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The waitress set the bowl down in front of John with a gentle thlunk. John automatically thanked her and picked up his fork, barely taking his eyes away from the building across the street. The current stake-out. The entire reason they were in the restaurant to begin with, and it just happened to be convenient because John was also hungry and it was near dinnertime and sometimes, on occasion, he liked to eat.
Sherlock took John’s hand so quickly, stopping the ascent of pasta on the fork, that John’s arm didn’t get the message to stop moving, and some of the pasta was tipped back into the bright red sauce.
“Yes, sorry, we’ll have to send this one back to the kitchen,” said Sherlock, his eyes hard on the waitress.
“Sherlock—“ began John, impatient.
“He hasn’t even tried it,” said the waitress.
“And I’d rather he didn’t. I’m sure you understand. After all, you put in the order and then went into the manager’s office, made a call that you weren’t allowed to make, filled water glasses for all the tables in your station, checked your text messages twice, sent one yourself, went into the back alley where you collected a package tied in twine and brown paper, sprinkled the contents of that package over the finished dish along with the decorative parsley, and still managed to obtain that marvelous love-bite on the side of your neck. The only part I haven’t been able to determine is who gave it to you. My money’s on the potboy, though I suppose whoever delivered the daturon powder is a likely candidate—“
The waitress shrieked, John moved, and Sherlock blinked, so he missed the part where the bowl of pasta, red sauce, and poison ended up over his head. All he knew was that John had the waitress – who was mostly blameless, apart from actually sprinkling the poisonous powder on John’s meal – in a hold on the floor, and that the red sauce was dripping off his hair and onto his suit.
“Might want to wash that off,” said John casually, pulling out his mobile, presumably to ring Lestrade.
“Don’t be silly, John,” replied Sherlock. “Daturon powder must be ingested to do any real damage.”
“Oh, right, someone dumps poisonous pasta on your head, and wanting to wash it off is silly.”
“It’s evidence, John, I can’t send it down the drain,” said Sherlock, and he looked back out the window in the direction of the stakeout. No point in being deterred, after all.
“I suppose you’ve spent years developing an immunity to daturon powder as well?” asked John sarcastically. “Hello, Greg? Someone just tried to poison me, could you come around?”
A large blop of sauce dripped down from Sherlock’s nose, and John’s face twisted, as if he was trying not to laugh. Sherlock frowned.
“Why would I spend years developing an immunity to a single poison on the mere possibility that anyone would try to assassinate me with that very poison?” Sherlock asked, ignoring the sauce trailing down his cheeks. “You have very strange ideas, John.”
“Yeah, thanks,” John said to Greg as another glob of red sauce trailed down Sherlock’s nose, and hung precariously on the tip. “Sorry, have to take a picture now.”
“John—“
“Say parmesan,” said John cheerfully, and held up his mobile.