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“You’ve never heard me speak of Victor Trevor?” I had asked Watson. Guilt welled up within me at the excitement which the question sparked in his eyes, because I knew good and well I hadn’t spoken of Trevor, and the omission had been deliberate.
Therefore I finally spoke to Watson of Trevor, but I didn’t dare speak all.
1.
I didn’t dare speak of the moonlight on the lime trees beneath which Trevor was mirthfully weaving while I stumbled along behind, not so intimately familiar with the lawn’s topography, listening to his reminiscences of lonely childhood games which were comfortingly similar to my own.
He had turned to wait for me to gain on him, standing beneath one of the trees, lazily holding a branch with an upstretched arm. As I approached my teeth gave an involuntary chatter and I hugged my arms around myself against the steadily increasing late-evening chill.
I came to a stop on a gnarled ridge of damp root and was adjusting my balance when Trevor murmured: “I say, Holmes, I didn’t know you were cold…”
I looked up just as Trevor stepped towards me, whipping off his muffler along the way and slinging it around my shoulders as he drew to a stop.
“There…” he said, adjusting it to cover the back of my neck. He maintained his grip on the ends of the muffler, letting the backs of his knuckles rest lightly against my chest, and when I glanced up at him I realized that some strange, unreadable change had happened in the atmosphere between us.
Unexpected changes have always caused me some degree of discomfort and anxiety, and my brain habitually scanned recent memory for the blunder I must have committed - for it is my experience that I am often the cause of uncomfortable interpersonal transactions. But I could come up with nothing I’d done which would explain the change which had come over Trevor - the softening of his face, the nervous roaming of his eyes, the awkward lingering of his grip on the ends of the muffler. This latter detail became increasingly unnerving the longer it persisted, rapidly consuming more and more of my attention until I could think of little else aside from the pressure of his hands against my chest and why he would want to touch me, to be so close to me for so long.
“Holmes -” Trevor said quietly before immediately cutting himself off. He licked his lips, and my uneasiness began to take on a panicked quality. It seemed that Trevor had something important to say - although I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what it was - but all I could think of was forcing myself to remain still, to avoid the affront of pushing his hands away from my chest as I wanted to do with growing desperation.
“Holmes -” he repeated hoarsely, but he never got to finish his sentence, for just at that moment my foot slipped from its precarious perch upon the damp tree root and I staggered back a step. Trevor made a comically failed attempt to wrangle me back by means of the muffler, and by the time I had righted myself everything had changed.
The atmosphere of easy camaraderie had returned between us, with Trevor laughing as he slapped me heartily on the back and suggested we make haste back to the warmth of the house. He never completed what he had been trying to say, and I didn’t know how to ask about it or even if I should do so.
2.
Nor did I dare speak to Watson of the faint squeak of the floorboards in the hallway outside my room some hours later. They brought my head popping out of the canopied bed into which I had confined myself just in time to see Trevor enter the bedroom bearing a candle in one hand, a clumsy cloth bundle clutched to his chest. He shouldered the door closed then shifted the bundle in his arms to reach deftly behind and turn the key in the lock.
“I knew you’d still be awake. I see you’ve discovered that this is the draftiest wing in the house,” Trevor said as he crossed the room, indicating the bed’s lowered canopy with an amused toss of his chin.
“I find a concentrated atmosphere soothing. I don’t sleep well in unaccustomed environments, as a rule,” I explained.
A moment later Trevor elbowed aside the tester and thrust his bundle into my lap, clambering over my legs to the empty side of the bed and leaning back against the headboard beside me.
“Yes, I remember your endless pacing the night you tried to stay over in my rooms,” Trevor chuckled, then glanced around the bed’s cozy interior. “You’ve got a lamp in here? And you’re reading, of course—what have we got tonight…?” Trevor snatched the book out of my hand and snapped it shut to examine the spine.
“You’ve lost my place,” I complained.
“Paracelsus?” he cried. “I didn’t lose anything, I did you a favor,” he laughed, tossing the book aside and retrieving his bundle. He unrolled it to reveal a bottle of brandy and a brace of glasses, well swaddled in a thick woolen blanket which he quickly spread out atop the bed.
“Surely you didn’t find such a book in father’s library,” he continued, setting the book down firmly between us and setting the glasses on top, pulling the cork from the brandy.
“No, it was in with my luggage,” I answered, warily watching Trevor splash two or three fingers of brandy into the bottom of each glass. Trevor made a sound of amused frustration.
“You’re supposed to be on holiday, Holmes, which means at least trying to enjoy yourself. Here…Cheers.”
Trevor pushed one of the drinks into my hand, and our crystal glasses chimed musically as we touched rims and drank.
“I am enjoying myself,” I said truthfully as soon as I had recovered from the brandy’s heady fire. “I merely have trouble falling asleep.”
“I know, that’s why I brought you a bumper.”
“A bumper? You brought the whole bottle.”
“Indeed I did. We’re on holiday, after all. Forget about college and chemistry and Paracelsus and be a normal human being for awhile.” Trevor nudged me with his elbow. Then he turned to me with a teasingly wicked grin. “And besides, I’ve never seen you drunk before, Holmes, and the idea has some appeal.”
“I was almost drunk the night that we debated Aeschylus,” I countered.
“You’re simply back-filling because yours was the losing position,” Trevor answered archly.
“Am not, was not.”
Trevor laughed in his easy way and tapped the rim of his glass to mine.
“As you say,” he replied, and when I raised my glass I saw him flash a quick wink with his nearest eye.
“I never knew you could cast such an accurate line, Holmes,” Trevor said presently, and the conversation turned to fishing while we worked steadily on the brandy. Trevor always had a way of making me feel blessedly normal, of ignoring my peculiarities or mocking them in a gentle way so that I felt accepted by him as a social equal, and I had become more comfortable with his presence than I ever had with another person’s, barring Mycroft.
We had finished our second round, and Trevor set book and bottle on the headboard’s shelf so that we could hunker down under the blankets against the growing chill.
“I say, this rather reminds me of school,” Trevor said presently. He had turned the lamp down to a dim glow, lending the interior of the canopy bed an atmosphere of enchantment.
“I wouldn’t know,” I replied.
“Oh yes, I forgot,” Trevor snickered, “You and Remus were raised on a hillside by wolves. Well, you didn’t miss much. We used to lay up late at night just like this, talking long after lights-out, telling one another the most outrageous lies…”
“What’s the point in that?”
Victor laughed. “I don’t know, really…”
“What sorts of lies did you tell?”
“Oh, all sorts - how many runs we once got in some cricket game, or scandalous things we thought we knew about our instructors, or how many girls we had kissed, that sort of thing,” Trevor chuckled. “You would have been a good one for figuring out the schoolmasters’ secrets.”
“Yes, I would have, but the other lads would have eventually come to hate me for it.” I had been down that road before and would revisit it soon enough.
“Nonsense - being able to tell which instructor was a tosspot and which was stepping out on his wife would have made you one of the most popular boys in the entire school,” Trevor insisted, but I shook my head.
“Once the novelty of my observations wore off, the other boys would have begun to wonder what I might know or find out about them; they would have begun to mistrust me, and I would have been persona non grata in short order,” I explained. I had been staring down into my last half-inch of brandy and now tossed it back, sitting up briefly to set the glass on the headboard behind me. When I laid back down, from the edge of my vision I saw Trevor quickly smooth a thoughtful look off of his face and resume his typically jovial countenance.
“Well, there’s no time like the present, Holmes,” he said as I slipped gratefully back beneath the blankets and lay staring up at the dimly visible canopy ceiling. “Tell me some lies, we can make up for lost time.”
“Wh-what?” I stammered, looking nervously over at him, unsure if I were being had.
“Tell me some ridiculous lies like the lads did in school,” he urged.
“Lies about what?” I felt caught off guard; I’ve never been particularly good at this sort of game playing.
“Oh, I don’t know - the most runs you’ve ever scored in a single game of cricket,” Trevor suggested.
“But I’ve never played cricket,” I said, and my ears began to grow warm when Trevor laughed.
“You’re supposed to lie, Holmes. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve played cricket or not. You didn’t have a headmaster, so tell me some scandalous lie about Mycroft.” Trevor dug an elbow into my arm.
“Psh, there’s absolutely nothing scandalous about Mycroft, I can assure you of that,” I snorted.
“Oh my God, Holmes, you’re supposed to be lying!” Trevor cried, his voice slightly muffled as he had thrown his hands over his face in mocking dismay.
“He’s a degenerate gambler who ends every spree by running out on a brothel tab,” I finally said after some consideration, my face breaking into a grin.
“That’s more like it,” Trevor said with delight. “I should quite like to see Mycroft running anywhere, but especially if he were being chased by a rabble of cheated whores. Now what about the girls - how many have you kissed?”
“Perhaps the only fortunate thing about your mother having passed is that she was spared the indignity of succumbing to my charms, for I’ve damned near kissed them all,” I replied and we broke into a fit of laughter.
In our semi-drunken state it took us a minute or two to recover; when we had, Trevor rolled over onto his side, pushing up on his elbow and grinning down at me. “Okay, the truth now,” he began; “Haven’t you ever wanted to? Kiss a girl?” He’d already learned about my general lack of interest in romantic relationships but, as he seemed to share my disinclination, we had never discussed the subject in any depth.
“No,” I answered truthfully.
“Not even from mere curiosity? As an experiment, of sorts? For the good of science and all,” Trevor teased.
“No.”
“Have you kissed any boys, then?”
I twitched a glance in his direction but he was looking back at me casually, and his tone of voice had been consonant. When our eyes met he gave an easy shrug of his uppermost shoulder.
“I ask merely from curiosity. I wouldn’t condemn you if you had…”
“No,” I said after a pause, turning my eyes back to the canopied ceiling, then glancing almost immediately back at Trevor. “Have you?”
“No…but I’ve thought I might like to try it one day, if I ever met a fellow who interested me.”
There was an atmosphere gathering within the canopy bed which reminded me of the fleeting moment beneath the lime trees which had occurred only hours before, a thick and ponderous silence, laden with portent which my body seemed to understand better than my brain for once. My heart began to pump harder within my chest, and all of my senses seemed to slowly sharpen.
“A fellow like you, perhaps,” Trevor added quietly.
“What?” I blurted, turning back and finding his expression unchanged. His subsequent smile was one of nervous amusement. Before my reeling mind could come up with a response, Trevor bent down and pressed his mouth to my own.
It was brief and befuddling. He had surprised me so that all which registered was his sudden and enormous closeness, his presence crowding down on top of me. When Trevor pulled back he scanned my face nervously for reaction, but I could only blink stupidly up at him, my mind utterly devoid of words. I know not what expression I may have worn, but Trevor’s face broke into a gentle smile and when he bent down to kiss me again I made no attempt to move or stop him.
It was exhilarating. I had never been cognizant of how thin and delicate was the skin of my lips, but now I learned in full, as I seemed to be able to feel every infinitesimal detail of Trevor. The softness of his lips, the faint stubble upon the skin around it, the gentle flow of his breath - all of these sensations combining to create a thrill which surged directly to my groin and seeped thence throughout the rest of my body.
He kissed me twice, thrice, until I was almost breathless. I didn’t know what to do other than lay there and let myself be kissed, but I was certainly willing enough to do that. When he at last pulled away Trevor looked down at me and smiled once again.
“Are you quite alright, Holmes?” he inquired with a hesitant chuckle, and I felt my ears and neck begin to burn as I nodded, speechless
“Shall I kiss you again?” Trevor asked, and this time I made some attempt to return the favor.
My memories of our urgent, sweaty fumbling beneath the blankets are blurred and fragmentary. I never entirely understood what was happening, only that I was consumed with unprecedented urges to touch, to feel, to embrace…to kiss. It was a jarring and discomfiting ecstasy, and the immensity of the event stunned me. As I lay frozen in place, awaiting Trevor’s return with a clean nightshirt, my thoughts were so scattered that I felt numb, my mind silent and placid as newly fallen snow. This was also a new experience.
It was short-lived, however, as Trevor swiftly returned with a stack of linen which he proceeded to parcel out to me. I didn’t know how to act in light of our newfound intimacy, and was in agonies of embarrassment as I began to clean up its evidence.
“I’ll have to go back to my room,” Trevor said. He had already cleaned up in his own room and was gathering the glasses and remnants of the brandy. “It won’t do to have the maids find us in bed together.”
I nodded numbly, my ears scorching.
“I would stay, if I could. Are you alright, Holmes?” Trevor asked this quietly, having come to stop at my side. I had just pulled on my borrowed nightshirt and now turned to look at him, knowing that I had to do this part right and hoping that I would.
“Yes, of course; everything’s fine,” I answered, then leaned forward to place a quick, clumsy kiss somewhere on the corner of his mouth.
Trevor grinned, gave me a brief kiss in return, and then he was gone.
I didn’t sleep a wink. After Trevor left and I knew that I was truly alone my brain began to function once again, and I spent the entire night thinking about what had happened. That part of the tale isn’t worth going into, however, because all of my analysis and ratiocination ultimately came to naught.
The very next day I would make the deductions about Mr. Trevor which precipitated the events which Watson has documented under the title “The Gloria Scott,” and nothing was ever the same between Victor Trevor and I after that.
It was rather difficult for me.
4.
For years I deliberately avoided thinking about Trevor, but I have caught myself thinking about him several times over the past year and, after going over these remembered events, I think I finally know why.
Inexplicable moments of portentous silence, atmospheres such as that with Trevor beneath the lime trees, have bloomed between Watson and I on more than one occasion. I have suffered an episode of the same unusual, awkward confusion in Watson’s presence that I experienced in bed with Trevor, and I believe that I have seen a softness on Watson’s face similar to that which had been on Trevor’s as he gazed down at me between kisses.
There were any number of old cases I could have regaled Watson with tonight, but I chose to tell him about Victor Trevor. Now I am thinking I did this so that I could leave myself an opening to eventually tell Watson all—not merely how I once felt about Trevor, but the feelings I now have for Watson himself. And if he reacts as I believe he is likely to…
The idea of leaning in to kiss Watson as I had Trevor that last time is terribly thrilling, and so I put it away just as I am putting away into my battered tin box the relics of “The Gloria Scott” and other old cases, grateful that Watson has gone to the bathroom and isn’t here to see my fingers tremble.
I must make my decision soon. I must know. I must have him.