They stopped at a gas station some miles out of town, half expecting the police to descend upon them the minute the store clerk recognized the vehicle as it pulled into the parking lot. When no such confrontation occurred, Victor was free to fill his gas tank and peruse the aisles of the convenience store, plucking candy and drinks from the shelves while investigating road maps of the tri state area. Professor Holmes waited in the car, with the windows down and the engine off, much like one would leave their dog to ensure it was comfortable unattended. They made a most interesting pair, though Victor could not help but feel proud as he strode back to the car, Professor Holmes's credit card tucked in his pocket and his arms laden with supplies for the trip ahead. He knew he was no good at calculus, nor would he end up proficient in anything that necessitated more than two brain cells and any number of critical thinking skills. Though he was smart enough to realize the difference in success, especially when considering his initial goal to be the top of the class. His classmates would surely pass in flying colors, those geniuses who found the problems to be common sense even under Professor Donavan's absurd teaching methods. But would any of them be trusted with Professor Holmes's backstory, his secrets, and now even his life? Victor had to smirk at the irony of it all, and he had to wonder who was really succeeding at the game of life.
"You're the navigator," Victor announced as he descended back into the driver's seat, throwing the maps across to his passenger's outstretched hands.
"And the generous donor, I see," Professor Holmes commented with a frown. Victor shrugged, opening the bags to reveal various chocolate bars and iced teas.
"I'm asking for no cash reward, just the ease of travel and the pleasure of your company."
"My company won't be so pleasurable if we end up broke. I'll make a terrible beggar."
"On the contrary you'd be wonderful. I'd take away your wheelchair and have you hobble around, so many people will throw coins on your staggering body until at last you fall."
"Now you're just being cruel," Professor Holmes defended, his eyebrows furrowing as he unfolded the map to trace their location. "I couldn't say for certain that John still lives at the last known address, but it'll be a starting place if anything."
"I almost hope he doesn't, for your sake," Victor admitted, breaking open a chocolate bar and munching as he watched the old man's finger trace along their proposed route. It would take just under nine hours, by their best estimate, which at this rate would have them at his doorstep by one o'clock the next day. It was by no means impossible, so long as the hospital staff did not put the police on their tail. Under the assumption that their health remained intact and their finances were not drained, the worst part of the trip would in the end be the hours of forced conversation. And that, with Sherlock Holmes, would really not be so bad.
Their conversation was nothing but small talk for the first hour, commenting on the weather, commenting on the news, commenting on the flow of traffic. It would seem as though they were both comforted by the avoidance of their current situation, the events leading up to it, or the nearly impossible task which currently faced them. Sherlock Holmes seemed paler with every mile that passed, while Victor's fingers got continually sweatier on the wheel, his palms sliding across the thick plastic and his legs getting stiff. He found himself sharing the Professor's anxieties, those which had been tampered down by denial and blind faith for some fifty years.
"Have you seen him since the war?" Victor wondered, figuring it was best to go into this situation knowing exactly where they stood. It did not seem unreasonable to assume that John Watson had last seen his lover in a hospital bed, leg bloodied from stitches and young eyes full of hope and pain. Sherlock seemed the sort to hide from everything, even the ones he most loved, in a desperate attempt to keep his emotions at bay and his secrets hidden. He seemed the sort to write, not to call, and to hope rather than confirm.
"No," the Professor admitted heavily, his wiry fingers curling around the corners of the map for lack of anything more productive. He couldn't keep reading it over, as he claimed to get nauseated when he followed the little red lines of highway, though he kept it open in the ploy of being a good navigator.
"Why not?"
"I was never invited," he admitted with a shrug. "Never considered."
"You never asked to be?"
"Well of course not, that would be rude. Besides, I figured his wife never knew about me, and John undoubtedly wanted to keep it that way. How could any man explain the presence of a stranger on their doorstep, a stranger with stitches in his legs, one so beautiful as I at that age. Certainly she would have suspected."
"Beautiful, huh?" Victor chuckled, taking his eyes off the road for only a moment to restudy the man's face, pretending to make the connections between the word and the withered creature in his passenger seat. Well of course this was more of a comical act than a legitimate inquiry, as Victor could tell the moment he walked through the door of the classroom that they were being instructed by a man far past his prime. Sherlock Holmes's aged face had every promise of beauty, as he had grown so thin that the sculpture of his skull was evident underneath his loose skin. He would have been remarkable, with high cheekbones and sharp eyes, curls that were rich and dark instead of sagging and grey. He would have been upright, confident, and certainly wearing a sort of look that was oftentimes found in a man who knew he was beautiful. A look that delighted in attention, in inquiry, especially when the world seemed bleak. When the war seemed endless.
"I have the photos to prove it," Professor Holmes insisted. "Though not on me."
"Convenient," Victor chuckled, to which the Professor merely hissed.
"That's beside the point," the old man insisted. "He was scared to bring me around; he was scared to so much as respond with any more emotion than seemed legal between brothers in his writing. He was living a lie, one that he had woven for himself...and it would seem after years of secrecy he began to believe it himself. He stopped writing all together."
"Why did you keep writing, then?" Victor wondered. "I mean, you pour not only your heart but your secrets into those envelopes. What's to stop them being opened between his mailbox and yours?"
"Well...nothing I suppose," Professor Holmes muttered, his eyes staring contently at the road. "Though I never had a problem until you."
"Perhaps his wife opened one of your letters, and that was what stopped it all? What if she read over what you had left, and reasoned it all out from there? What if she was the one that barred contact, on the suspicion of infidelity?"
"Then I hope to God above that she is already dead," Professor Holmes growled, his fingers clenching around the map and crunching it with what strength he had left to him.
"A strong choice of words," Victor pointed out.
"That's why I chose them." The old man seemed perfectly sour, and thus Victor chose not to pry any further. He knew he would be damning himself to something worse than Hell if he were to anger the Professor within the first hour, and be forced to listen to his lecture voice the rest of the way. Therefore the boy instead reached for the radio, realizing this trip had been absent of something important.
As soon as the music started to play the old man seemed considerably more relaxed, easing into the vocals of whatever the top hits were for the week. He leaned back in his chair, at least as far as his wound would allow him, and curled the map carefully upon his lap. His eyes drooped shut not in sleep, but in focus, and for once he seemed calm enough. Calm enough that Victor didn't worry about him dropping dead, at least.
He didn't like to reconsider things, to know and to understand that their roles may very well be reversed in some fifty years. He didn't like to think of Reginald as the married man, the man whose name continually resurfaced in his mind, the man who would refuse to answer his calls or respond to his letters. Professor Holmes was miserable, he made no show in hiding it, and yet Victor could almost see his future mapped out in this man's history. He was the blueprint of what not to do, of what not to mimic, and yet Victor could already feel the emotions barricading within his own heart, the years of intense love refusing to leave yet unable to grow into anything productive. The feeling instead stagnating, blocking entry for any additional emotions to pass or connections to grow. Love growing into jealousy, growing into denial, growing into stubbornness. Love hosted within the heart not because it was being reinforced, but instead because it had grown old, grown fused, grown messy. It had nowhere else to go, and in its absence the emptiness would be too much to bear. Impossible to move and yet a constant companion, what else was the man expected to do? Where else was the love supposed to go, except right back to the man who would not accept it?
When Sherlock Holmes fell asleep in the car for the second time, Victor reasoned that it was time to pull off for the night. The man was already ill, already old, and now he seemed to be exhausted to the point of uselessness. The sun had not yet set, though if Victor continued on this road he was running the risk of missing the next highway junction or the next turn. His navigator had all but fainted, and he had no choice but to let the old man rest for the night, figuring his energy would be rejuvenated with a good night of sleep without the hovering presence of a constant watching nurse.
"Professor, wake up!" Victor hissed when at last the car was parked in the lot of a small motel, one which seemed reasonably safe. In these days Victor could hardly tell if he would get a night of a sleep or a gun to the head, though he had no choice but to gravitate to a motel that seemed affordable.
"Where...where are we?" the old man readjusted himself too vigorously, grinding his teeth against his bottom lip as he struggled to contain his scream.
"We're stopping off for the night. You've fallen asleep three times already, and you're a damn snorer."
"Thank God. I thought you'd drive all the way through the night," Professor Holmes complained, readily unbuckling his seatbelt and throwing the map across the dashboard.
"What made you think that?"
"Because we've been driving so late already!"
"It's only seven thirty!"
"A half hour past my usual bedtime," the old man pointed out with a groan. "Now grab that wheelchair, or I'm sleeping in the car."
"Don't bloody tempt me," Victor grumbled, pushing open the driver's side door with enough force it rocked back upon its hinges, swinging back at him as if to show its disappointment.
Victor pushed the old Professor into the clerk's office, bumping him against the door on the way in just to show his spite. Professor Holmes growled and cursed, and together they made for a most interesting pair as they approached the front desk. Thankfully it was not manned by an escaped convict, nor by anyone who appeared to be visibly intoxicated, and as Victor pushed the old man towards the counter it was made readily apparent that they were the ones that looked the most out of place. The hotel clerk was giving them the look of fear, as if he had never seen such a pair, and Victor was relieved to know that their strangeness put them at least in a position of power.
"Good evening sir," the clerk muttered, looking down to Professor Holmes and ogling him like one might a circus animal. Well it was not so secret that the old man was in failing health, for if he did not move it seemed as though Victor was wheeling around a corpse, though certainly his motions could at least reinforce the idea that he was healthy enough to spend the night without calling the mortician.
"We'd like a room with two beds please, one for myself and one for...my grandfather," Victor stumbled upon the word, though it seemed more natural than calling this ailing old thing his Professor, or worse still his friend.
"Yes of course," the clerk agreed, seemingly happy to hear that an abnormal pair at least had a normal request. "Will you be paying cash or card?"
"Dear young grandson, please use my card," Professor Holmes sang in his sweetest voice, the underlying spite so thick it was nearly running down his lips.
"Certainly you old hag," Victor agreed, grabbing the card from the man's outstretched fingers and presenting it to the now wide eyed clerk, a man who didn't seem to understand what he was seeing.
"Breakfast is from six to eight, and we have a coffee station to your left," the clerk muttered as he ran the receipts. It was a tailored script, one that varied only in tone depending on the audience he was presenting to. "I'll put you in room number two."
"Thank you sir," Victor muttered, giving a smile as he snatched the key from the man's outstretched hands.
"Do you need help with your bags, sir?" the clerk asked kindly, seeing as though Victor's hands were occupied with pushing the chair and reasoning that Professor Holmes would be of no help.
"Oh no, we haven't got any of those," Professor Holmes assured with a laugh, seeming to enjoy the way the clerk's face paled to a complexion that rivaled even his. "Have a good night!"

"You get the bed closest to the door, Victor," Professor Holmes instructed as soon as he was wheeled into the small motel, pointing to the bed so as to ensure the boy knew without question which was assigned to him.
"Why, so I can fight off any attackers who come in?"
"No, it's so if I die you don't have to walk past my corpse for breakfast," Professor Holmes assured with a growl, wiggling in the wheelchair to show that he was content with where he was currently placed. Victor didn't bother reminding the man that he had autonomy over his chair, as he figured the strength would miraculously reappear the minute the old man was too inconvenienced to ask for help. For now he was merely playing helpless, an act which he never allowed with his real injury. For his weak arms he would use them as sparingly as possible, as if they had been broken in totality and where healing in shards within his skin. For his leg, the diseased and infected thing that was undoubtedly turning a fierce shade of purple under his trousers, Professor Holmes seemed remarkably comfortable with attempting to stand on it, leaning over top of it, and paying for the price of ignorance in the moment.
"You won't die...right?" Victor clarified, feeling almost foolish that he had to raise the question. The Professor frowned, though even his sarcastic heart could not conjure up a definitive answer. He merely shrugged; folding his hands over the arm rests of the wheelchair as if he was much too sleepy to commit to life at the break of day.
"We shall find out tomorrow, I suppose. I thought I already told you that I treat every day as a victory. Nothing is guaranteed, Victor...not even life."
Victor might have been snarky, he might have snapped back a response that would put the mystic old man in his place, and yet a sadness overwhelmed him with enough force to squash his tongue back into his mouth, the sort that tangled his words and replaced them with a lump in his throat, one which threatened to break into a sob if he was not careful.
"I need a bath, Victor. If I am to see John tomorrow I must look decent."
"I'm not bathing you."
"Did I bloody ask you to? You pervert. I'll do it myself of course!"
"Well you...you sit here then! Let me shower first. I don't want to be bathing in your...leg juices."
"Sit here? What is that, some joke?" Professor Holmes flung his arms weakly into the air, seeming disappointed that even his sarcasm could not be displayed properly in his current state.
"No, it's an order. Wait here, rather. Turn on the television; I'll be out in ten minutes tops."
"You can't order me."
"Yes, I can. Now sit there, watch the news."
"Like a good old cripple."
"Yes, if you want to steal the words from my mouth!" Victor snarled, passing over top of the man's designated bed so as to avoid being within arm's length. He didn't seem remarkably violent, yet with whatever strength he had it seemed likely he would use it for harm. He couldn't slap, he couldn't hit, though Victor could imagine he would wrench a fierce pinch if he could get his fingers close enough. He grew angrier by the minute, though Victor had to imagine this was because of the buildup of stress, the anticipation of the day he had undoubtedly been avoiding for the last fifty some years of his life.
Victor recognized that the old man had been avoiding John, even if he didn't want to admit it. He recognized that Sherlock Holmes was more afraid of a concrete denial than he was of living his life in half hope, the sort of ignorant bliss that can only come from asking yourself "maybe" every couple of minutes. Maybe he would respond, maybe he still loves me, maybe the post office was confused, maybe is wife is retaliating. Maybe, maybe, maybe...well tomorrow he will know for sure. Tomorrow Sherlock Holmes will solve the mystery, and as beautiful as the reunion will be it was equally terrifying. Terrifying in that it could destroy fifty years of hope in one single minute of truth. Of truth that was unfiltered through the needlessly optimistic mind of a man decades in love.
As Victor showered, finally rubbing off days of grime and worry, he wondered what they would find tomorrow. What they would see, and what would greet them at the door. His only mental image of John Watson was the photograph Professor Holmes had on his mirror and bulletin board, though undoubtedly that depicted John before the war, before aging, in his most prime and polished form. He would be different, aged perhaps worse than Professor Holmes, perhaps ugly and balding and rude. What if Sherlock found nothing to love in the husk that greeted him at the door? What if the problem was John Watson all along, a man who had lost his love for life and his care as a doctor to the cruel passage of time?
Professor Holmes insisted it was love, he insisted that he had found his one true soulmate in the ruins of a battle field, wounded and afraid and panicked. He claimed to have loved the man who sewed him shut, a love that was fueled while morphine was flooded in his blood stream and his brain. He loved so fiercely and for such a short period of time it seemed unreasonable to take him directly at his word, though Victor could only attest to what he knew, and what he had read. In all truth, Professor Holmes had never told him a word of their relationship, he had only alluded to it. There was more that he was keeping to himself, more that was fueling this cross country road trip rather than a single incident on a beach. Certainly their first meeting was special, though Victor could only guess what followed. What had made John Watson the true love of the old man's life, what made him worth the wait, and worth the effort of connection.