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The Gilded Room	By : DayjaJadie Category: Titles in the Public Domain > Sherlock Holmes > Slash > Slash Views: 7684 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work fiction, based on the Sherlock Holmes series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
Chapter 2

Sherlock awoke slowly with a vague, unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach that something was wrong. He was in a bed, was his first observation, but he dismissed that as the reason behind the wrong feeling because he almost always awoke in a bed. He ached, mostly in his head but the rest of his body was there too. He opened his eyes and took in the familiar strange room and the man who was just finishing getting dressed next to the bed. Strange memories danced with even stranger, leaving him adrift as to figure out the truth. Strangest was the memory of being intimate with the newly dressed man, but that didn’t seem quite real. Then he managed to look down at himself, still naked but for the bandages around his arm and shoulder and decided that perhaps it was after all. The man turned at the sound of the sheets rustling.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” he said, smiling at him with a fond expression, “I wanted you to take your medicine before I go.” Sherlock accepted the offered pill silently, swallowing it down with the cold bit of tea left in the cup by the bed. His eyes never left the stranger, watching his every move warily as he straightened out his clothes to make himself presentable. He didn’t offer Sherlock back his own, which had been cast aside to the floor, and Sherlock didn’t ask. He felt passive, strangely content to lie on the bed naked without even pulling a sheet to cover himself.
“You’ll have clean sheets soon,” the man continued, taking out a pocket watch to glance at the time and frowning at it slightly, “And the doctor will come to see about the…bleeding. I am sorry about that.” Sherlock didn’t answer. The man stopped messing with his clothes and looked at him properly. “Well,” he said at last, “I’ll see you tonight, Sherlock. Take care, love.” And he bent in briefly to kiss Sherlock on the forehead in an oddly domestic gesture before turning away and making for the door.

“Goodbye,” Sherlock said, speaking for the first time. As the man was already half out the door he wasn’t entirely sure he even heard him. Then he simply let himself exist, lying motionless on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. He only moved at last when he heard the door open.

The promised doctor, accompanied by the colossal James strode swiftly into the room. For once, Holmes’s memory didn’t need to struggle to place a name with a face.

“Watson?” he said, struggling to pull himself up with one arm. Watson approached the bed quickly, despite an awkwardly pronounced limp. He didn’t have his cane. He also looked as though he had lost a bit of weight. But he was dressed well enough, clean, shaven, without any obvious cuts or bruises on his exposed skin. He still looked wrong, like he didn’t belong in the room. There was a strange gleam in his eye and when he was close enough, Sherlock decided it looked a bit like anger. It made him nervous. He suddenly remembered that he was lying naked in a bed he had just shared with another man and awkwardly he grasped at the sheet to cover himself.

“Holmes,” Watson said, a warm hand covering his and stopping his struggle with the sheets, before he helped to arrange the pillows so he could sit up properly. The doctor’s body felt warm and comforting as he leaned over him, arms occasionally brushing his skin. For a moment, the wrongness went away. Then Watson stepped back and his eyes swept over Sherlock’s body with the clinical observation of a doctor, and Sherlock finally recognized the look in his eyes. It was the same look he got whenever Sherlock would get himself hurt, usually through his own folly.

“Sorry,” Sherlock said. Watson paused, head turning back to look Sherlock in the eyes, seeming to be searching for something.

“Holmes,” he said, hand brushing through Sherlock’s hair while the other clutched his hand tightly. “It’s alright.” Sherlock believed him. The doctor started inspecting him again, but didn’t let go of his hand. Sherlock relaxed slightly, now that he didn’t think Watson was mad at him, until Watson put a hand on his knee.

“Holmes, old boy, I’m afraid I must ask you to part your legs,” he said gently. Feeling suddenly tense again, some of the wrongness leaking back, Sherlock nonetheless did as he asked. He studied Watson’s face while Watson studied him, taking in the tightness around his mouth, the gleam in his eye. Sherlock had been right the first time. Watson was angry, furious in fact, but doing his best to hide it behind the neutrality of his profession. When he spoke, his voice remained soft. “Sorry, old boy, looks like I need to sew you up.”

Sherlock turned his eyes away as Watson pulled out his supplies. It didn’t hurt, what the doctor was doing, though it felt as if it should have. He could feel Watson’s fingers, cloth, metal…the actual sensation of the needle going in didn’t register but he could feel the pull of the thread. He didn’t feel pain, not down there. His head still hurt. And when his eyes filled with tears it wasn’t from the stitches but from the wrongness of everything.

Watson finished as quickly as he could and turned away completely, handing bloodied cloths and instruments to James. He was angry; Sherlock could see it in every stiff, silent movement even with his back to Sherlock, even with Sherlock’s eyes unaccountably blurred with unwept tears. Sherlock couldn’t really blame him; if Watson had lain with another man and then asked Sherlock to come in to clean him up, Sherlock might have been angry too. Finally, unable to take Watson’s silent rage any longer, he cried out, “I’m sorry!”

Watson turned back to him swiftly at the cry, dropping the cloth he had been using to clean his hands. He reached out and Sherlock fell forward, untied hand clutching at Watson’s shirt while he kept up a mantra of ‘sorry, sorry, please, don’t leave, sorry’. Watson pulled him close, one hand in his hair the other at his back, rubbing it, as the words gave way to incoherent sobs.

“Holmes, Holmes, dear boy, come on, hey,” Watson whispered into his hair as Sherlock slowly let himself relax, calming enough to realize that Watson wasn’t rejecting him, that his soothing words sounded a bit broken in fact, as though he were crying. But that seemed wrong. Watson didn’t cry, no more than he did. He pulled back to look and found Watson’s eyes bright with tears and pain.

“Watson, you’re crying,” he said in confusion, raising his hand to his face. Watson leaned in slightly to the touch.

“Yes,” he answered, “Yes I am.” Sherlock frowned, wondering what great tragedy could make his Watson cry and not liking it. Then Watson leaned back again. “Well,” he said, “Let’s see about getting you cleaned up, eh? Perhaps we should move to the couch.”

The journey to the couch was much more difficult than Sherlock knew it should be. After helping him into a robe, it took the combined effort of Watson and James to keep Sherlock on his feet and on a straight path. They took it slowly but by the time they reached their destination Sherlock was trembling with exertion. The world spinning around him, he sat back and let Watson run a warm, damp towel over him, not even stirring when Watson began on his private regions. Watson washed his hair last, having him lower his head back into a basin on a chair held steady by James. The water was warm and Watson’s hands gentle as he messaged his scalp, though the basin’s edge against his neck was not very comfortable. Then he toweled him off, leaving it tied about his head, and James carried away the cleaning materials to bring him a new set of clothes. Like his last clothes, they were of the sort one might wear to bed, which suited Sherlock’s sleepy demeanor perfectly. Watson had to help him dress as his limbs felt heavy and uncoordinated, not to mention one of his arms was still wrapped to his chest. There wasn’t a proper top, just the robe, and Watson took the opportunity to check on whatever wounds the bandages had wrapped. Sherlock himself wasn’t certain; he couldn’t really feel the pain and he had no memory of receiving them in the first place.

After everything was finished and Sherlock was clean and warm, Watson joined him on the couch, pulling Sherlock half on top of him as he put one leg up and let the other rest on the floor. It was comfortable, familiar. It reminded him of home. And at the same time, it reminded him how wrong everything was, because this wasn’t home, and he wasn’t supposed to feel so weak, and Watson’s hands weren’t supposed to tremble slightly as he ran the towel over his hair, and Sherlock wasn’t supposed to feel small and wrong and trapped every time he went to move his wrapped arm and found out he couldn’t. He felt sick and like he was infecting Watson just by leaning on him, dragging him into this wrong room after wrong things happened.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, curling slightly into Watson’s chest, and the towel stopped moving over his hair.

“Why are you sorry?” Watson asked, his voice almost in Sherlock’s ear. Sherlock frowned slightly because he hadn’t thought his apology would need to be explained, and because he didn’t know how to put the wrongness of everything into words. So he settled on what he did understand.

“I laid with another man.” Watson’s arm tightened around him, as though to draw him even closer while his other dropped the towel, settling Sherlock’s head under his chin.

“Don’t you remember?” Watson said, “I gave you my permission.” Sherlock frowned, because that didn’t sound like it could be right. But then, if it wasn’t, wouldn’t Watson have been rejecting him, throwing him to the ground? Watson’s arms were solid and warm, holding him in a manner careful but strong. It was not the hold of anger or rejection. Then Watson continued to talk, his voice low. “I said…I said, ‘it’s not okay…but you have my permission. I won’t be angry with you if you lay with him. Not even if you enjoy it.’”

“I didn’t enjoy it,” Sherlock answered, and he felt Watson stiffen slightly, holding him just a little bit tighter. “I didn’t enjoy it but I didn’t hate it…”

“And I’m still not angry with you,” Watson answered.

“I think…I think I went away. And when I come back my brain doesn’t work quite right. It’s like…it’s like what you wrote. A machine without a heart.”

“Go as far away as you need to. And after…when we leave…I’ll bring you back. I won’t let you be a machine.” Sherlock considered this. He thought about saying he didn’t mind being a machine, except that perhaps he did, because he didn’t feel quite whole like this.

“Something isn’t right,” he said instead, “But I can’t see…why can’t I see it?”

“You are…ill,” Watson answered, “Just…just let it go. Let me take care of it.”

“You said we will leave. When will we leave?” But Watson didn’t answer right away, his body tensing slightly.

“Forget about that,” he said at last, “Just…forget. Don’t talk of leaving, just…let it go.” The words were vaguely familiar and Sherlock had the sudden impression that he had had these conversations already. Of course; Watson had said himself they had already discussed some things. Why couldn’t he remember, though? He always remembered everything, but now…now everything was shrouded in a dense fog. It was beginning to grow distressing, even through the fog that had entrapped his mind and dulled his emotions along with the pain.

“I can’t…” he said, squirming in Watson’s hold as he tried to find something to grasp onto, “I can’t deduct…”

“Holmes, old boy, Ho…mph,” Watson said, trying to get him to still as Sherlock’s elbow found his stomach.

“Watson, this room makes no sense,” Sherlock insisted, though he stopped squirming as the room began to spin. “Watson, the room is dancing. Make it stop.”

“Lie still,” Watson instructed him, running his fingers soothingly through his hair and the world settled again around them. “There now.

Then for a while, they just existed, lying on the couch while Watson stroked his hair gently. After a while James was suddenly at their side again and Watson suggested that they walked around the room for a bit.

“I do not see the point in this excursion,” Sherlock told him as they led him towards the windows. His balance was precarious and his legs felt as weak as a newborn lamb’s, but Watson seemed to think it important so he only gave token complaints to the request and allowed himself to be supported and led until they stood in the sunlight.

Outside the window was not London. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see. He should have already known; surly this was not his first trip to look out of this strange, familiar room, yet the view was utterly unexpected. They were high up, overlooking a large drop to a courtyard, and beyond that to trees and hills.

“Where are we, Watson?” Sherlock asked. His companion sighed softly, his hand tightening slightly about his waist where it supported him. It occurred to Sherlock that, just as this couldn’t be the first time he’d looked out this window, it was probably not the first time he had asked this question. At any rate, it was a question he should doubtlessly already know the answer to in infinite detail.

“Blackwood’s small little kingdom, far from the civilized world,” Watson answered, his voice sounding cold and bitter and Sherlock shivered slightly in his arms. He felt Watson’s lips brush the side of his head as he whispered, “Don’t worry about it.” Sherlock frowned, worrying anyway, his mind picking at the threads of memory, trying to piece it together.

“He wanted London…” he remembered, doubtfully. London felt far away, like something he had dreamed once, despite the expectation he had had to see it out the window when they first approached.

“He didn’t get it,” Watson answered, whispering into his hair, breath warm across his ear, “You stopped him.”

“He fell…almost broke his neck,” Sherlock remembered, the fog slowly rolling back, giving just enough for the pieces to fit together before rolling back again. It was giving him a headache. “He got his arm in the way…the chain broke his arm, but he lived…and then…then…Watson, it won’t sit still, I can’t think, I can’t…”

“Hey, shhh…it’s okay. I’ll remember for you.” Sherlock allowed himself to be calmed, but in a brief moment of insight he understood everything, even without remembering at all.

“It’s not okay, is it. Not really. And I keep leaving you alone to face it all, because I can’t…” He let his voice trail away. For a moment, Watson says nothing, just holds him. When he did speak his voice was tired, sad and tired, but strong nonetheless.

“No,” he said, “No, it’s not okay. But it will be. And I’m not alone.” They stood together, staring out the window in silence until the light began to fade. Then James and Watson helped him back to bed and Watson stroked his hair until he fell asleep.
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The Gilded Room