RS/These streets are in your marrow

[thegentlemanthug]

After he pulls the man from the river, Ben feels uneasy in his mind, moreso than when he was first lucid after his beating. He had the opportunity to know his past, and he walked away. He is a coward as well as a friend to wretches.

He is returning from an errand in town for the dockmaster, his face apparently trustworthy despite his lack of memory, when he realises he has gone too far on the underground railway. He gets off at the wrong stop and means to return immediately to the right one, except that he knows this place. He knows it deeply and strongly, calling to him with a strong sense of who he is.

Either he can ignore it once more or he can follow it, step out from under this cowardice and learn something of who he is. And maybe he can find out the fate of that drowned man, learn something of him, know his pain and soothe it.

He lets his feet take him where they will, trying to follow his gut and not his better sense. He feels the familiarity in the streets, recognising a street sign there, a flower seller there, and his pace quickens as he draws towards somewhere he knows must be home.

The door calls to him and he runs to it, knocking hard on the wood before he can stop himself.

It opens on an older lady in an apron and, before she can speak, he tears his hat from his head and starts trying to explain himself.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, madam, but I had the strangest feeling I ought to come here today."

Comments

[thegentlemanthug]

Ben quickens his step, unwilling to hesitate even for a moment less his cowardice return and prevent him doing the right thing by Matthew.

The door is not yet locked and he pushes it open without knocking.

[thirstforvice]

Matthew's room is small and unfurnished apart from a single, uncomfortable-looking bed. He'd had a chair, at one stage, before the doctor had deemed it too much of a risk and removed even that.

Slowly, he's come to accept why he's here in the asylum. He knows now that Ben is dead, and that the man he'd seen down at the docks had been some sort of hallucination. He had a sickness of the mind, one that made him see things that were not real. He'd read about it professionally, and so knew such conditions existed.

The doctors here have taught him how to test his reality, by touching and asking others for confirmation that what he sees is real. They are strategies that help him with the hallucinations, but they do nothing for his mood. Without Bennet, he would still far rather be dead than anything else, and the staff have taken to keeping him on a high dose of laudanum to try and sedate him enough to keep him from trying to take his own life.

He gets plenty of visitors, though none that manage to lift the darkness. Reid is insufferable, Mrs Ramsay just frets and cries, and Treves seems more concerned in how much he's walking on his injured leg than anything else. The rest of the time, his world is this room, where nothing ever happens.

Until the door bursts open and his hallucinations burst in.

Screaming, he presses himself as far against the wall as he can, shielding his face and closing his eyes.

Not real, he tries to remind himself. Not real, not real, not real.

[thegentlemanthug]

Ben is shocked, both from the ghastly noise and the flood of recognition he feels at seeing this man.

He stumbles forward because he has to be near him, must comfort him, but then he stops - because clearly he is the cause of this madness, this pain.

The nurses come then, and the smug doctor. "As I said-"

Ben rounds on them all, standing protectively in front of this man who screams at his mere presence.

"You aren't doing nothing to him! D'you hear me?"

[thirstforvice]

"Sir, you are the one upsetting him..." the doctor tries to point out, and slowly Matthew raises his head, uncovering his eyes. How can a hallucination hold a conversation with his doctor?

He edges forward, brushing off the nurse who's trying to get yet more laudanum down his throat, reaching out for... no, not Bennet. He cannot think that, not until he's checked. He reaches for him, fingertips trembling inches from his shoulder. He doesn't want to touch, wants so badly for this to be real, scared that it won't be.

[thegentlemanthug]

Ben is frightened, his anger thundering through his body in time to his fear.

"You ain't giving him that stuff," he tells the nurses. "All of you need to leave him alone so we...so we can go home."

[thirstforvice]

Bennet moves, and Matthew's fingers brush his jacket. It feels real, solid and scratchy against his hand, and Matthew clings on as tight as his weakened body will allow as he finally lets himself believe.

"Can you see him?" he demands of the nurse, who nods, startled. One.

"Can you see him?" directed at Reid, who also nods. Two.

"And you?" to his doctor who, grudgingly, admits that he can. Three.

Bennet is real.

He throws himself at the man without warning, clinging on for dear life.

[thegentlemanthug]

As Matthew's hand touches his shoulder, Ben turns his body towards him - just in time to catch him as he flings himself at him.

He sinks to the small bed, clutching at his lover just as tightly. He smells exactly right, and that's how he knows this is real, that he hasn't just imagined this life out of nowhere.

He is going home.

[thirstforvice]

"We'll be taking him home now, then," Mrs Ramsay declares, throwing the doctor's earlier smugness back in his face as she watches her boys, reunited.

"He is in here for his own good," the man replies, determined to be difficult. "You have thrown all of my good work out of the window. I cannot let you take him out of here. Unless any of you happen to be an immediate relation?"

Mrs Ramsay looks defeated, but Reid's eyes light up. "I'll be back," he promises the room, and leaves them be without further explanation.

[thegentlemanthug]

Bennet pulls back a fraction, enough to look at his lover's face to see if he can knows more, remember.

But though he knows him, is sure of it, he cannot recall the details of it, nothing beyond the immediate sense of familiarity and care forthcoming.

"I am sorry," he says, "but I...I can't recall you."

[thirstforvice]

Matthew stiffens at once, pulling out of Bennet's embrace just as fast as he'd crashed into him a moment previously.

"What do you mean?" he frowns, looking to the rest of the room for help. He's sick, and doesn't understand things. He doesn't know what is real and what is his imagination. He has to ask for help.

[thegentlemanthug]

Pushing past the nurses, almost daring them to interfere, Mrs Ramsay comes to sit on the edge of the bed with her boys.

"Out Sergeant's having some problems with his memory," she tells the Captain. "He only just remembered his way home today."

[thirstforvice]

"Then... you don't know me at all?" he asks of Bennet, still not understanding. Why did his lover hold him as he had, if he were a stranger to him?

He looks instead to the nurse, beckoning for medication. It helps, when he gets too confused.

[thegentlemanthug]

Bennet glares at the nurse to stay away, knowing instinctively that whatever's in that bottle is no good for his doctor.

"I...I recognise you," he says, awkward at having to explain the vague sensations in his head. "You're familiar and I...I feel...there are many things I feel."

He's surprised to find his cheek is wet and he swipes at his eye.

[thirstforvice]

But Matthew persists, forcing the bottle from the nurse and into his hands, where he cradles it like a lifeline.

"Perhaps you could give us a minute?" Mrs Ramsay suggests to the staff, aware that the conversation her two boys need to have is not something that should be overheard by the doctor and his orderlies. Right or wrong, many would consider the love between the Sergeant and his Captain to be immoral and illegal. "You can see he's no danger."

The doctor seems unconvinced, but he knows when a battle is lost. Leaving Matthew with the laudanum, he vacates the room with his staff.

"But you don't know me," Matthew continues to look less than happy, fiddling absently with the top of the laudanum bottle. "You don't even know my name."

[thegentlemanthug]

"Matthew," Bennet says immediately, and removes the bottle from his hands. "And...and I know you mustn't have no more of that."

[thirstforvice]

Matthew chases the bottle with his hands, before pulling back. Still, he keeps half an eye on where it is, ready in case Bennet decides to do something rash like pour it all away. He is not ready for that, again.

He was - is - a doctor, and he knows he should understand this better than he is. But the drugs and his solitary confinement have made his mind slow, and he struggles to comprehend how his lover can know his name and his drug habits, but not recognise him in any way.

"You pulled me from the river," he points out. "You didn't know me then?"

[thegentlemanthug]

"No."

Bennet looks guiltily down at the hands in his lap.

"I was afraid of knowing you. Of finding out I was...bad."

[thirstforvice]

"You saved my life," Matthew frowns.

"How is that a bad thing?"

[thegentlemanthug]

Bennet took a deep breath.

"The woman what took me in - she thought I'd been beaten, over bad debts or the like. I didn't want to know what kind of man I'd been before."

[thirstforvice]

Matthew has had his fair share of debt-related beatings in his time, and he wonders what sort of man that makes him in Bennet's eyes, but he doesn't say anything. Whatever this is, now, between him and his lover, it is a fragile thing. He will not harm it intentionally.

"The train. You were... everyone said you'd died. But you were thrown. I knew it."

[thegentlemanthug]

Bennet frowns. "What train?"

He doesn't like to admit how much of his memory is missing, not with Matthew already so suspicious, but he needs to be honest. He knows that is important between them.

[thirstforvice]

Matthew supposes he shouldn't be surprised, considering how little Bennet knows of him, but it still hurts.

"We were... goin' away. On the train." He looks to Mrs Ramsay, who nods - she's used to the Captain checking his facts like this now. "But it crashed. You... disappeared."

[thegentlemanthug]

"To the seaside," Bennet says, not sure where that came from. "I left you because...something was happening. A disturbance."

[thirstforvice]

"A crook on the train," Matthew confirms, then frowns, realising there is no one else who can guarantee that that was the truth.

"I think."

[thegentlemanthug]

"Is your memory also affected?" Bennet asks, earnest in his concern.

"I don't...I don't want you to stay here, if it makes you unhappy, but if you are not well..."