The next day was a Saturday, and John's great plans for the afternoon included watching Pointless Celebrities with his only remaining flatmate, and perhaps a film later on. Instead, a phone call got him getting dressed and going out in a snap.
"John. I know perhaps you are not in good terms with me right now, but Lestrade has just phoned me…", Sherlock had said, with voice more enthusiastic than hesitant.
John smiled and shook his head. This guy…
"It's alright, Sherlock. I told him I would go with you whenever it was necessary, so just tell me your address and I'll pick you up."
"Ah… In fact I'm already half way there… I'm texting you the crime scene's address."
And he hung up, just like that. The message with the address chirped when John was already putting his trousers on.
It took John around twenty minutes to arrive; it was rather near, since John's flat was in Lambeth and the crime had taken place in Brixton, so in the same side of the river. During the short underground trip, John mulled over Sherlock's words. 'Not in good terms with Sherlock', he had said. Wasn't it the other way around? I'm not mad at him or anything, John thought, sighing. It was expectable that he reacted like that, sure. But it wouldn't have been honest on my part to pretend I was planning on a future with him. Or would it? Hell, I don't know anymore!
He didn't know, either, what kind of greeting would Sherlock give him right then, if he would be glad to see him or not, but it turned out that he didn't need to fret that much. Because as soon as he arrived to the location, surrounded by yellow tape, an ambulance and three police cars, he found Sherlock already there, deep in heated conversation with Lestrade. He approached them, still on the outer side of the police tape, and when Lestrade saw him Sherlock noticed his presence and turned towards him.
"Ah, John, here you are at last! Please tell Lestrade I am mature enough to see the corpse."
John opened his mouth, slightly shocked, but nothing came out.
"Sherlock…" the D.I. said, gritting his teeth and looking around awkwardly. "I'm breaking a lot of rules by having you here. I'm not comfortable allowing you to fulfil your… morbid curiosity examining a dead man."
"It's not 'morbid'! How I am to get a whole picture of the crime if I am not able to see the body?"
Sherlock grew frustrated by the moment. In the end John crossed under the tape to intervene. A dark-skinned woman in a blue overall came closer at once, frowning, but Lestrade waved her and told her it was alright. The woman glanced at Sherlock and John with suspicion, but said nothing and soon turned away and came back to her work.
"D.I. Lestrade, I am an army doctor, apart from Sherlock's teacher", John said, slightly uncertain. "Can I take a look at the body and assess if it's alright for Sherlock to see it?"
Lestrade made a show of sighing in defeat and gestured John to go on. John approached the corpse, covered in a black fabric, and retired the cover with care, trying not to touch anything. He noticed a group of onlookers gasping at the view, but Lestrade's voice asking them to circulate arrived to John's ears in a moment. In fact, he couldn't take his eyes from the dead man's body. It had been a couple of years since the last time he had seen someone dead, and although a part of him obviously found the sight ghastly, he couldn't deny that another part of him found it oddly fascinating. Thrilling. Even if this time he wasn't in front of an autopsy table, his mind was already running over the details of the wounds. Stab wound between the third and the fourth ribs. Another one a little lower, most certainly piercing the liver. That one could be the cause of the death.
He soon felt, more than saw, Sherlock's presence at his side. He didn't say anything, but after a moment he crouched as well and started murmuring.
"Around twenty-five years old, male. According to his visible piercings, haircut and style of clothing, I would say he was a petty criminal or at least he was acquaintance with some of them. He didn't live with his family; perhaps he lived on his own or with a casual partner. Used to physical work, but not by hobby. Boxes! He worked carrying heavy boxes". John turned to look at him in awe, but he didn't dare to say anything that could break Sherlock's focus. "He met with someone here, in this back street. At lunch time, perhaps; the street must be deserted at that time". He raised his eyes to look at John. The doctor checked the time of the death according the degree of rigidity of the body and nodded. Sherlock went on, reassured. "The murderer is a man, around his age. He lives or works in the neighbourhood, but not exactly here. He knew the street and what time it would be fine to meet someone and stab him in the middle of the day, without it being very noticeable at once, allowing him to walk away from the crime scene and get mixed with the crowds before someone called the police".
Lestrade came closer, crouching by their side, and bite his lower lip, thoughtful.
"You are making it up, Sherlock. There's no way we can check all of that".
"I'm not making it up!" the boy lashed out. "I'm observing! That's what I do, and that's what you policemen are supposed to do, too! So if you are not going to do your job, at least shut up and let me do it for you!"
John flinched. The Detective stood up, red with anger, and John pulled Sherlock's sleeve before the man exploded.
"Out!" Lestrade shouted. "I've had enough of you for today, brat. Get out of here right now."
He turned and walked away, fuming.
"Text me if you find something else!" Sherlock called out while John dragged him to the other side of the yellow tape.
They walked in silence for a minute, stepping away from the passer-byes and the police cars, and when they were almost turning around the corner, Sherlock asked:
"Well, that was interesting. What do you think?"
John huffed.
"What do I think? I think, for once, that you have a problem knowing when you should close your mouth or talk with restraint, that's for sure."
It was Sherlock's turn to scoff.
"Oh, that… Not important. The crime, John! What do you think about the crime?"
"What would I know?" John's sighed. He looked back at Sherlock's face, who was staring at him, eager. "Okay, you are really enjoying playing detectives…"
"I'm not playing! This is a real crime, and a criminal is out there, really close, and he's waiting to be chased and arrested."
"And here I thought I had won you for a Chemistry major…" John smiled, shaking his head.
But Sherlock was intent in tracking down the murderer, and he pulled John to the nearest tube station, so the only option left to him was following Sherlock and watch him type furiously on his phone once in the carriage.
"Where are we going?" he asked, only to be shushed by Sherlock.
They went out only a stop away, and John almost had to run to keep up with the long strides of the boy. He cursed.
"Sherlock! Mind to tell me where are we going, or what are we looking for?"
"But you already know that, John! We are looking for the murderer!"
John stopped in the middle of the street and reached for Sherlock's wrist. The young man turned to look at him, clearly annoyed.
"I'm not taking a step further until you give me some explanations", John stated, his face as stern as he could make it.
The boy sighed, impatient, but he gave in.
"I'll try to explain… This is so frustrating, John… At least keep on walking, would you?" John nodded and they started to walk again, slower than before. The teacher almost expected that Sherlock started to run in any given moment, leaving him behind. "Ok… We are searching for a petty criminal of the area, someone young, hence one of the weak links of a solid criminal chain, I would say. Is this clear so far?" John nodded again. He couldn't guess how Sherlock could be so convinced, just by seeing the body, but he relied on Sherlock's observation skills, so perhaps he was right after all. It didn't seem far fetched, to be honest. "Alright. So we just need to find a pub where the people like him meet in the evening."
"Do you expect those places to be advertised in the press or something?" John grinned.
"Almost. It only took me a short search in Google maps to find the most promising one. We are going there to take a look at the faces and try to gather some gossip."
John laughed and shook his head again.
"What happens?" Sherlock asked, uncertain for the first time in the evening. "Do you think I'm wrong?"
"No, it's not that… It's just… you are amazing, Sherlock."
The boy smiled warmly at him and kept walking.
"It's here."
The pub Sherlock pointed at didn't look different to others in the area to John, but once he crossed the door he couldn't deny the atmosphere was a tad different. He couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was, but suddenly he was ready to trust in Sherlock's theory and in the fact that a murderer was one of the regulars of that pub. When they reached the bar counter he felt a number of eyes boring into them. Unwelcoming eyes, he would add.
"Is this lad eighteen?" the bartender asked in a rasp voice, eyeing Sherlock suspiciously.
"Of course." Sherlock feigned offense and took out his wallet. "Do you want to see my ID?"
"Nah, keep that. So?"
"A beer for me, and a coke for him", John ordered. As soon as the man was at the other side of the counter, he hissed to Sherlock: "Do you have a fake ID? How come?"
The boy shrugged.
"I thought it might come handy. It's housemade, relax. It's not like I paid someone to get a fake ID. But I think I made a good work of it. In fact, I would have been glad to test it on this bartender and see if it worked."
John tried to keep a straight face when he took his beer and thanked the sturdy man. For the first time in their association, the teacher started to think that hanging out with Sherlock could be dangerous for his health.
"Do I dare to ask what you are going to do now?" he sighed.
"It's the first time I do something like this… I guess we should try to blend, or everybody will close their mouth when we are around."
John gave a squinted look at Sherlock. Did he want to blend with that kind of people wearing his usual black silk shirt and elegant jacket? Good luck with that.
"Sherlock, you are lucky I'm here…" John said at last. "Consider a change of outfit next time you wish to blend with other people."
Sherlock looked surprised, but he masked it well under a tiny smile when John started to ask the bartender about the outcome of the last days' football matches, given that he had been camping with friends and couldn't see the matches on the telly. After a while, a small crowd was cranked on the counter, commenting the best moments of that week's football in loud voices. Sherlock skulked, and John only saw him again when he came back and pulled from his jacket to call his attention. John paid their drinks and followed the teen.
"I know where he's hiding, John!" Sherlock hissed when they had barely reached the door.
John, face red from the beer and the warmth of the pub, looked at Sherlock agape. How much time had they been inside the pub? Less than half an hour, for sure. Where had Sherlock eavesdropped that data?
Sherlock grinned at seeing his astonished face.
"Don't worry, I was at the arcade machine, and I heard two girls who were playing billiards. Once you started that conversation about football, everybody seemed to relax and turned again to their normal conversation topics. You have been really helpful!"
"Ha!" John smiled. "Let's find Lestrade and give him this information, then!"
The boy frowned, letting his grin vanish.
"I don't think he will pay me any attention. You heard him: if there's no evidence, for him is exactly the same as if I have just made it up. Not that different from Gregson."
"Well, at least it seems that you amuse Lestrade… most of the time."
"Oh, yes, and he even allowed me to see the body! Wasn't it exciting?"
John chuckled.
"Alright… What do you want to do with the information, then?"
"Isn't it obvious, John?" Sherlock said with a naughty raise of an eyebrow.
John groaned and followed him again.
Ten minutes later, they were in front of a half ruined apartment building. Most of the windows were broken, but the ones in the first floor had been covered with wood boards, and it seemed to John the typical abandoned building with some squatters and junkies holed up in there. Sherlock took pictures of the door and the plaque of the street and sent them to Lestrade with an explanation, but refused to walk away once done. Instead, he approached the building and jumped the low fence that joined the small patio with the street.
"Sherlock!" John called, whispering.
But the young man ignored him, gluing his back to the walls to blend with the darkness. John lost sight of him; it was already night time, and the patio didn't have any kind of light. The feeble light of the streetlamp barely illuminated the front fence and the main entrance door, also covered with boards, hence completely useless. John resigned to jump the fence after Sherlock. His leg hurt a little bit, but it wasn't as stiff as he would have expected.
"John! This way!"
The teacher followed the voice until a hand grabbed his forearm.
"Sherlock…" John saw the boy's eyes, barely a feet from his, and held his hand. "You are mad, let's get out of here right now. You don't want to mess with the kind of people who live here, leave it to the police."
"I am not afraid. I have you. You will protect me. And I know how to fight."
"Sherlock…" John sighed.
"I think I have found an unblocked entrance. Let's see if we can reach the stairs from there."
John cursed his stubborn brat of a boyfriend and followed him, while mulling over the different ways he could take him out of there. He could just grab his hand and drag him out to the street. Sherlock would probably kick and cry out, alerting all the inhabitants of the building. Or he could phone Mycroft Holmes and he would order Sherlock to go back home unless he wanted his parents to find out about his little excursions and his boyfriend.
While he was still considering the pros and cons of both options, John found himself already climbing up the stairs and following Sherlock across a long corridor with apartment doors at his left. Most of the doors were broken, hanging from their hinges or just lying on the floor, and Sherlock examined briefly inside every gap with the light of his phone. The only visible outcome was a couple of junkies sleeping in one of the tiny apartments. They went back to the stairs while Sherlock texted Lestrade.
"Nothing in the first floor. SH"
The stairs to the second floor were tricky, and John was decided to end this adventure before Sherlock wanted to climb to the third one, considering the state of those stairs. He wasn't risking Sherlock breaking a leg while he was supposedly his responsible adult, no matter how the boy protested.
The outline of the floor was the same of the first one. They skipped the doors that seemed to have been closed for ages and went straight to the half open ones.
"That one, John!"
"It's closed."
"But it has been open recently; look at the floor, there's trails on the dust."
There was more debris than dust on the floor, but Sherlock was right. The door didn't budge when they pushed it with all their strength, but Sherlock took out a small pocket knife and the lock opened at once. They stepped in, guided by the light of their phones.
"Someone lives here…" John whispered, and Sherlock nodded.
There were the remains of a meal on a table, and blankets on the ruined sofa, and also some candles only half burnt scattered here and there. Sherlock went back to the door and closed it again. The lock made a light "click", so John guessed it still worked. Fantastic, he thought with dismay. We are shut inside. To make it still worse, they heard voices approaching. A man and a woman. John took Sherlock's hand and pulled him to the other room when the voices stopped right at the other side of the door. They hid there, in the darkness, with their phones in their hands, and held their breaths until the man and the woman entered the main room and started to move around, still talking.
"…Really, Tom, that was the stupidest thing you have ever done", the woman was saying. "And God knows you have done a lot!"
"Shut your trap up! The King will compensate me for this, you know that. I've been stuck at that fucking lowlife spot for a lifetime. It was my chance to finally go up. The King will give me a spot in a nice place with lots of money coming in, you will see."
"If you say so…"
The woman's voice seemed rather dubious. For the sounds, John guessed the man had dropped on the sofa and the woman was preparing a meal. He soon heard a camping gas, the glow lighting the main room with a warm and soft light that reached the room where Sherlock and John were, turning the complete darkness into gloom.
"And what are you going to do if the cops catch you, Tom? Have you considered that?"
"Billy says they haven't said anything in the evening's news… And the King will take care of me, even if they catch me. All I have to do is shut my mouth up, and when I'm out again, there will be a good business waiting for me."
John looked at Sherlock and nodded. He wrote in his phone and showed Sherlock the screen.
"Text Lestrade again".
The boy did it. John started to consider if it would be better to jump over the man and reduce him or wait until Lestrade arrived and he did it in an official way… but the decision was taken out of his hands when the main door opened again and some men joined Tom and the woman.
"Billy! I was just talking about you!"
"Ha! That's why I was sneezing a moment ago, then!"
"Nah, you know I would never talk bad about you!"
"We have brought some beers, and a pizza", a different voice said.
"Ah, good, we had some noodles, let's add that pizza. Does it have pepperoni?"
"Of course, Tom, just as you like it!"
"How many?" John asked Sherlock through his phone screen.
"Four plus Tom and the woman".
That's a lot, John thought, sighing.
"So what now? We just wait for Lestrade?" John asked.
"Seems like it".
Sherlock raised his phone again and showed John Lestrade's answer:
"We are on our way. Stay out of danger!"
"Thank god", John wrote.
Sherlock nodded. He grabbed John's hand tightly.
"I'm glad you are here, John".
John rolled his eyes and embraced Sherlock. They sat at the door, Sherlock almost sitting on John's lap, and the boy started to type fast on his phone. John glanced at the words.
"I'm sorry for snapping at you yesterday. I don't think you believe in what you told me, though, because there's no way you can really think that after knowing me for months."
John put his hand on top of Sherlock's phone, and when the boy raised his eyes to look at him, he shook his head. There was a moment and a place to talk about some things, and that wasn't the one they were right then. Wanting to reassure the boy, John kissed his lips, lightly. Sherlock's hand reached for his nape and anchored John there, against his eager mouth, and John, who had his focus more on the men's banal conversation than on what they were doing, suddenly felt how the ruined apartment and the criminals in it vanished, and all that remained was Sherlock, his hands on his scalp, his burning lips, the heat of his body. Something inside his chest crumpled when he thought that he was resigned to losing Sherlock in a few months as much. Sherlock, his brilliant Sherlock, who had become the main reason he got up in the mornings. His warmth shrouded John, eliciting more emotions from him than anybody else in his entire life. And he was giving up? What if he didn't need to give up on Sherlock? What if there was a way to make this work?
The young man seemed as oblivious to their surroundings as himself, kissing him with abandon, and after a while John felt his hands under his clothes, shuddering. A hand took his and placed it under an untucked shirt, too, and Sherlock's skin was so soft and hot that John didn't think to refuse the touch for a moment. He felt a trail of kisses along his neck, and then a wet nibble on his earlobe, and he had to bite his own lips to avoid moaning. He turned his face, looking blindly for Sherlock's long and slender neck, and once found he mouthed the flesh and sucked at it, not worrying for once about leaving or not hickeys.
A loud bang at the main door startled them.
"Scotland Yard! Please put your hands up and stand up! Don't make any strange movement or we will shoot, get it?"
The familiar voice of D.I. Lestrade roared through the apartment, and Sherlock and John hurried to get on their feet before his men thought of exploring the second room. John heard a number of cops going inside the apartment and searching the men for hidden weapons. They handcuffed the whole group and made him go out; to a police van, John supposed. When they heard all the steps gone, a voice suddenly called for them.
"Sherlock! Doctor Watson! You there?"
Sherlock walked to the main room, followed by John. Lestrade was at the door, frowning.
"Thank God you are fine, brat. Well, I expect you are right and that was our man. Have you caught any evidence?"
"I have recorded a bit of his conversation with that woman… It's not fully clear, but I bet even your men can work with that."
He typed again in his phone and sent the file to Lestrade's phone. The cop grinned.
"That was clever… too risky, but clever! Okay, now get out of here and come back home, please. Remember: you have not been here, and I haven't seen you."
John and Sherlock nodded, and followed the cop out of the building. Once in the street, they walked away discreetly, without a further word to Lestrade, who climbed his car at once. There was a police van, as John had predicted, and they were putting the criminals inside. Sherlock had a big winner grin on his face, and John couldn't help to chuckle. This is the most stupid thing I've done in a while, he thought. It shouldn't feel so right. So exhilarated. So alive.