crack_van | Gloria Scott, or Why Alone Protects Me, by songlin (Mature)

Fandom: SHERLOCK BBC
Pairing: Sherlock/Victor Trevor, Sherlock/John
Length: 4500 words
Author on LJ: I don't know
Author Website: AO3 fic
Why this must be read:
Of the ACD canon figures who have not appeared in the BBC version, I have a particular fondness for Victor Trevor, Sherlock Holmes's college friend. In "The Adventure of Gloria Scott," Sherlock spends a month with Victor at the Trevor estate in Norfolk, and a bit later solves the mystery of Trevor's father's death. Baby's first case! Or, to quote the master, "the first in which I was ever engaged."

Of course, it's too tempting to cast Victor in the role of first lover as well, good or evil or recurrent, making John squinty-eyed with jealousy. This is one of the better versions of Victor as the teens-to-early-twenties friend who sees Sherlock through a number of first encounters. The mystery has nothing to do with the original story (Gloria Scott was a ship there; here she's a medical worker), but fits in well. The friendship is convincing and this Victor is more compassionate than sticky. I still have issues with the show's distortion of "memory palace" operation, but you eat a peck of dirt and tell a thousand lies before you die. If you like minor characters, backstory, young Sherlock, and incidental sex and case-solving, give this a try.

A taste, from the story's opening:

If it hadn’t been for Victor Trevor, Sherlock might never have (possibilities: survived high school/made it out of uni alive/met John Watson/become a detective/known what happens in a man’s eyes when you bite him on the jaw with enough force to bruise) spent the spring of 2004 (six years before John Watson stormed his life like the beaches of Normandy) sweating out a decade and a half of addiction in a cheap hotel room in Peckham.

When Sherlock first met Victor Trevor, they were thirteen years old and had just started high school. They had been assigned a room together due to what the administration felt were complementary attributes. According to the school analyst, Sherlock was clever, precocious, and observant but antisocial and self-oriented. Victor was also terribly clever, but somewhat friendlier, with a kind of charisma to him that could not be denied.

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Gloria Scott, or Why Alone Protects Me