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"John. How upset would you be if I tested a version of that gas on you again?"
John paused in his reading but didn't look up from his paper. "I'd make sure you kept anything I could use as a weapon well away from me, if I were you. For several days. And if that means you've replicated in two weeks what took him twenty odd years..." He thought for a moment. "Don't tell me. In fact, don't tell anyone. And then dispose of it. And if you test it on Mrs Hudson, I will actually break your nose."
"But not if I were to test it on you."
"You remember the effect is cumulative, right? I don't need any more homicidal impulses toward you than I already have."
"You seem adequately able to control them."
"So far." He sipped his tea and started reading again.
Sherlock sat on the edge of the coffee table across from him. "The effects were considerably less dramatic in you than in the rest of us."
"I wasn't exposed for as long."
"You were. I timed it. And the second time, in the hollow, we all got the same exposure. You saw Lestrade afterward. Manic and shaking, like I was the first time."
"You weren't much better the second time," John couldn't resist pointing out.
"Yes, and you sedated Henry Knight and left Lestrade and me to shout at the television until dawn while you had a cup of tea and a nap!"
"You didn't want the sedatives."
"Not my point. You were just as calm the first time. You were chatting with Stapleton, and the worst she could say of you was that you looked a bit peaky. And you controlled yourself during the exposure..." There was a grudging pause. "Better than I did."
"You were all right the second time."
"And you were all right the first time."
John put the paper down. "It wasn't the first time."
Sherlock frowned. "You couldn't have been exposed previously, the--"
"First time exposed to the drug, definitely not the first time I've been scared shitless. It helps, probably, knowing that you can function half out of your mind with terror. The first time I was in a real fire fight, I looked like you after, shaky hands and pounding heart and all that. It gets easier."
Sherlock leaned in, studying his face from inches away.
"...What?" John said.
"You are simultaneously the most interesting and the dullest person I know. It's astounding."
"Was that a compliment in your world?"
Sherlock blinked at him and sat back. "Merely an observation."
John rolled his eyes and went back to his paper.