Chapter Twenty-Five: Besotted
John leaned back against the wall. Fractal-like, Sherlock leaned back too, with his shoulders coming to rest on John's thighs and his curly head on John's stomach. John wrapped an arm around him. He was too knackered to do much else. They were both too tired to run, and anyway, where was there to go? Sherlock had dropped their only key while pawing at the doorframe. For now, John was just happy to be alive and in the company of a well-oxygenated boyfriend.
"Oh my God," he said, clutching at Sherlock's right deltoid. John meant it as a hug, but his muscles were spent and it came out as more of a spasm. "We're here. We're alive. We're all right."
Sherlock tilted his head back. His expression was so nakedly affectionate that John ached to see it. It was a look that would have been dazzling on any face, but on Sherlock's pale and craggy Alpine features, it was enough to render the beholder snow-blind. John regretted that he did not have the physical or mental wherewithal to thank his boyfriend for continuing to exist by shagging him into the carpet. Instead, he gave him a bleary upside-down kiss that aimed for the lips but missed.
"I'm all right," said Sherlock. "Are you all right?"
While Sherlock looked angelic, something about his tone of voice did much to invite suspicion. John peered at him.
"Yes, of course I'm all right."
"Well, you did just kill a scientist."
Ah. There it was. A public declaration of Keplicide. Even on a ship full of creatures who didn't speak English, John couldn't help but look around to see if anyone had overheard. He was perfectly willing to kill on Sherlock's behalf; what he wasn't willing to do was talk about it. Directly afterwards. While still coping with the relevant emotions. In public.
"Yes, I …" John frowned.
Sherlock was unwilling to drop it. "The one with the scar," he said.
John's frown darkened into a smile that wasn't. What it was was a flat underscore of lips surrounded by a grim parenthesis of nasolabial folds. Years ago, he had honed this look on Captain Peterson, who stole the Hobnobs out of John's Christmas packages otherwise. It was not so much "looking daggers" as looking grenades.
"That's true, innit?" John flashed his teeth.
"Because you also killed that other one. The one with the severed tentacle." Sherlock waved his hand like Prince Hamlet dismissing a courtier. "Jabby, MD."
Frowning: useless. Smiling: useless. Next on the roster of things meant to change the subject: Watson Family Throat Clearing #5, a noise so full of displeasure that it would have stopped a herd of rhinoceros in samurai armor led by Jonathan Ross.
"EhereherHEM. Sherlock, where are you going with this?"
"Then there was that other one who flew out the window just now. Who was that, anyway? I don't think we were introduced."
"Up to three now, are we? Top counting, mate. Well done. Now if you don't mind …"
Sherlock didn't mind. Oblivious to John's protests, he was orbiting planet Death Count in an ecstasy of calculation.
"Also, while it would be a mistake to judge before having all the facts, I think we can expect that, given the vast hole in the side of the ship, explosive decompression is imminent. Catastrophic failure, otherwise known as 'boom.' That should up the body count quite a bit. Furthermore, I estimate that the number of casualties caused by projectiles cast off by the explosion…"
The sight of Sherlock miming projectiles proved too much for John. He grabbed the man by the shoulders and began shaking him back and forth.
"ARRRRRRRGH!"
"What?" Sherlock looked genuinely startled. "I'm only trying to determine whether you're all right!"
"GAHHH! I'M GRAND! I'M LOVELY! I'M FINE!"
"FINE!"
"THAT'S WHAT I SAID! 'FINE!'"
"FINE, THEN!"
John snatched his left hand back and began digging at the furrows of his own forehead with it, as if trying to excavate an iota of peace from that unlikely spot. The two of them sat in silence. Then Sherlock picked up John's hand and placed it back on his bicep so that John was holding him again.
"What I may not have expressed in full," said Sherlock, quietly, "is that while you did kill Scar, you did it to save my life."
John gave a slight nod.
"Thank you," said Sherlock, after some hesitation. The non-sarcastic iteration of this phrase emerged a bit rusty, as though it had been lying at the bottom of a watering can in the back garden. Possibly since the Thatcher administration.
"Don't mention it."
"Also, upon further reflection, I conclude that the two extra scientists who flew out the window were casualties of my own actions. Ditto for the ship's passengers, and for anyone who ends up pierced, smashed, vaporized, set on fire, or otherwise inconvenienced by exploding projectiles."
"Oh? How do you figure?"
"I did sneeze. You wouldn't have spilled the salt weapon if I hadn't."
John let out a long breath. "You're a bright boy, but I doubt even you have full mental control over your autonomic nervous system. I blame the scientists."
Sherlock thought this was a marvelous idea. He beamed as though John had just synthesized the 120th element from Quavers and Marmite.
"Absolutely. Let's blame the scientists."
"They weren't very nice scientists."
"No," commented Sherlock, sprawling comfortably in John's lap again. "No, they weren't really, were they?"
"And frankly bloody awful hosts."
"That's true. They were bad hosts. You should have heard Scar's ideas on how to chill the sangria."
John smiled down at him. It was a real smile, not the Kandahar Death Rictus.
"You have a morbid look on your face," he said. "Happily morbid. We're discussing party drinks, and you look happily morbid."
"Really, John. In this one area, your granularity of observation astonishes me. Most people can tell when others are sad, angry, appalled, but who recognizes a facial expression as 'happily morbid?'"
"I do. Me. A man whose boyfriend grins every time he thinks about stealing an egg carton full of eyeballs from Barts."
Sherlock huffed. "I told you, eyeballs don't come in cartons. They weren't in the carton when I stole them. I merely put them there afterwards, to prevent them rolling around in the cab."
"So the morgue staff don't stay up nights, gift-wrapping your eyeballs?"
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "Not yet."
"That," said John. "That grin. Yes. That."
"Merciful Meg," gasped the scientist, though he was not by nature religious.
When the insane, companion-obsessed laboratory creature had set him free, the scientist's first priority had been to squidge off as fast as possible on his ruffled base. He oozed his way down several corridors, leaving an undignified trail of terror-induced slime behind him. When he got to the nearest guard post, he threw himself against the door.
"Let me in!" he cried.
Inside the transparent room, a crew of guards stood around watching a huge screen. On it was projected a game of Tentacle Sphere. Several guards slapped the floor in delight as a player sent the spiked ball flying into one of the playing field's thirty-six holes.
"Find your own watching space!" shouted the guards in their large font. "This space is for Hexagons only!"
"You must help me!" cried the scientist. "Open the door. Please, I do not care about the game!"
"You should do!" hollered one of the guards. His accent was that of an off-worlder. You could see it in the slightly rounded apexes of his communicative polygons. "It's the final game of the orbit!"
There was much noisy discussion of the scientist's shortsightedness vis-à-vis not wanting to watch this highly important — nay, crucial — game. There were also quite a few Keplerian "oohs" and "ahhs" when a Midorian fire snake arose from the pit into which the sphere had just disappeared. The enraged snake chased the player around a bit, then swallowed him whole.
Gibbering with a fear that had nothing to do with snakes, the scientist pounded on the door.
"Get in here and stop making that racket!" hollered the off-world guard. He opened the door and pulled the scientist in. "Who do you think you are, not liking Tentacle Sphere? Poncy bugger. Show some respect!"
The scientist was glad to be out of the hallway.
"Please help. A violent animal is loose. Scar was experimenting on its companion in the main laboratory, and now the creature is going berserk. It is taking hostages. Jelly will be spilled."
"Pull the other tentacle," said the guard. "Oi! Well done, my offspring!" A new player had just sent a ball spinning down another hole. This time, however, the reward that sprang up out of the ground was a boingulating new bedroom set, not a tower of hot, fanged, reptilian death.
"You do not understand," said the scientist. "The bipeds are crafty and exceedingly dangerous."
"The bipeds," replied the off-worlder. For the first time, he looked the scientist over carefully, pausing to note his unusual ruffled base. "The bipeds that have 'no idea of how to procreate'? Those bipeds?"
Ah. So the scientist's report had gone viral. Why did he have the feeling that all over the ship, Keplerians were passing around electronic copies and quivering with gelatinous mirth? He was a laughing stock. No wonder he had been downgraded to Junior Xenoentomologist for Outer Beryllium.
The scientist persisted. "The biped has a weapon. I have seen him use it. There is no doubt that it is lethal."
And yet, the hostage taker had let him go once they reached the area where the companion was being held. This was an oddment. Why did the creature not kill him? What did it mean? The scientist shook his ruffles in anxious perplexity.
"Describe the makeup of this weapon."
"Bouillabaisse," said the scientist. "Also gazpacho, and when that is not available, borscht."
"Get out of here," said the off-worlder with disgust. And with that, the scientist found himself tossed back into the hallway.
It was painfully obvious that no one in the guardhouse was afraid of a pair of romantically challenged bipeds, no matter what handicrafts they had made from their lunch. So it was a relief when the squadron leader, Plum Hexagon, returned from the commissary, read the logs, and gave her soldiers a dressing down for their unprofessionalism.
"I deeply regret that this crime was not taken seriously," she said. "Well. It is not a crime, exactly, because it was perpetrated by an animal, but still. The animal sounds clever and hostile. He must be taken back into custody."
Finally, the scientist was being treated with respect. He presented the squadron leader with five circles of gratitude. It was all he could do not to add a sixth.
"I will investigate the situation myself," said the squadron leader.
"You must bring backup," said the scientist. "It is not safe."
"Then I will bring my aide-de-camp. Unless … perhaps you were suggesting that you would like to assist us in subduing the animal? You are very brave. You have already experienced much today. I would not normally ask you to return to the scene, but given your expertise with off-world creatures, it would be of some help. Perhaps you can show us the way?"
For a brief moment, the scientist considered pointing her towards his inadvertent trail of terror-slime. Surely that could be her guide. He had had enough of weaponized laboratory animals for one day.
Unfortunately, the squadron leader was so empathetic and good-natured that he found it difficult to turn down her request. An unseemly number of umber squares began spilling across the scientist's communicative plate. Some of his symbols began edging closer to her.
"Yes. Of course. Do you know the science area?"
"Vaguely. I have not been there in a long time, as trouble rarely emanates from that sector. This will be an adventure."
"It certainly will," thought the scientist. The squadron leader set forth. Quaking and jiggling more than mere ambulation required, he hustled after her. The aide-de-camp brought up the rear. The scientist barely noticed him. He was much more interested in the squadron leader's birthmark.
The birthmark — or rather, given the nature of Keplerian reproduction, the puddlemark — consisted of a sparkling mist of tiny air bubbles. They spun slowly in a ring around the officer's crowning Hexagon, catching the light as they went. An off-worlder might have thought of a glass of champagne, a drop of amber, an especially spiffy marble won in a game of skelly. The scientist had never heard of these things. He only knew that society at large considered such marks disfiguring.
That, however, was ridiculous. The officer's marks were lovely and enthralling. Society at large was an idiot.
Naturally, these opinions immediately broadcast themselves across the scientist's middle in all their horrifying candor. It was bad enough that he was experiencing such feelings, but to shout them aloud to someone from another caste! His only hope was that the squadron leader would not turn around and catch him in his woeful besottedness.
The squadron leader turned around. "Do we go left at the ...?"
"Your mark is like a galaxy," blurted the scientist. "Another galaxy. Not this one. A better one. One I would actually want to live in."
"Oh my!" The squadron leader reached out a concerned appendage and pressed it to his flesh, apparently looking for fever. "Are you all right?"
"I am so very, very sorry," said the scientist. His torso took on a purplish hue where she was touching him. He was deeply chagrined to have thought such things. What had gotten into him?
"Think nothing of it," she said, gravely, withdrawing her tentacle. "No doubt your systems are on overload due to the death threat you received. It is natural to be shaken after such a fright."
"You are very kind. I am beginning to wish my anatomy would permit me the emotional stealth found among my new charges." The next thing the scientist knew, he was telling his new acquaintance about the Beryllian Biting Beetles from beyond the Black Bog. It was mortifying.
"Oh, yes, the promotion! Congratulations." The scientist waited for the officer to laugh heartily at her own joke, but it appeared she was serious.
"I'm not sure that it was a promotion," admitted the scientist.
Now the officer laughed, her jelly rippling. "So modest. How many legs do your new animals have?"
"Six."
"Three times as many," said the officer, her peripheral shapes swirling with approval. "You have done well for yourself."
"Thank you. Not as well as you! Look at you, with a whole squadron under your command. That is more appendages than I can count."
"Sweet tentacles on a plate," said the aide-de-camp, who had maintained a discreet silence until then.
The scientist stopped swooning over the squadron leader and looked around. They were outside the lab. From this vantage point, he could see a gigantic hole in the side of the ship.
It was as clear as the unobstructed view of Kepler 22a: they were all going to die. It was possible, in fact, that his supervisor had gotten a head start on this project, as she was nowhere to be seen. This despite having blocked out an evening for one of her favorite pastimes: stapling a laboratory creature to the wall.
And where was the laboratory creature? It was curled up with the hostage taker. The two of them were practically gurgling with bipedal love.
Because that's what it was, wasn't it? Scar had said that they weren't mates, not really. She had demoted him over it, in fact. But what else could they be? The hostage taker, who had seemed so feral, so violent, was now expending all his energy on tenderly palpating every part of his companion's physical form, as if making sure all his bits were still there. Meanwhile, the companion was doing the same, to the extent that they were knocking appendages and getting in each other's way. When they became aware of their Keplerian visitors, the hostage taker tried to shield his companion with his body, but the companion pushed him down and sat on him. Everything about them indicated that they were mad for each other.
And yet, they had been locked up for ages and produced no children. Who knew if they were really even having sex. It was a puzzlement. Possibly, thought the scientist, the last one he would ever encounter.
Author's note: A big thank-you to Ariane DeVere for her invaluable transcripts. I used them as I thought about a certain cabbie. Thanks also to this chapter's beta, Mr. Mirith, "whom I shall ever regard as the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known."
Also, much appreciation to the people of 221b con. Thank you so much to everyone who sold me merch or rocked a panel or wore an extraordinary outfit or just said "hi." It was wonderful to see you. Extra squee to snogandagrope, reluctantabandon, and HiddenLacuna for helping to make my con experience marvelous.