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He tore the scrap of fabric away from his eyes and surveyed his body. Nothing particularly hurt, but nothing felt good either. He looked around frantically, and determined they were in some sort of old train car. The thick orange carpet was faded along the center where people’s feet had tread for years. John dug his fingernails into the rough fuzz until his hand went numb.
Sherlock was here.
He wasn’t alone.
He sat a few feet away, blindfold off, staring into the distance, looking away from John. John shifted to his knees, determining that they didn’t hurt either…or at least anymore than usual.
He grunted as he stood, surveying the situation in which they’d found themselves. It was one hell of a case–a series of disappearing teenagers. They were mostly girls, which had horrifying implications that had sent a shiver down John’s spine from the moment they took the case
“Hey, Sherlock?” He whispered, voice nearly cracking. His heavy breath hung in the air between them.
“Yes, John?” His first name, so this truly was serious now, wasn’t it? Sherlock had turned to look at him, his eye bags dark with the fatigue of the past days.
“I am really, really, fucking scared right now,”
Telling Sherlock didn’t do any good. It didn’t get them out of the train car they were currently trapped on, and it didn’t keep down the panic rising in his stomach. It didn’t stop the train flying down the tracks to God-knows where. It didn’t tell them where they were, or who the mysterious figure was who’d gotten them stuck in there.
It was an old English train, the sort with plush rows of seats, every other facing forward, while the others faced backward. John jumped up to check if the door to the next train car was unlocked, which of course it wasn’t.
“Already tried both of them, they’re locked,” Sherlock informed him, watching as John tried the other end of the car, nearly falling from the turning of the train. He gripped a plush seat to keep himself steady, and to quell the panic gripping his lungs with its thick, sharp, fingers.
The windows were blackened so that one could not see out, and the only light was hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the car, casting long shadows across the floor. John sank into a soft seat in the back corner, his leg anxiously bouncing up and down nearly as fast as his heartbeat. He would not panic, he simply wouldn’t.
“As soon as we are within reach of a cell phone signal, Mariana will be alerted to our situation,” Sherlock said, pacing back and forth along the length of the car.
“You kept your phone?” John demanded.
“Yes, it was in an inside pocket they didn’t bother to check when they grabbed me.” Sherlock answered, stopping next to where John sat, not looking him in the eye.
“What are we meant to do in the meantime?” John demanded, “We could be going anywhere!” He stood to join Sherlock’s movements, his restless legs needing desperately to move.
“You’re claustrophobic?” Sherlock asked, turning to face John for the first time since they’d become trapped.
“Well not normally!” John said, shaking his arms to an try and relieve the aching pressure on his chest, “But there’s no way out, we’re flying in a random direction-”
“And Mariana has been alerted to the situation, there is nothing we can do right now but wait,”
“That’s the only thing I can’t fucking do, Sherlock!” John said, “I mean, we have no food, no water, no toilets, and I cannot emphasize this enough, no fucking clue where we’re going-”
“Watson, listen to me,” Sherlock said slowly, holding up a hand to stop John’s anxious spiral of thoughts.
“What? You gonna break a window?” John demanded.
“Not unless I must,” Sherlock answered, “We’re going to sit down, and lay out everything we know,”
“I-I…” John said, feeling as though his brain was short-circuiting. His thoughts were so tangled together he wasn’t sure any of them could become words. Sherlock sat in one of the seats, gesturing for John to join him. John shifted from foot to foot a few times, eyeing the seat across from his friend, before Sherlock patted the seat next to him with more vigor than before.
John sank into it, nauseating dread pooling in his stomach. He was trapped, and he felt ill, but he couldn’t run away, even if he had to vomit he was trapped here and if he did, then he’d be trapped here with it. Not to mention Sherlock was trapped too, and it was only a matter of time before they’d-
“John,” Sherlock said, putting a hand gently but firmly on his shoulder, “Think of solutions, not problems,”
“There doesn’t seem to be a particularly clear solution!” John said, jumping out of the seat and shaking Sherlock’s hand off rather violently. If he sat still another moment he was sure he’d be suffocated by the rapidly tightening anxiety.
“Nothing rational will calm you, will it?” Sherlock asked.
“Nothing irrational will either, so don’t you even think about making yourself panic-”
“It was an experiment, and a moderately successful one at that,” Sherlock shrugged.
“Fuck,” John breathed out, suddenly struggling to catch his breath has waves of nausea rolled through him.
“You need a distraction,” Sherlock observed.
“No…” John whispered, cringing and putting a finger to his temple, “I need to get off this fucking train,”
“...Are you…angry? Or frightened?” Sherlock asked, folding his arms.
“Yes!” John shouted throwing his arms in the air.
“It wasn’t a yes or no question,” Sherlock said, “And besides, they’re going to hear you,”
“Maybe there’s someone sane somewhere on this train who might hear a cry for help,” John insisted, banging his fists against the door, “Someone help us! This isn’t a joke we are trapped!”
“Calm yourself, Watson,” Sherlock said, his tone obnoxiously even.
“The windows! They have to be painted, right?” John gasped, running up to the nearest window and almost falling flat on his face in the process, “Do you have something sharp to scrape with?”
“I have my nails,” Sherlock said. John rolled his eyes.
Sherlock trimmed his nails once a week, always keeping a quarter inch of white nail on each finger, smooth and even. John on the other hand (hah!) was a nail-biter to the extreme. He bit and picked and scratched until his nails were throbbing. They were useless for this situation…Sherlock’s however…
“Do it!” John said, sounding exasperated, which he much preferred over panicked, although the anxiety had not lessened even a smidge.
“The paint’s on the outside, I can’t scratch it from here,” Sherlock informed him.
“Well, shit.”
~~~
Sherlock’s phone was dying. 4% remaining. He watched the loading symbol spin as it had for the past two hours. Nothing was going through. Wherever they were, it was quite far from civilization, he guessed.
Meanwhile, John was not doing well.
Sherlock sat in one of the plush seats, cringing at the hardened velvet texture his hand would touch whenever he brushed against the surface. John had sat in every seat at one point, pntunated by anxious pacing along the rows. Sherlock wondered if this was what John saw when he was understimulated.
He’d been quiet on the matter, as John would snap each time he attempted pleasant conversation, but it was becoming increasingly hard not to feel the doctor’s panic rising with every second they were trapped.
“John…are you…” He began before realizing that he knew the answer, “You don’t seem well,” He opted to say instead.
John shook his head hard, not saying a word.
Well that was far from reassuring.
He wanted to point out tht movement was unhealpful as they currently had no access to calaories, or hydration both of which were used up by movement. But he knew from many hours spent trying to calm his own nervous system, that John did not have much choice in the matter.
“Do you need to urinate?” He asked John, sounding more blunt than intended.
He already knew that answer to that too, after living with Watson for the past few years he could predict John’s bodily functions almost better than his own. On second thought, significantly better than his own.
Sherlock expected John would say something like “Well fucking obviously!” or, “Doesn’t matter here, does it?”
Instead, he just cringed and nodded.
“And you’re hungry?” Sherlock said, heralding an informed guess.
John shrugged, a shiver running through his body, that Sherlock guessed was involuntary. Nausea then.
“And you’re exhausted, thirsty, and terrified,” Sherlock finished, not needing to see the way John’s eyebrows furrowed to know he was right.
“Can’t hide shit from you,” John whispered. Sherlock was relieved to hear his voice, although John sounded almost like he’d been crying. Of course Sherlock knew that he hadn’t, otherwise he’d have noticed.
Oh, well now he was.
John sat down across from Sherlock, bending over to put his head in his hands. He whispered something that sounded apologetic, but Sherlock couldn’t make out the exact words.
He was horrible at comforting people, he never could connect their emotions with the cause fast enough. He never knew when to touch, and when to stay back. He never knew if he should try to offer solutions, or simply allow the other person to let their emotions out.
He also knew he couldn’t go by the ‘golden rule’ his parents so often had reiterated when he felt unsure of how to proceed. When he was upset, he tried to be alone to regulate himself before even trying to explain why to others. Leaving John alone wasn’t exactly an option here. Besides, how was he even to know that was what John needed? He’d just have to ask.
“John, what do you need?”
“A toilet, mostly,” John chuckled, wiping his face almost frantically, “A glass of water…maybe a hug?”
“I have one of those things,” Sherlock said, sliding into the seat next to John and offering his arms. John, rather hesitantly at first, fell into them as he had so many times before.
As the two embraced, they could feel the train slowly coming to a stop. John tried to gain control of her breathing again, and lifted his head to look around for any sign of life.
The only sound they heard was the soft click of the only light turning off.
“Sherlock,” John whispered, “I swear to God, if you try to pull that-”
“I’m not, I’m sorry,” Sherlock said, pulling him back in, “And as previously established, I have no glass of water, but I do always have a hand to hold,”
John accepted.
~~~
So this was most likely the worst day of John’s life…and the way things were going, it could very well be his last. Sherlock had slowed his breathing, and almost exaggerated each intake of oxygen so that John could copy. With his body pressed against Sherlock’s, he could feel the pounding heart through both of their shirts. It was faster than he’d let on.
When Sherlock got scared, that’s when things got bad. That’s when people got murdered, or kidnapped or say…died of dehydration in a puddle of their own piss. That sort of thing.
“You don’t have to pretend everything is fine,” John whispered into Sherlock’s sleeve, not particularly wanting to look around at the dark room they’d found themselves in. It was far, far, too much like the one he’d been trapped in before.
He almost expected to feel the cold metal of a gun against his head…
BANG
He shot out of his seat, and into the aisle at the sound, patting his pockets for the gun he didn’t have. Had the man returned? A clicking sound echoed through the space almost as loudly as John heartbeat smacking against the walls of his chest.
Funnily enough, the only thought in his head was how embarrassing it would be to piss himself in front of a kidnapper.
“Hello?” A soft female voice whispered, and a window sprung open, shedding light on the train car.
“Mariana! Brilliant!” Sherlock exclaimed, jumping to his feet.
“Where are we?” John asked, “We were moving for hours, we must be halfway to Timbuckto by now!”
“Actually, you’ve been going in circles,” Mariana said bluntly.
“Circles?” Sherlock asked.
“You are currently inside one of the old historical trains at the Brighton Historical Society’s 75th anniversary display,” She said brightly.
“How did I fail to see it?” Sherlock asked, “The train’s windows were blacked out because no one was meant to go inside in the first place!”
“Can you climb out?” She asked, pulling to window back further.
John was all too eager to squeeze through, with Sherlock right behind him.
“If he trapped us in here, then I believe I know where the disappearing children may be,” Sherlock said, “Whoever this man is, he clearly has access to the Historical Society’s keys. Perhaps a board member, or even a janitor. There are only a few locations where they may be.
“John, are you alright?” Mariana asked as John looked around the courtyard where the train had indeed been going in circles.
“Never better,” He sighed, Mariana immediately seeing the sarcasm.
“What do you need?” She asked, anxiously.
“Toilet, water, food,” John sighed.
“I’ll meet you both at the central fountain,” Sherlock grinned, “I have a few witnesses to interrogate.
With that, Sherlock bounded away, clearly on the scent of the case.
“You’re really alright?” She asked softly. John supposed she could tell he’d been crying.
“Sherlock kept me sane,” He answered honestly.
“Not surprised,” She replied with a smile.