The Last Romantics

Victor Trevor Is Expecting Me

"Is it really ethical to show up to such a talk drunk?" Mycroft questioned.
"Perhaps you can ask the professor when we get there!" I suggested with a little chuckle. Mycroft burst out laughing, nodding his head in quite some excitement.
"Oh those educated fellows, so smart they are until faced with a question of the modern age! Like how to smelt iron at the precise temperature, how to forge a magnificent rod, how to conduct business with those stingy miners." Mycroft chuckled.
"And you factory workers, without the slightest idea how to preserve what nature has granted us. How to see the beauty in all things, rather than the reflection of your face off of a shiny penny." I snarled.
"What care do you have in beauty?" Mycroft wondered.
"I am beauty!" I defended outright. "You wouldn't understand, brother mine."
"I would understand, Sherlock. I could not emphasize, but I would understand." Mycroft whispered, his voice dropping to an almost sorrowful level. Upsetting, really, when beauty skips a generation. Or rather a particular member of said generation, when compared to another.
"Mycroft, I must use the bathroom. And Mycroft, I might get lost. So please, brother mine, please do not fret. I will be at the carriage at midnight, alright? Whatever happens, I'll meet you there." I assured, sliding off of my stool and patting his shoulders in reassurance.
"You need to use the bathroom for three hours?" Mycroft clarified, obviously a little bit lost but still not understanding enough to be worried.
"I really have to go, Mycroft." I agreed, as if that was a logical reasoning.
"Oh alright then. I will see you back here, for the lecture." Mycroft agreed, prodding at the seat I had just been sitting in with some urgency.
"I'll be back." I promised, giving a great big grin before leaning and nearly falling into the crowd, finding that my legs had grown considerably useless all the while I had been drinking. I floated out of there, I felt my legs hit the ground but I did not feel them push, and before long I became worried that the next step I took would not hit ground properly. I was worried that I would begin to float away with this weightlessness, and begun clinging to the pedestrians as I passed, gripping at their overcoats and their wrists just to make sure I had a proper anchor when I began to take off. Well, surprisingly enough all that got me was some dirty looks, though each one of my troubled steps got me in turn to the place I needed to go. A club in downtown London, quite the official looking place by the doorman who was waiting outside. I hesitated, finally steadying myself on this melting sidewalk and thinking about what was the best route to take. Did I approach the man and show him the letter of invitation, or did I walk in as if I owned the place and hope he didn't question me? Well, the latter might have been possible if I hadn't been drunk out of my mind, and so the former would have to do. I stood in a small line of people, three deep, all of who were showing some sort of membership card to the man who held the door open for them. All very rich folks were they, so rich that they almost made me forget that I also shared the top one percent with them. Often times I completely dissociated myself from my wealthy family, to such an extent that it seemed odd that my father's money would one day become mine. At last when the doorman got to me I pulled out the small letter that I had received, displaying it for him to read.
"Victor Trevor is expecting me; he said he'd get me in." I explained, though my words were just slurred enough to not be taken seriously.
"Trevor did, eh?" the man clarified, chuckling as if he didn't at first believe me.
"Yes, yes read the name it's addressed to. Sherlock, that's me. Sherlock Holmes." I agreed with a stiff nod. "Ask him yourself if you don't believe me."
"Holmes, as in the forge? What has a man like you got with these poets downtown? Nasty bunch they are, you better watch yourself." The doorman warned, nodding his head and yanking the door open for me to walk through.
"Not nasty at all, sir. Quite sweet." I assured, quivering away from his gaze and making my way into the club. Now I felt more of an outcast than ever, and constantly I found myself looking over my shoulder, worried that I would be followed by either my brother or some random police officer who was hunting me down on his behalf. I did not want to be snatched away, though as soon as those doors closed I felt at least safe from the outside world. Now it was the inside I had to worry myself with, here where I could very well be recognized as an outcast, as a drunken boy just looking for a group with which to fit in. the club itself was decorated beautifully, with lush velvet carpets dotted with little tables, all surrounding a great big stage onto which my Victor Trevor would step. There were balconies surrounding us from above, and along the wall was a great bar spread with drinks enough to last a lifetime. The lighting was dimmed to set the mood, and only rich couples swarmed the perimeter, mostly men with women on their arms, and occasionally a handful of bachelors that were looking quite out of place with their cigars and hands full of cards. I found myself a seat towards the back, for while I wanted Trevor to recognize that I had arrived on his invitation I did not want to be gawked at by those who were not expecting my presence. I was beautiful enough to pass, rich enough to prove, though awkward enough to stick out as an outsider. I knew none of these people, and none of them knew me. The only thing we had in common must of course be our love of poetry. The only thing we had in common was the fact that we had gathered here tonight to stare upon the man who would make us come to life once more, raise us out of these dismal city streets and into the life we should have been promised years ago. Victor Trevor, reincarnate. Victor Trevor, our muse and nymph, one with nature and one with us, integrating us together by words, by verse. I sat as still as I could manage in my seat, though my drunken mind was urging me to get up, and of course my racing heart agreed with such a conclusion. I was basically forcing myself to stay seated in my lonely table by the time the stage was set, and just as nine o'clock rolled around and all of the high society took their places, well only after did Trevor finally mount the stage. Once more he overwhelmed me, and just as a man who was falling in love I sat up straight as could be, keeping my eyes as fixed as I could upon his beautiful face, those electric blue eyes as they scanned the room impatiently. Only did they stop when they met mine, and only did those lips begin to curl when he saw my mouth drop open in admiration.
"Ladies and Gentleman, welcome. I imagine my crowd here today is worth my attention, and I do hope that I prove to be worth your admission cost." Victor muttered into the microphone, getting at least a couple of chuckles around the crowd. I breathed out my own drunken response, not so much in words but in feelings, hoping that he could understand each and every emotion which was bubbling up inside my youthful, anxious chest.
"I will be reading tonight from my only published work, Within the Realms of Possibility, but do note ladies and gentleman that more shall be on its way. I am writing...well I am trying to write as we speak. Looking for motivation where some may see nothing of the sort, searching for art, when it is covered by flesh and cloth." His voice trailed, his eyes dipping low to the stage and his fingers playing hastily along the notes of reference he had taken up with him. I knew he meant me, oh I just knew it!
"Without further ado." Trevor muttered, at last nodding his head and beginning his first poem. It took me somewhere, places that I had not been for a long, long while. No it was not the poem itself, for this poem I had memorized and understood long before Tobias ever got the main idea. It was not the words, but the way he said them, which allowed me to transcend to an entirely different plane, an entirely different world entirely. Each word I could recite on my own, each syllable my lips could form! Though the way he pronounced it, the words which his soul had left there, the way he understood it...it was surreal. I sat and I listened, though what world I had fallen into I was unsure. The club had vanished from around me, the crowds and their mutterings had disappeared. I was sat in the meadow my mother used to take me to, one just a train ride away from our home when it still looked like sunshine, still smelt of flowers. I was sitting in the bush of lavender that my mother always used to plop me into, for as a child I appreciated the smell and would cease my crying whenever I could get a good whiff. And there he was before me, not nearly as far away as before, standing just outside of where I sat, where I lay. He was standing before the same microphone, though it was not being fed electricity. Instead his voice was being projected much more powerfully, like thunder on this sunny day, all the while being the same trickle of the water dancing along the rocks in the stream nearby. His voice was the whistle of the birds, hidden away in the trees, the falling of leaves as they got loosed from their branches, the cawing of the eagle, the slither of the snake, the scuttle of all one hundred legs of the centipede as he curled about in a little ball in the mud. I sat, transfixed, and there my love stood reading, oh love might be too strong a word to use...there my God stood. And for a long while we remained uninterrupted, for hours we might have sat there, reader and listener, caught up in a private transfer of thoughts and appreciation, trapped in an exclusive bubble of beauty. I knew he noticed me, he knew I loved him, and all together we had more than just a moment together in that meadow of London. He told me, in as many words, exactly the truth of life. And I demonstrated to him, in as many actions, my unyielding and incomprehensible admiration. I showed him his true worth, and he loved it when I began to bow. The poetry reading might have lasted for hours, maybe perhaps for just minutes, though by the time he first began to speak it seemed as though he had finally finished, and after that first word had passed through his mouth he was already receiving his bout of final applause. With this strange sound, having no place in the meadow, I was whipped back into reality and found myself where I had last been seated, alone in the back of the darkened club. Thankfully I was able to recover my senses quick enough, for just as soon as the audience began to clap I caught up with the rhythm as well, clapping for a moment before rising to my feet to be the first of the standing ovation...the first and only, as it would turn out. Though he noticed, his eyes met mine just as soon as I rose to my feet and there we stared at each other, linked with something much stronger than any rope or chain. There was a connection, a spiritual connection that exists to this day (whether I like it or not), and from then on we understood that we were more than just reader and listener. Perhaps we were made for each other in some twisted version of God's fantasy. Perhaps the two of us were forged from the same star, made with the same brain and soul. Our eyes fit perfectly together, and before long I found myself sat back in my seat and watching his retreating back, wondering if that brief moment of eye contact would be all I received for the night. Oh to be here, invited personally by the man who had become my life! It was beyond an honor, though it was boarding on something of a disappointment. Was that all? I had made such a trip, such an effort, to listen for a moment and then be on my way? No surely not? Unsure of what to do to bide my time, I sat up in my chair and checked my pocket watch, dangling it rather haphazardly in front of my eyes and reading that it was only ten o'clock. I had left my brother nearly an hour and a half ago and he still had not picked up my scent. Any moment I was expecting a large search party to burst through the doors, or perhaps Mycroft himself having been able to worm himself into the club on the pretenses of an emergency. Well I had promised to return to him at midnight, but surely he had been rather drunk when those words were spoken. Perhaps he would be adhering to them as a sober man, or maybe he decided to keep drinking and therefore didn't realize that these hours had gone by. Perhaps he was still under the impression that I was in the bathroom, maybe these hours passed quite like minutes as they did for me. The only good news (or perhaps bad news) was certainly that he would know immediately where to look for me, if ever he was about to search. The moment his eyes saw that there was a poetry reading he would be sure to find me here, and whether or not that was an advantage on my part was up for interpretation. On one hand if Mycroft found me I would not have to worry about reuniting, on the other if he found me well then I was in much more trouble than I could handle. It was a tradeoff, my wellbeing for my brother's, though at the moment I would much prefer he didn't find me. I was certainly feeling a bit out of place; however I had a feeling that I would not be lonely for long. Something told me that there was someone else here, at least somewhere within the same walls, that would join me shortly. And so I stayed put, paying for a glass of wine with the crumbled cash I had in my pocket just to bide my time. I had attempted to forget about my fellow audience members for a while, considering that I was an outlier among them despite my money. There was a strange divide between the aristocracy and the self-made men, and being a member of an industrial family I knew that I was certainly the odd one out. No one knew me, or rather I didn't assume they did, and so I kept my head low for the duration of my stay. I was watching my watch, for lack of anything better to do, and it took approximately seven minutes before the chatter of the high society was interrupted with more applause. He had reappeared, though not on the stage. Trevor had made it only a couple of steps out of the stage door before someone noticed, and all together they erupted into another round of applause that was nearly deafening. There were some parts of me that rejoiced in the applause, taking it that Trevor would certainly have a regular audience and therefore an income. However another part of me scorned it, wishing that they would just quiet their clapping and realize their place in the room. I was special; I was here on special invitation. They had no room to humor themselves; they had no reason to call themselves true fans. Nevertheless I clapped along with them, this time a bit more maniacally considering I had drunk nearly my whole glass of wine already. I knew he wouldn't mind, I'm sure he was high on his drug of choice by now, and so whatever intoxication I chose may not impede on our conversation. I knew he was here for me, as soon as he reappeared I knew enough to clear my coat away from the seat next to me, and sure enough he began to migrate towards my table, knowing that I would be here to receive him as per my past obedience. Once he was finished making his way through the crowd, allowing himself to be recognized and fawned over by each layer of aristocracy, he at last arrived at my table, lingering quietly above where I sat as if waiting for me to notice him first.
"I assume you would like an autograph as well?" Victor wondered at last, his voice rather low and serious, through lavish in its own ways. I looked up towards him a bit lazily, the wine having gotten to my system now, slowing down my methods of worship and making me into something more of an unapproachable luxury.
"Company is what I need at the moment, if you are willing to brave my conversation." I offered at last, pulling out the chair for him to sit next to me, should he decide I was worth this time. Part of me wondered why I was not more entreating, why I had left that up to his decision and not expressed my own utmost dependency on his approval. Thankfully he seemed to like this side of me, this one which was not fawning over him and kissing his nicely polished shoes. Victor ran his fingers over the back of the empty chair, giving it a quick tap before at last settling himself down upon it, crossing his legs and leaning back in a very casual position.
"Cigarette?" he wondered, producing a case from his pocket and picking out one of the lot. I nodded, not knowing how to turn him down, and found within my hand a cigarette of my very own. Admittedly I had never smoked before, though I had watched my brother and father do it plenty of times, and surely I could get the hang of it before long. With a quick strike of a match Victor illuminated a small flame, lighting his own cigarette behind a cupped hand before extending the match towards me. I wasn't entirely sure how to take it, and so I clenched the cigarette in my teeth and extended it towards the flame in an awkward sort of giraffe movement. Victor chuckled, perhaps noticing that I had never smoked due to my sudden coughing fit, wincing as the smoke seeped all through my nose and throat, filling my nostrils with that familiar foul stench and entangling my lungs with a bout of poison.
"Oh that's terrible." I admitted at last, pulling it from my lips and breathing in as much fresh air as I could manage.
"First time smoking, Sherlock? I'm not entirely surprised." Victor admitted with a little chuckle, smoking like the posh expert he was with his cigarette clenched between two choice fingers, exhaling in a slow stream of steady gray smoke.
"What exactly do you mean by that?" I wondered nervously, looking upon my own cigarette with some mistrust and putting it very carefully back between my teeth, with the intention of letting it smoke down to a stump before I had to take an inhale.
"You seem very sheltered, as if you had never approached someone before who you were too afraid to talk to." Victor admitted with a chuckle.
"You're the first...well celebrity I guess, that I've ever met. So I suppose it would be my first experience." I admitted at last, to which Victor sighed, shaking his head as if I certainly didn't get the point.
"And that in itself is proof you don't get out much, nor court." Victor chuckled. I grew rather red, realizing at last that he was implying my very limited romantic experience. While he was correct in such an assumption it still felt as if he was calling me out, for I certainly wasn't prepared to discuss love with a man I had only just met a couple of days ago. I thought of Tobias, how easily words flowed when I was around him, but figured that really didn't count. Like all men I lost my tongue when talking to women, though it was not due to an excess of interest, rather than a lack of experience. I could count the number of women I've ever talked to on one hand, and without my mother and the serving staff I could not guess who would be left on such a list. All the same, Victor was much easier to talk to than I had expected. He had an air of carelessness about him, making it seem as though whatever I said may very well be passed over as more of the small talk that was happening in the background. He would pick and choose what he cared to listen to, and if I said something that did not entertain him he would simply listen in to the conversation behind us.