this sort of audience. “We’re all people who have an appreciation for the strange, the macabre, the odd. To make things right with all of you who feel violated by having the presence of a vampire in your lives for so long, Dr Lanyon has agreed to allow you to ask for his help in any experiments that may require… someone such as himself… in them.”

That sparked some excited murmurs. Within seconds any mention of doubt or annoyance was lost and overpowered by a lively discussion about the possibilities this opened up. Questions were being yelled out at the two of them about what exactly they were allowed to do. The first few questions were answered but it soon became an impossible task.

Lanyon felt himself being dragged away by the arm. It took him a moment to actually look down at who it was. He was relieved to see Rachel. She didn’t seem to look as angry as he’d thought. If anyone in the building had a right to be upset with him it was certainly Rachel. All he could see in her eyes was gentle sympathy.

“I’m guessing that this is why you never eat my garlic chicken?” she asked, giving him a reassuring grin. Lanyon found himself slowly being led away from the lodgers, somehow unnoticed by them.

“No, actually, it turns out I actually can eat garlic. I’m just not a fan of chicken.” He chuckled back at her.

She huffed, half-giggling as she did, “And here I thought you’d at least use the opportunity to make an excuse for yourself!” They both took the opportunity to laugh off the tension of the situation. They both drifted into silence and Lanyon saw Rachel’s happy expression weaken into something inexplicably sad.

“Rachel, I’m sorry I never said anything to you - I didn’t want you worrying about me. Jekyll’s already a handful on a bad day.”

“You didn’t have to worry about me, Lanyon. I’m built tough, you know that,” she smiled, giving him a friendly nudge on the arm.

“I haven’t destroyed any hopes of you trusting me in the future, have I? Aside from Jekyll, I don’t really have many other people I can call a friend.”

She stared at him for a moment before breaking out into the most genuine laugh she’d let out for the whole conversation. “You’re not all that bright for a Doctor, are you? You think something like being a vampire is gonna scare me off?” She looked back at the crowd of lodgers bombarding an overwhelmed Jekyll with questions, some relating to the news and others drifting off to other topics, then back to Lanyon. “I live here, I can handle a little bit of craziness.”

Lanyon smiled at her with such a pure, light relief he feared he’d start floating where he stood. Rachel glanced at the nearest set of stairs and tilted her head towards it.

“Come on, you’d better get started on cleaning up Luckett’s room. I’ll grab some supplies for you.”

“I don’t suppose I’ll be getting any help with my least favourite type of labour, would I?”

Rachel placed a firm hand on his back and pushed him towards the stairs alongside her. “Don’t be ridiculous, Doctor, what kind of a redemption would that be?”

Despite how heartwarming the moment was, Lanyon was starting to dread this whole ‘apology’ business.

-

Everything was, astonishingly, quite normal after yesterday’s events.

Granted the extremely emotionally moving speech Jekyll gave was quite a substantial factor in the amazing outcome. Lanyon was nonetheless eternally grateful for the good reception he was getting.

He still got some stern looks in the Society and a few mild threats as he passed through the halls. He also got some very invasive questions about how his physiology worked, not that he entirely knew himself. Everything was otherwise quite normal considering he’d been revealed to be one of the most heinous types of beast in all of London.

He did appreciate that Jasper fellow’s offer to get him a less… morally ambiguous… source of human blood that he used to feed some of his pets. He wasn’t quite sure how much he would like where the blood came from, but it was probably better than murdering whatever poor sap was stupid enough to get drunk in the East End.

He might have to lie about how much blood he needed and get some for Jekyll as well.

-

Jekyll carried his hefty case of equipment upstairs. He’d almost forgotten she was there. Alas, forgetting didn’t mean she didn’t exist, so upon being reminded by an off-handed comment from Rachel he made his way over.

She looked very comfortable, bundled up in her blankets reading a book. It appeared to be new so he assumed it was a gift from one of her new adoring fans. She looked up at him and, strangely enough, smiled at him. Jekyll would be lying if he said that didn’t put him on edge at all.

He went through the usual routine. Say hello, open the case, make her medicine for the day and make sure she took it. She had this demeanour about her, though. Whenever he said anything, did anything, even took a moment to look at her, she had this mischievous grin, like she had some brilliant secret she was desperate not to tell. Eventually his curiosity got the better of him as she downed his medicine.

“What’s got you so… cheerful… today?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“I’m so glad you asked, Doctor.” She casually fiddled with her own gloved hand, keeping that smirk on her face. “I was listening in on yesterday’s commotion, quite an outstanding resolution I must say. I personally wouldn’t have even noticed your friend was a vampire, since I’ve never even met him.” She looked up at him. “But I couldn’t help but think about how you always act.”

“What do you mean?” Jekyll asked carefully, keeping his voice as level as he could.

“Oh, nothing much, just how you’re pale some days and the next day you look flush as ever. How you talk less whenever your skin becomes quite pale. The way your eyes twitch ever so slightly whenever you give me intravenous medicines…”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Hmph, I thought you would be much more open at this point, but I suppose keeping up your facade is quite important. I believe you are a vampire, Doctor. A drainer, as you Londoners tend to call them.”

Jekyll’s blood would have run colder if it could. “That’s ridiculous, are you sure you don’t have a fever or something?” He began packing his things, sending her the message that he was about to leave.

She rested her chin on her elbow, which was propped up on her knee. “Really, Doctor Jekyll, I promise I won’t tell.” He stopped for a moment and stared her down, looking for some hint that she wasn’t toying with him. It was impossible to see through all of that smugness. She was obviously having some fun with this.

“Really?”

“Yes. It appears I may have thought you to be the wrong variant of blood-sucker. I much prefer a creature of the night than some pompous buffoon. A lot more fun to deal with, so I will let this slide for now. Creature insists that being disliked will be the least of your problems if I come to harm, anyway,” she said as she gestured to the monster in question, who simply gave a stern nod to him that Jekyll acknowledged solemnly.

“T-thank you, Frankenstein.”

“Of course, we beasts of humanity must live in harmony.” He wasn’t sure how comfortable he was with that comment.

Jekyll packed the rest of his things and quietly stepped out of the room, keeping an eye on them as he left. The grin didn’t leave Frankenstein’s face, but it didn’t seem as menacing as it did before. Instead it was more playful. Once he closed the door behind him, he let a tense sigh escape him. 

He reminded himself to yell at Hyde a bit for getting bitten in the first place.

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Vampire AU

1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6  : 7 : 8 : 9 : 10 : 11 : 12 : 13 : 14 (you are here) : 15 (coming soon)

I’m so glad to have another chapter out I was worried people would unfollow from all of the inactivity. But nonetheless I made sure this wasn’t a super short chapter so the wait would be worth it. Also for whatever reason I seem to have put more swears than usual in this one ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Lanyon shoved his way through the outskirts of the room, ignoring Jekyll’s pleas for him to rethink things. He stomped up to where Brokenshire had just been standing. Lanyon cleared his throat as loudly as he could manage and made no effort to hide the heavy scowl on his face.

All eyes in the room looked up at him with reactions ranging from disinterested to alarmed, but he had gotten their attention, that’s all that mattered.

“What the hell has gotten into you people? Do you have any idea how ridiculous you’re being?” he yelled, his voice travelling far around the large, echoey room.

“What are you talkin’ about, Doc?” a voice called out from the crowd.

“I’m talking about how nobody in the building seems to think that getting funding for the Society matters in the slightest! How the hell do you think we give you the materials you need to do your insane tinkering?”

He looked back at Henry as the murmurs turned to bombarding Lanyon with cries of protest and self-defence. He looked scared out of his mind, anxious and frantically attempting to settle the crowd with no success. It only made Lanyon angrier to see his friend being pushed around like that.

“It’s about time you people learned some basic respect! I don’t care who convinces you of otherwise, even if it is Frankenstein!” He was a hair’s breadth away from losing the steadiness in his voice.

Then someone cut through the racket with a panicked scream.

“Bloody hell! He’s got fangs! He’s a drainer!” Lanyon quickly shut his mouth and stepped back. Shit. He was a few days overdue to feed, wasn’t he? 

“That’s ridiculous!” Lanyon said, careful not to let his teeth be too visible. Getting worked up didn’t help him out in the slightest. His voice was being drowned out as everyone had turned on him and he was being yelled at instead.

“I bet Hyde isn’t even a vampire! You were probably trying to get the heat off a’ yourself!”

“He probably tried to kill Luckett too!”

“Stake the drainer!”

Lanyon froze in place and watched the scene unfold, petrified. He feared someone would take the initiative to attack him at any moment, but he couldn’t bring himself to move a muscle. 

“Stop!” The room was silenced eerily quickly as Jekyll stepped in front of Lanyon, blocking him from the verbal onslaught.

“Dr. Lanyon may be a vampire, but that doesn’t mean that we should turn on him immediately! We will settle this like adults and we will NOT be continuing this appalling behaviour!” He looked at them with a stern eye, then back at Lanyon with a twinge of concern that felt like a dream to him in that moment.

Jekyll turned towards Lanyon slightly and gestured up the stairs. “We should talk, Robert.”

Lanyon stared at him with dread and sighed, “Okay.”

They were cautiously watched as they made their way to the door. Lanyon was grateful for Rachel, who had crept out to the foot of the stairs in the silence and made an effort to keep anyone from following.

The heavy doors shut behind them and Lanyon’s heart dropped. 

It was too late, he’d been found out. Before he knew it he was being confronted by one of the worst possible scenarios. Henry would probably throw him out and he wouldn’t have any choice but to leave London. He thought through every plan he could to get out of this when suddenly Jekyll said something entirely unexpected with a chuckle.

“You have no idea how relieved I am that you’re the vampire.”

Lanyon stared at him. “What?”

Jekyll suddenly stepped up closer to him. He opened his mouth wide and there they were. A pair of well-kept fangs jutting out from the rest of his teeth. They were fairly small so he must have fed recently.

“You’re joking…” 

Jekyll shut his mouth. “Nope!”

Lanyon frowned. “So you didn’t think to open up to me about this? How did you even get bitten? You never go out.”

Jekyll paused and was looking for something to say. “Well… neither do you!”

Lanyon put his hands up in defence. “Okay so maybe I used to go out slumming. But I don’t do it anymore unless I go out to feed.”

“Oh… I…. uh… I used to go slumming too…” He said it far too quickly for it to be entirely true, but Lanyon decided this wasn’t the time to push it. The moment was lost anyway as Jekyll suddenly looked annoyed. “Wait, so did you actually break into Luckett’s room? I’m certain Hyde didn’t do it! He’s god knows where!” He didn’t look sure of himself, but Lanyon couldn’t bear to lie to his face right now.

“I.. I did it…” Lanyon looked aside, avoiding Jekyll’s gaze.

“Why? You scared the lodgers half to death!”

“Because Hyde is a terrible influence on the Society. You bend over backwards trying to defend him and all he does is cause trouble!”

Jekyll stared at him like a deer in headlights before snapping himself out of it. “Well he’s gone now, we’ll talk about it some other time.“ He rubbed at his own elbow and joined Lanyon in avoiding eye contact.

“It’s kind of funny isn’t it?“ Lanyon said, looking back at Jekyll, prompting him to look up as well.  ”We were both hiding this whole vampire business for so long that we didn’t even realise how convenient it was that we were always accommodating each other so well.”

Jekyll chuckled, “I guess it was pretty funny, wasn’t it? I thought you were suspicious of me!”

“I thought you were suspicious of me!” Lanyon said, pointing jovially.

They pondered on the relaxed silence for a moment. Jekyll gave a pensive hum.

“What are we going to tell the lodgers out there? We can’t exactly brush this off as nothing…”

“I’m sure there’s some way we can appease them, I’d rather not have to skip town.”

“Well, they are scientists, you could just offer to let them run some tests on you…” Jekyll said, shrugging tensely and casting his eyes upwards, unsure of his own answer.

“I suppose it's worth a try…” Lanyon looked reluctant, but couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“It’ll be fine!” Jekyll said, getting up with a burst of false energy and striding to the door, waiting for Lanyon to leave the room with him. Lanyon sighed and joined him.

[galaxy-parchment]

PSA: Don’t publish to A/O3

While I’m making my attempts to write up new chapters with everything going on, I’m just making an announcement that I’m not touching A/O3 anymore because I’m honestly getting sick of it. Whatever I have up will stay there but no more of my work is going to support the site.

Not only is there lack of control over stuff like child p/nogr/phy and the absolute lack of care to do anything other than provide blacklist tags, it turns out they’ve also been taking advantage of COVID-19 to get a little bit of extra money in their pocket from this year’s round of donations to boost their stock portfolio. I get if you post to A/O3 for some extra exposure and to make your content more accessible but there comes a point where I’m just not willing to contribute to that anymore.

Sorry to anyone that thinks my work will suffer and not get as much attention or if you’re one of those people that will defend A/O3 tooth and nail but as a content creator I’m going to stick my ground and if you have a problem with that I’d advise that you promptly unfollow me and don’t bother reading my content.

I encourage you to reblog this post, do your research and tell other authors you know to consider changing where they publish their work.

[galaxy-parchment]

Tumblr’s hiding my new fic from the glass scientists tag so here’s the next chapter of the Vampire AU

[galaxy-parchment]

Vampire AU

1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6  : 7 : 8 : 9 : 10 : 11 : 12 : 13 (you are here) : 14 : 15 (coming soon)

Guess who’s back (back again)! After an eternity of silence not only am I back with the Vampire AU, but I also have a shiny new beta reader (@hekyll-jekyll​) so you don’t have to endure my terribly edited writing anymore! Don’t worry if it takes a little longer for future chapters from here on out since I’m much busier these days. 

The silent panic sweeping the Society formed a thick tension in the air that almost suffocated Lanyon as he entered. Perhaps his show had put them just a little too on edge than he had aimed for.

The police carriages at the front almost blocked Lanyon out and the crowd of blue uniforms gathered at Luckett’s door encouraged him to see what was happening. As he passed he saw nearly all of the lodgers were eyeing the policemen with a mild terror that didn’t look like they could shake it off anytime soon.

Before he could approach Jekyll, the doctor turned and split from the group to greet him. He was looking almost as scared as the lodgers, even with his extensive practice of constantly looking like everything was fine.

“Thank goodness you’re here, Robert. We had a break-in last night! Luckett’s room was destroyed!” Jekyll exclaimed.

“Oh dear, is he alright?” Lanyon asked, placing a concerned hand on his own chest.

“Fortunately, yes. He was in someone else’s room at the time of the break-in,” he sighed deeply, bringing a hand to his forehead, “This is terrible, Robert! The lodgers could be at risk. This involvement with the police is starting to become commonplace. I'm worried about what this means for our reputation!”

“Don’t worry, Henry. Our reputation can withstand being the victim of a few crimes. Besides, as long as the exhibition goes well, none of this getting mixed up with the law will matter,” he reassured, placing a supportive hand onto Jekyll’s shoulder.

This didn’t do anything to ease how tense he was as he looked at Lanyon nervously. “About that…” 

“What?”

“The lodgers have pulled out of the exhibition…” Time froze between the two. Lanyon suddenly felt the urge to make a repeat attack, one that was much less performative.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Frankenstein talked them out of it just to spite me. They won’t listen and I can’t make them work.”

“Like hell you can’t! They shouldn’t even be staying here if they’re not going to help keep the place open!” Lanyon said, careful not to let any of the lodgers down below overhear. He shifted his gaze back to the ruckus and remembered the situation. “Let’s just deal with this for now and we’ll talk about the exhibition later.”

“Right, let’s go. I’ll fill you in,” Henry said, eagerly accepting the distraction.

They approached the door and Lanyon looked inside. The room was untouched from the previous night’s events apart from a few markers placed around it.  

“Robert, whoever did this had access to the inside of the Society; the window was broken from the inside. What if one of the lodgers is a vampire and I didn’t notice?” he rambled, worried sick at the prospect of being so careless. Guilt tugged at Lanyon but he reminded himself of what he was doing.

“Well Hyde has a key doesn’t he? I’ve been told he’s let himself in at night countless times,” he carefully suggested.

“Yes… He does have a key…” Jekyll didn’t look too convinced.

“Well he’s a known vampire. If he was a wanted criminal then coming here for easy pickings would make complete sense, especially for someone like Hyde.” He allowed himself a grimace. “Not to mention that it’d be a decent revenge for us outing him.”

“He wouldn’t do that! Hyde wouldn’t attack the lodgers!” he protested.

“Then how do you explain this mess? Hyde is the only vampire who could have pulled this off!”

“You don’t know that!”

“Well you certainly wouldn’t, you weren’t around during the attack!”

“Well were you?” Jekyll stared at him in exasperation, desperate for Lanyon to realise he was wrong. Why on earth was he still defending Hyde? Jekyll would have to get over this strange attachment he had to Hyde if anything was going to improve around here.

“I know you don’t like being wrong about things like this, but I think it’s best that the Society cuts ties with Hyde completely. I’ll let Sergeant Brokenshire know about Hyde’s key. This will hopefully be the last police visit for a long time.” He didn’t wait for an answer as he walked ahead, leaving Jekyll behind.

-

Any hope of redeeming Hyde in the eyes of the Society was completely lost. Lanyon’s intervention had branded Hyde as a bloodthirsty monster, the opportunity to find the other vampire was slipping through his fingers like water. 

Brokenshire’s gruff voice chipped away at Jekyll’s hard shell like a chisel with every word he uttered to the crowd of concerned lodgers huddled together in fear. Luckett was particularly frazzled and was being comforted from all sides. The investigations had finally died down and Brokenshire stood on the fifth step of the stairs in the centre of the lobby, overlooking the crowd.

“We’ve come to the conclusion that Dr Jekyll’s former personal assistant, Mr Edward Hyde, previously revealed to be a vampire, made an attack on the Society using a key that was given to him during his time working for Dr Jekyll.” He gave an understanding look to Jekyll from his position behind the crowd. He must have looked quite frazzled to get a look like that. “If anyone has any information on his whereabouts, please report it immediately.” He parted from the crowd. Gossiping murmurs emerged in a swarm from it as Brokenshire reached Jekyll. 

Without a word he was led to the door. Before he left, Brokenshire turned to Jekyll and gave him a stern look. Jekyll didn’t like one bit how intimidating he’d been since the fire. He felt like a criminal, or one that was known to be a criminal at least.

“I don’t know what you’ve been up to around here lately, but I hope that this is the last visit I’ll be needing to make in a while.”

“Agreed, good day Sergeant.” Jekyll desperately wanted the exchange to end. He was relieved to see the man turn away. The rest of his compatriots were gathered outside and ready to leave.

Jekyll shut the door behind him before he could turn back and exhaled slowly through his nose and allowed himself to slouch onto the door for a moment. He silently watched the lodgers chatter and strained his ears to pick out what exactly they were saying.

“I don’t wanna see that bastard’s face again!”

 “He’s obviously some deranged maniac drainer! I don’t know how nobody noticed!”

“He scared Luckett half to death!”

He saw Rachel arguing with some of them. He couldn’t quite hear her but he could only assume that she was talking about how Hyde couldn’t hurt a fly. Nobody seemed to be having it. She was being opposed by the entire room. Poor Jasper didn’t know what to do with himself and was fiddling with his own hands behind Rachel, not wishing to intervene and antagonise himself.

He had no idea when Lanyon had arrived, but he almost fell over in shock as an unexpected attempt at a friendly hand was placed on his shoulder and the man in question had appeared at his side.

“Next order of - good lord Henry you’re so jittery today - next order of business is we solve this… childish rebellion that’s been going on. Don’t worry, I’ll handle it. They already hate me and the last thing we need is them hating you too.”

“While they’re panicking over this mess? They won’t listen to a thing in this state!”

Lanyon’s face darkened, “Well I don’t know about you Henry but I am furious. Much like the lodgers, I won’t listen to a thing in this state! Right now I’m about to go tell a room of overgrown toddlers off for refusing to take part in the event that’s keeping a roof over their heads!”

“Wait, Robert-“ He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence before Lanyon stormed off to do exactly as he said he would.

When did it all go so wrong?

[galaxy-parchment]

Help! My daughter’s a Werewolf!

1 : 2 (you are here) : 3 (coming soon)

I’m back with another chapter! Thank you to everyone that liked this AU. I promise I’ve made progress on the Vampire AU but my output is going to be a little slower from now on since I’ve started Uni.

“Wait here while I go speak with my business partner,” Jekyll told Nora, sitting her down on a bench.

“Was that man Robert? Mum says you two were a fond look away from having a stitch,” Nora said all-too-casually. Jekyll couldn’t stop the deep red blossoming on his face.

“I’m sure your mother says a lot of things she shouldn’t,” he said as he turned and walked away.

Nora looked around at the room, allowing her thoughts to fully swirl at her situation. Not only had she actually met her father, but he was apparently some rich Londoner that was going to take her in for a whole week! He had some conditions, sure, but this was so much more than she could have ever hoped for. Was she dreaming? Was this going to blow up in her face? This felt far too easy, surely something would go wrong.

As she spotted a few heads peek out from the upper level and some curious grins visible on most of them, Nora’s breath hitched in fear that this may be one of the things to go wrong. She intently stared at her own lap, hoping to avoid having to spare them any attention. Her efforts proved fruitless as a steady stream of strange, observant men and women made their way down to the ground level, some of them trying to be casual and others not bothering to do so.

Before Nora knew it, she was surrounded by a swarm of people dressed strangely. Big dresses like some of the ones she’d seen outside on her way here and clothes that looked like some of the ones that her mother had kept for he from her past visitors, but they had other things too. Big goggles that were pushed up onto their forehead, glasses obscuring some people’s eyes, masks and accessories covering their faces, some carrying various odd objects made of metal and glass and most of them had strange and awful smells to them.

She was so overwhelmed by how many people were suddenly around her, some less shy than others, she almost didn’t catch the question thrown at her by a woman in a greek dress with a pair of goggles nestled into her short black hair.

“Are you actually Jekyll’s kid?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes? That’s what I’ve been told anyway…”

A man with obnoxiously large sideburns barked out a laugh, “I didn’t think he could be that adventurous!”

A younger man with red hair poked his head out from over the sideburn man’s shoulder, “Well they said she’s fourteen right? He had to have been a teenager right?”

“Mum says he was 19 at the time.”

“Jekyll’s 35? I thought he was older!” Nora was starting to lose track of how many people had joined not the conversation.

“No, he’s just a prude”

“You sure? He does spend a lot of time with Hyde”

“As if Jekyll would be sleeping with Hyde, he looks twice his age!”

“Do you know how many rich blokes have guys even younger than him to entertain them? Wouldn't surprise me.”

Before she knew it, Nora had been surrounded by people discussing the sex life of her father who she had just met and they didn’t seem to care about the fact that she was there. For every face she took note of, two more joined in the chatter as well. It was so overwhelming, she had to get out of here. She stood up and shuffled around the outside of the crowd, having a great deal of trouble doing so.

A hand suddenly gripped her arm. It was a woman with brown hair and a mole on her cheek, the one that was with her father before he took her to his office. She was about to yank her arm away before the woman spoke.

“Come on, let’s get you somewhere quiet, poor thing,” she didn’t see a reason to resist. She allowed her new friend to take her to a small room on the other end of the room, her escape going unnoticed by the crowd which was now bustling with excited gossip about her father.

-

Lanyon was furious to say the least.

Jekyll had left Nora to wait outside to spare her the full force of what he expected to be a daunting encounter, but he wasn’t so lucky.

“Good lord, Henry! I suspected that maybe you had gone back to see her, but you fathered her child? You complained to Morcant about keeping that girl from you but-“

“Her name is Nora-”

“i don’t give a rat’s ass if her name is Queen Victoria! You kept the fact that you’d gone back to sleep with that woman and you didn’t bother to mention it to me all of this time and I had to sit back and let you keep it from me. For the record I suspected that you went back but I just figured that maybe my best friend would tell me something like that!” Lanyon was yelling at the top of his lungs at this stage and had no qualms about announcing his grievances to however much of the world could hear him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t say anything at first because you didn’t like her. It started out as a few months, then a year and suddenly it was an entire decade of keeping it from you and I thought you’d react, well… like this,” he sat down in his chair and slumped into himself, “I suppose I was right about that,” he mumbled, avoiding Lanyon’s eyes. He didn’t deserve the pity he could feel radiating off of the other man at that last comment.

“Henry, I’ll help you in whatever way I can but promise me that this is the last big secret you’ve been keeping from me. Please.”

Jekyll stared into the floor with an intense conviction as he lied, “It is.”

Jekyll met his eyes and was relieved if ashamed to find that Lanyon’s face had a warm smile on it that he didn’t at all deserve.

“Ooooh, more blatant lying to Dear Doctor Lanyon! How fun!” Hyde’s voice cackled as his image floated behind Lanyon, leaving a wispy trail of green smoke in his wake, “I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he eventually finds out about me!”

“Are you okay, Henry? You look fit to fall right off that chair.”

“Just fine, just… need to process everything…”

“I’ll say. I can’t imagine finding out about a bastard chid from a 15 year old fling, so I would be far more concerned if you were taking this extremely well,” he half-sat on the desk, eyes idly wandering about the room, “have you dealt with the situation?”

“Dealt with it?”

“Are they gone now?” Lanyon asked, trying not to let Jekyll dance around the details.

“Morcant is gone but Nora is staying for what I’m hoping won’t be more than a week.”

“Why on earth would you-,” he stopped and recomposed himself, “It’s alright, we’ll work around it. I can handle a little bit of extra paperwork if that works.”

“No, Robert, you don’t need to do that.”

“I insist, which I rarely do when it comes to doing extra work so be grateful,” he said with a sly grin, “Now go organise where she’ll be staying, as if we needed the extra expenses,” he muttered at the end, “and I’ll sign off all of these documents,” he offered, gesturing to the piles of paper sitting in front of Jekyll.

Jekyll looked up at him, swept with gratitude and relief, “Thank you, Robert, I really appreciate how kind and understanding you’ve always been, I-“

Lanyon got up and dragged Jekyll out of his chair and towards the door abruptly, “Enough, Henry, just go already,” he huffed, slamming the door shut behind a very flustered Jekyll. He ought to go get Nora about now anyway.

[galaxy-parchment]

Help! My daughter’s a Werewolf!

1 (you are here) : 2 : 3 (coming soon)

Taking a break from the Vampire AU because of a slight case of writer’s block. I’ve had this sitting around half-done for a while so I thought I’d finish it off and post it now that I’ve done a little development on it. The title is a reference to the knock-off knock-off movie “Help! My mummy’s a werewolf!” from Gravity Falls. This is very likely to be continued but I won’t put chapter notes until I add another chapter. Thanks to the TGS discord for reminding me to work on this AU!

Henry was minding his own business, wandering about the Society when suddenly he was faced with his two best friends, Rachel and Lanyon, arms and expressions looking quite crossed. Lanyon spoke up with a dramatic open-handed gesture towards Jekyll.

“Henry, this has been going on long enough, is Hyde your half-werewolf illegitimate son or not?” he asked pointedly, Jekyll just stared at the both of them, first being frightened at the confrontation but then simply being confused at the accusation.

“My… half-werewolf illegitimate son?” he repeated, unsure if he’d processed the statement correctly.

“Yes, there’s no point in hiding it any longer, Doctor, so just be out with it!” Rachel demanded.

“How would that even work? If I were his father I’d have had to conceive him in my teenage years, not to mention that if I knew I had a bastard child I would certainly tell you!” Jekyll protested.

A heavy knock pounded against the front door. The three halted their argument as Jekyll took the liberty of answering the door, not wishing to be left aside to continue a quieter argument with either of his friends. As he opened the door he decided that he was the best person to have answered, since Morcant was standing at the door beside a shorter figure with a deep hood covering their face, Morcant herself wearing a similar cloak that had seen far less care to maintain it than her companion. Upon seeing who it was, Lanyon made a sound that vaguely resembled a high-pitched harrumphh, whereas Rachel had opted for more of a quiet excited squeak.

“Ah, this is… strange” Jekyll said simply, “What brings you to London?” he asked, plastering a clearly fake, shuddery smile on his face.

“I’m here to tell you about your illegitimate child” she responded. Jekyll stared at her for a moment.

“You’re kidding…” he said, slumping against the door slightly, the arm pressed against it being the only thing keeping him from falling over.

“Not at all, Nora, say hello to your dad” she told the figure beside her, who pulled off their hood to reveal a half-werewolf hybrid girl with a fuzz of fur nowhere near as thick as Morcant’s that looked very much in the age range to be his daughter. Jekyll shoved a hand against his face and grimaced through it. He carefully looked back at Rachel and Lanyon and wasn’t pleased to find that Lanyon was staring daggers into his back and Rachel looked fit to burst with joy at her greatest dreams relating to Jekyll’s love life coming to fruition.

“You can’t expect me to believe this is my daughter?” Jekyll finally asked, developing an obvious annoyance at the circumstance.

“Believe it or not, she’s yours” she shrugged.

“So you don’t bother telling me for… I’m sorry, Nora was it? How old are you?”

“Fourteen”

“Fourteen years! Did you just forget that I might want to know I have a daughter for fourteen years?” he said, voice growing louder.

Some of the lodgers had heard the commotion and filtered out of their rooms and strangely enough, Frankenstein had also been intrigued by the racket.

“Look, she wanted to meet you and its her birthday so I figured it would be fine.” Morcant said, raising her hands defensively.

“Good lord, you could have at least sent a letter!”

Murmuring began to grow from the balconies that lined the lobby. “Oi, Jekyll, you never said you bedded a werewolf!” a voice called out. Countless others joined in, asking all manner of questions and inspiring a deep scarlet to form on Jekyll’s face as his well-kept secret was suddenly the most well-known piece of gossip in the whole building. He felt a hand on his shoulder and was anything but relieved to find it was Lanyon.

“Perhaps we should… discuss this… in more private quarters?” he suggested, raising a stern eyebrow at him.

“Er… yes of course” he turned to his guests “come with me, we’ll talk in my office” he said as he gestured for them to follow him to the stairs and through the looming door at the top of them. As they entered and Jekyll shut the door behind himself, the protests of the lodgers were muffled and subsequently died down and he internally grimaced at the looks he was getting from Lanyon and Rachel, who were livid at being shut out of the room.

Jekyll turned to the pair and stared at Morcant, searching for some sign that she was kidding and that this was all her way of asking him for some favour and be on her way. He was unfortunate enough to not see anything of the sort.

“I’m not kidding, you know, she’s your daughter,” Morcant said with her arms crossed and an eyebrow raised at him.

“You’ve had plenty of time to tell me, why now? Why not contact me first? Do you have any idea how bad this could be for me if word gets out I have an illegitimate child? Let alone a werewolf?”

“And do you have any idea how little I care? You know I’ve never been one for all of those strict rules of society that you people insist on keeping to.”

The girl, Nora, stepped closer to Morcant and placed a hand on her shoulder, looking at Jekyll pleadingly, “I’m sorry, uh, dad? Can I call you dad?”

Jekyll contemplated it for a moment, “Fine, but it’s Dr Jekyll should you ever need to address me in public, which I hope won’t be happening”

Her face lit up slightly, “Well, uh, Dad, I just… wanted to meet you and it was my birthday recently and I thought that I could find out about my human half. I understand if you don’t want anything to do with me, but I just wanted for you to at least know I existed…” she trailed off and held her arm to her side, looking at him expectantly.

Something tugged at Jekyll as he looked at her. The more he looked the more he couldn’t deny it. The way her nose stuck out like his own, the kink in her hair as it reached her shoulders, even the crook in her eyebrows were unmistakably features that insisted on showing up in his family’s features.

“I… suppose we can spend some time together… but the full moon is tomorrow, and the exhibition is coming up, you’d have to take a wolfsbane potion if you intend to stay.”

Morcant cocked her head slightly, “You know I don’t touch that stuff, Henry, if you’re gonna make us take wolfsbane I’m leaving,” Nora glanced at her from behind with alarm.

“What? I don’t wanna go home!” she quickly looked at Jekyll, “I’ll take wolfsbane, I promise, I’ll be on my best behaviour, mum even taught me about how humans act!”

Jekyll smirked despite the situation, “Knowing her what you’ve been taught is bound to need some tweaking.”

“I’m standing right here.”

“So you are. Fine, she can stay, but you have to go home if you’re not going to take a potion and you,” he pointed to Nora, “will have to let me do my work every day before I’m able to spend time with you.”

Nora’s face was simply glowing with excitement, “Oh! Thank you! I can’t wait!”

-

The room was eerily silent as he led the two out of his office and marched solemnly towards Lanyon, who was at the foot of the stairs on his own. The room was clear but something about how quiet it was told him that everyone who had likely been shooed off were watching from hidden spots, but they were doing an awfully good job of it if they were. Lanyon just gave him a look of such annoyance that Jekyll was thankful for the silence.

“Robert! Our friend Nora is going to be staying with us for a bit. I’ll take care of everything, though!” he said, desperately trying to be as cheery as possible, but the lack of change in Lanyon’s face made it clear that he was seeing right through it, Jekyll dropped his facade and pleaded “Look, I know we need to discuss this but I promise I’ll take care of everything.” he waited expectantly for an answer.

“I’m going to be calm about this, but you’re right, we’re going to have a very long discussion.” He didn’t seem to want to continue the conversation, “Do what you need to, I’ll be in your office,” he walked up the way Jekyll had come without another word.

The walk across the lobby was brisk but it took an eternity. Despite Morcant’s utter lack of being being impressed by the vibrant displays strewn about the room, Nora was glancing about with such pure awe that Jekyll couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride blossoming within him. It felt nice to know that to some degree, his love of science had been passed down to his daughter without any of his influence. The door seemed to creak more than usual and he pulled it open and let Morcant pass. She took the offer and turned back to Jekyll and Nora, paying more attention to the latter. She stepped forward pulled her into a big hug, making sure to use her abnormally strong muscles to squeeze her tight.

“I trust you’ll only do what I would do, behave yourself,” she pulled back and looked at her with a mischievous grin, “but not too well, when I come back I don’t want to find you’ve been turned into one of these posh fuddy-duddies.”

“Oh, mother, I wouldn’t dream of it!” Nora exaggerated, placing a dramatically ginger hand to her chest.

“I’ll be back in about a week, Henry. Any past connections we may have will be ignored if I come back and find something has happened to my girl,” she said sternly.

“Of course”

“Good! Until we meet again, Henry Jekyll,” she said with a grin that inspired a nostalgic blush on Jekyll’s face as she turned and walked away without a care in the world. The fond moment was lost the moment the door creaked shut again and Jekyll remembered the encounter he had waiting in his office and the very real problem of a 14 year-old half-werewolf bastard daughter staying with him for the next week to add to the 5 course meal of misery he was being served by the wonderful struggles of London life. The howling laughter of Hyde from the back of his thoughts was anything but reassuring.

What on earth had he just been talked into?

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SHARING IS CARING 👀👀👀😳😳😳

What’s the fun in making obscene amounts of fan content and not sharing any of it?

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Here’s a list of all of the rules I could remember but if it turns out I’ve missed anything I’ll update the list:

- Vampires drink blood but usually only need to every 3-4+ days - Sunlight burns - Silver burns - No reflections - Very strong - Very agile and quick reflexes - Vampires are made when someone gets bitten and some of the vampire blood is ingested or gets into their bloodstream (this happens when the person doesn’t quite die and via mosquito rules some of the vampire blood can get left in there, but not always) - Vampirism isn’t genetic but it’s not unusual for a vampire’s kid to have a few things that are off about them compared to normal people (eg. just a bit too strong, weirdly pale, etc) - Vampires are immortal but definitely not invulnerable - Their blood is just other people’s blood plus a little bit of extra ‘vampire blood’ so they have a very hard-to-pick magical creature scent to them - As time goes on without drinking blood symptoms start showing up because of the lack of human blood circulating, a general outline of the main changes in typical chronological order:

Start to get really pale (not usually noticeable because 1800s)

Fangs start getting longer

Nails start growing out into claws (they don’t retract and have to be cut)

Becomes abnormally aggressive and ravenous

Eyes become a little glowy and whites become more yellow

Body structure starts changing into a very monster-like form (Note this takes at least 2 months to get to and the process is very slow and very hard to pick up without close inspection)

Complete loss of conscious thought and reverts into a pure vampire

Vampire dies up to a week after completely reverting into a pure vampire

- Vampires drink blood to stabilise their forms and because of this human blood will give them a stable human form but drinking blood from another animal will give them features of that animal, but drinking from something like a single rat won’t do much to satisfy them since one of the main benefits of drinking from a human is that they have a human’s worth of blood. If a vampire lives off of animal blood somehow they tend to become a mildly human hybrid of that animal, a bit like a fully aware but transformed werewolf. - It’s not advised to drink a mixture of different animals because that tends to just get things really messy and gross.

FYI I’m being a bit slow on the new chapter for the Vampire AU so would you guys like some of my notes on how my TGS vampires work?

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FYI I’m being a bit slow on the new chapter for the Vampire AU so would you guys like some of my notes on how my TGS vampires work?

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Vampire AU

1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6  : 7 : 8 : 9 : 10 : 11 : 12 (you are here) : 13 : 14 : 15 (coming soon)

Oh would you look at that! A new chapter! This one’s a little shorter than I was hoping it would turn out to be but enjoy anyway!

Jasper was once again spending his spare time idly kicking his legs from atop a counter as Rachel went about her business. It was nearing dusk, leaving him with his last hour of having a human face for the day. Rachel was finishing off one of the many complimentary chickens that saving her had earned Jasper for what was advertising to be the rest of his life.

“Are you settling in well, Jasper? I hope you’ve made yourself well enough at home by this point.”

“Well I’ve gotten all of the animals settled, at least. It took a few days, especially with everyone already being too busy with repairs to help me.”

“I’m sure Jekyll would have been happy to organise something for you. He’s approachable for a reason, you know!”

Jasper rubbed the back of his neck, keeping a tighter grip onto the side of the bench with his other hand to steady himself, “Oh, I don’t know, he and Dr Lanyon seem a bit off is all…”

“Off?”

“You know, it might just be that odd smell they have on them, but it might just be a gentleman thing…”

“What smell?” Rachel stopped what she was doing to look at Jasper closely with intrigue.

Jasper shifted under her gaze, “Th-they just have a scent that reminds me of some of my more mythical creatures, i-it could even just be Zosi’s scent rubbing off on them!” he stammered, hoping he hadn’t said anything offensive.

“So you’re saying they don’t smell like people?”

“Not like people I’ve met before, at least.”

“It’s not making you uncomfortable, is it? I could ask Jekyll about it if it’ll make you feel better,” she offered.

“Oh no! It’s alright, I’ll get used to it soon enough. I’m sure if it were a problem something would have happened already!”

“If you say so, but if you notice anything else don’t be afraid to tell me,” she reassured, making a mental note of it for herself, “are you free tonight, Jasper?”

“Y-yes? Why?”

“How would you like to come visit my sister-in-law with me tonight? I was hoping to get a lead on where Master Hyde is and she’s the sort of person to be able to find out stuff like that.”

“Is she a police officer or something, Miss Rachel?”

Rachel laughed, “Goodness, no, quite the opposite. You don’t exactly get police officers out of a Sugar-loaf Court family”

“Oh… that sounds… fun…” Jasper awkwardly agreed.

“Great! We’ll leave later tonight so make sure to be back here at around midnight. She’s not the sort of lady to see during the daytime.”

-

It was in the dead of night when everyone in the building heard the unmistakable sound of glass shattering in Luckett’s empty room.

Some woke up immediately, others only blearily peeking their heads out of their doors when the commotion started and an odd few that hadn’t been asleep to begin with were the first to investigate. Luckett of course was quick to race out of Doddle’s room, ignoring the unwanted attention coming out of someone else’s room half-dressed would earn him, the other man exiting a few moments after him. There were a few others gathered around the door by the time he arrived and he hastily pulled out his key and unlocked the door, wondering why the door was locked when he had specifically left it unlocked to make for an easy return to his room in the morning.

He flicked a switch and the lamps surrounding his room burst to life with tiny flames all along the walls, revealing the room to be completely destroyed. Claw marks were littered across every surface that they could pierce and the bed was barely recognisable as once having sheets and a pillow, which were mere ribbons and feathers spread all over the torn up mattress.

The only things that were left untouched were that Luckett had left out in the open were the silver lanterns sitting atop Luckett’s dresser. Luckett and the few other lodgers that were at the door entered and searched the room. Cantilupe gasped and pointed out a set of holes in them mattress right next to where the pillow used to be. Small holes in were riddled in pairs that were all the same distance apart.

“Is that what I think it is?” she said aghast.

Luckett paled, “Are those fang marks?”

“Goodness, they certainly are. They’re vampire fangs by the looks of it!”

“In this part of town? There’s never been an attack on Broadwick before!”

Ito poked her head in, “Have you been in the bad books of any vampires recently?”

“No! I haven’t even left the building this week, I’m sure if I got anyone angry they’d have ripped my throat out sooner,” he said sporadically.

She walked up to the broken window, careful to avoid any loose shards from touching her, “Did you leave your window open, Luckett?”

“No, why?”

“The window’s only been broken from the inside, whoever came in either came in through the building or they opened up the window and rushed to get out,” she explained, pulling on her leather gloves and inspecting the gaping hole in the glass, “We’d better tell Jekyll. Luckett, go back to Doddle’s room for tonight and keep everything locked up.”

Luckett made no effort to disagree and marched himself right back to Doddle’s room to process the situation, the other man doing his best to calm him down and help him get some rest.

To all of the Luckett fans, I’m sorry he got traumatised I just picked out a random lodger and his compensation is getting frisky with Doddle. Also another note is that Rachel and Jasper weren’t actually at the Society when the break-in happened for future reference.

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Vampire AU

1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6  : 7 : 8 : 9 : 10 : 11 (you are here) : 12 : 13 : 14 : 15 (coming soon)

I swear every time I write a chapter I’m like ‘oh yeah thats long enough’ and then I check the word count and it’s actually a really short chapter. When this finally gets posted to A/O3 I might just merge some chapters because this is turning out to have way more chapters than I expected.

Frankenstein was babbling about her misadventures as a disgraced hermit proudly as the lodgers were huddled up in front of her with their legs crossed as if they were children enthusiastically listen to their grandfather regale his exciting tales of war.

“For two long months I wandered that godforsaken forest, surviving on nothing but rain water and lizard guts! Tormented day and night by my own personal demon!” She regaled, gesturing to Creature, who was uncomfortably huddled up beside her bed and reluctantly listening to the woman tell her exaggerated stories.

Henry stepped through the crowd with a large case held carefully in his hands as he shooed off the lodgers so that he could treat Frankenstein, who was anything but happy to see him and seemed to be deciding whether or not to slap him across the face again.

He gingerly placed his chemistry kit on a nearby table as Frankenstein’s face remained annoyed and mistrusting. She gave a heavy huff of breath and turned away from him.

“I thought I told you to leave me alone” she said, struggling through coughs between her words.

“Regardless of either of our feelings I’m afraid I’m going to have to treat you, or your ‘personal demon’ over there may have something to say about it” he half-joked, Creature making no move to deny his statement. “besides, what sort of an alchemist would I be if I couldn’t cure someone as esteemed as yourself?” he said, holding up a flask from his chemistry kit.

“I have no doubt that you will kill me with your amateur skills!” Frankenstein retorted, glaring at him.

Jekyll continued to engage in intellectual banter while he mixed the ingredients to the antidote. Frankenstein was becoming increasingly alarmed at his deep knowledge of alchemy but refused to show any hint of weakness. As he finished the medicine, there was a pregnant pause, though Frankenstein was simply waiting for Jekyll to finish up and finally leave. He held the mixture up in front of his eyes and peered into it, checking that it was completed, then lowered it down in front of him before looking at Frankenstein more seriously than he had before.

“I must admit, I have a favour to ask of you…” he said firmly.

Frankenstein chuckled, “Ah! So you admit that your skills are inferior!”

Jekyll sighed, “No… it’s something different… I noticed that you seem to have become quite popular among the lodgers, I don’t think I need to explain why.”

“Yes? I know this.” Frankenstein answered, raising an eyebrow.

“I was hoping you’d look out for any strange behaviour that I may be missing, since they’ve been acting far more comfortable with you than have been with me recently.”

“Perhaps they are seeing through your lies. This is your own fault, I am simply revealing the truth to them!”

“This isn’t about me, it’s about keeping everybody safe!” Jekyll said, the anger is his voice was clear though stifled.

“What sort of strange behaviour then, Doctor? Signs of showing free will? Signs of the spark of creativity breaking away from the chains of London aristocracy?”

“No! I mean if they’re acting suspicious in any way, you know, if anyone has been acting like…” he stopped short, circling his hand through the air absently, unsure of whether to continue. This was an awful idea, why did he even consider asking her to do this.

“Like what? I cannot look for something if I do not know what I am looking for,” she insisted.

“Can I trust you to keep quiet? At least to the lodgers?”

She pondered for a moment and looked up at Creature, who simply nodded. She turned back to him with a curious grin on her face, “Very well, we will keep a secret.” Jekyll was silent for what felt like an eternity, but snapped himself back into reality and straightened his back out of the slight slouch it had sunk into.

“I think one of the lodgers is a vampire, you’re really the only one I can trust at this point since you couldn’t possibly be the vampire” He said quickly, forcing it out of himself before he could make up a lie and avoid the problem.

“I thought that Hyde fellow was a vampire?” Frankenstein asked. It seemed even the presence of the great Doctor Frankenstein couldn’t deter the lodgers from their gossiping.

“I have reason to believe that there was a second vampire with him on the night that you arrived, someone familiar with the Society. I’m sure you know how serious of an issue vampires are, especially in a crowded building like this.”

Frankenstein face was riddled with alarm, but she was determined not to show weakness in front of her sworn enemy and kept a strong gaze with him.

“I suppose I can look out for anything, since I’m sure someone as inexperienced as you could not possibly be able to see fine details as a good scientist can,” she smiled, “Besides, it will be fun to watch you learn the consequences of being an untrustworthy siren that knows nothing of the personal lives of the people he seeks to scrub clean.”

“Whatever makes you feel better, then. Here, this'll suppress your cough."

“Do you really expect me to drink this? Just because I’m helping you does not mean that I’ll swallow whatever mediocre mixture you put in front of me!”

“But how will you prove me wrong?” Jekyll asked, raising it further towards her.

She glared at him, annoyed by his logic, but nonetheless held her hand out expectantly. She took a long gulp and was quiet for a moment, observing the notable lack of scratchiness in her throat that she’d been subjected to for so long.

“Bah, just because you managed to… to…” Frankenstein’s eyes drooped and she felt the need to lie back onto her pillow. Jekyll smiled sweetly and pulled the bedcovers back over her.

“I may have added a touch of Moonsoaked Howlite to help you rest. I’m sure it will help you sleep on our agreement, since I’d be best that we fix the situation before the exhibition.”

“Ah, this is not happening”

“Well you’ve already agreed to help me so I’d appreciate for you to keep to your word.”

“No, I mean your exhibition is not happening, I already explained to your lodgers how this is a trap to lure them into the sedating poppy fields of the bourgeoisie,” she yawned and welcomed the overwhelming need to rest, laying down on her pillow, “Naturally, they all agreed to quit.” Jekyll stopped and stared at her in horror.

“What?” 

Jekyll spent what felt like an eternity standing over the bed, processing the information. Creature finally shifted from where he sat and spoke up.

“That’s quite a problem you have there”

“I’ll say, how are we supposed to stay open if nobody participates in the exhibition!”

“No, I mean your vampire problem, they’re quite dangerous when left unchecked,” Creature said simply, looking at Jekyll very intently.

“Yes, they are,” he closed up his chemistry kit and lifted it off of the table. He carried it out the door as Creature dismissed him.

“Do be careful, Doctor, I’d hate to see any harm come to my creator or to yourself.”

Jekyll didn’t bother replying.

-

The Society seemed less crowded with all of the fuss over Frankenstein. Not a soul in the building was occupied with anything other than swooning over the new resident celebrity or engaging in excited chatter in their rooms to stop themselves from giving into the temptation of sneaking up to her room. The lights were all turned off in the lobby, leaving an eerie darkness that Lanyon could see through easily, watching what few movements occurred in the building pondered what to do about Hyde. No matter how he went about it, he kept on wandering back to doing something particularly horrible.

He could frame Hyde. It would be easy. Everyone knew that he was a vampire, so all he really had to do was leave a few harmless clues, maybe make a targeted if deliberately unsuccessful attack. It would certainly be low of him to scare the lodgers like that but it was definitely an effective move.

Hyde was a menace, it was justified, he just needed to scare Henry into firing him. He couldn’t possibly come to any other conclusion if he did something as heinous as attempting to attack someone. Nobody would even get hurt in the process, it was foolproof, even if it was quite the backstab. Lanyon wasn’t one for lingering on his feelings anyway.

From his silent position by one of the pillars on the ground level, he spied Luckett sneaking off with Doddle, both of them giggling like teenage courters and obviously intending to have one of the ‘sleepovers’ that were so uncomfortably common within these walls. It was as good an opportunity as any, so Lanyon sighed and pushed himself off of the pillar, determined to get to work.

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Vampire AU

1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6  : 7 : 8 : 9 : 10 (you are here) : 11 : 12 : 13 : 14 : 15 (coming soon)

Woops guess who forgot to link chapter 9 to all the other chapters. I hope the sheer length of this mostly explains why it took a while to write mostly because of the whole trying not to directly plagiarise the comic but also I’ve been really busy with thankfully good things like weddings and birthdays and award ceremonies and all that fun stuff.

Of all the things Lanyon expected while he was checking on why nobody had shown up the Bethnal Green for the cleanup, Henry being covered in blood and losing control of everyone in the building wasn’t in his list of possibilities. Thankfully Henry didn’t seem to be in any sort of pain but rather was staring at the chaos of lodgers running up the main staircase.

His shirt was completely covered in blood and not going out to feed since the Moreau incident certainly wasn’t helping that annoyingly ravenous feeling he was getting in the back of his mind. God, he really should have gone out yesterday. He took his mind off of it by instead looking at Henry’s face, which had much less blood on it and turned to the ground with a very worried look etched into his features.

“Henry?”

“What?” his head perked up, drawing him out of whatever thought he was lost to, he turned and noticed who it was, “Robert! What are you doing here? I thought you were helping out in Bethnal Green today?”

“I was, but the lodgers that were supposed to be helping out today never showed up, also you’re bleeding” Robert said, carefully avoiding looking down and doing anything out of turn.

Henry quickly glanced down at himself and met Robert’s eyes just as quickly, “Don’t worry, it’s not my blood” despite the apparent reassurance Robert was getting, Henry still looked quite nervous.

“Is… is that meant to make me less worried? Have you been getting enough sleep?” he reached up and felt Henry’s forehead, which was cold rather than feverishly hot like he’d expected it to be.

Henry glanced up at the hand on his head with a look of panic. He quickly pulled his hand down and laughed nervously “I’m fine, Robert, just a little off schedule but I have it under control!” a knife suddenly appeared under Henry’s chin.

“Doctor Jaaaaaay…” came the calm voice of Rachel from Henry’s right hand side “Where is Master Hyde?” she yelled abruptly. Robert was lost as Rachel bickered with Henry but struggled his way back to listening to avoid looking down at the blood that was soaked into Henry’s vest. The first word he caught was ‘Hyde’ and his eyes widened in alarm.

“What’s all this about Mr Hyde? You’re not still in contact with that scoundrel are you?” he interrogated. He quickly found himself bombarding Henry with questions about that criminal. Why on earth would he still be on speaking terms with Hyde? He was not only a criminal but he’d been outed as a vampire. As much as it pained him to say, he hoped that Henry would be reasonable enough to stay far away from affairs with vampires if he could help it. He hoped there wasn’t any foul play in all of this.

A small metallic beetle suddenly zoomed into the room and halted in front of Henry, surprising all three of them as it blurted out a robotic voice that Robert just made out to be “Transmission for Dr Henry Jekyll”

Before Robert and Rachel could process what was happening Henry was suddenly out the door and off to find the lodgers that he explained were out in Survey. Robert and Rachel simply stared for a moment before the former uttered “What just happened?”. 

Robert decided he may just have to take matters into his own hands.

-

Jekyll rushed to his room to get the bloodstained clothes off of him as soon as possible and tossed them into a bag and away from his sight. He touched a finger to his teeth to check them. Thankfully, most likely because he’d fed last night, his fangs were barely longer than usual and Jekyll took the blessing in stride. Now he had to keep himself covered for the trip to find Bryson and his crew.

He took out a top hat with a wider brim than most, flipped his collar up despite how unflattering it was to his jawline, picked up a parasol and put on gloves so that he only needed to cover his face while he was out to avoid suspicion.

He spotted the balloon a mile off and walked as fast as a gentlemanly stroll would allow him, careful to keep to the edges of the path where it was shadier. Eventually he made it to the crash site and grimaced at the ladder leading up to where the group was waiting. To his annoyance, Helsby was waving for him up to climb the ladder, so he didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Jekyll huffed, closed and tucked his umbrella under his elbow and looked down and awkwardly climbed the ladder, nearly burning himself on a spot of sunlight on his way up. He clambered up onto the elevated ground that the balloon was resting in and tidied himself up before looking to the men and giant octopus in the basket.

“So what have you been up to on this fine adventure, gentlemen?”

Bryson looked into the distance dramatically and went on a convoluted tangent about how dangerous and mysterious their latest ‘journey through the cosmos’ was. After a few minutes of monologuing Jekyll grew bored and clasped his hands together cheerfully.

“I see! So what you’re saying is you got lost!”

“If you must put it into unscientific terms,” Bryson deadpanned.

“Not to worry, I’ll have a team out here to extricate your dirigible as soon as they’ve extricated themselves from Frankenstein’s clutches”

Bryson’s eyes widened, “Frankenstein’s awake? Why didn’t you say so earlier?”, neither he nor Helsby wasted a moment climbing out of the basket and sprinting back down the path Jekyll had just traversed, the accompanying octopus monster dragging itself along in tow at an alarming pace.

Jekyll stared defeatedly as the last of the lodgers were swept up in Frankenstein’s spell. Somewhere in the back of his mind Hyde stirred. Jekyll could feel the smug grin on him from whatever shadow he lurked in.

“Oh, poor Henry! After all you’ve done for the lodgers they abandon you for some clown with a famous name! I guess no matter how hard you try to hide all of those ghastly vampiric tendencies, the can still see how much of a monster you are, fangs or no!” he cackled, revealing himself in the shade of the nearest tree. Jekyll climbed back down the ladder as he spoke and reopened the umbrella, taking his time in making his way back.

“Why can’t you just stop existing for a week? You don’t normally hang around while I’m in control, what makes this different? You’ve already been to Blackfog for a night, as agreed.”

Hyde let out a growl of anger, “What? So you can just stop worrying about me forever? How convenient for you to just let me disappear forever!”

“You know that’s not true!”

“Right, because who else is going to do the sloppy murder you need to do to stay alive? Face it, Henry, if we weren’t a vampire then you’d probably have tried to get rid of me ages ago!” Hyde fumed, his shadowy form becoming less defined, “and for the record, you’re lucky that bartender knows not to mess with a vampire, that was by far the shoddiest luring I’ve ever seen and you’re lucky you found some depressed bastard that was probably baiting himself to get killed”

“I really don’t need to deal with this right now,” Jekyll groaned, rubbing the bridge of his nose and eager to avoid talking about last night, “if you’re going to hang around, you could at least help me get a handle on this Frankenstein problem.”

“Go to hell, traitor!”

“Don’t be like that! Frankenstein is our childhood idol, I need a way to win her over, but I can’t do that so long as she has this stubborn idea that I’m some kind of imposter scientist.”

“She’s not too far off, when was the last time you actually did any experiments? These days you’re just worried about making sure nobody figures out you got turned so that you can get them to throw money at your beloved Society.”

Jekyll looked up in realisation, “Huh… I think you might be onto something… I’ve been so caught up in keeping the Society afloat and focusing on hiding all of my secrets that I haven’t had time to follow my own scientific pursuits! Sure I’ve occasionally tried to make a cure but never anything I could be open about, of course Frankenstein would think I’m a fake!”

A confused look formed on Hyde’s face, “Uh- yes she… why are you agreeing with me? Where is this going?”

Before Hyde knew what was happening, Jekyll started out on a tangent about everything he remembered about alchemy and the various plants surrounding them and was adamant that he’d found just what he needed. Much to Hyde’s chagrin his insistence that Jekyll was simply blabbering and had no hope of ever winning over Frankenstein were ignored in favour of Jekyll returning to his enthusiastically wild scientific endeavours and explaining his plan all the way home until eventually he had to shut up to avoid suspicion from the sudden presence of other people who wouldn't take well to listening to Jekyll talking to thin air about the tiny flowers he had clasped in his hand.

[galaxy-parchment]

Vampire AU

1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6  : 7 : 8 : 9 (you are here) : 10 : 11 : 12 : 13 : 14 : 15 (coming soon)

The next few days seemed fine at first. He’d been juggling the exhibition plans, the increased number of meetings, Hyde’s tantrums at not being able to go out and rebuilding the Society like the difficult performance it was, but now there was an even bigger problem.

He had to feed, and if he let Hyde out he’d surely go straight to Blackfog and somehow cause even more problems.

“I don’t see the problem, it’s not like Blackfog was why I almost got arrested! I want to go back!” Hyde reasoned, “besides, if you go out now, then you’ll have to do the killing yourself!”

“In case you haven’t noticed, you’re Scotland Yard’s most wanted and regardless of how clever you are, someone will surely turn you in with such a high bounty,” Jekyll retaliated.

“Fine, have it your way, I can’t wait for the look on everyone’s face when someone catches the esteemed Dr Jekyll murdering a poor innocent fool for the sake of a meal,” he dramatically put his arms above his head like a lady about to faint, “I can just imagine the headlines, ‘Dr Henry Jekyll revealed to be a drainer!’, but what do I know anyway?” he grinned as he evaporated into nothing.

Jekyll looked out of the window and reached for a cloak that had seen better days and any accessory he could find to cover up as many defining features as he could. After successfully covering his face with some obnoxious alchemy goggles and a black cloth around the lower half of his face, he pulled the hood over his head and planted a foot up on his windowsill.

As he looked out onto the empty street he silently rejoiced that he didn’t have to stop and ponder his decision any longer while waiting for people to pass and scaled down the wall, careful not to pass any windows. He could do this, he’d watched Hyde do it every night, why was this different? Now he just has a different view of the action and he won’t even be able to see it as well as if he was the one doing it. He dropped down onto the ground and quietly scurried through the streets until he’d thoroughly escaped the high-end streets he’d come from and immersed himself among the seedier parts of London.

He wandered into one of the many bars and inhaled to the limit his lungs would allow him. He lowered the bandana and took off the goggles, leaving only the hood covering his face. Now came the hard part, all he had to do was find someone drunk enough to accept advances from the first person to ask. He pulled up a seat at the bar and ordered a whiskey with his natural Scottish accent and waited.

-

A man about his age sits at the bar, alone. He’s a portly man with messy brown curls that seem to be dirtied by the sweat of a hard day’s work.

He orders an absinthe and downs it without a second thought. Henry nurses his drink.

The man finishes his sixth drink. Henry has just ordered his second.

The man’s head is swaying idly and Henry casually sidles up next to him. The bartender gives him a look but knows better than to interfere, this is Bethnal Green after all.

Henry lets out one final sigh before placing his arm on the table, drawing the man’s attention to himself.

“Yer a good lookin’ feller ain’t ya?” he says with the sloppiest smile he can manage and maintaining a drunken dreamy look in his eyes. The man is far too drunk to notice he’s acting, or Henry’s just a really good actor.

“Not s’ bad yours’lf” he slurs, returning his own genuine sloppy smile.

They banter for a few minutes and Henry does his best to be as nice as possible. He may as well make this man’s last night be halfway decent. The man seems to enjoy the company and the extra distraction from whatever drew him to the initial distraction of getting this drunk so quickly.

“I ain’t normally so forward, but would ye care ta join me fer a walk, outside?” he says, moving his hand onto the man’s hand, whose name he has found out is Eddie, because of course it had to be Eddie. Instead of speaking, the man stands up with Henry’s forearm in hand before tottering a bit, encouraging Henry to take the lead and subtly guide him out the door and into an alley.

-

As Henry finished draining the last drop of blood he could he sat the body up against the wall. He at least owed poor Eddie the dignity of his corpse being treated with care. He wiped the blood off of his chin with the edge of his cloak and returned home, trembling slightly and struggling to ignore Hyde’s gleeful taunts at his integrity.