Nᴏᴛ Gᴀʏ {Tᴇᴇɴ/Jᴏʜɴʟᴏᴄᴋ}

№ 27 [Part Two]

The two of us trudged back outside, me leaning against Sherlock in order to be convincing to the man that I'd had to much to drink. His arm wrapped around my back as he held my weight, and I made sure to mumble a few things that I vaguely remembered Sherlock saying when he'd gotten a concussion. He sort of smirked when I did so. I liked how he looked when he smirked.

We heard the door swinging open and turned to see the man coming outside with us. "I'll wait with you," he said. "Don't want you vandalising my house or my brand new car."

"Oh, we wouldn't," Sherlock said a bit too nicely, and we inched forward a bit more when I felt something hit my right toe.

"What I've learnt, boy," said the man, his voice mean and scruffy, "is that you can never trust kids like the two of you."

Looking down, I tried to nonchalantly scrape the snow off of the object I'd hit. Sherlock noticed this and gave me an excited glance before trying to convince the man to go back inside.

"It's cold," he said. "You really shouldn't be staying out here so long. You can watch us through the window inside, you know."

The man merely grunted and proceeded to lean against the wall.

My shoe getting the snow off of the surface of the object below, I nudged Sherlock gently when I realised that, beneath us in the deep, white snow, was exactly the evidence we needed.

The gun.

Sherlock turned to me quickly and began whispering at a rapid speed. His lips were stiffened in the cold, and my mind sinfully wandered to ways of which I could warm them up again. His arm tightened around my shoulders as he tried to conceal our conversing, his body still supporting my weight wholeheartedly.

"Don't touch it," he whispered. "You'll put your fingerprints on the evidence and then risk smudging his away. We need to guard it, though, so he can't run off with it. And we want him back inside the house before the police come so he can't run away without spending minutes grabbing winter gear."

I nodded. "What if he-"

"Hey," said the man abruptly. "What's that down by your feet?" His voice was low and intimidating, and I tried my best not to look terrified and to keep my drunken composure. Sherlock took a breath and shrugged.

"A rock," he replied flatly. "Or maybe it's a block of ice. Why are you so curious?"

I felt my own fingers tightening around his arm, and he comfortingly did the same after a moment of awkward and reluctant hesitation. His breathing was nervous now, silent but quick and shallow. The man wasn't convinced, obviously. He knew what it was. He knew we had found his gun.

"Step away from it," he growled.

"Step away from what?" Sherlock teased, nudging me and nodding slightly toward the gun. I kept my eyes on it, planning my move to grab it and tensing up so I could when the time came.

"The item beneath your feet," he replied. "Take five large steps back."

"Why?" Sherlock asked, teasing the man with his voice and me with the placement of his hand. "It's not a gun or anything." He smirked and narrowed his eyes, and the man took a slow step over to us.

"I'm gonna take him down," Sherlock whispered, and I quickly gripped his arm with my hand again.

"No," I breathed, "you're not. You need to take care of your head still, remember?"

"I'm gonna take him down," he repeated again, and I elbowed him roughly in the ribs.

"Take the gun, Sherlock."

He turned to me and furrowed his brow. "What? That's your job."

The man then started to run toward us. I gasped and threw Sherlock to the ground behind me. "I said take the gun!" I ordered him, and that was when the man made contact with my body.

I had braced myself. My feet stayed planted as he rammed into my chest, and I gave him a desperate blow to the left cheek with my knuckles as he tried to get past me, his fingers grasping at the tail of Sherlock's coat. He covered his cheek with his hand then, giving me enough time to knock him to the ground and pin his hands to the concrete step.

My breathing wavered as I stared down at him, watching the gears turning in his head as he realised that I wasn't actually drunk and that we knew. I heard Sherlock inhale sharply behind me then, and I watched his coat swishing around in my peripheral vision.

"John."

I gathered my breath to calm my surging heartbeat, swallowing and taking a shallow, controlled breath in as to keep from hyperventilating. "What is it?"

His voice was excited and terrified and uneasy and had an air of gleeful accomplishment all at the same time as he replied, "I was right."

"Right?" I asked. "About what?"

The man beneath me tried to shrug me off, but I put my left knee on his shoulder to help keep him down. I turned a bit and watched Sherlock's face. He looked shocked. Shocked that he was right? That didn't make any sense. Not to me.

He hadn't picked up the gun, most likely so we wouldn't ruin the evidence. But he stared down at it now as he explained, "This is the same gun that was used to shoot you in the shoulder." He turned to the man and pointed at him with an outstretched, gloved finger. "You shot John Watson in the shoulder."

"Bastard!" the man hollered back at him. "You tricked me into letting you into my home! It was a whole setup and I was just doing the kind thing!"

"Doing the kind thing, was it? Was that your excuse when your wife took the kids and divorced you due to your complete shit personality? Was that what you said about hitting the dog on the head with the shovel? About beating the children when they forgot to do the dishes?" His eyes darted over the man's body again and again as he spoke, until he lowered his hand and added, "Is that your excuse for shooting my... um..." He waved a hand in the air at me as he tried to figure it out.

"What?" I asked. "Oh. Um... Friend."

"...Flatmate."

"Friend."

He looked blank for a few moments then, but eventually moved on with his little speech. "You have those memory pills in your home. I know because John spotted one on the floor. Once the authorities arrive, is that what you'll tell them? 'Oh, I was just doing the kind thing to do?' Piss off."

The man growled at him, wriggling under my weight. "How'd you know about my wife? And the kids? And the dog?"

"Those three traits are always associated with cheating, lying, filthy scumbags. I just used an educated guess based solely on probability and also partially on personal protectiveness. I'm sure you've heard of that." Sherlock laughed then. It was a terrifying laugh. "Honestly, though, you're a pretty open book. It's obvious just by the way you're worried about your cars instead of a plastered college kid because you have no emotional connections with anyone so you turn your insecurities into materialism. I could go on for minutes on how obvious you are. But you'd probably forget it right away, being the goldfish you are..."

The man stared lividly at him. "You... cock."

"Mm." Sherlock agreed coolly. "I get that a lot."

He nodded under me. "No shit."

And I nodded. "No shit."

Sherlock smirked and furrowed his brow playfully. "Shut up, John."

I laughed because that was all I could do. But there was such a big part of me that wanted so badly to stand up and say, Then make me.