Return To Dunwich

[entangled_now]

Title: Return to Dunwich
Fandom: Sherlock
Pairing: Sherlock/John (mostly suggested)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Tentacles, possibly disturbing themes
Word Count: 5500
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: In which Sherlock returns to the town responsible for his mutation.
AN: Sequel to The Morning of Madness, and fourth story in the challenge I'm doing with goldenusagi, to write a story every month where Sherlock is a mythical/supernatural creature. Her story for the month is Haunting for Dummies (and Geniuses).



It started with the book - actually no, it didn't - it had originally started in Dunwich, when some cult of dark gods turned out to actually be in touch with cosmic horrors beyond space, time, and sanity. When Sherlock ended up somewhat closer to the class Cephalopoda than he had been before. But this thing, this most recent thing (which may or may not turn out to be connected to the other thing) started with the book. Which had been delivered on Thursday the twelfth of February, by a long-faced, silent, unblinking courier who'd left with half a signature, and without his pen. Leaving John staring after him, growing rapidly cold in his pyjamas, hands too full to shut the door properly.

John thinks he could be forgiven for not having yet adapted to anticipating threats from the supernatural, so he'd left the book on the table, and gone to make toast -

- only to come back twenty minutes later, to find Sherlock staring down at the pages, tentacles curling unsettlingly out from his back, looking for all the world like threatening, glistening wings. Return to Dunwich was scrawled in wet, red letters on the opposite wall. Still running fine lines down the wallpaper.

John reacted by whacking the book off the table with the fireplace poker. It sailed through the air, crashed into the wall, and then landed crookedly against the sofa leg, yellowing pages crushed in a way that he imagined - for a few horrible seconds - to look thwarted and angry.

He made Sherlock sit down in the armchair, forcibly when he seemed oddly reluctant to move, trying his best to ignore the way his arms were coiled around, and squeezed, in an absent sort of way. Then he'd smacked Sherlock in the face a few times, and tipped his head up, checking for the first signs of incipient madness. Not that he knew what an invasion by cosmic entities looked like. They'd skipped that important lesson in his medical training. A fact that he still found himself somewhat irrationally angry about.

Sherlock catches his hand the fourth time it draws back.

"Stop slapping me, I'm not insane."

"Yet," John says harshly, then feels guilty about the word bursting out of him. He squeezes Sherlock's shoulders. Notes that they feel uncomfortably tense, cold and faintly damp. "Of course you're not. Bloody hell, Sherlock."

John sinks down to his knees. The tentacles tug gently, trying to hold on to him, but Sherlock seems to realise what he's doing and they wind slowly back around his torso. John squeezes again, tries to reassure him without words that it's fine, it's all fine.

"Though I do now have a headache, and there's something of a thready appearance to my vision," Sherlock says at last. "That's quite annoying actually. A surprisingly dramatic effect for only a few pages though."

"A few pages. What on earth were you thinking?" John snaps at him. "You shouldn't even have opened it. You should have left the bloody thing where it was, if you had the slightest inkling that it was...something like that." He stops when he runs out of breath, makes himself let go of Sherlock before he's compelled to shake the man.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow at him, he seems to be questioning whether John has put him into the category 'something like that.'

"You scared the hell out of me," John says, which he hopes holds an underlying meaning of, no, of course not, you idiot.

"You left it on the table," Sherlock points out, unfairly, John thinks because if he'd known what it was - what it was connected to - he would have kept Sherlock as far away from it as possible. He would have burned the thing.

"Yes, but in my defence I didn't know it was connected to the cult of dark gods, if I'd known monsters were going to come out of it then believe me, I would have thrown it in the fireplace." Or thrown it in the river.

Sherlock presses fingers against his temples, blinks several times, suggesting the world doesn't look quite right yet.

"Which would have done very little, I suspect - except possibly loose whatever horrors are contained within into the ash, possibly contaminating half of London."

John glares at him.

"Yes, thank you, the world is saved because I was too stupid to do something catastrophic, hurrah. Anyway I thought you destroyed the cult of the dark gods, smashed their altar, sent their half-formed monstrosity back to the depths and all that." That was the way he'd phrased it at the time, at least. Which John had thought was overly dramatic. He'd been tempted to press for more, but he'd been able to tell that Sherlock didn't want to talk about it. That thinking about it had been hard enough.

Sherlock's very still for a moment, barely breathing. John suspects that he keeps the experience he'd had in Dunwich behind a locked door in his memory palace. That perhaps it's one of the things he's actively trying to forget on purpose.

"I must have been mistaken." Sherlock admits, and it says something for how rattled he is that he lets that go without qualifiers. John doesn't need to be a genius to know that today.

-

Which is why two hours later they're in a taxi, heading towards the small town of Dunwich, just south of Oxfordshire.

John's nervous, he'll admit as much. For all that he has proof - for all that Sherlock is living proof - that supernatural threats exist, the rest of his brain still insists that it all can't possibly be true. His entire life had been spent happily believing that anything suggested to be 'supernatural' was really nonsense, was all stories, and sub-conscious fears, something that humanity just needed to shake off. It had been like sailing out to sea, and unexpectedly coming across the edge of the world. Too big and too wrong to fit into his world view.

If he let himself think about it too much...he suspects it would terrify him.

Sherlock had tried to forbid him from coming with him, but John had pointed out that he'd just follow him anyway, and wouldn't he rather have John where he could see him, than wandering round a possibly corrupted town on his own? He'd almost felt guilty about it then, when Sherlock's face had suddenly looked hollow, and far too old. When he'd grasped John's arm in painful fingers.

"There are things in Dunwich I would not have my worst enemy see," he'd said quietly. He'd sounded earnest...and afraid.

"I'm not your worst enemy, I'm your best friend," John had told him. "Which is why I'm not letting you go back there alone."

Sherlock's unnaturally stiff beside him now, breathing shallow and slow, fingers tapping on the cover of the book that he'd retrieved from the floor, and pinned shut against his own chest before leaving the flat. He looks restless, and unhappy, and every so often he'll shift the book - fingernails scratching at the leather.

"You're doing it again, aren't you?"

"Doing what?" Sherlock sounds more distracted than annoyed.

"Thinking about it," John hisses. "Stop it, you know what will happen."

"You think my mind will pierce the veil between worlds and succumb to inevitable roiling madness. Leaving me helpless against the sinister desire to destroy everything I come in contact with?" Sherlock squeezes the book, nails digging into the dark cover. There's a possessiveness to the gesture that John doesn't like at all.

"I think I was going to use the phrase 'batshit insane,' but that was definitely more poetic," John admits. He reaches across the back of the taxi and tugs the large, leatherbound (please god let that be from a cow, or other hooved animal) book out of Sherlock's white-knuckled grip. He's relieved that Sherlock actually lets the thing slip from his grasp, though he does clench his hands into fists, and hold them against his knees afterwards. If any cosmic horrors are going to ooze out of it then John doesn't want them near Sherlock.

...

And now he doesn't want to be holding it either - but lesser of two evils and all that.

"I want to," Sherlock admits, quietly. His hands fidget in his lap, as if he doesn't know what to do with them now. He clenches them tight again while John watches, forces them still.

"I know you want to, you're like a dog with a bloody bone. You know you can't be left alone with it."

"What about you, you think your pedestrian mind could handle even a glimpse of the untold horrors within? The knowledge, John."

"No, but my pedestrian mind is at least smart enough not to open the bloody thing in the first place. What's the point of knowledge that's going to squeeze your brain like an overloaded sponge? What's the point of cosmic secrets if all you can do afterwards is burble them incoherently at bystanders?" John shakes his head, he dearly wants to throw the damn thing out of the window, but he's well aware that a book like this could probably never be disposed of safely. That something like this would probably want to be thrown out of a window, left to lure in someone else, someone less wary of what was written in its pages.

"When have you ever known me to have good sense in the face of my own self-destruction?" Sherlock says, his voice is slowly losing its edge, sounding tired and harassed, instead of hungry. John likes that a lot better.

"Which is why I'm the one holding the book. Which I'm not happy about by the way, at all."

The taxi lets them out at the same place Sherlock had stayed when he was here. The Open Door, a pub that seems to still be living in the eighteenth century. The building looks crooked, a giant optical illusion of mass and grime, dark on one side where it should be lit by the midday sun. The streets are mostly deserted but there's the occasional thin, listless bystander. They have the same faraway, unblinking stare as the courier who'd dropped off the book. A stare which now seems to be focused on them. John doesn't think many strangers come here - at least not many strangers who don't immediately turn around and leave, before the population of the village burns them in some sort of giant effigy?

"And you never considered that this place might have been a mouth of hell?" John whispers out of the side of his mouth.

"In my defence, three months ago I assumed that fantastical creatures, monsters and Eldritch dimensions did not exist," Sherlock protests, flicking the collar of his coat up.

"I'll bet that came as something of a shock." John doesn't mean to be so flippant, he really doesn't. But Sherlock surprises him by offering the merest ghost of a smile.

"Something of a shock," Sherlock admits. "The extraneous body parts where consuming my attention at the time."

John doesn't try and find the outlines of said extraneous body parts through Sherlock's coat. He's getting a lot better at not doing that, in fact sometimes he forgets they're there completely - which, granted, has led to a few uncomfortable moments when Sherlock's wandering round in his dressing gown.

"Speaking of..do these people know that you have..." John gestures as subtly as he can.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow but he's too smart not to get it.

"Possibly."

"Possibly?" John sighs when nothing else is forthcoming. "That's not very helpful. More to the point is it going to make them try and kill you, or worship you?"

"Unknown."

"You're just a font of information, aren't you?"

Sherlock shrugs. "I suspect we'll know soon enough." He doesn't wait for John to make another comment, but strides purposefully towards the door of the pub, pulling it open, and disappearing into the unnaturally dark interior.

"Bloody hell -" John, after a moment's thought, stuffs the book under his jumper, and hurries after him.

The inside of the pub is darker than the outside. It smells like mildew and tin. The whole place feels like it's touching him, in a way that architecture shouldn't be allowed to. John hadn't known a building could feel like it was getting over-familiar with you, but there you go. Sherlock strides forward and leans on the bar, as if he doesn't care what might be slathered all over it. Which, considering where they are, John doesn't even want to contemplate.

"Mr Holmes," the barman says. He sounds genial enough, though his voice has a wet, drawn-out quality which suggests something unnatural is happening in the chest area. Something John doubts he could provide medical assistance for. "We didn't expect to see you back here."

Sherlock goes to tug his gloves off, and then seems to think better of it.

"Oh believe me, if I hadn't been pressed to return you wouldn't have done. Do you still have the room upstairs available?"

"Don't get many guests here," the man supplies. "Exactly as you left it."

He stares, and continues staring. After a moment he picks up a glass, and a cloth, and mechanically rubs them together in a way that's guaranteed to never make anything cleaner.

"Get either of you gentleman a drink?" he offers, after a long pause.

"No," Sherlock says immediately.

"No, I'm good thanks," John says with a nod.

The barman stares at them, as John follows Sherlock up the narrow stairs in the back - John gets the distinct impression that he continues staring at them after they leave.

Sherlock immediately starts checking under the bed, and in the wardrobe, fingering his way around the lampshade.

"So you have absolutely no misgivings at all about staying in the same room as you did last time?" John offers.

Sherlock ignores him to continue his rifling. John gives up and sits on the bed, he thinks he has a stone in his boot, so he lets Sherlock investigate around him while he fishes it out. Eventually Sherlock seems satisfied that nothing's going to ooze out of the woodwork, and pulls his coat off, flinging it over the chair in the corner.

"So, the creepy barman..."

"What about him?"

John eyeballs Sherlock for a moment, trying to decide if he's being obtuse or playing with him. He decides that in these circumstances he doesn't really care.

"Nope, never mind clearly not important. Right, so we're returning to the scene of the crime, I suppose. To make sure that none of the original cultists escaped. Where did the um...the thing happen?"

"The basement of St Mary's church."

"Churches have basements?" John asks.

Sherlock's not listening, he's stripping his way out of his shirt, and John has to step back when something long and silvery-black uncurls in his direction. It's getting easier not to flinch, not to react like they pose a threat to him. The more he sees them, the more he's around them when they're not resting curled around Sherlock's torso like sleepy snakes, the easier it gets. Sherlock gives a low grunt of annoyance, and re-coils them back around himself, before sliding his way back into his coat and hastily buttoning it.

"What are you doing?" There's been a fairly strictly followed 'always fully dressed in public' rule since this whole thing started.

"If there are any surviving cultists at the church I'd rather be less restrained."

That isn't exactly the most reassuring thing Sherlock's said recently. The amount of broken furniture in the flat doesn't say much for his self-control, tentacle-wise. Sherlock still isn't used to his subconscious having a physical form. There have been a few smashed mugs of tea, and a few frustrated apologies. And one cautious medical exam, which very nearly became wildly inappropriate - that one they don't talk about.

"You told me I wouldn't need my gun."

"Yes, but of course you brought it anyway." Sherlock's already twisting his scarf back round his neck, knowing John well enough to predict him, in ways that shouldn't smart but still do sometimes.

John glares at him for a second, then retrieves it from inside his coat.

"We're in a village that recently tried to resurrect Eldritch horrors from beyond the dawn of time. I didn't think it could hurt to bring it, just in case. Though from what you said I'm not sure how much use it's going to be. I've never shot any Leviathans, oddly enough."

Sherlock doesn't feel inclined to suggest what he should do if they run across something immune to being shot several times. He doesn't suppose 'run away' will be much of an option. Gibber mindlessly perhaps?

"You will try not to strangle anyone -" The strangling is a minor problem, though so far only Mycroft, and a thug who managed to rip Sherlock's shirt open have been the recipient of said self-control problem.

Sherlock looks at him. John doesn't think he considers the strangling a problem.

"Unless they're evil," John adds. He thinks about it for a minute. "Or insane, or very obviously not human...or trying to kill us."

---

The more they explore Dunwich the more uncomfortable John gets. If anyone had ever asked him he would have said he was fairly sure he'd be able to spot if someone wasn't human. It wasn't the sort of thing that could get past you, he'd have thought. But there's nothing obviously otherworldly - other dimensionally? - about the people on the street. Nothing disturbing sprouting from their face, no extraneous limbs, and everyone's walking on two legs. But there's just something...not quite right about them. An unnatural wideness to the eyes, a clamminess, and a vague instability to them, that leaves then pacing, slowly, gingerly, like a deer learning to walk.

"Ok, you really never spotted anything odd about these people?" John says quietly, as they walk tentatively among them. He's a little afraid that at any moment one of them will point at them and start screaming, like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Sherlock looks irritated now.

"Odd, yes, but as I said before my immediate deduction was not that they had been warped by the close proximity to an open portal to some sort of nether hell dimension where the laws of physics are neither tangible nor understandable. Next time I meet someone odd I shall immediately think monstrous horrors, naturally."

He's joking - John thinks he's joking.

"Right, I always feel like I'm going slightly mad when we talk about this, I have to admit. But, really, you can't have thought - what did you think was going on here, at the time?"

Sherlock's looking at the inhabitants of Dunwich now, and John is honestly curious how he sees them. How he saw them then?

"I came to the conclusion that there was something in the water - which turned out to be broadly correct. Quenztozal the Unmovable to be exact. They'd been worshipping it for almost a thousand years. Though I suspect they were simply its food supply, and breeding source."

John turns the words 'breeding source' over in his head, and then shoves it into a dark corner and most definitely doesn't ask about it.

"That's the one that gave you your..."

"Tentacles, yes. The church was the location of their temple, not far from the mouth of the lake, for those who didn't possess the ability to breathe underwater."

"Naturally," John offers, still not quite believing they can talk sensibly about things like this. "And that's where we're going?"

"Yes."

"It sounds jolly."

Sherlock pulls his coat tighter around himself, and John suspects his desperate attempts to lighten the mood are not helping at all. The air feels clammy and impatient, it's unpleasant against his bare skin.

"I've asked the director of the local museum to meet us there. He was a great help in unravelling the history of the town. Having moved here only recently his exposure was limited. He seemed as genuinely bewildered as I was by the unexpectedly unnatural turn our investigation took."

"Did you just admit to being bewildered?"

Sherlock snorts, and for a second he feels like his old self, familiar and comfortable, and obviously completely unsurprised that John focused on that part of explanation.

"Yes, be quiet."

"Does this director have a name? Or should I say was he helpful enough that you remembered his name?"

"Considering he dragged me unconscious and already inhuman out of the mouth of a cosmic horror of immense proportion." Sherlock pauses then sighs and continues. "I found him to be especially memorable. His name is Howard Marshall."

This is the most Sherlock has spoken of the whole affair, since it happened. John's a little wary of asking any more questions. He's very certain it's not something Sherlock enjoys remembering. Though he's never refused to answer any of the questions John has asked.

---

Howard Marshall is waiting for them tucked into the door of the church. He's thin, and bearded, and his clothes look a few sizes too big on him. He seems surprised to see Sherlock, though he doesn't recoil in horror - which is more than most people who're aware of his new biology manage - he even leans forward to shake his hand. Then, after a moment, he leans forward to shake John's, introducing himself at the same time.

He leads them into the church, while Sherlock explains why he's come back. Marshall speaks quietly, he also twitches, and stutters, and cracks his knuckles nervously, his eyes never rest on anything for very long. John suspects the events of three months ago have had just as permanent effect on him as they have on Sherlock. John's curious if the man still lives here, after what he's seen.

"May I see the book?" Marshall asks.

Sherlock nods and gestures at John to hand it over.

"Are we sure that's wise?" John cautions.

Marshall holds his hands up, palms outwards.

"Oh, I have no intention of opening it, don't worry."

John passes it over, while Marshall lifts the glasses he has settled on his chest. He holds the book carefully, examining the bindings and the leather it's made from, still hopefully from a cow - though judging from the way Marshall seems immediately hesitant to touch it, probably not.

"I'd been afraid of this." He carefully settles the book down on the small stone wall, as if he doesn't want to touch it any more. "I had assumed that when we destroyed Quenztozal we also severed its influence over the population, however too many of them are part of its bloodline. I fear one of them has chosen to ascend, if you will, to its abandoned throne."

"Just how many people in this town are connected, biologically to this...er...Quinnzeltozza?" John asks. Because if this is going to be an Invasion of the Body Snatchers type of situation then he'd quite like some sort of warning.

"Quenztozal," Marshall corrects. "And I'm afraid the answer to that is complicated. The town was shrouded in a sort of...miasma, for hundreds of years, which has been slowly altering people's DNA, not to mention the numerous examples of...er...interbreeding. Some of the afflicted are more obvious than others. And then there are those exposed to the source if you will, subjected to invasive, sudden mutations, rendering them unable to mix with ordinary people, due to their new, monstrous affect." Marshall stops abruptly and looks at Sherlock. "My apologies, Sherlock, that was crassly insensitive."

Sherlock waves him on, as if he doesn't care in the slightest. But John can see the way his shoulders are set more tightly than they had been before, defensive.

Marshall coughs, fidgets with his glasses.

"I would suppose if someone has taken Quenztozal's place then he would have had to come here, to rebuild the altar that we destroyed, to rebuild their relationship with the town, and prove their power to rule."

"Then I suggest we head down there at once," Sherlock says flatly.

Marshall's whole body flinches. "Ah, forgive me but - I just can't. It took so much to come here, forgive me, I can't. Not again."

For a second John thinks Sherlock will make a comment, something harsh and insulting, and John hasn't known this man very long, but he can almost imagine the horror that he must have already subjected himself to.

"Of course," Sherlock says instead, and he actually leans forward and shakes Marshall's hand again. "You have the number, should we not return."

Marshall nods, he can't seem to speak any more.

"John, perhaps you should stay with -"

"No," John says, firmly. "No, Sherlock, you won't change my mind. We're going down together."

Sherlock swallows, opens his mouth as if he wants to protest again, as if he has so many words to convince him. But he doesn't say one of them. He doesn't quite have the power to refuse John's company in the darkness. Somehow that makes his stomach feel like it's full of lead.

Marshall hands them torches, not apologetic about his refusal to accompany them, just relieved.

Sherlock knows the way, and John follows him - down a dank set of stairs that seems to be leading somewhere which feels like the icy centre of hell. The air is thick and unpleasant, it feels like he's swallowing some sort of rotting pond life with every breath. The walls glisten unnaturally, and there's a persistent, unpleasant throbbing in his head, a crawling on his skin, like there's something watching him, something always out of view.

John had thought he was a brave man, he'd thought that nothing in this world could have made him stop - made him say no, that he couldn't do this. He might have done then, he might have done. If it wasn't for Sherlock in the dark, leading where he had to follow, god help him.

Until they're there, the bottom of the stairs. John's exhausted, and sweating, half-ashamed of his own ridiculous, and so far baseless, fear.

They follow a small tunnel, and emerge into a natural cave, which looks like the throne room of a nightmare.

John loses all his breath, in one punch of an exhale.

There's a cluster of bodies in the cave, in the low pool of water surrounding the shattered statue of what looks like it was once a tentacled, fish-like god, carved in some sickly green rock that it almost hurts to look at. The bodies are all male, naked, skin shrivelled, black-veined, and so translucent that they look like they'd come apart at a single touch. There are slashing, open marks that look like wounds but seem to be gills instead. Their mouths are open in stretched-out, silent wails, and there are long, deep bruises on their throats, that suggest they were strangled to death. Though there are no ropes in evidence. They either had no genitals to begin with, or they've been removed, blackened groins too dark to be able to tell for sure.

Sherlock heads down the stairs, and crouches before the inhuman mound of bodies. John forces himself to join him, to be dispassionate in the face of things which were never entirely human. He can't help but look at them, and then he wants nothing but to look away.

"I don't think our suspect was a male descendent of Quenztozal," Sherlock offers. "And I don't believe she intended to rule here. She's taken what she needed from her loyal subjects and left the town, several hours ago by the look of it."

'What she needed,' John thinks to himself, and every part of him is horrified. He doesn't want to be here, he doesn't want to be anywhere near the pile of slaughtered acolytes.

"She'll move somewhere warmer," Sherlock says flatly. "Somewhere wet, possibly along the coast, a cave closer to the sea to...to spawn."

Sherlock's fingers are probing, gently, at the strangulation marks, face all at once horribly blank.

John, without a word, clamps both hands around Sherlock's shoulders and pulls him to his feet, away from the - away from all of it.

"She's gone. There's nothing else we can do here. There's nothing left that's going to tell you anything. Come on."

---

The first thing Sherlock does when they get back to their room is pull his coat off and toss it on the bed, then throw himself onto the small sofa. John stuffs the book under his coat and puts his bag on top of it. Where neither of them have to look at it.

Sherlock's glaring over his steepled fingers when John turns back around.

"You're not a monster," John tells him.

"Have you read the definition?" Sherlock says slowly, without looking at him. "Monster: An imagined creature that evokes fear, violent, ugly and destructive."

"You're not imaginary."

"And you're quibbling."

"No one says quibbling," John says with a frown.

"Clearly I do."

"Stop trying to bring words back into fashion." John pours him a brandy and shoves it into his hand.

"Brandy, really? Are we in a nineteenth century novel?"

John shrugs. "You've had a shock, I'm a doctor." He pours one for himself.

Sherlock stares at it, then shrugs and drinks half of it in one go.

"I think I had a more extreme shock three months ago, when I realised I could count past twenty on my extremities."

John shrugs and shoves him over on the couch until he can sit next to him, his own drink half-sloshing across his thighs, until a stray tentacle straightens the glass.

"Besides, who doesn't need a few more extremities?" John says, shaking brandy off his fingers. He lets the tentacle stay draped over his arm, he doesn't think Sherlock has noticed, since they're flailing about in a despondent sort of way.

They make their way through a shameless amount of brandy, which really is quite horrible, but also effective.

"Marshall knows your theory, he'll pass on any information, we can watch the coast, we'll find something."

Sherlock continues to stare into space.

"Whatever hope there was of us...fixing me has passed us by, it seems," he says eventually.

John hadn't even known that was a possibility. He hadn't known that was something Sherlock had hoped for.

"As if you've ever needed fixing before," John throws back.

Sherlock glares at him.

"Don't look at me like that. You're...you. You make it work, all the insanity, and the genius, and the ridiculous, shouldn't-work-but-it-sort-of-does bone structure -" John gestures. "Whatever it is you have going on there."

He sighs and lets his hand drop.

"You wouldn't be you without any of it, and now you have tentacles, and there are -" He swallows, and finds the world just a little bit unbearable for a second. "You do realise there are monsters out there, real, actual monsters. Impossible and terrifying, and that could have broken you into pieces, all that not-possible madness that you couldn't fit into your cold, logical brain. But instead you're just doing what you do, and you're amazing, just amazing. Sherlock, I think you're absolutely fine just the way you are, extra extremities and everything. I'm not quite sure how you cope with being you, but I'm glad that you are. Because I feel privileged to know you. I feel privileged to be with you, to be your friend, and I am, just so you know. In case you took it into your head to go live in some sort of...of Dunwich, surrounded by people like the barman downstairs. Because I would come and find you, granted it would take me a while, because I'm me - and you're you. But I would, I would find you because - because you don't belong somewhere like that. Because I care about you - god, more than I should - and I don't care what you look like, or how many limbs you have, or how often you call me an idiot. You do good things, you fix things, you make the world make sense when no one else can. You're Sherlock, and I'm not going to let you be anyone else."

John stops talking, because frankly he's not entirely sure what he's already said. People could clearly hold their brandy better a hundred years ago.

"And I say stupid things so now you should just nod...and possibly insult me, or something, so I feel like I didn't make an utter tit of myself."

Sherlock stares at him for a long and rather worrying minute. Before he eventually nods.

"I think you should pour me another glass of anachronistic brandy, I think I should like very much to get drunk with you."

"We already are drunk."

"Drunk-er," Sherlock allows. Which sounds like an extraordinarily good idea to John.

He fetches the bottle.