Title: Subject Number 1

Author: Shinju Tori

Character(s): SH/JW, MH/GL and miscellaneous other people…

Genre: AU, humor, romance, hurt/comfort & I dunno what else…

Summary: Sherlock was a scientist, devoting his life to trying to find links in between humans and various animals. Most leads turned out to be a dead end…That was until they found Subject Number 1…

Spoilers: None in particular unless you've never seen Sherlock…

Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock as it currently belongs to Moffat and Gatiss…

Rating: M for violence/gore & strong language (as of now) …

A/N: AlreadyPainfullyGone wrote a Fanfic called Specimen 001 and I was re-reading it recently and suddenly I got the mental image of an Octo!John stuck in my head as well as an Octo!Lestrade…This is the result of the aforementioned plot bunnies…Also, anything in italics when it's a human POV is thoughts and Bold when in Octo-human POV…Now then, ALLONSY~! :D

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Sherlock watched as Anderson tried to intimidate Subject 1, with little success. It was rather amusing in its own fashion, watching Anderson challenge it over and over to a staring contest (still not positive if it's hermaphroditic or not but Sherlock believed that if it was hermaphroditic, then it's mostly male due to its obviously masculine upper body) only for Anderson to look away within minutes, causing the Subject to grin triumphantly until Anderson looked back at it, in which case it's face would return to a deadpan expression until Anderson lost the next round.

Sherlock returned to his sketches, writing notes on the paper pointing at various parts of the Subject and telling what he's deduced from them. Now Subject Number 1 was a one-of-a-kind find, a missing link between mollusks and humans. From head to waist was the torso of a lightly tanned, muscular, blonde man with piercing dark blue eyes (slightly long nose, strong square jaw, his hair was cropped short, possibly to prevent tangling by currents or to prevent him from becoming some larger sea creature's meal, and his ears were large and webbed like a fish's fin) who looked to be somewhere in his mid to late 30's. On the front side of his left shoulder was a large circular scar of some sort from where he had something sharp pierce him (not all the way though but enough to obviously cause him some discomfort in moving that arm, possibly some ligaments in his shoulder were damaged). Below his belly button (which led Sherlock to believe that their young were probably birthed live just like an average human), his waist blended smoothly a mass of tentacles, each of them a sandy brown that gained green-brown splotches when the Subject was upset or nervous. There were 8 large tentacles on the outside that overshadowed a series of smaller tentacles layered underneath (Sherlock assumed that he ate like a human however rather than an octopus, though the nature of what exactly he could eat was still up for debate).

"Anderson! Leave it alone so I can continue my deductions in peace without your thoughts mucking mine up!" Sherlock shouted, both irritated and amused, after the 7th round of them having their weird staring match. Anderson looked ready to protest when his pager beeped: the head scientist, James Moriarty, wanted to see him in his cabin. Anderson sneered at Sherlock before leaving, slamming the door behind him. Sherlock sighed and turned back to the tank where Subject Number 1 was staring at him in mild surprise. "I wonder what you're called…Do you even have such a thing as names where you're from?" Sherlock mused before yawning. He had been up for the past 48 hours working hard on his multiple (very complex) experiments/observations and only now was the crash of all those cups of coffee and caffeine pills he had drunk/eaten catching up to him. Sherlock leaned back into his rolling chair and let his eyes drift shut. "I'm just going to go to sleep for a few minutes then I'm going to resume work ASAP…"

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John waited until the Nice-odd-tall-two-legs fell asleep to lift his head over the edge of the tank to get a better look at him. He (these two legs had odd things to restrict them like 'genders' and 'races', which confused John to no ends) was far paler than John, had curly dark black hair, and pale green eyes, almost exactly the same color of the ocean in the shallows of the tropics. The Two-legs had strange things covering themselves that he remembered his mates (friends, mates, not MATE, mates) calling "clothes". This particular two-legged being wore strange shiny things at the end of his 'legs' ("'Legs', not 'tentacles'…" John mused to himself trying to imagine how tedious life must be without tentacles), long black coverings for his 'legs', a dark purple cloth covering his chest area, and an odd white cloth over everything else. He remembered seeing things in writings about life on the surface that were called "doctors" or "scientists" that wore white cloth objects just like that. The best words that Octodarians (John's race) had for them were "healers" (Like John himself) and "all-knowers".

John found that he liked this particular two-legs out of all of them because while he wouldn't stop staring at John, he didn't do it in a cruel way (like the Evil-plotting-small-two-legs) nor was it a look filled with a mix of disgust, fascination, and fear (like the Eel-faced-small-two-legs). Instead he seemed both interested in John and almost…bored by him. As though he had seen stuff like him before and yet still wanted to find out more. Oddly, as he lowered himself back under the water, John found that he wanted to know more about these two-legs himself…

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Sherlock woke up about a half hour later, to find Subject 1 staring at him from behind the glass of his tank (light glistened off the side of it wetly, Subject 1 probably splashed some water over the edge of the tank doing something, collected in a puddle on the floor). He stood up, stretched, and walked over to the tank and returned the stare. It wasn't the blank, almost animalistic, stare that he had given Anderson nor the look of fear and hatred he had shot Moriarty before being sedated (they had to sedate him in order to get him into the tank). This gaze was calculating and serious like he was…

"Ah…You are just as interested in me as I am in you…" Sherlock said with a knowing smile. Subject 1 tilted his head to the side as Sherlock rested his hand on the glass. Subject 1 hesitated and placed his own hand on the wall of the tank, obviously comparing their hands. Sherlock's hands were longer from the heel of his hand to the tip of his middle finger, paler, much more slender and had narrow fingers with light calluses on the tips of his fingers and the side of his ring finger on his right hand (Sherlock prided himself in the fact that he had the hands of a musician or a writer rather than a fighter…proved that brawn wasn't everything) while Subject 1's were smaller, tanner, a lot broader, and his fingers were thicker, more heavily calloused, especially around the palm of his hand (Obviously was more of a fighter than Sherlock was, though he seemed to move his fingers around more carefully than Sherlock had originally assumed, suggesting that he did some delicate work of some sort). It was extremely interesting to note that the Subject's fingers were not webbed at all and that all 10 fingers looked exactly the same as an ordinary human's other than the greenish tinge to the tips of his fingers.

"Fascinating." Sherlock said as Subject 1 seemed to stare at their hands, and, if he wasn't mistaken (which was rare for him), seemed to be considering something. In one fluid movement Subject 1 swam to the top of the tank (a fascinating process that consisted of the main 8 tentacles moving upwards and then swiftly moving down accompanied by a rush of water from a pair of siphons, one on either side of his torso, just above his tentacles). There was a faint splashing noise and a gasp as Subject 1 inhaled once his head broke the surface of the water. Sherlock stepped back to watch both of his hands and a few of his tentacles reach up and grab at the edge of the tank pulling his head up so he could stare down at Sherlock. There was a pause and then Subject 1 surprised him by speaking (Sherlock could tell that his voice was normally a rich tenor but was hoarse not from sickness but instead from disuse). "Name is John. Who you?"

Sherlock blinked in shock before grinning and replied "I'm Sherlock, and you just got a lot more interesting…"

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TBC

…Well? You like? *hopeful look*