Bird's Bone
Prologue
Chapter One
All Sherlock had to do was reach out and touch the phone. Just pick up the phone and call Scotland Yard, that was all. Sherlock's stomach soured and his hand shook violently. He wasn't allowed to touch the phone.
Sherlock wrapped his arms around himself. The air was rank with the scent of blood, soaked darkly into to the golf-green carpet. Gloria lay at his feet, her head canted at an unnatural angle. Her wide blue eyes stared blankly at the wall, towards the opaque, frosted windows. Her soft blonde hair fanned across her face, hitched on her lipstick; a glossy pink. Sherlock exhaled tightly, stifling the cry that welled up from the back of his throat. Gloria hadn't really loved him. Sherlock knew that as objective fact. He reigned in his panic, or tried to, breathing stiff, measured breaths through his nose. His body trembled with the effort, or the cold. His hands and feet were freezing cold, numb almost. Odd that it should be so cold, when it had never been before. Sherlock dimly registered the effects of shock.
He made himself step towards the phone. He made himself drop his pencil to the floor. He uncurled his arms from around his waist and he reached for the phone. Call Scotland Yard, he told himself. She didn't love you. Just pick up the phone.
John was here somewhere. Sherlock's chest clenched painfully, and he willed himself to move his hand. Call the police, find John. Sherlock closed his eyes tightly and snatched up the receiver. His throat clutched cruelly at his breath. With a trembling, blood-splattered finger, he dialed Scotland Yard.
The woman who answered was brusque and professional. Sherlock didn't recognize her voice. He tried to swallow but his mouth had gone very dry, and when he finally spoke, his voice was a hoarse half-whisper.
"Trace this call," he instructed. "Get me Detective Inspector Lestrade."
The woman tried to press him for information, and Sherlock's veneer of self-control began to crumble.
"Please just get Lestrade," he begged. He was begging. He began to cry. "Please just get Lestrade."
The line went quiet as he waited. Sherlock struggled to calm down. He had to be sensible, he had to stay calm. This was very important. He wiped his eyes against his forearm, and when Lestrade came on the line, Sherlock brusquely overrode his questions.
"I'm in an office in the central business district, tenth floor or higher. There's a helicopter landing pad nearby. You'll have to trace the call."
"We're tracing it now," Lestrade answered. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"
He wasn't hurt. As far as he knew, John wasn't either. "John," he began, choked, tried again. "Bring," he said. Bring what? What was he even trying to say?
"Is John with you? Sherlock, is he there?"
Sherlock nodded. The fading timbre had left his voice, and he was left mouthing nothing into the phone.
"Sherlock, we have you. We'll be there in a couple of minutes, all right? Stay on the phone with Marjorie until we get there." Lestrade didn't wait for an answer, and the line was returned to the woman Sherlock didn't know. He dropped the receiver onto the desk. Though his knees went to water, Sherlock stepped over Gloria's thin, pretty ankles, skirting the two bloodless bodies of the men Sherlock had hated. He paused at the door that was never locked, then stepped out into the dove-grey hall, with its fluorescent lights buzzing and blinking one hundred times per second. Sherlock padded over the carpet and tried the room next door. He had to find John.
*
John and Sherlock were running pell-mell through the city, the night air burning in their lungs. John had fallen behind, as he always did. He couldn't run as fast, as long as Sherlock, who reveled in the furious exertion. Sherlock loved to run, he loved to chase. Their prey tonight was a drug mule with a probable lead on a series of professional hits throughout the city. They threaded through the darkened alleys, and suddenly Sherlock was broadsided by an enormous form that knocked the air from his lungs as it took him down. It was a man, and he held Sherlock down while someone else administered the sedative.
When Sherlock awoke, it was very quiet, very warm, and very dark. He could hear the blood rushing through his veins, along with the distant singing sound that accompanied external silence. There was a gag in his mouth, and when Sherlock tried to remove it, he found that his arms were bound in sleeves around his waist. He could feel the blindfold matted against his damp skin, and when he stretched out his legs he found he had not more than five feet in one direction, three in the other. The ceiling was very low, not high enough to sit, so Sherlock laid on his side and wondered what had become of John. He ran through the list of people who would do specifically this to him, and came up very short. He recited the periodic table, beginning with Hydrogen, atomic number: 1. Atomic weight: 1.0079. Density at 293 degrees kelvin: .0000899 g/cm3. When he had finished with this, he ran through his knowledge of cigarette brands, and the chemicals contained in each. When he had finished with this, he curled up at one end of his enclosure, his back to one side, his feet to another, and his shoulders pressed against the third. With a sick fear worming through his stomach, he steadily beat his head against the wall.
*
Sherlock tried one door after another. Some of them were locked. Some of the rooms were empty. He was in an extensive building, and the hallway was long, with doors on either side. John had been alive not five minutes ago, and if he were still alive, he would come to the door when he heard Sherlock. If he were still alive. Sherlock ignored that question. If he were still alive. Sherlock numbly tried door after door.
*
He couldn't help but turn towards that hand, chasing the contact, sensation. The gag was removed. Water was offered from a straw, and warm, gentle fingers caressed his cheek as he drank greedily. He didn't know how long he had been locked away. The hands stroked his hair, and Sherlock latched desperately onto the sensation, the soft tingle of each strand against the root. The hands guided him forward, led him slowly to stand. The effort made him dizzy, but the hands steadied him. His entire world was narrowed down to the press of the hands at the small of his back, and the slow, aching warmth that pooled in his groin. He could think of nothing else. The hands urged him to step forward, and he obeyed.
Sherlock felt the floor change from carpet to something smooth and flat. Not tile, his mind wanted to say. Linoleum. It didn't matter. The hands went to his waist, unfastened and shucked his soiled trousers. Sherlock felt his erection bob uncertainly in the air, and some hushed corner of his mind remembered to feel humiliated. All he really felt was a gratitude bordering on worship for whoever this was who had freed him from that hateful, numbing void. The hands unbuckled the straight jacket and slowly stripped him. With his hands free, Sherlock reached for the blindfold, but the hands seized his wrists firmly. Bad, the hands said. He wasn't to do that.
Sherlock's stomach knotted with apprehension. His mind gained a foothold, taking in the humidity of the air, the cool flow of air from an open door. He was suddenly aware that the hands belonged to a woman; small, warm, and soft, without callus. She released his wrists and rested one hand on his shoulder, guiding him around. Sherlock wondered frantically if John were alright, and his shin connected with a low, plastic ledge. He was urged to step over it, into a pool of warm water, almost too hot: it prickled and stung the this skin around his toes and the arches of his feet. Sherlock's breaths quickened into rapid gasps, punctuated with broken, breathy whimpers. He was so afraid. The hands told him to sit, and he did.
The hands left him for a moment, and when they returned, Sherlock flinched away and pressed himself against a cool, tiled wall. The hands were firm, and scrubbed him thoroughly with some porous material. They lifted the warm water over his shoulders, stroking the length of his back and Sherlock trembled, his erection now achingly hard. The hands stood him up, scrubbed perfunctorily about his buttocks and genitals. Sherlock clutched his elbows and choked back a groan, and the hands efficiently scrubbed the length of each leg, the loose plastic fibers grating the sensitive skin of his inner thighs and the backs of his knees. The hands pulled him back down and rinsed him thoroughly clean.
He was dressed again in soft loose slacks and a tee shirt. The hands momentarily abandoned him, and Sherlock desperately, wildly felt their loss. The hands that returned were not the same, were thick and not gentle. They fitted him with the straight jacket and Sherlock twisted away and struggled childishly. The gag was fitted into his mouth, the leather acrid on his tongue. He stilled when he felt the soft hands on his face, petting his hair, rubbing his back reassuringly. This time, when he was shut away in the hot, close, silent dark, Sherlock began to cry.
*
The end of the corridor opened into a large room that was teeming with people, telephones, movement and noise. Sherlock cringed and backed away. A young woman carrying a stack of file folders stopped and gaped at him. It was obvious she didn't know who he was.
"Sir, are you alright?" she finally asked.
Though John certainly wasn't among these people, he wasn't in any of the rooms behind Sherlock, either. Sherlock edged along the wall, cautiously making for the other side of the office and ignoring the stares, the inquiries, the interruptions. Keep moving, he told himself, and inched along the wall. Just keep moving.
*
The next time she came for him, Sherlock lay as still as a stone. His thoughts had long subsided beneath the muffled thrum of his pulse. The hands traced the rim of his ear, trailed along his cheek, his eyebrow. There was a tense, fluttery feeling in his stomach and groin, and he held himself very still lest the hands abandon him again. If some part of his brain warned him that this was dangerous, he didn't hear it over the warm, smooth hand on his hair that told him gently, firmly, that he would be cared for. The hands told him to stand, and he obeyed.
The gag was removed and he was led to a chair. He shifted his arms in his sleeves. Please take this off, the movement said, but the hands settled him into the chair and left him bound. He was offered water, which he accepted, and then a warm, wet cloth was applied to his face. The steam invaded his parched nasal cavities, soothed his throat. He recognized the odor of shaving cream, which was cool and caught on the sandpapery stubble that had grown in on his face. The hands tilted his head back and pressed the razor to his throat, and the hollow just beneath the jaw. Sherlock's breath hitched. He was hard again, and he could feel his pulse beat against the blade. With a steady stroke, the razor scraped upwards to the line of his jaw. Sherlock's legs parted, and he slid lower in his seat. Each stroke of the blade sent a spinning warmth to his groin until he writhed in his chair, fingers plucking uselessly at the insides of his sleeves. He had never wanted anything as badly as he wanted those warm, firm hands to envelope his cock, to stroke him. He would do anything.
The warm cloth was placed over his face again, and Sherlock was left alone. He shifted uncomfortably, stifling a whine. He pulled against his restraining sleeves, but didn't move from where he had been told to sit. The cloth slipped from his face and dropped into his lap, and Sherlock pressed his hips up into it. He was so hard it was physically painful, but he was left to sit until the cloth cooled and his arousal had settled into a dull ache.
The blindfold and earplugs were removed that day. Sherlock flinched from the harshness of the light, although objectively he knew that it was very dim. The overhead lights were off, so the only light in the room filtered in from the broad, frosted windows. The woman before him was thinly built but not frail, well manicured in a high-end business sort of way. She had deep blue eyes and a delicate mouth which smiled upon him kindly. She leaned in very close, and Sherlock could smell the warm, salty sweetness of her skin. She unfastened the straight jacket, carefully removed it, and set it aside.
"I want you to eat your breakfast," she told him, and spun the chair to face the desk. The was a plate of assorted fruit there, and Sherlock eyed it dumbly.
"Go on," the woman said. She plucked a grape off the plate and held it out to him. Sherlock took it. He held it to his lips a long while before delicately taking it between his teeth.
"Good," the woman said, and waited until he had swallowed before handing him a piece of melon. There was still a part of him that registered how sorry this all was, how pathetic he was being, but that part was still trapped in the farthest recess of his mind. The woman handed Sherlock a blueberry, and for the first time in a very long time he felt loved.
After breakfast, the woman handed the empty plate to a large man Sherlock hadn't even noticed was there. There were two of them, one had a gambling problem, but that didn't matter. Sherlock looked back to the woman, who was dialing a number on the black, office-style telephone on the desk. The ring sounded over the speaker, and it was John's voice that answered anxiously.
Sherlock's chest seized. He reached for the receiver automatically, but the woman caught his wrist and shook her head sternly. Bad. Sherlock looked at her with a mixture of bewilderment and fear. He had to talk to John.
"Hello?" John repeated. Sherlock's attention ratcheted back to the phone.
"John," he said hoarsely. John expelled an enormous breath that rustled over the line.
"Oh thank God," he said. "Where are you?"
Sherlock glanced around the room. It was empty aside from the desk, the phone. There seemed to be a washroom at the far side. He couldn't see out the windows. "I don't know," was all he could answer.
"Shit. Okay. Are you alright? Are you hurt?"
Sherlock slowly considered this. His brain wasn't processing information the way it used to. It couldn't penetrate the lingering fog in his mind.
"Um," he said.
"Sherlock, are you hurt?" John's voice was tense and loud.
"No."
"Okay. Okay, that's good."
Sherlock wanted to see John. He wanted to see him a lot, and it hurt in his wrists and his chest and the palms of his hands. "Where are you?" he asked, and his voice was much thinner than he expected.
"I don't know. I'm just in a room somewhere. Locked, obviously. I've been in here about three days. You're the first I've heard from anybody."
"Are you hurt?"
"No, I'm fine. Could do with a steak, though," he laughed and trailed off. "A sandwich or something."
Sherlock began to go cold. "You haven't eaten."
"Nope. There's six palettes of water here. I've already been through one - "
The call was disconnected. The woman pushed the phone aside and spread open a thin manila folder. The sheets inside contained a vast series of numbers.
"You understand the situation, don't you?" she asked gently. Sherlock was afraid to nod. He was afraid to breath. "You have the length of John Watson's life to crack this code."
*
Sherlock stumbled and braced himself against the wall. The office personnel had gathered to stare at him. When someone had moved to help, Sherlock had recoiled so violently that they now gave him a berth of several meters. The manager was still on the phone with the police.
It was obvious that John wasn't among these people, but still Sherlock checked every side office. John had been alive not five minutes ago, and it was therefore to be assumed he was still alive now. That logic was so relentlessly faulty. Sherlock reached the end of the office and stepped out into another corridor lined with doors. The office workers followed some distance behind, whispering. He was such a freak. He wanted Gloria to pet his hair and tell him he was good, that he could still save John if he tried harder.
Sherlock curled in towards the wall, away from the people behind him. His vision swam and blurred and he looked down at his pale, narrow feet, bare on the dark grey carpet. He had no shoes. Sherlock crossed his arms around his torso and slowly folded around his knees. Tucked against the wall, he began to silently, desperately sob.
*
He was making little progress on the code. Each line contained a different cipher, and Sherlock sat, day after day, amidst the endless whirring and blurring of numbers.
He spoke with John each morning after breakfast. Sherlock lay with his cheek flat on the desk, his nose as close to the speaker as Gloria would allow. John talked about his family, his friends growing up, sometimes the cases they had taken together. "It's alright," he always said. "It's going to be fine," but Sherlock could hear the increasing desperation in his voice.
Sherlock cried more easily now, and when Gloria ended the calls she would pull Sherlock towards her and stroke his hair while he cried, and say, "You're almost there. You still have time." She would cup his face in her hand and say, "You can do this." Sherlock would nod and set to work.
At the same time every evening, one of Gloria's men would pull back Sherlock's chair and clap a heavy hand on his shoulder. Sherlock's stomach would drop, sweat would break out across his lip. If Gloria had left, she would return at this time, lest he struggle too fiercely. The straight jacket went on first, and Sherlock always resisted this, a cold dread coursing through him. One man held him firmly while the other forced his arms into the sleeves and tightened the straps. Sherlock would clutch into a shivering knot of tension while the blindfold was secured, the earplugs inserted. He was left with nothing but his own screaming pulse as the gag was forced between his teeth, and he was guided to the closet where he was kept every night. He would be stowed beneath a low shelf, wracked with convulsive tremors, and then Gloria's hand would settle on his neck. She would rub her thumb along his jaw, telling him to be still. Sherlock would quiet, and the fearfulness lodged in his throat would subside. Gloria would take care of him. She would come for him in the morning.
*
"It had blown in all these little fish, about as big as your thumbnail, perhaps, and Harry and I went up and down the beach collecting them in a bucket. We must have had about fifty, I think they were sort of triangle shaped. They were this iridescent green and...and magenta, or something. I never saw them again. We went there every year."
John's voice was getting dry and dim, like radio static through an open window. He was rationing the last of his water.
"Are you still there?" he asked.
"Yes."
He wasn't going to be able to save John. The numbers were just numbers to him, he couldn't crack the code. Outside, the helicopter flew by, as it sometimes did. Sherlock knew he was in the central business district, and the news helicopters were every so often deployed there. That information was useless, like most. He lay there and listened to John tell his story, knowing that one day the phone would ring and just keep ringing, and he would have failed and John would be dead. He listened to John's voice and the drone of the helicopter and its feathery, magnetic reproduction coming through over the telephone line. Sherlock lay very still.
"It's going to be alright," John lied. The helicopter mingled with his voice, soft and distant, like radio static. "I love you, Sherlock, okay?"
When Gloria disconnected the call, Sherlock lunged from his seat and caught her chin in his hand. With a brutal push, he snapped her spinal column and let her drop bonelessly to the ground. He snatched up the pencil he had used on the code. One of the men grabbed at him, but Sherlock parried at the wrist and plunged the pencil deep into his jugular. He pulled it out quickly, and the splatter of blood soaked hotly into his shirt. The man clutched his neck and dropped to his knees. The second man had drawn a taser from his belt, but Sherlock barreled into him with a shoulder to his midriff, and they both went down. Sherlock severed the jugular with a stab of the pencil and the man beneath him struggled futilely as his blood steadily pooled beneath him. Then he was still.
Sherlock stood up, wiping his face on his arm. The scent of blood was thick and raw, and Gloria lay, her head cocked oddly, the surprise still frozen in those deep blue eyes. Sherlock's hand clenched around the blood-slick pencil. His hands and feet were cold, and he shivered, and once he shivered, he couldn't stop. His breath tightened into a panicked keen. John was here somewhere, he told himself. The helicopter faded to a distant hum. All Sherlock had to do now was pick up the phone.
Chapter Two
Chapter One
All Sherlock had to do was reach out and touch the phone. Just pick up the phone and call Scotland Yard, that was all. Sherlock's stomach soured and his hand shook violently. He wasn't allowed to touch the phone.
Sherlock wrapped his arms around himself. The air was rank with the scent of blood, soaked darkly into to the golf-green carpet. Gloria lay at his feet, her head canted at an unnatural angle. Her wide blue eyes stared blankly at the wall, towards the opaque, frosted windows. Her soft blonde hair fanned across her face, hitched on her lipstick; a glossy pink. Sherlock exhaled tightly, stifling the cry that welled up from the back of his throat. Gloria hadn't really loved him. Sherlock knew that as objective fact. He reigned in his panic, or tried to, breathing stiff, measured breaths through his nose. His body trembled with the effort, or the cold. His hands and feet were freezing cold, numb almost. Odd that it should be so cold, when it had never been before. Sherlock dimly registered the effects of shock.
He made himself step towards the phone. He made himself drop his pencil to the floor. He uncurled his arms from around his waist and he reached for the phone. Call Scotland Yard, he told himself. She didn't love you. Just pick up the phone.
John was here somewhere. Sherlock's chest clenched painfully, and he willed himself to move his hand. Call the police, find John. Sherlock closed his eyes tightly and snatched up the receiver. His throat clutched cruelly at his breath. With a trembling, blood-splattered finger, he dialed Scotland Yard.
The woman who answered was brusque and professional. Sherlock didn't recognize her voice. He tried to swallow but his mouth had gone very dry, and when he finally spoke, his voice was a hoarse half-whisper.
"Trace this call," he instructed. "Get me Detective Inspector Lestrade."
The woman tried to press him for information, and Sherlock's veneer of self-control began to crumble.
"Please just get Lestrade," he begged. He was begging. He began to cry. "Please just get Lestrade."
The line went quiet as he waited. Sherlock struggled to calm down. He had to be sensible, he had to stay calm. This was very important. He wiped his eyes against his forearm, and when Lestrade came on the line, Sherlock brusquely overrode his questions.
"I'm in an office in the central business district, tenth floor or higher. There's a helicopter landing pad nearby. You'll have to trace the call."
"We're tracing it now," Lestrade answered. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"
He wasn't hurt. As far as he knew, John wasn't either. "John," he began, choked, tried again. "Bring," he said. Bring what? What was he even trying to say?
"Is John with you? Sherlock, is he there?"
Sherlock nodded. The fading timbre had left his voice, and he was left mouthing nothing into the phone.
"Sherlock, we have you. We'll be there in a couple of minutes, all right? Stay on the phone with Marjorie until we get there." Lestrade didn't wait for an answer, and the line was returned to the woman Sherlock didn't know. He dropped the receiver onto the desk. Though his knees went to water, Sherlock stepped over Gloria's thin, pretty ankles, skirting the two bloodless bodies of the men Sherlock had hated. He paused at the door that was never locked, then stepped out into the dove-grey hall, with its fluorescent lights buzzing and blinking one hundred times per second. Sherlock padded over the carpet and tried the room next door. He had to find John.
*
John and Sherlock were running pell-mell through the city, the night air burning in their lungs. John had fallen behind, as he always did. He couldn't run as fast, as long as Sherlock, who reveled in the furious exertion. Sherlock loved to run, he loved to chase. Their prey tonight was a drug mule with a probable lead on a series of professional hits throughout the city. They threaded through the darkened alleys, and suddenly Sherlock was broadsided by an enormous form that knocked the air from his lungs as it took him down. It was a man, and he held Sherlock down while someone else administered the sedative.
When Sherlock awoke, it was very quiet, very warm, and very dark. He could hear the blood rushing through his veins, along with the distant singing sound that accompanied external silence. There was a gag in his mouth, and when Sherlock tried to remove it, he found that his arms were bound in sleeves around his waist. He could feel the blindfold matted against his damp skin, and when he stretched out his legs he found he had not more than five feet in one direction, three in the other. The ceiling was very low, not high enough to sit, so Sherlock laid on his side and wondered what had become of John. He ran through the list of people who would do specifically this to him, and came up very short. He recited the periodic table, beginning with Hydrogen, atomic number: 1. Atomic weight: 1.0079. Density at 293 degrees kelvin: .0000899 g/cm3. When he had finished with this, he ran through his knowledge of cigarette brands, and the chemicals contained in each. When he had finished with this, he curled up at one end of his enclosure, his back to one side, his feet to another, and his shoulders pressed against the third. With a sick fear worming through his stomach, he steadily beat his head against the wall.
*
Sherlock tried one door after another. Some of them were locked. Some of the rooms were empty. He was in an extensive building, and the hallway was long, with doors on either side. John had been alive not five minutes ago, and if he were still alive, he would come to the door when he heard Sherlock. If he were still alive. Sherlock ignored that question. If he were still alive. Sherlock numbly tried door after door.
*
He couldn't help but turn towards that hand, chasing the contact, sensation. The gag was removed. Water was offered from a straw, and warm, gentle fingers caressed his cheek as he drank greedily. He didn't know how long he had been locked away. The hands stroked his hair, and Sherlock latched desperately onto the sensation, the soft tingle of each strand against the root. The hands guided him forward, led him slowly to stand. The effort made him dizzy, but the hands steadied him. His entire world was narrowed down to the press of the hands at the small of his back, and the slow, aching warmth that pooled in his groin. He could think of nothing else. The hands urged him to step forward, and he obeyed.
Sherlock felt the floor change from carpet to something smooth and flat. Not tile, his mind wanted to say. Linoleum. It didn't matter. The hands went to his waist, unfastened and shucked his soiled trousers. Sherlock felt his erection bob uncertainly in the air, and some hushed corner of his mind remembered to feel humiliated. All he really felt was a gratitude bordering on worship for whoever this was who had freed him from that hateful, numbing void. The hands unbuckled the straight jacket and slowly stripped him. With his hands free, Sherlock reached for the blindfold, but the hands seized his wrists firmly. Bad, the hands said. He wasn't to do that.
Sherlock's stomach knotted with apprehension. His mind gained a foothold, taking in the humidity of the air, the cool flow of air from an open door. He was suddenly aware that the hands belonged to a woman; small, warm, and soft, without callus. She released his wrists and rested one hand on his shoulder, guiding him around. Sherlock wondered frantically if John were alright, and his shin connected with a low, plastic ledge. He was urged to step over it, into a pool of warm water, almost too hot: it prickled and stung the this skin around his toes and the arches of his feet. Sherlock's breaths quickened into rapid gasps, punctuated with broken, breathy whimpers. He was so afraid. The hands told him to sit, and he did.
The hands left him for a moment, and when they returned, Sherlock flinched away and pressed himself against a cool, tiled wall. The hands were firm, and scrubbed him thoroughly with some porous material. They lifted the warm water over his shoulders, stroking the length of his back and Sherlock trembled, his erection now achingly hard. The hands stood him up, scrubbed perfunctorily about his buttocks and genitals. Sherlock clutched his elbows and choked back a groan, and the hands efficiently scrubbed the length of each leg, the loose plastic fibers grating the sensitive skin of his inner thighs and the backs of his knees. The hands pulled him back down and rinsed him thoroughly clean.
He was dressed again in soft loose slacks and a tee shirt. The hands momentarily abandoned him, and Sherlock desperately, wildly felt their loss. The hands that returned were not the same, were thick and not gentle. They fitted him with the straight jacket and Sherlock twisted away and struggled childishly. The gag was fitted into his mouth, the leather acrid on his tongue. He stilled when he felt the soft hands on his face, petting his hair, rubbing his back reassuringly. This time, when he was shut away in the hot, close, silent dark, Sherlock began to cry.
*
The end of the corridor opened into a large room that was teeming with people, telephones, movement and noise. Sherlock cringed and backed away. A young woman carrying a stack of file folders stopped and gaped at him. It was obvious she didn't know who he was.
"Sir, are you alright?" she finally asked.
Though John certainly wasn't among these people, he wasn't in any of the rooms behind Sherlock, either. Sherlock edged along the wall, cautiously making for the other side of the office and ignoring the stares, the inquiries, the interruptions. Keep moving, he told himself, and inched along the wall. Just keep moving.
*
The next time she came for him, Sherlock lay as still as a stone. His thoughts had long subsided beneath the muffled thrum of his pulse. The hands traced the rim of his ear, trailed along his cheek, his eyebrow. There was a tense, fluttery feeling in his stomach and groin, and he held himself very still lest the hands abandon him again. If some part of his brain warned him that this was dangerous, he didn't hear it over the warm, smooth hand on his hair that told him gently, firmly, that he would be cared for. The hands told him to stand, and he obeyed.
The gag was removed and he was led to a chair. He shifted his arms in his sleeves. Please take this off, the movement said, but the hands settled him into the chair and left him bound. He was offered water, which he accepted, and then a warm, wet cloth was applied to his face. The steam invaded his parched nasal cavities, soothed his throat. He recognized the odor of shaving cream, which was cool and caught on the sandpapery stubble that had grown in on his face. The hands tilted his head back and pressed the razor to his throat, and the hollow just beneath the jaw. Sherlock's breath hitched. He was hard again, and he could feel his pulse beat against the blade. With a steady stroke, the razor scraped upwards to the line of his jaw. Sherlock's legs parted, and he slid lower in his seat. Each stroke of the blade sent a spinning warmth to his groin until he writhed in his chair, fingers plucking uselessly at the insides of his sleeves. He had never wanted anything as badly as he wanted those warm, firm hands to envelope his cock, to stroke him. He would do anything.
The warm cloth was placed over his face again, and Sherlock was left alone. He shifted uncomfortably, stifling a whine. He pulled against his restraining sleeves, but didn't move from where he had been told to sit. The cloth slipped from his face and dropped into his lap, and Sherlock pressed his hips up into it. He was so hard it was physically painful, but he was left to sit until the cloth cooled and his arousal had settled into a dull ache.
The blindfold and earplugs were removed that day. Sherlock flinched from the harshness of the light, although objectively he knew that it was very dim. The overhead lights were off, so the only light in the room filtered in from the broad, frosted windows. The woman before him was thinly built but not frail, well manicured in a high-end business sort of way. She had deep blue eyes and a delicate mouth which smiled upon him kindly. She leaned in very close, and Sherlock could smell the warm, salty sweetness of her skin. She unfastened the straight jacket, carefully removed it, and set it aside.
"I want you to eat your breakfast," she told him, and spun the chair to face the desk. The was a plate of assorted fruit there, and Sherlock eyed it dumbly.
"Go on," the woman said. She plucked a grape off the plate and held it out to him. Sherlock took it. He held it to his lips a long while before delicately taking it between his teeth.
"Good," the woman said, and waited until he had swallowed before handing him a piece of melon. There was still a part of him that registered how sorry this all was, how pathetic he was being, but that part was still trapped in the farthest recess of his mind. The woman handed Sherlock a blueberry, and for the first time in a very long time he felt loved.
After breakfast, the woman handed the empty plate to a large man Sherlock hadn't even noticed was there. There were two of them, one had a gambling problem, but that didn't matter. Sherlock looked back to the woman, who was dialing a number on the black, office-style telephone on the desk. The ring sounded over the speaker, and it was John's voice that answered anxiously.
Sherlock's chest seized. He reached for the receiver automatically, but the woman caught his wrist and shook her head sternly. Bad. Sherlock looked at her with a mixture of bewilderment and fear. He had to talk to John.
"Hello?" John repeated. Sherlock's attention ratcheted back to the phone.
"John," he said hoarsely. John expelled an enormous breath that rustled over the line.
"Oh thank God," he said. "Where are you?"
Sherlock glanced around the room. It was empty aside from the desk, the phone. There seemed to be a washroom at the far side. He couldn't see out the windows. "I don't know," was all he could answer.
"Shit. Okay. Are you alright? Are you hurt?"
Sherlock slowly considered this. His brain wasn't processing information the way it used to. It couldn't penetrate the lingering fog in his mind.
"Um," he said.
"Sherlock, are you hurt?" John's voice was tense and loud.
"No."
"Okay. Okay, that's good."
Sherlock wanted to see John. He wanted to see him a lot, and it hurt in his wrists and his chest and the palms of his hands. "Where are you?" he asked, and his voice was much thinner than he expected.
"I don't know. I'm just in a room somewhere. Locked, obviously. I've been in here about three days. You're the first I've heard from anybody."
"Are you hurt?"
"No, I'm fine. Could do with a steak, though," he laughed and trailed off. "A sandwich or something."
Sherlock began to go cold. "You haven't eaten."
"Nope. There's six palettes of water here. I've already been through one - "
The call was disconnected. The woman pushed the phone aside and spread open a thin manila folder. The sheets inside contained a vast series of numbers.
"You understand the situation, don't you?" she asked gently. Sherlock was afraid to nod. He was afraid to breath. "You have the length of John Watson's life to crack this code."
*
Sherlock stumbled and braced himself against the wall. The office personnel had gathered to stare at him. When someone had moved to help, Sherlock had recoiled so violently that they now gave him a berth of several meters. The manager was still on the phone with the police.
It was obvious that John wasn't among these people, but still Sherlock checked every side office. John had been alive not five minutes ago, and it was therefore to be assumed he was still alive now. That logic was so relentlessly faulty. Sherlock reached the end of the office and stepped out into another corridor lined with doors. The office workers followed some distance behind, whispering. He was such a freak. He wanted Gloria to pet his hair and tell him he was good, that he could still save John if he tried harder.
Sherlock curled in towards the wall, away from the people behind him. His vision swam and blurred and he looked down at his pale, narrow feet, bare on the dark grey carpet. He had no shoes. Sherlock crossed his arms around his torso and slowly folded around his knees. Tucked against the wall, he began to silently, desperately sob.
*
He was making little progress on the code. Each line contained a different cipher, and Sherlock sat, day after day, amidst the endless whirring and blurring of numbers.
He spoke with John each morning after breakfast. Sherlock lay with his cheek flat on the desk, his nose as close to the speaker as Gloria would allow. John talked about his family, his friends growing up, sometimes the cases they had taken together. "It's alright," he always said. "It's going to be fine," but Sherlock could hear the increasing desperation in his voice.
Sherlock cried more easily now, and when Gloria ended the calls she would pull Sherlock towards her and stroke his hair while he cried, and say, "You're almost there. You still have time." She would cup his face in her hand and say, "You can do this." Sherlock would nod and set to work.
At the same time every evening, one of Gloria's men would pull back Sherlock's chair and clap a heavy hand on his shoulder. Sherlock's stomach would drop, sweat would break out across his lip. If Gloria had left, she would return at this time, lest he struggle too fiercely. The straight jacket went on first, and Sherlock always resisted this, a cold dread coursing through him. One man held him firmly while the other forced his arms into the sleeves and tightened the straps. Sherlock would clutch into a shivering knot of tension while the blindfold was secured, the earplugs inserted. He was left with nothing but his own screaming pulse as the gag was forced between his teeth, and he was guided to the closet where he was kept every night. He would be stowed beneath a low shelf, wracked with convulsive tremors, and then Gloria's hand would settle on his neck. She would rub her thumb along his jaw, telling him to be still. Sherlock would quiet, and the fearfulness lodged in his throat would subside. Gloria would take care of him. She would come for him in the morning.
*
"It had blown in all these little fish, about as big as your thumbnail, perhaps, and Harry and I went up and down the beach collecting them in a bucket. We must have had about fifty, I think they were sort of triangle shaped. They were this iridescent green and...and magenta, or something. I never saw them again. We went there every year."
John's voice was getting dry and dim, like radio static through an open window. He was rationing the last of his water.
"Are you still there?" he asked.
"Yes."
He wasn't going to be able to save John. The numbers were just numbers to him, he couldn't crack the code. Outside, the helicopter flew by, as it sometimes did. Sherlock knew he was in the central business district, and the news helicopters were every so often deployed there. That information was useless, like most. He lay there and listened to John tell his story, knowing that one day the phone would ring and just keep ringing, and he would have failed and John would be dead. He listened to John's voice and the drone of the helicopter and its feathery, magnetic reproduction coming through over the telephone line. Sherlock lay very still.
"It's going to be alright," John lied. The helicopter mingled with his voice, soft and distant, like radio static. "I love you, Sherlock, okay?"
When Gloria disconnected the call, Sherlock lunged from his seat and caught her chin in his hand. With a brutal push, he snapped her spinal column and let her drop bonelessly to the ground. He snatched up the pencil he had used on the code. One of the men grabbed at him, but Sherlock parried at the wrist and plunged the pencil deep into his jugular. He pulled it out quickly, and the splatter of blood soaked hotly into his shirt. The man clutched his neck and dropped to his knees. The second man had drawn a taser from his belt, but Sherlock barreled into him with a shoulder to his midriff, and they both went down. Sherlock severed the jugular with a stab of the pencil and the man beneath him struggled futilely as his blood steadily pooled beneath him. Then he was still.
Sherlock stood up, wiping his face on his arm. The scent of blood was thick and raw, and Gloria lay, her head cocked oddly, the surprise still frozen in those deep blue eyes. Sherlock's hand clenched around the blood-slick pencil. His hands and feet were cold, and he shivered, and once he shivered, he couldn't stop. His breath tightened into a panicked keen. John was here somewhere, he told himself. The helicopter faded to a distant hum. All Sherlock had to do now was pick up the phone.
Chapter Two