The Darker Night (Sherlock/John, R)
The Darker Night (Sherlock/John, R)
Trigger Warning: Batman
Author: buttsnax
Fandom: BBC's Sherlock
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,754
Warnings: vengeance, the night
Author's Note: This is a direct sequel to "Sherlock Holmes And The Mystery Of John's Butt." Unfortunately I was unable to write a sequel that did not contain graphic violence or death. I am sorry.
Summary: "Oh," said Sherlock, backing up. "That's a boner."
-xxx-
It was night, and John Watson was walking home. It was a night laden with purpose and foreboding. It was a dark night.
“It’s dark tonight,” remarked John to himself.
“I know,” said the night.
“Shit!” John jumped back in surprise, dropping the six-pack of beer he’d purchased at the corner store.
Sherlock stepped forward out of the shadows. They were still three blocks from their apartment.
“Jesus, Sherlock,” said John, pausing to catch his breath for reasons entirely related to surprise and not at all a deeply repressed sexual attraction to his friend. “You scared me.”
“I am the night,” said Sherlock, his eyes narrowing.
John blinked a couple of times, then frowned. He looked down at the beer he’d purchased. The bottles had shattered on impact. A deep sadness welled up inside him. Then he remembered he had more beer. He pulled out a bottle stuffed in his sock and began to drink.
“Look,” John began, after a pause. “I know that last case had you pretty upset. But what happened to that girl isn’t your fault. There was no way we could have made it in time.”
“Justice waits for no one,” said Sherlock coldly. He took a step back and vanished into the gloom.
John stared after him for a moment. “So I guess I’ll see you at home then?”
There was no response. Of course. John shook his head and continued home. The night weighed on him like a strange man in his bedroom pressing down on his face with a pillow. He shivered. A night like this was rife with portentous omens and ominous portents.
When he reached his apartment the door listed open ominously. Shit, thought John. That was probably an omen.
Carefully, he set his beer down to free both hands and nudged the door open with his foot. Maybe the listing door was a portent instead; he wasn’t sure.
“Hello?” he called out. A shadowy figure appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Sherlock? Is that you?” asked John warily.
He shook his head. Not a portent, he thought. Perhaps it was an auspex?
No, John corrected himself. An auspex is a person who reads signs. Auger is the word I’m looking for. It wasn’t. An auger is a drill bit. John was looking for augur, but he didn't know that because he'd never used a drill before.
The shadow fled into the common room. John quickly gave chase. Barreling up the stairs he yelled, “Hey! Hey you! What are you doing?”
Upstairs, the common room appeared to be empty. A pall of misery hung in the air. Light crept through the window from the yellow moon outside. Reaching for his gun, John scanned the room for signs of movement.
Out of the moonlight a shadow arose from the other shadows that littered the shadow-laden room.
“I am darkness,” said Sherlock’s voice, echoing across the sepulchral blackness that engulfed the common room like a tomb for light that had died.
“Oh for God’s sake!" cried John. He flipped on the light switch. "What are you doing?” he demanded.
The ceiling light was thin and murky. One of the bulbs in the worn fixture sputtered, causing the shadows to dance like an epileptic witch’s coven circling their cauldron as they prepared good Christian babies for sacrifice to the devil. It did not ease John’s mood.
Sherlock took a step toward him. A pervasive sadness hung about him like a miasma, stifling all joy.
John swallowed.
“We need to talk about this,” he said. “I know you blame yourself for that girl's death, but you need to let it go. It's impossible to be right all of the time! If you need to see a therapist I ca--”
Sherlock lifted a finger to John’s lips. John got an instant erection.
“It’s because of people like you that I became this,” Sherlock began. “And you’ll never give me a reason to become someone else.”
Sherlock looked down and noticed the tent that had formed in John’s pants.
“Oh,” Sherlock said, backing up. “That’s a boner.”
“Uh,” said John, thinking about Sherlock and sex things.
Sherlock cleared his throat.
“London,” he said, his voice gaining strength and surety as his body gained distance from John’s inappropriate erection, “needs a hero.”
Sherlock jumped out the window.
John’s breath caught in his throat. “Sherlock!” He dropped the beer he was holding. The bottle shattered like the window Sherlock had smashed on his way out, scattering glass shards into crevices that lay hidden by the room’s darkness.
“God dammit,” John grumbled to himself, but his stomach was in knots. What if Sherlock was hurt? He grabbed a beer that had been stuffed under a chair cushion and raced down the stairs. As he reached the open air John realized with a start that the streetlights had gone out. It took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness that had darkened the already dark night.
“Sherlock!” he called out. “Where are you?”
It didn't take John long to find Sherlock kneeling in the street, encircled by shards of glass. A small dog barked excitedly at his heels. John rushed to him as quickly as he could, which in all honesty wasn't very fast as he was also nursing his beer.
Sherlock appeared to be unharmed by the fall. He was on top of an old lady, his knee pressing into her back. She wasn’t moving.
“Huh,” said John. He felt he should probably be more concerned.
The dog continued barking, a high-pitched yelp timed like a metronome. Sherlock’s hand shot out and grabbed the dog with a stifled yip. He looked up and met John’s eyes.
“Here,” he said, his voice pitched low and gravelly. “Take this small dog.”
John, curious, took the dog. It trembled in his arms.
“Yip,” it said softly.
He tried to feed it some beer. The dog was not interested and instead burrowed into his arms, shivering. John suddenly realized it was quite cold out, and he absently removed his scarf, wrapping it around the dog. He was pretty drunk.
“Sherlock,” he asked slowly. “Why did you tackle an old lady from our second-story window?”
“I am vengeance,” replied Sherlock.
John stared at him.
“Also, because of this,” Sherlock continued, lifting up the old woman’s skirt.
“Whoa, okay, hang on now,” interrupted John, disturbed and possibly a little jealous.
“Yip!” barked the small dog encouragingly.
Sherlock was quick with his hands, and retrieved a suspicious white package from under her skirt before John could stop him.
“Is that . . . heroin?” asked John, reading the package, which had the word "HEROIN" stamped on it. He took a swig from his beer.
Sherlock nodded solemnly. He could also read. In the distance, a crow cawed. “One hundred percent pure and uncut.”
He tossed the brick of heroin to John. John fumbled with it for a moment, then realizing he was also holding a beer and a small dog, promptly dropped all three. The bottle shattered like a gerbil dipped in liquid nitrogen and flung against a concrete wall.
“That’s not all,” said Sherlock. He flipped her skirt up again and produced a Russian PPSh-41 submachine gun, with three extra drum magazines--all loaded.
“Holy hell,” said John, staggering. “That’s some serious firepower. I wonder what she was planning.”
“We haven’t even gotten to the worst part,” said Sherlock grimly. He hiked her skirt up farther to reveal a full size Kirov-class soviet battlecruiser. All four 30mm gatling guns swerved to target Sherlock, and it was likely the SS-N-19 cruise missile launchers had him locked as well, though that level of firepower would hardly be necessary at this range. Its full complement of SS-N-14 Silex ASW cruise missiles glinted ominously (or possible portentously, but definitely not auspiciously) in the scant starlight. Sherlock lowered her skirt while John stared in awe.
Sherlock stood up and put his hand on John’s shoulders. One of the street lights flipped on right at that moment, bathing Sherlock in a backlit halo.
“Thank you, John,” said Sherlock. “For all you’ve done.”
“For all I’ve-what?” asked John, still stunned.
“A hero can be anyone,” Sherlock continued. “Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a scarf around a small dog's shoulders to let him know the world hasn't ended.” And with that, the street light winked out once more, and Sherlock vanished into the shadows.
“Sherlock, I thought we agreed coke was a ‘sometimes’ drug,” John called out after him.
“Yip yip yip yip!” barked the small dog, now covered in white powder as it tore into the heroin package.
“Please call an ambulance,” said the old woman, grasping John’s pant leg. “I think I’m bleeding inside.”
“Shit,” said John. He pulled a beer out from under her skirt and tossed it back before throwing it to the ground, causing it to shatter like the scholarship aspirations of a fourth-string high school quarterback.
John turned away and stumbled back to his apartment. Behind him, there was a small thud as a tiny dog went into cardiac arrest and fell over in the street.
The woman was actually completely innocent--just an old lady who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time--but the dog was a highly placed KGB agent. Of course, being as he had just consumed one-third of his body weight in potent refined opiates, no one would ever know. In case you are wondering though, the dog went to hell.
-xxx-
The next morning, John was rudely awakened by his phone when a caller stubbornly refused to accept voicemail. On the fourth attempt, John begrudgingly answered it.
“Watson,” he managed.
“Jesus, John,” exclaimed Lestrade through the phone. “About fucking time. You know there’s a dead woman outside your apartment, right? Surrounded by broken glass from your window. What the hell happened?”
“Uh,” said John, not quite awake. He tried to tally up the beer bottles strewn around his bed. It took him a few seconds. Four-thousand-six-hundred and seventy-three.
“Shit, don’t tell me you did it,” said Lestrade. “Oh god, it was more of your weird sex stuff, wasn’t it?”
John looked down. There was a beer in his hand. Four-thousand-six hundred and seventy-four. No, he thought to himself, pleasantly surprised. This one is still full. It doesn’t count.
“I . . . I can’t quite remember what happened,” lied John into the phone. He hoped Lestrade believed him.
“We’ll talk about that later,” said Lestrade. “There’s been another murder and Sherlock’s not answering his phone. Get both of your asses down to Farthington Square as soon as you can. And tell that emotionally damaged autistic savant we need him to not fuck this one up.”
“Yeah, sure,” said John, hanging up.
John sighed and tossed the empty bottle over his shoulder. Against all probability it landed on the pile of empty bottles in such a way as to cause a chain reaction, shattering all the bottles at once and turning his bedroom into a minefield of foot-lacerating glass shards.
John didn’t notice. His mind was elsewhere, thinking of Sherlock. Thinking of doing stuff with Sherlock. Butt stuff.
His feet were bleeding profusely by the time he was ready to go. Far away, he heard the sound of high-pitched barking, as if a small dog was laughing at him from hell.
It worried him, but more troublesome was the fact that Sherlock still wasn’t answering his phone. He dialed Sherlock’s number again and again, but the result was always the same.
“You have reached the voicemail of:
--I AM DARKNESS. I AM THE NIGHT.--
Please leave a message at the sound of the beep.”
“God fucking dammit,” cursed John under his breath as he pulled on his shoes. He would have to begin this investigation alone. He grabbed a beer from the mailbox and headed out the door.
When he arrived at the crime scene, it had quieted down considerably. John was late, having been pulled over on the way, but was let go when the officer assumed the 17 percent he blew on the breathalizer test was an equipment error.
John stepped out of his car and set his beer on the hood. The officer watching the police line gave him a wary stare.
“‘Oy there, ‘whatcha think you’re doin’ with that?” said the officer.
“This?” asked John, glancing at the beer.
“You can’t be bringin’ that 'ere,” the officer said.
“Oh fine,” said John, handing over his beer.
The officer made a beckoning gesture with his hand.
John sighed. “Okay, okay.”
He pulled out his emergency beers from his coat and handed them over, as well as four bottles strapped to his head, and the emergency bottle dangling from his belt. He briefly debated trying to sneak past with his pants-beers intact, but he regretfully handed them over when he realized how much they clinked when he walked.
“Cheers, mate,” said the officer. “The body's over there.”
John nodded to him and ducked under the crime scene tape. He put two fingers in his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. A seagull swooped overhead and dropped a bottle into his hands. “Caw!” it cried, as John flicked it a fifty-pence coin.
John walked over to the body. The victim was a young man this time, slouched up against a brick wall, his wrists slit open. There was a bloody message beside him.
John read the words aloud. “'I did it-Professor Moriarty.' Huh. Well that's something.”
“But what does it mean?” asked a shadow.
John whirled around, dropping his half-empty bottle. It shattered on the hard cobblestones like the hopes and dreams of an unwanted orphan. The shadow moved forward, casting a darkness onto everything it touched. Even the metaphors. But especially the similes.
It was Sherlock.
He wore the shadows like a tattered cloak. His face was like a rock carved from stone. He regarded the victim impassively.
“Where the hell did you go last night?” asked John, exasperated. “You’re acting crazy, you know that?”
“Sometimes,” said Sherlock, his expression grave like the grave, “Sometimes it's only madness that makes us what we are.”
John rolled his eyes. “Right. Sure.”
He looked at the crime scene.
“I think the meaning is quite clear,” he said, gesturing at the message scrawled in blood.
“I know Moriarty did it,” replied Sherlock, his voice pitched so low that it passed the southern equator and landed somewhere in Africa. “But what was his motivation?”
“No, the other message,” said John, pointing to the other message below the first one.
Sherlock looked to where John was pointing.
“MY MOTIVATION IS BECAUSE I HATE YOU SHERLOCK.”
“That name looks . . . familiar,” Sherlock said, his voice laden with the weight of an entire city’s burdens. “Like a whisper of a memory of a dream, half-grasped as I thrash in the tumultuous whirlpools of recollection.”
“Probably because your name is ‘Sherlock,'” John said. He wished there was another seagull around to give him beer.
Sherlock stared at him. “Is it?” he asked.
“I’m worried about you,” said John. “Are you back on the pipe again? Be serious with me.”
“I am an enigma born in a labyrinth,” replied Sherlock. “I am a conundrum wrapped in mystery, smothered in secret sauce and cooked over flames of darkness.”
John was not impressed. Sherlock stood for a moment and then said, “I am vengeance. I am the night.”
“I’m aware,” said John, annoyed.
Sherlock stepped forward out of the shadows. John didn’t waiver.
Sherlock reached his hand to his face and hooked it under his chin. Slowly he pulled up on it, revealing what some would call his true face, but yet, at the same time, was another mask. It was Batman.
“I’m Batman,” said Batman.
“Yes,” John said, calmly. “We figured that out, what with the whole ‘I am the night’ thing. I know we’re not on your level with this 'detectivey deductivey' stuff all the time, but that one was real fuckin’ obvious.”
Batman said nothing, but reached up again and pulled off his Batman mask. It was Sherlock.
“I’m Sherlock,” said Sherlock.
John nodded. He reached up to his chin and pulled off his mask. It was Batman.
“I’m Batman,” said Batman.
Sherlock stepped back in surprise, then reached up to pull off his Sherlock mask once more. It was Batman.
“I’m Batman,” said Batman.
“I’m Batman,” said Batman.
Then they made out.