A/N: English isn't my native language and this is unbeta'd, so there might be some mistakes.
I own nothing but my feels and some merch.
Enjoy~
Hearts beating fast, adrenaline coursing through their veins, two men sit on a sofa. It is not their sofa as they are not currently in their flat.
Sherlock Holmes and John Watson wait with bated breath, shrouded in total darkness. They wait for the woman who lives in this place, a woman named Kitty Riley, a reporter who holds the key to the Rich Brook business.
They sit there, not saying anything, comfortable in this silence but at the same time anxious about what will happen. Sherlock's name is being dragged through the mud, and John is in trouble as well merely because they are friends.
Sherlock doesn't know how much time they have spent like this already. He can't check his watch and he doesn't bother with counting each second that passes. He chooses to focus on John instead. He can't see the face of the man sitting next to him, but he doesn't really need to. John's visage is branded inside his skull and Sherlock can see it clearly with his mind's eye. If you were to look inside his mind palace, you would not find any data stored regarding the current Prime Minister; but you would find information such as how John's hair looks like on the days he doesn't have work at the clinic and hasn't bothered to brush it, or how long his eyelashes are.
Sherlock thinks of all the things that he would like to tell John right now. About how he has changed his life, that he is his whole life. That he never thought anyone could put up with him or would actually want to. That he kept having nightmares after the incident with Moriarty at the pool, dreaming of John dying in all sorts of horrific ways. That sometimes, when John takes a nap in his armchair in their living room, he watches him with burning interest and warm affection.
He also wishes to tell him those three words that he had considered insignificant and petty before a certain army doctor came into his life.
He wants to say these things because he fears that this adventure of theirs will not end well.
And yet, he forces all these words down his throat.
Sherlock can pick any lock in a matter of seconds, but he has done absolutely nothing to free him and his faithful blogger. It's wrong of him and selfish but he lets the handcuffs remain around their wrists so that John will remain with him, so that John won't leave him alone in the darkness.
And then he feels it. John brushes his knuckles with his thumb. His touch is soft and barely perceptible, like a feather; and yet Sherlock's senses are so attuned to John that he doesn't miss it. I'm here, this light touch seems to say. We'll get through this together. I believe in you.
Sherlock's fingers brush against John's in acknowledgment, in gratitude. His need to entwine their fingers is so strong that it almost causes him physical ache, but he doesn't dare. Instead, he only allows himself to be comforted by John's presence and his hand against his own. And he realises that the handcuffs aren't really necessary. They aren't really the thing that's keeping John with him right here, right now.
Even if the whole world is against them, they will still stand by each other's side.
And so, together, they wait.