#shexlockholmes

There were pictures from their university days. Not photographs— Victor had always thought about taking up photography, but never really went through with it— but drawings and a pastel or two. Victor remembered completing them; sitting in the smoke-hazed room of Sherlock’s dorm after he had driven out all possible roommates, charcoals and pastels on his hands as he sketched and smudged and immortalised the wild chemistry student. When Sherlock got bored of sitting still (which was often, if he wasn’t thinking of a puzzle), they would kiss.

Victor remembered those days. The mornings he overslept at Sherlock’s side and rushed to a lecture or studio with smudges of colour still clinging to his skin. He had switched from oils to chalks just for the ease of cleaning. He also remembered the days that Sherlock experimented with his colours— compared the fine contrasts of golds and brights he preferred to see on Victor’s darker skin (or in his hair, oddly enough). Victor had shoved him away when he got like that, unwilling to sacrifice his materials for Sherlock’s curiosity.

When he left, it was with a handful of drawings in a portfolio. When he left, it was all he had left.

The day the gallery opened in London— nothing spectacular, just a friend’s gallery on the edge of a market street— Victor hadn’t expected to know anyone at the wine-and-cheese party opening. He went as a featured artist, let his friend sell some high-colour, high-energy paintings of festivals in India, and some muted landscapes of ruins and estates. They were all signed with the name that had been butchered in his childhood— twisted by English until “Trivedi” matched “Trevor” and he gave up trying to correct his peers.

He had travelled in his time away from England, explored the country he had been born in and didn’t remember, found little hideaways and quiet spaces among the life and energy of big cities quickly clawing their way to the top of the economic foodchain and still ignored by the West. He found raves and parties, festivals and weddings, where the colours were vivid and open and splashes of life. He found fields and temples, remnants of the British merged with the thriving life that never let itself be truly conquered, where the greens and greys and earth tones were strong and steady on his canvas.

But it was a watercolour of his Norfolk estate to sell first.

He hadn’t thought it would sell— he had hoped it wouldn’t. It was his first watercolour, and it was submitted just to take up the space. It was small, filled with flaws made in his practice, and now it was gone.

The rest sold quickly after that.

Commissions were proposed, accepted without thought, and he found himself renting a studio space near the gallery with the proceeds of the sales.

——

It was hard to miss the news of Sherlock Holmes while in London. The great “amateur” detective was in almost every tabloid before he was in every newspaper. Still, the first time he saw Sherlock again, he didn’t recognise him.

A month into his stay— sleeping out of studio space, spending a ridiculous amount on cafes and supplies, playing tourist— and he bumped into the man in a park, of all places. It took a moment to register who it was he had knocked over; between the rumours and news, and his own memory distorted by fond memory, Victor had almost forgot that the man was real.

The meeting was awkward and rushed— Victor trying to find inspiration for a piece and Sherlock dashing off after a busker (arrested later that day for the murder of a living statue performer and a juggler). But they had managed to exchange greetings, and numbers, and Victor still left the park smiling and with the desire to smudge charcoal curls and bright pastel eyes. Brighter than he remembered. Cleverer than he remembered.

——

The first text came near midnight. His phone on silent while he worked, hands filthy with specks of pigments (Victor always did hate to use brushes for his portraits— he preferred to get closer to his subjects, not “prod at them with a stick” as he used to describe it to Sherlock).

221B Baker Street. -SH

Victor had washed his hands before handling the phone. Patted them dry as he considered the message that had buzzed to life over the lock screen.

Working.

Take a break. -SH

No.

Fifteen years ago, he would have been out the door before the address he was called to registered. He would have hailed a cab and fumbled with the phone to confirm where he was going. Fifteen years ago, it wouldn’t have mattered. Fifteen years ago, if Sherlock called, Victor would have let himself get swept up in his wake— forever chasing after him.

Fifteen years ago, he would have left his work because he expected to find Sherlock drugged and in trouble.

Now, in the spartan studio he had grown attached to, he chipped away at another bit of pastel on his palette and pressed two fingers into the powder. Now, he had his work, just as much as Sherlock had his. He let the phone buzz unanswered for a little longer while he finished this section.

——

It was a week of sharing texts before either one of them made a move. Victor had forgotten how good it was to talk to Sherlock again. As he worked, he sent bits of information-- learnt about the Watsons and Mrs. Hudson, made Sherlock guess his latest piece based on the silence between his responses, sent pictures of the studio and view when asked. It was a week of exchanges before he realised that he was flirting. That he had sent pictures of bright colours on his hands and arm— streaks where he tested new mixtures— because he knew that Sherlock had once been fascinated by the contrasts.

And in a very delayed fashion, he realised that Sherlock had been flirting back.

The net time the phone buzzed, he ignored it. And the time after that. The last thing he wanted was to gets swept up in Sherlock’s wake again. So he let it go.

——

He had forgotten that Sherlock picked locks.

——

Hours later, after he had been cajoled into dinner, and pulled into an adventure, he finally checked his texts. After hours spent catching up and running after, of wandering a gallery and providing knowledge of the masters’ works to Sherlock for a case, of telling stories and taking coffee at far too late in the evening, Victor remembered to check his phone. He had to fish it out of a pocket from his jeans on the floor, shrugging off a pale arm that had draped across his shoulders as he searched for some kind of clock and cursed the unfamiliar room of Baker Street— so much more comfortable than the studio.