Victor spent the entire day studying for his exam the next day, so much so that when the responsible hour of nine o'clock came around he was too exhausted to even attempt doing another round of memorization. His brain felt as if it had been simmering low and slow since he had woken, as if his blood was some sort of baste with numbers and variables sprinkled in like spices. His brain, locked in the crockpot of his skull, had become something of a mathematical brisket, raw and tough when he had woken and now so thoroughly assaulted that Victor was sure it would pull apart with a simple prod. He felt knowledgeable, knowledgeable enough that he didn't feel the need to open his book once more. He had spent the day memorizing the chapter, so much so that he may be better off writing an essay on its word choice and grammar. Usually when Victor became exhausted of a subject matter he knew he was ready to be tested on it. When his brain panics with a gap in knowledge he could go for hours without sleep or food, instant upon understanding a concept when it was his grade on the line. But for once he was not so panicked; for once Victor could lean back in his chair, switch his lamp off successfully, and ease a long breath from his chest, one which felt to be diffusing all of the stress which had built up throughout the week.
"Mastered it?" Reggie presumed from his desk, the tapping of his typewriter keys keeping a consistent pace even as he turned his attention towards his roommate. One would have assumed typewriters would break focus, though over the years Victor had grown to appreciate the consistency of Reginald's typing as a sort of background noise. Like a fan humming or a dryer tumbling laundry, Reginald kept the same pace of typing, dinging, and sliding, so much of a rhythm that Victor could oftentimes use it to fall asleep. It was the song of his roommate, the song of his friend.
"Maybe not mastered, but understand....yes. For once in my life, yes," Victor admitted with a thankful sigh.
"Maybe we've discovered a new tactic for teaching. Make each one of professors hide a deep dark secret, and throughout the semester let the students discover it. A shocking motivator, really. A miracle worker."
"It's not because of his secrets that I understand the course, it's because of his competency as an educator."
"I believe it's because your brain can't imagine him speaking any other words. So when you imagine him making sweet love to John Watson it's a calculus lecture he's using as his pickup line."
"Oh don't...don't make it gross!" Victor defended. "I don't imagine anything."
"Oh really? Nothing at all?"
"Nothing in regards to his sexual life," Victor defended, understanding that such answer admitted him guilty of imagining all other things under the sun.
"Then what fun is there, really?" Reggie chuckled, his tapping continuing at his predictable pace and a ding erupting just when it was due. "Even I've been trying to age him down to a point where he could be anything near to admirable, just to see if John Watson was as unhinged as his little lover." Victor's eyes slanted, finding this a strange jest. It was unlike Reggie to talk about sex, especially in the context of homosexuals.
"I didn't imagine from that letter that they had ever...well it seemed as though the surgery was the most intimate part of their relationship."
"From that letter, yes it did. Though there had to be something more, or else that man wouldn't be pining for him for forty some years. Must have been the best lay of his life. Maybe the only lay."
"How vulgar," Victor complained, though he leaned over onto his elbows thoughtfully.
"He seems like a virgin to me. One who got lucky once in his life, so lucky it could hardly count for his record."
"War made people do crazy things," Victor agreed. "Maybe he...maybe in the hospital tent."
"Behind a curtain, you think?" Reggie chuckled. "With that leg, though? Must have hurt either way. My money is on beforehand, they knew each other before the bullet."
"They fell in love before?"
"Why else would John Watson save his life so fiercely? How did Sherlock write it, he threw his body overtop of his own on a riverbank? Probably in enemy fire. Must have been love there beforehand."
"Maybe they shared a tent," Victor suggested.
"Or maybe they snuck off into the woods when all the rest of the battalion was asleep..." Reggie just chuckled, as if this discussion was as common as discussing what they had each had for lunch that day. Victor felt his face growing hot, hating to be dedicating such time for such a lude suggestion. Though he had to wonder, he had to agree. Professor Holmes had said on Monday he had more than nothing...was there more to this love story than Victor had once imagined?
"Either way I'd rather not know," Victor decided truthfully.
"Either way there's no way he'll tell you. Unless you intercept the next letter at the mailbox, of course, one filled with all the steamy details."
"After last time I hope he's not writing anything else," Victor grumbled. "Besides, he's got other things to write. Like a last will and testament."
"Oh?" Reggie's typing paused, as if this thought was finally the one to halt his academic flow.
"I thought you knew?" Victor muttered, looking up again and catching Reggie's vacant expression behind those thick glasses.
"Obviously not. I can't read your mind."
"Good," Victor muttered with a sigh. "He's dying, unfortunately. He told me so on Monday, when I went in for extra help. He has a life expectancy of three months at best."
"From the leg, or from being too pathetically alone?"
"The leg!" Victor growled. "Don't be rude."
"It's not a lie," Reggie defended with his hands raised high. "He is alone."
"It's a blood borne pathogen, from the very bullet that sailed through him years ago. He called it the slowest murder."
"Well I'm sorry for your loss, but hey, what if he dies before the end of the semester? Automatic passes I'm sure."
"Don't cheer for his death, Reggie." Victor couldn't help but frown, and in an effort to conceal his dread he pushed back against his desk, deciding to ready himself for bed while keeping his head tactically turned in the opposite direction.
"At this point I can't tell if you care more about passing this class or cherishing its instructor," Reggie admitted thoughtfully, his typewriter resuming its normal speed. "I've never known you to be so preoccupied."
"I care for him, Reggie. And perhaps that's only because no one else does."
"You have a big heart, perhaps bigger than what's good for you. So large it's like a vacuum, pulling in anyone who doesn't have a stronger force tugging them in the opposite direction. Anyone who doesn't have someone to love them more fiercely."
"Is that supposed to be a compliment?" Victor wondered, taken aback to the point where he had to twist his head to catch his roommate's eye. Unfortunately Reginald was still typing, his grey eyes focused on the paper that was slowly progressing its way to the right. He didn't seem willing to explain himself with just his eyes.
"Yes, it is. Not every day you get one of those, huh?"
"Not from you, certainly."
"Then don't just stand there looking stupid," Reggie suggested, his fingers pausing if only to snap his gaze up to meet his roommate's. Victor swallowed hard. "Say thank you!"
"Oh, right." Victor shuffled his feet, almost embarrassed to admit that he had expected something much more meaningful from such an abrupt request. "Thank you."
"You're welcome, Victor." Reggie smirked, his typing continuing at his easiest pace. Victor sighed, grabbing the collar of his shirt and pulling it up and over his head in preparation for bed. He half hoped that his bare chest would start some other conversation, that it would prompt Reginald up and out of his bed if just for the chance to settle a palm against Victor's shoulder blade. Certainly it was too much to ask for, and certainly something he could not be daydreaming about on the eve of the deciding exam. Victor had to stay focused on mathematics, on all the calculus he had absorbed in the last couple of hours. He could not think of Reggie, he could not think of Professor Holmes. Perhaps he should take Reggie's advice, however sarcastic it had originally been. Whenever he started to daydream, whenever he started to wander off...instead of love poems imagine lectures. Instead of sweet nothings, imagine derivatives. To compliment a kiss, the first words leaving their lips in the aftermath would be the explanation of a complicated formula. Mix the two things, don't leave them separate. Recognize calculus as part of Professor Holmes, and vice versa. Such a method may just work.

As they walked towards the mathematics building Victor felt a strange sort of dissociation. He felt as if each step taken was not his own, and that his soul was levitating towards the building, leaving his body far behind at its much slower pace. Reginald walked beside him, a maroon scarf curled against his lips and typed essay safely in his backpack, another point of academic dread. Not a word was exchanged; simply because Victor wasn't sure which of his own personas would being talking. If he opened his mouth would his body talk, or would his soul be screaming into another realm? Screaming for help, perhaps. Or summoning Einstein.
This exam was the second of three, fifteen percent of his grade riding on this morning alone. Victor had failed the first exam so epically that there seemed to be no hope unless he was able to ace the second, and as he tread on the sidewalk he felt concerned that he had forgotten how to even count to ten. Last night he had been so confident, though this morning the horror of his situation was beginning to creep in on him, fear shoving knowledge out of the way to make room in his brain. His saliva tasted sour, his fingers trembling in his pockets, his sight blurred. It would seem as though he was striding his way not just to the classroom, but to the hinge of his entire life. The very hour that would determine his fate as either an engineer or a failure. It would swing open, but not as a door of opportunity, instead a trap door underneath his feet. The hinge of his life that he wanted desperately to stay still.
"Well Victor, when I see you next you won't have to worry about a thing," Reggie decided with a grin, clapping his roommate on the shoulder in an appreciated gesture of good fortune. Victor groaned, too preoccupied to even cheer the fact that Reggie's hand still had not moved.
"I'll be worried about moving trucks, and lost tuition," Victor complained with a growl. "I'll be worried about facing my Father when he comes to pick me up in the sedan."
"You're not failing out of this college!" Reggie said loudly, a confident cry that might have been heard all the way to the third floor. Victor only wished that enthusiasm equaled truth. He wished Reginald had the sort of power in this world that he imagined for himself.
"If only that were true," Victor grumbled. He couldn't help but pout, staring into those foggy glasses and wondering if he would have to say goodbye to Reggie by the end of the week. Wondering if his fate was sealed, and he wouldn't get to make use of the two years he had promised Professor Holmes. Was he also destined to be yanked from his soulmate, without due consideration from Fate herself?
"I'll see you on the other side," Reggie promised. "Good or bad."
"Even something in the middle would be fine with me," Victor admitted heavily. Reggie's eyes were sincere as he gave Victor's cheek a soft slap, so slow in fact that it seemed to be more of a caress. It was not violent; in fact it seemed to be an offering of good fortune. Like a woman blowing luck onto a pair of dice before a gambling roll, Reggie was offering his support in the best way he knew how. Physical touch.
Victor couldn't process it; he would have to wait until the end of his exam to even begin considering what had happened before it. He felt as if his brain was being sectioned off, as if he had built a wall between his mathematical knowledge and all other earthly considerations. Until those bricks were put to good use, dismantled onto the page of his second exam, they would prevent anything from tainting the precious store of information he had gathered throughout the week. Not even Reggie could get through that wall, not Reggie and his foggy glasses and smooth, smooth palm.
Victor turned away, feeling as if he was marching up the stairs to the gallows, and passed inside of the mathematics building without another glance towards his roommate. He was ready to face his demons in whatever form they took. And maybe, just maybe, Sherlock Holmes would give him some ounce of extra credit for putting the effort in. For caring, just a little, about the subject matter as well as the man.
But when Victor finished climbing the stairs, he found someone different at the helm of the class. Someone different sitting in the chair behind the podium, someone horrifyingly familiar. There was no walking stick, nor any dark curls streaked with gray. He saw no crooked back, or laser pointer. No, instead there was a woman behind the podium, a woman who he remembered from the year before.
"Professor Donavan?" Victor asked out loud, wondering if he had slipped through a cruel time machine and found himself struggling once more against the current of that woman's ramblings. She smiled, as if they had been old friends, though Victor could attempt nothing but a blank stare in response. "Where's Professor Holmes?"
"Professor Holmes is unable to come in today, and so he's asked me to take his place this afternoon." The woman spoke like a robot, that same lifeless, matter-of-fact tone that made anything she said sound like a voicemail box.
"Is...is he alright?" Victor wondered, aware of the entire class's eyes upon him as he stood stupidly in the doorway, already late to class and now taking up the precious minutes of their exam time.
"I'm sure he's just fine," Professor Donavan assured. "Now Victor please, take a seat. We have to get the exam started right away."
"Is he ill?" Victor asked, moving towards his desk and dropping his bag onto the floor. He only now noticed the woman was holding a stack of printed papers, pristine sheets that would soon be scribbled on, crinkled, smeared with the streaks of a bad pencil eraser. The exams, undoubtedly.
"I was not given the details," Professor Donavan muttered.
"He didn't tell you?"
"I was contacted by the Dean, Mr. Trevor. Now please, take your seat so we can begin."
"So he never..."
"Victor I swear, sit down or I'll break your knees!" threatened a voice from the back, a crude reminder that no one else in the class cared about Professor Holmes's welfare. They only wanted to take their exam.
Victor sat, unsure if he was even allowed to take his coat off. As such he sat sweating, shaken now by the exam and by Sherlock Holmes's absence, his entire desk trembling under the panic of his overheated body. Professor Donavan's voice read the rules, it reminded them of their no-cheating policy, it reminded them to please raise their hands if they had a question. It said this and that, that and this, but not once did it offer anything helpful. Victor bowed his head as the exam was settled onto his desk, face down as it would undoubtedly be handed back to him in a week's time, though he felt as though the wall had been broken. The wall, which had been holding his calculus knowledge safe from contamination, had been breached. Each building block of formulas and equations had been dissolved in the acid rain that was intense worry for Sherlock Holmes, and even as he flipped the exam to reveal the first three questions Victor could only imagine the white square as a tombstone. The Dean had called...not even the man himself. Was he dead, then? Had he failed to keep his promises after all?
Victor swallowed hard, pushing his pencil to the first question and underlining what he could make of it. The equation was set up in a familiar fashion; yes...he had studied this. Solve it, solve it. Such a thing would be easy, though as he underlined the integers his pencil continued in a straight line, the straight line of one man's heart monitor, unable to detect a beep... His jacket was becoming immensely hot; the heat released from his overactive pours now getting trapped between layers of flannel and wool. The heater in the corner of the room was blowing shamelessly, the hair of his classmates fluttering in close proximity, unbothered and locked into the exam which was sitting before them. Their pencils were scribbling furiously, their pencils already on the bottom of the first page... Victor swallowed hard. He looked up for some solace near the blackboard, where he had grown accustomed to at least seeing a friendly face...
"Do you have a question, Victor?" Professor Donavan asked in that dreadful voice. Or maybe she didn't, maybe she didn't say anything. Her lips didn't move, but he heard it all the same. He saw her eyes stare straight into him, through his eyes and into his brain, she saw what he was imagining, he saw that dead man, that dead man on a riverside, aged and gray, that dead man with a doctor on his chest, trying to breathe life into a body that had already died.
Victor stood swiftly, his knees becoming tangled in the desk and nearly toppling the thing over as he scrambled in a mad rush of adrenaline and fear. His brain was spinning, cocooned in a bubble of heat and anxiety that was threatening to pop if he stood silent in that room for a second longer. He knew the exam, he knew the material...but how could he care a lick about mathematics if the very man who taught him had gone?
"I need to go," Victor insisted, his voice shaking as he stepped massively into the aisle, his chair getting knocked over as his coat tangled upon the back of it. All eyes were on him now, all the students, all of Professor Donavan's, Mr. Hall all the way from the Registrar, Satan all the way from Hell. His Father...all the way from home. But what did it matter, what did it matter? The chair fell nosily to the linoleum as he grabbed his backpack from the floor, his exam and pencil lay abandoned on his desk with nothing but a straight line dug all the way through the three sheets of paper and indented into the wooden desk below.