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Feb. 17th, 2013 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impishtubist"The Fall of Gods" (16/24)
Pairings: John/Lestrade; Sherlock/Victor Trevor
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Language, angst, mentions of suicide, implied past alcoholism, implied PTSD, religious themes, minor character death, sexual content, homicide, illness, permanent character injury.
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Part 13 / Part 14 / Part 15
Notes: I'm going to be out of town next weekend, so the next update might not come until two weekends from now. I'm terribly sorry about that, but if it's any consolation, there's no cliffhanger at the end of this update like there was last Sunday.
Apologies for some Greek myth mangling at the end.
“And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonor, and emulating one another in honor; and when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world.”
-The Symposium, Plato
Three days later, Sherlock is up and walking on his own, albeit shakily. He keeps most of what he eats down, but his appetite is near non-existent due to the pain. It will be severe for about a week, according to George, and pain management immediately following the amputation is the best way to stave off future, chronic pain. He had given Victor a number of narcotic analgesics prior to his departure, as well as some antibiotics for any lingering infection, and as a result Sherlock sleeps most hours of the day. He doesn't ask how Victor managed to persuade George to hand over so much medication, nor how George managed to get his hands on them in the first place. And, truth be told, Sherlock finds that he doesn't much care. He has larger issues to worry about.
Victor, as usual, is irritatingly rational about the whole situation.
“You’ve had a huge shock and there’s a good deal of medication in your system right now,” he says reasonably when Sherlock snarls about having slept yet another day away. “You need time to rest, so that the wound can heal properly.”
But Sherlock doesn’t want logic or reason, and he sneers at Victor’s words. Logic and reason had cost him an entire hand, for what good are three fingers if they can’t perform the duties of five?
A week after the amputation, Sherlock takes the bandages off. Victor comes back to their building to find him staring at what’s left of his hand, matted raw pink flesh the only sign of the fingers that used to be there.
“Idiot,” Victor says gently. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” Sherlock says absently. “No, I don’t feel a thing.”
Victor allows him to examine the hand for several more minutes, and then says, “Come. Let’s get this wrapped again.”
“It doesn’t surprise you,” Sherlock says later. Victor hasn’t flinched once since this whole ordeal began. He’s barely twitched, even.
Victor gives a grim smile.
“I spent a month in hospital after the accident,” he says at last. “I had a number of operations; only two of them were on my neck. The others were for my shattered legs. It’s a miracle I kept them. I was bedridden most of the time. It cures you of any sense of modesty, I can tell you that, and any lingering uneasiness. I spent four weeks having glass dug out of me and having drainage tubes carry God knows what out of my body. I had a couple of nasty infections, and I think my legs are more metal than bone anymore.” He shrugs. “I don’t think there’s anything left out there about the human body that can surprise me. Or scare me off.”
“And after?
That part of Victor’s life is closed to him, like a book written in a foreign language. He can see that the evidence is there on Victor’s body, written all over him, but Sherlock can’t make sense of it.
Victor fixes him with a look Sherlock can’t decipher.
“Does it matter?”
Yes, John would say, and so that’s what Sherlock tells Victor, even though he’s not entirely sure why it should. But he wants to know, needs to know.
And John hasn’t steered him wrong yet.
Victor gives him another long look, peering at him through narrowed eyes, partly suspicious and mostly confused.
“The first year without you was the worst,” he says at last. “After that... Just got used to it, I suppose. It’s like my legs. The pain never truly goes away, but you learn to deal with it.”
He looks at Sherlock from under heavy lids, a furtive glance that slides away quickly to rest on the opposite wall, but it’s not quick enough to hide the open curiosity on his face.
“I stayed with Lestrade for a time.” Sherlock goes to wring his hands, a semi-conscious gesture he makes in times of unease, but the moment his right hand touches the bandage he jerks back as though burned, even though he registers no feeling whatsoever in the left. “I didn’t go to your funeral.”
“Started doing drugs?”
“Later on, yes.”
“What made you stop?”
“Wrong question.”
Victor nods to himself. “Of course. Who, then?” And then, before Sherlock can answer: “Ah, of course. Lestrade.”
“Yes.”
Victor leans back against the wall, Sherlock’s damaged hand still in his lap, and rubs his thumb absently over the bandage.
“They keep finding us,” he says at last. “I doubt they know who we truly are, but they know that someone is out there trying to hunt them down. First Greece, then Johannesburg; now this.”
“What are you getting at?” Sherlock asks sharply.
“We’ve been living under a grand delusion, Sherlock,” Victor says softly. “I think it’s time we talk about... what happens if we can’t complete this mission.”
“We die.”
“Before then.” Victor gives him a wry smile that turns bitter. “I think we need a better option than that.”
“What is it you’re proposing?” Sherlock sneers. “Hiding?”
“Yes,” Victor says quietly. “Not forever, though perhaps that might happen. If they get too close... we should at the least suspend the mission. Find some house, go into exile, and keep a low profile so that your friends may live. Did you still want to keep bees?”
Sherlock shakes his head in disbelief.
“You want me to hide, as you did? Give up, as you did? No, that’s not an option,” he says harshly. “And I’ll not hear you mention it again.”
There is a long, heavy silence.
“Quite right,” Victor says at last. “Of course. It was... a foolish thought.”
He doesn’t bring it up again.
----
They have to keep moving.
Sherlock knows this--he knows this. But his body fights him at every turn, and even sitting up in the morning is a struggle. He can’t imagine walking down a flight of stairs, let alone around this city.
But he has to do it, or they will be discovered once more.
“Can you walk?” Victor finally asks one morning. They have been here too long already. Someone is bound to have seen Victor coming and going, no matter how careful he was about it, and they can’t afford that information falling into the wrong hands.
“Well enough,” Sherlock says, and it is a lie, but one that Victor allows to go unchallenged.
In the end, they find a building some streets away, and move there under cover of night. With Victor supporting most of Sherlock’s weight in addition to his bag, the distance takes them nearly two hours to cover. It is intolerable, and Sherlock can do nothing about it. He is pitifully weak and unsteady, and this time anger only makes him clumsy rather than sharpening his mind and senses.
They spend one night in the new building, and then move again. The next night, they do the same thing. By the end of the week, they are on their fourth building, and Victor deems that satisfactory for the time being.
One morning, Victor returns to the building as Sherlock is waking. He tosses a package in Sherlock’s lap and goes to a faucet in the far corner of the room, where he washes his face and hair. He doesn’t offer Sherlock help in opening the package, and says nothing as Sherlock manipulates the string tying it one-handed. It takes fully ten minutes for him to open it, but he does it on his own, and Victor nods curtly once he’s peeled back the paper.
“Saw those in a shop. Thought they suited you.”
Sherlock lifts one black leather glove out of the mass of paper, examining it. It’s nearly silken to the touch, flexible but tough as well. He works it onto his right hand, feeling the tautness of the material as it slides into place. It’s a perfect fit, and looks like a natural extension of his arm.
“I hope you used cash,” is all he can manage to say, and Victor snorts.
“What do you take me for? ‘Course I did.” He sits down on the ground, pulls off his boots, and then sheds his jacket. “All right, my motivations weren’t entirely altruistic. You’ve got a distinctive wound now. Very recognizable. You’re going to have to keep it out of sight as much as possible. Don’t call attention to it. But you can’t go through the rest of this mission one-handed--you’ve still got three fingers--so gloves seemed like the best solution. If you can’t keep the hand out of sight, at least keep it covered.”
Sherlock pours all of his concentration over the next few days into working with his damaged hand, trying to get it to a point where he can utilize it again. Victor stuffs the final two fingers of his left glove and sews the padding into place; so long as Sherlock doesn’t bend his fingers, when wearing the glove it appears as though that hand is whole.
He plucks the stitches out some days before they are supposed to be removed and starts to wear his gloves, now that there is no threat of his open wound rubbing against the inside of the left one. Victor doesn’t say anything for nearly half a week.
“You know, you don’t have to wear those around me,” he says finally. “I don’t care.”
“I know,” Sherlock says, but he keeps them on all the same.
They have been so fully thrown off the trail by this latest crisis that now, as Sherlock is on the road to recovery, it’s hard to know where to pick it up again. Victor makes the mistake of wondering aloud, after three sleepless nights of fruitless research, where the hell they’re supposed to go from here.
It is answered for him less than twenty-four hours later, when a note arrives with the dawn. It is slipped under their door and, as was the case in Johannesburg, the messenger is gone by the time one of them throws open the door and bolts after him.
“What’s it say?” Victor says breathlessly, breezing back into their room after the futile chase.
“Boa Vista,” Sherlock mutters distractedly. At the confused silence, he adds, “Brazil.”
Victor’s face darkens.
“What the hell are they playing at?” Victor growls, snatching the note from Sherlock’s hand and reading it in disbelief. “Brazil. Brazil.”
“You asked,” Sherlock says, lifting an eyebrow at him. “Someone answered.”
“You’re going to listen to this?” Victor brandishes the note angrily.
“Do we have a choice?” Sherlock snaps.
“I don’t believe this. You utter fool.” Victor crumples the piece of paper and holds it in a clenched fist. “There are only two kinds of people that note could have come from: someone from inside Moriarty’s network, trying to lead us into a trap, or someone on our side, trying to help. And you know what? Both are equally dangerous.”
“You think I’m unaware of that?” Sherlock says angrily. “Christ, what kind of fool do you take me for?”
“You don’t want me to answer that.”
Sherlock sneers, “It’s a risk, of course it is, but what would you have us do instead - give up? Find some house and live quietly, in secret, forever?”
A tremendous pause follows, and then Victor says, quietly, “You say that like it’s a terrible thing.”
Victor’s eyes are two orbs of light set deep in the shadows, and the weak lamp outside catches the lines of his face. He is worn at the edges, run down, and once again Sherlock is struck by the fact that he looks fully ten years older than his thirty-four years. Victor gives a small shake of his head and then says, “Apologies. You’re right, of course. That’s... an absurd idea.”
He looks away, turning from the light, and becomes a silhouette.
“We’re being toyed with, I hope you realise,” he continues, dully. “Every time we think we’ve escaped, they show us that they’ve known all along where we are.”
“They haven’t stopped us,” Sherlock points out.
“Not yet," Victor says bitterly. “No, they haven’t stopped us because we’re playing right into their hands, following their clues like trained animals. Moriarty’s people are probably laughing their arses off back in London. I’m sure we’re wonderful entertainment, running around at their every whim, and would you take off those damn gloves already?”
The room reverberates with the forcefulness of Victor’s words. He shuts his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, his other hand braced on his hip.
“I’m sorry,” he says to the ground. “I’m -”
He shakes his head, turns on his heel, and walks out of the building.
Sherlock’s dreams are unsettling that night, and the moments of wakefulness between them are equally uneasy. At dawn, he wakes to find that Victor has returned, though he isn’t sleeping.
“So,” he says as Sherlock blinks sleep from his eyes. “Brazil?”
Sherlock nods in agreement. “Brazil.”
His eyes search Victor’s face, but he can discern nothing about where his friend has been. He hasn’t been back for long, however, as the cool night air still clings to him like a lingering scent, and he’s tumbled onto the mattress with his boots still on.
Sherlock unfolds his arms and works his gloves off his hands, dropping them over the side of the mattress while Victor looks on in bemusement. Then he holds up what remains of his left hand. Victor stares at it for a beat, and then reaches out, sliding their fingers together and clasping the hand. He pulls it close and presses a kiss to Sherlock’s palm, lips brushing over the cobbled skin.
“Yes,” Sherlock breathes, and Victor’s eyes flick to him.
“Yes, what?”
“A house. With the bees. With you,” Sherlock says. “It wouldn’t be so bad.”
Victor pulls Sherlock close and kisses him again.
----
The climate in Boa Vista is opposite that of the Amazonian region, and thus the fading spring is hot and dry when Sherlock and Victor arrive. With their knowledge of other languages they are able to scrape by amidst the predominantly Portuguese-speaking population, and they find accommodations on the top floor of a rickety building that is set at the end of a steep and winding street. The water is always cold in their rooms and electricity is uncertain at best, but it’s luxurious compared to Belgium.
Slowly, they begin to replenish their lost supplies and funds. The language barrier and lack of official documents makes finding work difficult, but thankfully not impossible. What Victor lacks in words he makes up for in charm and perseverance, and he is able to secure a labor-intensive job that leaves him pummeled and aching for the first few days as muscles that had fallen into disuse are woken once again. Within weeks, however, his shoulders have hardened and his arms have thickened, and there is a quiet power behind his every movement, thrumming just beneath the surface. Gazing at him, Sherlock is reminded sharply of university, and of Victor at the height of his rugby playing days.
Sherlock is conspicuous during the day, his gloves and new matching leather jacket incongruous with the breathless climate and unforgiving sun. He ventures out only when the sun has disappeared from the sky; when his outfit is less likely to attract attention. And that’s when he begins his work.
The city is large, but the note they had received in Belgium offers more clues than perhaps their mysterious benefactor had intended. That’s what Sherlock would like to believe, anyway. He can tell from the paper and the slant of the handwriting that it was composed by a doctor, though one who had stopped practicing many years ago, and that English is his native language.
Three nights frequenting the bars in Boa Vista turns up a middle-aged man whose medical practice in the U.S. had driven him into debt. Sherlock glances across the room, at the regular the bartender has indicated, and with one sweep of his eyes can fill in what the bartender likely doesn’t know - that the man went into debt, yes, but he got out of it by faking his death. It is a tired story, and one that Sherlock has heard or deduced so often by now that even looking at the man in question bores him. He turns away, back to his drink, and contemplates whether the risk of approaching the man directly is worth the potential benefits.
But then the bartender says, in his accented English, “You look a bit down on your luck.”
Sherlock, who has been posing as an American tourist, says, “Oh?” and feigns interest.
The bartender leans toward him conspiratorially. “I might be able to help you out. I told you that story for a reason, after all. I don’t tell just anyone about our Walter, you know.”
“Don’t you?” Sherlock drawls, slightly irritated. He could be halfway across the room by now, weaving through the sweaty crowd and making his way to -
“You see,” the bartender continues in a murmur, so quiet that Sherlock is forced to lean toward him, “Walter went into debt, yes. But he managed to get out of it. He became fantastically rich. Doesn’t look it, I know, but the man doesn’t have to work another day in his life.”
The story may be a tired one, but the fact that the bartender seems to know the details of it has Sherlock intrigued. Is it possible he’s stumbled onto another connection to Moran’s network without meaning to?
Or was he supposed to run into this particular man all along?
It is endlessly frustrating, realising that their plans are no longer their own; that they are now playing by the rules of someone else’s game. But desperation has forced them into this situation, and he has little choice but to pursue this possible lead.
“Why tell me this?” Sherlock asks.
The bartender shrugs, but the purposefully transparent gaze that he drags over Sherlock’s frame is answer enough. Sherlock suppresses a sigh. How predictable.
But he pulls his mouth into a smirk and, as the bartender reaches over to top off his drink, allows their fingers to brush.
“I’d be very interested in knowing more about how Walter managed to pull off such a daring scheme,” he says in a low voice, and the bartender’s eyes flicker.
“Tomorrow,” he returns in an equally quiet timbre. “My shift ends at midnight.”
He moves away, and Sherlock leaves.
----
Victor is still awake when Sherlock returns to their rooms, and he sees a brief flash of irritation cross Sherlock’s features.
“I told you not to wait up,” he reprimands. Victor snorts.
“Not everything’s about you, you know,” he says. He’s stretched out on the bed, propped up on his elbows and reading a book he has set up against the pillows. “I didn’t wait up. I simply couldn’t sleep.”
“What’s it about?”
Sherlock begins to undress. Victor marks his page and drops his book on the floor.
“Nothing that would interest you. Gods and heroes and a million other things that don’t exist. Successful night? Only made it to one bar, I see.”
Sherlock tosses his shirt in a corner and sheds his trousers before joining Victor on the bed.
“Potentially. It remains to be seen. I’ll be going out again tomorrow, and we’ll know more after that.”
Their lips brush, tentative, and Sherlock is the one who tilts his head and deepens the kiss. He tastes of spring and mint and the calm after a summer rain. Sherlock pulls him down until Victor is sprawled on top of him, one hand tangled in Sherlock’s hair and the other braced on the mattress.
“It’s not all imaginary,” Sherlock says when Victor moves his attentions to his neck, apparently having caught a glimpse of the spine of Victor’s book.
“Hmm?” Victor hums, and he watches as gooseflesh erupts across Sherlock’s skin.
“Your book. Not all of it's imaginary. There’s Phaedrus, who argued that nothing shamed a man more than to be seen by his beloved whilst committing an inglorious act,” Sherlock says, and then stops. He weaves his fingers into Victor’s hair as Victor teases a spot just below his ear with teeth and tongue and a hint of stubble.
“Mm, yes, and that the lover would aspire to earn the admiration of his beloved, as on the battlefield,” Victor murmurs. He trails kisses down Sherlock’s bare chest and dips fingers into the hollows between his ribs. Sherlock shivers. "You think that's a truth?"
Sherlock doesn’t answer. Victor hooks his fingers into the waistband of Sherlock’s pants and works them off his hips. He rubs his shadowed cheek against Sherlock’s thigh, stubble rasping against the soft flesh, and then kisses his hip. In the moment before he takes Sherlock in his mouth, Victor looks up, catching Sherlock’s arousal-clouded gaze. Sherlock nods, and Victor finds his hand, curling five fingers around Sherlock’s three before swallowing him to the hilt.
He slides back up the bed once he’s finished Sherlock off, resting a palm on Sherlock’s stomach and kissing his shoulder while Sherlock shudders through the aftershocks. He turns his head to capture Victor’s lips in a clumsy kiss once he’s sufficiently recovered, and Victor nudges him until he rolls onto his side.
Victor curls an arm around Sherlock’s waist and pulls him until they are back-to-chest, Sherlock’s damp and heated skin pressed against his own. He slides an arm under Sherlock’s neck and then wraps it around his chest, as much for purchase as it is to support Sherlock’s head. His cock presses into the small of Sherlock’s back and he rocks into the curve of Sherlock’s spine, leaking and painfully hard.
“All right?” he murmurs, and then sinks his teeth into Sherlock’s shoulder. Sherlock reaches around and rests his damaged hand on Victor’s hip, silently encouraging him. The three points of pressure burn Victor’s overheated flesh, imprinting upon his mind the touch of the partial hand, overwriting the previous memory he’s held of Sherlock’s whole left hand on his skin.
Sherlock parts his legs and shifts so that Victor’s cock slides between the heat of his thighs. Victor groans at the added friction and sucks at the base of Sherlock’s neck. He rolls their hips together, thrusting into the heat.
Heat builds low in Victor’s belly, and then suddenly it is spiraling out, just as Sherlock murmurs, “Now, Victor.”
“Jesus.” Victor spends himself over Sherlock’s thighs and lies there for some moments after, gasping, sweaty forehead pressed against the back of Sherlock’s neck. Their fingers have become entwined and, as though Sherlock is just realizing this, he tries to tug away.
“There are many kinds of war, you know,” Victor whispers breathlessly. His grip on Sherlock’s left hand tightens, holding on as Sherlock turns to look at him. “And other kinds of bravery. You don’t need to hide this from me.”
Sherlock goes very still. Victor kisses his shoulder blade.
“‘And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves,’” Victor tells Sherlock finally, dreading up the words from half a lifetime ago, “‘when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world.’”
Sherlock stares at him for so long that Victor begins to fear that the quote is lost on him.
“Plato,” he says quietly, his voice grave and heavy with something that Victor is too cautious to name, and not foolish enough to hope for. “Who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?’”
Victor pushes a strand of sweat-damp hair out of Sherlock’s eyes.
“Who indeed,” he murmurs.
Hours later, Victor is asleep while Sherlock remains awake still.
Sherlock sits at the desk in the corner, smoking, a nearby window cracked open so the smell doesn’t rouse Victor. His own bed is untouched while Victor has torn his apart in sleep. The blankets are half on the floor and Victor rests one arm on the pillow above his head while the other lays across his stomach, covering the scar left behind by the vicious cut of the meat cleaver all those years ago. Victor lies in a patch of moonlight, his face holding its shape even in sleep. The strong planes of his jaw and shadow of stubble are thrown into sharp relief, as are the tight lines of his biceps.
He’s like something out of a story, this full-blooded man who swept into Sherlock’s life just as he was shaking off the last vestiges of adolescence. Sherlock traded dreams of pirates for the reality of Victor; tossed off daydreams of high adventure for the man who lived such a life every day. Victor is the death and the resurrection; the man lost at sea who wasn’t supposed to come home; the lover who fights alongside his beloved.
Who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?
Victor is like something out of a story.
And stories--all stories--end.
----
Part 17
----
Pairings: John/Lestrade; Sherlock/Victor Trevor
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Language, angst, mentions of suicide, implied past alcoholism, implied PTSD, religious themes, minor character death, sexual content, homicide, illness, permanent character injury.
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Part 13 / Part 14 / Part 15
Notes: I'm going to be out of town next weekend, so the next update might not come until two weekends from now. I'm terribly sorry about that, but if it's any consolation, there's no cliffhanger at the end of this update like there was last Sunday.
Apologies for some Greek myth mangling at the end.
“And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonor, and emulating one another in honor; and when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world.”
-The Symposium, Plato
Three days later, Sherlock is up and walking on his own, albeit shakily. He keeps most of what he eats down, but his appetite is near non-existent due to the pain. It will be severe for about a week, according to George, and pain management immediately following the amputation is the best way to stave off future, chronic pain. He had given Victor a number of narcotic analgesics prior to his departure, as well as some antibiotics for any lingering infection, and as a result Sherlock sleeps most hours of the day. He doesn't ask how Victor managed to persuade George to hand over so much medication, nor how George managed to get his hands on them in the first place. And, truth be told, Sherlock finds that he doesn't much care. He has larger issues to worry about.
Victor, as usual, is irritatingly rational about the whole situation.
“You’ve had a huge shock and there’s a good deal of medication in your system right now,” he says reasonably when Sherlock snarls about having slept yet another day away. “You need time to rest, so that the wound can heal properly.”
But Sherlock doesn’t want logic or reason, and he sneers at Victor’s words. Logic and reason had cost him an entire hand, for what good are three fingers if they can’t perform the duties of five?
A week after the amputation, Sherlock takes the bandages off. Victor comes back to their building to find him staring at what’s left of his hand, matted raw pink flesh the only sign of the fingers that used to be there.
“Idiot,” Victor says gently. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” Sherlock says absently. “No, I don’t feel a thing.”
Victor allows him to examine the hand for several more minutes, and then says, “Come. Let’s get this wrapped again.”
“It doesn’t surprise you,” Sherlock says later. Victor hasn’t flinched once since this whole ordeal began. He’s barely twitched, even.
Victor gives a grim smile.
“I spent a month in hospital after the accident,” he says at last. “I had a number of operations; only two of them were on my neck. The others were for my shattered legs. It’s a miracle I kept them. I was bedridden most of the time. It cures you of any sense of modesty, I can tell you that, and any lingering uneasiness. I spent four weeks having glass dug out of me and having drainage tubes carry God knows what out of my body. I had a couple of nasty infections, and I think my legs are more metal than bone anymore.” He shrugs. “I don’t think there’s anything left out there about the human body that can surprise me. Or scare me off.”
“And after?
That part of Victor’s life is closed to him, like a book written in a foreign language. He can see that the evidence is there on Victor’s body, written all over him, but Sherlock can’t make sense of it.
Victor fixes him with a look Sherlock can’t decipher.
“Does it matter?”
Yes, John would say, and so that’s what Sherlock tells Victor, even though he’s not entirely sure why it should. But he wants to know, needs to know.
And John hasn’t steered him wrong yet.
Victor gives him another long look, peering at him through narrowed eyes, partly suspicious and mostly confused.
“The first year without you was the worst,” he says at last. “After that... Just got used to it, I suppose. It’s like my legs. The pain never truly goes away, but you learn to deal with it.”
He looks at Sherlock from under heavy lids, a furtive glance that slides away quickly to rest on the opposite wall, but it’s not quick enough to hide the open curiosity on his face.
“I stayed with Lestrade for a time.” Sherlock goes to wring his hands, a semi-conscious gesture he makes in times of unease, but the moment his right hand touches the bandage he jerks back as though burned, even though he registers no feeling whatsoever in the left. “I didn’t go to your funeral.”
“Started doing drugs?”
“Later on, yes.”
“What made you stop?”
“Wrong question.”
Victor nods to himself. “Of course. Who, then?” And then, before Sherlock can answer: “Ah, of course. Lestrade.”
“Yes.”
Victor leans back against the wall, Sherlock’s damaged hand still in his lap, and rubs his thumb absently over the bandage.
“They keep finding us,” he says at last. “I doubt they know who we truly are, but they know that someone is out there trying to hunt them down. First Greece, then Johannesburg; now this.”
“What are you getting at?” Sherlock asks sharply.
“We’ve been living under a grand delusion, Sherlock,” Victor says softly. “I think it’s time we talk about... what happens if we can’t complete this mission.”
“We die.”
“Before then.” Victor gives him a wry smile that turns bitter. “I think we need a better option than that.”
“What is it you’re proposing?” Sherlock sneers. “Hiding?”
“Yes,” Victor says quietly. “Not forever, though perhaps that might happen. If they get too close... we should at the least suspend the mission. Find some house, go into exile, and keep a low profile so that your friends may live. Did you still want to keep bees?”
Sherlock shakes his head in disbelief.
“You want me to hide, as you did? Give up, as you did? No, that’s not an option,” he says harshly. “And I’ll not hear you mention it again.”
There is a long, heavy silence.
“Quite right,” Victor says at last. “Of course. It was... a foolish thought.”
He doesn’t bring it up again.
----
They have to keep moving.
Sherlock knows this--he knows this. But his body fights him at every turn, and even sitting up in the morning is a struggle. He can’t imagine walking down a flight of stairs, let alone around this city.
But he has to do it, or they will be discovered once more.
“Can you walk?” Victor finally asks one morning. They have been here too long already. Someone is bound to have seen Victor coming and going, no matter how careful he was about it, and they can’t afford that information falling into the wrong hands.
“Well enough,” Sherlock says, and it is a lie, but one that Victor allows to go unchallenged.
In the end, they find a building some streets away, and move there under cover of night. With Victor supporting most of Sherlock’s weight in addition to his bag, the distance takes them nearly two hours to cover. It is intolerable, and Sherlock can do nothing about it. He is pitifully weak and unsteady, and this time anger only makes him clumsy rather than sharpening his mind and senses.
They spend one night in the new building, and then move again. The next night, they do the same thing. By the end of the week, they are on their fourth building, and Victor deems that satisfactory for the time being.
One morning, Victor returns to the building as Sherlock is waking. He tosses a package in Sherlock’s lap and goes to a faucet in the far corner of the room, where he washes his face and hair. He doesn’t offer Sherlock help in opening the package, and says nothing as Sherlock manipulates the string tying it one-handed. It takes fully ten minutes for him to open it, but he does it on his own, and Victor nods curtly once he’s peeled back the paper.
“Saw those in a shop. Thought they suited you.”
Sherlock lifts one black leather glove out of the mass of paper, examining it. It’s nearly silken to the touch, flexible but tough as well. He works it onto his right hand, feeling the tautness of the material as it slides into place. It’s a perfect fit, and looks like a natural extension of his arm.
“I hope you used cash,” is all he can manage to say, and Victor snorts.
“What do you take me for? ‘Course I did.” He sits down on the ground, pulls off his boots, and then sheds his jacket. “All right, my motivations weren’t entirely altruistic. You’ve got a distinctive wound now. Very recognizable. You’re going to have to keep it out of sight as much as possible. Don’t call attention to it. But you can’t go through the rest of this mission one-handed--you’ve still got three fingers--so gloves seemed like the best solution. If you can’t keep the hand out of sight, at least keep it covered.”
Sherlock pours all of his concentration over the next few days into working with his damaged hand, trying to get it to a point where he can utilize it again. Victor stuffs the final two fingers of his left glove and sews the padding into place; so long as Sherlock doesn’t bend his fingers, when wearing the glove it appears as though that hand is whole.
He plucks the stitches out some days before they are supposed to be removed and starts to wear his gloves, now that there is no threat of his open wound rubbing against the inside of the left one. Victor doesn’t say anything for nearly half a week.
“You know, you don’t have to wear those around me,” he says finally. “I don’t care.”
“I know,” Sherlock says, but he keeps them on all the same.
They have been so fully thrown off the trail by this latest crisis that now, as Sherlock is on the road to recovery, it’s hard to know where to pick it up again. Victor makes the mistake of wondering aloud, after three sleepless nights of fruitless research, where the hell they’re supposed to go from here.
It is answered for him less than twenty-four hours later, when a note arrives with the dawn. It is slipped under their door and, as was the case in Johannesburg, the messenger is gone by the time one of them throws open the door and bolts after him.
“What’s it say?” Victor says breathlessly, breezing back into their room after the futile chase.
“Boa Vista,” Sherlock mutters distractedly. At the confused silence, he adds, “Brazil.”
Victor’s face darkens.
“What the hell are they playing at?” Victor growls, snatching the note from Sherlock’s hand and reading it in disbelief. “Brazil. Brazil.”
“You asked,” Sherlock says, lifting an eyebrow at him. “Someone answered.”
“You’re going to listen to this?” Victor brandishes the note angrily.
“Do we have a choice?” Sherlock snaps.
“I don’t believe this. You utter fool.” Victor crumples the piece of paper and holds it in a clenched fist. “There are only two kinds of people that note could have come from: someone from inside Moriarty’s network, trying to lead us into a trap, or someone on our side, trying to help. And you know what? Both are equally dangerous.”
“You think I’m unaware of that?” Sherlock says angrily. “Christ, what kind of fool do you take me for?”
“You don’t want me to answer that.”
Sherlock sneers, “It’s a risk, of course it is, but what would you have us do instead - give up? Find some house and live quietly, in secret, forever?”
A tremendous pause follows, and then Victor says, quietly, “You say that like it’s a terrible thing.”
Victor’s eyes are two orbs of light set deep in the shadows, and the weak lamp outside catches the lines of his face. He is worn at the edges, run down, and once again Sherlock is struck by the fact that he looks fully ten years older than his thirty-four years. Victor gives a small shake of his head and then says, “Apologies. You’re right, of course. That’s... an absurd idea.”
He looks away, turning from the light, and becomes a silhouette.
“We’re being toyed with, I hope you realise,” he continues, dully. “Every time we think we’ve escaped, they show us that they’ve known all along where we are.”
“They haven’t stopped us,” Sherlock points out.
“Not yet," Victor says bitterly. “No, they haven’t stopped us because we’re playing right into their hands, following their clues like trained animals. Moriarty’s people are probably laughing their arses off back in London. I’m sure we’re wonderful entertainment, running around at their every whim, and would you take off those damn gloves already?”
The room reverberates with the forcefulness of Victor’s words. He shuts his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, his other hand braced on his hip.
“I’m sorry,” he says to the ground. “I’m -”
He shakes his head, turns on his heel, and walks out of the building.
Sherlock’s dreams are unsettling that night, and the moments of wakefulness between them are equally uneasy. At dawn, he wakes to find that Victor has returned, though he isn’t sleeping.
“So,” he says as Sherlock blinks sleep from his eyes. “Brazil?”
Sherlock nods in agreement. “Brazil.”
His eyes search Victor’s face, but he can discern nothing about where his friend has been. He hasn’t been back for long, however, as the cool night air still clings to him like a lingering scent, and he’s tumbled onto the mattress with his boots still on.
Sherlock unfolds his arms and works his gloves off his hands, dropping them over the side of the mattress while Victor looks on in bemusement. Then he holds up what remains of his left hand. Victor stares at it for a beat, and then reaches out, sliding their fingers together and clasping the hand. He pulls it close and presses a kiss to Sherlock’s palm, lips brushing over the cobbled skin.
“Yes,” Sherlock breathes, and Victor’s eyes flick to him.
“Yes, what?”
“A house. With the bees. With you,” Sherlock says. “It wouldn’t be so bad.”
Victor pulls Sherlock close and kisses him again.
----
The climate in Boa Vista is opposite that of the Amazonian region, and thus the fading spring is hot and dry when Sherlock and Victor arrive. With their knowledge of other languages they are able to scrape by amidst the predominantly Portuguese-speaking population, and they find accommodations on the top floor of a rickety building that is set at the end of a steep and winding street. The water is always cold in their rooms and electricity is uncertain at best, but it’s luxurious compared to Belgium.
Slowly, they begin to replenish their lost supplies and funds. The language barrier and lack of official documents makes finding work difficult, but thankfully not impossible. What Victor lacks in words he makes up for in charm and perseverance, and he is able to secure a labor-intensive job that leaves him pummeled and aching for the first few days as muscles that had fallen into disuse are woken once again. Within weeks, however, his shoulders have hardened and his arms have thickened, and there is a quiet power behind his every movement, thrumming just beneath the surface. Gazing at him, Sherlock is reminded sharply of university, and of Victor at the height of his rugby playing days.
Sherlock is conspicuous during the day, his gloves and new matching leather jacket incongruous with the breathless climate and unforgiving sun. He ventures out only when the sun has disappeared from the sky; when his outfit is less likely to attract attention. And that’s when he begins his work.
The city is large, but the note they had received in Belgium offers more clues than perhaps their mysterious benefactor had intended. That’s what Sherlock would like to believe, anyway. He can tell from the paper and the slant of the handwriting that it was composed by a doctor, though one who had stopped practicing many years ago, and that English is his native language.
Three nights frequenting the bars in Boa Vista turns up a middle-aged man whose medical practice in the U.S. had driven him into debt. Sherlock glances across the room, at the regular the bartender has indicated, and with one sweep of his eyes can fill in what the bartender likely doesn’t know - that the man went into debt, yes, but he got out of it by faking his death. It is a tired story, and one that Sherlock has heard or deduced so often by now that even looking at the man in question bores him. He turns away, back to his drink, and contemplates whether the risk of approaching the man directly is worth the potential benefits.
But then the bartender says, in his accented English, “You look a bit down on your luck.”
Sherlock, who has been posing as an American tourist, says, “Oh?” and feigns interest.
The bartender leans toward him conspiratorially. “I might be able to help you out. I told you that story for a reason, after all. I don’t tell just anyone about our Walter, you know.”
“Don’t you?” Sherlock drawls, slightly irritated. He could be halfway across the room by now, weaving through the sweaty crowd and making his way to -
“You see,” the bartender continues in a murmur, so quiet that Sherlock is forced to lean toward him, “Walter went into debt, yes. But he managed to get out of it. He became fantastically rich. Doesn’t look it, I know, but the man doesn’t have to work another day in his life.”
The story may be a tired one, but the fact that the bartender seems to know the details of it has Sherlock intrigued. Is it possible he’s stumbled onto another connection to Moran’s network without meaning to?
Or was he supposed to run into this particular man all along?
It is endlessly frustrating, realising that their plans are no longer their own; that they are now playing by the rules of someone else’s game. But desperation has forced them into this situation, and he has little choice but to pursue this possible lead.
“Why tell me this?” Sherlock asks.
The bartender shrugs, but the purposefully transparent gaze that he drags over Sherlock’s frame is answer enough. Sherlock suppresses a sigh. How predictable.
But he pulls his mouth into a smirk and, as the bartender reaches over to top off his drink, allows their fingers to brush.
“I’d be very interested in knowing more about how Walter managed to pull off such a daring scheme,” he says in a low voice, and the bartender’s eyes flicker.
“Tomorrow,” he returns in an equally quiet timbre. “My shift ends at midnight.”
He moves away, and Sherlock leaves.
----
Victor is still awake when Sherlock returns to their rooms, and he sees a brief flash of irritation cross Sherlock’s features.
“I told you not to wait up,” he reprimands. Victor snorts.
“Not everything’s about you, you know,” he says. He’s stretched out on the bed, propped up on his elbows and reading a book he has set up against the pillows. “I didn’t wait up. I simply couldn’t sleep.”
“What’s it about?”
Sherlock begins to undress. Victor marks his page and drops his book on the floor.
“Nothing that would interest you. Gods and heroes and a million other things that don’t exist. Successful night? Only made it to one bar, I see.”
Sherlock tosses his shirt in a corner and sheds his trousers before joining Victor on the bed.
“Potentially. It remains to be seen. I’ll be going out again tomorrow, and we’ll know more after that.”
Their lips brush, tentative, and Sherlock is the one who tilts his head and deepens the kiss. He tastes of spring and mint and the calm after a summer rain. Sherlock pulls him down until Victor is sprawled on top of him, one hand tangled in Sherlock’s hair and the other braced on the mattress.
“It’s not all imaginary,” Sherlock says when Victor moves his attentions to his neck, apparently having caught a glimpse of the spine of Victor’s book.
“Hmm?” Victor hums, and he watches as gooseflesh erupts across Sherlock’s skin.
“Your book. Not all of it's imaginary. There’s Phaedrus, who argued that nothing shamed a man more than to be seen by his beloved whilst committing an inglorious act,” Sherlock says, and then stops. He weaves his fingers into Victor’s hair as Victor teases a spot just below his ear with teeth and tongue and a hint of stubble.
“Mm, yes, and that the lover would aspire to earn the admiration of his beloved, as on the battlefield,” Victor murmurs. He trails kisses down Sherlock’s bare chest and dips fingers into the hollows between his ribs. Sherlock shivers. "You think that's a truth?"
Sherlock doesn’t answer. Victor hooks his fingers into the waistband of Sherlock’s pants and works them off his hips. He rubs his shadowed cheek against Sherlock’s thigh, stubble rasping against the soft flesh, and then kisses his hip. In the moment before he takes Sherlock in his mouth, Victor looks up, catching Sherlock’s arousal-clouded gaze. Sherlock nods, and Victor finds his hand, curling five fingers around Sherlock’s three before swallowing him to the hilt.
He slides back up the bed once he’s finished Sherlock off, resting a palm on Sherlock’s stomach and kissing his shoulder while Sherlock shudders through the aftershocks. He turns his head to capture Victor’s lips in a clumsy kiss once he’s sufficiently recovered, and Victor nudges him until he rolls onto his side.
Victor curls an arm around Sherlock’s waist and pulls him until they are back-to-chest, Sherlock’s damp and heated skin pressed against his own. He slides an arm under Sherlock’s neck and then wraps it around his chest, as much for purchase as it is to support Sherlock’s head. His cock presses into the small of Sherlock’s back and he rocks into the curve of Sherlock’s spine, leaking and painfully hard.
“All right?” he murmurs, and then sinks his teeth into Sherlock’s shoulder. Sherlock reaches around and rests his damaged hand on Victor’s hip, silently encouraging him. The three points of pressure burn Victor’s overheated flesh, imprinting upon his mind the touch of the partial hand, overwriting the previous memory he’s held of Sherlock’s whole left hand on his skin.
Sherlock parts his legs and shifts so that Victor’s cock slides between the heat of his thighs. Victor groans at the added friction and sucks at the base of Sherlock’s neck. He rolls their hips together, thrusting into the heat.
Heat builds low in Victor’s belly, and then suddenly it is spiraling out, just as Sherlock murmurs, “Now, Victor.”
“Jesus.” Victor spends himself over Sherlock’s thighs and lies there for some moments after, gasping, sweaty forehead pressed against the back of Sherlock’s neck. Their fingers have become entwined and, as though Sherlock is just realizing this, he tries to tug away.
“There are many kinds of war, you know,” Victor whispers breathlessly. His grip on Sherlock’s left hand tightens, holding on as Sherlock turns to look at him. “And other kinds of bravery. You don’t need to hide this from me.”
Sherlock goes very still. Victor kisses his shoulder blade.
“‘And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves,’” Victor tells Sherlock finally, dreading up the words from half a lifetime ago, “‘when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world.’”
Sherlock stares at him for so long that Victor begins to fear that the quote is lost on him.
“Plato,” he says quietly, his voice grave and heavy with something that Victor is too cautious to name, and not foolish enough to hope for. “Who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?’”
Victor pushes a strand of sweat-damp hair out of Sherlock’s eyes.
“Who indeed,” he murmurs.
Hours later, Victor is asleep while Sherlock remains awake still.
Sherlock sits at the desk in the corner, smoking, a nearby window cracked open so the smell doesn’t rouse Victor. His own bed is untouched while Victor has torn his apart in sleep. The blankets are half on the floor and Victor rests one arm on the pillow above his head while the other lays across his stomach, covering the scar left behind by the vicious cut of the meat cleaver all those years ago. Victor lies in a patch of moonlight, his face holding its shape even in sleep. The strong planes of his jaw and shadow of stubble are thrown into sharp relief, as are the tight lines of his biceps.
He’s like something out of a story, this full-blooded man who swept into Sherlock’s life just as he was shaking off the last vestiges of adolescence. Sherlock traded dreams of pirates for the reality of Victor; tossed off daydreams of high adventure for the man who lived such a life every day. Victor is the death and the resurrection; the man lost at sea who wasn’t supposed to come home; the lover who fights alongside his beloved.
Who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?
Victor is like something out of a story.
And stories--all stories--end.
----
Part 17
----
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-02-17 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-17 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-19 01:33 am (UTC)I have to say, that despite there not being a cliffhanger, the last line is slightly ominous, as is the mysterious lead they've been given. I'm looking forward to more!
no subject
Date: 2013-02-20 01:24 pm (UTC)Glad you're looking forward to more. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-03-02 10:58 am (UTC)I'm saying this because your Victor rings a close bell - quiet, resilient, yet capable to speak his mind when he has too, and refusing to play the game of appearances in private. I quite like him. (And, needless to say, I liked the reference to paternal!Lestrade and the drug years.^^)
no subject
Date: 2013-03-02 07:24 pm (UTC)I'm glad that you're liking this version of VT. I wanted to do something that diverged from fandom's interpretation of him, and yet which still stayed relatively in line with ACD canon. I'm happy he's working for you so far! He's been a lot of fun to write.
You will get some more paternal!Lestrade down the road, too ;-)
Thank you for reading and commenting!