This is a two-shot. I originally left it as one long piece; tell me if that's preferred after I've added the next chapter and I'll put it back that way. Second chapter will be up tomorrow. This is sort of theme-related with some of my other stuff, but I don't really write them as though they were in any order, this was just an off-shoot idea from the others. Hope you like. Reviews are appreciated.
"Drake?"
The voice seemed to come from a long way away through the black fog of her head, muffled and echoing.
"Drake?"
Who was it? Her mind scrabbled for recognition. Thoughts came sluggishly, floating to the surface like bubbles in thick mud.
"Drake you dozy bint, wake up!"
Ah. One of the bubbles burst. Gene.
A few moments of confusion followed before her fumbling consciousness picked up the signals from the rest of her body and feeling came in a rush. Mostly of pain.
"Urgh."
"I hope you've been having nice dreams about me Bolly, because you've woken up to a living nightmare."
"Urgh?"
"That's right. How's the head?"
"Uurrgh."
"Good. Me too."
Alex opened her eyes. And blinked. Closed them again. Opened them. The blackness didn't change.
Hmmm. Odd.
For a second she thought she may have gone blind but then dismissed the fear. The rest of her senses caught up. She was lying on her side on something hard and cold. And she hurt. All over. A lot. Shifting, she tried to rub her eyes, but found she couldn't move her arms. They were wrapped around something large and warm and smelling faintly of scotch.
"Gene?" Alex mumbled groggily. "What the-?"
"Good morning to you too. Or it could be good afternoon, or possibly evening, I'm finding it quite hard to tell right at this moment."
She tugged at her arms but found them unwilling to relinquish their embrace of her DCI. It felt like her wrists had been bound together with cord.
"What happened? Where are we?"
"Well," Gene said from a couple of inches away from her nose, and she could hear the infuriated sarcasm coming. "If I had the magical ability to see in the dark and was able to get up I might be able to tell you. As it is, I seem to be tied to the biggest pain in the arse of a women to ever walk God's earth, in the pitch black, with a headache so big you can probably see it from space."
"Oh."
"Yes, 'Oh'."
There was silence for a moment.
"Kent's boys jumped us?"
"Well done, Bolly knickers. I expect Kent thought he'd give us a nice surprise after we busted his drugs ring."
"Shit. Could you sit up? My leg's gone numb."
A little cautiously, and with much grunting and muttered swearing, they managed to get sitting up. It transpired that their attackers had thought it entertaining to tie them front to front with their hands trussed behind each other's backs. It was done in such a way that they couldn't just lift their arms over their heads and be free, but with one arm over one shoulder and the other under the other arm, so that they were pretty much locked together. Hunt had his legs stretched out in front of him and Alex was perched on his lap, and it was a little awkward to say the least.
Gene had found a wall and was leaning against it. Alex could hear his breath as it quietened and feel it flutter on her cheek, the gentle rise and fall of his chest against hers. She tried to concentrate on her surroundings: coolness, the ground hard and gritty, stone maybe; the damp wall was made of brick and was slightly slimy under her fingertips; she felt a tiny draft wafting her skin, the air clammy and smelling of salt and silt, like the smell of the sea or the river; far away she thought she heard the echoing plink plink of water dripping. Closer to, and she hissed at the explosion of pins and needles that spread through her awakening leg.
"Will you stop wriggling?" Gene's voice was loud in her ear. "I'm tryin' to think and it's very distracting."
"Sorry. Guv?"
"What?"
"I think we might be underground. Maybe an access tunnel for something, or a sewer."
"Fabulous. All I needed to make my day better was shit on my boots. Again. Right, first things first, I think we need to one: get some light, two: untie ourselves from this bloody stupid joke, and three: get the fuck out of here. Upsadaisy, DI Drake."
They struggled to their feet unsteadily. Gene banged his head on the low ceiling and swore, forced to stoop. As she stood, Alex suddenly had a horrible feeling of disorientation, with the blackness seeming to press into her eyeballs and her mind unsure of which way was up and which down. A flash of memory; her nine-year-old self running for a hiding place, hide and seek, Alex, you love this game, the big toy chest, no, no, don't get in, the lid closing down over her head and the suffocating dark, all alone, I'm coming to find you…
"Hey," Gene said gruffly, breaking the spell. "You okay?"
"Yeah," she answered shakily. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just a, you know, rush of blood to the head. Sort of thing."
"Hmmmm," he growled and Alex felt the deep rumble vibrating in her breast-bone, even through their clothes. "If you don't stop pressing quite so hard against me, Drake, I'm going to have a rush of blood somewhere quite different and it wont be my fault."
Alex realised she was leaning into him more that she probably ought and was glad for the darkness that hid her burning cheeks, even though she knew he didn't mean it.
"Urgh, you are disgusting. It's hardly my fault that I'm stuck here with you like this, and you could at least pretend to be in control of yourself."
"I often find it hard to control myself around you Bolly, mostly from breaking your bloody neck."
"The feeling's mutual. Now, what were you saying about light?"
"Unless Kent has taken it, I should have a lighter in my trousers."
"Which pocket?"
"Erm…" Gene shifted thoughtfully and Alex almost leapt backwards as he gently pressed his hips into hers.
"Gene!"
"Shut up, woman, I'm trying to feel where it is. No hands remember?" He pushed a little more forcefully and she felt the pressure of something hard on her thigh. Trapped in the dark, all her other senses heightened without sight, every brushing touch of him against her set off small fireworks in her skin, and their situation suddenly felt far too intimate. She gulped and was immediately furious at the acute physical responses of her body to the warmth of his. She could practically see the knowing grin on his face as he whispered, "Lighter's in the right-hand front."
"Right." Alex tried to work out how to disentangle themselves enough for her to reach his pockets. It was hard to visualise in the pitch black. Frowning she said, "Could you lean down a bit?"
He obliged and, standing on tiptoe, she tried to lift her right arm over his head. There was a few moments of struggling before she said, "Mm. I can't do it. My arms aren't long enough and your head's too big."
"You should try looking in the mirror sometime, Bolly. Let me try."
He tried. And almost dislocated her shoulder. "Ow. Owowow. Christ, Hunt, you'll end up really breaking my neck in a minute."
"Well sorry, but if you will keep moving about."
"I don't think this is going to work."
"Maybe it would be easier if we lay down?"
Alex gave a humourless laugh. "Not on your life Hunt. If you think I'm going to -"
"Ssh, ssh. Shut up a second," Gene hushed her, an odd urgency behind his words. He took a step forward, turning this way and that, dragging Alex with him. She could sense him cocking his head to one side, listening intently.
"Can you hear that?"
"Sshh." Faintly, very faintly, she could hear something. A soft hissing, sucking, slopping sound that echoed eerily around them. "Wait - is that - water?"
"Sewers," they both said in unison. Gene took another step forward and another, and almost tipped them both over a ledge. Beneath his wildly pedalling boot came a splashing noise. "Shit. I'm sure that wasn't there before."
"Guv," Alex's voice was quite calm. "Lie down."
"What? You have to be joking me-"
"Lie down, Hunt! Now!"
~~~OOooOO~~~
Which was how Gene found himself flat on his back with his lovely DI crouched over him and her hair tickling his face. It wasn't quite how he had envisioned it in his dreams. For a start, they were both wearing far too many clothes.
"You know," he said conversationally, while Alex tried to undo the rope around her wrists with her teeth. "When I woke up this morning I thought today was going to be a good day. Go to work, catch some scum, have some oxtail soup, go to Luigi's, go home, eat a curry. You know."
"Mmph," Alex said through a particularly tricky knot before letting it go. "That's what you do every day, Gene."
"Yeah I know. S'good." There were a few moments of silence before he said defensively, "I might have got the Quattro waxed."
"That's nice."
Silence reigned again, except for the lapping of water against stone and Alex's hot, harsh breathing next to his ear. They had retreated back onto their dry stone shelf but now he could feel a cold wetness seeping past his ankles, and attempted to focus on that rather than the lithe woman straddling his midriff. He failed. Absently and half out of mischief, Gene began to stroke his fingers up and down Alex's spine and grinned when he felt her involuntary shiver. In frustration she let out a long hiss of expletives. His grin widened.
"I never knew you could talk so dirty, Inspector," he drawled.
"Shut up."
He chuckled. With a final angry tug, Alex pulled the cord away from her hands. "Ha!"
She wriggled underneath his arms and slid off his hips. Gene tried very hard to control himself. Quickly he sat up and her hands found his in the darkness, fingers clashing as she fumbled blindly with the knots. He felt cold without her pressed against him and suddenly missed her arms around his neck. Finally the rope fell away and Gene squatted up, feeling in his pockets for the lighter. There was a clink and a sputter and flame flared into life between them. She blinked in the sudden light but his eyes stayed steady, luminous as a cat's in the flickering shadows of his face.
The small circle of yellow light revealed a brick tunnel curving over their heads and the ledge that they were crouching on, a shelf maybe four-and-a-half feet wide and about eight feet long. Around this, water flowed like a black mirror, its surface barely marred by a ripple.
Wordlessly he handed her the lighter and checked his other pockets. Alex was looking at the walls, enthralled.
"This place is old," she murmured and then caught his eye. "I mean, for a sewer. Look at this mortar. It's not like the stuff used nowadays, it's much lighter. This must be part of the old Victorian system, maybe even as far back as Bazelgette himself."
"Old shit, new shit, it's all shit to me, Bolly."
"Oh that's not sewage, it's river water," she said blithely. "Only one per cent of London's sewer system is made up of Victorian tunnels and a good few of them aren't actively used any more. Some of them were made into drains for rainwater and just flow back into the river."
"Fascinating."
But Alex wasn't listening. "Back into the river," she muttered again, frowning at the water. "River water…Into the Thames…" She trailed off thoughtfully.
"Guv." her urgent tone made him look up. "The Thames is a tidal river."
Her horrified eyes lifted to meet his and as one they looked down at the water that had crept up over the lip of rock and was now lapping playfully around their shoes.
"What time is it?" Alex said hoarsely.
He looked down at his watch, "Erm, almost eight o'clock."
She began to run her hands through her hair. "Right. Have to think… they'd have had to bring us down here at low tide…difference between low tide and high tide's about six hours at Tower Bridge, give or take twenty minutes. High tide's around seven metres at a spring tide, less at neap. Low tide's always about half a metre, ish, so that's six and a half metres in around six hours, around…one point one metres an hour…"
Gene was staring at her. "What?!"
"I did a project at school," she explained. "Now shut up, I'm trying to think… Was it a full moon last night? New moon? Gibbous?"
"Who d'you think I am, Mystic Meg? What are you blathering about?"
"It's important!"
"I don't bloody know!"
"Please, Gene! Just think."
"Errm," he passed a hand over his eyes and thought back to last night, stumbling tipsily out of Luigi's. It had been clear of clouds for once and he'd looked up at a sky almost totally devoid of stars because of the light pollution. That song… he'd thought of that stupid Italian song when he'd seen the moon… how did it go? When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie…
"That's amore," he whispered. Now it was Alex's turn to look annoyed.
"What?"
"Um, nothing," he cleared his throat. "Er, it was full, a full moon, well almost. Is that good?"
"No. It's bad." She sighed at his confused expression. "When it's a full moon or a new moon it's called a spring tide, because tides are stronger, higher and faster. We have…" she looked critically at the height of the tunnel. "Maybe an hour and a half, maybe a bit more, before this place is completely flooded."
"Wonderful," Gene said gloomily. "Well, Drakey, I hope you brought your swimming keks with you." He smiled nastily at her and motioned towards the grimy river. "Ladies first."