PSL

[artintheblood]

Who: Sherlock and John
What: Self-experimentation with some help.
When: Whenever
Where: Baskerville
Warnings: ... ahahah. Yes. Be warned.


Eight months, seventeen days. Four-hundred sixty-one tests, nearly as many tubes of blood drawn. Thirty-four water changes, seven of them emergencies. Eight assigned doctors, fourteen technicians. And two therapists. Sherlock was tired of the numbers, every single one of them.


He lay at the bottom of the tank on his back, the tip of a tentacle twisted in his fingertips. His phone-call should bear fruit soon. Today, unless he was very wrong.

Comments

GOOD WARNING yes

[myblogwonabafta]

John opened the door. Sherlock never bothered to knock, after all, and John figured he couldn't be bothered to answer anyway.

"You know you've got a dozen doctors of your own," he groused, which was only a cover for the fact he was cranky from having to hold down the fort (keep the home fires buring? what was the proper metaphor?) in London. Without Sherlock, without cases, without... well, the ritual insanity which had been his life the past year. Until the insanity had exceeded all bounds of reason and things got strangely less spontaneous.

He still didn't see Sherlock, so he ventured further into the provided flat, setting down the bag with various things Mrs. Hudson had insisted Sherlock needed on his sabbatical.

I'm good at things.

[artintheblood]

If you could call it a flat. Half the walls had windows out into a bright white room(covered, for the moment, in torn-out pages of a book), and the floor of the front room dropped abruptly, descending into the tank, a five-by-five-by-three meter pool. Sherlock pushed up from the bottom as John neared it, swimming up into the shallow end. Nothing but the tentacles moved, barely disturbing the water before he surfaced, pulling himself up onto the edge in a smooth motion. "They're not my doctors, they're Mycroft's. I only have one."

[myblogwonabafta]

John did not think he was going to get used to that anytime soon. It was actually getting harder before it got easier--at first, it was like Sherlock banging in covered in blood (not his own), or with a shrunken head (not his), or with some demand that John accompany him to a posh kink party for someone's birthday (again, not his). It wasn't Sherlock, just something he did, something that happened in his vicinity, because Sherlock made things happen and that was why John stayed. Mostly.

Sherlock growing extra appendages, and non-human ones at that, was not really in the realm of things John could categorize as bringing one's work home with one. Especially not after the initial "what's Sherlock Holmes gone and got himself involved in this time?" shock/euphoria had worn off. Now he'd just got a very bored Sherlock with fleshy... things. And no flatmate.

"As your personal physician, I am required to say I'm absolutely unqualified to treat you," he said with what he thought was a remarkable degree of patience. He tried not to look where the new arms joined Sherlock's torso. "Not least because as far as I can tell, you seem entirely healthy, apart from..." He gestured in a vaguely squiggly fasion.

[artintheblood]

"And you think they are?" He clicked his tongue with a twist of contempt, reaching for one of a messy stack of towels. His muttered "Useless," was almost lost as he scrubbed his hair dry. It had gotten long, the loose curls standing out in a mess. "And I am entirely healthy. And stable," he added, putting a flattened, American accent on the word. It was a favorite of one of the doctors here. "Nothing new has turned up in months. Which they have only just bothered to tell me this week." He dried his hands and arms, careful of the fins that went from wrists to elbows, dark grey with bands of tan. They'd been the last external change, after the tentacles, and the way his skin had changed. He pulled a shirt on, did up two buttons, and didn't bother with the rest. "That was not the agreement."

[myblogwonabafta]

"You're never stable," John muttered, but on the whole, Sherlock was dealing with this much better than one might have expected. "Mycroft's just worried, and for once, I understand why. It's not like we had any warning of all this. Who's to say what might come of it?"

John sat, cross-legged, next to the pool and Sherlock. It was odd, but it was still his friend. It seemed Sherlock's legs had not been the draw.

"So," he said, leaning his cheek into his palm, "what are we going to do about it?"

There was no question they were going to do something. Sherlock always had a plan.

[artintheblood]

He rolled his eyes. Wasn't there a term limit to worrying about an irreversible circumstance? Two of the eight tentacles kept moving as he propped himself up on his arms, their tapered tips making ripples at the edge of the water.

"I want to reopen the blog. Get cases coming in again."

[myblogwonabafta]

"Cases," John repeated with a lack of intonation that was its own loud signal. He had two thoughts: first, that Sherlock was explicitly acknowledging the part his writing played in his--their--career, and second, Sherlock holding a magnifying glass in one appendage, shouting insults to Yard detectives, and tapping out messages on multiple mobiles with other... right, okay, tentacles.

A corner of his lip twitched.

[artintheblood]

He saw that, and knew that John had meant him to. "Stop picturing what you're picturing, right now." One of the appendages in question flicked against John's ankle sharply, just above the shoe. "Most of the ones I ever got could be answered out of the original query, anyway."

[myblogwonabafta]

John swatted at the fleshy thing automatically, laughing. "I hate it when you do that," he said, sounding very unconvincing. He'd missed Sherlock. More than he ever would have guessed, before. There was more to life than having the place to oneself. Much more.

[artintheblood]

"Don't-" he said hastily, but not before the smooth limb lashed back at the swat, twisting to catch his hand. "Mm. Minds of their own."

[myblogwonabafta]

John pulled back instinctively, unable to mask the look of alarm that crossed his face. Like most of his expressions, it was not extreme. But it was there--and Sherlock would be able to see it.

"You don't literally mean that, do you?" he asked cautiously.

[artintheblood]

Sherlock glanced sideways at him, and drew them all back closer to himself. Then they were still, except for two again that curled slowly on themselves. "No, of course not." A pause.

"Not minds, exactly."

[myblogwonabafta]

John cocked his head, lips pursed, trying to avoid asking the question. Because he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.

No, of course he wanted to know the answer. Who was he kidding?

"Then what? Exactly?"

[artintheblood]

"Am I a doctor?" He picked one up, handling as though it weren't attached to him. It curled into his fingers again, as he stared at it. "They have some sort of... neural cluster, one per pair, in control of the faster reflexes. Something about reducing neural complexity. There are more tests to do." Tests that were beyond him, which annoyed him.

[myblogwonabafta]

John ignored his question, because it was stupid even if it was rhetorical. No, Sherlock wasn't a doctor, but he was a genius, and he knew all sorts of things doctors didn't. Even if he was stupid about other things, it was obvious he could supply a better description than "not exactly."

As he did.

"So... a sort of autonomic response?" John mused. The rewiring of the brain necessary for such a transformation was far beyond anything he could imagine. It was one thing to suddenly, say, grow a tail--another for your neural system to integrate its new movements and reactions and behavior. "Amazing."

[artintheblood]

"Yes. Exactly that. Something disturbs them, they go to grab it. They get something, they clutch it." Which was probably the worst part about dealing with them day after day after day.

Not that he was going to tell John about fighting with his accidental appendages over a shirt.

"I have full motor control, but not full reflex control. You see?"

[myblogwonabafta]

John peered at the end of one of them, actively holding himself back from reaching out. "Yes," he said. "Your brain--sorry the brain, a normal animal brain anyway, yours is anyone's guess--wouldn't be capable of conscious control of that many limbs quickly enough to fend off attack, if necessary. So there has to be another way for them to function." Like, say, an anemone? Unconsciously (ironically so), John leaned towards the tentacle, his hand inching just a bit closer.

[artintheblood]

"It's not the number of limbs, it's the lack of joints." His tone edged well towards the clinical as he provided a quick demonstration, the limb nearest John coiling into a knot that inverted itself, stretched and squashed, and then uncoiled only to hook around his hand and wrist with a rippling sort of squeeze. "The muscle cells act individually, not in groups. So each cell needs specific input."

[myblogwonabafta]

"Really?" John gasped, telling himself it was, you know, medical curiosity. He was a doctor, after all. That was a sort of a scientist. All right, one who was struggling to remember his zoology, but still. It did make sense, once Sherlock put it that way.

He was staring at the thing around his wrist, not pulling away, but for some reason testing the pull of it, the squeeze. It was an amazing sensation. The pressure not at all that of fingers gripping him, but even, distributed, yet shifting under the smooth surface.

"So is that you, or... um. It?"

[artintheblood]

"Me." He should have corrected him, that this was conscious control but it was himself either way, but didn't. Just the one word and a moment of level gaze.

[myblogwonabafta]

For some reason, the gaze brought a hint of color to John's cheeks. Yes, naturally, it was him, just a different version of him, but he knew what Sherlock meant. No, not different. Altered. There was a difference between "different" and "altered," wasn't there? Like seeing and observing. This was Sherlock, his friend. Miraculously alive, and now miraculously... some sort of octopus.

"Must be terribly useful," he said after too long a pause. "For, you know. Cooking."

[artintheblood]

Sherlock looked up from where they sat at the edge of the pool to the flat's little kitchen, tidy because it was all but unused. Most of the place was so, actually, aside from a spreading cluster of useful things around his computer station. It was a defensive sort of tidy; it kept out the lab's janitor.

"Cooking," he said, with a sort of lazy pointedness, and his tentacle turned John's hand over, tip tracing into his palm. "Not back in practice?"

[myblogwonabafta]

Was he supposed to take it back? Pretend this wasn't happening? Was Sherlock controlling this, or was it automatic. No, that was stupid--it was far too deliberate to be anything but conscious.

"No," he said. There hadn't seemed much point, really. He'd seen Sherlock fall, seen him bloody on the pavement, and couldn't put him back together again. John's priorities had shifted, and losing Sherlock had sent him back to where he'd been before only the void had been that much blacker, being able to name what he was missing. "I've been concentrating on other things. Um. Writing, mostly."

[artintheblood]

"And therapy again. Are you missing an appointment for me?" he asked, raising an eyebrow, his face otherwise just a little too straight.

[myblogwonabafta]

"Yes," John said, and his lips thinned. "No. I mean, not... I'm not going anymore." Which he'd just decided, really, but that was one way of confounding Sherlock Holmes. Had it been any other, less personal deduction, John might have responded with his characteristic awe. Even as it was, he realized with a pang that he'd missed this, being amazed, being in the presence of a force like this. Sherlock had rerouted some essential bits of his brain, he thought, so that without him, nothing was ever going to have amazed him again.

That's stupid, he told himself. Might as well blame war. Which meant he only had himself to blame. But it didn't matter, because here Sherlock was, more dangerous and more brilliant than any war, and at least as rational as he was inexplicable, which was more than John could say for armed conflict.

"It became redundant."

[artintheblood]

"It was redundant to start with." Like his own. Or the two assigned to him, rather. One was worth having a conversation with, barely. He hadn't bothered remembering the other's name. He slid the tentacle free of John's hand, and meant to do it smoothly, but the tip made a last-second grab, and he snatched it back.

"Who's reading what you're writing?" he asked, eyes narrowed with annoyance at his own anatomy.

[myblogwonabafta]

It was, perhaps, annoyance at John keeping the blog. He wasn't sure. Sherlock acted above it all, naturally, unless someone said something about him, and then he'd go on about it at length. But he'd never asked him not to. And it had proven far more therapeutic than his counselor.

"People," he said, a bit defensively, but in his non-aggressive John-like way. "They don't often leave their names, really. Just... well, Harry. Naturally. And you know... fans."