SquidgeWorld Archive

They had been trapped in the strange rooms for almost a month now and John was becoming increasingly worried. He looked over at Sherlock and frowned, the man was flicking a coin at the floor, where it bounced from floor to wall and back into Sherlock’s hand. He had been doing it for hours; his grey eyes narrowed in concentration, a knot between his large brows.

John could talk or yell or dance around like a show pony when Sherlock was in this mindset. Deaf and dumb to everything around him except for whatever was taking place inside his brain. This, in and of itself, was nothing new. Whenever a particularly intractable case or criminal would present itself, Sherlock would lock himself inside his head until he had the answer. Perfectly normal Holmsian behaviour. But this… this was different because there was no answer.

There was no more data to analyse, no more observations to make, no criminal to read and the only investigation that could be followed was inside the four walls that they were trapped behind. .

John had gone to bed, as usual, in his small upstairs room at 221 Baker Street B. He had changed into his worn and comfortable flannel pyjamas, turned on his electric hot water bottle and rubbed his shoulder with a smelly but effective muscle relaxing cream. He had gotten into bed with a blissful sigh and had fallen asleep almost instantly.

Hour 7

He had awoken elsewhere with a thick head, a desperate thirst and an undeniable feeling of wrongness. John had sprung from the strange bed on a flood of adrenalin.

The room was empty, the door closed. He looked around the room, no windows; saw Sherlock’s pale, unmoving body on the bed and shouted his name.

“Sherlock!”

No response. John dove onto the bed, straddling the lean form and checked for vitals, rhythmic and strong.

“Thank you God, thank you, thank you.” Sherlock was alive. Checked pupils, responsive but sluggish. John slapped Sherlock’s cheek, maybe harder than he intended, and got a low moan and a slow wave of hand. Drugged then.

John left Sherlock and noted, if only peripherally, that he was wearing unfamiliar clothing.

He reached the rooms door and paused, he pressed his ear against the wood paneling and listened. He heard nothing and listened harder. He tried the handle and the door opened.

John crept out and slid along the wall. The room opened into a huge expanse, what looked to be an open concept living room, kitchen dining combination. Expensive though, it looked like one of the apartments he’d seen in the architectural digests that occasionally littered his surgery.

John slipped quietly through the living room to first one and then a second bath, a small utilities cupboard with stacked laundry and large pantry. It was empty. Not a soul and John raced back to the room he’d awoken in and yelled at his friend, “Get up, Sherlock!” He straddled the man again and shook him, noting a red imprint on pale cheek. He had hit him too hard earlier, John thought in dismay and realised, belatedly, what that meant. Sherlock had barely reacted to the overly enthusiastic wake-up call, he was still heavily drugged.

John pulled Sherlock up into a sitting position and with a silent apology to his back, he heaved the lanky figure onto his shoulder. John staggered with the effort. Sherlock was lean but he was a heavy sod and John weaved to the left and then the right before gaining his balance.

John moved swiftly through the living room and directly to the front door where he deposited Sherlock onto the floor. He looked like a large broken doll and John felt his adrenaline fuel his anger. He would have no qualms about killing whomever it was who put them here.

Looking about he went to grab a lamp off the table and swore in surprise when he found it bolted down. He looked closer and saw the table, too, was bolted to the floor. John swept the apartment again and found no ready made weapons. At least none that weren‘t bolted down like a 1 star hotel. John cursed again and moved to the kitchen. Underneath one of the cupboards he spotted a blender with large glass carafe, ‘that will do‘, John thought.

He pressed his ear against the door and heard only silence, he hefted the glass above his shoulder and with hand on the sleek metal handle John turned it, prepared to slip through and brain the first person who stood in his way.

The door, of course, was locked and John almost laughed at himself for not checking sooner. However, one didn’t accompany Sherlock Holmes for any length of time without picking up a few tricks and John retrieved a finely tined fork from the kitchen and went to work.

It was forty minutes later or so that John finally gave up and Sherlock finally came to.

Hour 14

John plunked one mug of coffee down in front of Sherlock and cupped the other between his hands, settling down on the wide, white couch. God, just the smell of it was making him feel better.

“Not, now, John, can’t you see, I’m thinking?” Sherlock snapped, irritably.

“You’ll think better with a clear head,” John said and took a long drink of the Cafe Nero blend. “At least we’re locked up in a swish flat. Could be worse.”

“Could be worse?” Sherlock said, scathingly. “We are trapped in a windowless, door-less box with no avenue of escape and you’re chuffed about the coffee?”

“Good coffee is good coffee,” John shrugged, “Besides, we’ve been all over this place and since we haven’t found a way out, there is not much for us to do at the moment, is there?”

Sherlock glanced sideways John, “Except die of poison, of course.”

John took a bite of the rather large gourmet coffee cake he’d found in the pantry and washed it down with another gulp of coffee.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I said, all we have left to do is die of poison.”

The cake settled heavily into his stomach. “Poison?” John asked, “What do you mean by… You’re not saying we’ve been poisoned?”

Sherlock’s pale eyes glittered, “Not WE, John. I haven’t been ingesting anything, have I?”

John looked about for a moment, panic beginning to rise in his chest, when he reviewed what Sherlock had said and relaxed.

He sank further back into the couch and brought his half eaten cake with him.

He forked an enormous piece of lemon iced cake into his mouth and groaned, “Ohhhh that’s good poison, Sherlock, you really won’t have some?”

Sherlock’s fleeting expression of defeat was priceless and John chuckled around his mouthful of food .

“How did you know?” Sherlock asked.

His head was tilted to the side and a shock of dark brown curl fell over his forehead.

John resisted the urge to reach over and tug the errant lock. “You mean, did I think for one moment you would watch me ingest poison and do nothing to stop it? No, Sherlock I didn’t think that. At least not for very long,” he amended.

“Hmph.”

John laughed, “Most people would be pleased that someone thought them so loyal.”

Sherlock sneered at that. “Feelings, John. Your deductions are once again based on feeling, not fact.”

“Hang on a moment,” John said, depositing his empty plate on the glass occasional table. “How do we know the food wasn’t poisoned?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, “Bit late to be asking that question, isn’t it?”

John grimaced, “It’s been a rough day,” he said.

Sherlock’s mouth softened, “Right, then. The food isn’t poisoned, because we have essentially been sealed in.”

“Come again?”

“There are no windows and the outer doors open into a cement wall.”

John balked at the reminder. He had worked for the better part of an hour trying to unlock the main door. Sherlock had done it in moments, whilst still half awake and drugged. When he had swung open the door it was only to see that they had been bricked inside. Without a sledgehammer or other tool, they wouldn’t be leaving through the front door.

“This tells us that our captor has invested both time and money in keeping us here. Our clothing and toiletries have been discarded and replaced with new ones, thus ensuring we have no hidden bugs or weapons on our person. A television has been provided without cable but with a rather large selection of television shows and movies. We have running water, towels and sheets and the laundry facilities to wash them. Finally, we have a fully stocked pantry and fridge containing your favourite foods.”

“Ok, so…” John said questioningly and almost chuckled. He knew where Sherlock was going with this, he wasn’t a complete moron after all but he did so enjoy egging him on.

Sherlock rolled his eyes again, “So.” he said, “They wouldn’t bother providing us with the essentials for life and entertainment if they wanted us dead by our first cup of coffee,” Sherlock finally paused for a breath and then reached down and finally took a sip of coffee.

“But you already knew that, John, didn’t you?” Sherlock asked around a half smile.

John grinned.

　

Hour 32

“So two bathrooms, but one bed. What do you make of that.”

“Not a lot,” Sherlock replied over his shoulder. He had pushed the sofa against the wall and was standing tip toe on the back of it. His long arms just reached the ceiling and John rushed over as Sherlock tilted dangerously on the ball of one foot, his other raised. Stork-like, for balance.

“You could have asked for help, you know,” John said, arms wrapped around Sherlock’s hips, holding him steady.

“Mm Hmm,” Sherlock hummed. “Just hold, right there,” he said and half clambered up Johns shoulder.

John ignored the knee to his nose and attempted to keep Sherlock steady.

“If I might be so bold,” John muttered into a face-full of cotton trouser, “What are you looking for?”

Sherlock ignored him and pulled at his left ear, “Move!” he demanded.

“I’m not a horse, you know. You could just ask,” John said whilst positioning the two of them an inch or two to the left.

Sherlock directed John for a short while more before leaping to the ground in a surprisingly graceful move.

“I give you a ten for the dismount, but the judges would still like to know the point of that little exercise,” John said, straightening his jumper and running a hand through his hair.

“Let’s try the other side, above the tele,” Sherlock said in response.

John sighed but knew when to give in graciously. “Fine, but I’d rather you straddle my shoulders proper.”

His dick recounted his words before his brain did and John felt a rush of heat in his belly. John, on his back and Sherlock straddling his shoulders.

“That would be fine.” Sherlock said shortly, his smooth, deep voice, sending a secondary wave of lust to his groin. John forced himself to breath deep and picture a sucking chest wound, recounting the initial steps of packing and inspecting, determining where the serious bleeders where and what was distraction. It was John’s go-to dick softener. Worked every time.

After a few more inspections, John’s shoulder began to throb and he was starting to feel like Sherlock’s horse after all.

“Nothing,” Sherlock pronounced.

“That’s too bad,” John replied evenly, he would wait Sherlock out, on the point of this exercise, if it killed him.

“Yes, it is,” Sherlock said, turning in full circle. “If I had found any windows, bricked up or not, we would have had a starting place.”

“Oh, right,” John said, pleased to have the right end of the stick, “Would have been a lot easier to break through a window of mortar than an entire door.”

“Not really, no,” Sherlock replied, “It would have, however, given me an idea of whether or not our prison exits to the outside or just another room.”

John suddenly got the idea of how mice must feel when searching for cheese in a maze that leads nowhere.

　

Hour 72

“Do you think they put this one in, just to take the piss?” John asked waving a boxed collection of DVD’s at Sherlock.

“Which one is that?” Sherlock squinted from across the room. He was currently tinkering with the microwave. John was convinced he was working on turning it into an explosive device.

“Build a New Life in the Country.”

“Oh, I haven’t seen that one.”

“S’good, presenter is a bit of a downer though.”

　

　

Hour 200

“We’ve been here for more than a bloody week, now John!”

“I know, Sherlock, I know.”

“I’m bored.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So, what are you going to do about it?”

John looked at Sherlock and felt a low burn through his body. He knew exactly what he’d like to do about it. Sherlock was dressed in fitted grey trousers and a fine lawn shirt. He wasn’t wearing a vest beneath it and John could barely take his eyes away from the heated red that started at Sherlock’s cheeks and travelled down long, lean throat into shirt.

His eyes were flashing and his mouth looked, good god, cherry red, like he’d been biting at it.

“Yes, I agree,” John said, dumbly.

“You agree?” Sherlock shouted, “You agree with what? I asked you what were you going to do about our captivity, John?”

“What I’m going to what?” John asked shaking his head, “Sherlock, I can’t do anything about our captivity,” he said reasonably. “And neither can you, I’m afraid. Until whoever is keeping us here, decides to do something, we’re stuck.”

“I don’t accept that,” Sherlock said, pouting, drawing even more attention to his ridiculously arched mouth.

John spent a moment imagining tracing the line of Sherlock’s mouth with his mouth. He was going mad, stark, raving can’t-stay-in-here-with-the-object-of-my-desires-twenty four-seven-without-cracking kind of mad.

“I’m going to my room,” John said, getting up off the couch.

“It’s not your room,” Sherlock bellowed, “It’s OUR room, remember? One bed, two bathrooms?”

“Until you sleep in the bed and not on the couch, It’s my room.” John gritted out, striding past Sherlock and slamming the door behind him.

Not long after that, John heard the plink, plink sound of a small metal object hitting floor, than wall…. and repeat.

　

Hour 240.

John was watching his fifth hour of Eastenders and Sherlock was pretending to read but was secretly watching his own fifth hour of Eastenders when he suddenly bolted from the chair.

“John turn off the tele.”

John snapped to attention and shut off the program.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“I don’t know, shut up,” Sherlock said, turning his head in each direction and cocking his head like one of the Queens corgi’s.

He jumped to his feet and headed directly to the kitchen.

John followed, the worry he’d held in the back of his mind since this entire thing began, seeped into his consciousness. His army training kicked in and he felt hyper aware. Falling in behind Sherlock as the taller man prowled the kitchen. He finally made out what had alerted Sherlock and he became quickly and completely terrified.

“Gas.” Sherlock pronounced and John nodded his agreement.

“Right, lets seal off the source,” John said. When they had first explored the flat he had piled everything they thought might be useful in a basket and hid it in the back of the furthest pantry. Likely a futile move, but at the time it had made John feel like he was doing something, despite his seeming helplessness.

John grabbed the basket and threw the cling film at Sherlock. There wasn’t any tape, but they could make do.

“It’s coming from the sink.”

“Bloody hell, they’re piping it through the water lines.”

John and Sherlock looked at each other. They both knew there would be no way to block off all the sources of the gas in time. There were too many. The laundry and toilets alone would have emitted enough of almost any gas, by now, to have contaminated the environment.

“We wait and see,” Sherlock said getting out the last of the sparkling water and drenching two tea towels.

John nodded and accepted his towel, folding it in half and tying it behind his head, covering nose and mouth. He’d been a medic in Iraq and then Afghanistan, he knew about biological weapons. Breathing through wet cloth was the most basic and least effective method he knew of to stop contamination, but they didn’t have any hazmat suits or gas masks lying about so it was the best they could do.

John felt his skin begin to prickle and he swayed a little on his feet. He saw Sherlock do the same and for just a moment he wished he was a little less of a coward. Wished he told Sherlock how he takes his breath away. How he admires, not just his intellect but what he chose to do with it. That for all of his naff claims of sociopathism, he’s the best man John’s ever known.

He grabbed Sherlock’s hand and led him to the bedroom, they wouldn’t be on their feet very much longer and if they survived there was no point adding head injury to… well, injury.

Hour 260

“Oh, this is starting to piss me off,” John said waking to a full fridge and re-stocked pantry.

“Curious,” Sherlock said, inspecting the new groceries.

“What’s that? That the psycho who has us locked up in here bloody well drugs us to bring in the groceries?” John ran his hand through his dirty blond hair and then scrubbed at his scalp. He had a blistering headache and he was in a foul mood.

“Yes. Exactly,” Sherlock picked up an orange and studied it under the light. “Do you know what this is?” Sherlock asked, holding the orange aloft and spinning it slowly for John’s inspection.

“Uh yeah, believe it’s an orange.”

Sherlock smirked, “Always so simple for you isn’t John?”

John rolled his eyes and waved at Sherlock. “Well, go ahead then, you seem to have something you’re dying to tell me, so let’s have it. What are you going to gobsmack me with now? That you know who set us up by the shade of orange the orange is?”

Sherlock’s expression snapped shut at his tone and John felt like an utter shite. It was one thing he’d never done. Mocked Sherlock for his phenomenal skills of deduction. It was something people did who hated Sherlock because he saw what they couldn’t. It was how people who feared Sherlock spoke to him.

“I…I’m sorry Sherlock. That was uncalled for. It’s just…. headache.” John stuttered, “I have a blinding, shagging headache and it’s making me an arse.”

Sherlock studied him for a moment, “Anyway.” Sherlock said impatiently, “The orange I’m holding is no regular market orange. It’s organic and from a specific hydroponic farm in Leeds and costs about four pounds per.”

“Sherlock, you’ve never done the shopping a day in your life, how on earth would you know that?” John asked gamely, happy to be forgiven.

“The stamp, of course, specific to the farm in question and how I know? Really, John you should know better than to ask that question by now.” Sherlock’s mouth quirked into one of his half smiles, “I saw a news reel on the bbc.”

John laughed despite his throbbing head and wondered how Sherlock had actually come to the deduction he had, “Alright than, Magellan, what does it mean? Us having this four pound orange delivered.”

“It means, my dear Dr. Watson, that we will be getting out of this alive.”

Sherlock’s pale eyes flashed with triumph and John was hard pressed to disagree. After all, he’d really, really like to get out of this alive.

Hour 330

“Sherlock, if you’d just stop for a moment and talk to me.”

There was no reaction and Sherlock continued to toss the coin at the floor at the impossible angle that allowed it to hit the wall and bounce back into his hand. John had tried it himself a week or so back and had found it utterly impossible.

“I’ll let you watch whatever you want. How about that?” No answer, though John wasn’t really expecting the prospect of yet more tele enticing enough to stop whatever train of though was barrelling through Sherlock’s brain.

“How about I make you that tart you like so much? I mean, sure I’m not really a baker per se. But how hard can it be, really?” Nothing there either. It is a nice tart though and John got distracted himself with thoughts of Mrs. Hudson’s lemon tarts. They were delicious. Sweet but not too sweet with the tartiness and all. Heh, the tart is tarty. John would have to remember that sometime…. He shook his head, like for some other fucking time when his marbles were completely abandoning him and he found desert puns altogether good humour.

“How about then I go serial killer on us and take us both out? How would that be? Hmm?” John asked not expecting any response. Sherlock had been throwing the bleeding coin for five hours now and the more John tried to ignore the metallic ping, plink, thud it made, the louder it became.

When Sherlock was like this back at Baker St, John would simply leave the flat for a while. Take a long constitutional or go to the cinema. But now, now he was trapped with a genius who couldn’t carry on a casual conversation for the life of him. He hadn’t seen the light of day for weeks and he was either going to kill Sherlock or throw him over the nearest surface and shag the daylights out of him.

That Sherlock was so… above those kind of thoughts and urges, made John feel like a pervert for having them in the first place. That he had them about Sherlock, well, that made it worse.

John swore, then and there, that should he ever, in fact see light of day again, he was going to the nearest bar he could find and he was going to throw down with so many tall, lanky brunettes, he’d forget that he had ever fallen in lo… had ever fallen in lust with Sherlock Bloody Holmes.

Hour 400

“Come on, John you can tell me you know, we are flatmates, after all.” Sherlock said in what he surely thought, was his most winning tone. John, however, was more like to compare it to a wheedling five year old.

“Still not going to do it.”

“You’re just being immature, surely you know that.”

John rolled his eyes so hard at that statement of the absurd that he got a small eye strain.

“You are!” Sherlock yelled.

“Sherlock I am not now, nor am I ever going to list for you who I have dated.”

“Not dated, shagged. The information I need is pertinent to the case.” Sherlock added primly.

“It is not and you bloody well know it. You’re bored, Sherlock. Bored and you want a project and why you think I would be stupid enough to allow myself or my dating history be that project… well.”

Sherlock shook his head sadly, “You’ve become jaded. What if one of your past…” Sherlock paused and wrinkled his nose, “…paramours is the one who locked us in this blasted prison?”

“Really? That’s what you’re leading with then, is it? That it was perhaps Sarah, criminal mastermind who orchestrated this whole mess? Is that about right?”

“You never know,” Sherlock said darkly.

“I thought you had this whole thing figured out anyways? A mysterious orange and bob’s your uncle, end of case? End of case which you still refuse to share, might I add.”

Sherlock smirked, “Perhaps, but one can never be too certain.”

Sherlock ignored Johns cough that sounded suspiciously like, ‘bullshit’.

“So you were how old when you lost your virginity?” Sherlock asked. “I know it was quite young, precocious boy that you were.”

John almost asked Sherlock how he knew that, but he thought only a fool would walk the same road as many times as he has without reading the street signs.

“Not indulging you, Sherlock.”

“Seventeen, I’d wager.”

“Fourteen, actually,” John said, he simply couldn’t help himself. He looked over and saw the look of blissful triumph on Sherlock’s face. Blast.

“Neighbour girl, John?” Sherlock asked, utterly unable to hide his satisfaction.

“Neighbour boy, actually.” John said, matter of fact.

“Really?” Sherlock inquired, leaning forward, brows hitting hairline.

“Really.” John had his own small moment of satisfaction. After all, getting one up on Sherlock Homes was cause for celebration. He went to the kitchen and cracked a lager, drank half of it in one go and then sauntered back into the living room, where Sherlock sat in deep contemplation, hands steepled beneath his chin.

Hour 480

John watched, heavy crease between his eyes getting deeper by the moment. Sherlock stood in one spot, casting the bloody coin against wall and floor and hand ignoring everything else. His white shirt was stained and half open, his neat trousers replaced with dark flannel pyjamas bottoms.

John had tried to rouse Sherlock for the last half hour, to no avail and he was getting seriously worried.

The circumstances of their capture were bizarre, but John and Sherlock were used to bizarre. It was clearly dangerous, but they were used to danger as well. It was the boredom that was killing them. John’s hand shook almost all the time now, damn Mycroft, another all too perceptive Homes. His limp had returned. His bloody limp, which Sherlock had proven to be psychosomatic and had all but disappeared, returned with a vengeance. John couldn’t walk for more than a few feet without feeling a paralysing ache through hip and thigh. What was more worrying, however, was that Sherlock didn’t seem to notice. John had even groaned a little louder when he neared the man. Shameful really, but he was worried himself, and a little frightened that he’d die in this place, without ever seeing the sky again. He wanted… he needed a little human comfort and Sherlock just wasn’t cutting it.

It upset John at an uncomfortably deep level that the person with whom he’d fallen in love with, the person he had in all intents and purposes chose to live his life with had failed him in this.

Hour 600

John dug the metal bar into one of the holes he’d created in the brick and heaved. He felt only a little give so he breathed in deeply and pushed harder.

He’d been working on the wall on and off since he woke from their second drugged sleep. Laboriously he had unbolted furniture from the floor and taken each item apart looking for anything that would help him dig out. He hadn’t found very much and a wooded table leg wasn’t much good against a bricked wall.

He had found a long thick piece of cast metal inside the frame of the posh couch. Before the lucky find of an actual tool, Sherlock had thought him foolish for thinking he could get them out through sheer pig headed brawn, but John had to do something. When Sherlock then pointed out that mathematically speaking, hitting a soundly built cement brick wall using only human strength would take more than a year and that the more likely end to said scenario was a broken human... Well, John could only respond with the fact that Andy Dufresne had busted out of Shawshank prison with only an eight inch rock hammer. That Andy Dufresne was both fictional character and that said fictional character had taken more than a decade to tunnel out was left unsaid.

John grunted again and pushed, his face turning red with the effort. He had broken through a good two inches already and he’d only been working for a few days. Sherlock’s assumption that the wall was more than likely 18 to 24 inches thick meant they could be outside in… best not to think of that. John heaved again and though his shoulder felt on fire, the small piece of rock that detached and fell onto the buffed cork floor, was victory.

His hands were slippery on the shaft and his hands cramped intermittently. John had stripped down to vest and jeans and he was sweating heavily. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep it up, but it was keep it up or go insane.

“You do realise that should you make any real progress, we will more than likely be gassed and the wall re-sealed?”

“Don’t care, really,” John said stoutly. He dropped the make shift crow bar on the floor, wiped his hands on his jeans and began again. He hadn’t worked for more than a few minutes longer, when long pale fingers wrapped around his reddened hands.

“Give it over, John,” Sherlock said at John’s ear.

The dark chocolate voice sending shivers up John’s sweaty neck. “Didn’t you just say it was futile?”

Sherlock grabbed the crowbar with both hands and dug it sharply into the crack John had worked created. “It is.”

John smiled and stepped back. Sherlock was dressed immaculately, shirt sleeves rolled up to forearm, trousers neat and pressed and John released a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding.

Lean muscles bunched and relaxed as Sherlock continued John’s work silently and John didn’t think he’d ever seen anything so glorious in all of his life.

Sherlock had gone against his reason and his intellect and his invariably accurate deduction and had thrown in his lot with John.

“Thank you,” John said, voice breaking, just a little.

Sherlock paused his work and when their eyes met, the pale grey eyes that met John’s own were open and wounded and grateful and John absolutely couldn’t help himself.

He stepped up to Sherlock until their chests were nearly touching and he reached up with one hand and stroked down the soft pale cheek he’d wanted to touch for what felt like the whole of his life.

“John… I”

John silenced him with his mouth. He moved softly and slowly as if he’d never get another chance at this and wanted to remember it.

John groaned against Sherlock’s soft, chapped lips and wound his hand through thick waves of hair and pulled him closer.

It was soft and wet and just a little bit awkward, but Sherlock responded to him and John would wonder if he wasn’t dreaming if not for the ever present ache of his shoulder.

Sherlock pulled back from John’s grip, eyes wide and panting as if he’d just run a kilometre.

“What was that?”

“It was a kiss, Sherlock. And we’re going to do it again,” John stated with much more confidence than he felt.

Sherlock looked at him, eyes narrowed, “John, I‘m never going to the kind of man you‘d want to date. I won‘t keep appointments, I‘ll forget your birthday. I‘ll still be…me.”

“You are the only man I want, Sherlock.”

Sherlock smiled then, his full mouth tilting upwards, eyes crinkling over large Slavic cheekbones.

“You’ve been warned, then.”

“So I don’t get to complain when you ignore me for eight straight hours?” John asked.

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.”

John smiled back and reached for Sherlock again.

Hour 740

They’d heard the heavy bass of machinery for hours now and John waited with a calm he didn’t feel. Freedom, after all this time. John snuck a hand into his jeans pocket and pinched his leg.

“Not dreaming John, the cavalry has come,” Sherlock said, “Finally.”

When the wall finally crumbled and Inspector Lestrade peaked his greying head inside their prison, John whooped like a ten year old at his first carnival and grabbed at Sherlock’s hand.

Sherlock smirked at John and then leaned down and whispered something in his ear. He smiled enormously when John just stood there, dumfounded.

“So I assume you’ve arrested her, then? It took you look enough,” Sherlock stated imperiously, picking his way over the rubble and making his way to Lestrade.

“Nice to see you again, as well, Sherlock. John, you’re alright?” Lestrade asked, eyeing the flat in fascination.

“Better, now,” John said.

“I asked a question.”

Lestrade smiled back at Sherlock’s one tracked mind. It was nice to see that some things didn’t change.

“She is being held by your brother’s department,” Lestrade said, “Whatever department that is. Apparently I don’t have the classification.”

John looked back and forth between the men. “You’re not having me on? Althea did all of this? What on earth for?”

Lestrade shrugged, “No idea, I’m afraid. Course can’t get a thing from you’re brother, can I? From what I understand, her name isn’t even, Althea. I just volunteered to lead the rescue team.”

“It’s obvious, John. We were a distraction. She wanted us out of the picture and Mycroft occupied.” Sherlock said winding his scarf about his neck. “I assume that someone or something of great value has disappeared recently? Something related to the papal conference, I‘d imagine.”

Lestrade thought a moment, “Bloody hell!, There were rumours of a kidnapping at the Abbey when the conclave was gathered. But those are just rumours, mind,” Lestrade said firmly, “Way above my pay packet.”

“You know what?” John cut in. “I don’t give a damn. Not. A. Damn,” John interrupted when it looked like Sherlock was about to open his mouth.

“We’ll figure it all out later, shall we? Right now, I want to see the last of this place and I want to walk home and breathe actual fresh air.”

“You don’t want a ride? Are you sure? We’ll need to check you out at hospital, at least.”

John was resolute, “Later. Thank you for rescuing me,” He directed a grim smile to the Inspector, “Now, if you would be so kind as to tell me where I am?”

“In a factory let, just off Regal Lane in Camden. Mycroft pointed us in the direction, you see. Turns out it was the power bill that first alerted…”

“Very good. Thank you, Lestrade,” John said, cutting the man off mid speech, “I’m sure we’ll be seeing you sooner than later.”

Lestrade smiled a funny little smile and then he took of his trench and handed it to John.

“It’s raining out.” He said, in explanation.

“Perfect,” John said, making his way to the exit and pausing just inside the door. “Sherlock, you with me?”

Sherlock looked about the flat and then nodded at Lestrade, before taking off after John, his long legs making quick work of the distance between them.