A Study In Blood Ch. 2/? (Supernatural/Sherlock BBC)

[batmanspimp]

Title: A Study In Blood
Author: Batmanspimp aka Gameboyrocker
Fandoms: Supernatural & Sherlock BBC
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: There will be language, violence, gore, and religious themes aplenty.
Summary: When Lucifer escapes from the Cage, Sam, Dean, and Castiel find themselves in London seeking the help of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson to save the world from a cataclysmic battle between God and the Devil. Sherlock/Supernatural crossover


John woke up to the sound of the teakettle whistling. For most people, this would be a normal, even welcomed, occurrence, but not for him. For him, it was unusual. In his flat, he was always the one to make the tea. Frankly, he was always the one to do everything, but he didn’t mind. Not really.

Another reason that this teatime was unusual was, well, because of the time-it was three-thirty in the morning. Normally when John was woken up at three-thirty in the morning, it was to the sound of gunshots or violin music or Sherlock shouting at the telly-but never the teakettle.

John crawled out of bed and, after slipping his slippers onto his feet, headed downstairs. Sherlock was sitting in his chair with his knees tucked up under his chin. John had to do a double-take; the position didn’t look to be at all comfortable, but Sherlock didn’t seem to mind. His arms were resting on his legs, his hands right between his knees, a teacup gripped in his hand. His hair was tousled and his robe was pulled tightly around him.

And he was shaking.

John rushed over to Sherlock’s side and put his hand on the man’s shoulder, kneeling down so that they would be about at eye-level. “Sherlock,” he said softly, gently, “Sherlock, are you-”

“I’m fine,” Sherlock interrupted.

“You’re shaking,” John argued. “What-”

Sherlock shrugged John’s hand off his shoulder. “I said I’m fine. Go back to bed.”

John didn’t want to. He was tired, sure, but more than that, he was worried. Even though he was an Englishman, Sherlock wasn’t a big tea drinker. John could count the times that he’d seen him do it on two hands, and they’d been flat mates for nearly two years.

After watching Sherlock for a few more seconds, John turned and slowly went back upstairs, turning around every so often to check on his friend. Sherlock never once met his gaze, staring instead into his cup of tea, gripping it so tightly that his hands trembled.

The next night, and the one after that, the same thing happened. At some ungodly hour of the morning, John woke up to the shrieking of the kettle and went downstairs to see Sherlock sitting in his chair and staring into a cup of hot tea. He tried to get Sherlock to talk, but the detective would have nothing to do with it. He told John that he was fine and to go back to bed.

John was used to Sherlock not talking. The first time they’d met, in fact, Sherlock had warned him that sometimes he didn’t talk ‘for days on end’. But this was different. Not only was Sherlock not talking, but he wasn’t doing anything. He sat in his chair all day, ignoring John, ignoring Mrs. Hudson, ignoring his phone, the telley, everything. John called Mycroft Holmes and asked if he knew of anything that had happened that would have caused Sherlock’s odder-than-usual behavior, but the man admitted to being oblivious to anything of the sort. Inspector Lestrade called John and, after saying that he’d tried to call Sherlock but hadn’t been able to reach him, told John that they needed the man’s help on a case. John told Lestrade he’d see what he could do.

“Sherlock,” John had said as he snapped his phone shut, “that was Lestrade. He needs your help. I told him you’d give him a call.”

Sherlock had ignored him.

Thursday night, John woke up at half-past two, but not to the sound of the teakettle. This time, he woke up to screaming. He ran downstairs in only his pyjama bottoms and flung open the door to Sherlock’s room. “Sherlock!”

Sherlock Holmes was on the floor, seizing. Out of his mouth escaped the most blood-curling screams John had ever heard in his life, worse than the ones he’d heard as a doctor, worse than the ones he’d heard as a soldier. John immediately kicked aside the books, clothing, and other odds and ends that were scattered on the floor around his friend, and then he dropped to his knees and pulled out his cell phone and called for an ambulance.

“Sherlock!” he barked, reaching out and gripping the man’s sweaty face in his hands. “Sherlock, it’s all right! I’m here now; it’s all right.”

John didn’t know whether Sherlock heard him or not; the man stopped neither screaming nor thrashing. John heard a gasp come from the doorway and glanced up to see Mrs. Hudson standing there, her eyes wide and her hand covering her mouth.

“Wait for the ambulance,” John told her. He looked back to Sherlock, assessing him, checking for wounds, but when he saw that Mrs. Hudson hadn’t budged, he turned to her and snapped, “Go!”

The elderly woman gave a cry at the edge in John’s voice, but she obeyed, quickly leaving the room. John heard her run downstairs. He focused again on Sherlock.

“No!” Sherlock was screaming. “No, please, no! Please, please! Oh, God! Help! Somebody help me, please! Make it stop! Make it stop!”

“Sherlock! Sherlock, listen to me!” John brushed Sherlock’s sweat-matted locks away from his brow and brushed his fingers over the detective’s pale cheeks. “Sherlock, it’s not real! Whatever you’re seeing, whatever you think is happening, it’s not real!”

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. Sherlock’s body relaxed, save for his breathing and heart rate, which both continued at unsafe rate. Through his deep, gasping breaths, Sherlock managed to wheeze out, “J-John?”

“Yes,” John answered, gripping his friend’s hands in his own. “Sherlock, it’s me. Everything’s fine.”

Everything wasn’t fine…but John didn’t know that. The ambulance arrived and rushed Sherlock to the hospital, where test after test-most of them being neurological-were run. All came back negative. According to science, Sherlock Holmes was in perfect health. He stayed overnight, continued to be monitored, and was sent home in the morning with nothing but a huge bill to be paid.

John didn’t go into work, opting instead to stay home and make sure that Sherlock was, indeed, better. The detective was acting more like himself today, just a bit preoccupied-not surprising for someone who’d just had a massive seizure and hallucination. As they sat together watching the nightly news, John asked his friend the question that had been pressing on his mind since last night.

“Sherlock-” the detective grunted in acknowledgement-“what…what did you see? Last night?”

Immediately after the words left his lips, John regretted them-Sherlock’s chest began rising up and down with quickened breaths and his brow furrowed at the thought.

“Never mind,” John said quickly, waving his hand as an apology.

“No, John, it’s-it’s fine.” Smirking, Sherlock turned to John and joked, “It’s all fine.”

They both chuckled a little. That first dinner they’d had at Angelo’s was nothing more than a humorous memory to them now. Since then, John had learned-not from directly asking, but from observation-that Sherlock didn’t particularly care for women-or men-in a romantic sense at all. In fact, he seemed perfectly content to live out the rest of his days in 221B Baker Street with John as his only companion.

John licked his dry lips and cleared his throat a bit. “Was it…um…Moriarty?”

“Moriarty?” Sherlock repeated. “No, no. That was nearly two years ago, John.”

“I know. But still. Being in a building when it explodes…not something you forgot right away.”

Sherlock shrugged in resignation. “I suppose you’re right.” He paused, staring down at his hands, which were crossed and sitting in his lap. “This was far worse than the night at the pool. I was…” Sherlock paused to laugh, although there was no humor in the sound. “I don’t know where I was. It was dark, save for the flames.”

Nodding, John encouraged him to continue. “What flames?”

Sherlock’s face became vacant, his eyes hazy, as he relived his experience of the previous night. “They were everywhere,” he said in a voice no more than a whisper. “All around me. They weren’t producing any light, but they…the heat that was coming from them was immeasurable.”

“And what happened? What did you do?”

Sherlock bit his bottom lip, and John felt his heart sink. This wasn’t right. Sherlock had, obviously, been terrified of what happened to him, but it wasn’t real. Why was he still so shaken up about it? When they had confronted Moriarty at the pool, Sherlock had gotten out of the hospital three days later and went straight to work finding the man again. He hadn’t succeeded yet, but that wasn’t the point-the point is, why would Sherlock be so courageous and unaffected when it came to his real life, but become so frail and frightened at a hallucination?

“I didn’t do anything, John. I couldn’t move. My body was just…frozen. My arms were tied above my head, my ankles were chained. I tried to call for help, but I couldn’t speak. Then I felt this…this warm, thick liquid running from my fingertips to my wrists. It stopped at my wrists.”

John cocked his head, curious. “Blood?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, nodding his head slightly. “Yes, I think it was.”

They sat for a moment in silence. John was waiting for Sherlock to continue; Sherlock was waiting for John to comment on his statement. John gave Sherlock a once-over. Other than the occasional wringing of his hands, his quick, shallow breaths, and his pale face, Sherlock looked fine.

As much as he hated to make Sherlock think about what he saw last night, he knew that the man had more to say. A rare occurrence, as Sherlock was normally a man of little words, especially involving his own personal weaknesses.

“Was it yours?” When Sherlock looked up at him, confused, John explained, “The blood. Was it yours?”

Sherlock shook his head. “No.”

The definite answer surprised John, as he had been expecting another long slew of ‘I don’t knows’. He looked at Sherlock, concerned with what his answer met. “Then whose was it?”

A long sigh escaped from Sherlock’s pale lips. “I don’t know. I just know it wasn’t mine. When I first felt it, I also heard…screams. It sounded like they were coming from all around me, but there was no one else there.”

“Were they saying anything?”

Sherlock shook his head. “No. Nothing I could make out, anyways. But John, it…it was the worst sound I’ve ever heard in my life. I don’t even know how to describe it. I could make out different pitches, so it wasn’t coming from just one person. I’m not sure how many, exactly, but there were several different voices.”

“Why did you have blood on your hands?”

Sherlock blinked and looked from the floor to John. “What?”

“Well, if it wasn’t yours, how did it get there?”

“I don’t know.”

John nodded and bit his lip. He was frustrated that Sherlock didn’t know anything about his hallucination-not that it was his fault, of course, but just that it might have helped things to make more sense. “Okay. Did anything else happen?”

“Yes. I caught on fire.”

John raised his eyebrows and he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Sorry, say that one more time. I thought you said you caught-”

“You heard me,” Sherlock interrupted. “The flames spread over to where I was chained up and just…consumed me. I could feel my flesh burning, I could smell it, but nothing was happening. I didn’t get burnt, my skin didn’t slough off, but the pain, John…” Sherlock’s lip trembled slightly, and John reached out and let his hand rest on his friend’s forearm. “The pain was just like the screams, just like the heat. It was immeasurable. I opened my mouth and screamed-I don’t know why I was able to now, but I was-and I also started thrashing. Such was the state in which you found me.”

John looked at Sherlock with pity and squeezed his arm gently. “Well,” he said, attempting to sound calm and reassuring, “it’s over now. Whatever happened, don’t think about it again.” He pat his friend’s arm and stood up. “I’m going to make some tea. Do you want some?”

Sherlock shook his head.

Well, at least that was back to normal. A cup of hot tea sounded like the perfect accompaniment to mulling over what Sherlock had just said.

As John started into the kitchen, he heard Sherlock call after him, “John?”

John stopped immediately and turned around. “Yeah, Sherlock?”

After licking his lips, Sherlock mumbled something inaudible. John walked closer to him. “Sorry, what?”

“I said, do you believe in God?”

“Yeah, sure I do.” He stopped himself before he could ask Sherlock why he wanted to know.

Sherlock nodded; that was obviously the answer he had been expecting. “Then…do you also believe in the Devil?”

John didn’t like where the conversation was going. Talking about God was one thing, but the Devil was not a normal subject of conversation, especially for Sherlock Holmes. “Sherlock, why are you asking me this?”

He jumped when Sherlock lurched out and slammed his fist on the end table beside his chair. “Just answer the bloody question, John!” he snarled. “Do you believe in the Devil?!”

“Yes!” John answered quickly. He understood that Sherlock was upset, but getting physically aggressive wasn’t going to help anything, and he figured the best thing to do was to keep the detective appeased. “Yes, Sherlock. I believe in the Devil.”

Sherlock returned his hand to his lap and once again interlaced his fingers.

“So do I."