Fic: Deep in December
Title: “Deep in December”
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters: Sherlock, Sally Donovan, Victor Trevor, Stanley Hopkins
Pairings: (background) John/Lestrade, Sherlock/Victor Trevor
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Fluff, flashbacks, angst, language, grief/mourning, moving on
Word Count: c. 6,900
Beta: thesmallhobbit
Spoilers: None
Summary: Sometimes, the only thing that makes the winter bearable is the memory of spring.
Notes: Stanley Hopkins and Victor Trevor are both characters from ACD canon. Victor Trevor is a university-era friend of Holmes’, while Hopkins is an Inspector at the Yard. I have lifted some of VT's backstory directly from "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott."
This is a follow-up to “The Fall of Gods,” which is preceded by "Liaisons." Knowledge of those stories isn’t necessary, but would be helpful. This acts as a sort of interlude fic between “Gods” and its sequel, which will be going up in the coming weeks. Many thanks to Small Hobbit for her input. Feedback always welcome.
When he was eleven years old, Sherlock Holmes fell out of a tree and broke his arm.
He remembered the pain more than anything else. That, and his mother’s bloodless face as she bundled him off to the hospital. He had been able to examine the injury with a strange disconnect once the painkillers finally kicked in, and he remembered thinking how strange it was that such a bloodless injury could hurt so much.
Now, at seventeen, he found himself contemplating the fact that an injury that had bled so profusely hurt less than that broken arm. He of course had a much better grasp of human anatomy now than he had as a boy, and he wasn’t surprised in the least, but it was still intriguing.
Sherlock carefully changed the dressing on his ankle, taking a moment to inspect the wound with that same sort of detached curiosity, as though he was looking at someone else’s injury. He’d had an unfortunate run-in with the dog of a fellow student three days ago, and the indignation of that was more bothersome than the injury itself. He had managed to stop the bleeding on his own without the aid of sutures, and it hadn’t rendered him completely immobile. The limp he possessed as a result of the dog bite was frustrating, but it would go away of its own accord. If anything, it simply gave him further excuse not to leave his room.
How dreary this whole university business was turning out to be. His lectures were dull and his peers were morons. It was almost as dull as all of his schooling prior to now had been. In all honesty, the only thing keeping him at university was the fact that it was slightly less tedious than his previous schooling.
Sherlock would take whatever victories over the tedium that he could, however small they might be.
He finished dressing his wound and had reached for a nearby apiology book and his notes when there were three solid knocks on the door, startling him out of his thoughts. He sat in silence for a moment, waiting for whoever was on the other side to give up and go away, but they simply knocked again.
And then again.
Sighing, Sherlock pushed himself to his feet and limped over to the door. He opened it only a few centimeters, making it more than apparent that whoever was on the other side was not welcome to come in.
“What is it?” he snapped.
The man on the other side gave him a triumphant smile, one that showed off his teeth. He stood taller than Sherlock by about an inch, and though he appeared to carry very little fat on his body, Sherlock wouldn’t have called him slim. He was brawny, with a hint of softness about his face and collarbone that betrayed his youth-he couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Sherlock. His brunet hair was swept to the side, except for a few strands that fell across his forehead. He had a striking face and a prominent nose, and the beginnings of a beard shadowed his strong jaw. He was dressed in carefully-pressed trousers and a light cotton shirt, his outfit purposefully casual and expensive. There was a gold chain around his neck that was visible through his open collar, but the medal at the end of it was hidden beneath his shirt.
He shoved his hand through the sliver of space between the door and its frame, holding it out to Sherlock.
“Victor Trevor,” he said, blue eyes sparkling. Sherlock stared at the hand, and then at the man, who was still looking utterly pleased with himself.
“Go away,” he said, and moved to shut the door. Trevor shot out a hand and braced it against the wood. He was stronger than he appeared; Sherlock couldn’t force the door closed. “What do you want?”
Trevor shouldered his way into the room. He brushed past Sherlock, ignoring his indignant protest, and immediately began to inspect Sherlock’s lodgings.
“You don’t remember me; pity. I had hoped I would make more of an impression.”
Sherlock fought back anger.
“Who are you?” he growled. “And what the hell do you want?”
“My dog took a liking to you,” Trevor said. He ran a long finger down the length of an 18th-century spyglass. “Thought I’d come see what all the fuss was about.”
He looked over his shoulder at Sherlock, a smirk on his face. And then he winked.
Forward bastard.
“Well, you saw,” Sherlock snapped. He remembered Trevor’s face now, albeit vaguely, having been more concerned at the time with the blood pouring from his ankle. He crossed the room just as Trevor began to inspect a stack of books sitting on a table and snatched an apiology tome out of his hands. “Now go. And don’t touch anything on the way out.”
Trevor didn’t move. He slid his hands into his pockets, regarding Sherlock carefully.
“You’re in my chemistry lecture,” he said finally. “Or you were, at least. Haven’t seen you since the first week of class.”
“It’s tedious.”
“Hm. You know, only two types of people would think so--those who don’t have a hope of understanding it and those who are too damned smart for their own good. You don’t exactly strike me as the latter.”
Sherlock bristled.
“My intellect is far beyond both your comprehension and your imagination,” he snapped. Trevor snorted.
“I highly doubt that. This is wrong, by the way.”
“I - what?”
Sherlock looked to where Trevor was pointing. There was an ancient chalkboard on the far side of the room, which Sherlock had nicked and subsequently been using ever since to mark down information from his experiments.
“The equations you have up there are wrong,” Trevor repeated. “I mean, technically they’re right, but you’ve used the wrong constant.”
“No, I haven’t,” Sherlock blurted. Trevor gave him an infuriating smile, and then shrugged.
“You’ll figure it out soon enough.”
Sherlock narrowed his eyes, his irritation growing. “What’s your course of study?”
“Computer science and pure mathematics. It means -”
“- it means that you study the abstract concepts of mathematics with respect to their intrinsic nature, and don’t necessarily concern yourself with how they manifest in the real world.”
Trevor arched an eyebrow.
“I’ve yet to meet someone outside my course of study who knows the difference,” he said. Sherlock smirked.
“Well, now you have. And you can still leave.”
Trevor continued to ignore him.
“I also know how it manifests in the real world, by the way. Mathematics, that is. I’m quite well-versed.”
“I’m sure you are. Get out.”
“Listen, if you need a tutor -”
“I don’t.”
“- here.” Trevor grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled on it--where had he got that pen?--before pushing it into Sherlock’s hand. “How’s the ankle?”
“What?” Sherlock had never before been part of a conversation that made no sense to him, and he wasn’t particularly enjoying this one. What was going on?
Trevor gave him a kind smile, and now Sherlock was even more confused.
“Your ankle,” he repeated gently. “You know, the one my dog tried to take a chunk out of? You’re walking, at least. That’s a good sign.”
“I - it’s fine,” Sherlock said shortly. Why did this man care? “Oh. You feel responsible, is that it? Well, don’t. It’s not as though you told the beast to attack me.”
“Still, it’s good to know you’re all right.”
“Why?” Sherlock burst out, fed-up with participating in a conversation that wasn’t going in any direction he expected. None of it made sense, and still--still--he found himself as intrigued as he was frustrated. Trevor gave an enigmatic smile.
“I’ll be back to check on you again tomorrow,” he said. He clapped Sherlock on the shoulder. “Good talking to you.”
“I - no, you won’t!”
“Good night, Sherlock,” Trevor called over his shoulder as he left.
Sherlock stood there, blinking, for a long while after Trevor’s retreating back disappeared down the staircase. Then he looked down at the piece of paper in his hand, and carefully unfolded it.
Victor Trevor, it said, followed by a phone number. And then, underneath that, Trevor had written, The dog’s name is Jasper, by the way. You’ll like him, once you get to know him.
Sherlock had absolutely no intention of getting to know the damned beast.
But he didn’t throw away the piece of paper.
----
Sherlock had never met anyone quite like Victor Trevor before.
Victor had a vast intellect that rivaled Sherlock’s own, and though mathematics was his course of study he was well-versed in a number of different fields. But whereas Sherlock used his intelligence as an excuse to cut himself off from the outside world, isolating himself from inferior minds, Victor reveled in the company of others. He was charming and persistent, with an air of confidence so strong he could probably convince someone that two and two equaled five, and they wouldn’t think to question it.
He was also astoundingly athletic, and hours spent either playing rugby or with the rowing club had hardened his shoulders and arms, and powerful thighs were hidden beneath his tailored trousers. Sherlock preferred solitary sports and occupied his free time with boxing. Victor thrived on the cheers from a crowd and the camaraderie of his teammates.
There was no reason at all for them to be acquaintances, let alone friends.
And yet, eight months after Victor first strolled into his life, Sherlock knew that the only reason he was able to bear the monotonous existence at university was because of his unlikely companion. He was already dreading the day when Victor would graduate and leave this place--leave him--as Victor was a year his senior. Sherlock even, as Victor had predicted, came to a mutual understanding with Jasper, and the dog hadn’t tried to bite him since.
The summer holiday was looming when Victor broke into his rooms one night, interrupting Sherlock’s latest round of brooding.
“Oh, come now,” Victor said in exasperation, instantly interpreting the look on Sherlock’s face. “The holiday won’t be that terrible.”
Sherlock glared at him.
“It will be worse than terrible, Victor, you have no idea,” he muttered. “And then to return to this dreadful place...”
“I’ll pretend not to take offense to that.” Victor went over to Sherlock’s bookshelf and dropped to his knees, scanning the bottom shelf.
Sherlock waved a hand at him. “You know what I mean. Oh, please tell me you aren’t still looking for that blasted book.”
Victor pushed himself to his feet and then went up on the tips of his toes, searching through the top of Sherlock’s bookshelf. “It was here at the end of last term, I’m sure of it...”
“I’d have remembered.”
Victor snorted. “No, you wouldn’t have.”
Sherlock shrugged, pushed himself up out of his slouch, and reached over the side of his chair for the stack of books sitting next to it. He selected one and began to read, wholly unconcerned with the fact that Victor was going through his things.
Victor opened a box that was sitting by the window, and then reeled back in alarm. “Why do you keep eyes in here?”
Sherlock sniffed. “Experiment.”
“They’ll rot, you know.”
“Experiment. Point of,” Sherlock said sharply. Victor rolled his eyes.
“Of course, my mistake.”
“It usually is.”
Victor went over to Sherlock’s wardrobe and threw it open. He pushed aside Sherlock’s clothing, searching through the myriad items that littered the bottom of the wardrobe.
“Find anything interesting?”
“Well,” Victor grunted, “I’ve discovered the secret of how you keep this room spotless. You just shove everything extra in here.”
“And your method of leaving useless items scattered around your room is preferable how?”
“Point taken.” Victor straightened, emerging with a fencing foil. “Adding another skill to your repertoire?”
Sherlock glanced at him, and then waved a hand dismissively.
“Mother used to have us take lessons,” he said disdainfully. Victor raised an eyebrow.
“Not useful enough for you?”
“I prefer boxing.”
“Hmm.” Victor adopted a stance, and took a couple of practice swipes through the air. “Out with it. Why don’t you want to go home?”
Sherlock’s eyes traveled with the blade, and he said, absently, “It’s dull.”
“Yes, I suppose,” Victor mused. He tossed the foil from hand to hand for a moment and then took a few swipes with his left hand. They were clumsy and less sure than those with his right. “Mycroft giving you problems again?”
Sherlock felt the remainder of his good mood evaporate. “He wants me to follow him into the government.”
“And what do you want to do?”
“Something interesting.”
“Hmm.” Victor took a few jabs with the foil. Sherlock watched him, and found that he was unable to tear his eyes from the muscles that rippled up Victor’s forearms. “Well, you could always put those observational skills of yours to good use.”
“That,” Sherlock said dismissively, waving a hand, “is just a trick.”
“Hey.” Victor paused, and their eyes locked. “Don’t say that. It’s not a trick, it’s brilliant.”
He resumed fencing with an invisible partner.
“You could go into business for yourself,” Victor said after a moment. He took a few violent swipes through the air and then pointed the end of the blade at Sherlock. “Think of it. Sherlock Holmes, Private Detective. No. Consulting detective.”
“Don’t be absurd, no one’s a consulting detective,” Sherlock said scornfully, knocking the blade away from his face.
“Exactly.” Victor smirked. “You’d be the only one. You like that, right? Being exceptional. Being extraordinary. The only one in the world. Has a nice ring to it, yeah?”
He tossed the foil at Sherlock, who caught it deftly by the hilt.
“How about this, then,” Victor went on. “Come with me to Norfolk. My dad’s home on business for a few weeks, but he has an office in London and spends most of his time there. It’d be like having the house ourselves.”
“Why me?” Sherlock asked, and meant, Why not your boyfriend? Normally, he would have been blunt, but he found that when it came to Victor’s personal life, he didn’t like to acknowledge the fact that there were others who occupied his friend’s attention.
Something shuttered behind Victor’s eyes, and Sherlock felt something ease in his chest. This latest interest hadn’t lasted, then. Given the fact that Victor had been through two--now three--boyfriends in the time they had known one another, Sherlock couldn’t say that he was particularly surprised.
“‘Cause you’re my best friend and you look like you could use a break,” Victor said smoothly. “And the best part is, Mycroft won’t be there.”
Sherlock rather felt that the best part was not who wouldn’t be there, but who would. He surmised it was probably best to keep that to himself, however.
----
The Trevor family estate was quite unlike Sherlock’s own home. They were both large houses that were surrounded by expansive grounds, but the similarities ended there. Sherlock had grown up in a house that was always bustling with activity, full of household staff and tutors and whatever guests his mother happened to be entertaining for the evening. Mycroft, at seven years his senior, had moved out of the home long ago, but his stepfather and mother remained, and when Sherlock was home on holidays it still seemed as though there was always something going on.
Victor, on the other hand, had lived a largely solitary existence as a child. His mother had died when he was an infant, and Henry Trevor never remarried. He thus showered his only child with love and attention, foregoing nannies and tutors that most single parents of his social status would have come to rely on. He traveled all over the world for business, but had always brought Victor with him. During Victor’s childhood he had been largely responsible for maintaining the house, cooking for his child, and supplementing his education. It was only now, in Trevor’s later years, that he had started to employ household staff, but during Sherlock’s three weeks in Norfolk that summer with Victor he only saw the maids on a handful of occasions.
The weeks spent in Norfolk were decent enough, but by the end of it Sherlock could see that living with his father was beginning to grate on Victor’s nerves. The two Trevors were spectacularly close, but Victor hadn’t been a child for a very long time and Henry Trevor sometimes had difficulty remembering that. And so, in the final week of their holiday together, Victor took Sherlock to a small cottage in the South Downs that his father had owned since the day Victor was born.
The escape to the cottage was nothing short of bliss. Victor relaxed almost at once, and it was as though they were back at university again, only this time there weren’t any other people to deal with.
Sherlock could get used to this, and he wasn’t sure what to make of that thought.
He spent most of their first afternoon in Sussex Downs running an experiment in the cottage’s kitchen. He’d had to fashion his own equipment from various items found around the cottage and bemoaned the fact that he had left his microscope at university, but for the most part he was having success. Victor had been intrigued for all of ten minutes, but the outdoors was much more alluring to him, as it usually was, and he had been outside with Jasper ever since lunchtime. Sherlock could hear the dog’s happy barking through the cottage windows, and every once in a while Victor darted across his periphery, either chasing the dog across the lawn or being chased in return.
The sun disappeared behind some clouds as the afternoon grew late, and Sherlock eventually became aware of a lack of commotion outside. He glanced out of the nearest window and saw Jasper stretched out on the grass, completely shattered and fast asleep. Victor was stretched out in a nearby hammock, reading a book, an open beer sitting on the ground at his side.
Rain was threatening when Sherlock finally decided to set aside his experiment, and he ventured outside into the muggy afternoon. Jasper lifted his head as Sherlock padded across the ground, and they stared warily at one another for a beat. They had long ago reached a truce of sorts, having a mutual friend that neither wished to see come to harm, and Jasper soon dropped his head and let Sherlock pass by him unmolested.
Victor was still in the hammock, one arm across his stomach while the other had been flung up over his head. His flesh, already tan, was tinged red on his forearms and shoulders from the earlier relentless sun. He was asleep, or appeared to be, his eyes closed and his face turned toward his arm so that his nose pressed into his shoulder. The hammock swayed slightly in the breeze, and leaves rustled overhead.
“Don’t you dare,” Victor muttered as Sherlock approached, his voice husky with sleep. Sherlock ignored him and flopped down next to him in the hammock, nearly upsetting it and sending them both flying. Once it had settled again, Victor leveled a glare at him. “Brat. Thought you were working on an experiment.”
“I finished it,” Sherlock lied. In truth, for the past hour he had become increasingly more distracted, and his gaze had kept straying to the window, beyond which he could see Victor in the hammock. For some reason, being out here appealed more.
Victor dropped a leg over the side of the hammock and gave a slight push, sending them both swaying gently as the breeze swept around them. It carried with it the sharp, biting scent of rain, and there was a promise of a storm in the heavy air.
Sherlock folded his hands on his stomach and closed his eyes, reaching out with his other senses. High above their heads, leaves shook as they were disturbed by the persistent wind. Victor’s breathing was slow and steady, a signal that he was about to drop off again, and every once in a while he drew a great lungful of air, savouring the cooling breeze. He smelled faintly of sweat and freshly-cut grass, and something stirred in Sherlock’s chest.
“You don’t get trees like this at university,” Victor murmured, referring to the majestic yews and willows that covered the expansive property. The yews in particular were impressive, their trunks thick and squat, unchanging and immovable. The willows were slender and ancient, and their branches curved and dipped towards the ground, their leaves brushing the grass. Victor was silent for a moment, and then he sang quietly, “And no one wept, except the willow.”
The song rose and crested like a wave at sea, and a tight heat coiled itself in Sherlock’s belly. He swallowed, trying to shove it away.
“What was that?” he asked, his words weaker than he would have liked. He felt Victor shrug.
“I’ve no idea; something I must have heard once. I only remember that line.”
He hummed it to himself for a while, the motion of the hammock lulling them both into a stupor.
“You’ve stopped seeing Brian.”
Victor cut off mid-note, and Sherlock instantly regretted having brought the subject up.
“He stopped seeing me, if we’re going to get technical about it,” Victor said finally, his words carefully guarded.
Sherlock wasn’t quite sure what was expected of him at this juncture, and said nothing for a while. He could offer condolences, he supposed, but he didn’t find any sorrow in the news. Victor’s attentions as of late had been focused on this latest interest of his, and Sherlock disliked having to share his best friend with another - especially one of such inferior intellect, which was just an insult.
“Why?” he asked finally, sensing that it was probably unwise to voice his satisfaction over the break-up. Victor sighed heavily. He kicked the ground again, sending them swinging a bit more violently than he had earlier.
“He found some of my habits... irritating.”
“Like what?”
Victor shrugged. “You name it, he couldn’t stand it.”
Sherlock frowned, and felt a spark of indignation in his chest. How anyone could find any of Victor’s quirks anything less than perfection, he would never know. Victor was a constant mystery, a puzzle Sherlock had yet to figure out completely, and every habit he had was one that made him unique. He would be uninteresting without them; even worse, he wouldn’t be Victor.
“That’s absurd,” Sherlock said finally.
Victor shrugged again. A light mist was beginning to fall, which Sherlock hadn’t noticed until now because of the shelter of the trees.
“It is what it is,” Victor said, sounding almost resigned. “Sometimes it’s hard to put up with my peculiarities.”
“I would have.”
The words were out before Sherlock had even fully realised he’d been thinking them. He felt Victor shift in surprise, and a heavy silence fell between them.
“Sherlock -”
The word fell from Victor’s lips as though he couldn’t quite hold onto it. It was quiet and rough around the edges, and not at all like the way Victor normally said his name. Sherlock suppressed a shiver.
“Never mind,” he said briskly, heart rate quickening. Was Victor’s body always this warm? He had never noticed. He pulled his arm away so they were no longer touching, but in the confined space of the hammock it was impossible not to touch Victor. “Just - forget that I said that.”
Victor obligingly fell quiet, but the companionable silence didn’t return. Instead, the air between them was thick, and even Victor seemed uncertain, which was unusual. He let his leg fall over the side of the hammock and gave them another push. The rain was growing steady.
“Want to go inside?” Victor ventured finally.
Sherlock, instead of answering, leaned over and pressed his mouth to Victor’s.
Victor’s lips were dry and soft, not at all like Sherlock imagined. His upper lip was smooth, as clean-shaven as the rest of his face-he’d got rid of the beard months ago-and his skin smelled of warmth and spice. Victor responded almost immediately to the touch, kissing Sherlock back after a moment of hesitation. He rested a hand on the side of Sherlock’s neck and parted his lips, and the unexpected heat of his mouth sent a jolt down Sherlock’s spine. It was a wet, clumsy kiss, made awkward by the angle of their necks, and by the fact that Sherlock wasn’t exactly sure where to go with what he had started. Victor grazed his lips over Sherlock’s, dropping soft kisses on his mouth with a hint of tongue that left Sherlock aching for more. He tasted of salt and beer, and Sherlock couldn’t hold back the whimper that fell from his lips when Victor finally pulled away.
“Okay.” Victor’s voice was little more than a croak. He let his hand fall from Sherlock’s face and settled it on his shoulder. The heat of his palm bled through the fabric of Sherlock’s shirt, and Sherlock shuddered at the touch. “I - wasn’t expecting that.”
His breathing was uneven, and this close Sherlock could see that his pupils were larger than normal. Victor’s blue irises were barely noticeable, in fact, as arousal widened his pupils and caused his gaze to become unfocused. Sherlock reached out a finger and traced Victor’s kiss-bruised upper lip before letting it trail down his throat, watching as gooseflesh erupted at his touch. Victor swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing under the press of Sherlock’s fingers.
Sherlock couldn’t stop staring at Victor’s face. His expression was a mixture of bemusement and desire, and Sherlock had never seen him look like that before. It was entirely new. Sherlock raked his eyes over Victor’s face, memorizing the parted lips and dark eyes. He let his hand rest on Victor’s taut stomach, and then pushed it under Victor’s t-shirt, brushing his fingers over the ridges and valleys on his torso. Victor’s breath caught in his chest and his hand tightened reflexively on Sherlock’s shoulder, and it occurred to Sherlock that there was so much he didn’t know about his friend. These were entirely new sounds that fell from Victor’s lips, and his face was one he had never worn around Sherlock before.
He wanted to know more, wanted to know it all, and that singular need burned through him, chasing away all other thoughts until there was only Victor.
Sherlock lowered his head, and kissed Victor once again.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
London hadn’t seen a rain like this in years.
“Bloody unseemly, this,” Sally Donovan had grumbled to no one in particular on the second day of the relentless storm. “It’s 2018. Shouldn’t we have control over the weather by now?”
It was coming down in torrents, and had been causing havoc for three days now. Basements were flooding all over the city and streets were becoming impassable, and it wasn’t supposed to let up for at least another day.
But it seemed serene from inside the Yard. The large building muted the outside world so that the rain sounded gentle and comforting. The sound of the storm was relentless at Baker Street, which was why Sherlock had chosen to actually work on Lestrade’s latest case at the Yard this time. He couldn’t think inside his flat, mostly because of the storm but partly also because the flat was devoid of its usual clamour. John and Lestrade were on holiday, and Sherlock was too used to their company now to find the empty flat anything other than disconcerting.
And so he took refuge in the Yard on this night, holing up in a conference room with Sally Donovan while they pored over nearly one hundred different crime scene photographs. A small radio in the corner of the room was tuned to a music station, at Donovan’s insistence, and it played on quietly in the background. Sherlock had objected at first to the extra noise, but didn’t really have the energy to argue his point beyond that.
The rain always drained him. And to think there had been a time when he had found it enjoyable, and cherished the memory that went along with it.
Try to remember the kind of September...
“Do you have the fingerprint analysis from the second crime scene?” Sherlock asked as the radio began to play a mournful tune. He tried to tune out the lyrics, but his concentration today was slipping. Donovan shuffled through her files for a moment.
“I just had - oh, here it is.” She handed it to him.
...that no one wept except the willow...
Sherlock froze, head snapping up to stare at the radio. Donovan followed his gaze, bemused.
“Suddenly taking an interest in music, Holmes?”
Sherlock ignored her.
… although you know the snow will follow...
Victor’s voice came to him from two decades past, rich and low, singing the single line over and over because it was the only one he remembered, his words stirring something in Sherlock he hadn’t at the time been able to name.
...it’s nice to remember the fire of September...
“I need a break,” Sherlock said abruptly. “And a coffee. Do you want one?”
It didn’t occur to him until some time later that he actually hadn’t heard her answer, if even he had waited around until she gave one at all.
No one wept, except the willow.
Sherlock tugged a piece of paper out of his wallet and held it the claw-like grip of his maimed left hand. The paper was worn and now a faded yellow; the ink was still legible, but faint. He should have taken more pains to preserve it, but he didn’t know at the time that it would one day be one of the only things he possessed of Victor.
He couldn’t stop staring at Victor’s name, which had been written in his usual hurried, spiky scrawl. The words had been written by a man Sherlock loved so dearly that it hurt-today more than usual. They were the words of a man he had loved and lost, a final remnant of Victor that Sherlock could see and touch.
They weren’t enough.
“Think they’re having this rain in France?”
Sherlock started at the sudden voice, and the man who had spoken held up a hand in apology.
“Sorry, mate.” Detective Sergeant Stanley Hopkins went over to the break room’s sink, where he dumped out the residual coffee in his mug and then started to wash it out. He was a slender man, taller than Sherlock by only a couple of inches, but the way he held himself made it seem like more. He had an angular face, complete with a thin mouth and a sharp nose, and had dark hair that stuck up in all directions whenever he ran his hand through it. He was dressed in jeans and a snug t-shirt this evening, a change from his earlier suit.
Hopkins was covering this week for Lestrade while he was away on holiday, and he had stepped into the role of DI with surprising ease. He was the only member of Lestrade’s team that Sherlock hadn’t been acquainted with before his fall, as he had been brought on during the eighteen months that Sherlock was abroad. But despite the fact that they had only known each other a few years, Hopkins was easily Sherlock’s favourite of the Yarders (Lestrade no longer counted, as it had become apparent long ago that he was in Sherlock’s life to stay, Yarder or no). Hopkins was exceptionally bright, and Sherlock had taken to mentoring him as of late, as Hopkins had not only expressed an interest in the science of deduction but also had proved quite competent at it.
Sherlock shook his head.
“I spoke to John last night. He said the weather is, in his words, to die for.”
Hopkins snorted.
“Sounds like John. Where did they go again?”
Sherlock shrugged. He hadn’t exactly been paying attention when John and Lestrade informed him of their holiday plans, having more important things to occupy his mind.
“Some cottage near the sea. Mycroft arranged a trip for them out there seven years ago as an apology for inconveniencing Lestrade during the Baskerville case. I believe they make it a point to go back every year.”
Hopkins nodded absently. He was a reserved man who didn’t speak all that often, and when he did, very rarely was it small talk. He was efficient with his words, practical almost to a fault, and stubborn to the extreme. He and Sherlock had clashed on more than one occasion over the years, neither of them willing to budge or negotiate his position, something that caused Lestrade no small amount of irritation whenever he brought Sherlock in to work a case. But despite outward appearances, Sherlock actually rather enjoyed working with Hopkins. He was clever, far more than he let on, and had a sharp wit that largely went unnoticed by his painfully ordinary team.
“Did you ever call him?”
“Hm?” Sherlock looked up from his coffee, startled out of his thoughts by Hopkins’ voice again. “What?”
Hopkins nodded to the scrap of paper Sherlock still held in his left hand.
“That’s a bloke’s handwriting, and I can see the number from here,” he said. “But the paper’s old--years, at least.”
“Decades, actually,” Sherlock corrected absently. Hopkins lifted an eyebrow.
“You never did, did you?”
“No.” Sherlock tucked the paper away. He stirred his coffee for a moment to have something with which to occupy his hands, and watched Hopkins. It was unusual to see him at the Yard after hours anymore, and rarer still for him to show up in jeans. He had cut back on overtime ever since his marriage six months ago, which had been preceded by a whirlwind courtship that was almost as long. He had gone home for dinner, then, and changed before coming back to work. “Hopkins, tell me something.”
“What?”
Sherlock stared at the smooth surface of his coffee, and watched his reflection blink back at him. “Do you ever regret getting married?”
Hopkins finished rinsing out his mug and grabbed a nearby towel to dry it.
“All the time,” he said simply, and Sherlock looked up.
“All the time,” he repeated, and then frowned. “I don’t understand.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Hopkins’ lips.
“If it helps,” he said, “I’m grateful all the time, too. I’m also as doubtful as I am happy, and I question even in times of joy. The fear doesn’t go away, but neither does the wonder.”
Sherlock swallowed, Hopkins’ words so accurate that they were almost painful. Absently, his hand went to his neck, and he brushed his fingers over the chain he never went a day without wearing-the one that had been Victor’s, and which still held the Saint Christopher medal at the end of it.
“Someday,” Sherlock said softly, “it’s going to hurt.”
Hopkins’ face turned sombre.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I know.”
“And it’s still worth it, for you?” Sherlock asked. “Even when times are hard.”
Hopkins gave him a faint smile. “Especially when times are hard.”
Sherlock nodded to himself. Hopkins went over to the coffee pot and refilled his mug. He was rooting around in the cabinets for sugar when Sherlock finally spoke again.
“I never called him.”
“Hm?”
Sherlock gestured to his wallet, where he had slid Victor’s note back into place. “I never called him.”
“Oh, yes. So you said.”
“But I did break into his rooms three nights later,” Sherlock went on. Hopkins finally looked at him, intrigued. “Had to scale the wall of a three-storey building to manage it, too.”
Hopkins gave a bark of laughter.
“And how’d he take that?”
Sherlock felt an unbidden smile touch his lips at the memory of Victor’s startled face that cool autumn night. It wasn’t often that he’d been able to catch his friend off-guard, and he treasured every memory of those moments. He cherished everything, in fact, about the man who had walked into his life one day and never quite managed to leave.
“We were together almost seventeen years,” he said at length. “You tell me.”
Hopkins sobered almost instantly.
“That was Victor,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.”
Sherlock nodded slowly.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “That was Victor.”
He had never made it a point to discuss Victor with those he worked with at the Yard, but in the months following his return it had been impossible to pretend that everything was all right. Lestrade had informed his team, in vague words, that Sherlock had suffered a loss during his hiatus, and John had written a couple of blog entries that mentioned Victor's role in helping Sherlock take down Moriarty's network. It would have been apparent to anyone that first year after Victor's death that Sherlock was a grieving man, but it usually wasn't talked about.
Except where Hopkins was concerned. He didn't shy away from Sherlock the way the others did when he had lashed out at them in a grief-induced rage during that first year, and he was the only one of Lestrade's team who wasn't afraid to mention Victor in Sherlock's presence.
“How did you two meet?” Hopkins asked as he stirred his coffee. “I don’t know that you’ve ever said.”
Sherlock gave a wan smile.
“His dog bit me,” he said. “I still have a scar on my ankle.”
“Hell of a first meeting,” Hopkins said with a snort. He took a tentative sip of his coffee and leaned a hip against the counter, clearly in no hurry to leave. For the moment, his attention was entirely on Sherlock.
“He looked after me,” Sherlock continued after a moment. “It was foolish, and unnecessary, but he did it anyway. He was always doing that--trying to look after me.”
It was Victor’s nature. Even from the first, when they were little more than strangers, he was there checking in on Sherlock. He was there for all the fights Sherlock had with Mycroft and his stepfather, and prior to the falling out with his own father, Victor’s home became a refuge during their holidays.
“He cared for you,” Hopkins said gently. The words were meant to be comforting, Sherlock knew, but he found no solace in them.
“He died to keep me safe, the first time,” Sherlock said quietly. “I wish... I wish he’d spent a little less time looking after me, and a little more time considering what he’d done. He spent so much time worrying about my well-being, he didn’t stop to think that maybe... maybe living without him that first time was worse than dying.”
Sherlock went over and topped off his own cup of coffee. Hopkins passed him two packets of sugar, and Sherlock took them with a nod of thanks.
“There were eighteen years between the day we met and the day he died,” Sherlock said softly. “But he was dead and gone for four of them, as far as I knew. I wish we’d had that time. I wish he’d realised -”
But that was the way Victor was--always trying to fix; always trying to help. He saw Sherlock through the tedium of university and held him together in the years afterward as boredom threatened to drag him under. He let everyone lean on him and wouldn’t allow himself to show need in return. Sherlock had been able to clumsily offer him comfort only a handful of times-most notably, during the hell that followed Victor’s falling out with his father.
Even then, Victor tried to be the reassuring one.
“He was always saying that it would be all right,” Sherlock went on, his words numb even to his own ears. He didn’t know why he was telling Hopkins this, why it felt so easy to admit to him things about Victor that Sherlock had never been able to tell even John. “Always. No matter the situation. It was as though he thought he could make it true just by saying it.”
Even in Brussels, when Sherlock had lost part of his hand to a bomb and Moriarty’s men were two steps ahead of them, Victor always had a quick smile and reassuring words. And when he was on his deathbed...
You’re going to be just fine without me.
Victor had been wrong. It wasn’t all right. It wasn't fine.
But Sherlock also knew that he wouldn’t trade the moments they’d had for anything.
Hopkins, who had been patiently quiet throughout, finally reached out and put a bracing hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.
“You held on to that piece of paper for over twenty years,” he said quietly, giving Sherlock’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I think you answered your own question, Sherlock.”
Sherlock stared at him for a moment. Hopkins’ earnest grey eyes were unwavering, and Sherlock gave a slow nod.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, it was worth it. He was worth it.”
It was still storming when Sherlock returned to Baker Street that night, and the pounding rain drummed against the roof. It invaded his senses and his subconscious, and he couldn’t help but think of the cottage among the yews; of a rain-filled week and kisses traded in a hammock.
He finally fell into a deep slumber, and dreamed of Victor.
Final Notes: “Try to Remember” is a song by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones. And, for those of you who are curious: as ever, my headcanon!VT closely resembles Karl Urban. The appearance of this version of Stanley Hopkins is based on Richard Armitage. But, of course, you may picture them however you wish. Thank you for reading.
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters: Sherlock, Sally Donovan, Victor Trevor, Stanley Hopkins
Pairings: (background) John/Lestrade, Sherlock/Victor Trevor
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Fluff, flashbacks, angst, language, grief/mourning, moving on
Word Count: c. 6,900
Beta: thesmallhobbit
Spoilers: None
Summary: Sometimes, the only thing that makes the winter bearable is the memory of spring.
Notes: Stanley Hopkins and Victor Trevor are both characters from ACD canon. Victor Trevor is a university-era friend of Holmes’, while Hopkins is an Inspector at the Yard. I have lifted some of VT's backstory directly from "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott."
This is a follow-up to “The Fall of Gods,” which is preceded by "Liaisons." Knowledge of those stories isn’t necessary, but would be helpful. This acts as a sort of interlude fic between “Gods” and its sequel, which will be going up in the coming weeks. Many thanks to Small Hobbit for her input. Feedback always welcome.
When he was eleven years old, Sherlock Holmes fell out of a tree and broke his arm.
He remembered the pain more than anything else. That, and his mother’s bloodless face as she bundled him off to the hospital. He had been able to examine the injury with a strange disconnect once the painkillers finally kicked in, and he remembered thinking how strange it was that such a bloodless injury could hurt so much.
Now, at seventeen, he found himself contemplating the fact that an injury that had bled so profusely hurt less than that broken arm. He of course had a much better grasp of human anatomy now than he had as a boy, and he wasn’t surprised in the least, but it was still intriguing.
Sherlock carefully changed the dressing on his ankle, taking a moment to inspect the wound with that same sort of detached curiosity, as though he was looking at someone else’s injury. He’d had an unfortunate run-in with the dog of a fellow student three days ago, and the indignation of that was more bothersome than the injury itself. He had managed to stop the bleeding on his own without the aid of sutures, and it hadn’t rendered him completely immobile. The limp he possessed as a result of the dog bite was frustrating, but it would go away of its own accord. If anything, it simply gave him further excuse not to leave his room.
How dreary this whole university business was turning out to be. His lectures were dull and his peers were morons. It was almost as dull as all of his schooling prior to now had been. In all honesty, the only thing keeping him at university was the fact that it was slightly less tedious than his previous schooling.
Sherlock would take whatever victories over the tedium that he could, however small they might be.
He finished dressing his wound and had reached for a nearby apiology book and his notes when there were three solid knocks on the door, startling him out of his thoughts. He sat in silence for a moment, waiting for whoever was on the other side to give up and go away, but they simply knocked again.
And then again.
Sighing, Sherlock pushed himself to his feet and limped over to the door. He opened it only a few centimeters, making it more than apparent that whoever was on the other side was not welcome to come in.
“What is it?” he snapped.
The man on the other side gave him a triumphant smile, one that showed off his teeth. He stood taller than Sherlock by about an inch, and though he appeared to carry very little fat on his body, Sherlock wouldn’t have called him slim. He was brawny, with a hint of softness about his face and collarbone that betrayed his youth-he couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Sherlock. His brunet hair was swept to the side, except for a few strands that fell across his forehead. He had a striking face and a prominent nose, and the beginnings of a beard shadowed his strong jaw. He was dressed in carefully-pressed trousers and a light cotton shirt, his outfit purposefully casual and expensive. There was a gold chain around his neck that was visible through his open collar, but the medal at the end of it was hidden beneath his shirt.
He shoved his hand through the sliver of space between the door and its frame, holding it out to Sherlock.
“Victor Trevor,” he said, blue eyes sparkling. Sherlock stared at the hand, and then at the man, who was still looking utterly pleased with himself.
“Go away,” he said, and moved to shut the door. Trevor shot out a hand and braced it against the wood. He was stronger than he appeared; Sherlock couldn’t force the door closed. “What do you want?”
Trevor shouldered his way into the room. He brushed past Sherlock, ignoring his indignant protest, and immediately began to inspect Sherlock’s lodgings.
“You don’t remember me; pity. I had hoped I would make more of an impression.”
Sherlock fought back anger.
“Who are you?” he growled. “And what the hell do you want?”
“My dog took a liking to you,” Trevor said. He ran a long finger down the length of an 18th-century spyglass. “Thought I’d come see what all the fuss was about.”
He looked over his shoulder at Sherlock, a smirk on his face. And then he winked.
Forward bastard.
“Well, you saw,” Sherlock snapped. He remembered Trevor’s face now, albeit vaguely, having been more concerned at the time with the blood pouring from his ankle. He crossed the room just as Trevor began to inspect a stack of books sitting on a table and snatched an apiology tome out of his hands. “Now go. And don’t touch anything on the way out.”
Trevor didn’t move. He slid his hands into his pockets, regarding Sherlock carefully.
“You’re in my chemistry lecture,” he said finally. “Or you were, at least. Haven’t seen you since the first week of class.”
“It’s tedious.”
“Hm. You know, only two types of people would think so--those who don’t have a hope of understanding it and those who are too damned smart for their own good. You don’t exactly strike me as the latter.”
Sherlock bristled.
“My intellect is far beyond both your comprehension and your imagination,” he snapped. Trevor snorted.
“I highly doubt that. This is wrong, by the way.”
“I - what?”
Sherlock looked to where Trevor was pointing. There was an ancient chalkboard on the far side of the room, which Sherlock had nicked and subsequently been using ever since to mark down information from his experiments.
“The equations you have up there are wrong,” Trevor repeated. “I mean, technically they’re right, but you’ve used the wrong constant.”
“No, I haven’t,” Sherlock blurted. Trevor gave him an infuriating smile, and then shrugged.
“You’ll figure it out soon enough.”
Sherlock narrowed his eyes, his irritation growing. “What’s your course of study?”
“Computer science and pure mathematics. It means -”
“- it means that you study the abstract concepts of mathematics with respect to their intrinsic nature, and don’t necessarily concern yourself with how they manifest in the real world.”
Trevor arched an eyebrow.
“I’ve yet to meet someone outside my course of study who knows the difference,” he said. Sherlock smirked.
“Well, now you have. And you can still leave.”
Trevor continued to ignore him.
“I also know how it manifests in the real world, by the way. Mathematics, that is. I’m quite well-versed.”
“I’m sure you are. Get out.”
“Listen, if you need a tutor -”
“I don’t.”
“- here.” Trevor grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled on it--where had he got that pen?--before pushing it into Sherlock’s hand. “How’s the ankle?”
“What?” Sherlock had never before been part of a conversation that made no sense to him, and he wasn’t particularly enjoying this one. What was going on?
Trevor gave him a kind smile, and now Sherlock was even more confused.
“Your ankle,” he repeated gently. “You know, the one my dog tried to take a chunk out of? You’re walking, at least. That’s a good sign.”
“I - it’s fine,” Sherlock said shortly. Why did this man care? “Oh. You feel responsible, is that it? Well, don’t. It’s not as though you told the beast to attack me.”
“Still, it’s good to know you’re all right.”
“Why?” Sherlock burst out, fed-up with participating in a conversation that wasn’t going in any direction he expected. None of it made sense, and still--still--he found himself as intrigued as he was frustrated. Trevor gave an enigmatic smile.
“I’ll be back to check on you again tomorrow,” he said. He clapped Sherlock on the shoulder. “Good talking to you.”
“I - no, you won’t!”
“Good night, Sherlock,” Trevor called over his shoulder as he left.
Sherlock stood there, blinking, for a long while after Trevor’s retreating back disappeared down the staircase. Then he looked down at the piece of paper in his hand, and carefully unfolded it.
Victor Trevor, it said, followed by a phone number. And then, underneath that, Trevor had written, The dog’s name is Jasper, by the way. You’ll like him, once you get to know him.
Sherlock had absolutely no intention of getting to know the damned beast.
But he didn’t throw away the piece of paper.
----
Sherlock had never met anyone quite like Victor Trevor before.
Victor had a vast intellect that rivaled Sherlock’s own, and though mathematics was his course of study he was well-versed in a number of different fields. But whereas Sherlock used his intelligence as an excuse to cut himself off from the outside world, isolating himself from inferior minds, Victor reveled in the company of others. He was charming and persistent, with an air of confidence so strong he could probably convince someone that two and two equaled five, and they wouldn’t think to question it.
He was also astoundingly athletic, and hours spent either playing rugby or with the rowing club had hardened his shoulders and arms, and powerful thighs were hidden beneath his tailored trousers. Sherlock preferred solitary sports and occupied his free time with boxing. Victor thrived on the cheers from a crowd and the camaraderie of his teammates.
There was no reason at all for them to be acquaintances, let alone friends.
And yet, eight months after Victor first strolled into his life, Sherlock knew that the only reason he was able to bear the monotonous existence at university was because of his unlikely companion. He was already dreading the day when Victor would graduate and leave this place--leave him--as Victor was a year his senior. Sherlock even, as Victor had predicted, came to a mutual understanding with Jasper, and the dog hadn’t tried to bite him since.
The summer holiday was looming when Victor broke into his rooms one night, interrupting Sherlock’s latest round of brooding.
“Oh, come now,” Victor said in exasperation, instantly interpreting the look on Sherlock’s face. “The holiday won’t be that terrible.”
Sherlock glared at him.
“It will be worse than terrible, Victor, you have no idea,” he muttered. “And then to return to this dreadful place...”
“I’ll pretend not to take offense to that.” Victor went over to Sherlock’s bookshelf and dropped to his knees, scanning the bottom shelf.
Sherlock waved a hand at him. “You know what I mean. Oh, please tell me you aren’t still looking for that blasted book.”
Victor pushed himself to his feet and then went up on the tips of his toes, searching through the top of Sherlock’s bookshelf. “It was here at the end of last term, I’m sure of it...”
“I’d have remembered.”
Victor snorted. “No, you wouldn’t have.”
Sherlock shrugged, pushed himself up out of his slouch, and reached over the side of his chair for the stack of books sitting next to it. He selected one and began to read, wholly unconcerned with the fact that Victor was going through his things.
Victor opened a box that was sitting by the window, and then reeled back in alarm. “Why do you keep eyes in here?”
Sherlock sniffed. “Experiment.”
“They’ll rot, you know.”
“Experiment. Point of,” Sherlock said sharply. Victor rolled his eyes.
“Of course, my mistake.”
“It usually is.”
Victor went over to Sherlock’s wardrobe and threw it open. He pushed aside Sherlock’s clothing, searching through the myriad items that littered the bottom of the wardrobe.
“Find anything interesting?”
“Well,” Victor grunted, “I’ve discovered the secret of how you keep this room spotless. You just shove everything extra in here.”
“And your method of leaving useless items scattered around your room is preferable how?”
“Point taken.” Victor straightened, emerging with a fencing foil. “Adding another skill to your repertoire?”
Sherlock glanced at him, and then waved a hand dismissively.
“Mother used to have us take lessons,” he said disdainfully. Victor raised an eyebrow.
“Not useful enough for you?”
“I prefer boxing.”
“Hmm.” Victor adopted a stance, and took a couple of practice swipes through the air. “Out with it. Why don’t you want to go home?”
Sherlock’s eyes traveled with the blade, and he said, absently, “It’s dull.”
“Yes, I suppose,” Victor mused. He tossed the foil from hand to hand for a moment and then took a few swipes with his left hand. They were clumsy and less sure than those with his right. “Mycroft giving you problems again?”
Sherlock felt the remainder of his good mood evaporate. “He wants me to follow him into the government.”
“And what do you want to do?”
“Something interesting.”
“Hmm.” Victor took a few jabs with the foil. Sherlock watched him, and found that he was unable to tear his eyes from the muscles that rippled up Victor’s forearms. “Well, you could always put those observational skills of yours to good use.”
“That,” Sherlock said dismissively, waving a hand, “is just a trick.”
“Hey.” Victor paused, and their eyes locked. “Don’t say that. It’s not a trick, it’s brilliant.”
He resumed fencing with an invisible partner.
“You could go into business for yourself,” Victor said after a moment. He took a few violent swipes through the air and then pointed the end of the blade at Sherlock. “Think of it. Sherlock Holmes, Private Detective. No. Consulting detective.”
“Don’t be absurd, no one’s a consulting detective,” Sherlock said scornfully, knocking the blade away from his face.
“Exactly.” Victor smirked. “You’d be the only one. You like that, right? Being exceptional. Being extraordinary. The only one in the world. Has a nice ring to it, yeah?”
He tossed the foil at Sherlock, who caught it deftly by the hilt.
“How about this, then,” Victor went on. “Come with me to Norfolk. My dad’s home on business for a few weeks, but he has an office in London and spends most of his time there. It’d be like having the house ourselves.”
“Why me?” Sherlock asked, and meant, Why not your boyfriend? Normally, he would have been blunt, but he found that when it came to Victor’s personal life, he didn’t like to acknowledge the fact that there were others who occupied his friend’s attention.
Something shuttered behind Victor’s eyes, and Sherlock felt something ease in his chest. This latest interest hadn’t lasted, then. Given the fact that Victor had been through two--now three--boyfriends in the time they had known one another, Sherlock couldn’t say that he was particularly surprised.
“‘Cause you’re my best friend and you look like you could use a break,” Victor said smoothly. “And the best part is, Mycroft won’t be there.”
Sherlock rather felt that the best part was not who wouldn’t be there, but who would. He surmised it was probably best to keep that to himself, however.
----
The Trevor family estate was quite unlike Sherlock’s own home. They were both large houses that were surrounded by expansive grounds, but the similarities ended there. Sherlock had grown up in a house that was always bustling with activity, full of household staff and tutors and whatever guests his mother happened to be entertaining for the evening. Mycroft, at seven years his senior, had moved out of the home long ago, but his stepfather and mother remained, and when Sherlock was home on holidays it still seemed as though there was always something going on.
Victor, on the other hand, had lived a largely solitary existence as a child. His mother had died when he was an infant, and Henry Trevor never remarried. He thus showered his only child with love and attention, foregoing nannies and tutors that most single parents of his social status would have come to rely on. He traveled all over the world for business, but had always brought Victor with him. During Victor’s childhood he had been largely responsible for maintaining the house, cooking for his child, and supplementing his education. It was only now, in Trevor’s later years, that he had started to employ household staff, but during Sherlock’s three weeks in Norfolk that summer with Victor he only saw the maids on a handful of occasions.
The weeks spent in Norfolk were decent enough, but by the end of it Sherlock could see that living with his father was beginning to grate on Victor’s nerves. The two Trevors were spectacularly close, but Victor hadn’t been a child for a very long time and Henry Trevor sometimes had difficulty remembering that. And so, in the final week of their holiday together, Victor took Sherlock to a small cottage in the South Downs that his father had owned since the day Victor was born.
The escape to the cottage was nothing short of bliss. Victor relaxed almost at once, and it was as though they were back at university again, only this time there weren’t any other people to deal with.
Sherlock could get used to this, and he wasn’t sure what to make of that thought.
He spent most of their first afternoon in Sussex Downs running an experiment in the cottage’s kitchen. He’d had to fashion his own equipment from various items found around the cottage and bemoaned the fact that he had left his microscope at university, but for the most part he was having success. Victor had been intrigued for all of ten minutes, but the outdoors was much more alluring to him, as it usually was, and he had been outside with Jasper ever since lunchtime. Sherlock could hear the dog’s happy barking through the cottage windows, and every once in a while Victor darted across his periphery, either chasing the dog across the lawn or being chased in return.
The sun disappeared behind some clouds as the afternoon grew late, and Sherlock eventually became aware of a lack of commotion outside. He glanced out of the nearest window and saw Jasper stretched out on the grass, completely shattered and fast asleep. Victor was stretched out in a nearby hammock, reading a book, an open beer sitting on the ground at his side.
Rain was threatening when Sherlock finally decided to set aside his experiment, and he ventured outside into the muggy afternoon. Jasper lifted his head as Sherlock padded across the ground, and they stared warily at one another for a beat. They had long ago reached a truce of sorts, having a mutual friend that neither wished to see come to harm, and Jasper soon dropped his head and let Sherlock pass by him unmolested.
Victor was still in the hammock, one arm across his stomach while the other had been flung up over his head. His flesh, already tan, was tinged red on his forearms and shoulders from the earlier relentless sun. He was asleep, or appeared to be, his eyes closed and his face turned toward his arm so that his nose pressed into his shoulder. The hammock swayed slightly in the breeze, and leaves rustled overhead.
“Don’t you dare,” Victor muttered as Sherlock approached, his voice husky with sleep. Sherlock ignored him and flopped down next to him in the hammock, nearly upsetting it and sending them both flying. Once it had settled again, Victor leveled a glare at him. “Brat. Thought you were working on an experiment.”
“I finished it,” Sherlock lied. In truth, for the past hour he had become increasingly more distracted, and his gaze had kept straying to the window, beyond which he could see Victor in the hammock. For some reason, being out here appealed more.
Victor dropped a leg over the side of the hammock and gave a slight push, sending them both swaying gently as the breeze swept around them. It carried with it the sharp, biting scent of rain, and there was a promise of a storm in the heavy air.
Sherlock folded his hands on his stomach and closed his eyes, reaching out with his other senses. High above their heads, leaves shook as they were disturbed by the persistent wind. Victor’s breathing was slow and steady, a signal that he was about to drop off again, and every once in a while he drew a great lungful of air, savouring the cooling breeze. He smelled faintly of sweat and freshly-cut grass, and something stirred in Sherlock’s chest.
“You don’t get trees like this at university,” Victor murmured, referring to the majestic yews and willows that covered the expansive property. The yews in particular were impressive, their trunks thick and squat, unchanging and immovable. The willows were slender and ancient, and their branches curved and dipped towards the ground, their leaves brushing the grass. Victor was silent for a moment, and then he sang quietly, “And no one wept, except the willow.”
The song rose and crested like a wave at sea, and a tight heat coiled itself in Sherlock’s belly. He swallowed, trying to shove it away.
“What was that?” he asked, his words weaker than he would have liked. He felt Victor shrug.
“I’ve no idea; something I must have heard once. I only remember that line.”
He hummed it to himself for a while, the motion of the hammock lulling them both into a stupor.
“You’ve stopped seeing Brian.”
Victor cut off mid-note, and Sherlock instantly regretted having brought the subject up.
“He stopped seeing me, if we’re going to get technical about it,” Victor said finally, his words carefully guarded.
Sherlock wasn’t quite sure what was expected of him at this juncture, and said nothing for a while. He could offer condolences, he supposed, but he didn’t find any sorrow in the news. Victor’s attentions as of late had been focused on this latest interest of his, and Sherlock disliked having to share his best friend with another - especially one of such inferior intellect, which was just an insult.
“Why?” he asked finally, sensing that it was probably unwise to voice his satisfaction over the break-up. Victor sighed heavily. He kicked the ground again, sending them swinging a bit more violently than he had earlier.
“He found some of my habits... irritating.”
“Like what?”
Victor shrugged. “You name it, he couldn’t stand it.”
Sherlock frowned, and felt a spark of indignation in his chest. How anyone could find any of Victor’s quirks anything less than perfection, he would never know. Victor was a constant mystery, a puzzle Sherlock had yet to figure out completely, and every habit he had was one that made him unique. He would be uninteresting without them; even worse, he wouldn’t be Victor.
“That’s absurd,” Sherlock said finally.
Victor shrugged again. A light mist was beginning to fall, which Sherlock hadn’t noticed until now because of the shelter of the trees.
“It is what it is,” Victor said, sounding almost resigned. “Sometimes it’s hard to put up with my peculiarities.”
“I would have.”
The words were out before Sherlock had even fully realised he’d been thinking them. He felt Victor shift in surprise, and a heavy silence fell between them.
“Sherlock -”
The word fell from Victor’s lips as though he couldn’t quite hold onto it. It was quiet and rough around the edges, and not at all like the way Victor normally said his name. Sherlock suppressed a shiver.
“Never mind,” he said briskly, heart rate quickening. Was Victor’s body always this warm? He had never noticed. He pulled his arm away so they were no longer touching, but in the confined space of the hammock it was impossible not to touch Victor. “Just - forget that I said that.”
Victor obligingly fell quiet, but the companionable silence didn’t return. Instead, the air between them was thick, and even Victor seemed uncertain, which was unusual. He let his leg fall over the side of the hammock and gave them another push. The rain was growing steady.
“Want to go inside?” Victor ventured finally.
Sherlock, instead of answering, leaned over and pressed his mouth to Victor’s.
Victor’s lips were dry and soft, not at all like Sherlock imagined. His upper lip was smooth, as clean-shaven as the rest of his face-he’d got rid of the beard months ago-and his skin smelled of warmth and spice. Victor responded almost immediately to the touch, kissing Sherlock back after a moment of hesitation. He rested a hand on the side of Sherlock’s neck and parted his lips, and the unexpected heat of his mouth sent a jolt down Sherlock’s spine. It was a wet, clumsy kiss, made awkward by the angle of their necks, and by the fact that Sherlock wasn’t exactly sure where to go with what he had started. Victor grazed his lips over Sherlock’s, dropping soft kisses on his mouth with a hint of tongue that left Sherlock aching for more. He tasted of salt and beer, and Sherlock couldn’t hold back the whimper that fell from his lips when Victor finally pulled away.
“Okay.” Victor’s voice was little more than a croak. He let his hand fall from Sherlock’s face and settled it on his shoulder. The heat of his palm bled through the fabric of Sherlock’s shirt, and Sherlock shuddered at the touch. “I - wasn’t expecting that.”
His breathing was uneven, and this close Sherlock could see that his pupils were larger than normal. Victor’s blue irises were barely noticeable, in fact, as arousal widened his pupils and caused his gaze to become unfocused. Sherlock reached out a finger and traced Victor’s kiss-bruised upper lip before letting it trail down his throat, watching as gooseflesh erupted at his touch. Victor swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing under the press of Sherlock’s fingers.
Sherlock couldn’t stop staring at Victor’s face. His expression was a mixture of bemusement and desire, and Sherlock had never seen him look like that before. It was entirely new. Sherlock raked his eyes over Victor’s face, memorizing the parted lips and dark eyes. He let his hand rest on Victor’s taut stomach, and then pushed it under Victor’s t-shirt, brushing his fingers over the ridges and valleys on his torso. Victor’s breath caught in his chest and his hand tightened reflexively on Sherlock’s shoulder, and it occurred to Sherlock that there was so much he didn’t know about his friend. These were entirely new sounds that fell from Victor’s lips, and his face was one he had never worn around Sherlock before.
He wanted to know more, wanted to know it all, and that singular need burned through him, chasing away all other thoughts until there was only Victor.
Sherlock lowered his head, and kissed Victor once again.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
London hadn’t seen a rain like this in years.
“Bloody unseemly, this,” Sally Donovan had grumbled to no one in particular on the second day of the relentless storm. “It’s 2018. Shouldn’t we have control over the weather by now?”
It was coming down in torrents, and had been causing havoc for three days now. Basements were flooding all over the city and streets were becoming impassable, and it wasn’t supposed to let up for at least another day.
But it seemed serene from inside the Yard. The large building muted the outside world so that the rain sounded gentle and comforting. The sound of the storm was relentless at Baker Street, which was why Sherlock had chosen to actually work on Lestrade’s latest case at the Yard this time. He couldn’t think inside his flat, mostly because of the storm but partly also because the flat was devoid of its usual clamour. John and Lestrade were on holiday, and Sherlock was too used to their company now to find the empty flat anything other than disconcerting.
And so he took refuge in the Yard on this night, holing up in a conference room with Sally Donovan while they pored over nearly one hundred different crime scene photographs. A small radio in the corner of the room was tuned to a music station, at Donovan’s insistence, and it played on quietly in the background. Sherlock had objected at first to the extra noise, but didn’t really have the energy to argue his point beyond that.
The rain always drained him. And to think there had been a time when he had found it enjoyable, and cherished the memory that went along with it.
Try to remember the kind of September...
“Do you have the fingerprint analysis from the second crime scene?” Sherlock asked as the radio began to play a mournful tune. He tried to tune out the lyrics, but his concentration today was slipping. Donovan shuffled through her files for a moment.
“I just had - oh, here it is.” She handed it to him.
...that no one wept except the willow...
Sherlock froze, head snapping up to stare at the radio. Donovan followed his gaze, bemused.
“Suddenly taking an interest in music, Holmes?”
Sherlock ignored her.
… although you know the snow will follow...
Victor’s voice came to him from two decades past, rich and low, singing the single line over and over because it was the only one he remembered, his words stirring something in Sherlock he hadn’t at the time been able to name.
...it’s nice to remember the fire of September...
“I need a break,” Sherlock said abruptly. “And a coffee. Do you want one?”
It didn’t occur to him until some time later that he actually hadn’t heard her answer, if even he had waited around until she gave one at all.
No one wept, except the willow.
Sherlock tugged a piece of paper out of his wallet and held it the claw-like grip of his maimed left hand. The paper was worn and now a faded yellow; the ink was still legible, but faint. He should have taken more pains to preserve it, but he didn’t know at the time that it would one day be one of the only things he possessed of Victor.
He couldn’t stop staring at Victor’s name, which had been written in his usual hurried, spiky scrawl. The words had been written by a man Sherlock loved so dearly that it hurt-today more than usual. They were the words of a man he had loved and lost, a final remnant of Victor that Sherlock could see and touch.
They weren’t enough.
“Think they’re having this rain in France?”
Sherlock started at the sudden voice, and the man who had spoken held up a hand in apology.
“Sorry, mate.” Detective Sergeant Stanley Hopkins went over to the break room’s sink, where he dumped out the residual coffee in his mug and then started to wash it out. He was a slender man, taller than Sherlock by only a couple of inches, but the way he held himself made it seem like more. He had an angular face, complete with a thin mouth and a sharp nose, and had dark hair that stuck up in all directions whenever he ran his hand through it. He was dressed in jeans and a snug t-shirt this evening, a change from his earlier suit.
Hopkins was covering this week for Lestrade while he was away on holiday, and he had stepped into the role of DI with surprising ease. He was the only member of Lestrade’s team that Sherlock hadn’t been acquainted with before his fall, as he had been brought on during the eighteen months that Sherlock was abroad. But despite the fact that they had only known each other a few years, Hopkins was easily Sherlock’s favourite of the Yarders (Lestrade no longer counted, as it had become apparent long ago that he was in Sherlock’s life to stay, Yarder or no). Hopkins was exceptionally bright, and Sherlock had taken to mentoring him as of late, as Hopkins had not only expressed an interest in the science of deduction but also had proved quite competent at it.
Sherlock shook his head.
“I spoke to John last night. He said the weather is, in his words, to die for.”
Hopkins snorted.
“Sounds like John. Where did they go again?”
Sherlock shrugged. He hadn’t exactly been paying attention when John and Lestrade informed him of their holiday plans, having more important things to occupy his mind.
“Some cottage near the sea. Mycroft arranged a trip for them out there seven years ago as an apology for inconveniencing Lestrade during the Baskerville case. I believe they make it a point to go back every year.”
Hopkins nodded absently. He was a reserved man who didn’t speak all that often, and when he did, very rarely was it small talk. He was efficient with his words, practical almost to a fault, and stubborn to the extreme. He and Sherlock had clashed on more than one occasion over the years, neither of them willing to budge or negotiate his position, something that caused Lestrade no small amount of irritation whenever he brought Sherlock in to work a case. But despite outward appearances, Sherlock actually rather enjoyed working with Hopkins. He was clever, far more than he let on, and had a sharp wit that largely went unnoticed by his painfully ordinary team.
“Did you ever call him?”
“Hm?” Sherlock looked up from his coffee, startled out of his thoughts by Hopkins’ voice again. “What?”
Hopkins nodded to the scrap of paper Sherlock still held in his left hand.
“That’s a bloke’s handwriting, and I can see the number from here,” he said. “But the paper’s old--years, at least.”
“Decades, actually,” Sherlock corrected absently. Hopkins lifted an eyebrow.
“You never did, did you?”
“No.” Sherlock tucked the paper away. He stirred his coffee for a moment to have something with which to occupy his hands, and watched Hopkins. It was unusual to see him at the Yard after hours anymore, and rarer still for him to show up in jeans. He had cut back on overtime ever since his marriage six months ago, which had been preceded by a whirlwind courtship that was almost as long. He had gone home for dinner, then, and changed before coming back to work. “Hopkins, tell me something.”
“What?”
Sherlock stared at the smooth surface of his coffee, and watched his reflection blink back at him. “Do you ever regret getting married?”
Hopkins finished rinsing out his mug and grabbed a nearby towel to dry it.
“All the time,” he said simply, and Sherlock looked up.
“All the time,” he repeated, and then frowned. “I don’t understand.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Hopkins’ lips.
“If it helps,” he said, “I’m grateful all the time, too. I’m also as doubtful as I am happy, and I question even in times of joy. The fear doesn’t go away, but neither does the wonder.”
Sherlock swallowed, Hopkins’ words so accurate that they were almost painful. Absently, his hand went to his neck, and he brushed his fingers over the chain he never went a day without wearing-the one that had been Victor’s, and which still held the Saint Christopher medal at the end of it.
“Someday,” Sherlock said softly, “it’s going to hurt.”
Hopkins’ face turned sombre.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I know.”
“And it’s still worth it, for you?” Sherlock asked. “Even when times are hard.”
Hopkins gave him a faint smile. “Especially when times are hard.”
Sherlock nodded to himself. Hopkins went over to the coffee pot and refilled his mug. He was rooting around in the cabinets for sugar when Sherlock finally spoke again.
“I never called him.”
“Hm?”
Sherlock gestured to his wallet, where he had slid Victor’s note back into place. “I never called him.”
“Oh, yes. So you said.”
“But I did break into his rooms three nights later,” Sherlock went on. Hopkins finally looked at him, intrigued. “Had to scale the wall of a three-storey building to manage it, too.”
Hopkins gave a bark of laughter.
“And how’d he take that?”
Sherlock felt an unbidden smile touch his lips at the memory of Victor’s startled face that cool autumn night. It wasn’t often that he’d been able to catch his friend off-guard, and he treasured every memory of those moments. He cherished everything, in fact, about the man who had walked into his life one day and never quite managed to leave.
“We were together almost seventeen years,” he said at length. “You tell me.”
Hopkins sobered almost instantly.
“That was Victor,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.”
Sherlock nodded slowly.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “That was Victor.”
He had never made it a point to discuss Victor with those he worked with at the Yard, but in the months following his return it had been impossible to pretend that everything was all right. Lestrade had informed his team, in vague words, that Sherlock had suffered a loss during his hiatus, and John had written a couple of blog entries that mentioned Victor's role in helping Sherlock take down Moriarty's network. It would have been apparent to anyone that first year after Victor's death that Sherlock was a grieving man, but it usually wasn't talked about.
Except where Hopkins was concerned. He didn't shy away from Sherlock the way the others did when he had lashed out at them in a grief-induced rage during that first year, and he was the only one of Lestrade's team who wasn't afraid to mention Victor in Sherlock's presence.
“How did you two meet?” Hopkins asked as he stirred his coffee. “I don’t know that you’ve ever said.”
Sherlock gave a wan smile.
“His dog bit me,” he said. “I still have a scar on my ankle.”
“Hell of a first meeting,” Hopkins said with a snort. He took a tentative sip of his coffee and leaned a hip against the counter, clearly in no hurry to leave. For the moment, his attention was entirely on Sherlock.
“He looked after me,” Sherlock continued after a moment. “It was foolish, and unnecessary, but he did it anyway. He was always doing that--trying to look after me.”
It was Victor’s nature. Even from the first, when they were little more than strangers, he was there checking in on Sherlock. He was there for all the fights Sherlock had with Mycroft and his stepfather, and prior to the falling out with his own father, Victor’s home became a refuge during their holidays.
“He cared for you,” Hopkins said gently. The words were meant to be comforting, Sherlock knew, but he found no solace in them.
“He died to keep me safe, the first time,” Sherlock said quietly. “I wish... I wish he’d spent a little less time looking after me, and a little more time considering what he’d done. He spent so much time worrying about my well-being, he didn’t stop to think that maybe... maybe living without him that first time was worse than dying.”
Sherlock went over and topped off his own cup of coffee. Hopkins passed him two packets of sugar, and Sherlock took them with a nod of thanks.
“There were eighteen years between the day we met and the day he died,” Sherlock said softly. “But he was dead and gone for four of them, as far as I knew. I wish we’d had that time. I wish he’d realised -”
But that was the way Victor was--always trying to fix; always trying to help. He saw Sherlock through the tedium of university and held him together in the years afterward as boredom threatened to drag him under. He let everyone lean on him and wouldn’t allow himself to show need in return. Sherlock had been able to clumsily offer him comfort only a handful of times-most notably, during the hell that followed Victor’s falling out with his father.
Even then, Victor tried to be the reassuring one.
“He was always saying that it would be all right,” Sherlock went on, his words numb even to his own ears. He didn’t know why he was telling Hopkins this, why it felt so easy to admit to him things about Victor that Sherlock had never been able to tell even John. “Always. No matter the situation. It was as though he thought he could make it true just by saying it.”
Even in Brussels, when Sherlock had lost part of his hand to a bomb and Moriarty’s men were two steps ahead of them, Victor always had a quick smile and reassuring words. And when he was on his deathbed...
You’re going to be just fine without me.
Victor had been wrong. It wasn’t all right. It wasn't fine.
But Sherlock also knew that he wouldn’t trade the moments they’d had for anything.
Hopkins, who had been patiently quiet throughout, finally reached out and put a bracing hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.
“You held on to that piece of paper for over twenty years,” he said quietly, giving Sherlock’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I think you answered your own question, Sherlock.”
Sherlock stared at him for a moment. Hopkins’ earnest grey eyes were unwavering, and Sherlock gave a slow nod.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, it was worth it. He was worth it.”
It was still storming when Sherlock returned to Baker Street that night, and the pounding rain drummed against the roof. It invaded his senses and his subconscious, and he couldn’t help but think of the cottage among the yews; of a rain-filled week and kisses traded in a hammock.
He finally fell into a deep slumber, and dreamed of Victor.
Final Notes: “Try to Remember” is a song by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones. And, for those of you who are curious: as ever, my headcanon!VT closely resembles Karl Urban. The appearance of this version of Stanley Hopkins is based on Richard Armitage. But, of course, you may picture them however you wish. Thank you for reading.