Chapter Text
When John got home, he found Sherlock in the kitchen, jacket off, but in his usual dark shirt and trousers. He was using their largest soup pot to mix something that John was fairly sure was not soup or even food. The pot was on the kitchen table in the area that John had designated for non-food experiments and that Sherlock had agreed to, and mostly did, use for that purpose. However— “Sherlock, I thought we agreed no experiments in food preparation utensils?” He said it rather mildly. He’d learned to pick his battles, and at least this didn’t smell bad. In fact it smelled rather nice, like honey and some spice or blend of spices he couldn’t identify. Maybe it was food after all.
“I had to, John,” said Sherlock. “I didn’t have anything else big enough for this.” He was rummaging in a cabinet (labeled “Chemicals in this cabinet only!”) for something he couldn’t seem to find.
“What are you working on, anyway?” asked John, peering into the pot. The liquid inside was a sort of pale violet colour, slightly translucent. There were objects floating in it that weren’t quite visible enough to identify. A few bits of shiny, colourful paper had stuck to the inner sides of the pot. One appeared to be star-shaped, another like a heart. The mixture seemed to be bubbling slightly, though there was no heat source John could see.
“Experiment,” said Sherlock, unhelpfully. He at last found what he wanted in the cabinet and pulled it out, nearly dislodging several other containers in the process. It was a small, round stoneware jar, with a brown paper label on it that John could not read at all. John couldn’t exactly place the pleasant, spicy scent that came out of the jar when Sherlock opened it. It wasn’t quite peppery, it wasn’t quite curry, it wasn’t quite like cloves or cinnamon.
Sherlock, as usual, knew what John was about to ask. “I picked this up while I was… away. It’s a rather rare spice. The label is in Tibetan; I'm not sure it even has an English name.” He carefully measured some of the golden-yellow powder from the jar into the soup pot, where it caused the liquid to froth up briefly before it disappeared into the mixture. “Anyway, what do you have there?” He barely glanced at the paper bag John was holding. “Oh, a lab coat. John, I appreciate the thought, but those things… they never fit properly. They don’t look good on most people.”
John knew that meant “it won’t look cool enough on me,” but that Sherlock would never admit it. He said, “You're starting that new job at the University. If you're going to hang around in chemistry labs, you should look the part. Can you leave that stuff for a minute?”
“Yes,” said Sherlock. “That was the last ingredient I needed to add. Now it just needs time to… mature.” He stepped back from the counter and turned toward John. "I'm still not sure why I agreed to take that job anyway."
“I'm not either, but at least you'll have access to a well-equipped lab. Close your eyes a minute, love.” Sherlock did so, and let John maneuver him into the lab coat. John buttoned the coat and said, “You can look now.”
Sherlock opened his eyes and looked down at himself. The lab coat he was now wearing had the same close-fitting cut as his suits. It even had lapels much narrower than a typical lab coat, and was made of much nicer fabric. He looked like a GQ model, if GQ had ever had anybody model lab coats. He said, “John. This is amazing. Where—?”
“You look amazing,” said John. “I went to your tailor. It does look quite good on you," he added smugly, looking Sherlock up and down. "And you look the part now, Professor Holmes.”
“Why thank you, Doctor Watson. Just how good does it look?”
“This good,” said John, and pushed Sherlock back against the table for a kiss, then ruffled Sherlock’s dark curls.
“John!” Sherlock protested, scowling and ducking away from John's hand, like a cat that wants to be petted right up until it inexplicably doesn't. “Not the hair, not so close to the experiment, you could contaminate it!” He was right; a few loose hairs drifted down in the general direction of the pot.
“Oh, please,” said John, amused. “If you were that worried about contamination, you wouldn’t be doing this in our kitchen anyway.” He reached for Sherlock’s hair again, and Sherlock leaned back, batting John’s hand away. He lost his balance, then caught himself against the worktop, but in the process, one hand flailed out and smacked into the contents of the still-open cabinet. John watched as one container, already near the edge because of Sherlock’s earlier rummaging, wobbled for a moment—and then fell off the edge of the shelf.
In the half-second that John had to try to catch the container, he could see only that it was made of some dull silvery metal, a bit like a large soft drink can, and was marked with a big, black X. He flung out his hand and managed to make contact with the can, but could neither get a grip on it nor stop the sweep of his hand, already in motion; the result was that he ended up batting the can toward the table, where it struck the rim of the pot, much harder than it could have hit anything if he had just let it fall. Maybe that was why the can split open, or maybe the seal had deteriorated, but whatever the reason, it popped open at a seam and began to spray a dark, oily-looking liquid into Sherlock’s concoction.
John and Sherlock both leapt back from the pot as the can fell in. “Well, that’s not good,” said Sherlock, frowning at it.
“What is that stuff?” said John. He slowly eased back toward the pot again and peeked in. Wherever the dark liquid had hit the purple stuff already in the pot, it produced large bubbles, which were iridescent like soap bubbles. John wondered if he was seeing things, because it appeared that when the bubbles popped, there was a little burst of sparkles. Some of the sparkles seemed to be in the shape of bunnies, rainbows, flowers, or hearts, like tiny, elaborate fireworks. It was a rather pretty effect, but it made him wonder if the can had held a hallucinogen. It wouldn’t be the first time Sherlock had brought something like that home.
“I’m not sure,” said Sherlock, who had begun poking at the stuff in the pot with a spoon. He fished out the can, which was now half-empty and had stopped spraying, and threw it in the sink.
“You’re not sure? You’re keeping chemicals here when you have no idea what they are?” John was exasperated, heading toward angry.
“I didn’t say I have no idea.” Sherlock avoided looking at John by gazing at his experiment, which was bubbling with increasing vigour. “I, er, acquired it when we were at Baskerville. They just called it ‘Chemical X.’ Though I overheard an American scientist referring to it as ‘a can of whoopass.’”
"A 'can of whoopass?' Sherlock, that's probably some kind of weapon! And that was six years—"
"John—"
"—ago. You don't know what it is, you don't know if it's—"
"John—"
"—stable, you don't know if it was—"
"We need to move away, John!"
John finally realized Sherlock was trying to draw his attention to the stuff in the pot, which had turned a deeper violet colour, almost indigo, and was frothing up madly now, about to overflow. It was also giving off a slight bluish glow. It was a bit unnerving.
"Move. Yeah," he agreed.
They both began to back away from the pot. Hissing sounds were coming from it, and the whole pot began to vibrate as Sherlock said, "I'm not really sure what's happ—"
There was a noise and everything turned white and John passed out.
When John regained consciousness after the explosion (was it an explosion? he wasn’t even sure; everything had turned very bright, and loud, but there didn’t seem to be any fire or smoke) it was because the highest, sweetest little girl’s voice he had ever heard was asking, "Are you guys okay?"
John opened his eyes and was briefly alarmed to see nothing but a sort of blank greenish blur, but quickly realized this was because his face was pressing gently against a green-papered wall. He next realized that he was hanging head down, arms dangling from his shoulders. There was something else wrong about his position but his head was still too fuzzy to place it.
Another voice said, “Of course they’re not okay, look at them!” This voice was also clearly that of a little girl, although a bit lower and rougher than the first voice. If you could imagine how a little girl’s voice would sound if it had been roughened by cigarette smoking but still sounded like a little girl, it sounded a bit like that, except that didn't really make sense, did it? Maybe she overdoes the candy cigarettes, John thought, and then realized he was thinking complete nonsense, and wondered if he could think better if he weren’t upside down.
He discovered that somehow his belt was caught on the horn of the bison skull that hung on the wall between the windows, so that he, too, now hung there like a wall ornament. His weight was suspended painfully by his belt, his body folded backwards through it like a towel on a towel bar, his face against the wall, knees facing out. He writhed, trying to figure a way to get his weight onto his hands so he could get his belt unhooked from the horn. His struggles ended when the horn, with a loud crack, broke off of the skull. He tumbled painfully to the floor, rolling over the edge of the table on the way down. As far as he could tell, though, he wasn’t seriously injured, just shaken up.
He sat up, groaning. The first thing he saw, once he crawled out from behind the table and got his eyes to focus properly, was Sherlock, lying crumpled like a rag doll against his leather chair, upside down—his head and neck on the floor, body propped against the edge of the chair, one leg on the seat and the other hanging limply over the arm. His white lab coat was bunched around his chest where it wasn't splayed over the floor around him. Papers, lab equipment, and broken glass littered the floor, evidently thrown there by the force of the maybe-explosion. John crawled over to him, shouting, “Sherlock! Sherlock, are you all right?”
A third little-girl voice said, “Obviously not. Haven’t we already talked about this?” This one sounded bossy and confident, almost arrogant. In fact, John thought, if Sherlock were a little girl, he probably would have sounded exactly like that.
While part of his mind was thinking how weird it was that he was hearing little-girl voices that sounded like Sherlock in his exploded flat, most of John's mind just wanted to hear from the actual Sherlock, whom he had now reached and was checking over for injury.
Sherlock opened his eyes, tried to focus, and said something that sounded like “John?” though it came out sounding sort of strangled because of the way his neck was scrunched up. He allowed his body to slide down to the floor, which he somehow managed to make look graceful in that way that always faintly annoyed John because it shouldn’t be possible to be thrown across a room and slump onto the floor and still look graceful. Sherlock sat up, shaking his head.
John said again, "All right?"
“Fine, yeah, fine, I think. Are you all right?” He leapt to his feet (annoyingly gracefully, again) and reached a hand down to John to help him up.
At the repeated questions, impatient sounds came from the kitchen, but then the first little voice said happily, “Yay! It looks like they are okay!”
Sherlock turned to face the kitchen and froze, staring. He said, “John! It worked—” but interrupted himself to say, very quietly, “This wasn’t quite what I was expecting.” John finished getting to his feet, still holding Sherlock's hand. He turned to look where Sherlock was looking. He hadn’t known to expect anything, so he only stared.