Victor's strength was hardly helping, and before long the boy was being dragged across the bricks, his feet dangling and clanging against the upper rungs of the ladder, his chest scratching against the outside of the building, his arms clamped painfully against the overhanging slate sill as he was slowly but surely dragged into the window frame. Eventually Reggie had pulled him far enough that he could ease his chest onto the window sill, allowing some of his weight to be distributed towards the building while Reggie did the honors of pulling him the rest of the way. Before long Victor was staring into Professor Holmes's dark office, the papers piled high in the corners like the ghost of math exams past, eerie in the low light and almost humanoid if looked upon with the right side eye. Victor's feet still slung out of the window, though by now Reggie had let go of his hands, seemingly satisfied enough with his work to let the rest up to his roommate. Victor wiggled nervously across the window sill, easing his arms downwards and plating them on the carpet as he yanked the rest of his body into the office, spilling over the messy carpet and feeling old staples digging themselves through his palms and through his trousers.
"This place is a dump!" Reggie complained, finally taking a moment to look around at the scenery Professor Holmes had left behind. "It's no wonder you walked away with incriminating personal content. I'm sure he'll hand over his house keys and social security number next time."
"At least we know it's the right place," Victor assured. He still felt shaky, and as he rose to his feet he still felt as if he was floating fifteen feet above the ground, the ghost of Reggie's hand still clasped tight within his palm. Nevertheless, he had a mission to complete. Grabbing the letter from his inside pocket, Victor looked around for the best place to set it. Not somewhere obvious, as it may be suspicious as to why Professor Holmes had overlooked it before, though not somewhere so complicated that he may never find it again. That would defeat the whole purpose.
"It smells like Bengay," Reggie complained. "And old people."
"Where should we hide it?" Victor wondered, ignoring his roommate's complaints as he tried to focus on their task at hand. Reggie squinted against the low light, looking through the desk and trying to come up with the most likely pile.
"What about that one there, with all the tests?" he suggested. Victor looked over the stack, the math unrecognizable, though the date was recent.
"I wouldn't want it to get caught in someone else's assignments, God forbid he hands them the letter along with their grade."
"Good point. They might not be so gallant as us," Reggie agreed with a smirk. "What about under his desk chair? Perhaps he rolled over it, and forgot it underfoot?"
"He would have checked the floor if he noticed it missing on Friday, which we have to assume he had."
"Right," Reggie agreed, humming in thought. Victor searched the desk for anything Professor Holmes had mixed around a lot the day of their study session, any likely piles or papers that would mask the letter well enough. Finally his eyes set upon the largest lump on the hardwood, the shape of a textbook piled with papers enough to camouflage it in the clutter.
"Perfect!" Victor exclaimed, reaching for the book with a celebratory grin. Reggie opened his mouth to comment, his face contorted into some confusion, though his words were stolen as another sound echoed through the hallway, another sound, a familiar sound....a thunk.
"Someone's here," Reggie whispered curiously, his eyebrow arching to wonder who would be wandering the halls at this time on a Saturday ngiht. He paused in an attempt to listen, to discern friend from foe, though Victor recognized the sound as soon as he heard it first. It was a wooden cane on marble flooring, sounding its way down the hall in a handy alert system. It was the sound he least wanted to hear, the sound of a crippled man in a hurry.
"It's him!" Victor insisted, throwing the letter madly upon the desk as he brace himself for the repercussions of his actions.
"Then get down there!" Reggie hissed, lunging at his roommate and pushing him madly towards the window.
"I can't, I can't! I don't know how!" Victor grabbed at Reggie in return, taking hold of his midriff and forcing him into the window instead. "You go first, I'll watch you, but hurry!"
The cane was getting closer, tap tap tapping on the floor as the man hobbled with fire underfoot. Victor might have known their adventures would be interrupted, he might have known the man had been preoccupied enough on Friday evening to neglect checking his bag ahead of time. He must have just noticed the letter's absence; he must have just wondered where on earth his sensitive words had gone...now only to panic in the horror of reality. He was hobbling fast, hobbling with a mission, hobbling for peace of mind.
"Out, get out!" Victor insisted, holding the window for his roommate as Reggie crawled up onto the ledge, dropping to his knees and feeling around underneath with a dangling foot, trying to catch upon the ladder at a safe place.
"It's far, I'm going to have to ease my way down. Give me a hand, will you?"
"I can't, it's...it's too late!" Victor was as panicked as he ever thought possible, he felt fire in his veins and a snare drum in his heart, with a talented musician tapping out a rhythm as fast as their wrists would allow. He would be caught, expelled, killed...what if Professor Holmes carried a gun? Oh, God forbid he was armed against burglars, still terrified with the shell shock that came along with surviving the war.
"I've got it!" Reggie declared, having latched his hands across the window frame and eased his hips onto the ledge, finally long enough to extent towards the topmost rung of the ladder.
The clang of keys upon the lock was obvious as anything that it was time to leave. Reggie's hands were still on the window sill, and there was no earthy way Victor would be able to maneuver so quickly or easily as his roommate. Unless he dove headfirst out of the window and hoped for the best he would be caught, and so in a panicked state and a sudden realization that his plan was not working, Victor decided he ought to hide instead.
Two doors worked simultaneously, the office door opening as the closet door was shutting, and with his breath in his throat Victor watched from the slightest crack between the wood and the door frame as Reggie's hands fell away from the window sill. Whether he had secured himself or he was doomed to fall backwards to his death, Victor could not tell, though the lack of a scream seemed to be a good indication that he had orchestrated his own retreat.
The light came on almost immediately, and Professor Holmes shut his door in a flare of his anxiety, obviously wishing for privacy as he dug through his papers in a panic. Victor still couldn't see him, though the sounds were telling enough. The sound of his cane against the rug was as distinct as a fingerprint, the struggled breathing of a man who had forgotten how it was to keep up a reasonable pace, the clatter of keys against the hook on the door. He was the very man Victor least wanted to see, and already he could hear the words of the letter listing off in his head, laughing at him as if he was a fool for considering this wizened old man to be innocent. To be emotionless.
"It's freezing in here," Professor Holmes announced to the seemingly empty office, finally bringing himself into view as he hobbled towards the open window. His coat was still on, a long dress coat that seemed about as old as his war wound, its long flaps hiding his limp well enough that he seemed to be just slow and awkward. His curls were obscured under a fedora, an outdated fashion for the time, though he wore it well above his pale face, his eyes still brilliant as ever, studying the window in a way any scientist would approach an unexplainable hypothesis.
Victor might have cursed his own idiocy, for as he saw the way the man pondered he realized he had neglected one key aspect of his plan. At the end of the day, sneaking the letter back onto the desk would require the recipient to have been careless at one point, to have missed something. If indeed Professor Holmes had searched for this letter, it suddenly seemed ridiculous that he would not have found it. This office was a mess, yes, though it was a mess of his own design. A mess with particular places, and particular assignments. Nothing was lost, even in such a visible disaster, though Victor should have been smart enough to realize that nothing got past Professor Holmes, not since that bullet in the war.
Thankfully, the Professor did not think to examine the outside world before he shut the window. With one hand he supported his weight, and with the other he pushed the window back into place, thankfully not noticing Reginald Musgrave clinging terrified to the ladder like a monkey hiding in a tree from a vicious rainforest beast. He thought for a moment, staring at his reflection in the darkened glass, before finally turning his attention to the desk. Victor could see his face now, which of course meant that one wrong glance from the old man would allow his position to be compromised. He took a risk in leaving a sliver in the door open for viewing, though Victor couldn't help but stare as the man recollected himself over top of his office desk, untying a scarf that had been knotted tightly around his neck and releasing his curls from underneath the battered old hat. Victor's curiosity had gotten the better of him, not just in watching how the letter was received, but also how his professor acted when he thought no one was watching. Unintentionally, Professor Sherlock Holmes had become the most interesting man in Victor's life. He was as much of an enigma as his exams were, and Victor had always known that one would have to be solved to crack the code of the other. Though perhaps there was something more to this grizzled war veteran than just equations and coordinate planes. There was humanity there, lost deep to the public eye, overshadowed by the pity that blinded any onlooker. There was something worth exploring within him, and, dare Victor admit if only to himself, now finally there was something that they shared.
"This is where you've been hiding?" Professor Holmes muttered, sending a horrible chill down Victor's spine on the off chance that those words were directed his way. Thankfully it was not so, as the man seemed to have been addressing the letter. He scooped it off of his desk with both hands, having set his walking stick against the wall, and held it thankfully to his chest, his eyes shutting exhaustedly and his lips parting to ease a sigh of relief. Victor could feel his anxiety melting away, his logic abandoning him as relief overwhelmed any sense of how or why the letter had appeared so sloppily on top of the rest of his papers. Perhaps this plan had been the right move after all, for Victor could only imagine the old man's panic if he returned to his office to find the letter missing. There would be suspicion, there would be horror, hell it might have killed the man if he imagined his secrets had found themselves in the wrong hands.
Victor hoped the visit was short, that this was his only agenda item when he roared violently into his office just moments ago. Certainly he was not a busy man, though it seemed a waste of a Saturday evening if it was spent in the office. Hopefully he had dinner reservations with a friend a little later, and would have to hurry back to his home to catch a ride, or perhaps a roommate would be here soon to pick him up after he collected a few items. In just a few minutes the man would be by the fireplace with an old friend, sharing stories about their time in grade school or in the war, or perhaps he'd be taking a crooked old dog out for an evening walk in the woods, crutching along through the underbrush after the scruffy thing. Maybe he was courting again, and would retreat to his home to daydream about his new love interest, unbothered by the exams he had yet to grade or the homework assignments he had not yet designed. Certainly he had somewhere to be, somewhere other than this empty old office, cold and unused on this wide open Saturday night. Though that would make this easy, wouldn't it? That would be far too convenient. Victor should tailor his expectations when considering this grumpy old veteran. He should begin lowering his expectations in regards to Professor Holmes's social calendar.
Sherlock Holmes sunk deep into his office chair, grabbing at his injured leg and pulling it into a more comfortable position, handling it as if the thing didn't have enough strength just to lift itself into a comfortable bend. He winced at the pain, his teeth grinding as he felt the pressure increase upon the old wound, having reported in his letter that it was becoming worse, discolored and more painful. Perhaps it was diseased, infected with old bacteria which had been shot into his body along with the bullet? Either way he looked to be a man in pain, and for a moment he leaned onto his desk, taking his forehead in his hands and wincing at the effort of staying seated. Victor mourned for the man, wondering if he was ever comfortable with such a wound, and began to realize why he would be so grumpy all of the time. Though certainly, certainly the man would leave soon?
Victor wanted to vanish as soon as possible, painfully aware that his roommate was dangling unaided off the side of the building, with the ladder obvious to any onlooker who had the sense to shine a flashlight in its general direction. Reggie didn't have the strength to pull it away from the building alone, and besides, it seemed as though Victor's only escape route would be down the ladder as well. It was a horrible prospect, so blood curling he half wished Sherlock Holmes would stay at his desk a little while longer, just giving the boy a moment to recollect his courage and his strength.
His wish seemed to be granted when finally Professor Holmes recollected himself, clearing his throat as if to reset himself as he shuffled closer to the desk, pulling the letter from its envelope and folding it neatly upon the wood in front of him. The man's eyes were thick with regret, and as he began to read he hung his head within his hand, leaning massively upon his own support as if to mourn the losses of the words he had pointlessly left. His updates were meaningless, his pleas unheard, his love unrequired. He had penned this letter only to be the first one (to his knowledge) to read it, and there was no point in absorbing his own layers of love. His old fingers trembled as he pushed the thing away, his eyes misting to know that he had been abandoned. As embarrassing as it was, and as nearly crippling as those desires had been, there was still passion within the words. There was still love so deep it seemed to have maintained itself throughout the decades, love so deep, and yet so ignored. Love so forgotten. Victor found himself hurting for the man, now pitying him more than just for his outward wounds of the war. If he had only been left with a shattered hip perhaps he could have still recovered, though to add a shattered heart as well...it was no wonder he found it so difficult to smile. It was no wonder he found peacetime more difficult than the war.
For a long while the two were caught in a stalemate, though Professor Holmes did not seem to notice that his excessive loitering was causing an inconvenience to his worst preforming student. Victor's legs were beginning to tremble with the effort of staying silent and still, worried that readjusting his posture would draw attention to the slight crack in the door, a motion of shadow drawing unwanted attention to the onlooker. He stood and he stared, understanding that he was invading the man's privacy though failing to truly feel the consequences of such actions. He didn't think himself to be hostile, for he didn't watch to find laughter or joy in the Professor's natural state. Victor watched from the point of an unknown ally, a friend in waiting, a kindred spirit that may never be recognized given their positions in life. Sherlock Holmes was similar to him, truly similar, and Victor felt his pain more recognizably than anyone else in this school. Though how could he ever step up to offer his support, without admitting to knowing Professor Holmes's secrets and without spilling his own?
The old man just sat there, his chin sat in his hands, staring blankly across the empty office. His eyes were glassy, his brain overwhelmed, straight backed in his chair and motionless, his feet flat and still on the floor despite the natural human urge to slowly spin when in a wheeled office chair. Motion must hurt him, though it would seem the man struggled with other pains, those which were to be found when life got a little too quiet, a little too slow. Victor was beginning to wonder if he would sit here for the rest of the night, if the man would sleep in his office without the stamina or motivation to crutch his way back home. Perhaps Victor would have to make himself comfortable in the piles of papers, finding space in the cardboard boxes which held notes and files, tests of students long graduated or even long dead. He would sleep here until morning, escape by the light of day, and show up to class on Monday without Professor Holmes knowing any better. Or at least that was the most probable option, probable until he heard the first round of thundering footsteps across the hallway.
They came fast and loud, the old building shuddering under such outrageous energy, the foundations shuddering and the empty halls screaming with the echoes of the sudden chaos. Again a round of footsteps went shooting past the door, this time accompanied by a whoop of pure ecstasy, an unknown figure rocketing through the mathematics hallway as if it was the 100 meter dash. Victor felt a breath of relief pass his lips, for even without proper confirmation he could feel in his heart that Reggie had come to save him. He could not tell for sure, for nothing about the newcomer was remarkably his style, though Victor's heart felt lighter, happier, as if it could sense that its counterpart was being ridiculous on the other side of this old plaster wall.