Title: Come Dine With Sherlock and John
Summary: Based on a prompt to have John as a contestant on the Channel 4 show Come Dine With Me. Chaos ensues.
Warnings: Crack (but plot-filled crack).
Parings: Hinted Sherlock/John. But you can ignore it if you want.
Disclaimer: I own neither show.
A/N: Thanks for the lovely reviews so far!
Eventually the dinner was over with and for the first time John was relaxing in the knowledge that the hard work was nearly over and done with. Or at least, the only hard work that remained would involve eating four extravagant dinners, which was the kind of hard work John decided he needed more of in his life.
All that was left was to dish up dessert and then the week would begin to be, if not fun, at least less miserable than it had been so far. He moved around the cameraman and camera to take his strawberries out of the fridge.
Sherlock, after his little act, was gone. He had apparently hidden his experiments in the kitchen of the long-suffering Mrs. Hudson and he planned to spend the rest of the evening doing some complex analysis of chewing gum. John allowed himself a moment of depression at the knowledge that their kitchen would never again be as clean or as practical as it currently was and that by tomorrow he would be picking entrails out of the fruit-bowl.
His only worry had been Sherlock's words before he'd left. John had expected whispered words of advice (or – let's face it – whispered orders) from Sherlock – especially as he know knew their life stories. Instead Sherlock looked distracted, and (in a moment away from the cameras John had managed to escape from) John had asked what was wrong.
"Hmm? Oh, I'm sure it's nothing."
"What?" demanded John.
"Just something I can't put my finger on," said Sherlock absently. His eyes were fixed into the distance as his brain whirred away at whatever problem it was.
"It is something to do with the guests?"
Sherlock looked annoyed. "Yes. But until I have more data I can't be sure."
What Sherlock meant by more data John had no idea of, but he offered to let Sherlock speak to them again.
"Why would I need to that?" asked Sherlock baffled. "I know everything I need to know about them."
"So what data do you need?" said John, who was trying to keep thoughts of a burning meringue out of his mind.
"That's the problem, until it happens I don't know." He straightened his jacket, and then caught John's shoulder before he went back inside. "John, promise me you'll stay in front of the cameras for the rest of the night."
John frowned, but nodded. "OK."
"Good," said Sherlock. His mind was still clearly on the problem and John had to ask him to remove his hand to let him go back to cooking.
It was probably just Lolli that had rattled Sherlock, John rationalised. He would no doubt have figured out that Lolli already knew John and this would have worried him. Still, he had lived with Sherlock too long to be entirely confident that that was the solution – even if Sherlock had guessed a connection, why would he be worried about John being away from the cameras?
He was delayed in serving up by Morgan, who asked him how he thought it was going, to get a response for the camera.
"Oh good," he said absently. She gestured for him to answer more completely. "Yeah it's going good. Sherlock – the, um, entertainment – was good-great. And dessert is nearly done."
"About that," said Morgan, "we need another ten minutes or so. Petra is still interviewing the contestants about dinner and Sarah and Danny have both gone downstairs to light up."
John nodded, "Er, yeah, that's fine."
"Cool," said Morgan. "I'll just use your bathroom."
She left to use it with the confidence of someone who spends their lives invading people's homes, and John was so wrapped up on preventing his dessert falling apart from the wait that he quite forgot about Sherlock's worries.
Jordan arrived back from his interview, followed shortly by Danny who had returned from his smoking. Lolli had been in the living room since her interview was finished and Sarah had been called up to hers after Jordan.
Finally Sarah returned with Petra and the second camera and John asked if he could serve up now. It was now twenty minutes since John had been asked to stall dessert.
"In a sec," said Petra looking thoroughly bored after what John imagined was a detailed breakdown of his inability as a chef. "Where's Morgan?"
John shrugged. "She went to the bathroom a while ago," he said. "Haven't seen her since. I thought she'd gone for a smoke."
Petra gave the first look of genuine concern John had seen from her. "She doesn't smoke."
"She wasn't downstairs when I was down there," said Sarah.
"I'll go check the bathroom for her," said Petra, "if she's not there we'll have to carry on without her."
She left, and John couldn't help but feeling some of the concern he'd felt before Sherlock had gone downstairs. None of the others looked especially worried, if anything they were impatient for the food he wasn't allowed to serve yet.
"I saw your fella downstairs," said Sarah brightly. "He was acting very oddly."
This caught John's attention. "That's nothing new," he said mildly (long having gotten used to Sherlock being referred to as such). "What was he doing?"
Sarah laughed. "He was moving around the ground floor staring up at the ceiling. When I said hello he actually told me to be quiet. Then he darted off into another room as if following a noise."
John was rattled by this information. If Sherlock had given up on his plan for dinner party success by being obnoxious to guests, that meant something more interesting had caught his attention, and whatever it was it was happening here. He had little time to worry further though; because Petra had arrived back looking worried.
"I tried the bathroom door, but I can't open it. I think Morgan's collapsed in there. I tried her mobile and I could hear it ringing inside, but there wasn't an answer."
John stood and hurried towards the bathroom. Sarah, Danny and the cameramen (not wanting to miss a scene) were hot on his heels, and it took the three of them to push the door open enough for John to look inside.
What he saw made him reel backwards in shock. He had seen some terrible things in the army, and several more in his adventures with Sherlock, but none of them had happened in his bathroom, televised, The bathroom was covered in blood. It had sprayed across the wall, splattered the pictures and window, and even reached the ceiling. John knew from the amount of blood alone that he would be unable to do much for the blonde girl slumped behind the door.
A closer examination told him what he had guess, the girl had had her throat slashed open from behind. The knife that had done it would have been long and very sharp – something much more deadly than a kitchen knife.
"Could it have been suicide?" asked Sarah. She was still at the bathroom door and though she looked shocked, she had a cool head on her shoulders.
"No. It would be near impossible to do that to yourself," he said. "Even if you really wanted to. And there's no knife. Someone killed her."
Danny leaned against the wall. "One of the camera crew? It can't have been us, we didn't know her."
John was just about to bark out orders for the police to be called, and Sherlock to be summoned from downstairs, when he heard sirens from outside.
"That was quick," he said.
Sarah frowned, "I don't think anyone's called them yet."
John stepped over the body and moved out onto the landing. As he had almost suspected Sherlock was standing there with Lestrade and several uniformed officers.
Sherlock pointed at Jordan. "Arrest that man for the murder of Morgan Dwight!"
One more chapter to go!