Chapter Text
“Needed: Security guard - night shift”
John would take that! He needed the job. Invalided home, living in London on an army pension, he needed the work, needed the money, and if that meant night shift at the bloody London Aquarium he’d jump aboard that ship. Besides what was the worst that could happen at night in an aquarium? Oh, the octopus escaped again? Nemo’s been lost? Psh, lots of walking and sitting watching loads of fish and the odd sometimes not-fish things calmly swim about.
The moment John stepped out of the office with his shift hours and uniform he was met by a rather intimidating looking posh toff with an umbrella who promptly proceeded to pull him away into the depths of the aquarium.
“Do you know who Sherlock Holmes, is Dr Watson?” he asked, as he serenely strolled past a massive tank with a replica whale skeleton settled in the bottom. Children ran around everywhere and the place was in general a loud echoing room, forcing John to keep close to the aloof man just to hear him.
“No, should I?” John replied as they turned a corner and entered a glass tunnel, sharks and turtles and all sorts of fish flying above while children and parents ooh’d and aah’d at them. The man kept walking, avoiding the crowds of people until he rounded the corner and stopped in front of the aquarium’s pride and joy, the huge shark tank with Easter Island heads towering from the bottom of the tall tank.
“No.” His fingers tapped on the handle of the umbrella in front of him.
“Sir-”
“Mycroft. Holmes,” the man corrected in clipped tones. “Sherlock Holmes was my younger sibling.”
“Mr Holmes, look, I don’t know what’s going on but if you could get to the point, I’ve got somewhere to be…” John trailed off as a huge fish swam by the window, not a toothy shark, one of the other ones swimming in schools throughout the tank. It darted past again before slowly drifting by. It was a large tuna fish… and John couldn’t help but feel as though it was staring at them, which was weird because it’s not like fish had eyelids, they always seemed to be staring at things.
“Some months ago my brother disappeared from this aquarium. His attacker was never found but it is assumed that they were… fish-napping, as it were, when he discovered their operations and pursued them.”
“And you would like me to keep an eye out for his killers?” John asked incredulously peeling his eyes away from the fish that had turned in a graceful arc to drift by again. This one looked different from the others too, it had larger dark markings that covered more of its body whereas the others were mostly silver with a black stripe on the back.
The elder Holmes simply hummed, twirling his umbrella handle under his palm, steel blue eyes following the fish as it darted away down into a faux rock corner of the tank. “An eye out would be adequate. Good day, Dr Watson,” he said before turning and walking away into the crowds of families still bustling through the halls. John was left to ponder the strange man for a moment before he decided to make his way through the rest of the aquarium and out; he took one last look at the unique tuna, drifting by on his lonesome, through the glass top down view of the tank near the exits.
Where the hell is this water coming from?! John thought for the fourth night in a row since he’d begun night shift. It was always in the same place: behind the scenes in the shark tank upkeep area, a long trailing puddle of water down the hall leading out into the aquarium proper. No one was scheduled to be in this late at night and yet it always appeared as though a diver had just flopped out on the floor and failed to do any sort of clean up.
When asked about it in the mornings, the various workers had no explanations and had found no leaks in the tanks that could have caused the puddles either.
John was replacing the mop from one of the well hidden ‘employees only’ closets when he saw a pale shape down the hall out of the corner of his eye. John quickly ducked behind a concrete coral display, peering around a brain coral at the lone figure. The lone naked figure who stood hunched with his arms around himself, illuminated by the light blue glow of the Easter Island shark tank. John crept closer to the man, using the fake ship wreckage as cover. The person sat down on a bench looking into the tank. Great I’m going to have to wipe that down, John thought as the pale white buttocks plopped down on the concrete seat.
“... clothes got picked up by lost n’ found again,” John heard the man grumble, his deep baritone carrying even as it roughened with a cough at the end. He quickly slunk forward to move behind the nude man.
John dove on him, throwing him from the bench to the floor and attempting to pin him. When he tried to grab the guy’s wrists to twist them behind his back, however, they slid out of his hands as though greased. Using this to his advantage, the very tall stranger pushed and bucked John off, turning over and taking a swing at him with a large fist. They grappled together on the floor for a moment, John catching his wrists individually and trying to pin the larger man and gain control by sitting on his bare stomach. The man suddenly turned his hands in John’s grip and pulled, leaning up quickly to headbut John hard. Dazed, John was flung off and the man scrambled to get up, squirming away as John clutched his face. John reached blindly and grabbed a slick ankle, getting enough purchase on the large foot to bring the man crashing face first back to the concrete with a wet slap. John hastily straddled the guy’s back again and pinned both wrists to the floor.
“I am detaining you for- wuh!” John was suddenly tossed off and found himself pinned with the bigger man straddling him.
John stopped struggling the moment he got a good look at the man’s face, long and far too pale with a very faint silvery sheen to his skin, under a wet, curly mop of dark hair. His ice blue eyes were wide, staring down at John as he panted, searching, studying him. It was his neck that made John freeze: there were gills open on both sides of the man’s neck, honest to god gills flexing with every breath. John’s eyes widened.
“What the--” was about all he got out before the man swiftly raised one of John’s wrists to his mouth and bit him just hard enough to draw blood. John screamed as the lunatic vaulted to standing and proceeded to run while John cradled his bloodied wrist. John levered himself up and ran on shaky legs to find the first aid kit. After properly washing, disinfecting and wrapping the wound John set out to find the crazy nude bitey man running loose in the aquarium, but he saw neither hide nor hair of him for the rest of the night.
As morning came a splitting headache began to bloom behind John’s eyes, running down his spine and permeating into a full body ache. He was making another round searching for the gilly man, beginning to wonder if he was going insane and had just imagined the gills when the tall nutter appeared again, decidedly less naked and dressed in a pair of neon blue swim trunks covered in clownfish and a yellow tank top with a cartoon otter and ‘Sea Life London Aquarium’ on the front. He was typing away at a computer meant for one of the children’s games.
The man saw John coming this time and quickly closed whatever he was working on, checking a little plastic fish watch on his wrist before darting away.
“Oi! Come back!” John shouted, running after the tall man. He had looped back into the aquarium, heading towards where John had found him the night before. The headache pounding in John’s skull only increased with the exertion of trying to keep up with those long legs. Adrenaline was pumping as he watched the man slide around a corner into a niche that dead-ended with a door to the staff only areas next to the shark exhibit. Unfortunately John had forgotten to re-lock that door after cleaning up the water so the man was already beyond it when John rounded the corner, breathing hard. Through the door he saw the pale man beginning to strip out of the stolen clothes, whipping the top off as he climbed the metal grated stairs going up to the tank.
John bustled through the door after him and was halfway up the stairs when an extremely sharp pain stabbed through his back; he fell on the stairs crying out in agony. He looked up through watering eyes to see a pale figure peering down at him over the railing, naked as the day he was born, again. Oh god-- John thought that it suddenly felt very much like he was dying; the pain was everywhere all at once and it left him gasping into the rough metal grating of the steps. He was reaching for his phone to dial 999 when another stabbing spasm rocked him and the phone slipped from his fingers, clattering away.
He gasped for breath, a feeling like razorwire cinched around his throat became more and more terrifyingly apparent over all the other pains, which were beginning to rival the time he’d been shot in the war.
John felt hands rolling and lifting his shoulders, dragging his feet up the stairs and laying him out on the cool concrete beside the pool. The gilly man! He bent over John, putting his unexpectedly dry hands on John’s face and neck, John felt thin fingers sink into the sides of his neck and panicked. It felt as though they sank into an open gash. John was gasping and sobbing for breath, feeling his eyes bulge. The man quickly started to strip off John’s uniform, his button-up peeled away like John’s skin was slimy. John wanted to struggle and get away from the madman but the amount of pain paralyzed him. Once he had John naked he pulled the slightly bloody wrapping from John’s bitten wrist. The man picked him up again, this time in a bridal carry, and John began to thrash in earnest as he realized where the guy was taking him: towards the water of the shark tank. The Killer! My wrist! He’s going to feed me to the sharks! John thought, trying to coordinate his limbs enough to get away.
John was unceremoniously dumped in the water, liquid instantly flooding his open mouth. He coughed and sputtered, flailing at the surface trying to find an edge to cling to. A large hand met the top of his head and pushed him back under; the man was drowning him! John flailed, pushing against the restraining hand, reaching for enough air for even a small breath, but to no avail. He felt his limbs go tingly, then numb, and he sank like a stone, water filling his lungs. He saw grey and silver shapes float past and the muffled sound of a loud splash nearby. John shut his eyes and accepted his death, somewhat thankful he wouldn’t be alive to feel the shark’s teeth.
But he didn’t die. Moments passed where he floated, his eyes opened to blurry blue and black shapes. When he went to blink again he found that he couldn’t. Instead, the blurry shapes began to gain clarity as if someone had slipped a pair of goggles over his eyes and drained the water from them. A fish bumped him and he rolled, the pain gone and replaced by the instinct to swim and try to go upwards. But he was stuck, he couldn’t feel his limbs.
The fish bumped him again pushing him up against the wall this time. It was the dark-colored tuna that lived in the tank. He hadn’t seen it since the day he started, not that he’d really been specifically looking for it. It had him pressed against the light blue wall with its massive barrel of a body. But the view was strange and distorted, bubbled out like he was looking through those fisheye lenses he’d seen in movies. The fish slid along his body till its large silver eye came even with John’s head. It pushed him again. Then he saw it: another large thin tail right behind him. He tried to spin to see the other fish pushing at him but saw nothing, just continued to float in a circle under the water with the tail staying in the same place at the edge of his vision. It then occurred to him to turn the other direction and catch it that way, but when he did it moved too, staying right there on the periphery. He’d gotten away from the wall and was disorientedly turning in space until that darker tuna appeared again and started pushing at the tail. Oh good it’s getting it away from me, John thought. But no, when the tuna pushed at the tail John spun with it… like it was attached.
John felt a hysterical panic begin to rise as the thought occurred to him. He tried to bend and twist his spine further to see the tail better, maybe see what it attached to. He bent his spine almost into a perfect C shape only to see the tail connected to a fish body. Oh god, oh god, oh god, OH GOD! The tail flicked and he was pushed out into the open water of the tank, above the statues on its floor. Oh fucking bollocks, this isn’t real! This isn’t real! John tried reasoning with himself, the killer just knocked me out and I’m asleep, asleep in the hallway with a massive goose egg and this is a dream! But it wasn’t. The more he struggled to wake up the more the tail propelled him around the tank, bumping into smooth walls of glass and concrete and scraping along them, the tail flickering away at the corner of his bubbled vision.
No! THIS ISN’T REAL!! He thought if he rammed himself into something maybe that’d wake him up, like a bomb exploding or a long fall jolted him out before. He tried flicking the tail faster, swimming at a glass panel in the opposite wall, but was intercepted by the dark colored tuna bumping into him. He floated there in the water becoming increasingly aware of his new body, of gills filtering water and the tail flexing, pushing him along.
God, he wanted to cry. What the fuck is this? Why won’t I wake up? Christ, am I in a coma somewhere and this is my fucked-up dream because of that skinny nudist? He just floated there, the normally beautiful surroundings of the tank he’d seen from behind glass a distorted nightmare that he could not even blink away. The other tuna stayed close by, bumping into him now and then, causing him to slowly spiral through the tank.
It was the first hints of noise that startled John out of his panicked stupor. Looking to the glass he could see people moving beyond it, shadows of children and adults pressed up to the glass looking in. For a brief moment John struggled for cover. I’m naked! he thought hysterically, trying to get his new body to work and get to the little rock hidey holes at the bottom of the tank. The same tuna who kept nudging him kept forcing him back upwards though, and John didn’t have enough control of his body to resist. Eventually he realized that fish don’t really need clothes exactly, and went back to floating and getting bumped by the one dark tuna as well as the other more mobile fish and sharks who couldn’t give a toss he was there.
The people were terrifying once there were enough of them outside. He couldn’t make out what they were saying through the water, just a garbled monstrous low babble, and then a child would bang on the glass he’d managed to drift near and the reverberating sound through the thick acrylic would startle him into movement until he realized where it came from and went back to his listless nightmare.
Eventually the dark tuna started pushing him rather insistently towards a specific window until his side was practically pressed against it. That’s when he saw it: Mycroft Holmes sitting on the bench near the glass, newspaper open. He glanced up at John and the tuna behind him with raised eyebrows, his eyes flicking to the strange tuna first then back to John. He flicked the paper closed and stepped up to the glass, peering hard at John before he pulled out his mobile and began to make a call, his voice too quiet and low for John to hear anything of the conversation. He gave the dark tuna one more appraising look before he turned and walked away, brolly in hand, leaving the paper on the bench.
Time passed. For John there was a moment of horrific embarrassment when his fish body decided to defecate; that was the one time the other tuna let him flee and hide in a corner of the tank for a while. John felt completely horrified by the fact that his body had just relieved itself in front of hundreds of onlooking people.
He stayed there for an immeasurable amount of time, floating between a rock and the wall trying to stay away from prying eyes. Food did rain down at some point and John ate none of it, the other actual fish gobbling up squid parts and pellets perfectly happily.
The noises from the people began to die eventually, the kids banging on the glass stopped and he continued to drift. Until the dark tuna came back and started pushing him again. When the slightly bigger fish pushed him out of his hiding spot John became more aware of his limbs. A sharp stabbing pain made him curl in on himself and instead of the bow of a tail he could actually curl in on himself, his arms and legs were back! He was completely naked and human again and breathing. He brought a hand to his neck, the slices of gills on either side of his throat opened and closed, still filtering away.
He quickly kicked upwards, swimming for the surface. The tuna that had been prodding at him all day was nowhere in sight. Before he even reached the surface, let alone break it, a long arm darted into the water and grabbed him by the bicep, pulling him swiftly the rest of the way out.
The moment he hit dry air his lungs burned and he began coughing, feeling like he was suffocating. The man attached to the arm hauled him out of the water and up onto the concrete, quickly pushing him onto his hands and knees. John’s body suddenly heaved and he retched an ungodly amount of water and bile onto the floor. He couldn’t see out of the water, his vision extremely blurry. Even as he continued hacking up water he felt hands on his face, thumbs and fingers rubbing and plucking at his eyes until finally something gave way and it felt like a thick skin had peeled away, clearing his sight perfectly out of one then both eyes. He felt slimy, like there was a gel film on his skin. John finally stopped retching but his entire chest felt sore. His limbs felt weak and his arms promptly decided to fold under his weight. Pale arms caught him before he could land face first in his own sick and pulled him to the side. John’s slime-covered skin allowed him to be pulled across the smooth floor easily. John looked up at the man hauling him with his hands under John’s armpits. It was the nude man from before.
John immediately wanted away from him, wanted to scream at him, but weak as he was he could barely lift a hand to try to swat him away. He let out a wet gurgle when he tried to speak. Then he realized the man was talking, he just couldn’t hear it. John was laid down again and the man’s hands went to his head. The peeling sensation he’d felt with is eyes happened over his ears and a small dribble of water ran out as his hearing returned. He heard a sharp clacking noise hit the floor nearby and turned his head towards it.
“Sherlock, how did this happen?” Mycroft stood against the railing, keeping his pristine shoes far away from the mess John had just created. He looked none too happy as he leveled his stern gaze on the man still peeling off whatever was covering John’s other ear.
“Sherl?” John croaked out, trying to push himself away from the dark-haired man once his other ear was freed, only succeeding in having his palms slip out from under him and leave him lying on the floor.
John weakly lay on his side for a moment. He heard the click of that infernal umbrella coming a few steps closer. A towel dropped unceremoniously onto his hip, providing some small amount of modesty, and when next he cracked open his eyes it was to a blurry view of Mycroft standing over him. “Dr Watson, you have, under extraordinarily poor circumstances, now met my younger brother, Sherlock Holmes.”