Sherlock X Reader One Shots || 𝐹𝐿𝑈𝐹𝐹 + 𝑆𝑀𝑈𝑇

A Holmes Family Reunion (Part 3)

Beside her, Sherlock is opening a sea-blue door flanked by a plaster bust of an important-looking gentleman, whom someone has adorned with a rather silly woman's hat. "This is the master bathroom." He takes a pace to the left, allowing Y/N to peer inside at what is indeed the most masterly of bathrooms she has ever seen.

Taking up much more than its fair share of real estate, the floor is carpeted and expansive, the ceiling so tall it must continue into the attic. A stand-alone porcelain bathtub lounges regally before a panoramic window, an open, unlit fireplace cut neatly from a slab of marble sunk into the opposite wall.

Y/N would think she's stepped into a set from Downton Abbey, had there not been a plastic shower rack nailed into the wallpaper, a bath mat shaped like a whale spread on the floor, and every surface stacked with Mrs Holme's bath salts, lavender shampoos and flowery towels.

"When you pull the chain," Sherlock is saying, gesturing to one of those long Victorian water closets dangling with a gold chain pull handle. "You've got to hold it for eight seconds exactly to make it flush. And the lock on the door was fitted upside down so 'Occupied' means 'vacant'. And if you get water on the floor it's fine, unless it's this specific spot," he prods a discoloured patch of carpet with the toe of his socks, "because it'll drip straight into the room below."

"What's in the room below?"

"A zebra skin rug."

Beside the master bathroom is a study that smells of yellowed paper, moleskin, and ink that comes in round glass pots. "We keep this curtain closed so the sun doesn't bleach this painting of my great uncle," Sherlock explains, giving the curtains an affectionate tug. 

 It extinguishes a narrow bar of light splitting a friendly-looking old man's face in two. 

"But," he points to the next window that has no curtain at all, the rings dangling, empty, "we keep this one open so it does bleach this painting of my great-great aunt Dorothy."

"What did Dorothy do?"

He shrugs as if it's not really important. "Apparently something bad enough to abuse her portrait but not bad enough to take it down."

"What are these things?" Y/N points to a shelf heavy with trinkets; little carved wooden people, clay pots, feathers, and jars full of pebbles or sand.

"Things brought back from various travels." Plucking a glass vial stoppered with a cork from the back of one particularly burdened shelf, he holds it out for Y/N to take. "Look at this."

She turns it upside down, watching the greyish-yellow rocks trickle along the glass. 

"It's uranium ore."

...

Apart from the master bathroom, none of the subsequent bedrooms Sherlock shows Y/N are particularly grand, but there is a definite air of class about the carved crown mouldings, original paintings, and the occasional remaining four-poster bed that the old cottage doesn't seem to be able to shake. 

Sombre-looking family portraits eye her as she passes from the walls, the cracks in the glaze etched into the pale faces like wrinkles. There are more busts, some plaster, others bronze, fine Holmes' features cut into the metal to form high cheekbones, angular noses and proud heads of curly hair.

The grandeur of the decor would all feel uncomfortably upper class, had some of the portraits not been vandalised with a bushy ink moustache, the rooms messy with knick-nacks, and each inch of space apparently not following any theme or colour scheme.