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John sighed as he wiped his wet hands onto yet another tea towel and scowled at the simple recipe in front of him. It shouldn't be this hard. It was nothing compared to what there was, to what John had cooked before. The stupid bloody magazine had insisted that it was 'family friendly!' and easy to put together – but John had to admit that even he was stumped.
“Less of the condensed milk!” came Mrs Hudson's voice from the living room, where she was tidying and setting up for her weekly game of bridge, polishing surfaces, dusting shelves, plumping cushions and rearranging the seating area, “And you're not putting enough sugar in. It needs to be nice and sweet and creamy!”
John grit his teeth until there was an ache in his jaw and turned away to stare at the kitchen wall, breathing deeply, trying not to get too riled up about it all. She hadn't even seen him putting the bloody ingredients together, so how did she know he was using the wrong amounts? And why had he offered to help in the first place? Why had he thought this was a good thing to do? Why didn't he just pull a Sherlock and refuse and pout and get on with what he wanted to do, rather than what he thought he was expected to do?
Grumbling unhappily, hating himself for getting into such a silly, immature sulk, John reached for another load of eggs - his third set - and began the preparation once more, "Fine. Yeah. You got it."
“It’s similar to making ice cream,” she told him encouragingly, as if that made it simpler, as if that made any jot of difference to John’s plight. “Why don’t you use my tablet thing? It could just be that certain recipe, that it's merely not good. Or not good enough! Not the traditional recipe.” John shot a glare over his shoulder, trying not to crush the smooth, delicate egg in his grasp as he rolled it around across his palm and brought it over a bowl to crack open. “You know, I should have a book somewhere with it listed. Frank bought it for me when we were in Florida. Had all sorts of things in there! All American, of course. - Have you ever been to America? Sugary snacks taste so different over there. Chocolate not as rich with flavour.”
John paused, hand hovering, “Do you want it to taste like it does in America?”
“Hm?” Mrs Hudson came over after an irritated sigh and took the egg from him, cracking it with a tut, as if expecting him to need help in doing so, and then separating the yolk from the white with an expert hand. “Here we are, dear. Like this, see?”
“Yes, I know how to—”
“Try and get it right this time. I’m running out of eggs!” she tittered, continuing to do the same to five more. “It’s a bit late notice, all of this, I know. - They were meant to turn up Thursday. Giving me time to make everything, but Gloria - she’s the love with the false eye - she can be a bit of a pretentious, haughty madame. Amongst other things. Everything and everyone has to fit to her schedule. Thinks she can just choose when to turn up without planning, whenever she wants, bringing whatever she pleases with her, expecting others to accommodate.” Mrs Hudson shook her head and let out a long sigh, and John rubbed the bridge of his nose, wondering if it was too late to just walk out and leave her to it. “I suppose we don’t help matters much by giving in to her, the girls and I. We tend to just do what she wants. Cuts down on tantrums and drama.”
“Mm. Sounds familiar,” John murmured, looking over the recipe again. “So, I shouldn’t follow this then? Despite you saying before that it was fine when I showed it to you and asked?”
Mrs Hudson wiped her hands on her apron and plucked it from him, “Let’s see…” she murmured, squinting and turning away, though not before she signalled impatiently for John to beat the yolks. “Well... from the looks of it, this is all right, yes. You can make eggnog like this. It all depends on personal taste. - Let me find my book while you do that. See if it's the same. I think so though. I remember making it for a whole party of eager guests. Of course, what I didn't know at the time was that they were a party of criminals. Funny really, looking back. Knowing how close I was to the worst of the worst.”
Leaving the recipe to fall with a flutter to the kitchen side, she turned with a hum and began rummaging around, leaving John to watch after her, beating the yolks with more and more frustration, “What else are you thinking of preparing again? Once the eggnog is done?”
“Nothing much else. Just things for us to pick at throughout the game. - A variety of dips, fitting everyone's tastes, and, well, I was thinking about fruitcake,” she told him, missing how John curled his lip in distaste at the mention of the cake as she bent down to open a cupboard, “Now, I'm not so such. I'm in a rush and I just don't reckon I'll be up for it. Even if it won't take me too long. Only an hour or so to make, you see. Really easy. - Even for you, I’m sure.”
John felt his eye twitch and forced a tight smile onto his face, “I’m sure…” he replied in a mutter. “So, you want help with that too then, yeah?”
“If you wouldn’t mind?” she asked with a bright grin. “You don’t have anything else on, after all.”
“...No. Unfortunately not…”
“What was that?”
John stamped down on the urge to repeat himself and roll his eyes, and instead tried to soften his smile, hating how sour his attitude was, how it clawed at the back of his mind, “Nothing, Mrs Hudson. You're right. I don't have any plans. None whatsoever.”
Giving him a look, she shuffled over with a small, hardback book in her hands and flipped through it, cracking the spine as she opened it wide, stroking the pages, fingers skimming lines of text, “Here we are!” she announced and put it down nearby, tapping wall of text with her fingernail. “Follow this instead. See if you find it easier to accomplish - And, for heaven’s sake, don’t forget the taste tests! All good chefs do it. That Gordon Ramsey gets his fingertips into all sorts of things!”
Not trusting himself to speak, John nodded, waited until she’d moved from her stern judging position over his right shoulder, and then rolled his neck, cracked his wrists and fingers, and made sure to follow the recipe to the letter. It was worded differently, the directions softer, clearly written for beginners more than experts. Dumbed down with cheeky, condescending, sexist jokes, and wasn’t that a wonderful insight into the relationship between Mrs Hudson and her late husband? No wonder she kept it in the deepest region of her furthest cupboard, hidden behind pots and pans and jelly moulds.
Thankfully, with the aid of the stupid book and Mrs Hudson’s now constant butting in, John was able to successfully finish the task, before being dragged into helping with the fruitcake that he was in no mood to taste at her instance throughout several minute intervals. Something he had considered relatively simple, something he thought he could actually help in making for his fretting landlady, had taken him more time than he cared to take note of. His neck, shoulders, and back ached from hunching, from tensing in piling frustration, and he was covered in splatters of sugar, nutmeg, egg whites, and smears of fruitcake mixture. It clung to the hair on his arms, streaked his cheek, forehead, chin, and was ingrained within the fabric of his jeans. The crotch of his jeans. How it had got there and nowhere else, he had no clue.
“I hope there’s enough there for everyone,” Mrs Hudson mumbled as she eyed John’s eggnog, John's best effort, with disappointment from where it sat in the fridge. "I would hate to run out before we finished..."
“There’s enough.”
“There should be four of us, like usual, but I get the sneaking suspicion that Gloria’s going to invite a few more,” she huffed, untying her apron, adjusting her hair and brushing down her cardigan. She then turned to face him, looking him over with the disgruntlement of an overburdened mother. “Oh John, you got it all over! What a mess! - Honestly, you should pay more attention to where you put your hands and handle ingredients.”
John picked at his fingernails, grinding his jaw, and leaned casually against the wall, keeping still so he didn’t act as childish as her words made him feel, so he didn't cross his arms and stomp his foot, “Yeah, I should have taken you up on that offer for your spare apron - Or, better yet, have used, Sherlock’s. That pink one.”
Humming, Mrs Hudson batted at him, dusting him of sugar, and John quickly caught her hand before it lowered any further and she did him an embarrassing injury, knowing how strong her dough pushing fingers were, “How have you got this filthy making eggnog?” she asked, tutting.
“And fruitcake.”
“Yes, but it was mostly the eggnog. You barely did anything when it came to the cake,” she snorted, taking a step back with an aggravated gasp when the doorbell rang. “Oh no! That old bitch came early!”
John choked on his burst of laughter, shocked at her language, unsure if he’d heard her say that word before, or one like it, “It might be someone else, Mrs Hudson. Someone for Sherlock. Or me, for that matter--”
“No, it’s her. She rings the bell three times in one second interludes,” she grumbled and shooed him to the sink, nudging and full out shoving when he stumbled in confusion. “Be a dear and wash up while I let them in.”
“What? Mrs Hudson!”
He watched her fluff up her hair and leave with a long groan under his breath, listening to her cheerfully greet her unscheduled visitors with the most condescendingly polite tone he had ever heard. She was picking up bad habits from Sherlock, that was the only explanation. John twisted, facing his new and very daunting, boring task, already feeling the intensifying twinge in his back as he leaned over and set to work washing each and every used appliance with grim determination, head canted to catch the drift of gossiping chatter as the women gathered in Mrs Hudson’s living room. Not really listening with any large interest, but preferring the sound of voices to the sound of splashing water and squeaking scouring sponge. He normally listened to music on his laptop when he did the dishes and he mourned his recently ordered playlist, complete with recordings of Sherlock’s violin, recordings that he was pretty sure hadn’t been noticed by the man yet.
“Oh, hello big boy,” a husky feminine voice crooned behind him moments later, wrenching him from his thoughts, and John had only barely started turning around in reply before a rather brazen hand was pinching his left buttock. “Hard at work, I see. Good to see it. I love seeing a man in the kitchen, up to his elbows in suds, cleaning the dirty, dirty plates.”
“Uh. Yeah, right,” John managed through his shock, nodding his head with a blink and a firm smile. “Hello, I’m John from upstairs. I was just--”
“The doctor?” questioned the cheeky looking lady with glittering jewels adorning her frail neck and long fingers. She extended one hand, stroked up John’s arm and squeezed his bicep with a hum of interest, fingernails snagging on the folds of his crumpled sleeve as she felt higher, only to let her fingers spread and drop, clawing the length of his spine. “Martha has told me all about you - I’m Gloria.”
“Ah, yes, um--”
“Has she talked about me too? All good I hope?” Gloria purred, false eye somehow shining with as much promiscuous glee as the other. Trying not to cringe out of his skin at her treatment of him, John shot a quick, helpless, pleading look in the direction of Mrs Hudson, who was laughing at something one of her other, more well behaved friends, had said. “Are you staying for a quickie? - A quick game, I mean?”
John glanced back at her, finding her to be impossibly close and flinched back, knocking his hip and splashing water up his abdomen, “I, uh, no. No. I’m… I’m just the dishwasher,” he told her, clearing his throat to raise his voice, “Isn’t that right, Mrs Hudson?”
“What’s that love?” she replied, smiling until she saw John’s requesting eye flick and noticed that Gloria had wandered from the group and was now pawing at him, the woman’s fingers already combing the hair at John’s nape. “Gloria, you leave that poor boy alone!” This, of course, did a little more harm than good. It brought the attention of all the others. John inwardly grimaced as they eyed him up, as they giggled and beamed and made their way over to touch him in greeting. “Do stop molesting him! You're acting as if you've never seen a man before! - Sorry, John. This is Gloria, as I'm sure you know now, and Bridget, Agatha... and these are Gloria’s friends Della and Hattie. Now, with that out of the way, let’s all leave him to it.”
“Come on, Martha,” Gloria scoffed, hands going, thankfully, to her slim, weedy hips. The further away from him, the better he felt. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone timid in your old age? It's just a bit of flirtation. Nothing wrong with that, is there? We used to do a lot more in our youth. A lot more. Or have you forgotten?”
Mrs Hudson puffed up in offence and marched over, squeezing between John and the devil woman, becoming his wall of protection from her sneaking, fondling fingers, “I have never approved of how you touch men, Gloria,” she told her, waving all of them back, “now come on, back to the living room with all of you. John has work to do and he doesn’t want to be felt up by a bunch of women old enough to—”
“Is he shy?” Gloria cut in, cutting a teasing look in John’s direction, mouth curved. “Is that it, John? Are you shy little boy? - Intimidated, perhaps? - Tell me, how many women have you been with? Ever had a mature woman before? One who knows the wants of men. One with enough experience to make your toes curl.”
“Uh…”
“Would you like to?”
Mrs Hudson gave an indignant sigh, “Honestly, Gloria!” she said, turning with a comforting pat on John's wet forearm. “Pay no attention to her, John, dear.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Gloria went on.
“Well, um, no. But--”
“When was the last time you had sex? - And not just regular sex, but mind-blowing sex?”
“Gloria!” Mrs Hudson snapped and crossed her arms. “If you'll kindly remember--”
John frowned and tensed, “Mrs Hudson…” he warned, implored, hoped.
“--he’s already taken. He has a boyfriend,” she continued, and John turned away to roll his eyes, leaning against the edge of the sink, unsure if he should argue the case or not. “Something you’d know if you ever read our weekly letters.”
“Weekly letters?” John echoed, staring at his own reflection in a large, shaking bubble within the centre of the sink and wondering when it was that his life had become some exciting antidote that his landlady made sure to update all her friends on, in hand-written letters. Not emails, but letters. Pieces of paper with his name on them, documenting his movements, fictional and otherwise.
Gloria sniffed in dislike, “That detective fellow?”
“Consulting detective,” Mrs Hudson corrected her, bringing a smile to John’s face, even the midst of madness. “Yes. Sherlock and John have had a few troubles, some domestics, a break or two, but what relationship doesn’t?”
“I thought Sherlock Holmes was—”
In that moment, as if awaiting for the very instance his name was uttered, a curious, ruffled, bare footed Sherlock entered with his usual flourish, dressing gown rippling out behind him, brow furrowed, lips pursed in the beginnings of a sullen pout. He looked between them all, gaze jumping from each woman, across the messy kitchen counters, over the frothy sink, and then up John’s sullied torso with a questioning eyebrow lift. Mrs Hudson grinned and reached for him as he closed in, snagging hold of Sherlock’s wrist to pull him nearer, to squash him into John’s side. He went willingly, still inquisitive enough not to refuse, and John tried not to think too much about how glad he was of the man’s abrupt presence. How happy he was to be crushed by his looming figure. To be touched by him instead of a groping, gnarled hand.
“Sherlock, good, why don’t you help John, your partner, with the washing up?” Mrs Hudson suggested in a way that warranted no argument.
Sherlock tilted his head, blinked, and his eyebrow only went higher, “Pardon?”
“Yes, please, help me,” John muttered between his teeth and stared at him when their eyes met, trying to make him understand, trying to convey his need to get out of the kitchen as fast as possible. Away from the fondling hands and hungrily eyes of the wanton elderly. “You dry.”
Sherlock’s head shifted the other way slowly, mouth quirking as the seconds passed, and John clenched his jaw at the smug amusement he saw settle into his features, “But of course, John,” he drawled huskily, bending to nuzzle his nose up John’s cheek and take his ear in a gentle, unneeded, shiver-inducing nibble. “Anything for you.”
“Don’t overdo it,” John whispered as they both stepped up to the sink, side by side, Gloria huffing in defeat, murmuring about it being a terrible shame that everyone seemed to be gay as Mrs Hudson herded them back into the living room.
“I think you needed me to overdo it,” Sherlock murmured as he opened a drawer, pulling out another tea towel, and John stiffened, shooting him a glare. “Now you know why I—”
“Yes, yes, I’ve learned my lesson, okay? Shut up and get drying,” John grumbled, glancing over his shoulder at Gloria, “I need to leave before they have a go at the eggnog. If this is them sober, I’d hate to see them tipsy...”
Sherlock paused and snorted, shifting his stance enough that they were nestled as close as physically possible against one another, “You’re welcome.”
“You couldn’t have come earlier? I was gone for ages! Didn’t you wonder what was taking so long?”
“I come when I’m good and ready, John, and not a second before.”
John flicked a clump of bubbles at on his cheek, “Fuck you.”
Laughing, Sherlock blew them away with the side of his mouth, speckling the air with floating clouds, “Next time,” he told him, taking the offered bowl from John, “just knock her eye out. It worked for me. Doesn’t take much. Just a good ‘ol thump--”
“No wonder she doesn’t like you.”
“She could not like you too?”
John gave another glance at the woman and let his lips curl up in mischief, “Into her eggnog, maybe?”
“Oh, perfect,” Sherlock smirked.
“You’re a bad influence on me, you truly are.”
“Mm. Yes, I try.”