Hello, I'm actually publishing this at a semi normal time, r u proud? You should be. I started writing this at half nine and it's now quarter past eleven so you better enjoy it my dudes:) k, ima let you read

Warnings: I don't think there are any? I always feel unsure saying that in case I'm being silly and have missed something obviously triggering so please let me know in the comments if you spot anything:)

Word count: 2050

"What are you doing?" Sherlock wandered into the kitchen and wrapped his arms round his boyfriends neck and placing a kiss on his ruffled, flour spattered hair.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Huffed a slightly infuriated John.
"Trying to burn the flat down and destroying the kitchen in the process?" Suggested sherlock as he surveyed the damage.

It was true, the kitchen looked dreadful. They had once had a bomb go off in the flat which pretty much destroyed everything but it hadn't done as much damage as this. Every available surface was littered with discarded egg shells and half used bags of baking ingredients. There were several trays lying on the floor, with what looked like cremated remains clinging to them, as though thrown there in anger. There was a thin layer of a white powder coating everything that Sherlock assumed was flour and quite a lot of another sticky substance that plopped down in great globs from where it was splattered on the walls. Sherlock felt something suspiciously gloopy drip onto his curly hair and looked up with his eyebrows raised to see that there appeared to be rather a lot of it on the ceiling too. It was uncomfortably warm from the oven being left on for so long and the stuffy air smelt like burnt sugar. It was also slightly hazy suggesting that there had previously been rather a lot of smoke that was yet to fully disperse.

In the middle of this chaos stood the army doctor, looking more perturbed than he had ever done on a case before. His face was smeared with various powders and gloops and his grey hair stool up at peculiar angles around his head like a weird, unbecoming halo. He wore an intensely floral apron, presumably borrowed from mrs Hudson that Sherlock doubted would be wanted back due to the battered state of it. There was a large burn mark on the bottom left and was caked in half cooked batter. John cautiously wiped his hands on a slightly cleaner section of it and, seeing as it didn't entirely work, then used the back of his wrist to wipe his exasperated eyes. The net result of this was that now his apron was even filthier and he had a white streak across his face.

"Don't. I'm doing my best here but apparently baking us more difficult than it seems."
"What and why are you baking in any case?" Queried Sherlock as he peered aprehensively at a large pink recipe book, propped up against the kettle. The recipe on the opened page was somewhat obscured by the large amount of ick that had attached itself to the shiny paper during the chaos.
"Some sort of cake? Victoria sponge I would hazard a guess at?"
John nodded and leaned against the counter in exhausted defeat.
"I wanted to do something nice for your birthday but it went a bit wrong." He explained sheepishly, addressing his partners black leather shoe, wet from the London drizzle, rather than his face.
"My birthday?" He seemed surprised. "Oh yes, that is this week isn't it, it had slipped my mind. Thank you my dear but you really needn't have, just having you here with me is birthday present enough."

John smiled, its quietness only just reaching his weary eyes.
"That's good because this really isn't working, sorry darling."
"Not to worry. I'll tell you what, why don't we all have a go together this weekend, I'm sure Rosie would love to turn her hand to cakes." He smiled and kissed him on the cheek with the least flour on.
"And her stomach." Joked John, thankful that he could finally get cleaned up and have a sit down.
"And that too, definitely that too."
"Alright, it's a deal. We can all try on Saturday when we get back from our weekly trip to the park."
"Brilliant. I would usually never suggest this but I think Mrs Hudson might have a fit if she comes home and sees the flat like this so I think we had better try and clear up. Also, we should probably get you cleared up too." He looked and ruffled John's hair, causing an avalanche of white powder to fill the air, making them both cough slightly.
"Yes, what an excellent suggestion Mr Holmes."
"Come on then Mr Watson, we've got some serious cleaning to do."

Saturday afternoon came along and they were ready. The kitchen had been returned to its semi clean state. It was actually possibly cleaner now than when John started as it was possibly the first time that miscellaneous body parts and discarded experiments didn't litter the counter tops. There was still a blob of gloop on the ceiling over the oven that neither of them had been able to reach but apart from that it was pretty clean.

Anyway, they had taken Rosie to the park and they had had a lovely time pushing swings and playing tag with several screaming toddlers and now they were finally back at 221b smiling and excited by the prospect of baking. Well, Rosie was excited. Sherlock was cautiously optimistic and John was frankly terrified. After the stressful disaster of Wednesday, he wasn't sure how this could go much better, especially with a 3 year old in the mix. Hopefully it would be fun but he wasn't entirely convinced.

In a strange fit of responsible homeliness, sherlock had visited their local home bargains and purchased three aprons (the one John had borrowed from Mrs H had been beyond salvaging and had had to be thrown into the rubbish along with all the charcoaled evidence of the failed baking attempt). Sherlock had bought matching couple ones for him and John and John was slightly worried his boyfriend had been replaced by a soft emotional sap who was obsessed with romance. One said "king of the kitchen, (and her heart)" and the other said "queen of the kitchen (and his heart)". John looked at them in confused scrutiny.

"So why does one of them say 'queen'?" He asked tentatively, fearful of the answer. His expectations where quickly met with Sherlock's reply.
"There are 2 reasons, 1) because the world is very heteronormative so it is only possible to buy straight couply stuff and 2) because you are my queen." He smirked and laughed as John scowled.
"Why can't you be the queen?" He pouted, "you are definitely the more flamboyant of the two of us."
"That is true but it's my birthday so you have to do what I want." John sighed but reluctantly put the apron on.
"Fine, but only because I love you."
"I love you too, my queen."
He grinned and kissed him softly, wrapping his arms round the shorter man.

Just then, Rosie, who had been so quite during this conversation because she had gone to find her cook doll, appeared in the doorway before running forward and wriggling between them.
"Cake time! Cake time!" She squealed happily, poking both he fathers in the knees.
"Ok, ok little irregular, put this on and we can start." Sherlock bent down and presented her with a small, dark blue apron with dinosaurs printed onto it. She was ecstatic at this gift and happily complied, chattering excitedly about the habits of triceratops and how she would like to have a pet one called Tony because Tony is a good name for a dinosaur.

"Wait till you hear what we are going to make Rosie, you are going to lose your tiny mind!" Sherlock's tone was deadly serious but his eyes sparkled with happiness.
"What? What we making papa?" She bounced up and down happily.
"Would you care to do the honours dear?" Sherlock turned to John who reached into a bag and pulled out the dinosaur biscuit cutters that were on top. Both him and Rosie gasped in delight (although his was more at how cute Sherlock was for going to all this trouble to make Rosie happy than at the prospect of making dinosaur desserts).
"We are making dinosaur shortbread!" The detective announced, scooping up Rosie and spinning her in a circle.
"I thought we were trying to do cake?" Laughed John as his daughters feet skimmed past his nose.
"We were but that seemed too complicated and besides, who doesn't live dinosaurs. Also, there are only 3 ingredients in shortbread so what can go wrong?"

You should never make that statement as it inevitably leads to disaster. As it turns out, a lot can go wrong but after about an hour of eggs smashing on the floor and buttery hand prints on the windows, they finally managed to place the mostly flat dough, already cut into dinosaur shapes and 'neatly' arranged on greaseproof paper covered trays, into the fridge to cool for an hour. During that time, they made a game of tidying up and had a washing up cafe, with glasses full of frothy water as coffees (not real ones as you shouldn't actually drink it as Rosie discovered when she tried it but discovered soapy dish water was not a pleasant flavour and had had to have a cup of actual apple juice to wash the traces of it away).

They had been sat down in the living room, talking about the wing span of pterydactyls and the likelihood of dinosaurs actually having feathers rather than scales (having Sherlock as an adopted father and a trained, highly intelligent assassin for a mum plus an intensely curious and actually pretty damn smart (although he might have seemed less so due to the brilliance of the companions he kept) doctor for a dad had made Rosie amazingly inquisitive and an amazing thinker for one so young) for about 15 minutes when the timer went off to tell them the shortbread was ready to go into the oven.

Once it was safely cooking they settled down to a quick game of fortunately  unfortunately for the 20 minutes they needed to cook. John kept a watchful eye on the timer and went to check them every 5 minutes, determined not to let the fate of his cake befall these dinosaurs (they were too young to die). When they were finally golden brown, they were carefully extracted with the 'hot stuff' labelled oven gloves that was another recent purchase of Sherlock's (apparently, these were the only ones they had according to Sherlocks adamant insistence but John suspected that he just liked them because he was secretly a romantic who liked stupid puns (he was technically a father now after all so fair enough)).

The smell that wafted from them was so good and they could barely wait for them to cool so they could decorate them. They decided to eat one now just to make sure they were alright and had all agreed they were wonderful when the buttery goodness melted like warm sunshine in their mouths. They have them 10 minutes to cool, making all the different coloured icings in that interval. Then each dinosaur got a personalised makeover with multi coloured stripes and afros and glasses and massive eyes and other amusing attributes that they could think of to give the dinos.

The result was three very sticky people and a plate of slightly chaotic dinosaurs with a huge amount of personality each. John took several photos of the biscuits and them all with the biscuits for 'posterity' and then they all dug in.
"Oh my God, these are actually so good!" Gasped John in honest surprise.
"I know, I have actually made them before, for a case." Smiled Sherlock as he snapped the purple head off a dipladocus and popped it into his mouth.
"What sort of case required you to make biscuits?" Laughed John, trying to stop Rosie from stuffing 3 biscuits into her mouth at once as he spoke.
"It was very interesting, you see, this was before we met and there was this Baker..."
The three of them spent the rest of the night cuddled up, eating shortbread and telling stories to each other, Rosie listening attentively to each word her guardians uttered before she eventually fell asleep and was carried off the bed by a tired and happy Sherlock and John.

The end

There you go. I am super tired cos I had film group this morning and then went out with my mum and dad to go on the ferry and get Sambuca pizza and icecream (I know, what a hard life I lead🤣, I'm honestly so grateful to have so many wonderful experiences). Oh, and I accidentally twisted my ankle a bit when I landed funny cos I was jumping up and down to keep warm (I know, icecream at like 3 degrees is definitely a great idea. It's too nice to refuse though so...). This is the third time something like that's happened and I'm a bit annoyed at myself for doing it but oh well. It's only a dull ache and I'm very good at controlling pain so that's good:) k, ima go now and read this lesbian pirate adventure book with an asexual main character that I'm reading, good night:). As always, be kind and such. Tell people that you love them more often, including yourself. Lots of love to everyone,
Isabella
🐹🐹❤🧡💛💚💙💜