Chapter Text
Victor comes home on New Year’s Day.
It’s bad for a long time after that.
Victor sleeps little and eats less, his body weak from its ordeal and from the four weeks he spent lying half-conscious in a hospital bed. It’s the second time he’s had a hospital visit so lengthy, and it brings back ugly memories for him of the first, when he had been abandoned in a strange country with no one but strangers for company and everyone he loved thinking him dead.
At first, Sherlock allows Victor the entirety of his bed and relocates out to the sofa at night to sleep. But he abandons that plan the fourth time Victor wakes in the middle of the night, chased out of sleep by yet another bout of pain.
“I’m fine,” Victor mutters when Sherlock appears in the bathroom doorway. He splashes cold water on his damp face, and his t-shirt is soaked completely through with sweat.
“Shut up,” Sherlock says, and helps him back to bed.
He starts sharing the vast bed with Victor at night after that, so that he can be on hand to aid Victor if necessary. They manage the pain with medication that leaves Victor drowsy at best and nauseated at worst, and for the most part there is nothing he can do but ride it out until his body heals. He spends most hours of the day in Sherlock’s bed, either asleep or too pained to get up. Sherlock tries not to crowd him and attempts not to worry. He only succeeds at one of those, and starts taking on small, private cases in order to keep occupied.
And yet, somehow, between the pain and the sleepless nights, life starts to go on.
-----
The flat is too quiet one day in early January, with John and Lestrade having both left for work and Victor asleep in the bedroom. Sherlock, out of desperation, pulls up his blog and checks for any new cases. There’s nothing of any particular interest, but at this point he will accept even something dull so long as it at least quiets some of the static in his mind.
He leaves the flat and returns four hours later, having solved one case involving a jewel theft and another involving a duck and some very enthusiastic circus performers. When he comes back inside, he notices that Victor has vacated the bedroom. He’s sleeping in an oversized armchair before the fireplace, one of the many items of furniture John purchased in an effort to make Baker Street his own after Sherlock’s fall. Victor’s feet are propped up on a low table, and Charlie is asleep on a nearby rug.
“Vic.” Sherlock touches light fingertips to Victor’s cheek, which rouses him. “What are you doing out here?”
Victor stretches, and one of his shoulders pops.
“The usual,” he murmurs, gazing through heavy-lidded eyes at Sherlock. “Sleeping yet another day away. Thought I could use a bit of a change in scenery. I’m tired of staring at your ceiling. The one out here is much more interesting. See?”
Sherlock stares at him in bemusement.
“I think,” he says quietly, stooping to press a kiss to Victor’s cheek, “you need to lay off those pain medications. You’re not making much sense.”
“You just can’t keep up with my incredible thought processes. It all makes sense in my head.” Victor gives him a bleary smile and tweaks his collar. Sherlock rolls his eyes and straightens. “Actually, I’m glad you’re back so soon. I have something for you.”
“Mm?” Sherlock hangs his coat on the back of the door and looks around. “What’s that, now?”
Victor nods to the mantel. Sherlock looks over and notices a nondescript box sitting there, wrapped in plain brown paper.
“For you,” Victor repeats, and Sherlock plucks the box off the mantel.
“For what?”
Victor’s mouth quirks.
“For surviving to see thirty-five, old man. Happy birthday, git.”
Sherlock laughs and plucks at the string tying the package.
“Here, budge up,” he says, and Victor scoots over. There is room enough for them both in the oversized armchair, and Sherlock settles in whilst continuing to unwrap the package. He opens the box and pulls out a brand-new watch--titanium this time, as opposed to the platinum one Victor had gifted him fifteen years ago.
“Your other one has seen better days,” Victor points out groggily. He taps the face of the watch with his fingernail. “This one could probably survive being thrown into a volcano - or it should, given its price. I’d tell you the designer, but to be honest I can’t pronounce the name.”
“You know, I’m starting to believe we should keep you on those medications,” Sherlock says dryly. “You’re much more amusing like this.”
“Ha, ha.” Victor points at the box. “There’s something else in there.”
Sherlock digs around amidst the wrapping and emerges after a few moments with a key. He raises an eyebrow.
“It’s for the cottage,” Victor tells him quietly. “The one in the South Downs. Where we -”
“The one where we began,” Sherlock says softly, remembering that school holiday from all those years ago. “Victor, this is yours.”
Victor shakes his head.
“No,” he says quietly, “it’s ours. My father left me everything, turns out. His estate, his money, everything. He never bothered to rewrite his will after I died, Lord only knows why. So I thought... well, you’ve always talked about keeping bees someday. If you wanted... we could move out there when you retire.”
Sherlock turns the key over in his fingers, a small smile touching his lips.
“Yes,” he whispers. “Yes, of course.”
Victor squeezes his knee.
“There’s one last thing.”
He reaches over to the small table that sits next to the armchair, the one that has unofficially been designated as the place where they all discard the post. Sherlock’s penknife has been relocated from the mantel to the table, and Victor plucks it out in order to pick up the top letter. He hands it over.
“Mycroft stopped by earlier today,” he says, “with these papers. I thought you might like to know.”
Sherlock unfolds the papers and skims their contents.
“You’re -” he starts, and then stops. He blinks several times, reading over the words again. “Discharged.”
Victor hums in response and adjusts the blanket thrown over his legs.
“Retired, discharged, unemployed...” he trails off and fixes Sherlock with a small smile. “Whatever you prefer to call it.”
“But your work...”
Victor gives a small shrug.
“I can’t do it anymore.” Victor sobers for a moment. “My legs aren’t going to get any better; the explosion in Belgium knocked out some of the hearing in my left ear; there’s scarring on my lungs from all those illnesses. And the poison... well.”
He gestures vaguely at himself. Though all traces of the poison have now left his body and he responded well to antitoxin treatment, the fact that he was very ill is still apparent, and probably always will be. The poison added lines to his face, and he is grey beyond his years. He appears now as though he could be a contemporary of Lestrade’s, and though he doesn’t often mention it, Sherlock knows that it bothers him.
“I’m far beyond my peak,” Victor goes on. “I can’t even compete with the best of them anymore. It’s fine; we always knew this day would come. Agents in your brother’s service don’t stay with him much beyond thirty, so I was pretty lucky. He’s given me a... very generous severance. And more commendations and honours than I know what to do with. I had to threaten him with bodily harm when he mentioned the knighthood.”
“Mm. He’s threatened me with that twice now.” Sherlock sets the letter aside. Victor chuckles.
“Can you imagine if you’d taken him up on it? Sir Sherlock. You’d never live that down; I’d make sure of it.”
“As if yours would be better!” Sherlock leans over and brushes his fingers along Victor’s side. “Sir Victor.”
Victor fails to suppress an undignified yelp and then dissolves into laughter, shoving Sherlock’s hand away.
“I quite like the sound of that, come to think of it,” he manages between chuckles. “And don’t make me laugh, that fucking hurts. Damn, I hate you sometimes.”
Sherlock snorts.
“No, you don’t,” he says, leaning in for a kiss. Victor hums against his mouth.
“No, I don’t,” he agrees. Sherlock settles back into the seat, and Victor leans against him.
“Oh! Don’t tell anyone,” Victor says suddenly, comically serious, and he presses a finger to Sherlock’s lips, “but John and Greg are planning a surprise party for you.”
“Are they, now?” Sherlock says, amused at how quickly the medication causes Victor to slip in and out of lucidity. He kisses Victor’s finger. “Tonight?”
“Mm-hmm.” Victor closes his eyes and lets his head fall onto Sherlock’s shoulder. “You hate parties.”
Sherlock wraps an arm around Victor’s shoulders.
“I believe I can suffer through this one.”
----
It’s not often that Victor dreams.
When he does, though, lately it’s been of the hospital. He dreams tonight of needles that slide into his veins, all the way up his arms, bulging through the delicate skin. He dreams of torn blood vessels and needles tearing through his flesh, and he wakes up feeling nauseated.
It takes Victor several long minutes to try to convince his sleep-fogged mind that he’s not in the hospital, that there are no needles in his arms and he can move them without the threat of bursting blood vessels. But the imagined pain lingers still, and his left arm throbs all the same. And when finally he’s able to compel himself to move, he simply rolls onto his side, folding his arms tightly across his chest as though he can ward off the phantom needles.
But now sleep is elusive, and Victor spends several long minutes staring at the opposite wall, willing his heart rate back under control. The space next to him is empty, Sherlock’s sheets and pillow having gone stone cold in the hours since he left the bed. Victor, sore and groggy but knowing that any further attempt at sleep tonight is futile, hauls himself out of bed and reaches for his dressing gown.
He finds Sherlock in the main room, holding a beaker in one hand and texting with the other.
“Goggles,” Victor reprimands softly, and Sherlock glances at him over his shoulder before acquiescing to the request and grabbing his goggles off a nearby table.
“You’re supposed to be asleep,” Sherlock accuses mildly as he slips them on his face.
“Sorry to disappoint,” Victor murmurs. He wraps his dressing gown tighter around his body and sinks into a nearby armchair with a sigh. “What’re you working on?”
“Experiment,” Sherlock says absently as he turns back to his phone. He then whirls away and disappears into the kitchen for a brief moment. There is a hissing sound and a soft pop, and then Sherlock re-emerges sans beaker and goggles.
“A successful one?” Victor asks drowsily.
“We’ll know in the morning.” Sherlock leans over him, bracing his hands on the arms of the chair, and their noses brush. Sherlock gives Victor a light kiss and asks, quietly, “Pain?”
“No.”
“Dreams?”
“No.”
“Are you lying to me?”
Victor snorts and steals another kiss. Sherlock rolls his eyes.
“That’s not an answer.” He straightens and holds out his hand. Victor takes it and gets pulled to his feet.
“Oi, careful with the invalid,” he mutters, swaying. Sherlock slips an arm around his waist, holding him steady. “Come to bed?”
“No, I should work on– ” Sherlock stops abruptly. “I mean, yes. Of course.”
Victor smiles to himself.
“Did you just choose me over the work?” he asks in mock surprise. Sherlock’s face turns suddenly earnest.
“Always.”
----
Sherlock plays the violin once.
He plays it on an afternoon when Greg and John are at work and Victor is sleeping in the bedroom once again. Victor wakes to the sound of off-key notes and frustrated strains. He lies in Sherlock’s bed for close to half an hour, misery holding his heart in a tight fist, and listens as the attempt at music tapers off and is replaced instead with a string of heartbreaking curses. He remembers the concerts of old, and realises that he hasn’t heard Sherlock perform in close to a decade. Now, he likely will never hear it again.
And though Victor would give his own fingers in a heartbeat if it meant Sherlock could have his own back, that thought is a foolish flight of fancy. He cannot make this better for Sherlock.
But if Sherlock can’t play one instrument, perhaps he can supplement it with another.
“What’s this?” Sherlock asks one day when he returns to the flat. He’s coming off the high of having solved another case, his eyes bright and his hair mussed from the number of times he’s run his fingers through it.
Victor is sitting in the armchair once again, but this time he isn’t sleeping. Exhaustion has been tugging at the back of his mind all afternoon, but he’s been able to fight it off thus far with a couple of books and a cup of tea.
“A piano,” he answers.
Sherlock gives him a withering look.
“Sometimes, I’m not entirely sure why I put up with you.”
Victor laughs.
“It’s the one from my father’s house. Well, one of the ones from my father’s house. I had it brought over this morning. I thought it might be nice to have around.”
And that’s not the reason, they both know that, because the main room feels too small now with the piano taking up space in the corner and no one living here has played the instrument in years, if at all.
But later that evening, Victor wakes from yet another nap in the armchair to find Sherlock sitting at the piano, picking out a few, gentle chords with his right hand.
----
Victor’s recovery is slow.
By the time the end of January rolls around, he’s finally spending more hours during the day awake rather than asleep. He is still underweight, having lost a good deal of muscle mass to the poison, but there comes a point when climbing a flight of stairs no longer winds him, and he starts taking Charlie for walks in an effort to regain some of his strength. By mid-February, Victor is running again, and though he still feels the strain in his lungs, it’s no longer crippling.
Other areas of Victor’s life start to settle as well. He starts to bring more of his personal items out of storage, and soon his books begin to appear on the shelves next to Sherlock’s and his clothes start to occupy space in Sherlock’s wardrobe. He has the tattoo inked back into his skin, and Sherlock finds it as riveting now as he did back at university. He flips Victor over onto his front and takes him from behind their first coupling after the hospital, fingers tracing the wings of the hawk as they flex in time with Victor’s muscles.
They live nearly on top of one another in Baker Street, which presents a challenge when John and Lestrade are at the flat as well. The tiny kitchen isn’t large enough for four grown men to navigate in the morning, not to mention the fact that the one bathroom forces them to stagger their schedules. Sherlock tries to solve this dilemma by occasionally sharing the shower with Victor, but given the fact that it actually results in them taking twice the time--and, from the flush at the base of John’s neck when they emerge, isn’t as soundproof as they might have hoped--Victor puts a quick stop to it.
Well. During the working week, that is.
Nonetheless, Victor starts looking for a place of his own by mid-March. He is mildly successful at first, and even finds a couple of flats within ten minutes of Baker Street that look promising. He narrows his list of possibilities down to five, and that’s when it gets strange.
The first two flats are purchased within days of Victor expressing interest in them. The third suffers a rat infestation, the fourth has unexpected electrical problems, and the fifth catches fire.
Victor is too used to living around the Holmes boys to be impressed by it.
“All right,” he says one afternoon after Sherlock comes home from working on a case, “what’s going on?”
Sherlock gives him a puzzled look.
“What?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Victor huffs. “It always has to be a show with you, doesn’t it? Look, if you didn’t want me to move out, all you had to do was say so.”
The puzzled expression melts from Sherlock’s face, and he looks irritated.
“I told Mycroft the fire was too obvious,” he mutters, shedding his jacket and hanging it on the back of the door.
“Wait. That was Mycroft?”
John comes out of the kitchen, balancing his laptop on one hand and holding a cup of tea in the other.
“You have to admit, Victor,” he says as he sits down at the table by the window, “there’s nothing that says true love like your boyfriend getting his brother to burn down a flat for you.”
Victor’s weary, “He’s not my boyfriend” is nearly drowned out by Sherlock’s, “It wasn’t my idea!”
They stop and stare at one another, and then at John, who looks bemused for a moment.
“Oh!” he says, realisation dawning. “Right, I’ll just - be over here. Er, no. I’ll be upstairs.”
He hurries from the room, leaving them to their conversation. Victor looks back at Sherlock, hands braced on his hips.
“Well?”
Sherlock reaches a hand into his pocket and pulls out a key, which he lobs at Victor.
“That’s a key for here,” he says as Victor catches it. He sounds almost hesitant. “Baker Street. If... if you like, that is.”
Victor closes a hand around the key.
“How long have you been carrying this around?” he asks finally. Sherlock looks almost sheepish.
“Three weeks.”
“Sherlock...”
“Back at the hospital, when I suggested that you stay permanently, it was said mostly in jest,” Sherlock says. “But these past few weeks... I’m not sure I want them to end.”
“We’ve never lived together,” Victor points out. “Not really, at least.”
“Seventeen years,” Sherlock says softly. “It’s about time, don’t you think?”
Victor stares at the key in the palm of his hand for a moment before touching it, as though he couldn’t be entirely sure it was real.
“Has it really been that long?” he murmurs. “Seventeen years. God. Not nearly long enough, wouldn’t you say?”
He meets Sherlock’s gaze again and finds that he’s giving a cautious, relieved smile.
“No,” Sherlock says quietly. “No, I don’t think it will ever be long enough. You’ll stay, then?”
Victor grins.
“Yes.”
----
John and Victor get along like a house on fire.
They spend much of their time together talking themselves hoarse, trading stories about their days of service.
“Now, get this, John. The car’s still moving at this point, okay? Now, I manage to jump and land on top of it -”
“On top?” John asks, sounding both impressed and as though he fears for Victor’s sanity. “Jesus, Sherlock, are you listening to this?”
“Heard it,” Sherlock says absently.
They also, Sherlock has discovered, take great pleasure in tormenting him.
“Where’s Greg tonight?” Victor asks one day. He’s come back to the flat sweaty after a run, and sprawls next to Sherlock on the sofa. Sherlock pointedly moves a few inches to his right, away from Victor, and shoots him a glare. Victor retaliates by settling his legs on Sherlock’s lap, pinning him in place.
“His place,” John says as he types. Victor cocks an eyebrow at him.
“Something the matter?”
“What? Oh, no. He gets like that sometimes. Needs a few days to himself.”
Victor smirks, a look Sherlock distinctly does not like on him. At least, not at the moment.
“You know what that means, don’t you?”
John looks at him, and then at Sherlock. He grins.
“You aren’t allowed to leave this flat anymore,” Sherlock says the next time he sees Lestrade. Lestrade arches an eyebrow at him.
“Oh?”
“Those two,” Sherlock nods out into the main room, where Victor and John are once again deep in conversation, “are insufferable. They ambush me when you aren’t around.”
Lestrade stifles a laugh.
“What’d they do to you this time?”
“We watched... a movie.” Sherlock’s lip inadvertently curls at the memory. John and Victor have distinctly juvenile senses of humour sometimes, and when Lestrade isn’t around to be a dissenting voice they subject themselves to movies which are labeled comedy but really should be instead classified as a danger to brain cells.
Lestrade shakes his head, still chuckling, and gives Sherlock a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
“Sorry, lad. I’ll try to give you some warning next time.”
“Yes, see that it doesn’t happen again.”
----
Sherlock continues to take cases during Victor’s first few months at Baker Street, but as Victor heals and starts to be more like himself again, Sherlock finds that he no longer has the desire to expend his brainpower on private cases when it could be better utilized elsewhere. Victor is a distraction, he always has been, but one that Sherlock is more than glad to indulge in. He could spend a lifetime with Victor and it still wouldn’t be enough to understand everything about him.
He simply doesn’t need the work, not when he has Victor. And he doesn’t want it, not when it could distract him from the man he once thought lost forever.
And so, as March grows old and Victor grows stronger, Sherlock closes down his website.
It takes Victor less than two days to notice.
“Sherlock,” Victor asks quietly one afternoon, coming into the kitchen, “why did shut your website down?”
Sherlock looks up from his microscope.
“Ah,” he says. Victor arches an eyebrow at him.
“Ah, indeed,” he says. “I thought you were getting some good cases.”
Sherlock nods and switches out the slides on his microscope.
“I was,” he says. “Well. I still am. But I don’t want the work anymore, Victor. I don’t need it.”
Victor folds his arms and leans against the counter, his brows furrowing.
“You live for the work, though.”
Sherlock looks up.
“No,” he says softly, “I live for you.”
Victor flushes and looks away.
“I can’t solely be responsible for your happiness, Sherlock,” he says.
“I know.”
“That’s asking far too much of me.”
“I know.”
They stare at one another for a beat.
“What will you do?” Victor asks finally. “You know what you’re like, Sherlock, when you don’t have something to occupy your mind. I can’t be everything for you. Not everything you need, at least.”
Sherlock shrugs.
“I have my experiments,” he says. “I have some papers I’ve been meaning to write. I haven’t published anything since before you died; it will be good to do that again. And I’ll still take cases for Lestrade--I owe him that much. But only for him.”
Victor nods to himself.
“If you’re sure...”
“I am,” Sherlock says firmly. Victor considers him for a long minute.
“Well, I hope you weren’t thinking about moving to the cottage in the next few years,” he says, somewhat hesitant. “Because, well… I was thinking about finding work myself somewhere.”
Sherlock cocks his head. “You don’t need to work.”
“I know. But I want to.”
Sherlock folds his arms across his chest, thinking.
“What would you do?”
“I’m not sure,” Victor says, rubbing the back of his neck absently. “Teaching, probably. I - er - well, it seems I have a knack for it.”
What he doesn’t say is that this isn’t simply a job, it’s another form of redemption. There are people who never came home because of him, and he can’t change that fact--nor would he, if he had to do it all over again. But he can do this; he can make this contribution. Had it been anyone else, Sherlock would have scoffed at the sentiment. Because it’s Victor, though, he keeps his thoughts to himself.
“I can call Mycroft,” he offers tentatively. Victor gives him an amused smile.
“Thanks, Will,” he says, “but this is something I want to get on my own.”
He makes to leave the room.
“Vic?”
“Yeah?”
Sherlock offers him a smile, and then winks at him.
“Good luck.”
----
Victor, though he has largely recovered from his injuries, still battles some residual effects from his illness. Exhaustion seems to be chief among them. This evening he is stretched out on the sofa, a book abandoned on his chest and an arm thrown over his eyes while he sleeps. It’s the second time Sherlock has caught him napping today.
And normally Sherlock would scold him for this, but he’s bone-tired himself, having just come back to the flat after an entire day spent on a stakeout with Lestrade and his team.
“No, don’t get up,” he says quietly when he sits down on the edge of the sofa to kick off his shoes and Victor starts to rouse.
“Joining me?” Victor murmurs as Sherlock pushes his legs aside and climbs fully onto the sofa. Sherlock hums in agreement and settles down next to him.
Large as the sofa is, it was never meant to accommodate two grown men sprawled across it, and so Sherlock lies mostly on top of Victor. He presses a thigh between Victor’s legs and rests his head on Victor’s chest, over his heart. The arm that isn’t wrapped around Victor’s torso is pinned between Victor’s body and the back of the sofa, but Sherlock can’t bring himself to mind. He covers Victor like a blanket and it won’t be comfortable for very long--in fact, it’s not very comfortable to begin with. Victor’s sharp left hip digs into Sherlock’s stomach and the hard muscles of Victor’s chest are a far cry from a pillow.
But the fact that he can do this--that he can lie on the sofa with his lover four years after Victor’s supposed death--that alone makes the discomfort seem less than trivial.
“Bloody heavy, you are,” Victor grumbles, but it doesn’t sound like he truly minds. He rests a hand on the back of Sherlock’s head, threading his fingers through the curls that are beginning to grow unruly. “And bloody freezing, too. Were you out in this rain all day?”
“Stakeout,” Sherlock murmurs.
Victor’s heart is beating under his ear, an irregular thud that Sherlock’s not used to hearing from his chest.
“It’s the medicine,” Victor murmurs when Sherlock mentions it. “Makes me jittery as all hell. I feel as though I’m constantly running a marathon.”
But it’s a brand-new sound, a tune that is uniquely Victor, a tarantella instead of a march but Sherlock loves it all the same. He closes his eyes, stilling the fingers that had been absently stroking Victor’s arm and slowing his breathing as much as possible, until only Victor fills his senses. His heartbeat drowns out all other noise; Sherlock feels nothing else apart from the rise and fall of his chest.
Victor is home, Victor is here, and Victor is everything.
---
Sherlock wakes one night with his head on Victor’s shoulder, one arm draped across Victor’s chest while the other is trapped awkwardly between their bodies and quickly losing feeling. Victor has his free arm, the one not wrapped securely around Sherlock’s shoulders, flung up over his head. His head is turned away from Sherlock, nose pressed into his arm, and he breathes heavily with every other exhale, as though it is a failed snore.
Sherlock can feel the brand-new scar tissue from Victor’s most recent bullet wound through his thin t-shirt, and he moves his arm so that it rests across Victor’s stomach instead. He then dozes for a while, but as the thin line of grey along the horizon begins to lighten to blue, he knows that sleep is lost on him for the rest of the night.
He pushes himself into a sitting position and rakes a hand through his hair, gazing down at Victor. He hasn’t stirred. Sherlock then runs the back of his finger down Victor’s cheek.
“Love you,” he mutters gruffly, and then slides out of bed.
Two weeks later, Sherlock is sitting at the kitchen table, scrolling through his phone while the rest of the flat bustles around him. Everyone is here today--Charlie is underfoot, John’s in the shower, and Lestrade is trying to fix a much-needed cup of coffee before work. Victor breezes out from the bedroom, dressed in a suit and barefoot. He has an interview at a local university today.
“Socks?” he asks as he brushes past Sherlock, touching the back of his neck affectionately as he goes.
“Behind the sofa,” Sherlock answers without looking up. He tips his chair back until it is resting on its two back legs, and balances there with the back of his foot hooked around the table leg. Victor locates his socks, hops into them, and comes back into the kitchen just as Lestrade is leaving, cup of coffee in hand. They nearly collide, laugh nervously about the almost-disaster, and then exchange quick hellos before Lestrade is out the door.
Victor makes two cups of coffee and puts one on the table in front of Sherlock. And then, as he passes behind Sherlock on his way back into their room, he pauses to wrap an arm around Sherlock’s collarbone and gives him a tight hug from behind. His lips brush the shell of Sherlock’s ear.
“Love you, too, nutter.”