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It was stupid. Ridiculous, really. Sherlock looked down at the scarf that was draped across his lap, his fingers circling over the soft fabric in time with the faint tick of the clock on his bedside table. It was almost worn through in some places, from where his fingertips had traced the same path hundreds of times before.
Seventy percent cashmere, thirty percent lamb’s wool. It was also ridiculous that those numbers were forever etched into in his memory. Despite the vast amount of data he chose to delete, he would forever hold onto those percentages. They were more important than the ruling monarch or the solar system. Those numbers were Victor’s. They belonged to him. Those numbers were never to be deleted; placed on a shelf in his mind palace, so high, that he’d never be able to reach them.
Edinburgh 2001
“Will! Look what I bought this afternoon.”
Sherlock had spent the afternoon in their small hotel room, sprawled across their bed, reading a book about toxicology. He’d decided that he had no desire to walk up the Royal Mile for the fifth time that week. His feet were tender from walking over the cobbled streets of the city and he was therefore quite content to lay reading and listening to the wind rattling the bathroom window.
Victor had not been discouraged and had pulled on his coat and scarf with copious amounts of enthusiasm. It was clear that he was enjoying exploring the city of his mother’s birth and Sherlock had decided that he wouldn’t be against returning with him in the future.
“What did you buy?” He asked, lazily rolling onto his side to face the man who was standing at the foot of the bed.
“This.” Victor produced a short scarf from the blue carrier bag that he’d placed on the desk beside him. “The Trevor family tartan. One hundred percent cashmere.”
Sherlock laughed softly and held out his hand to look at it. “I thought you’d promised that you weren’t going to visit that tartan mill again. You’ve visited it four times already.”
The scarf was a garish red against Sherlock’s pale hands, crossed with thin strips of white, forest green and dark blue. He decided that he disliked the scarf immediately and vowed to buy Victor a nicer one for Christmas. One that wasn’t so… bright.
“Victor, there is no way this is one hundred percent cashmere.”
“What?” Victor was doubled over on a rickety desk chair, attempting to untie his shoes. “The woman in the shop said it was.”
“The woman in the shop lied. It has some cashmere in it, I’ll give you that, perhaps about seventy percent of it is, but the rest is lamb’s wool. Sorry to disappoint.” Sherlock said, handing back the scarf to a disgruntled Victor.
“I paid fifteen pounds for that as well. There’s no point in trying to get my money back.” He grumbled, tying the scarf around his neck. The red tartan clashed terribly with the pale blue jumper he’d chosen to wear that morning, causing Sherlock to roll back onto the bed in disgust.
“You didn’t tell me what you thought of it, my wee Bee.”
Sherlock looked up slowly, a playful smile on his lips, reaching out to pull Victor towards him by the ends of his scarf. “Personally, I think it’s ridiculous but for some reason it suits you.”
Sherlock sighed and brought the fabric to the soft skin above his top lip, rubbing it gently from side to side. It were nights like these that were the worst. It were nights like these when he truly missed Victor, when he wanted nothing more than to curl up against the man’s chest, close his eyes and shut out the rest of the world.
But he couldn’t do that. Not now. The only artefact that he had from the man was that ridiculous scarf. The red had faded now, the blues and greens washed out by being caught in the London rain a few too many times.
He inhaled deeply, hoping that perhaps that the smell of Victor, his Victor, lingered but knowing that none remained. Ironically it had been replaced by his own after many evenings spent in the same position he was in now. Eyes tightly shut; fabric clung tightly to his rapidly rising and falling chest.
The afternoon sunlight had slowly retreated from the detective’s bedroom until only shadows remained, leaving Sherlock huddled in the dark.
He took the scarf from his lips and clutched it to his chest, twisting his fingers in the fringe that lined the bottom of it, attempting to the slow the rate of his breathing, to focus only on the feeling of the cashmere and lamb’s wool as it slipped through his fingers.
“I am ridiculous.” He murmured, hugging the ridiculous scarf from that beautifully ridiculous man to his heaving chest.