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On Friday the first of June 2012, an alien spaceship crashed into the Thames.
It was something of a news story.
Not the sort of thing any government could possibly cover up. Within three hours there were more than a thousand videos, twice as many pictures, eleven news feeds, six alien memes, and numerous interviews from specialists drafted in from all over the country - and one very confused work experience girl, who was mistaken for a famous anthropologist, and ended up catapulted into sudden national (and possibly intergalactic) fame. There was no hiding it, you'd have had to take the internet down. You'd have had to take the mobile networks down. And then possibly ban semaphore, just to be safe.
Aliens existed, aliens not only existed, the proof was now a messy wreck in the water, in the middle of London.
Most people, if they'd been honest, would probably have expected the proof of alien life to come in the form of dead microbes on Mars, maybe some living ones on Europa. Best case scenario, maybe some signals from some distant galaxy that turned out to be alien in origin. Scientists would get excited, write lots of scientific papers, go on talk shows, try and wrangle a bigger budget out of the government. Mankind would have found out that they weren't alone but in a safe, and vaguely distant, sort of way.
No one could have expected what looked like a giant, spinning ceiling fan to come smashing down in the Thames, spraying some sort of red plasma, and sending water flooding across huge parts of London.
The world went mad for a while. Swinging wildly between optimism and horrific paranoia. A few end-of-the-world cults sprang up, almost all world governments that still had some sort of control, were visibly panicking.They talked a lot about what sort of technology these aliens would have, and how Earth should react to the inevitable threat from space. Which led to an amusing, but completely false, story about how the CIA were actually all aliens in disguise. More than a few countries threatened to go to war, though no one was quite sure if anyone had managed to nab any advanced alien technology, so they mostly settled for shaking things at each other, and puffing themselves up to look as big as possible.
It could have been significantly worse.
Of course, then the other aliens came to find the ship that had crashed. The aliens hadn't asked for it back, they'd just teleported it straight out of the top secret, underground base where it had been stashed, every piece of debris, every scrap of alien wreckage, and its unfortunate, most likely half-dissected pilot. They basically abducted all their stuff back, much to the annoyance of the British military.
A few things were launched, by itchy trigger fingers across the globe, only to mysteriously disappear in the upper atmosphere.
There'd been a message, an apology of sorts, for the accidental early break in the non-interference protocol the aliens adhered to. Contact was apparently normally delayed until a species had explored or inhabited thirty percent of its solar system, or until some variation of faster than light travel had been invented, and successfully tested. But they left an assurance that when humanity was ready, the galaxy would be more than happy to welcome them. Until then the many, many other species out there were busy doing their own thing, in space, with their spaceships.
Fermi Paradox solved. Yes, the aliens were up there. A whole damn galaxy full of them. They were the playground monitors, and Earth didn't get to come sit at the big kids table until we stopped banging rocks together, pulled our socks up, and got into space.
Once the aliens left there was nothing to really react to, though people tried for a while, messily, desperately, like children trying to get a distant parent's attention. But after a few months people were back to being interested in celebrity weddings, and who was going to be killed in Eastenders, and if the price of petrol was going up again.
John missed most of it. He was busy recovering from a bullet wound at the time, and he put down half the talk of aliens in London to a little too much morphine.
By the time he came off the good drugs, the aliens had already stolen their ship back and buggered off.
----
Which is why John is very surprised a month later, when he's abducted out of his bed and then driven at some speed through London, in a nondescript black car, which takes him to an empty warehouse. Where he's forced to sit in a cold chair for over an hour, while two sensible men in sensible suits stare at him, in a way that he thinks is supposed to be intimidating. One of them has an incriminating redness growing around one eye, and a smear of blood on his split upper lip. Which spoils his attempt at serene aloofness somewhat. John's not sorry for that, at all. He doesn't care how many MI5 documents they make him sign.
He doesn't even have any shoes on.
"Why exactly am I here, at three in the morning? What have I apparently done, that I needed to be kidnapped out of my own bed, and driven to god knows where?" That rant had been brewing for a while - and to be honest there's more, a lot more. But one of the sensible men decides to finally open his mouth.
"Mr Watson, we apologise for the rather abrupt way in which you were brought here."
"That's funny, because you don't look very apologetic," John says. "And when you abduct someone the very least you could do is admit to it." He's sitting in the chair with his arms crossed. His feet are cold.
The taller of the two men stops standing quite so stiffly, possibly because he's under the impression that it's making John 'tense.' He has no idea where he got that impression from. John isn't tense, he's livid.
"Mr Watson, this concerns the extraterrestrials, and your connection to them."
John blinks, leans forward despite himself.
"Excuse me? My - what - my connection to them? You're joking, I've never even seen an alien. I'd probably still be convinced they didn't exist if pictures of the ship weren't all over the internet. And in that advert, the one for car insurance they keep playing every afternoon. With that stupid song - I certainly don't have any connection to any of them. What, did you think I was hiding one in my bloody pajamas?"
"That's not what my colleague means, Mr Watson." The shorter, and significantly more bruised, man doesn't seem to hold any grudges. There's a worrying sort of professionalism about him that John's naturally wary of. "Contrary to what was publicly reported there is still a - " They look at each other, and then away again. Communicating in intent looks that they probably think is cautious and secretive, but really just makes them both look like pillocks. "There's still a certain amount of contact, and one of the extraterrestrials has expressed an interest, in how our society works." There's a pause, a significant one.
"An interest?" John says, pushes really, because he doesn't like the way they keep stopping, as if they want him to prompt them, rather than risk saying too much.
"This one wants to consult with the Metropolitan police," Shorty says, in a tone that suggests he doesn't approve, at all.
"Excuse me?" John shakes his head, as if he can force that sentence to make sense. "They want to want?"
"Consult, with the police, he, she or it wants to examine our crime prevention and crime-solving techniques up close."
John can't help the short bark of laughter that comes out of him. Then decides to hell with it, and just laughs outright.
"Is that the best idea -" He realises, belatedly, how that might have sounded. "I mean, coming from an advanced alien race wouldn't we come across as a bit -" He doesn't want to say it, it should be obvious.
The two serious men in suits stare at him meaningfully. But he's had quite enough of that. He stares back, until the taller of the two seems to relent slightly.
"Which is where you come in."
"Yes, I was wondering when I was coming in," John says cautiously.
"The ministry of defence won't allow an extraterrestrial to just wander around London, without supervision, without military supervision."
That seems sensible, if a little inclined to cause some sort of incident, some sort of diplomatic, intergalactic incident. You can't have aliens just wandering around London. Visiting all the tourist destinations, scaring the locals. Losing their Oyster cards. He's going to laugh again, he can feel it coming.
"They requested you," the taller man says pointedly, as if that was something he hadn't wanted to share.
Which kills John's urge to laugh completely.
...
They...requested him? Aliens requested him. John takes a minute to let that sink in, and ends up more than a little disappointed when it flatly refuses to.
"You are aware I was medically discharged." Which is something - some sort of excuse, he's going to want one of those.
Their expressions tell him that they were indeed aware of this.
"The other candidates were apparently 'unacceptable.'" The shorter man manages not to look insulted through sheer force of will. John can imagine the sort of candidates put forward. He can imagine exactly how far down that hypothetical list he'd be. "Under the circumstances, special circumstances, you'll be attached to the Secret Intelligence Service."
"Of course I will." He's laughing again, he can't help it.
"Please take this seriously, Mr Watson."
"It's Dr. Watson," he says, in what is definitely not a three in the morning voice. "And you abducted me, at three in the morning, to serve as some sort of diplomatic assistant to an alien, who wants to see how we catch and treat our criminals. How exactly is that the sort of morning that calls for polite conversation?"
"There was something of a time issue considering the - uh, visitor wants to meet you in four hours."
That's what they'd been trying very hard not to give away, the fact that they had barely any time to try and convince him. The fact that they were rushing this whole thing. John tries very hard not to react to how suddenly very serious this is, in any sort of outward, obvious, terrified sort of way. He takes a breath and doesn't react at all.
"And since they represent some sort of advanced space empire that could turn us into planetary dust," John says, a little tactlessly, but to be fair he's still wearing his pajamas. "We're bending over backwards to be acceptable, and accommodating I suppose. Or is it just bending over?"
Both men look uncomfortable.
"Can I at least have a shower, and put on some actual clothes, before you offer me as a possible human sacrifice to an alien species?"
It turns out that he can.
----
He has to sign several foreboding documents, and go through what feels a lot like especially invasive quarantine procedures (possibly in case he gives the alien some sort of horrible human disease, and destroys mankind's future in space, possibly something like that?) Before he's bundled into a suit that feels too small, but that he suspects fashionable magazines would insist fit him perfectly, and dumped outside of an ordinary door on an ordinary street in the middle of London. Traffic drives past in an ordinary sort of way behind him.
He's more than a little annoyed at the world for being so bloody ordinary when his own life suddenly feels anything but. He's still half convinced the whole thing is one bizarre practical joke - until he thinks to glance sideways, and finds several suspicious, armed men on the street, in clothes that look a little too new, trying their damndest to look inconspicuous.
"Right, well then, this is just perfect. This is just bloody perfect." It occurs to John that he's talking to himself, and there's an outside chance he has a microphone attached to him somewhere. That would be a fantastic start to human/alien relations. Perhaps they'll call the whole thing off once they realise he might be completely insane. Maybe he should just wait around long enough for them to actually do that?
Though John realises, belatedly and depressingly, that at no point in the proceedings did he ever actually refuse. That probably says something about him, something that will be written on forms by humourless psychiatrists.
He's completely unprepared for this. No one has told him what to expect, no one has told him anything. He doesn't have a description, or even a name. Granted, it's not the first time that's been a problem for him, but it's definitely the first time there's been the possible fate of humanity at stake. He doesn't know what British Intelligence is assuming about how this is supposed to go, but he's not entirely surprised that he's essentially been cut loose and left to sink or swim.
Who knows what aliens want, they're alien. That's the whole point - it's entirely possible John's going to be eaten. It wouldn't be too far-fetched. Almost no one knows he's in London, he hasn't contacted anyone, no one's expecting to hear from him any time soon. No one would notice if he went missing - no, that's ridiculous, why would they have bothered making him sign all the forms, and buying him a nice suit then? Probably not eaten then, just some sort of diplomacy, some sort of inter-species diplomacy which for some unknown reason he's been chosen for. Just a little alien diplomacy.
If they were interested in the Metropolitan police why didn't they have a police escort? Or their own police, don't they have their own police forces, probably lots of police forces. Space police forces.
John's stalling and he knows it. But he's just not ready to face what might be beyond that door.
Because it won't look like him, will it? It'll be weird and alien. John reads things, he knows the likelihood of aliens looking anything like people are astonishingly small. He has to be prepared for anything, prepared to not react if what's behind that door is the weirdest, most horrible, alien thing he's ever seen. He has to act normally, and talk normally, no matter how much the inside of his brain might be screaming. Because that's what they have to do if they ever want to join the society that's up there in space. They have to adapt, evolve, to make themselves better than they are right now. Or at the very least manage to not run screaming from the premises.
The door startles him by swinging open at that point -
Please don't be a giant spider.
- an older woman is half-turned, talking to someone behind her, and when she turns her head and finds John half a step away she makes a quick, high sound and pulls her hand to her chest. It's a human sound. She's very human.
"Oh, sorry dear, I didn't see you there, you gave me a shock."
"Sorry, sorry." John doesn't know whether to put his hand out or not. "I'm here to see -" Who exactly was he here to see? It's not like anyone had given him a name, or a general description. He didn't want to just assume, because he'd already discovered the places that took his brain. He'd been accused once of not having much of an imagination, but what he had seemed more than sufficient.
There is a significant amount of need-to-know that he feels he really needed to know here.
"I'm here to see -"
Luckily the woman cut hims off.
"Of course you are, of course you are. I'm Mrs Hudson, I live downstairs, I'm just renting out the upstairs for our -" She lowers her voice to a whisper. "For our visitors."
"At a very reasonable price." A voice cuts in from behind her, and when she turns a little John can see the man better. He's very human too, tall and surprisingly pale for this time of year, accent posh in a way that almost grates, but his voice is deep enough to have character. It currently sounds amused at Mrs Hudson's expense. She turns enough to prod at him with her fingers.
John can't help himself, their easy, relaxed conversation is doing nothing but driving his tension up a notch.
"Are they...are they -" He clears his throat, goes to try again when Mrs Hudson pats him on the arm.
"It'll be fine, I'm sure - I'll just leave you two to get acquainted then shall I?" She smiles and pats him again. There's a squeeze on the end of the movement, as if maybe John isn't doing as good a job as he'd thought at looking calm and together. "Sherlock, behave yourself, heaven knows what you'll get up to when I'm not looking." She turns far enough to smack Sherlock in the chest. Then slides from between the both of them and slips back into the first open flat, shutting the door behind her.
John breathes out, stops himself from putting his hands in his pockets, from doing anything with his hands really. He doesn't quite trust himself to not do anything stupid.
"I don't know where I'm supposed to go. Is it - is it upstairs? Am I supposed to be meeting it - them upstairs. I wasn't exactly told anything." He's talking too fast and he can't quite make himself stop. Nervous, nervous in a way he hasn't been since he was much younger and much newer than he is now. "The whole thing was - to be quite honest - one step up from being thrown out of a moving car, which as you can imagine wasn't exactly pleasant." He nods because, yes, that's exactly how he feels right now. As if he'd been shoved out of a moving car, into a political minefield that he has no training how to deal with. "I don't know what to expect, have you seen...have you seen them? Should I be - no?" John makes himself stop talking and take a breath.
The tall man, Sherlock, he remembers Mrs Hudson calling him, is still watching him curiously, as if John might at any moment do something interesting and he doesn't want to miss it. He smiles, in a slow, cautious sort of way.
It occurs to John, oddly slowly, and with a dreamlike sort of horror, that he's talking to an alien.
He's talking to an alien.
He's talking to an alien.
His brain hangs on to that sentence, replays it over and over. Maybe it thinks it can lesson the shock through repetition. But it just rattles around in his skull like there isn't a single other thought in there.
"I expected you to look more...alien," John offers at last, blurts really, when the silence and the staring goes all the way past awkward and into 'diplomatic incident.' Only to belatedly wonder if that's rude. What constitutes rude to an alien? Do aliens even have rudeness? How could he be expected to know what was rude in that case? And the alien's wearing a scarf - not an alien scarf, just a normal, boring, human scarf, that John might go out and buy (alright like a richer version of John might go out and buy.) Something about that seems oddly difficult to get past.
"In what way?" Sherlock asks. Completely unaware of John having a minor panic attack - or at least he hopes he's unaware of it.
John wonders whether to be honest answering that, or whether to be diplomatic. He eventually decides that there's no way he can keep 'diplomatic' up for however long this is supposed to go on. He's still a little stuck on the fact that the supposed alien has an English accent, which is oddly unexpected.
"Oh, I don't know, more arms, things growing out of your face, tentacles."
"And that would make you more comfortable?" Sherlock looks honestly curious.
"God, no," John admits. "But I was clinging to my expectations a bit, and you look very...almost normal. You don't expect to meet an alien and have it look, well, just like you."
"I don't," Sherlock says. "Look like you that is. Though I'm not sure if that's something you'd find reassuring or not. My species specialises in - you don't really have a word that fits - flesh-crafting will do, I suppose. My bones, cartilage, nerves and tissue can be...broken, twisted and rearranged into a shape that you find...less terrifying and more familiar. On the outside I look like you, but through any sort of scan or imaging device you would see." Sherlock seems to think about it for a minute. "An unfamiliar puzzle of interlocking parts and barely familiar internal organs."
John blinks. He tries not to picture that, tries harder not to find something imperfect and alien about the odd curve of Sherlock's face. But his eyes keep coming back to it, trying to find a flaw, something he can grasp onto and declare 'alien.'
"So...you're a shapeshifter?" Not a question he's ever considered asking.
"No, shapeshifters change at the genetic or molecular level. They can often change their mass and density as well, whereas we have to...work with what we have. Also, shapeshifters are notoriously difficult to talk to, they're considered insane by most species definitions."
There are so many things John wants to ask, all clogged up inside his mouth.
"Doesn't it hurt?" he blurts. "The uh, crafting?" That had been one of them, but not one he'd intended to ask out loud.
Sherlock doesn't look offended, he seems more pleased at John's inability to be diplomatic. Or maybe he isn't pleased, maybe that's just what his human-shaped face is doing?
"It depends on how much I want to change at once, how different the shape is to my own."
"So how different -" John realises he's not only being rude, he's being personal, with an alien. Does he really want to ask how much looking like a human inconveniences him? "Sorry, I feel like I'm going to say that a lot. Please tell me if I'm being horribly rude, since I have no idea."
"First contact specialists tend to be very hard to offend."
"I suppose that makes sense. Oh, that's what you are then, a first contact specialist?"
"Something like that."
"Umm, I'm John Watson - Dr. John Watson actually. Though you already know that, because you approved me. Well I'm not sure you did, someone did, I'm assuming you were aware."
Sherlock holds his hand out, to shake, and John doesn't flinch away from it, though a very small and primitive part of him wants to.
"I did that wrong?" Sherlock starts to take his hand back.
"No!" John grasps Sherlock's hand on reflex, finds it shockingly normal and human-feeling. Almost disturbingly so - this would sound great in the textbooks wouldn't it? One of the first humans to meet an alien found him terrifying in his very humanness, and ran screaming from the room. He would never live that down. Never.
He stifles a laugh.
"No, that's exactly right, my fault, sorry, I'm still a little - you're my first alien." John lets go, and his hand tingles weirdly, in a way that he suspects is more just him reacting to the general weirdness, than any sort of alien virus that's going to eat through his skin. Which is something he really didn't need to be thinking about.
"You're doing very well," Sherlock reassures him. "Especially considering you weren't aware of our existence until very recently."
John can probably imagine a few ways this could still go horribly wrong.
"You have no idea how good that is to hear," he says stiffly. "I was really just - thrown into this. I have no idea why I'm here, to be perfectly honest."
Sherlock adjusts his scarf, in a way that reassures John that it may look human but he's still not entirely sure how to wear it...or perhaps he's used to having more neck?
"The people that were suggested as acceptable to accompany me were disappointing. I made an...executive decision. You seemed interesting." Sherlock smiles through his teeth.
"Interesting?" John's not sure if that's a compliment. He's tempted to treat it like a compliment. It's probably best to treat it like a compliment.
"Yes, interesting, honest, flexible, willing to take a - " Sherlock makes an odd noise that isn't human at all, something grating that crawls up the back of John's neck. "Not quite certain how to translate that. You have so many languages. I'm still working on accents. Trying not to make your 'k's sound clicky."
"But isn't your name Sherlock?" John reminds him.
"One of many, and only the most recent. When you can change the shape and structure of your body keeping one name, with only one pronounceable form is impossible. I chose Sherlock because I liked the way it sounded with a human throat, in an Earth atmosphere, it has pleasing consonants. But if I was communicating with a species underwater it wouldn't travel at all. Do you like it?"
"It's certainly different."
Sherlock looks...complicated at that.
"Am I to understand that in this context 'different' does not necessarily mean good?"
"No, it's fine, it's good, it's all good. I'm assuming your original name isn't pronounceable for me then?"
"Sadly, no, I could vocalise it for you, but I'd have to rearrange my throat and my lower jaw." Sherlock looks as if he might actually do that.
"No, umm, no, don't worry. I wouldn't want you...to do that." John really wouldn't want him to do that. He thinks he'd much prefer to ease into the whole alien diplomatic assistant thing.
Sherlock retrieves something from his pocket - John half expects some sort of shiny, advanced technology - but it turns out to be a normal, ordinary mobile phone. Either that or alien technology disguised as an ordinary phone. John has to wonder how much space minutes cost? He probably couldn't afford them.
"We're supposed to meet a Detective Lestrade at the crime scene, as soon as possible."
"Already?" They've only just gotten past the introductions.
"I did say that if the military wanted to afford me an escort then there was some matter of urgency. Is that a problem? Do you need to use the toilet?"
John shakes his head.
"No, I'm fine, I just didn't expect dead bodies this early in the morning."
"I'd imagine it would be safer to expect dead bodies at any hour, if you normally find them disagreeable."
Sherlock is already snatching up a long, thick coat and swooping out of the door, before John can decide whether that was a joke or not. Since he's supposed to not let him out of his sight, John's left with no choice but to go swooping after him.
---
"So, ok, hang on -" John is slightly annoyed that Sherlock's stride requires him to walk faster than he's expecting. "No one at the crime scene knows you're an alien?" He says that a little loud and then has to check that no one overheard, while cursing himself for almost failing rule number one before they've even made it half way up the street.
"I think that's partly why your company is required." Sherlock is fussing with the buttons of his coat. John refuses to believe that none of the many alien species have invented buttons yet. Maybe Sherlock was still getting used to human fingers - still getting used to having fingers? No, that's ridiculous, he must have had fingers before. How would people pick stuff up without fingers...or some sort of grasping extremities?
"My company - " he manages, almost missing the thread of conversation. "I'm here so you don't get discovered by the general public?"
"That would be awkward, wouldn't it?" Sherlock's grinning in a way that says he fully expects John to have to work at it. "Yes, you're here to assist me in my bid to appear as human as possible. So I can make my observations in peace."
"How exactly am I supposed to do that - I mean, how am I supposed to know you'll know what you're doing and that you won't do anything weird and alien?"
Sherlock seems amused at 'weird and alien,' rather than insulted. So John doesn't bother apologising for it. He's sure there are going to be a million other things he can apologise for later.
"I'm led to assume capital cities will extend the benefit of the doubt where oddness is concerned, rather than immediately assume some sort of non-human explanation." Sherlock still looks amused, he seems to be used to eyebrows if nothing else. "Your powers of denial when it comes to uncomfortable additions to your world view are...interesting. Adorably primitive really."
John can't help but bring to mind the first day he'd spent in London, and the fact that he'd given a wide berth to a drunk man throwing shoes at people, and screaming about someone called Cynthia.
"Alright, I suppose that's fair. If a touch insulting."
"Apologies," Sherlock says with a smile. John can't help but get the impression that Sherlock knows that word in several languages - and uses it sparingly. "I've observed a considerable number of people, and I'm almost certain I can blend in well enough to not evoke suspicion."
"Right so, how do we know each other?"
"I'm Sherlock Holmes, I consult on criminal matters. You're my companion."
"I'm your what?" John's abrupt stop makes Sherlock pause too, leaning ever so slightly towards him, and the posture looks strangely inquisitive.
"Was that a word with an unintentional alternate meaning I'm not aware of? My assistant, my colleague, my partner -"
"Right, got it. And I introduce you as...he? You are male ?" John flounders a little. "If that's not a personal question. It's all fine, I'm just wondering how to...er, introduce you. Pronoun-wise. Calling someone 'it' is considered rude."
Sherlock looks like he's tucking that piece of information away for later.
"My body is human male to any cursory medical examination," he says after a moment.
John takes a minute to try and work out if that actually answers his question or not. But they've already reached the crime scene, a taped-off garden watched over by uniforms, and a serious looking man in a suit. Sherlock has clearly been here longer than John expected, or he's done more research, because he has a few words with the detective - Lestrade - and then effortlessly lifts - steals - some gloves from a box that one of the techs had set on a parked police car.
There's a body lying in the grass, and John had been telling the truth when he said he never expected to spend time with dead bodies this morning. But he's distracted away from that fairly quickly. Because Sherlock's powers of observation are incredible. John can't do much but watch him, as he spots fine grains of dirt, dried spots of water, sub-dermal bruising, and traces of powder in the dead man's eyes. John's not sure how many of those he could have seen, how many of them he could have pointed out as suspicious - and honestly Sherlock is already doing a pretty poor job of pretending to be human. The surrounding officers seem torn between hating the complete stranger trampling all over their crime scene, for his dismissive arrogance, and being fascinated by the evidence he's pointing out.
John only has to step in once when Sherlock waves him over. But even then the questions are social rather than medical in nature.
When Sherlock has perfectly divided the crowd into those that love him and those that hate him, he grabs John's hand and pulls him away, slipping his phone away, and pocketing something he's clearly stolen from the crime scene.
"I don't think you're allowed to steal evidence," John points out.
Sherlock laughs, he actually laughs, and it looks as real as anyone else's might. John's so surprised he lets Sherlock pull him by the arm until they reach the same serious doorway on Baker Street that he'd been dumped at early this morning. It isn't until Sherlock takes his hand back to unlock the door that John registers he's not holding him any more. He feels oddly adrift, staring at an alien on a half-busy street in the middle of London. There's a danger this might actually sink in soon.
"What you did, that was amazing," John can't help the way that tumbles out. "The way you - I mean what you did back there, was incredible."
Sherlock looks genuinely surprised.
"Did you think so? I was really just making a few preliminary observations. I didn't want to risk noticing anything beyond your abilities."
"I think maybe you skirted across the line a little," John admits, following him inside.
Sherlock looks surprised. "Thank you, I shall be more careful."
John laughs, quick and breathless.
"No, it was great, everyone was impressed and you looked professional but not...superhuman."
Sherlock turns to face him fully at that.
"Odd word? Slip of the tongue?"
John shakes his head and Sherlock looks weirdly pleased, in a completely not human sort of way and it's fascinating. John makes himself stop staring, before it becomes obvious that he's staring.
"You'll be staying with me for the foreseeable future," Sherlock says suddenly.
John's halfway out of his coat, elbows half tangled.
"I will?" That sounded a bit too obedient. "Really, I'm sort of flattered that I was chosen off some sort of list. I'll admit I don't entirely know why but, yes. And don't get me wrong I am still having trouble with the whole you coming from another part of the galaxy and being an alien. It's amazing and unbelievable and I'm sure if I was an astrobiologist, or a physicist that I would have - well much more interesting questions if nothing else. But I do have a life you know. I can't just be at your beck and call twenty four hours a day. I'm an army doctor..." He sighs. "I was an army doctor, and I really don't think I have the skill set for...this."
Sherlock's nodding before John's even finished. And if he'd had his arms free John suspects Sherlock would still be dragging him along with him.
"This is exactly why you're so well-suited. You're perfect."
"I'm confused," John admits. "Also, not a mascot."
"Definitely not, you're more like an ambassador. Diplomatic immunity in more than three thousand star systems. Don't let it go to your head."
"I don't want to be an ambassador. I'm not even sure I'm going to be able to keep up with you, this is going to be exhausting," John just sounds confused, he knows he does.
"I can already tell that you like a challenge." Sherlock spins him around, leaves him twisted in his coat sleeves while he makes his way upstairs three steps at a time.
"Exhausting," John calls up after him. But this time he doesn't sound confused, he sounds drunk, and more than a little excited.
---
Exhausting turns out to be mostly true, since Sherlock seems to have a handle on pretending to be human only as far as the whole 'wearing the body' goes. He doesn't seem to have bothered spending too much time perfecting his knowledge of social convention, or observation of personal space, and he has a certain...offensive form of honesty. Almost a weaponised form, if John's being honest.
John spends the first few days trying to keep up while Sherlock chases murderers across rooftops, because he also seems to have no self-preservation. Also, because he apparently only needs twelve hours sleep every sixty eight.
John really shouldn't be so surprised when they finally corner the murderer, and he immediately rips his way out of his human skin, and goes on a rampage through Marks and Spencers. John eventually shoots him while he's trying to strangle Sherlock in the menswear department.
The 'don't attract attention' part of the operation seems to have developed a bit of a setback.
They both sit on the floor for a bit after that. Surrounded by mutilated shirts and mannequin heads. They're absolutely covered in purple goo and Sherlock can't stop smacking him on the shoulder, with a bit too much strength or enthusiasm, and people are looking.
"You know what this means -" Sherlock says, stripping off his slippery gloves and tossing them into a rack of fashionable Italian brogues. "There aren't supposed to be any aliens on earth - apart from me, obviously - someone's broken the non-interference treaty, which will need to be investigated."
He claps his hands together.
"Right, that settles it. We'll have to go to Arithine, in Epsilon Eridani, talk to the Head Eradicator. You should pack a bag, definitely. How are you in two thirds of your own gravity, do you think? John, this is going to be a fiendish adventure, and I insist you come with me."
"Into space?" John's voice doesn't crack, though it does waver a little.
"Not such a huge step, after all. You've already met me. I come from space. It's all really rather boring when you get used to it."
"I don't think I'm allowed to go into space." John says carefully, because Sherlock's talking very fast, and he only met an alien a week ago, and he's not sure that space would agree with him.
"Nonsense, you have to follow me everywhere, it was in the papers they made me sign. We'll take my brother's ship, he won't mind."
"Sherlock."
Sherlock's touching him again, long fingers grasping his own, like his species really never learned about personal space.
"I'm old, and boring, I've been a hundred species on a thousand worlds, and what I need is someone who still finds the galaxy fascinating. I need someone who looks out at it all and still experiences awe. Someone who will occasionally be rude, and primitive, and make mistakes. So I can see through the gaps."
John glares at him for that.
"So you can see how other people react to me?"
"Yes, it's very important. I think you could help me."
John's floundering for an answer. Something in him isn't capable of refusing outright. It can't say no. The enormity of this whole thing, the way Sherlock is pulling on his forearms, enthusiastic in a way that feels surprised and human.
"I don't really want to live in outer space," he manages.
Sherlock rolls his eyes.
"Fine, we can live in London and work in outer space."
John isn't sure if that's better. But maybe it's a start.