A/N: I could hardly impose a meme on Chewing Gum without joining myself, especially after threatening the poor dear with rotten vegetables. Here's my contribution; more will be forthcoming.

Locksmith

"Well, that tears it, Watson." My friend hitched his back farther up the rough plaster of the wall, staring down as if personally affronted at his limp, bluish, swollen hands. "I can't loosen these ropes, not with numb fingers. You shall have to free us both."

I nodded resolutely, rubbing gingerly at the raw skin of my wrists. Our captors had not done so thorough a job with my bindings, and with much twisting I had managed to loosen them enough to free my hands. "Tell me what to do."

"You'll need something for a lock-pick." Holmes' eyes narrowed, fastening on my coat. "That is the coat you tore on the grating yesterday, isn't it? Yes? Good. Mrs Hudson won't have had time to mend it properly before you snatched it back up; there will still be a pin in the collar. Find it for me, there's a good chap."

I had already slipped out of the jacket and begun to run my fingers along the collar, searching intently for the vital bit of metal. Yes, there was a pin, thrust right through the seam at the back of the neck; I extracted it and held it up for Holmes' inspection.

"Good man!" He flashed me a quick smile across the hallway separating our cells. "Now, you'll have to bend it very precisely. Tell me, is the lock on your door the same as mine?..."

For the next ten minutes we traded information. I tried to describe my lock to Holmes' satisfaction, frustrated by the growing darkness and my inexperience with burglary. He in turn struggled to demonstrate proper lockpick-bending, fumbling at bits of straw with his useless hands. Neither of us succeeded in conveying much that was of use. To make matters worse, by the time I had finally understood my task, it was so dark and my fingers so tired that I could not seem to bend the stiff pin as my friend wanted.

After the fifteenth time my sore hands slipped, Holmes forced a long breath through his clenched teeth and threw himself back against the wall. "Honestly, Watson! I thought surgeons lived by their dexterity!"

"That's a different matter entirely, and you know it." Stung, I threw down the pin. "Blast it all, Holmes! I'm a doctor, not a locksmith!"