4.
"JOHN!" Sherlock yelled, lounging on the sofa with his friend's laptop on his lap.
"Yes, Sherlock?" came a quiet response from the other side of the room. Hmm. Sherlock hadn't even noticed John was still in the living room.
Sherlock closed the laptop and stared at John accusingly. "Why is there no tortelloni in the flat?"
John looked perplexed. Of course he did, he was simultaneously trying to work out exactly what tortelloni was and contemplating why Sherlock had suddenly started asking for food.
"Because I didn't know you wanted any," John offered as an explanation. "Actually, I was going to go to Tesco tomorrow afternoon, if you want anything you'd better let me know."
Sherlock frowned. "I don't think you understand, John, I really want tortelloni now."
John sighed. "You know what? I can make the shopping trip this afternoon instead but only if you come with me. Yeah, you can help me to look for stuff. You can also pick out your own tortelloni because I haven't the foggiest what type you'd want."
"But I really don't want to go to Tesco," Sherlock retorted with a pout.
"Then you can do without your tortelloni. What do you want it for, anyway? Some mad experiment to do with how long you can boil it for before the filling turns into mush and completely disperses through the water?"
"Actually, I intended to eat it," Sherlock said matter-of-factly, and John's eyes widened with astonishment. Yes, John, I intend to eat on a case. I just really want a certain kind of pasta for no real reason. Don't look so surprised.
"Well, then, we're definitely bringing that trip forward," John said, standing up. Sherlock was suddenly aware that his coat had been thrown over him and John was dragging him upright by the arm.
"No, John..." Sherlock began, crossing his arms and anchoring himself to the settee as firmly as he possibly could.
"I can't believe you just carried me down the road to Tesco's..." Sherlock grumbled, as soon as John let him out of his fireman's lift in front of the supermarket.
"Well, you clearly weren't going to walk yourself so I thought I may as well do that for you," John pointed out. "Now, if you try to run away I'll put you on the thing mothers use to stop their children from escaping, and we have already established that I am stronger than you." Sherlock's customary pout returned and John grabbed a basket by the door. The pair walked into the building and Sherlock's ears were promptly accosted by the sound of a grating voice over the tannoy requesting that "all amber cardholders to support checkout," whatever that meant. Sherlock winced.
"All right, then, you can go and look for whatever it was you wanted and then if you could go and get four pints of semi-skimmed milk, a box of six large eggs, chilled orange juice and maybe a pizza. You can choose what type," John said, as Sherlock internally panicked. No John you can't just abandon me in this noisy place full of people to find things I really have no idea where everything is kept...
John took off for the produce aisles on their right-hand side leaving Sherlock to make his way to the dairy department at the back of the shop. Sherlock marched up the electronics aisle, spotting the sign from the ceiling that read "milk" and headed for aisle twenty-seven. As soon as he got there he was confronted by the frankly rather intimidating sight of an entire row of various kinds of milk.
John said four pints of semi-skimmed. is semi-skimmed the blue, green or red? Logic dictates that it must be the green because it is between the red and blue but people are so illogical it could really be any. Even so, there are so many different brands of the green it could really be any. Oh, damn, there's also a purple bottle over there that says semi-skimmed. Why can't people just stick with one brand and be logical? There's really no need for this many...
Sherlock eventually grabbed a green bottle with the word "pure" on it (If it's been filtered it'll last longer and give me more excuses for experiments). He turned around and noticed that the orange juice was also conveniently situated on this aisle. After having settled on a carton, Sherlock walked back to the space separating the two halves of the shop and decided to turn left, observing the increasing aisle numbers. At that moment the grating voice came on the tannoy again, demanding that "all shop-floor staff to attend rumble," which could really have meant anything.
When he reached aisle thirty, he spotted a large display of various types of eggs. Obviously John specified six large eggs, but these ones here are BLUE, Sherlock thought, stealing the stool a small girl with long hair in a Tesco uniform was currently using to take the empty cardboard boxes down from the top shelf.
"Excuse me," the girl said nervously, avoiding eye-contact with Sherlock as best she could. "Customers aren't really supposed to be using the stools, do you want me to reach something for you?" Sherlock thought this was hilarious, especially considering this girl must be more than a foot shorter than him, but he saw for himself that there were no more containers of blue eggs in the box so he admitted defeat.
"No, there's nothing up there I want," Sherlock said coldly, eyeing the duck eggs on a lower shelf.
"I suspect you'd have just as must luck reaching anything up there without a stool as I would with it," the girl said, giving an uneasy laugh. Ha, she sounds like Molly after she's made one of her terrible jokes, Sherlock thought. The girl returned to tearing the empty boxes up as Sherlock plucked a box of duck eggs off the shelf. Sherlock winced with every ripping noise emanating from the cardboard, and noticed that the girl had abandoned her gloves and was grimacing every time her fingernails scraped the box. Sherlock didn't blame her, even the thought of his fingernails scraping cardboard was enough to make him cringe.
"You too?" Sherlock asked, gesturing to the cardboard. The girl nodded glumly. "Probably best to leave your gloves on, in that case," Sherlock said, handing the girl her navy gloves which had been lying on the self.
"It's only a disadvantage when you factor in the rest of the world, and really, who cares about them?" the girl replied awkwardly. Sherlock laughed humourlessly.
"Could you tell me where the tortelloni is?" he asked. Best to minimise my time spent in this shop, I don't particularly enjoy making forced conversation with employees who obviously don't feel comfortable talking to their customers more than necessary either, Sherlock thought.
"Yes, that's on aisle twenty-three," the girl replied, giving Sherlock a pleasant enough smile. Sherlock gave her a nod before hurriedly tearing off in the direction she indicated, weaving in between the old ladies with trolleys and the small children holding their mothers' hands.
When he reached aisle twenty-three and was greeted by the sight of a wide selection of tortelloni Sherlock got rather carried away. Excellent, I must buy one of each of the twenty types he thought, picking up an abandoned basket that had been lying in the corner and putting his groceries into it. He turned on his heel to go and look for John, before the sound of a screaming toddler from the next aisle over penetrated his thoughts and everything left Sherlock's mind except the thought of MAKE IT STOP CRYING. Of course, sod's law being what it is seemingly every child in the shop took the already screaming toddler as an excuse to start wailing themselves.
Sherlock ran out of the aisle and towards the grocery section of the shop to look for John (he's out of jam and that's always buried under stuff in the plastic bags so he doesn't buy it last, he gave me fewer objects than he's getting himself because he reasoned it would take me longer to find everything than it would for him and because I asked the girl I saved time) when the tannoy started talking again.
"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our store. This is a customer announcement..."
Sherlock didn't even notice John was on the same aisle until he'd run into him.
"John, I'm bored and all the babies are screaming and I thought about scratching cardboard and I think I'd rather like to go home now," Sherlock said all in one breath.
"I see you found the tortelloni," John quipped, eyeing the plethora of pasta in Sherlock's own basket. "Oh, I was thinking hen's eggs, but I suppose these will do if you don't mind paying for them. What happened to the pizza I told you to get?"
"I forgot," Sherlock said unabashedly, restlessly glancing towards the exit.
"Well, there are still some things I need to get so you'll have to wait for a bit," John pointed out, as Sherlock scowled.
"But John, cardboard..." Sherlock pleaded, steepling his fingers and pressing them together with as much force as he could. That makes the sensation brought on by the thought go away faster, yes, it does.
John raised an eyebrow at Sherlock, but when the latter started wringing his hands and spun in a circle John just sighed. "All right, I didn't have very much left to get anyway, and I suppose we have enough bread to live on for a few days," he conceded, as Sherlock's eyes lit up and he started bouncing down the aisle towards the tills, his hands still pressed together.
As John smiled at the middle-aged lady on the check-out, Sherlock tried his best to tune out the beeps and whirrs being given off by the till and receipt printer, but to no avail. Sherlock noticed that an avocado had gone through the till and grabbed it as soon as the lady relinquished it. His eyes lit up even further.
"John, you got me an avocado?" he asked, eyeing the fruit.
"Yes, you can feel it," John said, picking it up and handing it to Sherlock, before he returned to putting the groceries into plastic bags.
As Sherlock ran his hands over the avocado the sensation brought on by the memory of fingernails on cardboard vanished, to be replaced by the interesting and pleasant waxy texture of the fruit with its raised bumps. Yes, John had done well to anticipate far enough in advance to buy it, but Sherlock was also pleased that John had taken it upon himself to learn Sherlock's favourite textured things to placate him. It really did make life much easier.