In an effort to break through a three-week stint of writer's block (and still working on that, unfortunately), I began this 221B-drabble series for the Watsons_Woes LiveJournal community. My other fics are still uncooperative, but I am indeed trying. Until then:
"What d'you mean, you don't know if you have a concussion?" Worry honed the tone into a razor's edge, cleaving the frozen darkness into thawed darkness. "You're a doctor, for heaven's sake –"
The small moan offered the response he was hoping to evade, and he lowered his voice. "My apologies, Watson…look, do not move and I shall try to navigate around these crates. Confound it, what is the fellow doing with seven types of turnips, preparing for a famine?"
"Sure I don' know…"
"Devil take the man!" the detective fumed as his shin made intimate contact with a splintered crate-edge. "I must indeed be approaching senility, Doctor, to be taken in by such overt fabrications." He felt but did not mention the smart of damaged pride regarding his inability to defend himself from a much younger man's physical prowess.
"You'll…never become senile," came a weak reassurance out of the inky void. "Absent-minded, possibly…crotchety…demanding…"
"Yes, I grasp the idea, Watson," he replied dryly, though smiling into the darkness in a feeble gesture to convince himself that all would come right, as it always had before…
…despite the fact no one knew they were trapped, that their villain was not returning, and that the cellar door was not only barred outside but the trapdoor hidden under a rug in a disused bedroom.