Melancholock

3: (un)Familiar :3

It'd finally happened. 

The discoloration in the corner of the screen had overtaken the entire picture. Everything on the display was purple. 

After being knocked over a thousand times, the tape player getting jammed, and endless amounts of water damage, the TV was wrecked. 

It's not like they hadn't seen it coming. They'd been slowly saving up for another one since John's dad dumped it into his arms when they'd moved in. 

John was pretty attached to the thing. He'd spent most of his youth playing video games on it, watching reruns of sitcoms and sneaking R rated horror movies into the tape player. He was truly going to miss it.

The boys struggled to lug the heavy black block down the steep metal stairs. It wasn't very big in diameter, approximately the size of a large shoe box, but damn, after all those years, it'd collected enough dust and dirt to become its own little island. 

Sally Donovan was waiting in her sleek maroon Prius, the windows rolled down and the trunk already popped open for them to drop the TV into. 

"Hey, Freak," she said once Sherlock had slid into the front seat, carefully applying a thin coat of lip gloss in her rear view mirror. John was clambering into the back when Sherlock mocked, "Who, me?" 

She laughed, glancing into the mirror at John. "Where to?" 

"Sherlock's got the directions on his phone."

Sherlock was already scrolling through his apps to get to his GPS.

"You guys should invest in a car - not that I don't love carting you kids around."

"Your daddy's rich, have him buy us cars," Sherlock poked, and John laughed from the backseat. "Yeah, two cars each, Sally. I want an Impala and a Mustang. Convertibles." 

"Alright, alright, I get it, my dad's got cash and you're both bitter about it. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful." 

"Speaking of beautiful, did you get anywhere with that guy you were talking about?"

Sally was pulling out of the complex, watching the street as she answered, "Josh? Nah, the date flopped, he's pretty boring. You can take a stab at him, Sherlock, I'll text you his number later."

"Perfect. Is it weird that we have the same taste in men?"

"You'll hump anything that moves, so I wouldn't consider that a 'type.' I just happen to snag all the pretty ones at the party." 

John chuckled.

Sherlock squinted at her, making a dumb face. "What are standards, Sally?" 

She rolled her eyes with a sigh, but couldn't help the smile that spread across her plump lips. 

The smooth, robotic voice of the GPS on Sherlock's phone piped up. "Turn right, and continue down Coors Rd for 1.3 miles." 

"Hey John, you should totally write me into your play," Sally joked. "How's that going, by the way?"

"Yeah, John," Sherlock turned around, throwing him a satirical, accusing look. "How is it going?" 

"You know what, it's going fine. I'm really making some progress."

Sherlock turned back to Sally, his eyes rolling. "He hasn't touched it in over a month."

Sally whistled, the pitch getting lower and lower, making a quiet explosion noise with her mouth. "Busted," she teased, the voice telling her to turn left at the light.