Chapter Text
John Watson is an over eager med student in a ridiculously large university. This school wasn’t his choice, his major was hardly his choice but with over zealous and overbearing parents here he landed. Luckily John’s dorm mate ended up becoming a very close friend, a med student as well, Mike Stamford.
Mike was the type of guy you could call any hour of the night and he’d have the energy to run a marathon but would rather not. He’s dependable in every sense of the word and funny too, making dorm life all that much easier for John. In a stressful college environment it was difficult to find moments of actual relaxation or fun for that matter. So, when Mike brought up a party in the neighboring dorm building they jumped at the chance.
“Are you sure we’re invited?” John asks, dropping his school bag on his bed having just gotten back his classes for the day, the weekend upon them.
“Everyone is invited. It’s not formal.” Mike scoffs at him picking an outfit out of his dresser in an attempt to look cool. Of which he really wasn’t.
“That’s not what I was saying.” John rolls his eyes and sits on the edge of his bed with a sigh, kicking off his shoes.
“Hey. Don’t get all comfortable. Get ready, I don’t want to be the last ones there.” Mike frowns at John’s reflection in the mirror.
“If it’s going all night -like you said- then there’s no such thing as the last one there. We’ll be fine. I just need a nap first” John yawns afterwards mostly just for the effect and flops back on the bed
“How old are you? It’s not even dark out.” Mike rolls his eyes and turns to John with his hands on his hips. Wearing some ridiculous Hawaiian shirt with blues and pinks and strangely sparkles.
“Please don’t wear that. You look like my dead grandfather.” John stares at Mike with a look of pure horror at the appalling shirt.
“Come on. It’s not that bad.” Mike looks down at himself, seeming to actually like it.
“I’ll help you mate if you just let me sleep for at least an hour. I’m exhausted and after I rest then we can party all night, I promise.” John offers giving the shirt one last look of disgust to further his point.
Mike sighs and starts unbuttoning the shirt, John falls asleep within minutes. It had been a stressful week, his classes were clear across campus and being so close to the end of this semester every assignment was getting longer and harder to accomplish. His brain was effectively fried by this point and all he wanted was sleep but a party did sound like fun. Not to mention he’d had no time for a social life outside of Mike before this.
So an hour later Mike woke him, John helped him pick an outfit and dressed himself. They ended up going casual, this was college after all no one is actually dressing up. By the time they made it to the adjoining dorm building -a case of beer in hand because you can’t show up empty handed in Mike’s expert opinion- it was dark outside.
“I thought this was the drugs dorm.” John says dryly standing outside the front door with Mike as they wait for someone to come let them in. The dorm was labeled the “drugs dorm” for exactly the reason it sounds like. All the drugs that ended up inside the campus were funneled through this dorm, a very secret yet public operation that somehow never got found out which of the many crazy drug addicts in this dorm building were doing it all. Eventually the campus managers just got tired of it and condemned the building altogether.
“It is. That’s why the party is happening here. Everyone else is too scared of being suspended.” Mike points out holding his coat around himself tightly against the chilly air coming at them.
“Is this a dumb idea? You know I think we’re asking for trouble just walking into this building.” John says shaking his head to himself and holding the beers close and his coat closed with his free hand.
“Don’t be such a prude.” Mike bumps his shoulder into John’s lightly as a group of people are heading out of the building and they quickly shuffle inside after them.
“Okay.. now what?” John asks as they stand in the eerie common room of the first floor, a few people smoking in the corners.
“Follow me.” Mike motions him on knowing where it was being held. They walk along the corridors for a few minutes, the entire building smelled of smoke that made John’s stomach churn, he’d never been a fan of it. Eventually they start to hear the thumping of a bass and the sound of music, following the sound they eventually come to what must have been a conference room at one point.
There’s people in the hallway leading up to it lining the walls, a lot of them couples making out or going even further. Mike and John do their best not to look too hard at anything’s focusing on getting to the door but the further they go the more John feels like this was a mistake. Eventually they reach the open door and by that point the music was especially loud, thudding what felt like through John’s very bones.
They enter the space and it just seemed like bodies on top of each other, the crowd was unlike anything John had experienced before. Waves of people moving in sync almost like a live organism, sharing a brain. John holds Mike's arm instinctively so they don’t get separated and noticing a clearing far left so he sticks to the wall and tugs Mike along.
It took at least a minute of avoiding people and squeezing along the wall until finally they reached the clearing and on this side of the room even the music was quieter. There were still a lot of people but space to move around and pulling Mike along even further John spots a separate room on the far wall and pulls him into it.
The room was much calmer with only a handful of people inside, all seeming very relaxed. Probably a drug induced relaxation but it was much better from the mob just next door. It felt almost like a dream, everyone appeared in slow motion. John looked at Mike and Mike looked at him then back to the group of people lounging around on couches and smoking. John cleared his throat.
Only a few turned his way, the rest either too high to notice or just didn’t care past the rest of the noise going on not too far away. What caught John’s eye and held it was the curly haired man who seemed to be staring into his very soul and time really did stand still.
The man’s green gold wild eyes stared through him in a way he’d never felt before. His loose curly black hair framed his face and he sat on a red couch across the room, his long legs sprawled out in front of him lazily, a cigarette hanging loosely from his hand.
Then the moment broke.
Another man, one John recognized as Jim Moriarty, he had the highest IQ in the whole college and never quite talking about it, not to mention some rich parents. Jim slid his arm around the curly haired man’s shoulders almost sensually making him turn his gaze away, Jim offered him some sketchy looking pipe that he took.
“John!” Mike was whisper shouting into his ear and shaking his shoulder
“What?” John turns to him having totally forgotten where they were or what they were doing.
“That’s Jim Moriarty. You know what everyone says about him.” Mike whispers to John
“Yes, shut up.” John pulls Mike away into a corner before he could get them kicked out. Almost everyone believed Jim was the one smuggling the drugs in and with the money his family had it’s not like they would kick him out even if he was doing it. Nothing has been proven of course. “Whose that with him?”
Mike looks over at the curly haired man from where they’d settled into the corner like the two awkward outcasts they were. “Holmes I think. One of ‘em anyway. I don’t know which one.”
John looks back at the man puffing smoke out of the pipe and practically falling into Jim’s chest. Whether that was just their relationship or it was the drugs pushing them to be so intimate was unclear but John couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of him.
He didn’t know much about the Holmes name but he’d heard of it, same as Moriarty, they were rich. Big donors to the college and funded many events they had, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes both attended but one had graduated a few years before. John could not for the life of him remember which one was the older one. He wished he’d paid more attention to the local gossip now, it never used to be of much use to him.
John and Mike mostly stayed in that corner, sipping on their own beers and just observing the wild behaviors in front of them. Mike was too awkward to actually go talk to anyone and John was too fixed on watching Holmes. At one point Jim was lounging on the couch stretched over the whole thing and Holmes was laying between Jim’s legs with his head on his chest seeming to be almost asleep drifting in some sort of drug induced haze. They seemed like lovers. Some part of John wished they weren’t though he didn’t know why.
John was straight.
Very straight.