It's How You Say It
He knows how to speak silkily, and convince Jekyll of almost anything. Old Jekyll's losing sense, and Jekyll likes the newfound pleasures he's always known how to indulge in. When he whispers to Jekyll and tells him that there's no point in shutting him away, Jekyll listens. Who wouldn't listen?
He knows how to speak. That's what he's all about. He knows how things must be said to convince folk that he's a very reasonable, sane fellow. Wine makes him lightheaded and yet he keeps his sense. Being delighted only helps him, because the more delight he derives, the more he learns that he can't ever let all this go.
He loves being free. He loves being out. More than he loves women and more than he loves drink and more than he loves any number of his strange fantasies, he loves being out. He loves the fact that he has his own hair to be swept by the stars, and he loves that fact that it's his own voice he uses to seduce people into his ideas.
Being out means stretching his arms as far as he wants without being cramped inside Jekyll. Being out means jumping in the air until the sweat runs down his cheeks and knowing he'll ache the next day because he has real limbs to ache. Being out means if his heart bursts it'll be his own heart and his own blood and his own death, not Jekyll's.
And it's a good bit thanks to his voice, he thinks, amused. His very nice, perhaps--perhaps tenor voice--with the slight gravelly roughness to it, that he can make go silk at a moment's notice. Being out and staying out is thanks to that voice, and not always paying at taverns is thanks to that voice and picking girls off the street is thanks to that lovely, perfected voice.
Jekyll is prey to his voice as well, and Jekyll hasn't forced him in yet. He smiles. He's taking care of that, too, secretly. So far, he stays out without protest, but if he must figure out how to get out on his own, he will. He'll never go back in willingly and stay shut up behind locked doors in Jekyll's mind ever again.
But he doesn't think that possibility will ever begin to occur. After all, he knows how to use his voice.
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