The Last Romantics

How The Holmes Family Fell

"You might be wondering, Doctor, how it was Tobias Gregson left my life for good. Well it was not planned, for sure. It was abrupt...unannounced. And in some ways it was self-inflicted. I did not ask for him to leave, nor did I ask for my own removal from the University but as fate would have it and as coincidence should allow...my own removal was quite on par with his removal from my life. It was not so sweet as rejection, don't wear that look of pity upon your face. It was not so easy as that. Though it was in some ways, rather correlated...one of my last days at University seemed to me to be no different from the rest of the days, as it was an unexpected departure. I was in the midst of my studies, both of assigned readings and my own leisure, learning the things which the state required and feeling the things that only Mr. Victor Trevor could describe. I was learning of numbers and reading of flowers, tested on chemistry though devoting myself to the moon, studying the arts of humanity all the while growing more and more disgusted by it. The poets of the age, the original age, were just the compliments to the literature I so loved. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats...all mere sideshows to Trevor's main event. In the old masters I saw art; in Victor Trevor I saw truth. And in Tobias Gregson I saw opportunity. We picnicked sometimes, in the forest that surrounded the University's perimeter. It was a very minimally traveled spot, unknown by the students at the college and uncared for by the residents of the town. There were the times I knew we were truly alone, and these were the times where I felt able not only to be myself, but encourage him to do so as well. I was certain that he must have felt the same way about me, if not in the form of love but at least in a passionate sense. He had admitted to me that he regarded me as a different sort of art, though one of the highest forms. He had admitted to admiration, and to love in every connotation except for the most direct, and the most obvious. He loved me like a brother, I suppose, and like a friend. I loved him as something more than that, as the missing piece of my soul, at least the missing piece from that particular time. Looking back, I would not have found complete satisfaction in him. But in the moment, well of course I would not have known that for sure.
"Sherlock, you really disregard your manners when it's just the two of us." Tobias scoffed, staring at me from where he sat on the blanket and watching with some disgust as I plucked the grapes directly from the stem with my outstretched teeth.
"Oh what's the matter with cutting out the middle man? Besides, royalty never bother eating grapes any other way." I debated with a snicker, though repositioned myself on the blanket to recline back, discarding the last of the bunch back into the basket it came from.
"Well you're not royalty yet, Sherlock. I do recommend you stop acting like it." Tobias insisted, to which I merely rolled by eyes and obeyed for the current minute. I truly thought myself royalty, oh in those days and many beyond. It ever I had a fatal flaw, perhaps that would be it. Self-admiration...and believing all the words everyone in acknowledgment.
"That's the problem with the monarchy, don't you think? They're never born into a life like ours, a life in which you can do almost anything you desire. They're not chosen on their purity, nor their goodness. They're born into it, and you as well as I can attest to the fact that responsibility and capability are not always inherited traits." I insisted.
"You think it should be a system of selection?" Gregson clarified, his dark eyes narrowing as he sat forward, picking the last of the cookie crumbs from the handkerchief in which they were tied. Our meal was long since over, and now it was the time where we enjoyed the sounds of nature and the sounds of our own voices.
"I think it should be. Like you said, I'll never be royalty, and I am certainly one of the most entitled candidates." I chuckled, running one of my hands through my most admiral curls so that they all fell in more appropriate positions around my forehead.
"You speak so much of goodness, when you yourself haven't got a lick of it." Gregson insisted.
"Well perhaps then I shall have another beside me." I offered.
"Someone with a moral compass?" Tobias clarified.
"Someone with more than that, someone with everything that could ever be desired. A proper ruler, a proper person... a proper lover." I suggested at last, my breath escaping me and my words, just for a moment, faltering. Perhaps he knew who I was referring to, for the look on his face hesitated and his eyes looked down towards the blanket which covered the ground, hiding the mud and leaves from our view and making sure we only appreciated the more beautiful parts of the forest. And for a moment, only the trees moved. And only the birds sang.
"Sherlock, I dare not assume..."
"Do it anyway." I insisted, sitting up in an instant so that my face could match his, staring now into his eyes from the short distance that separated the two of us. So short a distance it was, almost completely negligible...
"Sherlock." Gregson insisted, in something of a hiss that was supposed to bring me to my senses.
"You heard me right, Tobias. Perhaps now is not the time but the thoughts are the same, it's all the same. Linear." I whispered, my eyes now wide open though serious, my lips hesitant but bursting with words I really ought not to say. I never asked him his feelings on love; I never considered that they could be any different from mine. Tobias hesitated, looking into my eyes with that meek look he often wore, that look of reluctance that usually resulted in him not doing what he wanted to most. He was a follower of the laws; of the rules...oh I must have seen this coming? I should have scolded him for such fear; I should have reminded him that what we have on the line was not our lives, but our potential happiness as well. There were two sides of this coin, and of course he might have picked the one dedicated to the meek.
"The words you say...you're not allowed to say them." Tobias reminded me.
"Then let me say them again..." I insisted, grabbing at his face with one of my hands, stilling his wandering eyes and ensuring that he kept his gaze focused on me. I wanted his full attention; oh I wanted this to be as dramatic as I could possibly make it.
"Sherlock." Tobias whispered, though he did not make a move to resist, he didn't slap my hand away. He never made a move to falter my apparent plans; he only seemed hesitant to make them himself. Perhaps he felt obligated to say what was coming out of his mouth, perhaps though he could not pull himself away so quickly.
"Tobias. I've fallen in love with you." I whispered, a quiet confession. The boy braved a smile, oh surely it was the only thing he could think to do was laugh. I had no other options for him, I was not going to let those words hang in the air forgotten but I was certainly not going to force him to take a moment to digest. He had no choice but to laugh, at last taking his own hand and easing mine off of his cheek, depriving me of that soft skin, such warmth that I had not felt in a long while.
"No you haven't." he said at last, his laugh quieting but his smile still remaining almost painfully on his face, almost as if he were forcing his lips to stretch into such a grin, quite without his approval.
"What on earth can you mean by that? I told you right here, surely you don't think I'm lying?" I insisted, crossing my now unoccupied hands like a toddler who didn't get what they wanted.
"I think you're mistaking your feelings, I think you've got your love of poetry mixed up for a love of me. And surely, Sherlock, that can't be." He whispered, a small almost pitiful smile coming upon his face. I huffed, my heart beating out of my chest and my face growing red with humiliation. Somehow this wasn't going how I expected it to, no I had pictured this moment in all extremes quite well but this scenario...well he wasn't running and screaming though he also wasn't currently kissing me. Oh but in a way this was worse, he was no extravagant show of emotions and so I could not tell what he actually felt. Was he disgusted, was he flattered? To this day it remains a mystery, to this day I still hate to think the sort of thoughts that may have run through my Tobias's head.
"No I'm not confused, Tobias you're the first person I've ever..."
"But not the last, Sherlock." He interrupted quickly, touching his finger to my lips for just a moment, quieting me all the while giving me but one ounce of false hope. In my idiocy I tried to kiss at his finger, to which the boy withdrew rather anxiously, a sense of fear flashing just for a moment in his eyes.
"You'll meet a woman one day, Sherlock, a woman who will show you what actual love is. What it feels like, not to admire the ideas one has, but instead to love someone for who they are." Tobias insisted.
"Why do you think yourself incapable of being loved? That's honestly so pompous of you." I snarled.
"Don't throw a fit now, Sherlock." Gregson insisted. "You'll make someone very happy one day, I know you will."
"Why don't I make you happy? I thought you found me beautiful?" I insisted, deciding to present the facts I had collected as if this was some sort of courtroom debate.
"I do find you beautiful, Sherlock. But I also find that tree beautiful, and that flower. And I love them all as part of nature, and I love you in just the same way. As a part of nature, as a work of art." Tobias insisted in a rather struggling voice, as if it hurt him to explain why I was not good enough. Perhaps he did think me perfect in some ways, though then again even those who adore you the most won't always be what you need.
"I love you as more than that. I love you as...as a husband! As anyone in this world has ever loved another I would...well I would marry you!" I insisted, now just trying to prove my point. I was trying to prove I was not crazy, all the while appearing to stray farther and farther from any common sense.
"Sherlock, darling. Quiet yourself." Gregson insisted, his words now faltering into quiet breath as he placed his hands upon my shoulders, stilling me so as to be at his mercy. I was still, I dare not argue with what he had in store. For a moment we were silent, and then he leaned forward in a very brotherly way, kissing the top of my head as if to wish me good graces...and to wish me goodbye. Well I didn't know it then, but that was the last I ever saw of Tobias Gregson. When he disappeared through the forest that day, without another word to be said, I watched his retreating back in some shame, some regret. I had planned on reconnecting with him, well our daily schedules never permitted it but certainly I would come back for him. Eventually we might be able to mend the bond that had been broken, if we had ever gotten the chance. But no, no that very next day I got a letter from Mycroft, one which prompted me on a train to my hometown, a train that I would never take in the reverse direction again. The loss of Tobias's complete trust left me friendless, unmotivated, and unrecognizable in the face of that university. My time spent there was wasted; my education futile, for after looking over these poems again and again I realized that my calling was not in math, nor in science as a whole. No, as I sat there on the train with my belongings in a trunk at my feet, staring out at the dismal countryside that had proved to me no use any longer...well I decided then that I was going to be a poet. A poet, yes! And one that would put all but Victor Trevor himself to shame.