Title: Caught
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Rating: General
Length: 1840 words
Content notes: Brief mention of erm, bodily functions.
Summary: There's no escape. John is okay with that.



It's dark in here," John said. He squinted at what he could see of the room. A small space, with some kind of table, shadowy shapes hanging on the walls, abstract sculptures of metal and darkness propped up in corners.

Sherlock's silence was an eloquent comment on what he thought of John's flair for stating the obvious.

"It's cold," John said. "And the floor is hard."

Sherlock drummed his fingers.

"The post is digging into my back," John continued. "And the rope tying me to the post adds nothing in the way of comfort."

The drumming stopped. "Are you quite finished?"

"I've barely started."

"It doesn't help matters to rant on."

"It helps me," John said. "It relieves my anxiety. You know, about being caught," he dropped into radio-drama narration, "like a rat in a trap in a cage in a cell in Sing-Sing."

"Sing-Sing?"

"American prison in New York--"

"I know it," Sherlock sounded annoyed. "Why Sing-Sing? Why not Alcatraz? Devil's Island? The Tower?"

"It's a saying, Sherlock." John gave the ropes binding him an experimental tug. Old. Made from hemp, probably. Sisal? Did they still use that?

"Who said it?" Sherlock snapped. "Citation?"

"I'll just look it up in my Bartlett's," John said. At least the rope wasn't synthetic. It was almost impossible to escape from synthetic rope. John preferred natural fiber. You could really get your fingers into a knot made of natural fiber. It didn't just keep twisting into a tighter and tighter knot the more you worked at it. John had become something of a connoisseur.

He could feel Sherlock working at the ropes, silently, with purpose. John waited. But release didn't come. Was the idiot just fidgeting? He was probably thinking. It was probably not a good idea to interrupt the process. John's nose started to itch. "Who were those guys, anyway?"

Sherlock twisted one way, then the other, then banged a shoulder against the post. "Amateurs, obviously."

"Obviously," John said sarcastically. "And yet, we're the ones tied to a pole in a garage."

"Shed."

"What?" It came out as more of a hiss as Sherlock's elbow dug into his back.

"Garden shed," Sherlock said. "Rope, shovel, potting bench, watering cans, hoses."

John squinted. He supposed some of the shadows could resolve into shovels or watering cans. They looked more like bicycles, old chairs and paint buckets. "You can see all that?"

"Of course."

"Hm." John gave up and closed his eyes. Sherlock banged the post again, cursing. Then, Sherlock's shoulder bumped up against his. He'd managed to scoot around to sit side by side with John.

John opened his eyes. Sherlock was a solid, somewhat comforting shadow next to him. In actual terms, the amount of heat generated by their shoulders touching was minimal. Yet somehow, John's whole body felt flushed and warm.

"Better?"

"Erm. Yes. Thanks."

"I'd offer my coat, but," Sherlock shifted against John, as if settling down more comfortably.

John blinked. "Yeah, well," he said. "I'll take it in the chivalrous spirit it was offered."

Sherlock turned his head and smiled. His face was very close to John's. It was a brilliant smile.

John smiled back. Caught, he thought. Then he frowned. "Do you think someone is coming for us?"

"Someone?"

"The people who threw us in here, just for example."

Sherlock shrugged against him in the dark. "Possibly."

John knew he was excited -- enthralled -- seduced -- by the danger Sherlock brought into his life. It wasn't the mark of a healthy relationship, perhaps, but there it was. Rooftop chases, slogs through sewers, madmen by swimming pools, abandoned train yards, burglars, brawls, hit-men, shoot-outs, standoffs and friendly fire from the police -- all of it the kind of stuff to make one's life worth living. Bagged over the head and stuffed in a potting shed was hardly worth mentioning.

However. John made a face in the dark. It was certainly more intimate. He could feel the warmth of Sherlock's shoulder against his. Hear his breathing. Smell his aftershave. He could only dimly see him, but he didn't need to. He knew every sharp cheekbone, every tilt of an eyebrow, every scathing glance -- John took a deep breath. Well. That was four senses. John considered. He could probably taste Sherlock if he wanted to. Lean a bit this way and...

"What are you doing?" Sherlock's voice jolted him.

Like a rat in a trap, he thought. No escape. He was doomed.

"Hardly," Sherlock said dryly.

John hadn't realized he'd said it aloud.

"We've only been here half an hour."

"Half an hour? How do you know?"

"They left my watch. I can just see it if I do this," Sherlock contorted his body in a way that made John's muscles ache in sympathy.

"Impressive," John said. "Your watch -- doesn't happen to have a phone, does it?"

"No."

John rolled his eyes in the darkness. "Tell me it's digital, at least."

"Analog. Traditional clock face."

"What is wrong with you? It's like you never left the nineteenth century."

"My lab is up to date," Sherlock pointed out.

"Oh, good. The ability to date the morbidity rate of sheep's eyes is rather lost on us here."

"Not necessarily. There's a--"

"Shut up, Sherlock."

Sherlock subsided. They sat silently for what seemed like hours, but the minute hand had probably only gone round the traditional clock face of Sherlock's watch three or four times.

"You're not going to tell me who they were," John said, making his voice firm against the darkness.

Sherlock shifted against him. John felt a spark of excitement. In a cage. Sherlock shifted away. John felt bereft.

"Tell you later," Sherlock said. "I'm trying to think."

"Probably something to do with Mycroft, then." John elbowed Sherlock. "Is he going to show up, I wonder? To a potting shed? Probably not. He'll send a minion or two. So, we just sit tight, is that the plan?"

Sherlock was obstinately silent. John could feel him grow tense. They weren't even touching, but he could feel it.

"All right. Forget it. We can talk about something else. Anything. Just make conversation, you know? Keep the darkness at bay. Forget about how I want to pee."

John felt as if the entire darkness was coiling up around him like a tense cobra. But then Sherlock's shoulders began to shake.

"Are you laughing at me?" John tried to sound affronted, but started giggling.

"Piss if you must," Sherlock's voice was full of amusement, as if they were sharing a joke sitting across from each other in their flat, safe at home, waiting for Mrs. Hudson to bring them tea and claim she wasn't their housekeeper. God.

John giggled again. "I don't want to piss my pants, do I?"

"It's hardly the worst thing that could happen to you," Sherlock snickered.

"So you say. What if we're rescued?"

"You could say I made you laugh."

John laughed. Then bit it back. It sounded a bit hysterical.

"We'll be rescued," he said firmly.

"Or escape."

"You have a plan?"

"I have a knife."

John let his head fall back against the post. "You have a knife. Of course you have a knife." He turned his head towards Sherlock, a lighter shadow against the darkness. "Tell me it's not in your boot."

"It's in my watch," Sherlock said smugly.

John pounded his head against the post. "In your watch. Naturally."

"Sometimes the old technology is best," Sherlock said.

"Still can't call anyone with it."

"If I could call someone with it, they would have smashed it," Sherlock said reasonably.

"Right," John said. He closed his eyes out of habit.

Sherlock was using his watch-knife to saw at his bonds, moving rhythmically.

John tried to breathe normally. In a cell. Doomed, he thought, careful not to say it aloud.

"Ah! There." Sherlock flexed his hands. "Now you."

"Thanks," John said as Sherlock moved against him softly, breathing in his hair. His hands fell free. "Oh god, that feels good."

Sherlock flung the rope away as if it insulted him and turned to John, patting him down, checking him as he always did in the aftermath of danger. John still felt it was an oddly un-Sherlockian gesture, a small crack in the veneer of his diffidence. It was almost affectionate.

John didn't want to admit it, but he liked it.

He liked it now. Sherlock was industriously rubbing John's wrists. It took an effort not to catch Sherlock's hands and hold them.

Sherlock's hands slowed, and stilled.

"John--" Sherlock hesitated.

John felt lightheaded. He cleared his throat. "We should be leaving. They could be coming back any minute."

"There's something you should know--" still hesitant.

John swallowed, listened to Sherlock's breathing. He realized he was holding his own breath. "Yes?"

"I--"

"Wait--" John put his hand out -- "listen."

But Sherlock had heard it too. Voices on the other side of the door. A muffled clanging. Thumping. All of which grew louder.

John tensed. Who was coming? Friend or foe? He struggled to stand up, but Sherlock held him down with a touch to his shoulder.

"What?" John whispered.

Sherlock took John's face in his hands and kissed him.

It wasn't as if John had never felt the sensation of time standing still. Looking down the barrel of a gun, that was a good time-stopper. Or to be caught deer-in-headlights as a bus bore down on you. Or staring down a chasm in that split second before you jumped across to safety -- so far at least. But this was different. Their lips touched only for a moment, but that short moment spun out almost unbearably, spinning into infinite possibilities, futures light and dark, leading God knows where and the devil take all. John was lost in Sherlock's kiss, in free-fall, in danger. His normal fight-or-flight defenses reasserted themselves, and he scrambled to stand. Sherlock leapt to his feet and almost pulled John's arm out of its socket dragging him up beside him -- just as the door flew open, banging against the wall. Two men dashed to either side, blinding them with torches.

A third man emerged from the light. "Sherlock?"

"Ah, Lestrade. About time."

As they straggled out of the shed -- and it was a shed, in a park that gave evidence that the shed had not been used for some time -- into the afternoon light and the waiting cars, John hissed at Sherlock, "What was that for?"

But Sherlock only gave him one of his blank smiles and then Lestrade was there again, firing questions.

But John knew what it was for. He sat in the back seat of the car, watching Sherlock explain the entire unlikely plot to a frowning Lestrade, and thought, that was the jailer throwing away the key. "Sing-Sing," he said aloud. Sherlock turned his head to look at him quizzically. John smiled. Sherlock went back to talking.

Maximum sentence, John thought. He could live with that.