Fic: Mise en Place (9/25)
Title: Mise en Place (9/25)
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Relationship, Characters: Sherlock/John (eventually), just about everyone else
Warnings: None
Rating: R
Summary: John Watson had no intentions of taking over the family business, but when he returns from Afghanistan, battered and bruised, and discovers that his sister Harry has run their restaurant into the ground, he doesn't have much choice. There's only one thing that can save the Empire from closing for good - the celebrity star of the BBC series Restaurant Reconstructed, Chef Sherlock Holmes.
A/N: My husband deserves credit for coming up with the original concept of the Empire. But it was my beta, the fantastic earlgreytea68, who came up with how to fix it.
Another shout-out to my lovely Brit-picker, kizzia, who has written an absolutely delectable and delicious 221B inspired by John and Sherlock in Mise called “Bed & Breakfast.” Absolutely go and read - it’s lovely and funny and most importantly, will make you want pie. Assuming you don’t already, that is. (Doesn’t everyone want pie?)
Prologue ~ One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four ~ Five ~ Six ~ Seven ~ Eight
Chapter Nine
Sherlock glanced at the clock and frowned. It was just after nine, Molly was starting her second round of bread, Artie was nearly done with whatever ridiculous combination of ingredients would pass for lunch, and John was nowhere to be seen.
Worse, Donovan was flirting with Anderson in the dining room, and Lestrade - Lestrade, of all people - was flirting with Molly in the kitchen.
Sherlock couldn’t even watch them. It was disgusting.
“No!” giggled Molly. “Not like that, you’re meant to knead it, not pummel it into submission.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Think of it as a massage,” said Molly. “You’re giving the dough a really fantastic back massage.”
“All right,” said Lestrade. “So, I’ll just…massage the dough.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes. There were some things that were just inappropriate for the kitchen, and apparently the combination of Lestrade and Molly was one of them. Or two of them.
“Molly,” said Sherlock, rather more sharply than he meant to do, “tell me what you’re doing.”
Molly startled, and it took a moment for her to switch from her previous flirtation to actual serious chef. “Kneading the dough.”
“Really? It looked rather like you were needing something else,” said Sherlock. “You’re giving it a ten-minute knead?”
“Yes-”
“Six. No more than seven. Wait until it’s just reached cohesion and has lost its softness and then stop kneading, no matter how much time is left on the clock.”
“But…yes, Chef,” said Molly, and she didn’t glance at Lestrade once until Sherlock’s back had turned again.
Lestrade didn’t say anything, but Sherlock could hear the movement. When it was followed by Molly’s giggle, Sherlock had a relatively decent idea what the movement was, increased the count to three, and left them to their own devices.
It was nearly as bad in the dining room: Donovan and Anderson were sitting entirely too close together, whispering to each other under the windows.
Lestrade was right after him.
“Right then,” said Lestrade evenly. “Feeling particularly stroppy today?”
“No.”
“Go have a fag, it’ll make you feel better.”
“Patches.”
“Any ideas on how to fix the restaurant?” asked Lestrade.
“Eight,” said Sherlock absently, watching Donovan and Anderson chatting.
“Oh, good, that won’t be hard to narrow down by this evening,” said Lestrade. “Why don’t you go work on those?”
“Why don’t you go back to flirting with the chef?” countered Sherlock.
“Think I will,” said Lestrade, and returned to the kitchen.
The laughter from the kitchen propelled him, much like a tidal wave, over to Donovan and Anderson.
“Aren’t you meant to be filming?” Sherlock snapped at Anderson. In a perfect world, he would have snapped to attention. As it was, he merely leaned back in his chair and grinned lazily at Sherlock.
“I’m taking a break. There’s only so much filming one can do on days like this,” said Anderson. “Aren’t you meant to be teaching the dishwasher how to cook?”
Sherlock ignored him and turned to Sally. “Where is he?”
“The dishwasher?” asked Sally.
“I know where the dishwasher is, he’s mutilating asparagus,” snapped Sherlock. “Where is John?”
“No idea,” said Sally. “He’ll be here soon, I’m sure.”
“I need to discuss the evening’s menu with him.”
“Oh, good, you’ve got ideas, then. How many?”
“Four. And we need to lay the groundwork for changing the décor.”
“That all?” asked Sally, and Sherlock had to work hard not to strangle her. It was a very near thing.
“Yes, that’s all,” snapped Sherlock. “Unlike some of you, I’ve remembered that we are here to work. I have a job to do, Sally. When does the decorating crew arrive?”
“Tomorrow morning,” said Sally, completely unruffled. “But we’ll get the new furniture in this afternoon. The bulk of the work will be on Monday, the restaurant’s closed that day anyway, we can get everything loaded in at once.”
“Let me know when John gets here.”
“Oh, absolutely,” said Sally, and she was so annoyingly accommodating that Sherlock marched back to the kitchen, took one look at the still giggling Molly and Lestrade, and marched right back to the manager’s office, where he shut the door with a satisfying slam.
It was only once he’d slammed the door that Sherlock realized that as far as locations went, the manager’s office was a particularly poor choice. Bad enough that Sally and Anderson were making eyes at each other - they always made eyes at each other on the road, it was to the point where everyone simply expected it and no one commented on it. Had they stopped, it would have deserved comment. But Lestrade and Molly were something else entirely. Sherlock half expected to go back into the kitchen and find Artie making eyes at a toaster or something. When had love become so thick in the air?
And now he was in John’s office. The alleyway would have been a better choice; there weren’t any sensory cues in the alleyway. In John’s office - or, more correctly, Harry’s office - there were more visual cues than Sherlock could count.
Photographs on the wall going back some thirty or forty years, the older ones of James Watson, young and smiling, in a dining room that looked eerily like the one where Sally and Anderson were sitting. Later, with his son, and still later, with a young boy and girl who were very likely John and Harry Watson as children. Sherlock paused to examine that photograph - John was a handsome child, blond hair ruffled and wild, short and lean and with an irrepressible grin. In the picture, he was standing on a chair in the kitchen, peering eagerly at the range while James stirred something, a sauce of some kind. The picture was crisp enough that Sherlock could see the steam rising from the pan. James looked down at John with a fond, almost proud look.
Or maybe he was looking at whatever he was cooking. It was hard to tell from the angle of the photograph.
Sherlock sat down at the desk and tapped his feet on the floor. He didn’t want to sit and cool his heels in the manager’s office. He wanted to be out, to dazzle Molly into worshipping him, not Lestrade. This was no time for flirting. She needed to keep her focus on the food, not on…fornication. Honestly.
Sherlock’s mind raced and tumbled, tripped over itself. He growled and wriggled in the chair.
A pen. Sherlock threw open the drawers in the desk, one after the other, searching. He needed a pen, and paper, and…
His scarf, folded neatly, there in a drawer.
Sherlock took a deep breath. His mind still whirred, but began to slow down as he picked his scarf up out of the drawer.
Sherlock let his mind wander a little, back to John’s kitchen, the smell of the ginger and tomatoes, the scrape of John’s fork on the plate, the way he’d smiled and laughed. They’d talked a bit like friends; it was comfortable in a way that Sherlock didn’t really remember with anyone else. And he’d sat there, and almost wished that John would lean over with the fork and offer him a bite, so he could lean toward the other man and take it.
He hadn’t been hungry, not exactly. That is, he’d been hungry, but not for food. For…exactly what they’d shared that night. Sitting at the table with someone, talking, comfortable. That was the thing about comfort food: it wasn’t entirely the food that made one comfortable. It was everything that came with it.
And then the kiss - the completely impossible, illogical kiss which Sherlock couldn’t even remember if he’d initiated or not. John had been too far to touch and then the next moment, he’d been in his arms, pressing up into him, pulling Sherlock down. It had been so perfect and comfortable and right, and Sherlock thought he could have stayed in that moment forever until John had laughed and broke the spell. Laughed, as if Sherlock was utterly ridiculous, a fool falling for another manager, another trick of the moonlight and roasted garlic.
Sherlock supposed that was why he’d returned the next night, climbed into John’s window. He’d been trying to solve the puzzle that was John, to determine whether John was the comfort he’d thought he found, or something else entirely. He very nearly did, too, and Sherlock felt his cheeks flush a little, remembering the way John had gasped and reached, the taste of his mouth, faded peppermint toothpaste and sleep.
And then they’d argued and John had kicked him out and Sherlock had gone wandering for an hour before he holed himself in his hotel room and tried to figure out if he even wanted to try to save the Empire, because it was so tempting to simply call it hopeless and go home.
The idea of five days before the next shoot - because there was no chance Lestrade or Stamford would be willing to change the schedule yet again - five days in which there was nothing to do but sit in his flat and mope was more than Sherlock could bear.
And anyway, the Empire wasn’t hopeless. Not entirely. Not quite yet. Not if Sherlock had anything to say about it, and he did. He had plenty.
He just couldn’t say any of it until John showed up, and it appeared that John was perhaps having second thoughts of his own, since it was bloody close to nine-fifteen and the man hadn’t so much as called in to say he was late or ill or trapped inside a burning house, so sorry, he’d be there just as soon as someone rescued him from the tower and-
The bell on the front door jingled merrily. Sherlock dropped the quickly irrational train of thought the moment he heard Sally call out John’s name.
“We were beginning to wonder about you,” said Sally cheerfully.
“So sorry.” John sounded apologetic and a bit out of breath, but didn’t offer an explanation, which further irritated Sherlock. The man was late, and couldn’t even offer a suitable excuse. The bell jingled again as the door closed behind him. “Where is everyone?”
“In the kitchen,” said Sally.
“Sherlock’s having a strop in your office, though,” said Anderson, and Sherlock frowned. He was not having a strop, and Anderson didn’t have to sound so smug about it, either.
“Right,” said John. “Should I…I’ll just check on Molly and Artie, shall I?”
No, thought Sherlock crossly. You’ll just interrupt the flow of knowledge.
He stood up and stumbled around the desk, but by the time he opened the door to the dining room, John had already gone into the kitchen, the door swinging behind him, and Anderson close behind, the camera on his shoulder.
Sally stood right outside the door, arms folded, a cheeky grin on her impossibly annoying face.
“He’s here,” said Sally.
“I heard.”
Sally studied him. “You…aren’t happy about that.”
“Sally,” said Sherlock, witheringly, and he might have continued, except for once, he didn’t quite know where to go. “Please…tell Mr Watson that I await the glory of his presence in my office.”
“His office,” Sally corrected him.
“My office, I was here first.”
“Today, maybe.”
“Off you pop,” said Sherlock, and slammed the door on Sally. It wasn’t nearly as satisfactory as the slam before, but he imagined it got his point across well enough.
Sherlock glared at the office, trying to find something about it to hate. Except he couldn’t; it was tiny and cluttered and there were far too many papers on the desk and too many photographs on the wall and the telephone was the old-fashioned sort with a rotary dial. Sherlock walked around the desk and sat on the chair again and stared at the phone. It was old and black and nicked in a thousand places, and Sherlock had no doubt that it was probably original to the restaurant; just like everything else, from the wallpaper to the menu, no one had bothered to update it since 1957, and for a moment, Sherlock was filled with such rage and impossible despair over the sheer stupidity and reluctance to change that he picked up the phone, as if to throw it.
But the phone didn’t leave his hand. Instead, he held onto the receiver and felt the weight of it. He’d forgotten how heavy a phone actually was - a real phone, one that you couldn’t slip into your pocket and forget where you’d placed it. Sherlock lifted the receiver to his ear; it fit, so comfortably cool and perfect, and Sherlock heard the dull dial tone, and couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard it. Dial tones didn’t exist on cell phones; you simply entered the number and sent it along. Sherlock remembered, barely, having to listen for the dial tone before dialing the number, or ringing the operator if you were making a longer call.
The memory was a flash: his mother, sitting on a chair in the hall, just outside the sitting room, laughing gaily while on the phone with someone - her sister, perhaps - in bright sunshine streaming in from the windows.
Sherlock placed the receiver on the hook again, and looked around the office a second time. It was a tiny little germ of an idea, just in the back of his head…all he needed was a few more moments to let it grow…
The door flew open, a bit harder than the man on the other side perhaps intended, but it had the desired effect of jerking Sherlock out of his reverie, and the unintentional result that the little germ of an idea was squashed flat before it could flower.
“I hear I’ve been requested to report to your office?” asked John Watson, the annoyance in his voice palpable.
“John,” said Sherlock. “Good morning. So happy you could join us.”
“It’s my office.”
“Point of fact, it’s Harry’s office,” said Sherlock. “She’s taller than you are; this chair is set for her, not you.”
John flushed. “Aren’t you meant to be retraining my staff, instead of lazing about in here?”
“Funny,” said Sherlock, his voice going a bit sharp, “I thought you were meant to be here, instead of popping out to the shops.”
The two men glared at each other.
John changed his grip on the cane, and took a breath. “Right. Right. I was told to be here at nine, so here I am, and if you had wanted me here earlier, you could very well have let me know.”
It was a reasonable response; Sherlock found that he wasn’t particularly interested in a reasonable response, because it just showed the kind of reasonable man John Watson was.
Reasonable men did not allow other men to climb into their bedroom windows in the middle of the night and then proceed to toss off together. Nor were they willing to do it again.
“Next time I’ll text you when you’re meant to be here, shall I?” asked Sherlock through gritted teeth. “But now that you’re here, perhaps we can discuss the menu for this evening?”
John didn’t say anything. He straightened his back and lifted his chin, and Sherlock realized what he was doing: as closely approximating a soldier’s stance as possible, despite the cane. John Watson was preparing himself for something he didn’t want to face: change.
“Go on, then,” said John. “Or should this be on film?”
Sherlock stared at John, and let him wait for it. He half expected John to start fidgeting in the silence, or even to swear and turn and leave the office. But the longer Sherlock waited to speak, the stiller John became. John wasn’t even looking at him - he was staring off into the middle distance; it was as if Sherlock wasn’t there, as if John was willing himself to be anywhere else.
And the cane, the bloody, infernal, pointless cane, was still at John’s side, and all at once, Sherlock grew impossibly impatient with it, and had there not been a desk between them, Sherlock might have reached over and torn it from John’s grasp and thrown it out into the street.
“Molly is untrained though not untested,” said Sherlock coolly. “I’m speaking of her experience as a cook, of course; the opposite is true for her baking abilities. She has a sense for what is wrong or right with baking, and given enough time and yeast, she might actually turn into a reasonably decent baker. I’m sure you saw the improvements she made to your deplorable Russian bread recipe on your brief sojourn in the kitchen when you arrived. The problem is that the Empire neither needs nor wants a baker; there is no hope for this establishment as a bakery when there is a perfectly sound bakery across the street, and Molly could not hope to best it with only a week’s worth of experience.
“Artie is both untrained and untested in the kitchen; I doubt he’s so much as touched a knife in his entire life, which is both utterly reasonable as he is also the most uncoordinated person I’ve ever met, and completely inconceivable since to look at him one automatically assumes some level of disreputable past. However, he has energy and a will to learn, not to mention some intelligence and a sense for flavor, so it’s possible that he hasn’t entirely killed the taste buds in his mouth through excessive drinking, smoking, or other recreational drugs. The sandwich he is in the process of making for my lunch is an unusual combination of the mundane and the inspired, and assuming he doesn’t chop off one of his hands, he has the makings of a reasonably competent sous, provided he can stay focused.
“The real problem you have is your menu.”
Sherlock took a breath, and saw John do the same.
“Here we go,” said John under his breath, and Sherlock plunged right in.
“The Empire’s menu is dated, extensive, rambling, and overreaching. It may have served its purpose in 1957 but it no longer meets the needs of a public that has been overeducated in the exotic and now-familiar tastes of other countries. There is no such thing as ‘foreign food’ any longer, Dr Watson, not when there are Indian curry restaurants on every corner. Fifteen percent of the population is from other countries and that number will only grow exponentially over time. The Empire was a bellwether of its day, but that day is long past. You’re not an idiot; you must know this.”
“So you want me to scrap all of it, is that it?” said John bitterly. “Throw away everything my grandfather was trying to do-”
“Your grandfather did it, John. He wanted to bring the world to Upper Brickley and that’s exactly what he did. Look at the photographs on the walls - look at the reviews you have in frames. That’s your proof that your grandfather was a success in his day. I’m not throwing away his legacy when I throw away his menu. But if you try to keep it, you are.”
John blinked rapidly, and his fingers clenched on the cane. Sherlock ignored it and kept going.
“You want to prove your grandfather built a success with the Empire? Then don’t let it fail. Don’t let the Empire close because you’re too bull-headed to see that people don’t need the world they already possess.”
John exhaled. “Then what do you want us to do? This is all we know.”
Sherlock didn’t answer. His mind was already whirling, clicking, turning, processing…. “Shut up,” he said suddenly.
“What-?”
“Shut. Up,” he repeated, irritated. “I need to go to my mind palace.”
“Your what?”
“John, do be quiet for a moment,” snapped Sherlock and closed his eyes. He heard John’s impatient huff of breath, and then heard the man shuffle further into the office. It sounded as if John sat down on the chair opposite the desk, and then Sherlock stopped thinking about John entirely, and started making the connections.
Empire - Victorian era - curries - Indian conquest - Afghan war - soldiers - bringing home curries, rice, foreign foods - fascination with the exotic - fascination with India - (Vanity Fair, Mira Nair, Reese Witherspoon, utterly ridiculous) - the sun never sets - Ghandi - revolts - Pakistan - the sun eventually set - influx of immigrants - multiculturalism - diversity - ethnicity - ethnic pride - pride - homeland pride…
Sherlock’s eyes popped open to see John Watson watching him. John looked befuddled and somewhat amused, his chin resting on his fist, and for the first time since John had stepped in the office door, he actually looked…relaxed. Calm. Comfortable. A little more like the John Sherlock remembered from the night before - and Sherlock couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. It was almost instinct, and John had begun to smile back when Sherlock leapt to his feet.
“I know how to fix the Empire,” he said, and went straight past John and into the dining room. “Anderson! The camera. We need to film.”
*
[INTERIOR, Dining room. Tables are pushed together. JOHN is sitting down, hands folded and looking apprehensive. MOLLY is at his right hand, but pushed back from the table, twisting her hands together anxiously, and she keeps glancing at someone off screen, as if looking for reassurance. ARTIE is behind them, shifting from foot to foot, and MARY leans against the bar, watching as if everyone is posing just for her.]
SHERLOCK: The Empire is past its prime. If people want good foreign food, they’ll go to those restaurants that specialize. They don’t come here. So you need to ask yourself: what purpose does the Empire serve?
MARY: To educate?
SHERLOCK: Educate whom? No one’s here.
ARTIE: Gives me a place to go and a paycheck.
SHERLOCK: Very close, Artie, thank you.
MOLLY: Ah…it’s a part of local history?
SHERLOCK: Yes, but not quite what I want.
JOHN: It’s home.
SHERLOCK: Exactly. It’s home. It’s comfort. The reason people come to the Empire isn’t because the food is good, because it’s not. It isn’t because the décor is lovely, because it’s not. It’s because they know what to expect - and there are times when people desperately need the sense of safety that “expected” provides. And that’s what the Empire needs to be - it needs to be the place where everyone in this town goes when they want a little piece of home, something that makes them feel better at the end of their dining experience.
MARY: Great. How do we do that?
SHERLOCK: Molly, what’s the first lesson?
MOLLY: Play to your strengths.
SHERLOCK: In general terms, what’s your strength?
MOLLY: Ah…baking. Because I like to do it.
SHERLOCK: Correct. What’s your favorite meal to make? Not necessarily what’s on the menu here - what’s the one dish you make when you want to feel better? All of you - what do you want when you’ve had a bad day?
MOLLY: Pasties.
ARTIE: Bangers and mash.
MARY: Beans on toast.
MOLLY: Victoria sponge, actually. It’s tricky but it always makes me feel better, when I get it right.
MARY: I like soufflés.
ARTIE: You can’t make a soufflé in a restaurant kitchen, don’t they fall flat at loud noises?
MARY: No, not really.
ARTIE: Just give me a tin of soup. I like it easy.
MOLLY: Bangers and mash aren’t easy.
ARTIE: They are when they’re frozen.
MOLLY: That’s cheating! We can’t serve customers-wait. Is that what we’re going to do? Serve customers bangers and mash and beans on toast?
SHERLOCK: A restaurant isn’t just the balance of profit and food costs and labor costs. It’s the love and care and attention to detail that its staff gives what it creates. If you don’t love what you’re making, you’re not going to make it well, and if it’s not made well, no one else will love it, either. There are dozens of restaurants in Upper Brickley but not one of them provides the sense of history, and comfort in history, that the Empire can do.
MARY: You want us to make…comfort food.
SHERLOCK: Yes.
MARY: Huh.
MOLLY: But…can’t people just stay home and eat all that? If that’s what they want? Why would they come here and pay us to make it for them?
SHERLOCK: Because yours is going to be better. Because you’re going to take everything the Empire has been in the last sixty years and you’re going to incorporate it into what you already love to do. The question is not what the Empire has been - it’s what you want the Empire to be.
[Silence for a moment, while the team looks at each other, somewhat skeptical.]
MOLLY: Pizza.
ARTIE: What?
MOLLY: Pizza dough. I love making pizza dough.
ARTIE: I make a mean sandwich.
MARY: Roast chicken. Remember, John, I made you roast chicken all the time.
MOLLY: And potatoes! And - there’s this spinach thing my mother always made, with lemon and garlic.
ARTIE: I hate spinach.
MOLLY: So do I, but this is delicious.
[They keep talking, growing more and more excited.]
SHERLOCK V.O.: It’s true, the key to a truly successful restaurant isn’t necessarily that the net profit exceeds the spending. It’s that the love put into the food needs to match the quality of what is placed before the customer.
[The team is now writing down ideas, laughing and clearly excited about the menu they’re creating. The only person not participating, strangely enough, is the manager, JOHN, who remains seated at the table, arms folded, watching SHERLOCK with a cautious and reserved gaze.]
SHERLOCK V.O. cont: When James Watson started the Empire, he loved what he made - and that love translated to the food on the plate, which was then transferred to those who ate it. But the current staff of the Empire has no such love for their menu, and that’s what they need to recapture - love for what they’re making.
[JOHN glances away. What to?]
[Cut to: the portrait of James Watson, hanging in the back of the restaurant.]
*
The rest of the morning was a mix of frantic preparation and quiet moments where John could catch his breath and look around, wonder what exactly he was doing, with just enough bemusement before he had to dive headfirst back into the rapid pace Sherlock set for them.
As it turned out, trying to create an entire menu from scratch in just a few hours wasn’t nearly as easy or streamlined as the show had made it out to be. Then again, John had learned that nothing in life really was how one expected - not medical school, or war, or death.
Sherlock took a quarter of the staff’s suggestions and within twenty minutes created a shopping list. He sent Artie into the kitchen to determine what was already on hand, and after scratching half the list away, handed what remained to John with instructions to purchase everything on it and return in less than an hour. John had tapped his cane and tried to point out that it was an impossible task, or nearly so, but Sherlock was already instructing Mary on what needed to be done in the dining room.
“We’ll need to take it down,” he said, motioning to the walls.
“I think you’ll find we need the walls,” said Mary patiently. “Unless you want the first floor to come crashing down on our heads.”
“The photographs, the maps, the bric-a-brac, everything,” said Sherlock impatiently, with the air of someone who was extremely tired of repeating himself. “Take it all down. This entire dining room is going to be transformed on Monday, and the only thing I want to see on the walls are the light fixtures and the wallpaper because you don’t have enough time to remove them before the dinner service.”
“Hold on,” John said, shoving in, the shopping list still clutched in his hand. “You can’t throw away everything my family’s collected over the last hundred years.”
Sherlock turned to him, and for half a moment, John thought he saw a burning, angry glare on Sherlock’s face, just before it was replaced by something softer, something a bit more…humbled? Repentant?
No, ridiculous. Sherlock was many things. Repentant wasn’t one of them; never once had John seen the man apologize on any of his shows, not even the one where he’d accidentally (or purposefully, it was never quite certain) set fire to the curtains.
“Not the portraits,” said Sherlock, still looking at John. “Those should stay; we’re meant to be imparting a sense of history, and they provide that. But everything else is extraneous. It goes.”
John wasn’t sure if that was the answer he wanted, but it was something. “Thank you,” he said, and Sherlock gave him the briefest of nods. For a moment, John forgot they were in a room with Mary and Sally Donovan and a camera which was permanently set to film every single thing that happened between any of them.
Sherlock then promptly ruined the moment. “Don’t you have shopping to do?”
“I thought shopping was something you did, with the chef, to show them how to purchase the proper things?” asked John, somewhat pointed.
“I have plenty to be getting on with here, and you’re rather extraneous at the moment,” snapped Sherlock, and John held his breath, counted to three, and turned on his heel to go.
He almost turned back when Sherlock spoke again. “And you’re less likely to select a poisonous mushroom. Unless you’d rather Artie did it?”
John exhaled. “I can go.”
Sherlock didn’t answer; when John finally gave in and looked over his shoulder, Sherlock was already gone. The only other people in the dining room were Mary, who looked a bit like a deer in the headlights, and Sally, who had an exasperated expression on her face. John thought he recognized it from one his mother had worn when he was a boy and being particularly impossible.
“One of these days we’re all going to be standing around a dead Sherlock,” said Sally grimly. “And it’ll be a restaurant manager who put him there.” She glanced at John. “You’re welcome to the honors. I know people who would help.”
John huffed, and looked at Mary. “Better get started, before he comes back out and rips your head off.”
“I know,” said Mary quietly. “But I’m going to wait until you’re gone at least.”
John nodded. “Thanks. Put it all upstairs, I suppose. Get Harry to help.”
John left before Mary could answer, and tried not to think about what was happening in the restaurant, or care that it was being dismantled. It didn’t seem right, really, to focus on the changes in the dining room, not when he’d seen the excitement in Molly’s eyes, the way Artie had actually started to be helpful instead of derisive.
John was halfway to the market before he looked at the list in his hand.
2 kilos each ground veal, pork, turkey
Fresh herbs - rosemary, sage, thyme, basil, parsley
2 loaves French bread
1 kilo wet mozzarella
1 kilo each parm, romano
It continued, items grouped not by type of food but by recipe. A terribly disorganized list for shopping, but John read the ingredients and the meals started to form in his mind.
By the time he was in the market, John was ready.
Saturday market in Upper Brickley at the end of January wasn’t near as extensive as the summertime version, but it was still active enough to remind John of being five years old and out with his grandfather. It wasn’t often that James allowed John to tag along on the shopping excursions; Saturday mornings were too frantic and James was often too tired to chase after John, and thus John learned quickly to keep up or be left behind. He learned the tricks of selecting the right mushrooms (looks), the freshest berries (smell), and the best meats (bribes). He watched James talk to the vendors, ask after their children and their wives, rail about politics and the NHS, laugh with them, cry with them, and argue with them. It was the arguing that everyone seemed to enjoy best. The first time John saw James launch into a full-scale argument with the fishmonger, it came so close to blows that John, then age four, had run crying out into the street, and James, laughing, had to fetch him before he’d been run over by a bicycle loaded with asparagus.
“It’s a game,” James explained to John. “That’s all, nothing to cry about.”
“It’s not a nice game,” countered John, his face streaked with dust and tears. “You could play conkers instead.”
James had howled with laughter, and lifted John up on his shoulder to carry him back. The fishmonger was more sympathetic, and gave John a bit of salt-water taffy. It tasted like a pale approximation of a strawberry, and John spent the rest of the morning attempting to unglue his teeth.
Winter market wasn’t nearly as busy, and John was able to navigate the stands with ease, despite the cane. Fruit was thin on the ground, nearly non-existent, but potatoes and carrots and squashes were in abundance. Hot-house flowers and fresh herbs, ginger and garlic in brown and white piles. The stands that usually held berries were instead stacked with home-made jams and chutneys, and there were artists in all directions, trying to sell home-made jewelry or notebooks or flavorings.
John circled the market once, eyes on the items for sale. It was half an exercise in learning the layout of the market, and half analysis. Which stands looked the cleanest, the freshest; which vendors greeted him with a hopeful smile or were so busy with customers that they couldn’t afford him a glance. When he had completed his circuit, he pulled the list from his pocket again and examined it.
Sausages flavored with fresh herbs, served with buttery mashed potatoes and steaming fresh vegetables. John rubbed the rosemary between his fingers and bought extra parsley, curly and flat because Sherlock hadn’t specified. He rubbed the fuzzy sage leaves and saw the bright orange carrots already paired with the broccoli. French beans might have paired better, but the broccoli was a brilliant green, with small florets that would cook quickly in a busy kitchen.
Vegetable pizza, with peppers and onions and mushrooms. John skipped the large portobellos and went straight for the creminis, and he smelled and touched lightly before eventually choosing the firmest of the lot, and he placed them carefully in the top of the basket.
There was fresh kale, spinach, and beetroot near the lettuce; John bought two bunches each, and then doubled back for the red onions. He had to double back again later for the potatoes as well.
The grocers themselves seemed to bend over backwards, trying to steer him to the freshest vegetables, the plumpest loaves of bread, the largest eggs. Everything was the best and brightest, and what’s more, everyone was perfectly happy to deliver.
It was the cane, John decided, and not that they knew the impressive and talented Sherlock Holmes was on the other end of the delivery. These were John’s people; they knew him, they knew his history, his military service, and they were only doing him a kind turn because watching a veteran limp home with bags full of groceries would have made them out to be hard-hearted cretins.
It wasn’t until John reached the butcher, where he placed an order for twenty chickens in addition to the ground meats and sausage casings, that it began to make sense.
“It’s true, then?” asked the butcher, leaning over his counter. “You’ve got Sherlock Holmes behind the range?”
“It’s true,” said John. He rested on the glass case; his shoulder ached, but in a good way, and he could still smell the rosemary and sage on his fingers.
“Crikey,” said the butcher thoughtfully. “What’s he like, then?”
“He’s-”
But John couldn’t think of how to continue. Arrogant sod of a bastard who thinks he’s forty steps above the rest of us and we’re not worth the garlic in my basket but for some reason he’s trying to help. Oh, and he’s a brilliant shag.
The butcher chuckled knowingly. “Think if I bring the chickens myself I’ll meet him?”
“Wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, mate,” said John, having found his voice.
“When’s the show air?”
“Two months, give or take. I have the date written somewhere, I’ll let everyone know. Or not.”
“Don’t make me wait that long to find out if he likes my chickens,” said the butcher.
“You’ll know if we’re back tomorrow,” said John. “I don’t think he’s closed a restaurant mid-week, but I suppose there’s always a first time.”
The butcher laughed. “Good on you, mate, you’ve got the right attitude for it. Do we need reservations? Me and the missus might want to stop in.”
Reservations.
“I…have no idea,” said John finally, completely blown over. “But Harry’s manning the book, she can tell you. You’d have to sign a waiver, I know that.”
The butcher waved his hand, clearly not concerned. “To see Sherlock Holmes in action? Cor. I haven’t been to the Empire in years. It’d be a treat. Good luck tonight, mate.”
“Thanks,” said John, a bit bewildered, and he glanced into the basket, thought eggs, and went to find them.
It was as though the butcher opened the floodgates. Now every person John saw was smiling, grinning, nodding their good wishes, leaning toward him as if they were about to ask him something.
But no. Surely not everyone knew about Sherlock Holmes. Upper Brickley was small, yes, but….not that small. It was the cane. It had to be the cane.
John clenched his fingers, as if to hold tight to the cane to reassure himself it was the reason for the kindness - and his fingers held tight to nothing but air.
For a moment, John froze still on the pavement. It took every ounce of will not to fall over, to convince his leg that it would. Not. Buckle.
It didn’t. But John didn’t dare move, and the tide of people doing their Saturday shopping surged around him. John felt like a sturgeon, trying to spawn.
“John Watson,” said the voice, silky smooth and disturbingly friendly. John snapped out of the intense concentration to not fall over, and saw the man standing in front of him, hands in his pockets, light grey suit tailored perfectly to his frame. It took a moment for John to place him.
“Jim,” said John.
“Fancy meeting you here. Out for an afternoon stroll?” asked Jim Moriarty, and John clenched his hands again and wondered what the hell he’d done with his cane, and moreover, how Jim had noticed so quickly that it was gone.
“Just doing a bit of shopping for tonight.”
“Oh, right, of course. Been watching the proceedings with great interest, of course,” said Jim, and paused as though waiting for John to laugh. When John didn’t make a sound, he frowned in consternation. “Did you see the episode where he kicked everyone out of the restaurant halfway through the dinner service? Brilliant. I liked that one.”
John had seen it too, and he could picture Sherlock doing the very same thing that evening, or any evening, all too easily. He was half surprised it hadn’t happened to the Empire yet.
“Think I might stop in to dine while he’s here,” continued Jim, and John’s blood ran cold. “See what’s going on inside the Empire’s walls myself. Must be fascinating, isn’t it, John? Everything your father and grandfather worked for, being dismantled and traded in for something new and shiny?”
“Not everything is being traded in,” said John stiffly. “There are some things too important to throw away, even for Sherlock Holmes.”
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that,” said Jim, and sure enough, his eyes were bright, and John wished he hadn’t wanted his cane so badly - not because he needed it, but because he had the strongest desire to thump Jim over the head with it. Probably not a good move, thumping the head of someone who could very well own the Empire before the month was out. “Must be off. See you at dinner service, we can catch up then.”
Jim slid back into the flow of the pedestrian traffic so easily that John barely saw him do it. John remained still on the pavement, and tried to catch his breath. The idea of Jim sitting in the Empire’s dining room was such a reprehensible one - a bit like a spider building a web right on the kitchen counter.
“John! John Watson!” came the shout from behind him, and John didn’t dare turn around. A moment later, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and pushing against the crowd, the butcher appeared, his bright red face concerned and curious.
John’s cane was in his hand.
“You left this,” said the butcher, and John took the cane. It was lighter than he remembered it.
“Thanks,” said John, and the butcher’s name popped in his head, as if it had appeared with the cane. “Angelo.”
Angelo grinned and clapped him on the shoulder, nearly knocking him over, and joined the throng of people, heading back up the street.
John held the cane in his hand, weighed like a pendulum, and when a break in the crowd appeared, began the slow, careful walk back to the Empire. His mind was comfortably blank; his feet moved of their own accord, and his leg did not throb, not once.
The cane never touched the ground, and when John stopped walking, he found himself not in front of the Empire, but the Slate Street Clinic. After a moment of consideration, he opened the door and went inside.
End A/N: Recipe: A full meal for you today, to make up for last week’s deficit! Spicy Roast Chicken with Salt-and-Pepper Potatoes and Spinach with Cinnamon, Raisins, and Almonds. If you’ve never roasted a whole chicken before - it’s time to give it a try! It’s much easier - and tastier - than you’d think.
Chapter Ten
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Relationship, Characters: Sherlock/John (eventually), just about everyone else
Warnings: None
Rating: R
Summary: John Watson had no intentions of taking over the family business, but when he returns from Afghanistan, battered and bruised, and discovers that his sister Harry has run their restaurant into the ground, he doesn't have much choice. There's only one thing that can save the Empire from closing for good - the celebrity star of the BBC series Restaurant Reconstructed, Chef Sherlock Holmes.
A/N: My husband deserves credit for coming up with the original concept of the Empire. But it was my beta, the fantastic earlgreytea68, who came up with how to fix it.
Another shout-out to my lovely Brit-picker, kizzia, who has written an absolutely delectable and delicious 221B inspired by John and Sherlock in Mise called “Bed & Breakfast.” Absolutely go and read - it’s lovely and funny and most importantly, will make you want pie. Assuming you don’t already, that is. (Doesn’t everyone want pie?)
Prologue ~ One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four ~ Five ~ Six ~ Seven ~ Eight
Chapter Nine
Sherlock glanced at the clock and frowned. It was just after nine, Molly was starting her second round of bread, Artie was nearly done with whatever ridiculous combination of ingredients would pass for lunch, and John was nowhere to be seen.
Worse, Donovan was flirting with Anderson in the dining room, and Lestrade - Lestrade, of all people - was flirting with Molly in the kitchen.
Sherlock couldn’t even watch them. It was disgusting.
“No!” giggled Molly. “Not like that, you’re meant to knead it, not pummel it into submission.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Think of it as a massage,” said Molly. “You’re giving the dough a really fantastic back massage.”
“All right,” said Lestrade. “So, I’ll just…massage the dough.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes. There were some things that were just inappropriate for the kitchen, and apparently the combination of Lestrade and Molly was one of them. Or two of them.
“Molly,” said Sherlock, rather more sharply than he meant to do, “tell me what you’re doing.”
Molly startled, and it took a moment for her to switch from her previous flirtation to actual serious chef. “Kneading the dough.”
“Really? It looked rather like you were needing something else,” said Sherlock. “You’re giving it a ten-minute knead?”
“Yes-”
“Six. No more than seven. Wait until it’s just reached cohesion and has lost its softness and then stop kneading, no matter how much time is left on the clock.”
“But…yes, Chef,” said Molly, and she didn’t glance at Lestrade once until Sherlock’s back had turned again.
Lestrade didn’t say anything, but Sherlock could hear the movement. When it was followed by Molly’s giggle, Sherlock had a relatively decent idea what the movement was, increased the count to three, and left them to their own devices.
It was nearly as bad in the dining room: Donovan and Anderson were sitting entirely too close together, whispering to each other under the windows.
Lestrade was right after him.
“Right then,” said Lestrade evenly. “Feeling particularly stroppy today?”
“No.”
“Go have a fag, it’ll make you feel better.”
“Patches.”
“Any ideas on how to fix the restaurant?” asked Lestrade.
“Eight,” said Sherlock absently, watching Donovan and Anderson chatting.
“Oh, good, that won’t be hard to narrow down by this evening,” said Lestrade. “Why don’t you go work on those?”
“Why don’t you go back to flirting with the chef?” countered Sherlock.
“Think I will,” said Lestrade, and returned to the kitchen.
The laughter from the kitchen propelled him, much like a tidal wave, over to Donovan and Anderson.
“Aren’t you meant to be filming?” Sherlock snapped at Anderson. In a perfect world, he would have snapped to attention. As it was, he merely leaned back in his chair and grinned lazily at Sherlock.
“I’m taking a break. There’s only so much filming one can do on days like this,” said Anderson. “Aren’t you meant to be teaching the dishwasher how to cook?”
Sherlock ignored him and turned to Sally. “Where is he?”
“The dishwasher?” asked Sally.
“I know where the dishwasher is, he’s mutilating asparagus,” snapped Sherlock. “Where is John?”
“No idea,” said Sally. “He’ll be here soon, I’m sure.”
“I need to discuss the evening’s menu with him.”
“Oh, good, you’ve got ideas, then. How many?”
“Four. And we need to lay the groundwork for changing the décor.”
“That all?” asked Sally, and Sherlock had to work hard not to strangle her. It was a very near thing.
“Yes, that’s all,” snapped Sherlock. “Unlike some of you, I’ve remembered that we are here to work. I have a job to do, Sally. When does the decorating crew arrive?”
“Tomorrow morning,” said Sally, completely unruffled. “But we’ll get the new furniture in this afternoon. The bulk of the work will be on Monday, the restaurant’s closed that day anyway, we can get everything loaded in at once.”
“Let me know when John gets here.”
“Oh, absolutely,” said Sally, and she was so annoyingly accommodating that Sherlock marched back to the kitchen, took one look at the still giggling Molly and Lestrade, and marched right back to the manager’s office, where he shut the door with a satisfying slam.
It was only once he’d slammed the door that Sherlock realized that as far as locations went, the manager’s office was a particularly poor choice. Bad enough that Sally and Anderson were making eyes at each other - they always made eyes at each other on the road, it was to the point where everyone simply expected it and no one commented on it. Had they stopped, it would have deserved comment. But Lestrade and Molly were something else entirely. Sherlock half expected to go back into the kitchen and find Artie making eyes at a toaster or something. When had love become so thick in the air?
And now he was in John’s office. The alleyway would have been a better choice; there weren’t any sensory cues in the alleyway. In John’s office - or, more correctly, Harry’s office - there were more visual cues than Sherlock could count.
Photographs on the wall going back some thirty or forty years, the older ones of James Watson, young and smiling, in a dining room that looked eerily like the one where Sally and Anderson were sitting. Later, with his son, and still later, with a young boy and girl who were very likely John and Harry Watson as children. Sherlock paused to examine that photograph - John was a handsome child, blond hair ruffled and wild, short and lean and with an irrepressible grin. In the picture, he was standing on a chair in the kitchen, peering eagerly at the range while James stirred something, a sauce of some kind. The picture was crisp enough that Sherlock could see the steam rising from the pan. James looked down at John with a fond, almost proud look.
Or maybe he was looking at whatever he was cooking. It was hard to tell from the angle of the photograph.
Sherlock sat down at the desk and tapped his feet on the floor. He didn’t want to sit and cool his heels in the manager’s office. He wanted to be out, to dazzle Molly into worshipping him, not Lestrade. This was no time for flirting. She needed to keep her focus on the food, not on…fornication. Honestly.
Sherlock’s mind raced and tumbled, tripped over itself. He growled and wriggled in the chair.
A pen. Sherlock threw open the drawers in the desk, one after the other, searching. He needed a pen, and paper, and…
His scarf, folded neatly, there in a drawer.
Sherlock took a deep breath. His mind still whirred, but began to slow down as he picked his scarf up out of the drawer.
Sherlock let his mind wander a little, back to John’s kitchen, the smell of the ginger and tomatoes, the scrape of John’s fork on the plate, the way he’d smiled and laughed. They’d talked a bit like friends; it was comfortable in a way that Sherlock didn’t really remember with anyone else. And he’d sat there, and almost wished that John would lean over with the fork and offer him a bite, so he could lean toward the other man and take it.
He hadn’t been hungry, not exactly. That is, he’d been hungry, but not for food. For…exactly what they’d shared that night. Sitting at the table with someone, talking, comfortable. That was the thing about comfort food: it wasn’t entirely the food that made one comfortable. It was everything that came with it.
And then the kiss - the completely impossible, illogical kiss which Sherlock couldn’t even remember if he’d initiated or not. John had been too far to touch and then the next moment, he’d been in his arms, pressing up into him, pulling Sherlock down. It had been so perfect and comfortable and right, and Sherlock thought he could have stayed in that moment forever until John had laughed and broke the spell. Laughed, as if Sherlock was utterly ridiculous, a fool falling for another manager, another trick of the moonlight and roasted garlic.
Sherlock supposed that was why he’d returned the next night, climbed into John’s window. He’d been trying to solve the puzzle that was John, to determine whether John was the comfort he’d thought he found, or something else entirely. He very nearly did, too, and Sherlock felt his cheeks flush a little, remembering the way John had gasped and reached, the taste of his mouth, faded peppermint toothpaste and sleep.
And then they’d argued and John had kicked him out and Sherlock had gone wandering for an hour before he holed himself in his hotel room and tried to figure out if he even wanted to try to save the Empire, because it was so tempting to simply call it hopeless and go home.
The idea of five days before the next shoot - because there was no chance Lestrade or Stamford would be willing to change the schedule yet again - five days in which there was nothing to do but sit in his flat and mope was more than Sherlock could bear.
And anyway, the Empire wasn’t hopeless. Not entirely. Not quite yet. Not if Sherlock had anything to say about it, and he did. He had plenty.
He just couldn’t say any of it until John showed up, and it appeared that John was perhaps having second thoughts of his own, since it was bloody close to nine-fifteen and the man hadn’t so much as called in to say he was late or ill or trapped inside a burning house, so sorry, he’d be there just as soon as someone rescued him from the tower and-
The bell on the front door jingled merrily. Sherlock dropped the quickly irrational train of thought the moment he heard Sally call out John’s name.
“We were beginning to wonder about you,” said Sally cheerfully.
“So sorry.” John sounded apologetic and a bit out of breath, but didn’t offer an explanation, which further irritated Sherlock. The man was late, and couldn’t even offer a suitable excuse. The bell jingled again as the door closed behind him. “Where is everyone?”
“In the kitchen,” said Sally.
“Sherlock’s having a strop in your office, though,” said Anderson, and Sherlock frowned. He was not having a strop, and Anderson didn’t have to sound so smug about it, either.
“Right,” said John. “Should I…I’ll just check on Molly and Artie, shall I?”
No, thought Sherlock crossly. You’ll just interrupt the flow of knowledge.
He stood up and stumbled around the desk, but by the time he opened the door to the dining room, John had already gone into the kitchen, the door swinging behind him, and Anderson close behind, the camera on his shoulder.
Sally stood right outside the door, arms folded, a cheeky grin on her impossibly annoying face.
“He’s here,” said Sally.
“I heard.”
Sally studied him. “You…aren’t happy about that.”
“Sally,” said Sherlock, witheringly, and he might have continued, except for once, he didn’t quite know where to go. “Please…tell Mr Watson that I await the glory of his presence in my office.”
“His office,” Sally corrected him.
“My office, I was here first.”
“Today, maybe.”
“Off you pop,” said Sherlock, and slammed the door on Sally. It wasn’t nearly as satisfactory as the slam before, but he imagined it got his point across well enough.
Sherlock glared at the office, trying to find something about it to hate. Except he couldn’t; it was tiny and cluttered and there were far too many papers on the desk and too many photographs on the wall and the telephone was the old-fashioned sort with a rotary dial. Sherlock walked around the desk and sat on the chair again and stared at the phone. It was old and black and nicked in a thousand places, and Sherlock had no doubt that it was probably original to the restaurant; just like everything else, from the wallpaper to the menu, no one had bothered to update it since 1957, and for a moment, Sherlock was filled with such rage and impossible despair over the sheer stupidity and reluctance to change that he picked up the phone, as if to throw it.
But the phone didn’t leave his hand. Instead, he held onto the receiver and felt the weight of it. He’d forgotten how heavy a phone actually was - a real phone, one that you couldn’t slip into your pocket and forget where you’d placed it. Sherlock lifted the receiver to his ear; it fit, so comfortably cool and perfect, and Sherlock heard the dull dial tone, and couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard it. Dial tones didn’t exist on cell phones; you simply entered the number and sent it along. Sherlock remembered, barely, having to listen for the dial tone before dialing the number, or ringing the operator if you were making a longer call.
The memory was a flash: his mother, sitting on a chair in the hall, just outside the sitting room, laughing gaily while on the phone with someone - her sister, perhaps - in bright sunshine streaming in from the windows.
Sherlock placed the receiver on the hook again, and looked around the office a second time. It was a tiny little germ of an idea, just in the back of his head…all he needed was a few more moments to let it grow…
The door flew open, a bit harder than the man on the other side perhaps intended, but it had the desired effect of jerking Sherlock out of his reverie, and the unintentional result that the little germ of an idea was squashed flat before it could flower.
“I hear I’ve been requested to report to your office?” asked John Watson, the annoyance in his voice palpable.
“John,” said Sherlock. “Good morning. So happy you could join us.”
“It’s my office.”
“Point of fact, it’s Harry’s office,” said Sherlock. “She’s taller than you are; this chair is set for her, not you.”
John flushed. “Aren’t you meant to be retraining my staff, instead of lazing about in here?”
“Funny,” said Sherlock, his voice going a bit sharp, “I thought you were meant to be here, instead of popping out to the shops.”
The two men glared at each other.
John changed his grip on the cane, and took a breath. “Right. Right. I was told to be here at nine, so here I am, and if you had wanted me here earlier, you could very well have let me know.”
It was a reasonable response; Sherlock found that he wasn’t particularly interested in a reasonable response, because it just showed the kind of reasonable man John Watson was.
Reasonable men did not allow other men to climb into their bedroom windows in the middle of the night and then proceed to toss off together. Nor were they willing to do it again.
“Next time I’ll text you when you’re meant to be here, shall I?” asked Sherlock through gritted teeth. “But now that you’re here, perhaps we can discuss the menu for this evening?”
John didn’t say anything. He straightened his back and lifted his chin, and Sherlock realized what he was doing: as closely approximating a soldier’s stance as possible, despite the cane. John Watson was preparing himself for something he didn’t want to face: change.
“Go on, then,” said John. “Or should this be on film?”
Sherlock stared at John, and let him wait for it. He half expected John to start fidgeting in the silence, or even to swear and turn and leave the office. But the longer Sherlock waited to speak, the stiller John became. John wasn’t even looking at him - he was staring off into the middle distance; it was as if Sherlock wasn’t there, as if John was willing himself to be anywhere else.
And the cane, the bloody, infernal, pointless cane, was still at John’s side, and all at once, Sherlock grew impossibly impatient with it, and had there not been a desk between them, Sherlock might have reached over and torn it from John’s grasp and thrown it out into the street.
“Molly is untrained though not untested,” said Sherlock coolly. “I’m speaking of her experience as a cook, of course; the opposite is true for her baking abilities. She has a sense for what is wrong or right with baking, and given enough time and yeast, she might actually turn into a reasonably decent baker. I’m sure you saw the improvements she made to your deplorable Russian bread recipe on your brief sojourn in the kitchen when you arrived. The problem is that the Empire neither needs nor wants a baker; there is no hope for this establishment as a bakery when there is a perfectly sound bakery across the street, and Molly could not hope to best it with only a week’s worth of experience.
“Artie is both untrained and untested in the kitchen; I doubt he’s so much as touched a knife in his entire life, which is both utterly reasonable as he is also the most uncoordinated person I’ve ever met, and completely inconceivable since to look at him one automatically assumes some level of disreputable past. However, he has energy and a will to learn, not to mention some intelligence and a sense for flavor, so it’s possible that he hasn’t entirely killed the taste buds in his mouth through excessive drinking, smoking, or other recreational drugs. The sandwich he is in the process of making for my lunch is an unusual combination of the mundane and the inspired, and assuming he doesn’t chop off one of his hands, he has the makings of a reasonably competent sous, provided he can stay focused.
“The real problem you have is your menu.”
Sherlock took a breath, and saw John do the same.
“Here we go,” said John under his breath, and Sherlock plunged right in.
“The Empire’s menu is dated, extensive, rambling, and overreaching. It may have served its purpose in 1957 but it no longer meets the needs of a public that has been overeducated in the exotic and now-familiar tastes of other countries. There is no such thing as ‘foreign food’ any longer, Dr Watson, not when there are Indian curry restaurants on every corner. Fifteen percent of the population is from other countries and that number will only grow exponentially over time. The Empire was a bellwether of its day, but that day is long past. You’re not an idiot; you must know this.”
“So you want me to scrap all of it, is that it?” said John bitterly. “Throw away everything my grandfather was trying to do-”
“Your grandfather did it, John. He wanted to bring the world to Upper Brickley and that’s exactly what he did. Look at the photographs on the walls - look at the reviews you have in frames. That’s your proof that your grandfather was a success in his day. I’m not throwing away his legacy when I throw away his menu. But if you try to keep it, you are.”
John blinked rapidly, and his fingers clenched on the cane. Sherlock ignored it and kept going.
“You want to prove your grandfather built a success with the Empire? Then don’t let it fail. Don’t let the Empire close because you’re too bull-headed to see that people don’t need the world they already possess.”
John exhaled. “Then what do you want us to do? This is all we know.”
Sherlock didn’t answer. His mind was already whirling, clicking, turning, processing…. “Shut up,” he said suddenly.
“What-?”
“Shut. Up,” he repeated, irritated. “I need to go to my mind palace.”
“Your what?”
“John, do be quiet for a moment,” snapped Sherlock and closed his eyes. He heard John’s impatient huff of breath, and then heard the man shuffle further into the office. It sounded as if John sat down on the chair opposite the desk, and then Sherlock stopped thinking about John entirely, and started making the connections.
Empire - Victorian era - curries - Indian conquest - Afghan war - soldiers - bringing home curries, rice, foreign foods - fascination with the exotic - fascination with India - (Vanity Fair, Mira Nair, Reese Witherspoon, utterly ridiculous) - the sun never sets - Ghandi - revolts - Pakistan - the sun eventually set - influx of immigrants - multiculturalism - diversity - ethnicity - ethnic pride - pride - homeland pride…
Sherlock’s eyes popped open to see John Watson watching him. John looked befuddled and somewhat amused, his chin resting on his fist, and for the first time since John had stepped in the office door, he actually looked…relaxed. Calm. Comfortable. A little more like the John Sherlock remembered from the night before - and Sherlock couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. It was almost instinct, and John had begun to smile back when Sherlock leapt to his feet.
“I know how to fix the Empire,” he said, and went straight past John and into the dining room. “Anderson! The camera. We need to film.”
*
[INTERIOR, Dining room. Tables are pushed together. JOHN is sitting down, hands folded and looking apprehensive. MOLLY is at his right hand, but pushed back from the table, twisting her hands together anxiously, and she keeps glancing at someone off screen, as if looking for reassurance. ARTIE is behind them, shifting from foot to foot, and MARY leans against the bar, watching as if everyone is posing just for her.]
SHERLOCK: The Empire is past its prime. If people want good foreign food, they’ll go to those restaurants that specialize. They don’t come here. So you need to ask yourself: what purpose does the Empire serve?
MARY: To educate?
SHERLOCK: Educate whom? No one’s here.
ARTIE: Gives me a place to go and a paycheck.
SHERLOCK: Very close, Artie, thank you.
MOLLY: Ah…it’s a part of local history?
SHERLOCK: Yes, but not quite what I want.
JOHN: It’s home.
SHERLOCK: Exactly. It’s home. It’s comfort. The reason people come to the Empire isn’t because the food is good, because it’s not. It isn’t because the décor is lovely, because it’s not. It’s because they know what to expect - and there are times when people desperately need the sense of safety that “expected” provides. And that’s what the Empire needs to be - it needs to be the place where everyone in this town goes when they want a little piece of home, something that makes them feel better at the end of their dining experience.
MARY: Great. How do we do that?
SHERLOCK: Molly, what’s the first lesson?
MOLLY: Play to your strengths.
SHERLOCK: In general terms, what’s your strength?
MOLLY: Ah…baking. Because I like to do it.
SHERLOCK: Correct. What’s your favorite meal to make? Not necessarily what’s on the menu here - what’s the one dish you make when you want to feel better? All of you - what do you want when you’ve had a bad day?
MOLLY: Pasties.
ARTIE: Bangers and mash.
MARY: Beans on toast.
MOLLY: Victoria sponge, actually. It’s tricky but it always makes me feel better, when I get it right.
MARY: I like soufflés.
ARTIE: You can’t make a soufflé in a restaurant kitchen, don’t they fall flat at loud noises?
MARY: No, not really.
ARTIE: Just give me a tin of soup. I like it easy.
MOLLY: Bangers and mash aren’t easy.
ARTIE: They are when they’re frozen.
MOLLY: That’s cheating! We can’t serve customers-wait. Is that what we’re going to do? Serve customers bangers and mash and beans on toast?
SHERLOCK: A restaurant isn’t just the balance of profit and food costs and labor costs. It’s the love and care and attention to detail that its staff gives what it creates. If you don’t love what you’re making, you’re not going to make it well, and if it’s not made well, no one else will love it, either. There are dozens of restaurants in Upper Brickley but not one of them provides the sense of history, and comfort in history, that the Empire can do.
MARY: You want us to make…comfort food.
SHERLOCK: Yes.
MARY: Huh.
MOLLY: But…can’t people just stay home and eat all that? If that’s what they want? Why would they come here and pay us to make it for them?
SHERLOCK: Because yours is going to be better. Because you’re going to take everything the Empire has been in the last sixty years and you’re going to incorporate it into what you already love to do. The question is not what the Empire has been - it’s what you want the Empire to be.
[Silence for a moment, while the team looks at each other, somewhat skeptical.]
MOLLY: Pizza.
ARTIE: What?
MOLLY: Pizza dough. I love making pizza dough.
ARTIE: I make a mean sandwich.
MARY: Roast chicken. Remember, John, I made you roast chicken all the time.
MOLLY: And potatoes! And - there’s this spinach thing my mother always made, with lemon and garlic.
ARTIE: I hate spinach.
MOLLY: So do I, but this is delicious.
[They keep talking, growing more and more excited.]
SHERLOCK V.O.: It’s true, the key to a truly successful restaurant isn’t necessarily that the net profit exceeds the spending. It’s that the love put into the food needs to match the quality of what is placed before the customer.
[The team is now writing down ideas, laughing and clearly excited about the menu they’re creating. The only person not participating, strangely enough, is the manager, JOHN, who remains seated at the table, arms folded, watching SHERLOCK with a cautious and reserved gaze.]
SHERLOCK V.O. cont: When James Watson started the Empire, he loved what he made - and that love translated to the food on the plate, which was then transferred to those who ate it. But the current staff of the Empire has no such love for their menu, and that’s what they need to recapture - love for what they’re making.
[JOHN glances away. What to?]
[Cut to: the portrait of James Watson, hanging in the back of the restaurant.]
*
The rest of the morning was a mix of frantic preparation and quiet moments where John could catch his breath and look around, wonder what exactly he was doing, with just enough bemusement before he had to dive headfirst back into the rapid pace Sherlock set for them.
As it turned out, trying to create an entire menu from scratch in just a few hours wasn’t nearly as easy or streamlined as the show had made it out to be. Then again, John had learned that nothing in life really was how one expected - not medical school, or war, or death.
Sherlock took a quarter of the staff’s suggestions and within twenty minutes created a shopping list. He sent Artie into the kitchen to determine what was already on hand, and after scratching half the list away, handed what remained to John with instructions to purchase everything on it and return in less than an hour. John had tapped his cane and tried to point out that it was an impossible task, or nearly so, but Sherlock was already instructing Mary on what needed to be done in the dining room.
“We’ll need to take it down,” he said, motioning to the walls.
“I think you’ll find we need the walls,” said Mary patiently. “Unless you want the first floor to come crashing down on our heads.”
“The photographs, the maps, the bric-a-brac, everything,” said Sherlock impatiently, with the air of someone who was extremely tired of repeating himself. “Take it all down. This entire dining room is going to be transformed on Monday, and the only thing I want to see on the walls are the light fixtures and the wallpaper because you don’t have enough time to remove them before the dinner service.”
“Hold on,” John said, shoving in, the shopping list still clutched in his hand. “You can’t throw away everything my family’s collected over the last hundred years.”
Sherlock turned to him, and for half a moment, John thought he saw a burning, angry glare on Sherlock’s face, just before it was replaced by something softer, something a bit more…humbled? Repentant?
No, ridiculous. Sherlock was many things. Repentant wasn’t one of them; never once had John seen the man apologize on any of his shows, not even the one where he’d accidentally (or purposefully, it was never quite certain) set fire to the curtains.
“Not the portraits,” said Sherlock, still looking at John. “Those should stay; we’re meant to be imparting a sense of history, and they provide that. But everything else is extraneous. It goes.”
John wasn’t sure if that was the answer he wanted, but it was something. “Thank you,” he said, and Sherlock gave him the briefest of nods. For a moment, John forgot they were in a room with Mary and Sally Donovan and a camera which was permanently set to film every single thing that happened between any of them.
Sherlock then promptly ruined the moment. “Don’t you have shopping to do?”
“I thought shopping was something you did, with the chef, to show them how to purchase the proper things?” asked John, somewhat pointed.
“I have plenty to be getting on with here, and you’re rather extraneous at the moment,” snapped Sherlock, and John held his breath, counted to three, and turned on his heel to go.
He almost turned back when Sherlock spoke again. “And you’re less likely to select a poisonous mushroom. Unless you’d rather Artie did it?”
John exhaled. “I can go.”
Sherlock didn’t answer; when John finally gave in and looked over his shoulder, Sherlock was already gone. The only other people in the dining room were Mary, who looked a bit like a deer in the headlights, and Sally, who had an exasperated expression on her face. John thought he recognized it from one his mother had worn when he was a boy and being particularly impossible.
“One of these days we’re all going to be standing around a dead Sherlock,” said Sally grimly. “And it’ll be a restaurant manager who put him there.” She glanced at John. “You’re welcome to the honors. I know people who would help.”
John huffed, and looked at Mary. “Better get started, before he comes back out and rips your head off.”
“I know,” said Mary quietly. “But I’m going to wait until you’re gone at least.”
John nodded. “Thanks. Put it all upstairs, I suppose. Get Harry to help.”
John left before Mary could answer, and tried not to think about what was happening in the restaurant, or care that it was being dismantled. It didn’t seem right, really, to focus on the changes in the dining room, not when he’d seen the excitement in Molly’s eyes, the way Artie had actually started to be helpful instead of derisive.
John was halfway to the market before he looked at the list in his hand.
2 kilos each ground veal, pork, turkey
Fresh herbs - rosemary, sage, thyme, basil, parsley
2 loaves French bread
1 kilo wet mozzarella
1 kilo each parm, romano
It continued, items grouped not by type of food but by recipe. A terribly disorganized list for shopping, but John read the ingredients and the meals started to form in his mind.
By the time he was in the market, John was ready.
Saturday market in Upper Brickley at the end of January wasn’t near as extensive as the summertime version, but it was still active enough to remind John of being five years old and out with his grandfather. It wasn’t often that James allowed John to tag along on the shopping excursions; Saturday mornings were too frantic and James was often too tired to chase after John, and thus John learned quickly to keep up or be left behind. He learned the tricks of selecting the right mushrooms (looks), the freshest berries (smell), and the best meats (bribes). He watched James talk to the vendors, ask after their children and their wives, rail about politics and the NHS, laugh with them, cry with them, and argue with them. It was the arguing that everyone seemed to enjoy best. The first time John saw James launch into a full-scale argument with the fishmonger, it came so close to blows that John, then age four, had run crying out into the street, and James, laughing, had to fetch him before he’d been run over by a bicycle loaded with asparagus.
“It’s a game,” James explained to John. “That’s all, nothing to cry about.”
“It’s not a nice game,” countered John, his face streaked with dust and tears. “You could play conkers instead.”
James had howled with laughter, and lifted John up on his shoulder to carry him back. The fishmonger was more sympathetic, and gave John a bit of salt-water taffy. It tasted like a pale approximation of a strawberry, and John spent the rest of the morning attempting to unglue his teeth.
Winter market wasn’t nearly as busy, and John was able to navigate the stands with ease, despite the cane. Fruit was thin on the ground, nearly non-existent, but potatoes and carrots and squashes were in abundance. Hot-house flowers and fresh herbs, ginger and garlic in brown and white piles. The stands that usually held berries were instead stacked with home-made jams and chutneys, and there were artists in all directions, trying to sell home-made jewelry or notebooks or flavorings.
John circled the market once, eyes on the items for sale. It was half an exercise in learning the layout of the market, and half analysis. Which stands looked the cleanest, the freshest; which vendors greeted him with a hopeful smile or were so busy with customers that they couldn’t afford him a glance. When he had completed his circuit, he pulled the list from his pocket again and examined it.
Sausages flavored with fresh herbs, served with buttery mashed potatoes and steaming fresh vegetables. John rubbed the rosemary between his fingers and bought extra parsley, curly and flat because Sherlock hadn’t specified. He rubbed the fuzzy sage leaves and saw the bright orange carrots already paired with the broccoli. French beans might have paired better, but the broccoli was a brilliant green, with small florets that would cook quickly in a busy kitchen.
Vegetable pizza, with peppers and onions and mushrooms. John skipped the large portobellos and went straight for the creminis, and he smelled and touched lightly before eventually choosing the firmest of the lot, and he placed them carefully in the top of the basket.
There was fresh kale, spinach, and beetroot near the lettuce; John bought two bunches each, and then doubled back for the red onions. He had to double back again later for the potatoes as well.
The grocers themselves seemed to bend over backwards, trying to steer him to the freshest vegetables, the plumpest loaves of bread, the largest eggs. Everything was the best and brightest, and what’s more, everyone was perfectly happy to deliver.
It was the cane, John decided, and not that they knew the impressive and talented Sherlock Holmes was on the other end of the delivery. These were John’s people; they knew him, they knew his history, his military service, and they were only doing him a kind turn because watching a veteran limp home with bags full of groceries would have made them out to be hard-hearted cretins.
It wasn’t until John reached the butcher, where he placed an order for twenty chickens in addition to the ground meats and sausage casings, that it began to make sense.
“It’s true, then?” asked the butcher, leaning over his counter. “You’ve got Sherlock Holmes behind the range?”
“It’s true,” said John. He rested on the glass case; his shoulder ached, but in a good way, and he could still smell the rosemary and sage on his fingers.
“Crikey,” said the butcher thoughtfully. “What’s he like, then?”
“He’s-”
But John couldn’t think of how to continue. Arrogant sod of a bastard who thinks he’s forty steps above the rest of us and we’re not worth the garlic in my basket but for some reason he’s trying to help. Oh, and he’s a brilliant shag.
The butcher chuckled knowingly. “Think if I bring the chickens myself I’ll meet him?”
“Wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, mate,” said John, having found his voice.
“When’s the show air?”
“Two months, give or take. I have the date written somewhere, I’ll let everyone know. Or not.”
“Don’t make me wait that long to find out if he likes my chickens,” said the butcher.
“You’ll know if we’re back tomorrow,” said John. “I don’t think he’s closed a restaurant mid-week, but I suppose there’s always a first time.”
The butcher laughed. “Good on you, mate, you’ve got the right attitude for it. Do we need reservations? Me and the missus might want to stop in.”
Reservations.
“I…have no idea,” said John finally, completely blown over. “But Harry’s manning the book, she can tell you. You’d have to sign a waiver, I know that.”
The butcher waved his hand, clearly not concerned. “To see Sherlock Holmes in action? Cor. I haven’t been to the Empire in years. It’d be a treat. Good luck tonight, mate.”
“Thanks,” said John, a bit bewildered, and he glanced into the basket, thought eggs, and went to find them.
It was as though the butcher opened the floodgates. Now every person John saw was smiling, grinning, nodding their good wishes, leaning toward him as if they were about to ask him something.
But no. Surely not everyone knew about Sherlock Holmes. Upper Brickley was small, yes, but….not that small. It was the cane. It had to be the cane.
John clenched his fingers, as if to hold tight to the cane to reassure himself it was the reason for the kindness - and his fingers held tight to nothing but air.
For a moment, John froze still on the pavement. It took every ounce of will not to fall over, to convince his leg that it would. Not. Buckle.
It didn’t. But John didn’t dare move, and the tide of people doing their Saturday shopping surged around him. John felt like a sturgeon, trying to spawn.
“John Watson,” said the voice, silky smooth and disturbingly friendly. John snapped out of the intense concentration to not fall over, and saw the man standing in front of him, hands in his pockets, light grey suit tailored perfectly to his frame. It took a moment for John to place him.
“Jim,” said John.
“Fancy meeting you here. Out for an afternoon stroll?” asked Jim Moriarty, and John clenched his hands again and wondered what the hell he’d done with his cane, and moreover, how Jim had noticed so quickly that it was gone.
“Just doing a bit of shopping for tonight.”
“Oh, right, of course. Been watching the proceedings with great interest, of course,” said Jim, and paused as though waiting for John to laugh. When John didn’t make a sound, he frowned in consternation. “Did you see the episode where he kicked everyone out of the restaurant halfway through the dinner service? Brilliant. I liked that one.”
John had seen it too, and he could picture Sherlock doing the very same thing that evening, or any evening, all too easily. He was half surprised it hadn’t happened to the Empire yet.
“Think I might stop in to dine while he’s here,” continued Jim, and John’s blood ran cold. “See what’s going on inside the Empire’s walls myself. Must be fascinating, isn’t it, John? Everything your father and grandfather worked for, being dismantled and traded in for something new and shiny?”
“Not everything is being traded in,” said John stiffly. “There are some things too important to throw away, even for Sherlock Holmes.”
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that,” said Jim, and sure enough, his eyes were bright, and John wished he hadn’t wanted his cane so badly - not because he needed it, but because he had the strongest desire to thump Jim over the head with it. Probably not a good move, thumping the head of someone who could very well own the Empire before the month was out. “Must be off. See you at dinner service, we can catch up then.”
Jim slid back into the flow of the pedestrian traffic so easily that John barely saw him do it. John remained still on the pavement, and tried to catch his breath. The idea of Jim sitting in the Empire’s dining room was such a reprehensible one - a bit like a spider building a web right on the kitchen counter.
“John! John Watson!” came the shout from behind him, and John didn’t dare turn around. A moment later, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and pushing against the crowd, the butcher appeared, his bright red face concerned and curious.
John’s cane was in his hand.
“You left this,” said the butcher, and John took the cane. It was lighter than he remembered it.
“Thanks,” said John, and the butcher’s name popped in his head, as if it had appeared with the cane. “Angelo.”
Angelo grinned and clapped him on the shoulder, nearly knocking him over, and joined the throng of people, heading back up the street.
John held the cane in his hand, weighed like a pendulum, and when a break in the crowd appeared, began the slow, careful walk back to the Empire. His mind was comfortably blank; his feet moved of their own accord, and his leg did not throb, not once.
The cane never touched the ground, and when John stopped walking, he found himself not in front of the Empire, but the Slate Street Clinic. After a moment of consideration, he opened the door and went inside.
End A/N: Recipe: A full meal for you today, to make up for last week’s deficit! Spicy Roast Chicken with Salt-and-Pepper Potatoes and Spinach with Cinnamon, Raisins, and Almonds. If you’ve never roasted a whole chicken before - it’s time to give it a try! It’s much easier - and tastier - than you’d think.
Chapter Ten