"Look, Victor," Reggie insisted between bites of mashed potato, pushing a folded flyer across the dining room table for his roommate to inspect. Victor squinted at the thing, cursing the low light that was intentionally hung over the dining hall so as to deter students from doing any homework in the midst of their unlimited buffet. If a student was occupied they could sit for hours, eat for hours, and drain this cursed university for every dime of their overcharged meal plan. Better to have them squinting, better to have their heads aching with the effort. Better to have them anywhere else but here.
"Basketball tryouts!" Victor exclaimed, letting his fork drop for the mere moment it took to give a clap of enthusiasm, trying to conjure any ounce of energy that was still left after this mammoth of a school week.
"On the 10th of November," Reggie agreed. "Three weeks from now."
"It's a bit early of a notice, isn't it?" Victor wondered, spearing his knife into his chicken breast without the motivation to saw through it. Instead he held it upon on the blade, balancing it like a barbarian and taking a great gnaw from the most appealing side.
"They probably want to give the poor souls ample warning, as I'm sure they haven't been practicing at all this fall," Reggie guessed, withdrawing the paper with a sign only to read over it once more.
"What makes you say that?"
"Because I've been practicing, and I haven't seen one sad lad there all year!"
"Perhaps they don't need to practice; perhaps they're just that good."
"Basketball is a repetitive art. You can't get any better if you don't practice, nor can you maintain your skills be being dormant."
"Have you gotten any better?" Victor wondered, tilting his head slightly if only to bite at a new angle on his chicken. Reggie frowned a bit, suddenly unenthused with his dinner.
"Well...a little bit."
"Practice makes perfect, for those who are already decent. Practice for you makes half decent."
"At least you're being optimistic!" Reggie snarled, smacking Victor across the head with the flyer still clutched in his fist. It made for a nasty knuckle shot, one which made Victor flinch away with a squeal.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I haven't seen you practice lately...perhaps a miracle has occurred and you can," Victor leaned backwards for this one, to avoid the reach of Reggie's arm; "...you can make two free throws in a row!"
"Oh I've had it with you!" Reggie threw his fork when he realized his fist would not suffice, though it bounced off Victor's shoulder without much harm and clattered to the floor. "If your calculus is any indication of my basketball skills it would be a wonder I could even pick the ball up from the floor!"
"You have me there," Victor agreed with a giggle. He liked it when Reggie was angry, just angry enough to be flushed but not enough to cause a legitimate fight. After the basketball party it seemed as though both boys had grown exhausted of fighting. The topic matters had grown stale, the wounds had at least grown a thick scab, and before long even Victor was bored of challenging his roommate on how he spent his time. Their lives were interconnected in many ways, though it would seem as though their two knew hobbies were better unreported, unshared. Victor didn't want to know how much Reggie smoked with the basketball team the night before, and Reggie would vomit to know that Victor had hugged Professor Holmes Monday afternoon. There were some things better left unsaid, and with those silences laughter could overcome what used to be an unnecessarily tense relationship. Victor could be happy for his roommate, so long as Reginald could keep his questions to himself.
"I think I'll start practicing every day now. Maybe I'll even see some of the boys down in the gym, and get to play one on one."
"I could play one on one with you," Victor offered, in a very fatherly attempt of being supportive.
"You?" Reggie chuckled, obviously doubtful.
"As if I'm any worse than you! Besides, I can be a body in the way. Maybe not a professional body, but I can jump, and I can do this!" Victor dropped his dinner to raise his hands above his head, waving them back and forth at such a speed he felt he ought to get recruited for the team immediately. The dining hall quieted around them, as if the students closest to them had lost focus on their own conversations the moment Victor acted out, though he had grown old enough not to care about what anyone else thought. He couldn't even recognize the closest most judgmental onlookers, if he could even remember their faces at all.
"That's real talent there! Come on then, finish your dinner Mr. Athlete. I'll see what you've got."
"I'll have you vomiting those mashed potatoes, vomiting with sheer embarrassment!"
"Ew, Victor."
"It's trash talk!" Victor defended, folding his arms over the table, suddenly too excited to finish his meal.
"It's a bit much," Reggie sighed, looking down at his mashed potatoes now without much enthusiasm.
"See, I scared you, didn't I?" Victor pointed out. Reggie's stare was blank. 

As Reginald had predicted, the gym was empty when the two boys arrived. Not even the posting of the basketball tryouts was enough to spurn the students to the gym, if of course anyone else had the chance to read it. Perhaps Reginald had a plan to tear down all the flyers around the school, if only to ensure no other student showed up. Reggie had to turn on the lights upon their arrival, finding that the janitors had already assumed the courts would be empty for the evening.
As the large overhead lights heated up, the gym was cast in a strange orange glow, as if embers were smoking above their heads. Victor dropped his school bag on the bleachers, scuffing his shoes nervously against the slick gym floor and remembering the tread was almost nonexistent on his fine pair of leather loafers. Certainly he would have to play barefoot, if he had any chance at all to win.
"Do you carry that thing with you everywhere?" Victor wondered, hearing the bouncing of the basketball before he could turn to see it.
"Actually I've taken to leaving it here. Hiding it up in the second row, seat 214."
"Our room number?" Victor chuckled upon recognition.
"So I don't forget," Reggie agreed. The ball bounced a couple of more times as Victor worked on getting his shoes off, and as he struggled the lights finally switched to their full capacity, illuminating the gym in the familiar yet suddenly aggressive fluorescent.
"So my goal here isn't to score any points," Victor admitted. "It's to stop you from making them. So for round one I'll just sit over here, and see if my being active has any impact on your potential to miss."
"Oh stop that," Reggie growled. "I've actually become quite decent."
"I'll be the judge of that," Victor decided, bouncing up and down on bare feet and wincing to feel the heel of his foot slamming into the unforgiving wooden floors.
"We'll play for a half hour. Whoever has the most points wins," Reggie suggested.
"I can't shoot," Victor complained.
"According to you, neither can I. So it'll be fair!"
"Yeah, yeah. Bring it on then," Victor decided with a grind of his teeth.
Bounding onto the court, Victor made an immediate lunge for the ball, attempting and failing to swipe it from Reggie's hands while the boy stood waiting. Reggie laughed, pulling away and beginning the game with the first allowed dribble, showing off his practiced control as he made it up and down the court twice with Victor in tow. The poor boy's dinner was heavy in his stomach, and as he chased he felt like a dog, overly excited and working at a pace that would not sustain itself. Eventually Victor slowed, standing on one side of the court firmly, trying to insist they keep their game evenly sectioned.
"Half court," Victor insisted.
"What, tired already?" Reggie challenged with a laugh, dribbling the ball back and forth and even through his legs, which seemed already a natural movement for the boy.
"Yes," Victor admitted. He threw his hands in the air again, moving towards the net and flailing around in hopes that stagnation would do him better than meaninglessly chasing.
"You have to get closer than that, you can't block from there."
"I can jump!" Victor defended, hopping around in an attempt to demonstrate his height.
"If it's going over your head there's nothing you can do about it!" Reggie lined up for a shot to prove his point, and to Victor's surprise (and relief, honestly) the thing sank easily into the basket.
"Like that!" Reggie exclaimed happily. Victor couldn't help but smile, grabbing the ball and dribbling it childishly across to the edge of the court, bouncing it uncontested as Reginald relished in his first point. The boy squeaked his bare feet against the floor, trying to line up a shot that seemed likely to go in, and threw the ball so hard against the backboard that it soared almost perfectly back into Reginald's hands.
"Good pass," Reggie mocked, grabbing the ball and giving a couple more dribbles for good measure. "Now get over here and defend. That's why you're here is to get in my way!"
"I'm an expert at that," Victor agreed, snickering as he lunged towards his roommate again. This time Reggie dribbled around him, faking him out to where he wanted to lunge one way and was left dangling as his roommate turned on a dime and went dribbling the opposite direction. Victor stumbled around for a moment, and by the time he had turned enough to start running towards the net Reggie had already completed a layup, his feet landing at just the same time as the ball when it shimmied neatly through the net.
"Easy," Reggie bragged. Victor sighed, wiping the first bead of sweat from his brow and nodding for a moment.
"Okay, so I see you're a worthy opponent," Victor chuckled, clapping his hands together. "Then I won't play around with you anymore," he assured. "I'll go for real now."
"It would be my pleasure to beat you at your best," Reggie agreed, bouncing the ball towards Victor to even out the opportunity.

The game did not get any better for the poor boy. From missed shot to hitting the floor to sore feet to a ball getting smashed against his fingers, Victor could hardly say he enjoyed one moment of the thirty minutes they played together. For every point Reginald scored Victor seemed to get more discouraged, and for every point Victor made Reggie seemed to make ten. Though it was not about Victor's score, his own success didn't matter at all. Instead it was Reginald who deserved the spotlight; it was Reginald whose skills were suddenly unmatched. It was clear he had truly dedicated himself to this sport, as he had gone from bad to at least fair, with each of his uncontested shots at least hitting the rim and many of his free throws sinking easily. A couple of times his throws were lazy or uncoordinated, and sometimes Victor would get lucky and slap his fingers against the ball, disrupting the trajectory and sending the ball off target. But mostly Reginald kept good control, sinking more shots than he missed, and overall keeping at such a good pace that he was hardly fatigued by the end of their miniature game. He had transformed himself into an athlete, or at least a marginally passable player, and Victor could not help but smile in satisfaction. He had been crushed in this miniature session, though he had hope for his friend's future. Enough to support him all the way through, with now some fleeting hope that he may sit in the stands one day and watch Reginald play for real. 

Victor sat through his geology class with his calculus notes spread in front of him on his desk, very obviously absorbed in his homework and study guides while Professor Mildred rambled on and on about water flow and gravity, the connection between the two, and, presumably, what any of that had to do with rocks. It was an easy class, one Victor had come to appreciate not for its content but instead for its ease, one which fit well into his schedule on the defense that engineers would have to work with bedrock one day. He spent most of his time daydreaming in geology, or during the days before a calculus exam he was already beginning to cram for the next morning starting at ten o'clock Thursday. Such was his plight this morning, with his eyes still crusted around the lids and his yawns heavier and heavier. He had his calculus book open on the counter beside him, his notes spread out on the desk and his lap, his pen writing furiously to match the notes left by Professor Holmes during their most emotional meeting on Monday. None of the content matter had absorbed during that meeting, though Victor was happy to see the man had annotated his notes, seeming to have noticed Victor's empty stare throughout the duration.
Professor Holmes had given him a smile yesterday almost as soon as he had walked through the door, a smile that was not meant to be kind or full of heart. No, it was a teasing sort of smile, the sort that was offered when someone achieved something impossible. It was a winner's smile, to show that Victor should have confidence in his longevity. And yet he spent the entire class period sitting down, pointing with a small handheld laser rather than the aggressive pointer stick that sat along the edge of the chalkboard. He had seemed much too pained to walk, and as the man had packed his briefcase for the walk to his office victor heard the rattling of a pill bottle, most definitely a container filled with the sort of pain medications strong enough to numb an injury forty years old. The man was showing as much resilience as anyone could in this stage of their life, though Victor worried for him. He worried like he had not worried for even his own relatives. He could hardly enjoy a moment in the man's presence without worrying whether there would be another opportunity, dreading the moment he was lost but grinding his teeth throughout these last couple of weeks, feeling a guilty dichotomy of wanting to be at the man's side and wanting to leave him alone until company was required. Victor wanted to spend every waking moment in Sherlock Holmes's presence, on the off chance that any minute that ticked on the clock would be his last, though the idea of acknowledging their friendship more than he already had made the boy sick to his stomach.
He was embarrassed by his actions on Monday, even if he did not regret them. He was embarrassed about admitting his love for Reggie, as true as it was. He had over glorified Sherlock Holmes's love story, to the point where he had to imagine that Professor Holmes would care about his own with such vigor. But no, he forbid it, he scorned it, he begged Victor to reconsider before he did anything rash. The Professor brought a much more realistic view to the relationship, while Victor was still clouded with the romanticism of it all. He didn't even want to know who it was that Victor had fallen for, as if it mattered not to him if it was a match made in Heaven or a match made in Hell. Either way, it was illegal. Either way he seemed to presume it was going to condemn Victor to a fate as depressing as his. But in the end, Victor had still done the impossible. In the end he had still managed to admit to his feelings, to speak at least part of the truth to someone who would not judge him unfairly. Yes, Professor Holmes was harsh, but it was not anger which stirred his emotions, he did not see Victor as lesser than, or criminal. He feared for the boy, he pitied him, and in some ways Victor was sure he envied him. Either way, it was a reaction brought about by deep care, a love that only grew with the confession, a connection that was secured by their mutual attraction to criminality.
But it was not Sherlock Holmes's personal life that Victor had to master; it was not his rethinking of their conversation that would be demonstrated on the exam tomorrow. He was in deeper trouble with the registrar than he would ever be with the law, and at the moment he was much closer to getting thrown out of college than thrown in jail. He had to focus, no matter the cost, and somehow he had to master the questions that still looked like a bunch of gibberish thrown together, with a step by step process that must be faked by all who attempted it in a worldwide conspiracy to make Victor look stupid. Yes, that was the only explanation. Sir Isaac Newton must have had it out for him.