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Chapter Text

Molly storms into her room and slams the door. (She immediately regrets it, because there’s no way she can pay the innkeeper for damage should any occur, but the brief moment of satisfaction the thud gave her was almost worth it.) She mutters to herself as she paces around the room, trying to walk off the frustration.

Sherlock. The absolutely insufferable, aggravating, maddening wizard’s apprentice, who had been assigned to her as a traveling companion by Lord Lestrade. The idea was that he’d be offering her protection as she journeyed from village to village, healing as she went. At this point, Molly is fairly sure that he’ll be needing protection – from her. She has a brief and glorious fantasy of throttling him, which is interrupted by a knock on the door.

She knows that knock.

“Go away!” she says bitingly, in the direction of the door, and for a minute there’s silence and she thinks that he has but then –

“I’m… sorry.” Sherlock’s voice is soft and hesitant in a way that she’s only heard once or twice before, despite the fact that they’ve been on the road together for almost a year.

“Sorry doesn’t fix anything,” Molly says testily. Perhaps she should be a bit more gentle, especially since Sherlock is trying to make an apology. Probably he’ll stomp away and there will be an uncomfortable, awkward, silent tension between them when they leave tomorrow.

“I know,” he says instead, and Molly stops her pacing, surprised.

“You – what?”

“I know,” he says again, sounding a little tetchy, and Molly considers apologizing herself before shaking it off. She will not be a pushover! She will not bend over backwards to cater to Sherlock’s vanity! He continues talking and she pays attention despite herself. “I was… careless with my words,” he says hesitantly. “And the client I chose to do it in front of… well.”

Well, indeed. The Queen, with whom she’s wanted to work for years, whose raised pinky finger could change the course of her entire life, who could help Molly reach the entire kingdom.

Of course Sherlock saw fit to make some of his most humiliating and revealing deductions to date in the presence of Her Majesty.

She hears Sherlock huffing on the other side of the door, but hasn’t the slightest intention of making this easier for him.

“Look, Molly, I know you’re embarrassed, but won’t you just open – ”

If she was thinking straight, Molly would not open the door. She would never give Sherlock the satisfaction. Unfortunately, Molly is not thinking straight. Her wits are addled with righteous indignation. She yanks the door open and stares furiously into Sherlock’s slightly smug face.

He knew she’d open the door. Insufferable.

“I am not embarrassed,” she seethes. “I am mortified. I have never been so humiliated in my life. But at the moment neither of those things matter because I am so incredibly angry. You ruined any chances of my employment by the Palace – which I have been dreaming of since I was very young. You are selfish, thoughtless, and thoroughly unpleasant, and I shall be contacting Lord Lestrade to let him know that you are unsuitable as a traveling companion. Now get out of my sight.”

And then she slams the door again, which is slightly counterproductive considering that with the wood between them he’s already out of her sight, but she’s reasonably certain that the message got through all the same. She takes a deep breath in, lets it out, and then promptly starts to cry.

Turns out that traveling without a companion is just as unpleasant as everyone has always told her. She’s gotten herself into scrapes quite regularly (but then, she’s also gotten herself out of them. Even that one time with the dragons. That’s beside the point, though, she supposes. The situations she finds herself in are incredibly unpleasant, regardless of her ability to get out of them.) Carrying all her healing paraphernalia and her food and her bedroll turns out to be very difficult. She’s constantly tired, sore, and struggling. Then again, the feeling of accomplishment that seems to have permanently lodged itself in her chest makes it more than worth it.

She misses Sherlock.

When she first struck out alone, she was so full of anger and hurt that she’d been glad he wasn’t there. As time went on, the anger burnt itself out and was replaced with cool resentment. And now, after she’s been on her own for almost eight months, she finds herself carrying regrets. She knows that Sherlock wasn’t trying to be cruel. He just got carried away. She wishes she apologize and accept his attempt at reconciliation and let him know that she’s forgiven him.

Then again, traveling with him could be awkward, considering the nature of the information he’d deduced out of her in front of the Queen. She’d always suspected that he knew of her affections – Molly is many things, but she is not subtle – but having it confirmed was a bitter pill to swallow. She doesn’t like the idea of traveling with Sherlock if their easy banter was to be replaced with awkward silence and their comfortable friendship with tension.

Perhaps she should have been paying more attention, because she is jolted from her reverie by a rough hand grabbing her pack and shoving her face-first against a tree.

She groans a little, face stinging, and feels the straps of her pack being slid off her arms.

“Don’t!” she says stupidly, whirling around and reaching for her sword. (She’d resisted carrying one at first, but Lestrade had insisted that she have it on her at all times. She’s had reason to be thankful for that more than once in the past months.)

“None o’ that!” snaps a thug, and grabs her wrist, wresting it behind her back. She lets out a little gasp of pain and deems it wise to be still.

There are three of them, her attackers, all with hoods on that obscure their faces. They’re rooting through her pack with all the care and cautiousness of pigs getting slopped, and Molly has to bite her lip to keep herself from protesting at their treatment of her medical supplies. Something tells her that they wouldn’t appreciate it. Besides, she needs to focus on a plan of attack and escape.

She’s just starting to come up with one, after having had her hands tied roughly behind her back and her ankles bound together, when there’s a shout from the bushes off the path and a troop of soldiers burst through the foliage and descend upon Molly’s capturers. She’s torn between being thankful and indignant, because she’s reasonably sure her plan would have worked and it would have been a much better story than ‘and then I got rescued,’ and then her mind is made up for her because Sherlock himself is crouching in front of her, cutting through the bonds on her ankle with – are his hands shaking?

“I had it under control!” she informs him irritably. He doesn’t reply, just turns her with gentle (and definitely shaking) hands to face away from him so he can do away with the ropes on her wrists, too. “I didn’t need you bursting in here, all ‘knight in shining armour,’ Sherlock,” she says when she’s sure he’s not going to respond, and for some reason his silence aggravates her all the more. “I don’t – ”

And then he pulls her into an embrace, wrapping his arms tightly around her and drawing her close to his chest. She probably makes a sound of surprise, but she can’t be sure, because he’s warm and solid and she’s still upset with him but she slides her own arms around his waist and this is nice, this is very nice, this is something she’s dreamed about but never –

“They were werewolves, Molly,” says Sherlock, and even his voice is shaking. Molly pulls back from him in concern, and in curiosity.

“Who?” she asks, genuinely confused, and Sherlock points at the three men who’d grabbed her. She’s struck dumb with shock for a moment, and then, “Oh.”

So her plan wouldn’t have worked, because it involved waiting for nightfall and tonight was the – oh, goodness.

“Oh,” she says, and then she’s the one that’s shaking, and Sherlock wraps her up in his arms again and tonight is the full moon and she almost – “They almost – ”

“You’re safe now,” Sherlock says, resting his cheek against the top of his head. “That’s all that matters.”

“Oh,” says Molly again, and it’s very difficult to keep track of her thoughts when she almost died tonight and Sherlock is holding her like this.

They stand there like that, in silence, for a while, until Sherlock says, “Your feelings aren’t unreciprocated, you know.”

And that is so singularly and spectacularly unexpected that Molly’s mind goes blank. She can’t even think to stiffen in his arms.

“You – what feelings?”

His chest rumbles a little with a laugh and it sends shivers down Molly’s spine.

“For all you know, those feelings might be gone,” she says.

He pulls back and gives her a look.

“No,” he says. “They should be gone, because I was horrible to you, but they’re not.”

At that, Molly pulls back, shock and fear gone at the reminder.

“You were horrible to me!” she says, glaring at him.

“I was,” he says, looking ashamed.

“You humiliated me in front of the court!” she snaps, resentment that she had thought gone forever rearing its head again.

“I did,” he says with a wince, which is ever so gratifying.

“You ruined any chance of my employment by Her Majesty!” Molly says, warming to the work of being angry again.

“That, at least, I did not,” says Sherlock, sounding relieved, and Molly is so taken aback that she can only say, “What?”

He breaks into a grin and pulls a crumpled piece of parchment out of his pocket.

“Read that, and be less angry with me, Molly,” he says, and she shivers, partly because she’d forgotten how her voice sounds in his deep, rumbly voice and partly because their fingers brush as he hands her the parchment.

She reads it, and then she reads it again, and then she reads it once more.

“This cannot be true,” she says, gaping, and Sherlock laughs, bright and happy.

“It is, I assure you,” he says, eyes sparkling.

“But – you – how – ” she splutters, stunned into incoherence.

“I have a… an acquaintance,” Sherlock says, wrinkling his nose as if said acquaintance is an unpleasant one. “An acquaintance with access to Her Majesty. He was able to explain that… well. That my behaviour was not a reflection of yours, or your character.” She just keeps staring at him, rendered speechless, and he tries again. “I do hope that someday you’ll be able to forgive me. I understand – ”

And then she cuts him off with an embrace, because the silly, foolish, wonderful man has to know that she forgives him already. He lets out a surprised “oomf” and then returns the embrace with tentative, hopeful arms.

“Does this… do you…”

“You’ll be doing the firewood-gathering every night,” Molly says, “and you can carry both of our bedrolls from now on.”

The smile on Sherlock’s face is binding.

“I’m looking forward to it, Royal Healer,” he says.

Chapter Text

“I’m home,” Molly calls. There are footfalls in the corridor, and then the racket of someone dropping into one of the rickety chairs in the kitchen.

Mary wanders in, ruffling Molly’s hair as she passes her chair. Molly swats at her hand and growls.

“How was the lab?” asks Mary, unrepentant. She’s well aware that her roommate doesn’t mind the physical contact.

“Very bloody long,” huffs Molly, routing in her bag for her library book. “Our professor is lovely, but he doesn’t know how to teach very well and I’ve still got to get this report in before tomorrow morning.”

Mary winces in sympathy and puts the kettle on.

“Hope it’s a good book, then,” she says. Molly groans, and is given a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “You can do it,” Mary promises. “And once it’s in, you’ll never have to think about it again.”

“True enough,” admits Molly, scooping up her bag and hoisting herself out of the chair before relocating to her room. Mary smiles to herself and makes her a cup of tea, like the absolute darling that she is, and then informs Molly that she’s going out with somebody and not to wait up.

Mary walks into the flat three hours later to find Molly sprawled on the couch, cackling like a madwoman as she reads what should, by appearances, be a very dull book. Mary is, understandably, concerned.

“All right?” she asks. There have been a few memorable occasions on which Molly, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things on her to-do list (understandably, because she seems incapable of mentally measuring her workload before taking it on {or, more likely, she just has a really hard time saying ‘no’}), has burst into hysterical laughter, and not stopped for quite some time.

“Very,” Molly giggles. “Look at this.”

And she flips the book around for Mary’s inspection.

The book is positively defaced. Notes are scribbled up and down all the margins, notes in the same deep blue ink and the same scribbly, spidery hand.

“Okay,” says Mary uncertainly. “What am I looking at here?”

“Someone has gone through and written – ” and now Molly is cracking up again, and Mary can’t help joining her (her tiny roommate has the most infectious laugh) – if a bit uncertainly. Molly sobers up, closes the book. Sets it down. “They’ve written – ” and she’s off again, giggling hysterically, and Mary picks up the book to take a look for herself. She only has so much patience.

It turns out, she discovers upon inspection, that the notes contain an impressive collection of critical remarks on the validity and veracity of the content of the textbook. The writer of these notes has many colourful remarks on the intelligence of the author of the book, the mother of the author of the book, the siblings of the author of the book, and, of course, passages from the book itself. She’s barely even finished a page before she, too, is chortling, albeit at a much lower level than Molly.

“Okay, he’s funny,” she admits, setting the book on the back of the couch. “But not intentionally, I don’t think.”

“No,” agrees Molly, wiping her eyes. “I only laughed so hard because I’m tired. But some of the insults that he uses, Mary!”

“Quite creative,” Mary agrees, and then hears footsteps in the stairwell and jolts. “Listen, I’ve invited John up – ”

“No, really?” groans Molly, grabbing for her book and her mug and scrambling up and off the couch. “Half a mo, I’ll be out of your way – ”

 “Oh,” says Mary, and she feels like the worst friend on earth, most likely because she is. “I was wondering – ”

“What have you done?” asks Molly suspiciously, dumping her mug in the sink and scooping her bag off the floor.

“Well, he’s maybe bringing his friend with him – ”

“Mary!” squeaks Molly, horrified.

“Well it’s not like I could stop him, is it?” hisses Mary. Whoever the footsteps belonged to keeps going past their door, so they have at least another minute. “John’s roommate absolutely insisted on coming. Something about ‘approval.’”

“Oh,” says Molly, looking somewhat mollified. “I can understand that.”

“You’re a goddess,” says Mary fervently.

“Only half an hour,” warns Molly. “Then I’m off to write my report, and neither principalities nor powers nor you nor the Queen – “ Mary gasps at this blasphemy – “can stop me.”

“Fair enough,” Mary concedes, and reaches for the kettle. She’s not even really British, but she does quite like tea.

There’s a knock at the door, which Mary hastens to open, while hissing at Molly to go put her bag in her room because right now she looks like a homeless person, and then she and John are doing the awkward ‘hello’ that you say to someone you have a real connection with but don’t know very well and aren’t in the middle of conversation with, and then a tall man that she assumes is John’s flatmate pushes past her and into the dorm.

“Oh,” she says, and John looks like he’d like to die. It’s very endearing.

“Sorry,” he says, and she can hear sincerity ringing in his voice. “He’s – I – sorry.”

“That’s all right,” Mary says, and she smiles at him. He smiles back, and her heart flip-flops in her chest. “I don’t mind.”

She holds the door for him and they shuffle along into the kitchen, where John grins and says, “Molly?”

Molly looks up from the cup of – is that coffee?

“John!” she says. “Hi!”

“So you’re Mary’s roommate,” John says, smiling.

“Guilty as charged,” Molly says, smiling back. John’s flatmate (what’s his name? Sean? No, it’s Sher…something. Something strange.) makes an annoyed sound from where he’s sitting at the table, and Molly turns back to what is definitely coffee with a quiet “oh, sorry.”

Mary doesn’t know what she wants to approach first, the fact that John and Molly know each other or the fact that Sherlock (that’s his name) is an absolute arse. In the end John chooses for her.

“Molly and I were in pre-med together,” he explains, and Mary doesn’t know if it’s just her or if apparently-perpetually-stiff Sherlock relaxes the tiniest smidge. “No one better to ask for notes if you missed a day.”

Molly smiles at him and then sets the cup (why is there coffee in this house?) in front of Sherlock, who immediately starts sipping without so much as a thank you.

“So you went out with Mary, did you?” says Molly.

“I did, yeah, and we had a good time,” says John. Sherlock chokes on his coffee.

“Why is she allowed to ask questions like that and I’m not?” he demands.

“Because she is asking because she’s genuinely interested in my and Mary’s relationship instead of embarrassing me in front of my parents,” snaps John, and then stops. “Not that we have a relationship, obviously,” he says, sounding like he regrets a lot of things. “Just – ”

“We could,” says Mary, and John looks at her like she hung the moon and it’s quite a heady feeling. “Maybe. Later.”

“Ri – right. Yeah. Of course,” says John.

Sherlock makes a snorting sound and takes another sip of his coffee.

They stay for a while and then they leave and when they leave Mary has definitely decided on something.

“Sherlock fancies you,” she informs Molly, who drops the plates she was loading into the dishwasher.

“He what?” she says, looking absolutely flabbergasted.

“Don’t even try to pretend you don’t fancy him,” Mary says quickly. She’s grown accustomed to all of Molly’s diversion tactics. “I know what I saw.”

She’s grown to know (and be fond of) Molly’s idiosyncrasies.

“Well… all right,” concedes Molly, blushing even more brightly. “But he doesn’t fancy me, Mary. He couldn’t.”

“Oh, he could,” says Mary, rubbing her hands together. She (and John, whom she suspects she’ll be seeing quite a bit more of) have a match to make.

Chapter Text

Sherlock has never seen the point of soulmates.

Why does the universe have to pick out your perfect match? Why can’t you just find the person you love on your own? Why can’t it be normal and accepted to never find your soulmate, to be matchless?

And even if he did concede, in his heart of hearts, that perhaps there’s something nice about two people being made for each other, he would never agree with how you find your soulmate. Why should you have to wait until you realize that you love them? Isn’t that ridiculously counterproductive? In what universe does it make sense that the person you’re meant to fall in love with can’t know it until they’re actually in love with you? Ridiculous. And what on earth is the point of the revelation being given in the first words they speak after your own realization tattooed on some part of your body? He never has, and never will, understand. All of it is utterly outrageous.

So he thought when he was small and first had the concept of soulmates explained to him, and so he thinks now, years later, when almost everyone around him has found love. Even Mycroft wound up finding words on himself, which Sherlock, for one, never saw coming. Anthea apparently did, and likes to tease Mycroft about it at family dinners. (Which they’ve been having quite a few of, and all of which make Sherlock want to shoot something. The only saving grace is that John and Mary are usually invited, and he can amuse himself with Rosie.) The only exceptions in his life are Lestrade and Molly Hooper.

Lestrade he can understand, because the idiot won’t stop marrying the wrong people. He doesn’t have words (Sherlock’s read his file, and is informed on updates) and yet he keeps marrying women that he obviously knows won’t make him happy. It makes no sense, but clearly explains why Lestrade hasn’t found his soulmate yet. He won’t stop looking. Everyone knows you have to be patient and wait for them.

Molly, though… Molly doesn’t deserve to spend her life alone. He knows that she craves a significant other, yearns for a romantic connection, and he sincerely wishes the best for her. (If there’s a strange, twisted, unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach every time he considers her showing up to Baker Street, towing a man whose words are embedded in her skin… well, that’s a fact best kept to himself, is it not?)

Soulmates aside, Sherlock finds himself caught in a web of his sister’s (and Moriarty’s, apparently) design. Each turn of the corridor brings new horrors. Sherlock feels sick, faint, miserable. He can’t believe that someone he’s related to, that has the same blood flowing through their veins that flows through his, could even conceive of such horrible things. (Although perhaps he’s not so shocked at the conception of these things so much as the practical application. Holmes are not known for their squeamishness.) He’s frightened, scared, afraid, but he doesn’t know true fear until he enters a room with a coffin in it.

Molly.

Eurus explains what he has to do, a video feed is thrown up on a screen, a phone is dialed, and Sherlock’s hands start shaking in a way he doesn’t think they ever have before.

Molly, Molly, Molly.

He begs, he cajoles, he pleads, but Molly is in no mood for his nonsense today. The only way she’ll do it, she says, is if he says it first.

It’s just three words. All of them little. He can say it. He has to say it. For Molly.

He does say it.

“I love you.”

And as he says it, something seems to click. He feels a prickling feeling across the back of his neck but is so focused on Molly that he doesn’t notice John and Mycroft exchanging stunned glances behind him. She says the words and he lets out a rush of air and he has so many emotions swirling through him, he can’t focus, and he’s always tried to be cold and logical but it just isn’t working…

They make it out. Of course they make it out. They are Sherlock Holmes and John Watson and The British Government, who is, contrary to popular belief, quite intelligent. But not without heavy losses, and not without one very significant gain.

Sherlock doesn’t know why, everywhere he goes, people whisper behind his back. He doesn’t know why, when he leaned down to kiss Rosie hello, Mary was staring, wide-eyed, when he came back up. When he asked her what was wrong, she blushed, stammered, said ‘you’ll figure it out,’ and mouthed something at John. Mummy and Daddy were positively beaming at the latest installment of family dinners (they phoned Eurus at one point, and Sherlock couldn’t even look at the device while her voice was coming out of it. Too many feelings swarm through his chest when he thinks about his sister.).

Same thing happens when he thinks about Molly, except those feelings are warm and soft and fluttery as opposed to the cold, slimy ones Eurus seems to inspire. He tries to avoid the Morgue, however, because he’s not interested in being slapped again. Somehow, it feels like that would hurt worse than it did before, though he doesn’t care to examine why that might be.

However, Sherlock Holmes is not particularly gifted with impulse control, so he finds himself striding into Bart’s on a rainy day. John was busy and Mary was cross (he suspects that another Watson will be making its way into the world in around seven months, but he’s keeping that deduction to himself for now) and he didn’t have any cases, so, really, what else was he meant to do? And if he’s been wanting (more than wanting – yearning, really) to see Molly for quite some time, well, that just makes it all the more understandable, yes?

“What are you doing here?” she asks immediately upon his entrance to the lab, and Sherlock has to stop and stare.

She is not looking well. She has bags under her eyes, paler than even a fair-skinned person living in Britain should be, and the exhaustion she’s feeling is clear in her movements. And she’s lost at least six pounds. What on earth could be the matter?

“Are you all right?” he asks, instead of answering her question.

“I’m fine,” she says curtly, pulling off her gloves with two loud snaps and tossing them in the bin with vigour. “What do you want?”

“I just – ” Sherlock is taking a back. He wasn’t expecting a warm welcome – their last interaction was bound to leave some tension, after all – but he wasn’t expecting this open hostility. “I – ”

“I’m not finding body parts for you,” she says, reaching for a paper cup of coffee that is cooling on the counter. “So you can piss off if that’s why you’re here.”

“That’s not – ” Sherlock begins, and finds himself frustratingly wrong-footed by Molly’s unpleasant demeanor. “That’s not why I’m here, Molly, and you’re intelligent enough to know it.”

There is a clatter in the corridor, and he turns to look out the window to see what it is, and Molly lets out a gasp and there is a squelch as her coffee cup hits the ground. Sherlock turns back around, startled. Molly is shaking, eyes wide, coffee splattered across the ground, and he has had enough of this.

“What?” he demands. “What could possibly – ”

“You’re… you…” Molly stammers, and there are tears filling her eyes, flowing down her cheeks. “Sherlock, you…”

“I what?” Sherlock asks, exasperated and snappish, his irritated and antsy feelings exacerbated by Molly’s tears. He is so tired of –

And then Molly has flung her arms around his waist and is sobbing into his chest and that’s distracting enough that Sherlock gives up on trying to figure her reactions out and instead returns the embrace. She cries for a long time but Sherlock finds that he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind holding her close and making the ‘shh, shh’ noises that seem the universal language of comforters. When she’s finally calmed down she pulls back, scrapes a hand across her eyes.

“I love you,” she says, and she doesn’t stutter or blush and Sherlock can only blink at her. What on earth could have prompted – “Hold still a moment.”

And she walks around behind him, tsks at him when he tries to turn and look and ask what she’s doing, and uses her phone to snap a picture of the back of his neck.

“Molly,” he says, feeling thoroughly discombobulated, “what is going on?”

She smiles at him, reaches way up to brush a curl away from his face.

“I love you,” she says again, and hands him her phone.

He has his mouth open to inquire after the motivation for these unprompted confessions when he actually looks at the picture she’s taken and his mouth falls open.

I love you.

Written in the hurried, messy script he knows Molly uses.

I love you.

In black, bold, unapologetic letters.

I love you.

It’s too much, too much, and he drops the phone. Molly catches it (her reflexes are much better than anyone gives her credit for) and sets it on her desk.

“Darling,” she says softly, and pulls up her sleeve to show him the Let me know when you’ve got it scrawled across her forearm.

“Oh,” he says. He feels rather as though he’s been shot again. Everything is spinning, there’s a roaring in his ears, I love you. He feels small but steady hands steering him towards a chair, and his knees buckle when he reaches it. “Yours is rather unfortunate.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Molly agrees. “It’s from that time you asked me for a head, remember?” Sherlock does, and supposes that there are worse things he said then that could have been written on her arm. He should be thankful.

“That’s when you realized you were in love with me?” he asks, slightly amused.  Or he would be, if he wasn’t feeling so stunned.

“Yes,” says Molly, looking shy. “Silly, I know.”

“No,” blurts Sherlock, who is not accustomed to blurting and needs a moment to adjust after the words are out of his mouth. Molly looks at him, wide-eyed, just as surprised as he was.  “Not – ” He feels like his throat is closing up. This is much more difficult than he was expecting. “You’re not silly.”

Her eyes, which had been sharpened with curiosity and concern and trepidation, soften, and Sherlock isn’t quite sure what to do with that.

“It’s a bit of a shock, isn’t it?” she says gently, “finding out that you have a soulmate.”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, and then he thinks about when he asked for that head. How long, how very long, Molly has been waiting for him. “Molly – ”

She reads him like a book and shakes her head, smiling. She still has tears in her eyes but they don’t bother him now that he knows why they’re there, and that they’re not bad.

“It’s all right,” she says, and her voice is so tender that he feels tears of his own prickling at the back of his eyes. For the love of – “You’re worth waiting for,” she says, and then turns red and looks embarrassed by her own boldness.

“Oh,” Sherlock says, and then, because John is right, he is an idiot, he’s only just realized that - “Molly, I love you.”

She makes a small noise and then he’s kissing her, kissing her with everything he has in him and everything he’s had in him and everything in between, and she’s melting into him and it’s heavenly and Sherlock thinks that he might possibly, at last, see the point of soulmates.

Chapter Text

Mary has always been quite a good demon. She doesn’t mind torturing, tricking, tempting. Matter of fact, she quite enjoys it sometimes. She’s gotten multiple commendations, and has collaborated with some of the best - worst, actually, of course – on temptations and the like.

Unfortunately, Mary cannot be proud of herself, because of the stupid do-gooder angel John, whom she has encountered on rather more than a few of her – er – missions. He’s fiercely loyal, and he has bright blue eyes, and when she’s around him she wants to be good.

It’s sickening. She tries not to think about it.

But when she does, she’s forced to admit that the reason John affects her so much is that she, well… sometimes if she lets herself consider what she really wants, if she –

She fancies him.

There it is, out in the open. Mary is a good demon in every way but one, and that one is significant, because she fancies an angel. She finds herself ashamed of herself and her demonic nature when she’s in his presence. She finds herself wishing – and here she retches, because just the thought of it is so spectacularly undemonic that her biology rejects it – that John could love – no, not love, of course she doesn’t love him, she fancies him, that’s all, thinks he’s lovely, not love, not love – her back. That they could live – ugh – happily ever after.

It’s absolutely ludicrous, and Mary hates it, but there it is. She tries not to think about it too much. When thoughts of John press in on her and she’s forced to admit that she’s not a great demon, not like she’d be if she could get over this ridiculous crush, she consoles herself with the fact that Molly is an even worse demon than her.

At least when Mary goes topside, she does her job. She tempts and teases and corrupts souls like the best of them, and if she sometimes feels guilty then that’s for her alone to know. Molly, on the other hand… Molly loves people. She loves teenagers and kids and the elderly and everyone in between. On her evenings off she’ll wander through hospitals dispensing curses on shaky hands and scattered brains so that surgeons find themselves making steady incisions and physicians make extremely accurate diagnoses and helpful prescriptions. She’s one of the gentlest souls that Mary has ever known.

She shouldn’t have Fallen.

Mary knows it’s blasphemy, but she’s also a demon and doesn’t care. Molly should still be in Heaven, reveling in the Lord’s Grace and Love, free to dish out as many blessings as she’d like. Instead she’s down here, cut off from God, pale and thin and sad, all the time. She gets caught, sometimes, because Molly’s affection for humans exceeds her care for her own well-being, and is subjected to the kind of punishments that Hell bestows on traitors. Mary always watches, because she’s the closest thing Molly has to a friend. She never cries, because she’s a good demon, but she always wants to.

If the demons involved in the torture sometimes disappear under suspicious circumstances, well, sowing strife and discord and causing pain are part of Mary’s job description.

Mary didn’t know about Sherlock until 1351, when Molly, bright red and stammering, asked her for a favour.

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” she said, in that awkward, hesitant way of hers. “And I really don’t mind doing it, it’s just – well, I’d rather not be in Sweden just then, I’d like to be in Greece, and I know it’s – well, if you don’t – ”

“I’ll do it,” Mary had interrupted, and Molly had broken into such a bright, beaming smile that Mary had been forced to cover her eyes. “Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it,” she’d grumbled, although, truth be told, she wasn’t particularly upset. She had reason to believe that John was going to be in Copenhagen around the time this temptation was supposed to be performed, and if they happened to bump into each other…

That’s exactly what happened. She and John bumped into each other, and she tempted him into taking a stroll with her (tempting angels is always a good idea; looks good in the reports), and he mentioned that his friend was in Greece.

“So’s mine,” said Mary, thoughtlessly, and then hastily amended, “acquaintance, I mean. I’ve an… acquaintance. In Greece.”

“Hmm,” said John, looking at her in the way that always made her melt a little. He had the most gorgeous eyes. “My friend’s name is Sherlock.”

“Mine’s Molly,” said Mary, distracted by the gorgeousness of John’s eyes, and then wanted to strangle something for mentioning a name and not making it clear that she didn’t have friends. Before she could amend her statement, though, John’s eyes were widening.

“You know Molly?” he said, voice sounding very strange.

“Do you?” scoffed Mary, because why would John… but then she looked at him, and he looked at her, and she felt her stomach drop. “Why do you know Molly?” she demanded, heart (which she didn’t need, strictly speaking, but found quite comforting, though she’d die before telling anyone that) pounding. Why did Upstairs know about Molly? What were they –

“Sherlock knows her,” said John, “and he won’t shut up about her.”

Something in his tone soothed Mary, but she had to be sure.

“What? What’s he planning?”

She saw comprehension dawn on John’s face, and he hastened to reassure her because he is an absolute darling.

“Nothing bad!” he said quickly. “He…” John looks at her, clearly hesitating, and Mary rolled her eyes.

“You can trust me,” she said. “I won’t run around blabbing your holy secrets to anyone.” And then, because John looked distinctly uncomfortable, “It’s fine. Out with it!”

“Well,” John said, looking torn. “He, um…” and he leaned in, and Mary shivered a little at his warm breath on her ear. “If I didn’t know better,” he whispered, “I’d say he fancies her.”

And if that didn’t send a jolt right through Mary. She, a demon that was romantically interested (fine, she doesn’t just fancy John, she has never just fancied John, she thinks that he’s thoroughly wonderful in every way and has for a very long time) in an angel, was unorthodox enough, but for an angel to be interested in a demon!

“Wow,” she said, shocked into speechlessness.

“I know,” John had said, still in the undertone. “Between you and me, Mary – ” and she’d shivered again, because she does so like to hear her name in his voice – “Sherlock has never been a very good angel.” He widened his eyes meaningfully.

“Maybe it’s meant to be then,” said Mary, and snorted at the shocked face John pulled. “Oh, shut it. Irreverence is part of the job description.”

“Mm,” said John, still looking a little shaken. “Why would it be – erm – meant to be?”

“Molly’s not very good at being a demon, either,” Mary told him, and she was the one lowering her voice this time. “To be perfectly honest with you – painful as it is – she’s absolute rubbish at it.”

“Hmm,” said John.

And from that moment forward she and John had an Arrangement – one in which both of them did their best (well, in her case, worst) to bring together one Sherlock, Principality, and one Molly, Demon. John felt comfortable working towards this end because Love is Good, and Mary was more than comfortable working for it because corrupting an angel would probably mean another commendation.

Unfortunately, the Arrangement never seemed to lead to anything. Through the years (and decades, and centuries), Mary and John cunningly brought Sherlock and Molly together in Italy, Moscow, Cambodia, Rio de Janeiro, even New York (and wasn’t that a time to remember), all to no avail. Though there were many longing looks and soft stares, Sherlock and Molly remained resolutely on opposite sides.

Though it was disappointing, Mary couldn’t find it in herself to mind that much. Of course she hated that Molly, who had seen so much of death and destruction and felt so much sadness and deserved to be happy, was kept pining after someone she might never have, but on the bright side the Arrangement gave her excuses to meet up with John.  She and he grew… well, close is an oxymoron, isn’t it, for an angel and a demon, but she, at least, grew fond of him. Fonder. Than she’d been already.

And then none of that mattered because the end of the world was at hand, Armageddon rushing towards them like a freight train, and Mary had no choice but to suit up, gird her loins with evil, brace for the clash.

She never prays, for obvious reasons, but if she ever did she would have then, to be spared the pain of having to face John in battle. To look what she was in the face. To admit that she could never be with him, ever, in the way she wanted.

Wants. Because suddenly everything was topsy turvy and the end of the world was cancelled and everyone was defecting and who was she to go against the flow?

And now here they are. A lot of confusion and a few scuffles later, Sherlock and Molly are standing in the middle of St. James’ Park, looking deeply into each other’s eyes, and Mary and John are accidentally elbowing each other from their vantage point in the bushes.

Mary watches with bated breath as Molly flutters her eyelashes up at Sherlock.

“Honestly,” John mutters from beside her, “how could he ever think she didn’t feel the same way? He’s an idiot.”

“Shh!” hisses Mary, and John glares at her but he also shuts up.

They’re talking, now, in low, murmury voices that aren’t loud enough to eavesdrop on. Mary starts to use her infernal senses, but John stops her with a look.

“That’s cheating,” he says, looking disapproving.

“Snob,” says Mary, sticking out her tongue.

A few more words are exchanged, and then Molly is crying. Mary is seconds away from barging out of their hiding place and giving Sherlock a piece of her mind, but then he’s leaning down and giving Molly the tenderest, sweetest, most beautiful kiss Mary has ever seen and she decides not to.

“Lovely,” says John, and when she looks at him he’s grinning ear to ear. “About time they found some happiness.”

“Yeah,” says Mary, and John turns to look at her. She blushes hotly, suddenly aware of how much of her hidden longings she was unconsciously wearing on her face.

“You know,” says John, and she could be wrong but she thinks he’s blushing, too, “if you – if I – if we – ”

“Yeah,” says Mary, heart swelling. She’s dreamed of big speeches, of being swept off her feet (because if you’re going to give in and want things that make you a bad demon then why not go all the way?), but it turns out that John’s stammered ‘ifs’ tell her everything she wants to know.

“Really?” he says.

“Yeah,” she says again.

“Oh,” he says, and then they look at each other for a minute, and then they’re kissing, and Mary thinks, fuzzily, as she receives the best (and first) kiss of her life, that she is very glad that the world didn’t end.

Chapter Text

Molly doesn’t like – has never liked – large crowds. She doesn’t like making conversation, she doesn’t like feeling squished by the throngs on the streets, she doesn’t like lots of people. This natural introversion is probably part of why she chose a career where she never has to speak to anyone except her boss and colleagues.

But Molly has never wanted to be alone.

She has never wanted this emptiness. The knowledge that she’s one of the only ones left. She sips some tea – it’ll be one of her last cups; the tea bags in her cupboard are running out – and tries to keep the tears at bay.

It happened so fast. It spread like wildfire. She worked as long as she could, doing autopsies and taking increasingly careful precautions, until finally Mike told her to go home.

“No point in staying,” he said, coughing. Blood had dribbled down his chin, and she could see it through the makeshift hazmat suit he wore. Molly, who has historically eaten lunch with one hand while slicing a cadaver open with the other (not approved procedure, and she’d been really careful), felt her stomach roll. “Go home. Stay safe.”

She’d given him a tight smile, as warm as she could manage.

“I’d hug you bye if I could,” she said, awkward to the end, “but… well…”

“I know,” said Mike, who had been diagnosed several days before. “I’ll miss you, Molly.”

“You, too,” she said, and she waved and went home.

‘Safe’ was a joke, in this world ravaged with sickness, but Molly had locked the doors and curled up on her couch until rioters came and hammered on them. They’d gotten in, of course, and she’d hidden under her bed with her heart in her throat. They’d found her (again, of course), but she’d been unbelievably lucky – they’d given her and her dust bunnies a cursory glance and then left.

Now, two months after they’d broken in and nearly a year after the illness had started spreading, Molly is living on borrowed time. She looks out the window at what’s left of London. Her hands shake. She spills some of her precious tea and sets her mug down on the table with a clatter.

“How has it come to this?” she asks, knowing full well that she’ll never get an answer. A year – how has the world all but ended in only a year? She shivers and slinks to the couch, wrapping herself in an afghan as if the chill in her bones is temperature-related.

She’s just started dozing off when there’s a knock on her door and she jolts awake.

The doorknob turns and she clutches the afghan around her, staring at it with wide eyes. There’s nothing she can do, no weapons, no nothing…

The door opens.

It’s Sherlock.

“Oh,” she says, tension draining out of her and only leaving a deep-rooted, all-encompassing exhaustion. “Oh, Sherlock – ”

And then she’s crying, hard and quiet and ugly, tears rolling down her face and coating the inside of her mouth with salt.

“Molly,” he says.

His eyes are hard and tired and pained , which shouldn’t be a surprise and is anyway.

“You’re alive,” she says, and then sobs. “I thought – ”

She thought he was dead. She thought everyone she’d ever known was dead.

“No,” he says, “I’m here. We’re – that’s why I’m here, Molly. Mycroft caught wind of what was happening early on. We’ve started a – well, I suppose you could say colony if you wanted to, though it’s more a bunch of people huddled in a basement – ”

“We?” Molly says, voice shaky. She’d been so sure that everyone was dead. “Who’s we?”

“Myself,” says Sherlock, and then shakes his head. “Obviously myself. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she whispers. The shock has set in and she can’t think very clearly. The fuzz in her brain is sort of nice, though.

He looks at her in a way she’s only seen a few other times, and she thinks that he’ll come over and hug her – she prays that he’ll come over and hug her – but he doesn’t.

“Um, well, John. Mary. Rosie.”

The Watsons. The Watsons are alive. Oh, that is good to hear. Molly feels herself start crying again.

“Mycroft, of course, and Lady Smallwood – not her husband, he was one of the first to contract it, it was quite unfortunate – and Mrs Hudson and Wiggins. Oh, and my parents and Eurus. Which – well, never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

“Oh,” says Molly again, and she can’t believe that they’re all – they’re all alive, let alone that she might be able to see them. “Could I – do you think – that is – ”

“Spit it out,” says Sherlock, who has crossed the room and started rooting in the cupboards.

“Could I come back with you?” murmurs Molly, eyes fixed on her fingers, which are twisting in the afghan. There’s a clatter – Sherlock has dropped the bowl he was holding – and she looks up to find him staring at her.

“Of course,” he says after a moment, voice creaky. “Molly, you didn’t really think – that’s why I’m here. We’ve been looking all over the city for you. You weren’t in your flat.”

“Moved,” she says. “After they broke in.”

“Who’s they?” demands Sherlock, crossing the room yet again to tower over her. It’s unreasonably comforting.

“I dunno. Random blokes.”

“Are you all right?” Sherlock asks, eyes scanning every inch of her.

“Yes,” says Molly. “They didn’t, er, do anything.”

“That’s good. That’s – ” he clears his throat. “That’s very good.”

“Yeah,” says Molly.

“And after that? You came here? Because I came here, too, not all that long ago – ”

“I’ve been moving around,” she mumbles, not meeting his eyes. It’s ridiculous, but she’s ashamed of it. “Scavenging, I guess. Finding places that seemed unlived in and… living in them. Until I run out of… stuff.”

Sherlock is quiet, and she looks up, expecting to see disdain or disgust or something along those lines. Instead his eyes are soft and filled with something she doesn’t dare give a name to, because it makes her tummy flutter in a way that it hasn’t in a very long time.

“You’re a survivor, Molly Hooper,” he says quietly. “You’ve done well. I’m glad I’ve found you.”

“Oh,” says Molly again. She doesn’t know what else to say.

“Well, then,” says Sherlock, clapping his hands together and shattering the moment. “I’ll grab these – ” he fills his arms with the last of the tea bags and the peanut butter jar and a couple of dishes – “and we can be on our way.”

She has never felt so relieved, ever, in her life. As soon as she descends the stairs into the labyrinthine and shockingly clean tunnels that have apparently been underneath of London this entire time, Rosie Watson makes a beeline for her.

“Auntie Mawly!” she bellows, and Molly scoops her up and buries her face in the tiny, sticky neck.

Alive, alive, alive.

She feels more arms encircle her, and when she surfaces again, her cheeks are wet and Mary and Mrs Hudson have a hold on her.

“Hi,” she says, and bursts into tears.

Sherlock’s back is starting to ache, but he’s not leaving. Not when Molly’s been –

He shudders.

The thought of her making her way through London, small and scared and alone, makes him very shaky and even more uncomfortable. He’s never done very well with showing it – matter of fact, he’s done an absolutely terrible job of showing it, and he’s not proud (has never been proud) of how he’s behaved towards her – but he cares about Molly Hooper.

Deeply. He cares deeply.

“How’s she doing?” asks John in an undertone, pulling aside the curtain that marks a ‘room.’ He checks Molly’s pulse, listens to her breathing.

“Fine,” says Sherlock. “She hasn’t moved since you left.”

“Mm,” says John, sitting down on the chair on the other side of Molly. “And how are you doing?”

“Me? I’m great,” says Sherlock bitterly. “Why wouldn’t I be? She’s been scrounging about London to survive while we’ve been lounging around down here.”

“Shut up,” says John, and Sherlock, despite himself, can’t help being impressed with how good Mary has been for him. “You’ve been running yourself ragged trying to find her.”

“I – ” Sherlock begins, but John keeps going.

“You care, Sherlock,” he says. “You care very deeply about Molly Hooper, and the world has ended and our lives as we knew them are completely over and if you don’t admit to yourself how much you love her then you’re going to be absolutely miserable.”

Sherlock gapes at him, quite thrown by the world love.

“I – ” he tries again, but John shakes his head.

“You need this,” he says. “So does she.” He falls silent and looks at Molly’s still, pale face. “Take what happiness you can get, mate,” he says eventually, standing up from his chair. “It’s in short supply these days.”

Molly wakes up to a dry throat and a sense of hope that she hasn’t felt in a very long time. She coughs, sneezes, hiccups; her little routine every time she wakes up in a place she doesn’t know. She’s been doing that since she was a kid, and doctor though she is, she has no idea why. She stretches, and smiles, because she’s alive and other people are alive, too, and she gets to live with them, and she opens her eyes.

Sherlock is sitting in a chair beside her bed.

“Morning,” he says.

“Morning,” she says, startling into a sitting position. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to – ”

“Please don’t apologize,” he says, not looking at her.

“Okay,” she says. “You all right?”

He meets her eyes, and there’s that something again. It takes her breath away.

“It has recently come to my attention,” he says slowly, “that I… care about you.”

Molly can’t keep from snorting at that.

“Prick,” she says. “I know that.”

“Yes, but – ” Sherlock looks irritated with her reaction and frustrated with himself for struggling to say whatever it is he wants to say. “But a lot,” he says.

“I know that, too,” Molly says, slightly amused. “You said you loved me to save my life, and I know you’d rather be tortured than say that you… well. I know you do, Sherlock. And you know I care a lot about you, too.”

“Yes,” says Sherlock, and he’s definitely frustrated, “but the thing is…” His throat is dry and he clears it. “I do.”

She shakes her head.

“I just woke up. You do what?”

“Love you,” he says, and immediately feels both immense relief and regret.

She stares at him, eyes comically wide, breathing shallow.

“What?” she breathes at length.

Sherlock breathes in, breathes out. Breathes in again.

“I love you, Molly Hooper,” he says. “I love you… a considerable amount. And I… well. Now seemed like an appropriate time to say it. End of the world and all.”

“Sherlock,” Molly says, and she knows her mouth is hanging open but she can’t seem to shut it. “You – I – you – ”

“If you’re trying to say that you love me, too, I know that,” he says, and that snaps her out of it.

“You’re insufferable,” she says, and he grins – an actual, genuine smile. It warms Molly all the way through.

“I’ll just leave then, shall I?” he says, rising from his chair. It was a bluff, but Molly’s annoyed with him for Han Soloing her.

“Yes, you do that,” she says, “and send Mary in.”

He gapes at her, indignant and offended, and she can’t help laughing.

“Oh, fine,” she says. “You could come here and kiss me instead.”

And that’s exactly what he does.

Chapter Text

"No," says Sherlock.

"Yes," says John.

Most of the time, when they have this conversation (read: argument), Sherlock wins. Most times, Sherlock does not have a small Rosie Watson sitting on the floor of his living room, looking up at him with impossibly big blue eyes.

" No !" says Sherlock, again. 

" Yes !" says Mary.

"Please?" says Rosie, and Sherlock is done for. The child has had him wrapped around her little finger since she was born. It's infuriating. 

"Fine," he groans, and stomps down the hall to his bedroom. 

"Real mature, Sherlock," snarks John. 

Once he's dressed and sitting in the back seat of the Watsonmobile with Rosie, Sherlock is feeling much more okay with the whole situation. He likes his friend's child, and if she really wants him to accompany her to the doctor's office while she gets her shots, then so be it. 

"Okay, Rosie," says John as they pull up to the children's hospital entrance. "Off you go!"

Sherlock clambers out of the car (he doesn't like how close to the ground it is; makes it very difficult to make graceful entrances and exits) and opens the door for Rosie before offering her his hand. 

"Down you go, milady," he says grandly, but she doesn't laugh like she normally does. "Something wrong?" he asks when she takes his hand with one of hers and Mary's with the other one. 

“I’m scared,” she admits, ducking her face. 

“Oh, it’ll be fine, love,” says Mary. “A quick pinch and then it’s all over.”

“And,” Sherlock adds, “I’ll be right here the entire time.”

Rosie brightens at that, and Sherlock feels a pang of guilt. He does do a lot of… leaving. He mentally resolves to be a more reliable support.

They check in with the receptionist and then sit down in some squishy, garish chairs in the waiting room. Sherlock plays a word game with Rosie to keep her occupied. John jogs in, out of breath, just as a voice calls, “Rosie Watson?”

“That’s you!” Sherlock tells his playmate, and then looks towards the source of the voice. 

Oh , he thinks, she’s pretty , and then promptly blushes. He never thinks that people are pretty. John gives him a look, and it’s far too knowing for Sherlock’s liking. He returns a glare and follows his goddaughter (and the pretty doctor, but that’s beside the point) down the hall.

“All right, Rosie,” says the doctor, “my name’s Doctor Hooper, but you can call me Molly.”

Molly . 

It suits her.

“You’re in for some vaccinations?” Doctor Hooper (Molly) continues brightly, glancing over some folders.

“Yes,” says Rosie, and promptly starts crying. 

“Oooh, love,” says Mary, and bundles her daughter into her arms. (Sherlock feels that the doctor and the patient and two parents and one godfather are entirely too many people in the room, but Rosie wanted him here and so of course he’ll stay.) “It’ll be all right.”

“It is scary,” says Molly (Doctor Hooper, actually, he doesn’t know her at all) understandingly, but not patronizingly. Rosie must like her tone, because she separates herself a little from her mother’s chest. “It does hurt a bit, but it’s over soon and once you’re done you can pick a treat from my little box of goodies.”

Rosie perks up. Sherlock tries to feel disgusted by the fact that she says ‘box of goodies’ but he’s distracted by the furrow of her brow as she concentrates on filling the syringe. 

“All right, sweetheart,” she says, grabbing an alcohol wipe. “Can Mummy help you get your jumper off?” 

Mary obligingly helps peel Rosie’s jumper off of her, and then Doctor Molly Hooper, who is very pretty, Sherlock is starting to think, perhaps even bordering on beautiful, rubs the wipe on Rosie’s arm.

“Do you like watching TV, Rosie?” Molly (Doctor Hooper, that’s her name, that’s appropriate) asks, turning away and fumbling with the syringes. 

“Yes,” says Rosie.

“What’s your favourite show?” asks Doctor Hooper, and by the time Rosie has finished informing Doctor Hooper of the finer points of Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure Molly has finished the injections and cleared away all evidence. Rosie never even noticed .

“Well done!” Doctor Hooper tells her, anyway, and Sherlock watches in fond exasperation as Rosie, all flushed cheeks and acceptant of praise, digs around in the ‘goodie box.’ He tries not to think about how lovely Doctor Hooper is, holding the box and ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ing over everything Rosie lifts out, despite the fact that she herself is the one that bought the little toys in the first place.

Molly waves Rosie Watson off with a smile. 

“Bye!” she says, waving, as Rosie waltzes off with her new water pistol. (It is cheap and flimsy and will probably fall apart soon, but that in no way diminishes anyone’s delight.) 

“What do you say?” Rosie’s mum (Mary?) prompts.

“Thank you!” Rosie says, throwing a glance over her shoulder. 

“My pleasure,” says Molly, and she means it. She loves the kids she works with. 

Her breath catches in her throat when the tall, dark and curly-haired man (Rosie’s uncle?) in the fancy coat gives her a nod and walks past her into the hallway. She gives him a little wave and “Bye!” and then promptly regrets it, but she’s so flustered by his ridiculously sharp cheekbones and unsettlingly lovely blue eyes that she can’t dwell too much on it. 

“He’s into you,” says Rosie’s dad, smirking a little.

“Oh!” says Molly, stunned and pleased and unsure of how to respond. “I - er - ”

“Here’s his number,” says Mr. Watson (whose name, she suddenly remembers, is John), handing her a scrap of her own paper. It has a telephone number scribbled on it with her own pen. “You should call him. He’s a snob and an idiot and very difficult to get a long with but he’s also a good person and he’s gone on a total of three dates since I’ve met him. You’d be good for him.”

“You don’t know me,” says Molly, stupidly. She has never had anything like this happen to her before. “You don’t know that I - ”

“He was watching you,” says John Watson, and it should leave her feeling creeped out and unsettled but instead it makes her feel flattered and flustered and happy. “You’d be good for him.”

“Oh,” she says.

“And besides,” says John, inching past her (she’s somehow occupied most of the space in the doorway in her shock), “Rosie and Mary and I all like you, and that’s pretty much the one and only requirement for anyone in his life. Give him a ring and come for dinner sometime.”

“Okay,” says Molly. She really doesn’t know what to say.

“Okay,” echoes John, flashing her a smile. “Be seeing you.”

And he turns and strides after his wife and daughter and friend, leaving Molly to lean against the doorframe, catch her breath, and try to make sense of what just happened.

Chapter Text

Molly is five years old when she meets Sherlock Holmes. 

She’s playing in the garden, making up a story about a queen and a dragon and a pirate, when a boy with curls and tears in his eyes appears, as if by magic, in front of her. 

“Why are you crying?” she asks, because she is five years old and has a question and can think of no reasons not to ask for an answer.

“That is none of your business,” the boy snaps in return. 

“What’s your name?” asks Molly.

“Not telling you,” says the boy.

“Mine is Molly,” she says, feeling uncertain. She’s never heard anyone talk like this before. 

“I don’t really care,” says the boy, making a face and then looking away.

Hurt, Molly bows her head to continue her story, which is being acted out by the tiny figures she was gifted with for her birthday. The boy watches, sniffling, wiping his eyes every now and then, but doesn’t say anything until - 

“Pirates don’t talk like that.”

“That’s what Mummy says pirates talk like.”

“Well, they don’t.”

“How do they talk, then?” Molly asks. This boy is silly. Everyone knows that pirates say things like ‘ahoy’ and ‘argh’ and ‘matey.’

“Not telling you,” says the boy, and Molly plants her hands on her hips.

“That means you don’t know!” she says.

“No, it doesn’t!” says the boy, who sounds aggravated. “I’m going to be a pirate one day, of course I know how they talk!”

“Oh!” says Molly, distracted by this career aspiration. She’s never met anyone who wanted to be a pirate. “Why won’t you tell me, then?”

He looks surprised by the question, and takes a moment to think. 

“Don’t want to,” he says eventually.

“Oh,” says Molly. “That’s okay.”

“Is it?” he says, looking at her strangely. 

“Yes,” says Molly. “Mum says that you don’t have to tell anyone anything if you don’t want to.”

The boy looks entirely taken aback at that. Molly waits for him to say something, but she doesn’t, so she prepares to return to her story.

“Sherlock,” says the boy, rudely interrupting the queen, who was about to grant the pirate pardon. “My name’s Sherlock.”

Molly smiles at him.

*

When Molly is thirty-nine years old, Sherlock tells her that he loves her. 

It’s a far cry from the fantasies she’s been harboring since childhood. It’s rough and sharp and it hurts both of them very, very much.

But Sherlock tells her that he loves her, and it changes everything. 

Not immediately, of course. Sherlock is good at avoiding conversations he doesn’t want to have. But Molly has gotten better at confrontation since they were children, and after a week of replays of his “I love you,” after analyzing the tone and volume and timbre of it til she nearly goes mad, she has enough. She puts on her coat and flags down a taxi and marches into the living room of the newly rebuilt 221b Baker Street.

“All right, Sherlock,” she announces, stomping into the living room. Sherlock jumps violently and drops the phone he was holding. “We need to have a chat.”

“For goodness ’ sake ,” he hisses. “You can’t just - ”

“Oh, I can,” says Molly, crossing her arms. Her courage is failing her but her anger is fuelling her. “It’s been thirty years, Sherlock. Thirty bloody years that I’ve let you tell me what to do. What not to do. That I’ve been absolutely mad for you and never gotten anything in return.”

“Molly - ” he tries, looking immediately ashamed, and it’s a mark of how furious she is that she is undeterred by it. 

“No,” she says, and her voice is shaking and there are tears in her eyes but she is going to say this. “I love you, Sherlock.” Her voice breaks but she takes a deep breath, ploughs on. “I do, I always have, but I can’t do this anymore. I won’t do this anymore. You either tell me that you meant what you said on the phone, or I walk out of here and you never get to see me again. I can’t keep…” her voice fails her and she angrily wipes tears out of her eyes. “Please,” she says, and it’s little more than a whisper. She wishes that she could hold the tears back, look stronger, but it’s Sherlock. She’s known him since they were kids. He knows exactly how strong she is. She doesn’t have to prove anything. 

Sherlock stands up, crosses the room. He’s so close. Her heart pounds. 

“I…” he starts, and then stops and clears his throat. “I have treated you very, very badly, Molly.” 

“I should think so,” says Molly. 

“I have taken advantage, taken you for granted, and generally been a self-absorbed arsehole that never deserved any of your time or affection.”

It’s true, but Molly can’t find it in herself to say anything. Her throat is closing up.

“I have asked things of you that I never had any right to, given you responsibility that never should have been on your shoulders, demanded more of you than anyone ever should.” When she forces herself to meet his gaze, his eyes are filled with tears. “I could never deserve your love,” he says, “and can never make amends for what I’ve done to you.”

“You’re bloody well right,” mumbles Molly, but her breathing won’t stop hitching and her pulse is hammering in her throat. 

“And yet,” says Sherlock, and he takes both of her hands in his. “I cannot stop myself from wanting to.”

Her mind has gone fuzzy. His hands are warm, and shaking a little. Or maybe that’s her. His grip is tight, uncomfortably so. His voice is ringing with emotion, and with genuinity. Molly feels her heart sing. 

“I meant it, Molly,” he whispers, and brings her hand up to his lips to press a kiss to it. “I love you.” 

Molly thinks about small children in a garden, about hours spent laughing in the garden with books, about drugs and pain and hurt. 

“Oh,” she says, and kisses him.

Chapter Text

“Your city is in ruins,” observes Moriarty, and the gloating tone in his voice sets Sherlock’s teeth on edge. “The people are terrified. You are - ” He stops and looks down. “You’re wrapped in my cape,” he says, blinking.

It’s a mark of how rattled Sherlock is that he’s confused, at first. 

“No, I’m not,” he says.

“Not you,” says Moriarty, and he follows the villain’s gaze. Somehow the sight of Molly huddled on the floor of her cell, swaddled in Moriarty’s cape, manages to make him feel exasperated, amused, and fond at the same time. 

“It’s cold down here, and you left it in reach. If you weren’t too cheap to run some central heating through your lair, I wouldn’t have had to resort to thievery.”

“Oh, you’re adorable ,” coos Moriarty, and although Sherlock secretly agrees with this assessment he wants nothing more than to make Moriarty pay for making it. “I’ll just have to keep you forever and ever if you carry on like that.” 

“I don’t think so,” says Sherlock stiffly. He’s been trained and trained and trained to keep his powers under control, but right now he is inches away from delving deep into Moriarty’s mind and using what he finds to get Molly out of here . “That’s what I’m here to prevent.”

“Oh, really?” queries Moriarty, looking delighted. “Why? Why you ?”

“Yes, why did they send you, Sherlock?” asks Molly from the floor, where she’s wrapped the blanket around herself until her face is the only thing visible. It’s stony, but her voice isn’t.

“She’s been very shaky,” Moriarty informs him in an undertone, as if Molly wasn’t five feet away from them and very capable of hearing him. Sherlock feels irrationally upset by this. “I’ve honestly been a bit worried.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” snaps Sherlock. “You locked her in a cage, Jim , so forgive me if I don’t quite believe you.”

Moriarty makes a face at his name but doesn’t seem otherwise upset. 

“Oh, she doesn’t mind. Do you, darlin’?”

Molly glares at both of them. 

“I mind a lot of things,” she says testily. “Right now I mostly mind that I’m so cold . Sherlock, can I have your jacket?”

“I’ll have you out of there in a moment,” he returns, and draws the weapon that he has at his side. “Okay, well, it’s been fun but I’m really going to need you to let her go now.” 

Molly widens her eyes at him in an ‘are you serious?’ look. Sherlock shakes his head at her, confused, but before she can do anything else to communicate whatever she’s trying to say her eyes widen and he looks back at Moriarty just in time to be hit with a two by four to the face. 

*

“You’d think he’d try to have at least a little bit of finesse,” muses Molly, dabbing at his face with a corner of Moriarty’s cloak. “That plank… very crude for Jim.” 

Sherlock grunts, not feeling up to gracing the world with language. 

“Oh, sorry,” says Molly, wincing in sympathy. “Probably not feeling tiptop, are you?”

He’s not, but it has surprisingly little to do with getting hit in the face and a surprising lot to do with Molly having been held captive for upwards of two weeks. They lapse into silence until Sherlock decides to break it.

“Why’d you let him catch you?” he says without preamble. She startles at his voice and then gives him a look of disbelief. 

“What are you on about?” she asks, sounding incredulous.

“It’s been…” Harrowing. Awful. Terrifying. “Strange. Not having you around. Why - ”

“Sherlock,” says Molly quietly, but it’s the kind of quiet that from her usually precedes either a cuddle or a bollocking. (Sherlock has never been on the receiving end of the former, and is very often on the receiving end of the latter. He’s never let on how much he’d like to receive a cuddle from Molly Hooper, and he doesn’t intend to start now, but it does cross his mind that here and now would be a good moment. With the bleeding and the being captured and all.) “Why are you here?”

“To get you out,” says Sherlock, and it’s his turn to look at her like she’s an idiot. “Thought that was fairly obvious.”

“Who sent you?” Molly demands, and she’s definitely headed towards a bollocking. Sherlock cannot for the life of him fathom why she’s angry. 

“Mycroft,” says Sherlock, and only stumbles a little bit over the lie. He doesn’t lie to Molly very often, and when he does usually he’s had time to practice. 

Molly laughs, but not the delighted peal she gives when she finds something funny. 

“No, he didn’t,” she says.

“Of course he did!” returns Sherlock, indignant. “He wouldn’t leave one of his best agents sitting in a cell!”

“Sherlock,” says Molly, rubbing at her temples. “Mycroft sent me here.”

“What?” asks Sherlock stupidly. His head is spinning, partly from being dealt a blow to the head and partly because he’s now face to face with his own stupidity. Of course that’s why Mycroft was so unconcerned. Of course that’s why the Agency’s best was caught off guard by their most wanted. Of course he’s got it wrong when it matters. 

“You heard me,” says Molly, frustrated. 

“Shouldn’t have told me,” says Sherlock automatically. “Your cover - ”

“No audio surveillance. I checked.”

Sherlock wants to ask how, but he knows that he’s in no position to ask questions. He pulls his knees up to his chest and buries his face in them.

“I am very curious,” Molly says eventually, “as to why you felt the need to ignore your brother’s specific instructions to not come rescue me. You’ve spent - you don’t care about this stuff. I’ve seen you let agents languish in cells for years without losing any sleep. So why is it different this time?”

Sherlock would laugh if his head wasn’t hurting so bad. He’s played this out many, many times, but for some reason it’s never been on the floor of a psychopath’s holding cell. He wonders why, because it’s honestly not that shocking when he thinks about it. He briefly toys with the idea of trying an avoidance tactic, but there’s no point. 

“Because it’s you,” he says, and leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. 

“What?” breathes Molly, shocked. 

“Oh, come now, Agent Hooper,” he says, lifting his head up and giving her a tight smile. “You and I both know that you’re not stupid.”

“No, just - really? Me?”

“I don’t understand it, either,” says Sherlock wryly, “but it would seem so.”

“Oh,” says Molly, and mulls that over. “Well, you and I both know that you’re not stupid, either.”

“Mm,” says Sherlock, and he’d deny it even under torture but his heartbeat is quickening. 

“So you know…” prompts Molly, and he can hear her nervousness. 

“Of course,” he says, and she nods quickly.

“Right,” she says. 

She shifts her weight from one side and then she shifts it to the other and then she laces her fingers together and then she pulls them apart. Sherlock knows what he’s going to ask before he asks it and he hates how nervous the question makes it, how the thought of rejection makes him feel hot and cold by turns. 

“Do you…” he tries, and then clears his throat. There was something in it, apparently. “Would you like to share a bit of your blanket with me?” 

Molly blinks at him, and he feels foolish. 

“Never mind,” he says hastily. “I was - I didn’t - ”

“Oh, shut up, you idiot,” she says, and scooches over til she’s close to him. His breath catches in his throat as she fusses with the stolen cloak until it’s covering both of them and then leans her head on his shoulder and wraps her arm around his waist. It is heavenly .

“You were right,” he says awkwardly. “It is cold in here.” He knows he’s stiff but he doesn’t know how to relax into it.

“‘Course I was right,” Molly says, and she sounds so happy and contented that Sherlock can’t help grinning. “Now cuddle me properly.” She grabs his arm and pulls it around herself before wrapping her arm around him again. 

“Ah, that’s nice,” she sighs, pushing her nose into his bicep. 

“It - ” he’s forced to clear his throat again. He’s not sure if it’s full of happiness or love, but there’s definitely something in there. “Yes,” he agrees, when he’s successfully cleared the feelings out. “It is.”

Chapter Text

“Molly,” says Mary slowly. “Calm down.”

Molly - Queen Margaret, actually, to most of the world, but she’s never liked being called that - sucks in a deep breath and forces herself to let it out again. 

“Sorry,” she says, dashing tears away. “It’s just - ” Another sob threatens to choke her, and she rolls her eyes at herself. “I know,” she says, letting out a shuddering breath. “I’m being ridiculous.”

“No!” says Mary quickly, and draws her into a hug. Molly goes willingly. Mary gives good hugs. “It’s all right,” she says, rubbing Molly’s back. “I understand. Being queen is overwhelming. Or so I think, anyway.” She pulls away to give Molly a bright smile, which also serves to make Molly feel better. 

“It is,” she agrees. “Very.” 

“So what’s particularly overwhelming this time?” Mary asks, keeping a gentle hand on Molly’s back, and Molly can’t help but think about how lucky she is to have a friend like Mary.

Mary married John Watson, the head of security at the palace, three - no, four - years ago, and she became Molly’s personal bodyguard shortly after. Molly, whose natural introversion had left her struggling through the life of a royal, had been absolutely thrilled to discover a true friend in Mary. She didn’t coddle or suck up or cringe when Molly made a bad joke. She had a good head on her shoulders and she knew it and she didn’t shy away from imparting advice. 

Molly honestly doesn’t know where she’d be without her. 

“Sherlock,” Molly says. “He’s being - urgh.” 

“A wanker?” suggests Mary helpfully. (Most people would be wary of insulting their queen’s husband. Mary is not most people.)

“Exactly,” says Molly, and rubs her temples. “He just - ” She huffs and twiddles her fingers together. It’s silly. It’s very silly. She shouldn’t even be thinking about this, let alone - 

But it is bothering her. 

“He’s been… distant, I suppose,” she says. “And I can’t help thinking about how difficult it must be to be married to me. I know I’m not - I don’t have a lot of free time, and I’m always busy, and there are so many other people for him to spend time with , and I must be really poor company compared to them. And maybe… well, maybe he wishes he hadn’t married me.”

“Wow,” says Mary. 

“Oh, it’s silly, isn’t it,” frets Molly. “Never mind. I never should have - ”

“No,” says Mary, interrupting. “Don’t do that, please. I can’t handle your self-hatred right now. Let’s just talk about it and figure out a solution, shall we?”

Molly throws herself backwards onto the bed she’s sitting on, grateful that Mary isn’t going to coddle her. 

“But I don’t want to,” she points out, feeling dramatic and enjoying the feeling. “That’s entirely too practical. I want to sit here and complain about my husband and how he’s not paying attention to me.”

“Suit yourself,” says Mary with a shrug, standing up from the futon she’d plunked herself down on when she entered the room. “I’m off. Things to do, you know.”

“Oh?” asks Molly, propping herself up on her elbows. “What sort of things?”

“Practical ones,” says Mary, winking, and flees before Molly can shout at her.

*

Sherlock is having a good day. John agreed to follow him around the city and he’d had the chance to make some deductions about someone he wasn’t meeting in an official capacity. John even snuck him into the shooting gallery to let off some steam. He’s daydreaming about convincing Molly to shirk whatever queenly responsibilities she has on her plate this evening to take a dip in the lake with him when Mary comes striding towards them like a woman on a mission. That’s never good. 

“Your wife is upset,” she says in an undertone, and Sherlock feels his eyes widen. 

“What?” he says, quickening his pace. “Why?”

“Because you’ve been neglectful,” says Mary, and Sherlock feels his heart drop into his toes. 

He’s so extremely tired of doing his best to juggle five different balls and dropping one. 

“Not intentionally,” he says, much more snarly than he intended to.

“I’m aware,” says Mary, matching his speed, “but Molly doesn’t.” 

“Why does she - ” he starts, and then stops, forcing himself to take a breath. Not her fault. Not her fault. She needs what she needs. 

“I know,” says Mary, and Sherlock blinks, because sympathy is not something he was expecting, “but she loves you, and you love her.” 

He glares at her, mostly because it’s true, and then they’ve arrived at the door to the bedroom he shares with his wife. (Well, suite. Wing, basically. He’ll never get used to palace life, he doesn’t think.) 

“Good luck,” Mary says, and leaves him to his devices. 

Sherlock takes a deep breath and pushes open the door. 

Molly is sitting on the bed, eyes red, and he feels his heart twist a little. The fact that she can do this to him every time is more than a little irritating, but he loves her, he loves her so much, and he can do the feelings stuff for her. 

He sits down beside her and pulls her into an embrace. 

“How’s Her Majesty doing today?” he asks, voice muffled by the top of her head. 

“Mary told you, didn’t she?” Molly says flatly. 

“Er - yes.” 

Molly groans and pulls away.

“I’m sorry, Sherlock. I really don’t want to - ”

Bother it all. 

“No, I’m sorry,” he says, and talks over her when she tries to protest. “I didn’t mean to make you feel neglected, Molly, honestly.”

“I know,” says Molly, and there are tears welling up in her eyes again. “I’m being silly, Sherlock, really - ”

“Not silly,” says Sherlock firmly, even though everything in him wants to say, ‘Yeah, you are, a bit.’ “If it matters to you then it’s not silly.”

The tears escape her eyes and run down her cheeks and she swipes at them angrily. 

“I run a bloody country,” she says huffily. “I should not be this worked up over - ” she growls, frustrated with herself, and Sherlock pulls her into a hug again.

“Tell me what’s wrong, love,” he says.

She’s quiet for so long that he thinks she’s going to refuse to answer, but then she sighs. 

“Do you ever wish you hadn’t married me?” she asks, sounding so small and unsure that his heart stops beating for a moment. 

“Of course not!” he says, stunned that she would even think it. He holds her at arm’s length so he can look her in the face. “Margaret Elizabeth Hooper, I’ve been in love with you - and only you - ” (He added that for good measure. He has no idea why she’s questioning his love for her, but he figures he should cover all the bases.) “ - for years. You are brilliant, kind, and good - a good leader, a good wife, a good friend. The day I married you was the day I made the best decision of my life. I do not - and I will not - ever regret marrying you.”

“Oh,” says Molly, and she’s crying harder now. “That’s - even when I’m being difficult?”

“Especially then,” says Sherlock, cupping her face in his hands. “I know I don’t communicate it well, but I really, really love you.” 

“You foolish man,” says Molly, but she’s beaming. “You communicate it very well.” 

He kisses her, and she kisses him, and words are lost for a few minutes. 

“Especially when I’m crying,” she adds at length, when they’re both out of breath. He huffs a laugh and runs a hand through her hair. 

“I have lots of motivation when you’re crying,” he murmurs, and strokes his thumb along her cheekbone. She leans into the touch, humming. “I mean it. I love you more than anything.”

“And I you,” she says, turning to kiss his palm. “Thank you for being here.”

“Always,” he says, and she smiles.

Chapter Text

Molly takes a deep breath and tries to will away the headache she woke up with. When she was a little girl dreaming of becoming a pirate captain, authority-induced headaches somehow never entered into her calculations. Now, here she is, a throbbing in her temples because why can her crew not seem to get the slightest thing right? Her headache is quite concentrated today, on the complete and utter stupidity of a certain crew member that felt the need to tell Sherlock bloody Holmes where their ship would be today. If Molly’s honest with herself, she’d quite like to know why Sherlock was asking for their location, but regardless of how it maybe, possibly causes her heart to flutter a little, it was an unbelievably foolish move to give the details of their plans for the next few days to the one man that has challenged her control of the ocean. 

No one wanted to believe that a woman could dominate the seas, but Molly proved all of them wrong. Part of it was to do with her can-do spirit, and the rest was to do with the fact that she knew her way around a pistol (and a sword, and she’s fully capable of whipping up a grenade at short notice) and she knows how to cause anybody a truly impressive amount of pain and she’s shot countless people without flinching. (No one ever knows that she’s shed tears over every kill she’s ever made. She doesn’t let them find out.) 

Sherlock Holmes has been living on ships since he was born, she suspects. He has an older brother involved in the navy, which means that he’s got more motivation than most to stay out of the law’s way, which means that he’s an unreasonably good pirate.

Well. Good. Relative term, isn’t it?

Regardless, Sherlock has been made aware of which islands she’s been aiming for, and it’s too late to change course now. Having a ship that can withstand blasts from cannons and therefore win her sea battles unfortunately also means that she cannot go very fast. Sherlock has different priorities, given his family connections, and so nearly every ship in his fleet is made for speed. 

“Captain!” someone shouts, and points at the horizon. Ah, thinks Molly, recognizing the ship, speak of the devil and he shall appear. She recognizes both the ship and the flag. 

Shouting for her crew to prepare to parlay (no point in leaving before she finds out what he wants ), she tries not to think about how badly she’d like to go check her reflection in the frivolous and unnecessary looking glass hanging on the back of her door. She’s not sure when the bubbly, Sherlock-related feeling in her stomach started consisting of something other than anger and resentment, but she doesn’t like thinking about it too much.

Given his speed, Sherlock’s vessel ends up frighteningly close to hers within no time. 

“Ahoy!” he shouts enthusiastically, waving at her. 

“Morning,” she calls, with a more reasonable level of excitement. (Which is to say, of course, none. Honestly, what is wrong with him?) “I hear that you want to speak with me?” 

“Ah, indeed,” he says, and then frowns. “We - er - I - um - ”

“Come on,” says Molly, not sure if she wants him to hear it or not, crossing her arms. This is not helping her headache. “Say it.”

“A favour!” he says, finally, after the physician he keeps on board with him (his name is John, but Molly will never admit to knowing this) nudges him with his elbow and mutters something in his ear. “I need a favour.”

“Oh?” queries Molly wearily. “What favour?”

“Ah,” says Sherlock, and then his quartermaster (her name is Mary, although, again, Molly will never admit to possessing this knowledge, nor to the slight amount of jealousy that she feels watching both Mary and John interacting with their captain) says something to him. “We - um - ”

“We’re going to be under attack very shortly,” Mary shouts, clearly fed up with Sherlock’s stammering. “We’d like to be under your protection when that happens.”

Molly splutters.

“You can’t just ask me that!” she snaps, when she’s feeling up to talking again. 

“We just did,” says Sherlock, although to his credit he does look slightly uncomfortable. Probably a bit damaging to the pride, Molly thinks, having to ask for help. She hates it, but it softens her anger a little. 

“I assume they were close behind you and will be here any moment?” she guesses, rubbing at her temples for the fiftieth time today. This was not what she wanted from her day today. 

“Um,” says Sherlock, “yes.”

Molly curses, quietly and thoroughly, under her breath. Then she straightens up and meets his eyes. 

“All right,” she says, “fine.”

His face practically glows , and he opens his mouth to start thanking her. 

“Shut it!” she shouts quickly. “You’re going to be working for me for months to pay this off.” 

He shuts his mouth, but doesn’t look any less relieved or grateful.

*

After the battle that she had neither wanted nor needed, when there are holes in her ship and her headache has grown even worse , she and Sherlock end up talking. 

They’ve dropped anchor and come ashore, the crews of both ships, to a tiny island that they’re reasonably sure they’ll be safe on. They can’t light any fires, for obvious reasons, but they can curl up and sleep in some semblance of peace.

Molly is trying to wrap up a cut on her upper arm and swearing creatively when she, understandably, due to the angle, fails. 

“May I?” Sherlock tentatively scuttles around to face her. 

She’s so surprised to see him that she says yes. 

Before she’s processed what that means, he’s taking the cloth from her with gentle fingers. They’re warmer than she thought they’d be. 

“Thank you,” he says softly, holding her arm steady with one of his hands while he wraps the gauze around it with the other. “I know that’s not nearly enough, but… thank you.”

Molly just grunts. 

“How’d you get this?” he asks, after she’s been silent for a while.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” she exclaims, and he jumps. “Aren’t you supposed to be quiet and condescending? Why are you talking to me ?”

“Ah,” he says, finishing up her bandage. “Well, you see - the thing is - ”  

“Spit it out,” she hisses, because her head is pounding and she has no patience for stuttery pirate captains that can’t even protect themselves, “or I will stab you right here and right now.” She yanks her arm away from him. “And I won’t even feel bad about it,” she adds, for good measure. 

“I wanted to work with you before this,” he blurts, and that’s so incredibly surprising that Molly is rendered speechless. “I think - ” he rubs the back of his neck, looking bashful. Molly’s stupid heart flip-flops. She ignores it and glares at him. “We would work well together,” he says. “We complement each other. We - we could be co-captains. Good ones. So powerful, lots of the sea. You know.”

“You’re not making sense,” says Molly, but her words have no bite to them. She is inexplicably endeared by how flustered he is by this. 

“But you understood?” says Sherlock hopefully. 

“Yes,” says Molly.

“I knew you would,” he says, and he’s looking a little more like his usual cocky self. “We understand each other - another reason we’d be such good co-captains.”

Molly doesn’t say anything.

“So?” he says eventually. “What do you think?”

She doesn’t know, honestly. If it was anyone else she’d be furious at the audacity of them and probably would have done something to cause them pain by now. (She likes punching people, but she doesn’t know if her arm would do well with that right now. Probably it would have involved a blade of some sort.) But with Sherlock…

“I don’t know,” she says candidly, and shakes her head when he tries to say something. “You have some good points,” she says, “but I’m not - ” She swallows what she was going to say; it’s far too vulnerable. 

She’s worked her whole life for this. She has a reputation . If they join forces, that’ll be obliterated. 

“I don’t know,” she says firmly, clearing her throat. “You’ll have to wait.”

“Okay,” he says, even though he looks like he’d like to say more. “Least I could do.”

He’s right, and she’s in a lot more pain than she woke up with, so she nods at him, says, “Night,” and walks away. She curls up on the ground not far from the clearing he found her in and promptly drops into a deep and dreamless sleep.

And if she wakes up to find his coat draped over herself, well, neither of them ever mention it.

Chapter Text

"For the last time," says Molly, propping herself up on her elbows to glare at her best friend. " No ."

"Coward," says Eurus, and sticks out her tongue until Molly throws a pillow at her. 

Molly sighs and puts her head back down on Eurus' thickly carpeted bedroom floor. 

"Yeah," she says with a sigh, "I am."

"Oi!" cries Eurus, tossing the pillow back at Molly. "What have I said about those lovelorn sighs?" Molly flops the pillow onto her face. "I can't handle them," says Eurus, "especially since your current emotional distress is your own fault."

Molly screams into the pillow.

"You know it is," says Eurus mercilessly. "And you also know as well as I do that my brother is just a guy. There is no reason for you to be this worked up about declaring your undying love for him."

Molly screams louder. 

"Oh, hush up," says Eurus. "If you'd just tell him you wouldn't have to go through this."

Molly sits up at that.

"I'd have to go through rejection, which is worse," she says, trying for a pouty look. It garners no sympathy from Eurus so she drops it. It felt unnatural anyway. "I'm not ready for that. Besides, he's going to uni soon, anyway. It won't matter much in a couple of weeks."

Eurus levels her with the sort of 'really?' stare that only a Holmes can deliver. 

"You can't honestly believe that. You'll be even more mopey than you are now, and I'll have to put up with it."

Molly considers this. 

"Yes, but - "

"No buts. Please, for my sake, I beg you, tell the boy. I can almost guarantee you that he won't laugh in your face."

It is these sorts of assurances that make it difficult for Molly to remain resolute in her decision to never tell Sherlock Holmes just how much she lo - er, likes him. (She's seventeen. She doesn't love him yet. She couldn't. She's not old enough for those sorts of feelings, as she's been told time and again by her parents. Eurus maintains that it's only sentimental hogwash, but Molly can't help thinking that maybe it's true and her feelings now are inferior to those that she'll have later in life. 

"But you can't completely guarantee me, and therefore it's unsafe," returns Molly, and, before Eurus can get too worked up, "besides, what about Victor?" 

Eurus makes a valiant effort at looking unaffected. 

"What about Victor?" she asks, picking at a loose thread on her quilt. 

"Come on, Eurus," says Molly, and now she gets to be the one that's grinning like a madman - or madwoman, as the case may be. "Don't try to pull that with me. It may work on your mum but we've been friends since we were born. I know you better than literally anyone else."

"Fine," huffs Eurus. "I maybe, possibly - ugh - never mind."

"That's okay," says Molly, and she can't stop smiling. Teasing Eurus about her feelings is so much more fun than getting teased about her own. "You don't have to say it. I know it anyway."

"Then why'd you bring it up?" Eurus demands, throwing herself backwards onto her bed and staring at the ceiling just as broodingly as Molly had been earlier. 

"Because you can't nag at me to tell Sherlock when you have no intentions of telling Victor. That's just hypocrisy."

Eurus doesn't say anything, and Molly smiles to herself. She has a forceful personality, does Eurus, and very few people would be blunt with her like this, and if they were they’d flee or change the subject or something afterwards.

Most people aren’t Molly Hooper. She sits in silence, contemplating the ceiling, fully aware that Eurus will talk sooner or later.

“Maybe,” admits Eurus eventually. “But it’s… Scary. It’s scary, Molly.”

“I know ,” Molly says. “Why was I just screaming on your floor? You can’t tell me to face up to your brother when you can’t face Victor.”

Eurus makes a vague grumbly sound, and Molly elects to leave well enough alone.

*

Exactly three days later, there’s a knock on Molly’s door. She knows who it is - Sherlock’s knock is distinctive. It’s sharp and impatient, because Sherlock is always trying to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. No one else in this sleepy farming village is overly concerned with it.

“Morning,” she says, opening the door. “Here for the eggs?”

The Holmes have been buying eggs (and various vegetables, and poultry, usually) from the Hoopers for years . Mrs Holmes, a teacher at the local high school, had felt a bit off-kilter and out of place moving from the bustle of London to the quiet of rural Yorkshire, had found a friend in Elizabeth Hooper, and the two are still close. Mrs Holmes often says that she feels as though Molly was her child, and Elizabeth has changed every single Holmes baby’s nappies. 

“Er - no,” says Sherlock, and he looks remarkably uncomfortable. “I was wondering - would you like to take a walk?”

Molly blinks. What…

“Sure,” she says, smiling at him. “Hold on for one moment.” 

She slips back inside, tells her mum she’s going for a walk with Sherlock, endures the knowing grin and cheeky wink this elicits, and flees out the door. She had expected (understandably) that he’d have something to say, seeing as he was the one that asked her for a walk and all, but he just walks alongside her in silence. She chatters by herself for a bit, talks about school and the books she’s been reading and what happened when the pigs got into the garden the other day, and then he stops. 

She stops, too, and follows his gaze out over the river. It’s swollen, angry in the aftermath of the summer rain they’ve been having. She doesn’t find anything worth looking at, and is about to open her mouth to ask him why he stopped, when he opens his instead.

“Eurus told me,” he says, and Molly’s ears start ringing.

“What?” she asks faintly. She’s read about hearts sinking but she’s never felt it before. Until now. 

“Don’t play dumb, Molly,” he says, turning to meet her eyes. His are so incredibly blue, and she feels the jolt she always feels when she looks at them. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“Right,” says Molly, feeling faint. “I - um - ” He just looks at her, waiting for her to speak for what might be the first time ever, and she feels a surge of inexplicable anger. “Well? What do you think about it?”

He looks surprised at that. 

“Dunno,” he says, mumbly. “I had suspected, obviously, but… bit foolish of you, wasn’t it, falling in love with me ?”

And she’s not sure if it’s the fact that he knows or the fact that Eurus betrayed her trust or the fact that ‘ me ’ could mean a hundred things and all of them sting, but Molly is made furious. 

“For your information,” she hisses, “I am not in love with you.” His eyes widen at that but she doesn’t bother trying to guess why that might be. “And it was foolish, wasn’t it, just like everything I do, but it’s not like I chose you. If I’d had a choice, I would have picked anyone but you.” It’s a lie, of course, but she’s fairly sure that she sees a flash of hurt in his eyes. Well, Molly thinks, not like he hasn’t done the same to her countless times. Regardless, she’s so thrown off by the idea that she has the power to hurt Sherlock Holmes that she ends with a lame “I’m sorry that I offended you with my feelings ,” before storming away.

*

She doesn’t see him again until his going away party, which is less than an opportune time to attempt an apology. She mostly sits on a lawn chair with Redbeard, the Holmes’ dog, who has always loved her much more than she thinks she deserves. She’s more or less forgiven Eurus for her indiscretion, especially since it turns out that it was more of an interrogation than information freely given. Still, a nasty part of her whispers that Victor Trevor is right there, and if she just dropped a few hints…

“Hello,” says Sherlock, shattering her peace and her half-baked plans of revenge. 

She doesn’t answer, just bends over to give Redbeard an extra dedicated rub. 

Sherlock sighs, huffily.

“You can’t ignore me forever, Molly,” he says. 

She shoots up into a standing position and he takes a step back.

“You can’t make fun of me like that,” she snaps. 

He looks genuinely confused.

“I wasn’t trying to - ”

“I don’t care what you were trying to do! I’ve done my best to be a good friend to you, taken all the insults and endured all the exposing of my secrets, and then you expose this one and call me stupid for loving you!”

Well, drat. In the heat of the moment she forgot that she doesn’t love him. She’s also gotten louder than she meant to and people are starting to look. Eurus looks torn between delight and sympathetic fury. 

“That was not what I said,” says Sherlock, and she can tell that he’s fighting to keep his cool. “I said it was foolish .”

“Right, because there’s such a difference,” snaps Molly. 

“There is !” says Sherlock, pleadingly. “I’m not - I’ve never been good with emotions. You know that. And I felt… I don’t know, guilty. Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t want to know. You deserve better.” 

And if that doesn’t take all the wind out of her sails. 

“No, I - what?”

“I…” Sherlock looks incredibly ill at ease. “You have to know that I feel the… well, that I return… well, that I would…”

“That you what ?” gasps Molly. She cannot believe that this is happening.

“That I love you, too!” Sherlock all but shouts, and then promptly looks like he regrets it. A glass shatters. Greg Lestrade dropped his champagne flute. 

“How on earth was I supposed to know that?” Molly demands, jaw slack. This can’t be real. She must be dreaming. She’s going to wake up and feel relieved that she didn’t actually have a row with Sherlock in his family’s garden at his going away party. 

Sherlock squirms. 

“I’m not made of stone, Molly. There were lots of - I didn’t contain myself so well as I would have liked to.”

“Oh, really? Because I never got the slightest indication that you even liked me!” says Molly, lying. She did. She knew they were friends. But she’s also in shock. She deserves to be cut some slack. “How you could possibly think that I’d be able to read… I don’t know, the microscopic , unbelievably faint signals that you - I never - you can’t - ”

She splutters, feeling like she’s lost her footing. How can this be happening in front of more or less the entire village?

“Well, I do,” says Sherlock, and he sounds irritated, too. “I love you. And I really do, and I’m not going to try to pretend otherwise. And guess what else? I want to kiss you. And guess what else?”

But he never gets to tell Molly what else, because she grabs him by his silly, overdressed lapels (why is he wearing a suit? The invitation said casual .) and pulls him down to her level.

It’s awkward and a bit messy and she’s blushing bright red when he pulls away, but there’s clapping coming from the other occupants of the garden and he keeps his eyes closed for a moment and there is an unbelievably bright smile on his lips and maybe, just maybe, this isn’t the worst thing that could have happened.

Chapter Text

Sherlock is good at committing crimes.

He is so good at it, in fact, that he’s become somewhat of a legend in the world of criminals. The name of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ is whispered behind dumpsters and in alleyways and underneath bridges, and always with an undertone of fear and paranoia. He’s powerful and clever and can make you disappear with a snap of his fingers. And, unlike most people, when Sherlock Holmes makes you disappear you will never be found unless he wants you to be. Jus this NAME is enough to send the toughest, hardest, most seasoned of unsavoury persons running for the hills.

Which is why it's so humiliating to be chained to the desk of an interrogation room with his wife guffawing at him.

"You got CAUGHT!" she hoots, grinning at him with undisguised glee. 

"Really, Molly, you don't need to be so unbearably insensitive about it."

"Oh, I do," she insists, pulling out the chair and dropping into it. "What do I tell you EVERY DAY before you leave the house?"

He mumbles something with the intention of it being impossible for her to hear. She glares at him and he knows he's succeeded. 

"You say, 'be sure your sins will find you out,'" he says sullenly, crossing his arms as best he can with the handcuffs. "And it is uninspired and tired out and you shouldn't - " 

"I never mean it, you know," she says. Sherlock gapes at her. 

"You mean all this time, all those lectures about how evil unfailingly contains the seeds of its own destruction," he says slowly, "and you DIDN'T BELIEVE WHAT YOU WERE SAYING?"

"That's exactly what I mean," she says, looking unrepentant, "but it turns out I was right all along! Honestly, Sherlock, leaving your cigarette butts at the crime scene..." she shakes her head, and he knows it's partly to make her point and partly because she wants him to consider the many, many, MANY times she's told him to stop smoking because this exact scenario would happen. "Amateurish. Sloppy. I can't BELIEVE - "

"All RIGHT," Sherlock snaps, feeling both slightly amused and very, very irritated. "Did you just come here to gloat? Because that is in very poor taste, and I have better things to do. Like try to think of an explanation - " he cuts himself off with a groan and leans forward to rest his head around the table. 

"Oh, that's not my only reason," she says. "What d'you want for dinner?" 

"Fish and chips," he says, not lifting his head from the table. He needs comfort food. 

"Right," she says. "I'll swing by Wiggins' on the way home and pick some up."

Sherlock's head jerks up. 

"Why would you - " he begins, but she rolls her eyes at him. 

"No one knows, remember? Thanks to you."

Oh. He'd forgotten. 

Bill Wiggins has been convicted many, many times of many, many different things. Mostly everyone that is part of the police force knows this, but it never stops them from buying his fish and chips. They're the best in London, and it gives the cops a warm fuzzy feeling to think that they're supporting a poor, struggling druggie. They'd feel differently if they knew that his real crime is laundering enough money to buy Buckingham Palace and the chippie is just to avoid rousing suspicions, but hey. Sherlock has used some of his considerable resources to keep Wiggins out of jail, and off the real radar (because who really cares about some public indecency and carrying illicit substances?), in return for free and unobstructed use of Wiggins services. 

It's not a bad deal.

Molly is opening her mouth to say something else when the door to the room opens and Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade, who irritates Sherlock because he actually LIKES the man (against his will, of course), steps in. 

"All right, DS Hooper?" he says, looking between Sherlock and Molly with a bit of a patronizing grin. Molly is well known around the office for her crush on the man that they all want to bring into custody. Sherlock thinks with relish of the many coffees that would be spat out if word were to get out that she is, in fact, married to him. 

"Er - yeah," says Molly, ducking her head and looking for all the world like someone who's been caught with their hand in a cookie jar. Sherlock feels a rush of pride at her acting abilities, which is silly because he’s had nothing to do with them. “Sorry. I’ll just - ” she points at the door, movements jerky and awkward, and winks at Sherlock when Lestrade’s back is turned.

“Sure,” says Lestrade, still smiling indulgently. 

“Okay,” says Molly, and leaves the room.

If Sherlock’s responses to Lestrade’s questions are a little less calculated and smooth as they should have been, well, it’s not his fault that his wife is distracting.

*

Sherlock talks himself out of the police station, like he always does, and goes home, like he always does. Molly gives him a look on his way out, and he grins like an idiot all the way back to Baker Street. 

She gets home at seven, loaded down with takeaway containers. Sherlock breathes in the smell of grease and fish and his mouth waters. 

“Hello, my darling,” she says, depositing a container in his lap and disappearing down the hall. 

“How was the rest of your shift?” he calls after her. 

“Unbelievably dull,” she informs him, and there is the thump of her tripping over the box he left in the bedroom and the cursing that always accompanies a stubbed toe. He winces as he chews on a chip. “How many times?” she shouts, when she’s caught her breath. “If you must be a part of the black market, you can still leave it out of our bedroom !”

She reappears in a tank top and yoga pants and with a scowl on her face. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, attempting to look as apologetic as possible. “I just - wasn’t thinking.”

“Hmph,” she says, plopping down beside him and drenching her chips in ketchup. He makes a face. She sticks out her tongue at him and downs some fish anyway. “Was that the same sort of not-thinking that got you arrested today?” she asks presently.

Sherlock chokes. 

“Why are you bringing that up again?” he demands once he’s cleared his airway. “Can’t we just forget it ever happened?”

“Nope,” says Molly cheerfully. “You got caught, and I get to rub your face in it for the foreseeable future.”

“Didn’t get charged, though,” he offers hopefully. “Clever of me, wasn’t it, to talk myself out of it.”

“Not clever enough,” she hums, snagging one of his chips. 

“You’re insufferable,” he pouts, clutching his container protectively to his chest. 

She beams at him, and his stupid heart skips a beat. They’ve been married for years , and she still manages to knock him off-balance. 

“Love you, too,” she says, and after that what is he supposed to do but kiss her?

Chapter Text

Molly Hooper has been working with The Baker Street Boys for almost three years. 

Well, with might be a bit of an overstatement. Working for . She’s been working for The Baker Street Boys for almost three years. She got the job right after graduation, because they just wanted someone to sweep the stage and run for coffees, and she’s worked her way up to being the second-in-command of all things backstage. 

“Wiggins! The lights !” she snaps. As a former fresh-out-of-school recruit who cried more nights than not in her first few weeks, Molly always makes an effort to be gentle and nonthreatening when she’s instructing newbies. Wiggins , though… 

“Does he even care about his job?” she moans to Mary, who is the number one backstage manager. (Technically second-in-command isn’t a thing, but no one told Mary that. She made Molly a badge and everything. It’s gathering dust in her glove compartment, but she appreciates the gesture nonetheless.) 

“No,” says Mary, “but that’s because you’ve been too kind to him.”

Molly splutters, because she doesn’t like admitting that she’s a tender-hearted individual that would rather lose her job herself than fire someone else, but she can’t really deny it. 

“Don’t worry,” says Mary, wrapping an arm around Molly’s shoulders, “I’ll speak to him and clear everything up. Either he shapes up, or he goes away.”

Molly shudders at the thought of being on the receiving end of that speech. Mary can be terrifying when she wants to be. 

“Better you than me,” she says, and then prods at the arm still draped around her shoulders. “You seem happy.” Mary gets physically affectionate when she’s in a good mood. It was something to get used to. “What’s going on?”

Mary just grins at her, retracts her arm, and stalks off to shout at the sound guy. Molly shakes her head and tries not to laugh.

*

They have a show that night, and it’s chaotic and stressful and invigorating. 

None of this is out of the ordinary. Molly loves how alive she feels, scrambling around backstage, working the soundboard, and she loves how reliable the thrill is. What is out of the ordinary, what makes Molly nearly swallow her tongue, is watching John Watson, one half of The Baker Street Boys, come jogging off the stage and run straight into Mary’s arms. Molly, whose own arms are full of cords and wires and a faulty microphone, feels her jaw drop, and then feels an uncontrollable grin creep onto her face as she goes on with her post-show duties.

She feels someone watching her and glances over her shoulder. 

Sherlock Holmes , the other half of The Baker Street Boys, is watching her.

Her heart skips a beat.

She’s had a crush on him since before she even started working for him. Matter of fact, she’s had so much of a crush on him that Mary likes to inform that she’s teetering on the edge of ‘infatuated’ and nearing ‘obsessed.’ But, really, is it Molly’s fault that he’s so handsome? That his eyes all but sparkle when he’s excited about something? That he’s tall and thin and beautiful? No! It’s not! And if she’s in his presence on a more or less regular basis… 

It’s not her fault. She refuses to feel guilty. She’s only human, and everyone human is susceptible to Sherlock Holmes. Plus, she has some strong suspicions that Sherlock couldn’t care less about her, so she’s not hurting anyone but herself.

She tries to pretend she can’t feel his eyes on her and snaps at Wiggins to sweep up.

*

“Since when ?” Molly demands, bursting into Mary’s hotel room. 

Mary, who is sprawled across her bed and curled into the chest of one John Watson, raises a glass of champagne in Molly’s direction.

“Since very recently. Help yourself.”

“Oh,” says Molly, covering her eyes and stumbling backwards. “Oh, no. I can’t - I didn’t - I can’t - I’m so sorry.”

She whacks her head on a lamp and stubs her toe on what she assumes is something of Mary’s, but she can’t risk opening her eyes to find out. John sounds like he’s choking and Mary sounds like she’s giggling hysterically and Molly just wants out .

“Sorry!” she says again, flailing blindly for the doorknob. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” She finds it, and with one last, “I’m really sorry,” she turns it and falls gratefully into the corridor.

Except that she ends up colliding into someone with an ‘oomf.’ Stumbling backwards and trying to recover herself, she looks up with a thousand apologies on the tip of her tongue.

Unfortunately, all of them dry up, because it is Sherlock Holme’s bright eyes looking back at her.

This is really not her night. 

“You okay?” he asks, steadying her with an arm, and she’s surprised, like she always is, at how shy he is in real life as opposed to his boisterous and bold stage persona. Silly, because over the years she’s seen more of him behind the scenes than she’s seen him on the stage, but there it is.

“Yeah,” she blurts belatedly, brain only just remembering that it’s supposed to respond. “Just, uh, walked into something that I’d rather not have.”

She doesn’t know what she’s expecting, but it’s definitely not for him to break into a giant grin. 

“Ah, yes,” he says. “John’s been talking about her since before she started working for us. I’m honestly surprised it hasn’t happened sooner.”

“Wh - how - ” Molly struggles to phrase her question, so shocked is she. 

“How long?” Sherlock guesses, still grinning like a maniac. “A long time.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell me about it?” Molly asks, feeling baffled.

Sherlock goes red, and it’s his turn to stammer. 

“Er - well - ”

Molly smiles in what she hopes is an encouraging manner. 

“It’s okay,” she says. “The question was more rhetorical than anything.” 

“Oh,” says Sherlock, looking relieved. “Of course.”

They stand in the hallway in silence for a moment, and it’s awkward but he’s so close . Molly can smell him. He must have showered since the show, because there’s no hint of sweat or makeup, just eucalyptus and a little bit of mint. She’s just musing on how nice it is to be able to see him look more relaxed and natural when he frowns suddenly.

“Is your head okay?” he asks, stepping forward and reaching for her forehead. Her breath catches in her throat and he snatches his hand back. “It’s just, you’ve got - ” he gestures at his own face.

“Oh,” Molly says, understanding. “That’s from when I fled Mary’s room with my eyes closed in a panic and hit my head on a light fixture.”

He stares at her for a moment and then starts giggling. She stares at him for a moment (his eyes are all crinkly, and his teeth are so white) and then joins in. 

“Bit silly, isn’t it?” she says.

“Depends on what you mean by ‘silly,’” says Sherlock. “Hitting your head? Not silly. Happens to the best of us. Barging into your friend’s room when the last time you saw her she was snogging John silly? A bit.”

“Eurgh,” says Molly, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “I can’t believe - ”

“I know,” he says, mouth tipping up on one side. Molly hates how fluttery it makes her feel to see him smiling at her. “Guess we’ll have to get used to it, though.”

“Guess so,” Molly agrees, and then they lapse into silence again.

“I was on my way downstairs just now,” says Sherlock slowly, “was planning on getting a snack of some sort. If you - would you care to join me?”

“I’d love to,” says Molly, ignoring the fact that the fluttering is intensifying. 

Maybe this is her night, after all.

Chapter Text

“Sherlock,” says Molly, very clearly and very slowly. “We have been over this. You cannot go around drinking the blood of political leaders you don’t like!” 

“But the corruption adds flavour!” Sherlock says, pouting. 

Molly honestly doesn’t know what to do. It’s bad enough that her boyfriend is a vampire. It’s even worse that he’s rooming with Molly - very illegally. (Vampires and werewolves and any other humans-turned-monsters are supposed to be reported and then impounded in ‘containment facilities.’ Everyone knows that these so-called ‘containment facilities’ are places of death, and so the reports of any sort of monster are few and far between.) It’s the worst that he refuses to listen to reason and insists on sneaking out to do terrible things when Molly is working night shifts.

“Look,” says Molly, “I know that you don’t like the taste of the blood bank portions I smuggle back for you.” Sherlock wrinkles his nose in distaste, and Molly hastens on. “And I respect that! Really! But I’m putting my job on the line, and you letting all the bags languish in the freezer is unacceptable.” Sherlock tries to protest but Molly glares at him. “I mean it,” she says as sternly as she can. “You’re going to have to suck it up and drink the blood we have at home.”

“Ugh,” says Mary, shuddering. 

“I know you don’t like the taste - ”

“Not that. I don’t like it when you get tetchy.”

Molly throws her hands up in the air in exasperation. 

“I don’t know what to tell you, then,” she says, and she’d never admit it but part of her frustration is inspired by worry . She’s terrified of what might happen if Sherlock gets caught. He was seen tonight, and although he’s always careful about wearing black, unidentifiable clothes, he was still spotted. Molly can’t imagine - 

She dashes away tears and grabs for her coat. 

“I’m going out. Stay here or I swear I’m kicking you out on the streets.”

Sherlock, who was going to say something, sits back against the couch cushions, subdued. Molly slams the door when she leaves.

*

“All right, Molly?” John says, jogging up to stand beside her as she looks broodingly out over the river. 

“Not very, actually,” she says, and turns to face him. He reads everything he needs to in her face and pulls her in for a hug. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispers into his shoulder. “He won’t listen to reason .”

“I know,” says John, and when he pulls back he’s frowning. “Mary went out tonight, too.”

Molly groans and leans her elbows against the railing, resting her face in her hands. 

“How are we going to do it, John? How are we going to keep them alive?”

“I don’t know,” says John honestly. She growls and glares at a duck who’s gone for a night swim. 

She doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t know how to do it. Sherlock is going mad cooped up in her flat, and she can’t blame him. She’d find that sort of isolation and containment maddening, and her brain doesn’t work even close to as quickly and frantically as Sherlock’s does. This isn’t a long-term solution. It can’t be.

But while vampires are deemed ‘dangerous’ and ‘illegal’ by the government, what can she do ? Maybe if they lived in the country they’d be able to go for walks, but here there are too many windows (and mirrors, and other reflective surfaces) and too high of a chance that someone will notice Sherlock’s lack of reflection. He has to stay put, or…

She stifles a sob.

“Tell me it’s going to get better,” she pleads, eyes blurring so that the lights across the river go fuzzy. “Tell me it won’t be like this forever.”

“I can’t, mate,” says John honestly, though she can hear it pains him, too. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I don’t know if it’ll get better.”

Molly wipes her tears away and looks at him.

“What are you planning?” she asks bluntly. John looks at her, silently asking for clarification. She lets out a shaky sigh and runs her hands through her hair. They snag on a tangle. She needs to brush it. “How are you going to make it better for her?” Molly clarifies. 

Mary and Sherlock are both fairly recent vampires. They were off working a case and got bitten. It was terrifying, but they couldn’t go to the hospital. Molly and John patched them up as best they could, and they’ve been sequestered away in their respective flats ever since. 

“I don’t know,” John says for what feels like the thousandth time tonight. “We’ve been looking at online employment options, talking about moving…” he shakes his head and crosses his arms. “Stupid, saying that they’re dangerous and have to be contained. Couldn’t we just set up… I don’t know, a blood donation system? Or something?”

“Make resources available so that they aren’t dangerous,” says Molly. “Yeah, I know.”

“We should run the country,” says John, and they laugh together for a moment before falling silent.

They’ve been friends for a very long time - ever since med school - and normally when there’s silence they feel comfortable. This is not like that.

“You gotten in trouble for stealing blood yet?” John asks eventually.

“No,” Molly says. “Have you?”

John shakes his head.

“Not yet, but I’m getting…” he makes a frustrated noise. “How are we supposed to keep them fed? How are we supposed to keep them safe? How are we supposed to keep them entertained?”

“You make them sound like pets,” Molly murmurs, not sure if she’s amused or alarmed.

“I don’t mean to,” says John. “I know they’re still people, they’re still themselves. But - ” he makes yet another growly sound. “I don’t know what to do.” He meets Molly’s eyes,and there are tears in his. “I don’t know how to keep her safe,” he says, and then he’s crying.

Molly cries, too, because she’s exhausted and she doesn’t know, either. They cry together, and then they wipe their eyes and square their shoulders. 

“Well,” says John, “this was an incredibly unproductive conversation.”

Molly laughs. 

“Yes,” she says, “but I feel better.”

And she does. Something about sharing the burden makes it feel… not lighter, but bearable. Like there might be a way out. Like maybe they won’t have to live like this forever.

“Me, too,” says John, and he clears his throat. 

“Well, I should get back,” says Molly. “I sort of stormed out.”

John chuckles.

“You should definitely get back, then,” he says. “I can just see him scowling. He hates it when you’re mad at him.”

“Oh, I know,” says Molly. “It’s too much power for one person.”

“No, you wield it well,” says John, grinning, and then he sobers up. “Good luck, Molly.”

“You, too,” she says, trying not to think about how lonely she’s going to feel on the walk back. 

They give each other one more hug, and then they walk away in opposite directions.

Chapter Text

John Watson is a genius.

Not in an ‘oh my gosh, you’re so smart’ kind of way. In a certifiable, extremely intimidating, ‘emotions stand in direct opposition to the cold hard logic he prizes above all else’ kind of way.

Dr. Sherlock Holmes has always been a little in awe of him.

He’d gotten back from a tour in Afghanistan – honourable discharge; he’d gotten shot in the shoulder – and promptly met the good consulting detective (a term he’d coined himself. Sherlock would never admit it, but he’s impressed by this, too.) when he put out an ad for a flatmate. It turned out that John wasn’t short on money, just on entertainment, and was more than happy to room with Sherlock provided he’d put up with his eccentricities .

Sherlock agreed, and they lived happily for two years.

Sherlock watched John make eyes at Mary Morstan, the pathologist at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, for the entirety of those two years, and often pushed him to make a move. John refused, every time – although Sherlock has his suspicions that the hesitation was almost entirely instilled in him by Harry, his older sister. (Bit bold of Harry. She’d gotten married, it hadn’t worked out. She’d promptly turned to constantly reminding John that caring is not an advantage. Well, Sherlock has saved John’s life several times by caring. Every time he points this out he gets an impatient wave and a, “Yes, but that’s you .” He can’t decide whether to feel complimented or insulted.)

And, anyway, it didn’t matter in the end, because John died. Irene Adler, consulting criminal and the only person he ever felt matched him in intellect and sheer enjoyment of the game that criminals and detectives play, forced him to jump off of the roof of St. Bart’s. Sherlock had never been so miserable.

And then he’d met Molly Hooper, and his life had turned around. She’d changed everything . He still missed John terribly, of course , but it became bearable. 

And then it turned out that John Watson was not, in fact, dead.

Sherlock had never been so hurt. John faked his own death and refused to tell him, and it hurt . Sherlock had flattered himself that John considered him a friend , at least, but if John didn’t want him…

Molly snaps him (and John, who was angry with him for sulking) out of their respective snits and is instrumental in mending their fractured friendship. Sherlock falls in love with her a little bit more.

He’s never thought seriously about marriage - what’s the point, really? - but he’s thinking about it seriously now. He confides in John about this, and he’s surprisingly encouraging. Sherlock buys a ring after much deliberation (John was inches away from picking one for him) but decides to wait for the perfect moment to do the actual popping of the question.

Unfortunately, the perfect moment gets shattered by a sniper who shatters the crystal glasses on the table in front of Molly. Dashing away from the perfect, pricy restaurant he’d chosen was not what Sherlock had been expecting. While they’re catching their breath in a slightly sketchy alleyway, Molly informs him that not only does she know the sniper; she used to work with him. Then she bites her lip and waits for his reaction. 

Sherlock isn’t dull. He’s usually quite skilled at reading people, in fact. (Not as good as John, obviously, because he lacks the hyperintelligence necessary for that, but pretty well.) This, however - this blindsides him. The woman he is in love with, the woman he wants to make his wife , is an ex-assassin. (And for all he knows she’s a current assassin. All he has to evidence the contrary is her word, and he’s finding that that is shockingly unreliable.)

It’s a long night, in which they work with the yard and John does a lot of dramatic guessing and Sherlock studiously avoids talking to Molly, and at the end of it she takes a deep breath and says, “I’m sorry, Sherlock.”

He scoffs, and she nods. Her face is very pale and her eyes are very wet.

“I know sorry doesn’t even begin to cover it, but I want you to know that I am. I’m thoroughly, incredibly, unbelievably sorry for lying to you. I wanted - ” she chokes on a sob and takes a moment to regain her composure. “Never mind. That’s not important. I understand if you don’t… er... if you don’t want to be with me. Anymore. But please know - ” She chokes on another sob. “Please know that I love you with all my heart,” she whispers pleadingly, and then she walks away.

Sherlock watches her go and then spins on his heel and walks the other way.

*

Sherlock mopes around the Baker Street flat until John gets fed up.

“Enough!” he bellows one day, after Sherlock has played “Someone Like You” on the violin one too many times. “Either go and tell her you love her anyway or stop that !” 

And he snatches Sherlock’s violin out of his grip, ignoring his many protests, and glares at him until he walks out of the door.

*

Sherlock wanders London, coming up with lots of reasons not to talk to Molly and then with more reasons that he should.

He’s trying not to think about the fact that the real problem here isn’t whether or not he loves her. Of course he loves her. The problem is that he loves her just as much now that he knows that she’s killed people than he did before he found that little tidbit out, and he’s frightened of what that says about him as a person. 

He wanders and thinks until it’s very late and he’s at the door to Molly’s flat. He almost convinces himself to leave (because he doesn’t want to wake her up, you know, she’s grumpy when she’s woken up) and then he knocks instead. 

She opens the door and her eyes go wide. 

“Er - hi,” he says, when it becomes clear that she’s not going to say anything. 

“Hi!” she says, snapping out of whatever trance she’d gone into at the sight of him. She shakes her head a little, as if to clear it, and then holds the door wide open, grinning nervously. “Come in! Make yourself at home!”

Sherlock comes in but is unable to make himself at home due to Molly’s insistence on making herself the hostess.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” she asks, seeming slightly hysterical. “Black coffee with two sugars, right?”

“Right,” says Sherlock, impressed that she remembers, and then quickly adds, “I’m fine right now, though, thanks,” because she was halfway to the kitchen before he was finished saying the word. 

“Oh,” she says, stopping dead in her tracks, “right.” 

And then she just stands there, wringing her hands and determinedly not meeting his eyes and looking so altogether lost that Sherlock’s heart twinges a little bit. 

“Why don’t we sit down?” he asks her gently. 

“Of course!” she says, relieved to have something to do. She sits down and bounces her knee up and down, a nervous tic. Sherlock reaches out and puts a hand on it out of habit and without thinking. The motion immediately stops. 

“Please calm down, and listen to me, Molly,” he says.

“Okay,” she says, and then takes a deep breath, bracing herself. 

Sherlock clears his throat. 

“Molly,” he says, “I am not happy that you lied to me.” 

She opens her mouth. He glares at her. She closes it again.

“I don’t like what you used to do,” he continues, and she starts to say something else (probably along the lines of ‘duh’) but he glares at her and she stops. Again. He tries not to be endeared, but is endeared anyway.

“But I love you,” he says, and she lets out a small, sharp sound. He was going to try to make a big, bold, beautiful speech, but all of the words he’d planned have fled his brain. “I love you, and I will probably be angry for a long time, and I want to be with you anyway.” Her face is twisted up in tears, and Sherlock doesn’t even bother being irritated by how quickly it makes his heart melt. The ring feels like it’s burning his hip from where he impulsively threw it into his pocket, and he makes an impulsive decision. 

“Wh - what - ” Molly gasps for words as he slides off of the sofa and onto one knee. He smiles up at her, takes her hand, presses a kiss to the back of it. 

“I love you,” he says again. “Always have, probably always will, against my better judgement.” She lets out a truly horrific sound, one that’s full of snot and is meant to be a laugh but sounds like a sob, and he’s overwhelmed by how true it is. How much he loves her. He had a flowery speech planned for this, too, but he decides against it. Actions speak louder, after all. “I don’t know if this is even your real name,” he says, pulling the ring out of his pocket, “but Margaret Elizabeth Hooper, will you marry me?”

She manages to say yes, and he pulls her into a hug. She holds onto him like she’ll never let go, and Sherlock thinks that it won’t be easy and that they’ll be okay anyway.

Chapter Text

“Come on !” Sherlock says impatiently, brandishing his shovel.

“Hang on for just a minute!” Molly snaps from where she’s kneeling to help Eurus tie her shoes.

Sherlock growls and walks in a circle. Molly finishes tying a bow for Eurus, who jumps up and grabs Victor’s hand. Victor looks both distinctly uncomfortable, which Sherlock can understand, and slightly pleased, which Sherlock cannot. 

“You’ve got to have patience , Sherlock,” says Eurus maddeningly. Sherlock has been told many times that she’s only five, you’ve got to be kind , but she still makes him very angry very quickly. It’s because she’s your sister, love , his mum will say knowingly, but that doesn’t help . 

“Listen to your sister,” says Molly, who has knelt down to tie her own shoes.

“This treasure isn’t going to hunt itself,” Sherlock points out, trying to hide his hurt at the admonishment. He doesn’t like being admonished.

“Well, I’m ready to go,” says Molly, standing up and planting her hands on her hips, “so shall we go hunt it now?”

“Yes,” says Sherlock, clutching his shovel tighter. “Don’t forget - ” he starts, but of course Molly is already grabbing her own shovel, and Eurus’s. He’d never admit it, but the way she looks out for his little sister makes him jealous. Molly is his friend! He asks her over to spend time with him , not to fawn over bloody Eurus!

But they have treasure to hunt, and so he decides to be gracious and forgive Molly for spending some of her valuable time with his little sister.

“Come on, then,” he says, and off they go.

*

Sherlock learns about two hours into their venture that treasure hunting was a terrible idea. 

For one thing, he’s starting to suspect that the map Mycroft gave him is obsolete at best and fake at worst. They’ve been running around the big field in circles for a very long time. For another, they should have brought snacks. He’s starving, and Eurus has been complaining nonstop for even longer than they’ve been walking in circles. For a third, Molly won’t stop nagging.

“Should have started digging under that tree back there,” she says for the fourth time. 

“I don’t make the rules,” Sherlock says testily, who has the vague impression that treasure hunts are not treasure hunts if you start digging at the first convenient tree you come to. You have to do some hunting .

“Or the maps, clearly,” says Molly, and he stops in his tracks and whirls around. 

“Listen,” he hisses, in such a way that Victor takes a step back. Eurus takes a step back, too, in solidarity. Molly, who has been on the receiving end of more than a few of his outbursts, stands her ground. “ I’m the lead pirate. I’m the one with the map. And I know what I’m doing.”

There’s silence.

“Do you, mate?” asks Victor tentatively. Sherlock rounds on him with a snarl.

“Oh, don’t you start,” he growls, and then, suddenly finding that he feels very guilty and very tired, he stomps away. He can’t deal with this.

*

Molly comes and sits down beside him after he’s had enough time to get a proper sulk in. 

“Victor and Eurus went home,” she tells him. 

He grunts.

“It was a good treasure hunt,” she says.

He groans and buries his face in his knees.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Yes,” she insists, “it was.”

“Everyone was miserable - ”

“No,” says Molly, and Sherlock can’t help but wish she’d be a bit more sympathetic about the whole thing, “ You were miserable.”

Sherlock considers this and is left with the conclusion that she’s right . He wasn’t paying attention to anyone else’s feelings, anyway. 

“Oh,” he says. 

“Yeah,” she agrees, and they watch the sun setting. Sherlock drums his fingers on the handle of his shovel. 

“I think Mycroft was playing a joke on me,” he says, when they’ve sat in silence for a while. “He said the map was real, but I don’t think it was.”

“Oh,” says Molly, and she frowns. “That wasn’t very good of him.”

Sherlock looks at her. 

“He’s your brother,” she says, “he should look out for you.”

Sherlock hadn’t thought about that. 

“And, besides,” says Molly, “it really was a good treasure hunt.”

Sherlock’s face grows hot. He’s not sure why. It just does. 

“Thanks,” he says quietly. 

She smiles at him.

They sit there for a while longer, and then they walk home, and on their way back they find three rocks that are incredibly sparkly and a glass bottle that still has a little Vimto in the bottom of it. Not treasure , exactly, but Eurus is delighted with their haul. Sherlock thinks as he watches her squeal over how the rocks glimmer in the light of the setting sun that maybe their hunt wasn’t such a disaster after all.

Chapter Text

Molly has had a very long day. 

She’s not sure why everyone seems to be angry today, she just knows that everyone does, in fact, seem to be angry. This seemingly universal anger, on top of the spectacularly bad week she’s had, leaves her irritable and out of sorts.

Mary’s picked up on her bad mood. 

“What’s wrong?” she asks, when she and Molly are sequestered away in the break room. They’re eating sandwiches. “Your professor tell you off again?”

Molly groans and takes a huge bite of her sandwich to avoid the question. Yes, Donovan had been her usual nasty self, and Molly had gotten an awful mark on a paper which she had poured her heart and soul into, and the house she’s been renting with Meena and Jim is getting sold which means she has to find somewhere else before next month, and she doesn’t want to tell Mary any of these things because Mary will be practical about them and suggest actual solutions, and Molly doesn’t want to be practical and think about solutions. She wants to wallow in self-pity for a little bit. She’ll be practical tomorrow.

So she says, “Yeah. It’ll be fine, though.” 

Mary eyes her suspiciously around a mouthful of tomato but doesn’t press. She never pushes unless she knows that Molly needs it, and Molly loves her for it. 

“C’mon, ladies,” says Stamford, poking his head into the break room. “Lunch is over.” 

“Sorry, Mike,” they chorus. Molly crams the rest of her sandwich into her mouth and cracks a smile at the sight of Mary struggling to gather all of her lunch things back into her bag. It feels a little cathartic to watch someone else struggling. Mary catches her smirking and lets her know how she feels about that with a very specific finger. 

Grinning, feeling much better than she did before she took lunch, Molly heads back to her till.

*

The Tesco she works at is just down the street from a fire station, and therefore a popular place for firefighters to pick up a mid-shift snack. At that fire station works a man that Molly has been quietly crushing on for the two years she’s been employed here. She’d call him cute, except that cute feels too weak a word to describe Sherlock Holmes. He’s handsome , in such a classy and sophisticated way that film stars could only hope to emulate. Something to do with those piercing blue eyes. And he’s a fireman . Something very… well, she’d say sexy, except she’s at work and she’s trying to be professional, late lunch breaks notwithstanding. Attractive . There’s something very attractive about that. 

Anyway.

He doesn’t talk to her today - not that he talks to her on normal days. His partner (do firemen have partners? They’re always together, anyway), John, chatters away to Mary, leaning on the counter. Molly grabs a clipboard and starts doing inventory, trying not to feel bitter, and pointedly avoids any kind of eye contact with Sherlock. Holmes . Mr. Holmes. Unlike she usually does. Normally there’s quite a bit of “hello,” and “can I help you with anything?” and “how are you today?” but today she doesn’t feel like it. 

If she was looking, she’d notice a very disappointed expression in some very blue eyes.

*

Molly’s week gets better towards the end. Just like she’d thought, Mary finds her a flat that seems affordable, and it’s the same one Molly’s mum had sent her. She took it as a sign and sent the owner a message, and she’ll be able to move in before the lease is even up on her current place of residence. And Stamford calls her into his office and has a discussion with her about becoming a manager, which would mean more money. And Sherlock comes in a couple more times, and he chooses her till. He doesn’t say anything to her beyond a brisk, “Hello,” but that’s still progress. 

And then, of course, just as she’s starting to feel cautiously optimistic about her life in general, it all goes downhill again.

*

The neighbors will hold many rigorous debates about how and by whom the fire was started. The police will do a thorough investigation. No one will ever be sure.

None of that matters to Molly, who is currently stuck in the break room at the very back of the building. 

It started fast and it went in a line , right through the middle of the store. Almost like a wall of fire. Molly, who was stocking shelves in the back, heard a whoompf and turned around to find that she could no longer see to the front because it was blocked by a wall of flames. She’d opened her mouth to shout and then started coughing. Smoke was everywhere and she couldn’t see anybody and panic was tearing through her, so she did the first thing she could think of; dashed to the break room and closed the door behind her.

Now, she realises that it was stupid. She’s essentially stuck. Nothing she can do. This is it. 

She shoves reusable bags against the crack under the door (you’re supposed to do that in a fire, right?) and tries to take deep breaths. 

“Okay,” she says, out loud, to herself, “it’s going to be fine.” 

Except it’s not going to be fine and she just barricaded herself into a room in a fire and she’s going to die here and suddenly she’s crying and pulling out her phone, because even though she can’t remember whether that’s a good or bad idea in a fire she’s reasonably sure that she’s going to die anyway and she might as well go while talking to someone she loves.

She takes some more deep breaths, all of which taste like smoke, and calls Mary. Her mum will be at work and Molly doesn’t want to interrupt her day. (She will be told, later, that her mother would rather quit her job than not be interrupted for something like her daughter stuck in a fire. The volume this speech will be delivered at would normally hurt Molly’s feelings, but the tears in her mother’s eyes and the tight embrace she will be pulled into will combine to make her feel nothing but loved.) 

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” chants Mary. “Where are you? Are you out?”

“No,” says Molly, and suddenly she’s crying again. And dizzy. She’s getting a little dizzy.

“Oh my God,” says Mary again. “Where are you?” 

“Break room,” sniffles Molly, and she wipes her eyes with her sleeve. “I’m going to die here, aren’t I? I’m going to die here at the age of twenty-three in a Tesco.” 

Mary doesn’t answer, but Molly hears indistinct voices on the other end of the line. All of them sound incredibly distressed. 

“What’s going on?” she demands of Mary, clutching the phone to her face. It’s getting harder to think.

“Molly, love,” says Mary, as if speaking to a child, “move away from the door, okay? Sherlock’s coming to get you.” 

Molly’s vision is starting to go fuzzy. She thinks vaguely of smoke inhalation and side effects. 

“Isn’t…” she’s not sure what she’s trying to say. “Structural integrity?”

“What?” says Mary, sounding so confused that she’s momentarily distracted from her distress. Molly crinkles her forehead and tries very hard to think 

“The building,” she says. “Isn’t - ”

But she never gets a chance to say what she was going to, because there is an almighty crash and the door breaks in and there is Sherlock (or she assumes he’s Sherlock, anyway) in full firefighting gear and the last thing Molly says before everything goes black is, “You look nice.” 

*

She wakes up with a killer headache and an absolutely awful scratchy feeling in her throat, but she also wakes to find out that she has two weeks of paid sick leave and extensions on all of her assignments, so she wonders if perhaps this isn’t a blessing in disguise. 

She putters around Mary’s flat for a while because her mother refuses to let her be alone and Mary does, too. 

It is during this time that she’s working on a paper and there’s a knock at the door.

“Could you get that?” asks Mary from where she’s entertaining John in her bedroom. 

“Just a second!” she bellows, and then gets so distracted copy/pasting links that whoever’s at the door has to knock again.

“Sorry!” she calls, speedwalking down the hall and hoping she looks half decent. 

She yanks the door open, expecting to find a delivery man and instead finding Sherlock Holmes in jeans and a t-shirt and with an armful of flowers.

They blink at each other for a minute, and then she holds the door open. 

“Come in,” she says, and he steps awkwardly into her home.

They stare at each other for another minute, and then he holds out the flowers. 

“For you,” he says.

“Oh!” she says, and she really should have picked up on that but she really didn’t. “Thank you!” She takes them and leads him towards the kitchen because she really doesn’t know what else to do. “They’re absolutely gorgeous,” she says, “though it’s really me that should be buying you flowers, isn’t it?”

He looks at her blankly.

“As a thank you,” she clarifies, feeling awkward and jumpy. “Because you saved my life?”

“Oh,” he says, and looks distinctly uncomfortable. “How - um - how are you? By the way?”

He jams his hands in his pockets.

“Fine,” she says, and then starts coughing. He raises an eyebrow at her when she’s done. “I am!” she insists. “Really. They said there’ll be no lasting damage. You got me out of there right in time.”

“Not least because the building came down shortly after,” he mumbles. 

She’s heard bits and pieces about how the fire captain didn’t want anyone going in because the building was too unsafe (the structural integrity was compromised, someone had said, and Molly had looked smugly at Mary) but Sherlock went anyway.

“Yeah,” she says, and then, because she doesn’t know what else to say, “... thanks.”

He looks even more uncomfortable, and shrugs. 

“Well. Didn’t want you dying before…” and then he clamps his mouth shut and goes red.

Molly is intrigued.

“Before you what?” she inquires.

“Um,” says Sherlock, and there’s silence again. 

“Well,” starts Molly, unsure of where she’s going with the sentence but unwilling to let the silence hang so heavily on them.

“Before he told you he fancies you and took you on a date!” John shouts from the back room, and Sherlock goes even redder than before. 

“Piss off!” he howls down the hall at John, and then avoids looking at Molly.

“Oh,” says Molly.

“Yeah,” says Sherlock. “I had hoped - uh, wanted - ” he sighs. “I’d hoped to be a little more suave.”

“That’s okay,” says Molly, and she’s grinning. “You can make it up to me when you take me on a date.”

“Oh?” says Sherlock, finally meeting her eyes and looking so hopeful that her heart melts. 

“Yes,” she says. “Thursday?”

He’s grinning, too, now. 

“Pick you up at seven?” he suggests.

“It’s a date,” she agrees, and they stand there grinning at each other until he seems to shake himself back into reality.

“Right,” he says, looking a little dazed. “I’d better - you know - ”

 “Right,” says Molly. “See you Thursday, then.” 

“Right,” he says again. He moves towards the door and then towards her and then towards the door again, and then, so quickly that she can hardly believe it’s happened, dashes towards her and plants an awkward kiss on her cheek and dashes away again. 

Molly stands in Mary’s kitchen, feeling flustered and fluttery, and presses a hand to the cheek that he kissed. 

Thursday cannot come soon enough.

Chapter Text

Believe it or not, Molly likes being a bodyguard. 

Most people wouldn’t believe it. There’s something about being a petite, soft spoken woman that leaves people unconvinced when you tell them that you’re employed as a part of the security detail for one of the most influential families in Britain. Not that Molly spreads the word around a lot. She does have a sense of professionalism.

She’s mostly assigned to Eurus, which she doesn’t mind. Eurus is fun. She was allegedly a very difficult child, but she’s mellowed out with time. The most exciting thing she does these days is convince Molly to sneak out with her so she can visit her boyfriend. (Usually, Molly is able to talk her into sneaking Victor in . There’s a reason she’s one of the best in the business; the safety of her charges never once leaves her mind.) Eurus talks a lot and is nothing if not entertaining.

Sometimes she’s assigned to Mycroft, which she does mind. Mycroft makes her nervous. He’s so stoic, and there’s something behind his eyes that makes her uncomfortable. Or maybe it’s the lack of anything behind his eyes. Molly has never met anyone with such a poker face. Those are always boring shifts. He never does anything that doesn’t involve paperwork.

And sometimes, very rarely, she’ll be assigned to Sherlock. Sherlock makes her stomach flutter and Sherlock has the prettiest curls and Sherlock has snogged her against a wall more than once. (Okay, so her sense of professionalism isn’t that strong.) They never talk about it, and it’s always awkward afterwards, but Molly is glad that she’s not the only one that feels electricity sizzling between the two of them. 

She’d been worried about that for a while, you see. She’d been unreasonably attracted to him - she was only around him because of her job ; being attracted to him at all was unreasonable - and had tried very hard to suppress the feelings. After all, he didn’t return them, right?

She was proven wrong the first time he kissed her, and she doesn’t think that it’s ever felt so good to be wrong.

Except… (She hates that there’s an except.) Except that she’s not just attracted to him anymore. Except that the makeout sessions and the conversations leading up to them and the man himself have led her closer and closer to falling in love with him. Molly suspects she’s more than halfway there already. 

And that can’t happen. They’re not compatible, social status-ly speaking. Sherlock doesn’t do feelings; there’s no way he returns hers. Also, she’d probably have to quit her job, and she doesn’t want to do that. 

So she kisses him and screams internally and tries not to think about it too much.

*

Then, one day, she has to think about it. 

It’s a routine outing; the Holmes are making an appearance at the local library. Sherlock is smoking on the steps outside, and Molly is standing beside him, trying not to grin at the crackled squawking that’s coming through her earpiece. (Mary is trying to wrangle Eurus away from Victor. It’s not working.) And then there’s the glint of a gun from somewhere in the crowd that has gathered to gawk at the Holmes, and then Molly feels more than guesses what is about to happen, and then she’s jumping in front of Sherlock and shoving him out of the way just in time to take a bullet to the shoulder. 

After that it’s a lot of shouting. John dashes into the crowd and nabs the guy that tried to off Sherlock, and Molly presses her own hand to her wound to apply some pressure because Sherlock is panicking .

“Calm down,” she huffs, after he lets out a particularly shrieky string of nearly unintelligible curses. 

“Right, right, sorry,” he says, and crouches down beside her, hands hovering over her body “What - what - ” he lifts her hand and goes pale at the sight of the shot. “Molly,” he says, and his voice breaks, “what can I do?”

“Give me my hand back,” says Molly, trying and failing not to be irritable, “and calm down .” 

*

He does, in fact, calm down, but not until long after Molly has been loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital. She gets wrestled onto a bed, protesting the whole time that she can go home. 

“We want you under observation,” her doctor says, and glares when she tries to protest. “You’re staying the night, Molly,” he says huffily. “Deal with it.”

Shortly after she gets admitted there is parade of Holmes through her room and she is thanked and applauded to within an inch of her life. Most of them leave after thoroughly fussing over her, and then there is only Sherlock. 

He looks at her. She looks at him. He breaks first.

“I was so scared, today, Molly,” he says. 

“Never would have guessed,” snorts Molly, and then feels guilty at the sight of his face. “Sorry.”

“You should be!” he says. “It’s not funny!” 

“It is a bit ,” she says. “You were terrified.”

“Of course I was!” he says, eyes wide and a little wild. “The woman I love got shot trying to protect me.”

“Didn’t just try, succeeded ,” Molly says automatically, before the second part of the sentence catches up to her. “You - the - what?”

He’s blushing, and Molly would be hopelessly endeared if she wasn’t so stunned. 

“I’d meant to be a little more, um, intentional with that,” he says, looking at her monitors instead of her face. (And, honestly, why does she have monitors, this is not such a big deal - ) “But the spontaneity doesn’t make it any less true. I - ” he takes a breath. “I love you.” 

She stares at him, words gone. 

“I know that you just want an - er - a physical relationship,” Sherlock continues determinedly, “and I’m sorry to, you know, muddle it up with feelings, but I - ”

“Me, too,” she interrupts breathlessly, and about five different emotions crowd onto his face at once. 

“Yes?” he asks, looking like he can hardly breathe.

“Of course, you idiot,” she says, laughing. He surges forward and kisses her and then pulls back just as quickly, hands fluttering anxiously.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asks, looking upset at the very thought. She rolls her eyes at that.

“Of course not,” she says. “Now come here and kiss me.”

He smiles, even though he still looks a bit apprehensive, and obliges.

Chapter Text

            Mr. Sherlock Holmes rests his head against the back of his seat and runs his hands over his face, ignoring the jolts sent down his spine by the movement of the carriage. It has been a very long day.

Lestrade, the foolish man, completely ignored Sherlock’s explicit advice and went chasing after a suspect. He then, as Sherlock has predicted, was shot, and Sherlock had to spend all afternoon worrying about him.and then worrying about Watson, who had disappeared after tending to Lestrade’s wounds, and they hadn’t caught the man. It was discouraging and infuriating and Sherlock just wants to go sit down in his armchair and smoke a pipe.

It’s only after he’s done both of these things that he realizes it wasn’t really about either of them. He’s just very much in need of an embrace from his wife.

But she’s still at work, so he stomps around the flat until he starts to feel as if he might jump out a window to get away from himself, and then he goes downstairs and annoys Mrs Hudson until she sets him chopping vegetables (a skill he had learned very quickly after marrying Molly – she was not about to let him plead ignorance and escape assisting with her culinary efforts. The one time he tried to argue that this was highly unusual, he’d ended up with peas in his hair and an irate spouse. He learned from it.), and then he eats with his landlady instead of his wife and feels distinctly upset about it.

It’s nearly ten in the evening when he hears Molly’s footsteps on the stairs, and he’d begun to worry something awful. He’s sitting in his chair and feeling extremely bad-tempered when she walks through the door.

“Good evening, love,” she says cheerfully.

He glares at her.

She looks contrite.

“I know it’s late,” she says, pulling off her mustache with savage glee and rolling her shoulders, “but you’ll be pleased to hear that I shan’t be working in the next two days, and so you’ll have me all to yourself.”

Sherlock is, in fact, albeit begrudgingly, pleased to hear this.

“Why were you so late?” he asks, trying to stay sullen.

She groans and starts unbuttoning her overcoat.

“You know the new apprentice – the one that wants to be a surgeon?”

“Yes,” says Sherlock, now feeling more pity than irritation. The would-be surgeon is impressively awful at nearly everything medical.

“The boss wanted me to oversee an autopsy. A full one.”

Sherlock winces sympathetically, and tries to be subtle as he watches her hands work on the buttons of her waistcoat. He likes her fingers.

“He took four bloody hours, and then we still had to clean up,” she says, shedding her waistcoat and starting across the room to stand in front of him. “Is that enough of an explanation or are you still feeling cantankerous?”

“It’s enough,” he says, reaching for her. She slides onto his lap and wraps her arms around his neck, and he cuddles her close with a contented sigh. “Much better,” he says into her shoulder, eyes closed.

She hums happily and draws little circles on his back with her fingers.

“How is the case?” she asks, when she’s felt enough tension seep out of him to feel confident that he can handle the question.

It’s his turn to groan.

“Awful,” he says, and she makes a sort of morbidly impressed sound. “Oh, yes,” he says bitterly, “it’s awful. Lestrade was shot – ”

Molly gasps.

“Is he all right?” she asks, sounding worried.

“Oh, yes,” he says, “but I was concerned about him, you understand, because I didn’t know he would be – ”

“Of course,” Molly says soothingly.

“ – and then Watson went off to find a man he suspected based on his own deductions, and – ”

“He wasn’t shot?” Molly interrupts, leaning back to look at him.

“No,” he says, “but he was gone, and I must have covered the whole of London looking for him, and his suspect was not the killer – ”

“Obviously,” says Molly, which Sherlock finds absurdly enjoyable for a multitude of reasons.

“ – and I’m so tired,” he finishes, pouting.

“Oh, you poor dear,” she coos, pressing a kiss to his forehead. He’s well aware that she’s mocking him, but he likes being kissed by her, so he doesn’t complain and pulls her mouth to his instead.

They part a good while later, and he grins at her while he catches his breath.

“I missed you,” he says.

“I missed you, too,” she says, leaning her head against his shoulder. He pulls her in tighter and buries his nose in her hair. Even without seeing her face, he knows that she’s twitching her nose. “I hate that mustache,” she says fervently, itching her lip with abandon. “I’d like to burn it.”

“And someday you shall,” Sherlock says.

“Yes,” she says, though she doesn’t sound convinced. Sherlock would like to say more, but he’d rather never catch the culprit than resurrect this argument. Sherlock is of the opinion that if Molly were simply to reveal her identity – gender and all – her colleagues would be forced acknowledge the fact that she’s a better pathologist than any of them and allow her to stay on. Molly does not feel this way. Sherlock has used the argument that she could get rid of the mustache. It hasn’t worked. “Someday.”

She relaxes against him again, itch apparently scratched, and he closes his eyes to breathe her in. He does so love holding his wife. She is small and soft and warm.

“I love you, Margaret Hooper,” he says, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. She pulls back, looking offended, and Sherlock is genuinely baffled as to what he could have said wrong. That was a lovely sentiment, he thinks.

“That’s Margaret Holmes to you, sir,” she says, pretending to be stern, and Sherlock rolls his eyes.

“Of course, Mrs Holmes,” he says. “How could I forget?”

“Probably quite easily,” she admits, “but you’re better than that.”

“I am,” he agrees. “And I love you.”

She breaks into a smile and leans in to kiss his cheek. She's done it a thousand times if she's done it once but his skin still tingles where her lips are on it.

“I love you, too,” she says.

Chapter Text

“It’smybirthdayit’smybirthdayit’smyBIRTHDAAAAY!”

Sherlock wakes to a small body crashing down on his and “BIRTHDAAAAY!” being shouted into his ear. He groans and reaches up to pull his daughter into his arms.

“It can’t be,” he says groggily, snuffling her ear in the way that always makes her laugh. “If it was your birthday, there would be cake on the counter, and there wasn’t any last night.”

“That’s because last night wasn’t my birthday!” says Catherine, and then she pulls back and looks at Sherlock with wide eyes. He smiles to himself, holding her a little more tightly and thinking with sadness about some day in the future when she won’t let him cuddle with her like this and hoping fervently that that day is a long way in the future. “Do you think there’s any now?”

“You’d better check,” says Sherlock. “I’m not getting out of bed until you’re positive it’s your birthday.”

Catherine leaps out of bed and pounds down the hall, and Sherlock winces as he thinks of Mrs Hudson. She loves Catherine dearly, but no one wants to be woken up at – he checks the clock – 6:30 in the morning. There’s a brief lull in the pounding as Catherine arrives in the kitchen and sees the giant chocolate monstrosity that Mary helped him with last night, and then it resumes, louder than before, as Catherine hurtles back towards his bedroom.

“There’s cake!” she announces, grinning madly. “It’s my birthday! I’m six! And you knew that the whole time.”

“I did,” he agrees, “but you knew that I knew the whole time.”

“Yep,” she says. “It’s because I’m so smart.”

“Indeed,” he says, resigning himself to the fact that he isn’t getting any more sleep this morning. He grumbles a little and forces himself to sit up.

“Is Mum coming today?” Catherine asks, and her eyes are full of something Sherlock doesn’t want to think about, just wants to get rid of, even if he knows he can’t.

“We’ll see,” Sherlock says, wanting to throttle Irene for it even being a question. “I’ll call her while you’re eating cake.”

“Cake!” she says, and dashes in the direction of the kitchen again.

“Quietly!” Sherlock calls after her, but he knows it won’t do any good, and he knows that Mrs Hudson will be nice about it. He rolls out of bed, grabs his mobile, and pads down the hall after her.

She’s standing beside the counter, admiring the cake with wide blue eyes, and the last of Sherlock’s displeasure at being woken up before he wanted to be evaporates. She’s so lovely, he thinks, and grabs a knife.

“Picture first!” Catherine demands, and Sherlock pretends to be confused.

“What?” he says. “Picture?”

She just glares at him until he pulls his mobile out of his pocket. It’s a birthday tradition that a picture is taken of Catherine with her cake. She likes going back and looking at them throughout the year. He doesn’t know why.

“Smile,” he says – unnecessarily, since she’s beaming so brightly that they could probably see her smile from space – and snaps a photo.

“Let me see it before you cut!” she says, making grabby hands, and he groans but hands her his phone.

“Good,” she pronounces.

“Thank you,” he says, and finally cuts her a slice. He sets it onto a plate, lifts her up onto a barstool, and says, “Enjoy.”

Her mouth is already full, and she flashes him another grin that is full of chocolate.

“Eugh,” he says, pretending to recoil, but she knows he’s joking and laughs.

Shaking his head, he retreats to the bathroom and calls Irene.

She doesn’t answer until the third ring.

“What on earth could you want this early in the morning, Mr. Holmes?” she grumbles, and Sherlock tries not to feel hurt at the fact that she won’t use his first name.

“Are you coming?” he asks, without prelude. They’re both exceptionally brilliant adults – he sees no reason in beating around any bushes.

She sighs, and he hears the murmur of another female voice before she answers.

“Not today,” she says, and Sherlock barely resists the urge to hurl his phone at the wall.

“Why not?” he demands. “She asked about you.”

Irene pauses, and sounds distinctly uncomfortable when she answers.

“I have… work. To do.”

“On your daughter’s birthday?” Sherlock says, not bothering to keep the contempt out of his voice. “Really?”

“Really, Sherlock, because not everyone can ask big brother to give them a loan,” snaps Irene. Sherlock’s temper is rapidly heating up.

“Don’t try that with me,” he snaps. “I know that you’re fine for money. You just don’t want to see your daughter?”

“And what if I don’t?” Irene’s voice is clipped. “What if seeing her reminds me of all the mistakes I’ve made?”

And oh, Sherlock is so angry and hurt by that that he can’t speak for a moment. Mistakes? Like marrying him? Like having Catherine in the first place.

“Catherine is not a mistake,” he says, seething, when he can speak again. “And if you’re not coming to see her then the least you can do is stay on the line and wish her happy birthday.”

 “Fine,” she says, sounding almost bored, and Sherlock hates her in that moment. “Put her on, then.”

Sherlock takes some deep breaths to calm himself and then plasters on a smile for Catherine’s benefit as he returns to the kitchen.

“Mummy wants to say hi!” he says, and puts Irene on speaker.

“Hi, Mummy!” shouts Catherine, mouth full of cake.

“Hello, sweetheart,” says Irene. “Happy Birthday!”

Catherine beams.

“How are you?”

“Good!” says Catherine, and she sets down her fork and reaches for Sherlock’s mobile. He hands it to her and wanders into the living room and buries his face in his hands and wonders when it all went wrong.

He and Irene were happy, weren’t they? At least for a while. And then they were a family, a real family, one that set up a Christmas tree and coordinated outfits for photos. And then Irene left.

Sherlock doesn’t know if it’s good or bad that Catherine can’t remember when she lived with them. He feels guilty for being thankful for it, glad that Catherine feels safer with him than she does with her mother. He’s selfish, he knows.

“I love you! Bye!” Catherine shouts, and then comes to join him on the sofa, balancing her cake precariously on her lap.

“You shouldn’t be eating out here,” he says.

“It’s my birthday!” she says, and he can’t argue with that.

“How’s Mum?” he asks.

“Good,” she tells him, taking another bite and talking around it. “She’s very busy today, but maybe sometime soon she can come spend a day with us.”

“That’ll be nice,” Sherlock murmurs, not meaning it.

“She loves me,” says Catherine, and that gets his attention. He looks at her, but she’s very busy with her cake.

“Of course she does,” he says. “Did you – were you wondering if she did?”

“Everyone else’s mum comes for their birthdays,” says Catherine. “Some people even have two mums.”

Sherlock doesn’t know what to say to that.

“She loves me,” says Catherine again, almost to herself, and then stands up and goes back to the kitchen.

Sherlock stays on the sofa for a while, feeling as though he’s swallowed a boulder.

*

They’re going to the zoo, because that’s what Catherine wanted for her birthday. They’re waiting at the bus station, because Catherine also wanted a bus.

“They’re more interesting than cabs,” she insisted, which Sherlock can’t argue with. Doesn’t mean he hates them any less, but she is his daughter and it is her birthday.

He’s busy working on a case in his head as they wait for the bus that he’s too late to stop Catherine from saying, “It’s my birthday!” to the woman sitting beside them.

Sherlock looks over, planning on apologizing, but the woman has a very nice face and she’s smiling brightly at his daughter and he forgets to say anything.

“Is it?” she says. “Happy Birthday! You must be very old now.”

“Six!” says Catherine, and the woman gasps.

“Wow!” she says. “that is very old.”

“We’re going to the zoo,” Catherine continues, and Sherlock really needs to stop her, although he’s enthralled with the way that the woman is listening with rapt attention to everything his daughter is saying.

“Lovely!” says the woman. “Are you excited?”

“Yes,” says Catherine. “My mum was going to come, but she got busy. She’s busy a lot.”

“Oh,” says the woman, and Sherlock starts to say, “Sorry,” but he’s interrupted by Catherine gasping like she’s had a brilliant idea.

“Will you be my mum for my birthday?” she asks, and Sherlock is seized by a coughing fit and the woman turns bright red.

“I don’t think – your father – he probably – ” splutters the woman, and Catherine turns to Sherlock.

“Can she be my birthday mum?” she asks him, and her eyes are so blue and she knows how to use them and there are more emotions swirling through Sherlock’s chest than he’s had for a very long time.

“I don’t think Miss – ” he looks to her.

“Hooper,” says the woman, and then, “Molly,” and then, “well, it’s Margaret, Margaret Hooper, but just Molly. Call me just Molly. Molly.” By the time she’s finished she’s brighter red than she was before, and Sherlock tries not to think about how much he’d like for her to accompany them to the zoo.

“Miss Molly is probably very busy,” says Sherlock, “and she doesn’t even know us.”

“I’m Catherine, and this is my dad!” says Catherine, and then looks at Sherlock again. “Now she does.”

“No – ” starts Sherlock, and the woman – Molly – interrupts.

“I’m not,” she says. “Busy, I mean. It’s my day off. But of course I don’t want to impose – ”

“It’s us that are imposing,” says Sherlock. “I’m so sorry that she – ”

“Oh, no, she’s delightful!” says Molly earnestly, and then looks embarrassed. “I’m so sorry, I’m probably – I’m not trying to be creepy, I swear – ”

And then Sherlock finds himself smiling, grinning at the ridiculousness of this whole affair, and he looks at Catherine and forces his face into a more neutral expression.

“Miss Margaret Molly Hooper,” he says solemnly. “Would you care to accompany us to the zoo to celebrate Catherine’s birthday?”

Molly beams, and Sherlock forgets how to breathe.

“I would be honoured,” she says sincerely, and Catherine lets out a whoop of joy.

Molly smiles at her and then smiles at Sherlock and Sherlock thinks that he’s glad he didn’t stop Catherine.

*

They have a shockingly wonderful time. Sherlock, who has never been the biggest fan of zoos – so many people, so little reward, although he does like the elephants – is startled by how much he enjoys it. Having someone to look at when Catherine says something especially outrageous, someone to laugh with when her ice cream drips down her ‘Birthday Girl’ shirt (courtesy of Mary. Sherlock was horrified by it, but Catherine was so thrilled by the sparkles that he had no choice but to say thank you), someone to be a parent with, is so much more fun than he’d ever expected.

Not that Molly is parenting with him. Molly gets on exceptionally well with his daughter and is doing her a favour and after today he’ll never see her again. And that’s fine. He won’t mind not seeing her again. But having her here is fun.

*

After the zoo, they go to the Watsons. Sherlock was sure that Molly would leave them after the zoo, but Catherine pitches a fit at the very idea, and Molly, looking touched at how much the newly turned six-year-old wants her around, says awkwardly that she doesn’t mind, if the Watsons won’t.

They don’t. Their eyes go comically wide and then they trip over themselves trying to welcome Molly in. Sherlock rolls his own eyes – they’ve been trying to set him up with someone since Irene left – and then tries not to smile too obviously at Catherine coercing Molly into wearing an orange birthday hat and bright pink feather boa.

Molly gets on incredibly well with everyone at the table – at one point Rosie and Catherine are fighting each other for lap space – and everyone is disappointed when she makes to stand up.

“Don’t leave!” begs Catherine, and Sherlock winces. Perhaps letting her get this attached – although how was he meant to know that she’d fall thoroughly in love with a random woman from the bus stop if he let her join them on an excursion to the zoo? – was a mistake.

But then Molly leans down and pulls Catherine into a hug and says, “I’m coming back, my lovely, I promise,” and Catherine is mollified. Sherlock gives her a little wave, wishing that she hadn’t said that – he can’t blame her, leaving with a six-year-old trying to cling to you like a koala whilst wailing is most unpleasant -  and she frowns at him. “I am coming back,” she says, and he tries to pretend that that doesn’t make his insides go warm.

She does come back, and she has a wrapped gift box in her arms, and that is the catalyst everyone needs to gravitate to the living room, where Catherine opens her presents.

Sherlock tries to stop himself from staring at Molly and fails utterly. He cannot believe how well she gets on with Catherine, or how much he likes looking at her, or how his heart twinges when he thinks about never seeing her again. John takes one look at him while he’s being particularly daydreamy (in his defense, watching a woman he’s very attracted to pull his daughter into her arms and press kisses to her hair is quite overwhelming) and says, “Just give her your number, mate,” and butterflies flood his tummy at the thought.

*

And then she comes back to Baker Street with the two of them when the party is over, and she falls asleep on the couch with Catherine while watching The Little Mermaid and then when he tries to move Catherine to bed she refuses to go without saying goodnight to Molly.

And Molly, rather than being grouchy at having been woken up, goes willingly to Catherine’s room and admires her drawings and gives hugs and kisses and tucks her in.

“Okay,” says Sherlock, whose heart is almost painfully full, “time to let Molly go home.”

“But a lullaby,” says Catherine pleadingly. “I need a lullaby.”

Molly looks nervously at Sherlock and Sherlock looks apologetically at Molly and Molly says, “I’ll do a lullaby as long as you promise not to make fun of my singing.”

“I won’t,” promises Catherine solemnly, and Molly sings a song about horses and by the time she’s reached the chorus Catherine is out like a light. Molly presses a kiss to her forehead and then puts her hand to her mouth when she looks up at Sherlock and scurries out of the room.

“Sorry,” she says as soon as they’re in the living room. “I’m so sorry. I know I was very physically affectionate and I’m so – God, I can’t believe – I’m so sorry – ” and Sherlock cuts her off.

“Don’t be,” he says gruffly. “She – er – you were a very good birthday mum.” And there are tears in his eyes despite his best efforts and Molly looks at him thoughtfully for a moment before stepping forward and pulling him into a tight hug and he cries on her shoulder until he feels thoroughly ashamed of himself, at which point he pulls away. (And he is not feeling like he’s lost something as he steps out of her arms, of course he isn’t, that would be ridiculous.)

“My turn to be sorry,” he says, wiping his eyes and feeling extremely abashed. “That was – ”

“No,” says Molly, and she’s crying, too, and Sherlock’s stomach is going to have to retire soon. It’s not made to do acrobatics like this. “You’re a good dad, Sherlock. You’re an incredibly good dad.”

“No,” he begins, and she wipes her tears away and glares at him.

“You are,” she says. “I know you’ve probably not been told that very often – ” Sherlock has never, in fact, been told that. “ – but it’s very, very true. She’s lucky to have you.’

If she keeps going on like this Sherlock is going to start crying again, so he shrugs and grunts noncommittally.

“I’m sure you’d like to be somewhere else,” he says, but what he means is stay, please, forever, and tell me I’m a good dad and love my daughter and let me keep feeling so fond of both you and her that it hurts. Let it be like that always.

“Oh,” says Molly, and she looks at him. “Yes, of course, I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

You couldn’t, Sherlock thinks, but he doesn’t say anything. A voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like John’s snaps, Coward.

“Well,” says Molly, and she puts on her coat and picks up her bag and starts for the door.

“Bye,” says Sherlock, feeling miserable.

She stops when she’s in the doorway and turns around. She looks incredibly nervous.

“Actually,” she says, and Sherlock’s stomach has to stop flipping around like this. “I – um – I had a very lovely time today.”

“Me, too,” he blurts.

“And I really do love your daughter,” says Molly, “even though I’ve only just met her.”

“Me, too,” he says stupidly.

“And I really – ” she’s very red now. “I like you, too, and I was just thinking – I mean, it’s silly and I don’t want you to feel obligated – I mean, here’s my number.”

And she holds out the receipt for the storybook she bought Catherine, avoiding his eyes. There’s a phone number scribbled on the back of it. Sherlock takes it, feeling lightheaded. His fingers brush against Molly’s. Hers are soft.

“You can call me anytime,” she says, still not looking at him. “I’d – I’d love to spend more time with Catherine. And with you. If you wouldn’t mind. If you’re okay with that. I know that’s very presumptive of me – ”

And this time Sherlock pulls her into a hug. Thank you for being brave, he thinks. Thank you for doing what I couldn’t do. Thank you for being wonderful and loving my daughter. I’m looking forward to getting to spend more time with you.

“It’s okay,” he says instead, and then lets her go, feeling awkward. “See you, uh, see you later, then.”

“See you later,” she says, looking relieved and delighted. She meets his eyes and then all but runs away, and he’s left in the middle of his living room, holding a receipt and feeling many feelings.

“Dad?” says a voice, and it’s Catherine, wrapped in her Star Wars blanket and looking sad. “Is Molly gone?”

Sherlock doesn’t feel even a smidge of irritation that she’s awake.

“Yes,” he says, setting Molly’s number on the counter and scooping his daughter up into his arms.

“Oh,” Catherine says. She’s silent until he sets her on her bed, and then she says, “Molly was a good birthday mum.”

“Yes,” says Sherlock, “she was.”

“But it was only for today,” continues Catherine. “She’ll be busy after this, just like my real mum, won’t she?”

“Not always,” says Sherlock, and he’s too old to have butterflies like this. “I have her phone number. And when she’s not busy, she’ll tell us, and we’ll see her again.”

Catherine lights up.

“Really?” she asks.

“Really really,” says Sherlock.

Catherine smiles, all the tension that had been in her since she woke up to the sound of Molly leaving floating off into nothingness. Sherlock tucks some hair behind her ear and watches her eyelids drifting closer and closer together.

“Love you, dad,” she says groggily.

“Love you, too,” says Sherlock, trying to ignore how tight his throat feels. “Happy Birthday.”

Chapter Text

Molly stares at Mycroft.

“You can’t do that!” she says, trying to keep her jaw from hitting the floor.

Mycroft looks back at her, unruffled.

“I assure you, DS Hooper, that I can, and I have.”

Molly opens and closes her mouth, trying to find something to say.

“But you promised me!” she says, and then winces at how childish it sounds. Sure enough, Mycroft’s eyebrow is raised.

A raised Mycroft eyebrow is never a good thing. 

“I suggested to you that a promotion might be in your future,” he says evenly. ( Maddeningly .) “I am now telling you that there will not be one any time soon. Do you have any more questions?”

“No,” says Molly, quietly seething.

“Good,” says Mycroft, and he gives her a smile . Molly has never wanted to strike someone more.

At least, not until she makes it back to her desk and the new Detective Inspector steps out of his office and looks right into her eyes and smirks .

She spends the rest of the day unable to focus, though she can’t tell whether it’s because she’s angry, hungry (she forgot to pack a lunch), or whether it’s the fault of the new DI’s stunning eyes.

*

It’s the fault of the new DI’s stunning eyes. She knows this because she’s performed extensive experiments (and she’s gotten completely lost in them at least three times this week which meant getting told off in front of the department which is hard to forget). She also knows that it’s unacceptable and must be stopped.

Unfortunately, her heart shows no signs of slowing its unhealthily quick pitter-patter every time DI Sherlock Holmes steps into her personal space, regardless of the reason. (Usually it’s something like pointing to her screen and making disgruntled noises because whatever she’s looking at hasn’t helped him.) She finds herself ranting about it to her friend Mary over lunch one day.

“And he never so much as thanks me!” she says, anger stoked by the extra minutes she’d taken on her paperwork that morning due to his stupid swishy coat. Who wears something that might knock papers off of someone’s desk, honestly ?(Molly conveniently forgets that many articles of clothing can knock papers off of someone’s desk under the right circumstances.)

“Sounds like a prick,” says Mary agreeably. 

“He is !” says Molly.

“He’s been keeping you out late, hasn’t he?” says Mary, snagging a chip off Molly’s plate and sticking out her tongue when Molly glares at her. “Running around at all hours, trying to solve cases?”

“Yes!” says Molly, snatching onto this new thing to rant about. “All the time! And I’ll point out the things that lead to him cracking the case, and he’ll never once think to thank me. It’s just ‘Hooper, find the CCTV footage’ or ‘go get me a coffee’ or ‘what is the point of you?,’ all day.”

Molly pauses to take a sip of her tea and when she meets Mary’s eyes over the rim of her cup her friend is staring at something behind her.

Molly’s stomach drops, and she sets her mug down and twists around.

Sure enough, there’s Sherlock - Holmes , he’d insisted everyone call him, as if that didn’t make things difficult and confusing, what with his brother being the Chief and all - standing behind her chair, looking off-kilter and uncomfortable. Molly’s mouth is dry. She does not want to get fired, especially not for bad-mouthing a superior officer. What if - 

“To be fair,” he says in that rumble of his, “you offer to get me coffee, most times.”

And Molly lets out a laugh, shocked and breathless. 

“That is true,” she agrees, and tries to be surreptitious as she scans his face for signs of anger.

She finds none, and breathes a sigh of relief.

*

There is a mug of coffee sitting on her desk when she gets back to the office, and even though it is lukewarm and horrifically strong she drinks the whole thing and pretends she doesn’t notice DI Holmes’ badly suppressed smile when she gets up to set the cup in the sink.

*

It’s little things like that, mostly, that assure her that he doesn’t hate her. When she’s had a particularly awful day, or he’s shouted at her more than normal, there’s always a pastry or a beverage or something sitting on her desk. 

But it still shocks her when he asks if she wants to have dinner.

“Yes,” she says, because what else is she supposed to say, and his eyes light up in a way that should, frankly, be illegal.

“Great!” he says, apparently unable to help himself, which makes several of their colleagues look over and look suspicious because Sherlock is nothing if not stoic. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Molly, who has only just realized that she hasn’t really hated Sherlock from the moment he stepped into what should have been her office, can only smile, feeling dazed. 

She’s looking forward to it, too.

Chapter Text

Molly isn’t a huge fan of recording culture.

Sure, it’s revolutionized the way the world works in good ways. Sure, it means that crime is more or less abolished, in a way that no one would have suspected. Sure, it’s led to people feeling safe, and, what’s more, being safe. (Okay, maybe she’s a fan of that side of it.)

But it still means that ‘privacy’ is obsolete. Everyone is everywhere, plastered on social media, because of the stupid cameras that are everywhere , in people’s glasses and buttons and belt buckles. (And why would you want footage at that angle? Actually, never mind. Molly doesn’t want to know.) Molly, who happens to like privacy and not like the idea of life’s most intimate moments floating around somewhere in cyberspace where anyone with enough determination and a rudimentary knowledge of technology can access them. 

But Barts wants to do some promotional video and Molly is one of their best pathologists (what a thing to be known for) and she listens when she’s told to do something, which is how she finds herself in the lab, getting outfitted with some of the button cameras she’s hated so much for so long.

Sherlock walks in halfway through with John tailing him, grinning as he talks to someone on his mobile. Mary, probably. Molly wants to hate how sickeningly adorable they are, even after having a child together (which, if she knows anything about childbirth/rearing, should definitely have doused the sparks), but she can’t. She’s too happy for them, and it does something to dislodge the guilt that had taken up permanent residence in the back of her throat after witnessing John’s pain, his two-year mourning period.

She doesn’t like thinking about that.

She drags herself back to the present to find Sherlock with his mouth… not hanging open, but it is open, and he looks surprised. It’s shockingly gratifying to see Sherlock looking surprised.

“What’s this?” he says, and he looks like he’s not sure whether he should be amused or upset. He looks at the person adjusting Molly’s buttons, and then he looks at all the screens. “Are you giving in and getting hooked up?”

“Not even close,” sighs Stamford, rubbing his face. The hospital had tried very, very hard to get Molly to commit to a year’s worth of recording. (“Many, many people record from the moment they’re old enough to decide to until the day they die!” the press person had all but shouted. Molly had been quite intimidated, actually, but stood her ground.) “It’s a week-long recording for the hospital’s new promotional team.”

Sherlock is quiet, probably because he’s processing the fact that a hospital has a promotional team. (To be fair, Molly was also startled by this information.)

“All right, that’s you done,” says the - what, technician? Recording device expert? Camera person? Molly doesn’t know. And regardless of the technical term, she gets to step away and adjust to the fact that there’s now a camera attached to her person.

“I can take it off when I’m at home, right?” she says, fiddling nervously with the button.

“Don’t touch that!” says the camera person, lunging forward to smack her hands away.

“Of course not!” says Stamford at the same time. He waits for the camera person to finish scolding Molly and then says, “No. You just have to record while you’re at work, and during your commutes.”

“Right,” says Molly, trying to sound as if she knew that already. It’s pretty obvious that she didn’t, because she asked the question in the first place, but she tries anyway. She can feel Sherlock looking at her out of the corner of her eye, but she focuses very hard on not looking at him , because she hates everything in this moment and knows that him making fun of her will be crushing. (More crushing than it normally is, that is.)

*

She has a horrible week. Everyone makes fun of her for ‘caving’ and ‘surrendering to the inevitable’ and it’s not inevitable, it’s not , she refuses to accept that the only way to live is with a camera attached to you at all times, she’s only doing this for work . 

Also, they want her to do a photoshoot for posters. Since when does Barts care about being ‘approachable’ and ‘friendly’?

She rants about this to John and Sherlock when they come in to investigate something. Sherlock is excited, like he always is when there’s a case. (She’s listened to more than one spiel about how he was ‘born in the wrong era’ and ‘lots of people say that, Molly, but they don’t understand , they don’t mean it like I do’ and she’s always felt quite bad for him. Sherlock has a brain that thrives off of constructing scenarios that he can’t see out of evidence that he can, and when people have cameras on them it leaves his brain with nothing to do. She often thinks that he’d be much happier if he was born in a different era, like the 1800s or something.) She tries not to think about how sparkly his eyes are when he’s excited.

(Her New Year’s resolution was that she’d focus on Molly and forget about men this year. In her defense, it’s very hard not to think about men when their eyes sparkle like that.)

John is sympathetic and Sherlock doesn’t say much, probably distracted by the case.

Molly pretends to herself that she isn’t disappointed, that she was expecting more of a reaction, because that would be silly.

*

She finishes her week of recording and she wears her lab coat for the photos and then she goes home, relieved that it’s over, to find her inbox full of the footage. It’s standard procedure for the recorder to be given the footage to look over, according to the email from Camera Person. This is so that if there’s anything in there that Molly really doesn’t want, she can tell them before they start editing the video. If she doesn’t tell them to take something out, she has by extension given them permission to use all the footage and cannot take legal action against them if there’s something that she doesn’t like.

Molly bakes a frozen pizza and starts watching the recordings, grumbling to herself about the unbelievably awful state of the world.

She’s about to call it quits and accept the fact that there might be something in the final video that she doesn’t like and that she’ll just have to deal with it when something happens that makes her choke on her pizza and rewind. 

There was one point early on in the week where she went and got coffee for Sherlock and John because they’d been in the lab for almost five hours and John was looking quite groggy. John had taken his cup with a fervent ‘thanks’ but Sherlock hadn’t said anything, just accepted the cup like it was his right, and Molly had been distinctly annoyed.

Turns out that as soon as she’d stopped looking at him and waiting for a ‘thank you,’ he’d looked at her fondness and appreciation written all over his face. Not even filtered. Not at all tempered, not even a little bit. It’s enough to knock the breath right out of her lungs. 

He jerks back to reality, makes direct eye contact with the button camera (is it direct eye contact if it’s with a camera?) and hastily looks away, but it happens .

She replays it five times, memorizing the turn of his head, the warmth of his eyes, the bright blush ( who knew Sherlock Holmes was a blusher?) and quick return to his microscope when he realized what he was doing, before she sets her plate aside and fast-forwards to the next Sherlock encounter.

She sees that look again, and again, and again, and every time it makes her heart catch in her chest. He looks at her like that all the time when she’s not looking, apparently, and it leaves her completely breathless. (Although he does always jerk guiltily when he realizes he’s doing it, and usually makes apologetic eye contact {she’s decided that sure, it can be called eye contact} with the camera. She wonders if he does that all the time or just when she’s recording.) 

She watches him looking at her with heart eyes while she’s writing up reports, while she’s griping to John, while she’s cutting open dead people. 

He looks at her like that constantly, as long as she’s not aware enough to see it, and that is ridiculous and before she knows what she’s doing she’s grabbing her coat and closing her door and making her way to Baker Street.

*

Sherlock looks both unsurprised and dismayed to see her.

“Hello,” he says.

“Hello,” she says, courage failing in the face of… well, his face.

He sits down. She sits down. He stands up again. She takes a deep breath.

“Sherlock - ”

He holds up a hand.

“No, listen to me, Molly, before you say anything.” She shuts her mouth. “I - ” he ruffles his curls, looking frustrated, and Molly’s mouth feels dry. This whole situation is very not good for her whole ‘focusing on Molly’ resolution. “You’re here because of the footage you’ve been reviewing, I assume,” he says, starting to pace.

“Yes,” she says. He nods, looking guilty.

“I know I should have said something,” he says. “As soon as I found out about the camera I knew you’d find out soon, and I really meant to tell you before you watched it, so that you’d hear it from me - although I suppose you saw it from me - anyway. I know it’s too late for me, that I’ve missed my chance with you, and I don’t blame you, Molly, honestly, I’m awful to you, have been and continue to be, though I’m better, I hope. But I - please be gracious, please show me mercy I don’t deserve and don’t use it against me. Now that you know.”

Molly gapes at him. 

“ What ?” 

He lets out a long suffering sigh.

“I understand that this is probably shocking, surprising, perhaps even upsetting, but don’t play dumb , Molly, it doesn’t suit you.”

“I’m not playing dumb!” Molly says, feeling a little like she’s been run over by a train. A long one, that’s left her flattened and disoriented. “I don’t know what I know! I don’t know what is going on! Now that I know what ?”

“That I love you,” says Sherlock, frowning. “I thought that was fairly obvious.”

“It was not,” says Molly automatically, her head spinning. 

What ? What? To have Sherlock Holmes tell her that he loves her - in such a matter of fact voice, too! - it’s no wonder that she can’t think straight.

“I didn’t know that,” she says shakily.

“It’s not like I hide it very well,” Sherlock says, sounding disgruntled. “I’m not much better than you used to be.”

“Okay, there’s something,” says Molly, seizing onto something she feels like she can grasp. “You think I’m not in love with you anymore?”

“I know you’re not,” says Sherlock, sounding sad , of all things. Sad because she’s not in love with him . The world is a funny place.

“Well, you’re wrong,” she says bluntly, unconcerned with tact. His eyes widen. “I’m still very much in love with you. Just got better at hiding it, apparently.”

“Oh,” says Sherlock.

“Oh,” echoes Molly. 

They look at each other for a moment.

“Should we - what do we do now?” asks Sherlock.

“We could kiss,” suggests Molly.

“Okay,” says Sherlock.

“But we don’t have to if you don’t want to,” adds Molly, suddenly nervous.

“I want to,” says Sherlock, and he cracks a grin. It’s boyish and crooked and makes Molly’s heart turn all the flip-flops she’s been sternly telling it not to since New Year.

“Okay,” says Molly, and she stands up and he leans down and then they’re kissing, and it is soft and warm and nice and Molly thinks that maybe, just maybe, she might be warming to recording culture.

Chapter Text

“This is absolutely horrific .”

“Oh, shut it. It’s Christmas .”

“I know .”

“Listen - ”

“William! Margaret!”

Sherlock and Molly snap to attention, because no one can feel the wrath of Queen Violet without sustaining serious injuries. They’ve both learned this the hard way. 

“Stop whispering and pay attention!”

Molly would ask why they should pay attention when nothing is happening , but she knows better. 

She remembers a time when holidays were looked forward to. Celebrated. A good time. And then her older sister Anthea was married off to Mycroft Holmes, who was the crown prince of the next country over, and that was that. Now the Holmes and the Hoopers all gather together, because they want to create the illusion of a happy family to the press and nothing says ‘happy family’ like crowding into a tiny cottage that was never meant to hold eight people. And yet, here they are. 

It’s funny, because Mycroft and Anthea actually get along quite well for two people in an arranged marriage. And Molly herself gets along famously with Sherlock. It’s just their parents that… struggle.

“Violet! Leave the children alone! There’s nothing happening !”

Mostly because neither mother can seem to keep themselves from micromanaging the other’s offspring as they boss about their own. They’ve gotten more inflammatory as their children have grown up, and now that all of them are officially in university it seems to be getting worse. Molly truly doesn’t understand, but that’s beside the point. It’s not for her to understand. 

“I think I’m going for a walk - if that’s okay with you, Mum,” Sherlock adds hastily, at the look on his mother’s face. 

“Fine,” his mother sniffs. “But be back in time for dinner!”

“Of course,” Sherlock says in an undertone to Molly. “Who’d want to miss Christmas dinner?”

Molly tries not to giggle. 

“Okay if I go, too, mum?” she asks, as casually as possible. 

“Whatever you like, dear,” her mother says, being as aggressively lenient as possible to rub her superior parenting style in Violet Holmes’ face. 

Good Lord .

Molly grabs for her coat to find that Sherlock already has it and is holding it for her like a gentleman. She grins at him.

“How very kind of you, sir,” she says. 

“I am nothing if not kind,” he says haughtily, which makes her laugh.

*

The air is crisp and cool and clean and exactly what she needs after the horror of their collective families.

“Why do they make us do this every year if they hate each other so much?” she asks as they crunch along in the snow. 

“I think they’re bitter because Mycroft and Anthea found love in each other and they hate seeing their children happy,” says Sherlock, a bit bitter himself. 

Molly looks at him, surprised. Sure, Mummy Holmes can be a bit much, but she also loves her boys with abandon. This is evident to the outside eye. Molly didn’t know Sherlock was feeling like this.

“What’s going on?” she asks cautiously.

Sherlock will talk to her more than anyone else, but she still has to tread carefully. He’s easily offended. John, his mate from uni, has done wonders for his abilities to be misunderstood without flying off the handle - she thinks that having someone else listen to him, something that’s so simple and yet apparently so hard for everyone to do, is what has wrought the change - but he’s especially tetchy on their yearly family retreats. Which is understandable. Molly is also more prone to biting people’s heads off around Christmas. (Which is sad on many different levels.)

“Dad’s being… not good,” Sherlock says, after enough time had gone by that Molly was sure he wasn’t going to say anything.

“Oh?” says Molly, trying to sound gently inquisitive.

“Mm,” says Sherlock, and they crunch along together. “He - wants me to start thinking about getting married, too.”

“ What ?” Molly gasps, and she’s aware that her gasp is a little bit much but Sherlock , married , really ? “But you’ve only just finished your first semester! How can he possibly think that it’s time for you to be married off?”

She’s very purposefully ignoring the pang she feels at the thought of Sherlock getting married. (And if the pang is more for the idea of Sherlock marrying someone that’s not her than the idea of Sherlock’s marriage in general… well. No one needs to know that.)

Sherlock shrugs.

“Such is life, I suppose.” 

He shrugs again, trying to be nonchalant, but Molly can see tears in his eyes. She feels hot and cold all over. She doesn’t know what to say.

“If - ” and then Sherlock is crying for real and Molly is pulling him into her arms without a second thought. She murmurs nonsense until his shoulders stop shaking and then she just holds onto him until he pulls away, wiping angrily at his eyes. “Sorry,” he says. “I - um - ”

“Don’t apologize,” says Molly quickly, and her heart breaks a little. “It’s okay.” Then she thinks about that and tries to backtrack. “I mean, not okay , obviously it’s not okay , I just meant - ”

He rolls his eyes.

“Yes, I know,” he says.

“Okay,” she says.

They walk for a little longer, and then he says, “If I wasn’t being forced to marry somebody, I would have asked you if you - you know - ”

Molly gapes at him, for a while, and then, when he isn’t showing any signs of saying something more coherent, asks, “if I’d marry you?” 

Sherlock panics.

“No! No. No! Of course not! I wouldn’t - no! But I just - ” and he’s bright red, so much redder than she’s ever seen him blush before, and it’s somehow incredibly endearing and highly flattering that he’s so flustered.

“It’s okay,” she says again. “I’m not mad. Just… confused.” And hopeful, although she’d rather not admit it just yet. She’s had her heart broken multiple times by Sherlock Holmes, and she doesn’t fancy another go-round. “Confused about what you’re saying.”

He looks at her. Her heart stops.

“I would like to have a romantic relationship with you, Molly,” he says, blushing harder as he says it. 

She opens her mouth, thinks better of it, and closes it again. He doesn’t say anything, either. They just stare at each other for awhile.

Molly thinks about the painful Christmases. The angry parents, the struggles Mycroft and Anthea went through trying to make their marriage work. She thinks about how Sherlock was always ready to listen, how his letters gave her something to focus on in the midst of chaos, how she’s grown to love him.

She has, too. She won’t tell him, not yet, but she loves him dearly. 

“I think,” she says carefully, “that I’d like to kiss you if that’s okay.”

His eyes go wide.

“That’s okay,” he says quietly.

“Okay,” Molly says, and stands up on her tiptoes and pulls him down by his scarf and then they’re kissing in the snow on Christmas.

Life isn’t perfect, of course. They’re going to have to deal with their parents saying things like, “We already have a union between our countries, why would we need another? You two can be far more useful elsewhere.” They’re going to fight and argue and disagree.

But they’ll be together, and that’s what matters.

Chapter Text

There are many things Molly hates about being a private detective. 

She doesn’t like the fact that she’s in the business of more or less ruining people’s lives. She hates telling people that their worst fears are coming true, even though it’s obviously better than them being kept in the dark. She also dislikes handing her clients the materials they need to bring their husband’s or sister’s or colleague’s life crashing down. Usually the people she investigates have done bad things, but often they’ve done them for the right reasons. It gives her a pang, every time, even though logically and rationally she knows they need to be punished.

Sherlock, who works with her sometimes, says that she’s too soft. She cares too much, it makes her weak. Molly always tells him to piss off or something else that shows that she doesn’t care about what he’s saying.

(She does, of course. She cares very much about what Sherlock says. She cares too much. It is, in fact, a weakness.)

But never mind what she thinks about Sherlock. Molly is currently reflecting on the one thing she hates most about being a private detective - testifying in court.

She’s not sure what it is about the process that terrifies her so thoroughly. She doesn’t know if it’s the box she has to stand in or the silly wigs that both amuse and cause anxiety or knowing that it’s up to her to bring a bad guy down. (It’s not, really, but that’s how her brain interprets it because her brain is ridiculous.) 

Whatever it is, she’s shaking a little as she sits in the courtroom, waiting to be called. She accidentally meets Sherlock’s eyes (and why is he even here? Did he come to gloat over the trembling, pathetic mess she becomes when she stands in front of a lot of people?) and quickly looks away before she can read anything into his face.

(If she’d taken the time to try to read his expression, she’d have been surprised to find only sympathy; no disdain is in sight. But, as has been said, she didn’t take the time, and before she has the chance to try again she’s distracted by her name being called, and Sherlock’s face settles into something more stony and familiar.)

*

It didn’t go great.

It didn’t go terribly, either. There’s still a good chance that her client will get justice. But her voice shook and she took a moment to answer a question and the judge said, “You need to answer, Miss Hooper,” which was stressful and unpleasant and led to Molly being even more agitated. The jury certainly wasn’t impressed, and she doesn’t think her client was, either. 

She slunk out of the courtroom without giving anyone - her boss or her client or the attorney or Sherlock - a chance to speak to her, and she’s now sitting at home with a headache feeling quite miserable.

Maybe she should quit her job. Maybe she should move to Havana. Maybe - 

There’s a knock at her door.

It’s a testament to how out of it she currently is that she doesn’t think twice before going to open it. She’s sporting her baggiest Tweety Bird t-shirt and threadbare joggers; hardly her best look. 

It’s a testament to how dreadful she’s feeling that as soon as she opens the door she bursts into tears.

Sherlock, his arms full of takeaway containers, looks distressed.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he says over the mounds of white plastic in his arms. “I can leave you alone if - ”

“No,” says Molly, sniffling, dabbing at her eyes with the hem of her enormous top. “Sorry. I - I’m not feeling very well.”

“Oh,” says Sherlock, shuffling awkwardly past her as she stands aside to let him in. “Sorry to hear it.”

“Not says your fault,” says Molly, more mumbly than she likes to sound, watching him set the takeaway on her counter. “What’s this, then?”

“This is dinner,” says Sherlock, looking pleased with himself. “Figured you wouldn’t eat - you don’t eat when you’re upset, Molly, and that’s not good for you, you really must start trying to overcome that - and that some Thai wouldn’t be unwelcome.”

Molly squints at him suspiciously.

“What do you want?” she asks. “Do you have another spot you want me to squeeze into because you’re too big to fit? Because I was aching for days after the last time, and I don’t - ”

“No!” says Sherlock quickly. “No, I just - ” He stops lifting cartons out of bags and turns to face her. “I know I’m not particularly pleasant. To work with. And I know you had a bad day today. So I thought - two birds, one stone.”

“An apology and a cheer up mission,” says Molly, watching him rummage through her cupboards until he finds some plates. “Who are you and what’ve you done with Sherlock Holmes?”

He scoops rice and avoids her eyes.

“I simply had a discussion with a friend, and he thought that - we agreed that this might be nice. For you. And the first step towards becoming - ” he might be stopping himself from saying something, or he might be stopping because he’s focusing on not spilling curry. “ - friends,” he says, shrugging.

“Oh,” says Molly, feeling guilty for suspecting him of having ulterior motives and frustrated because he’s never not had ulterior motives before. “Well - thanks.”

“Not a problem,” he says, sliding dishes into the microwave. He presses start, dusts off his hands, and heads towards the door. “Well, enjoy. I hope that - ”

“You can’t possibly be going,” says Molly, feeling like a whirlwind has rushed through her flat and also like she must have missed something. “There’s not the slightest chance that I can finish all this on my own.”

He looks at the mountains of takeaway cartons piled on her counter like he’s seeing them for the first time.

“Oh,” he says, tension in his shoulders, “I couldn’t - I don’t want to impose.”

“It wouldn’t be imposing,” says Molly, rolling her eyes. “It’d be helping me. It’ll take me weeks to eat everything by myself, and my fridge isn’t big enough.”

“Well,” says Sherlock, hands fidgeting at his sides, almost like they want to reach for the buttons of his coat. “If you’re sure …”

“I am,” says Molly, and he almost smiles. The corner of his mouth tilts up, which is enough to make Molly feel slightly lightheaded. “I’m very sure,” she says again, for good measure.

And that is how she ends up eating Thai with Sherlock while sitting on the floor because she only has one chair. 

“You have to stop taking clients for free,” Sherlock says, shaking his head as he shovels pad thai into his mouth.

“I’ll stop helping when people stop needing help,” Molly retorts, accidentally dribbling tom kha onto her Tweety Bird shirt. 

Sherlock glares at her and says, “That’s a terrible business model,” but Molly can’t see any heat behind his eyes. In fact, if she looks hard enough, she sees a twinkle.

Chapter Text

“Sherlock Holmes!”

Sherlock freezes halfway through the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

He winces and turns to face his mother.

“I was going to go see Victor - ” he begins, unconvincingly, and his mother interrupts him by shaking her head furiously. Sherlock’s heart sinks. He can’t miss the opening, the opening is the best part, and - 

“Not before you’ve washed these dishes!” his mother says, in a tone that leaves no room for arguing.

Fine. Sherlock can work with this. If he hurries he can still get there before they’ve finished lining up the elephants.

He washes the dishes more quickly than anyone has ever washed dishes, and then is out the door before his mother can see how slapdash his washing job was. 

He can’t miss it. 

Three weeks ago, his parents took him and Mycroft and Eurus to see the circus that has established itself indefinitely in the empty building by the library. Sherlock was unhappy with the entire affair until the aerialists made their entrance. Or, rather, the aerialist . She was slender and graceful and Sherlock was instantly enchanted. He watched the entire routine with rapt attention, and has since been sneaking out to watch every performance he possibly can.

He’s learned that her name is Margaret Hooper, and he’s learned that she is one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen, and he’s learned that she’s been part of the circus for most of her life, and he’s learned that she wants to make enough money to go to university.

And he is smitten. 

He doesn’t know what it is about her that has him so thoroughly enthralled, but whatever it is he doesn’t have it in him to fight it. He slips into the back row just in time to watch her make a lap of the ring to finish off the opening routine. He watches her walk and wishes that he had the nerve to ask for a conversation with her. 

He sits through the clowns and the animals and the other acrobats and then he sits up as soon as the music for Margaret’s routine starts. 

He knows, objectively, that he must look silly, watching with open-mouthed awe. He knows that he must look sillier to the employees, who know that he’s watched nearly every show for the past three weeks with open-mouthed awe. 

But he can’t help it. She’s captivating. He can’t look away, and he doesn’t want to. 

When she slides down a silk to the ground and takes a bow, he claps so hard his palms tingle.

“You like her,” says a voice in his ear, and Sherlock jumps violently.

He turns to see someone very blonde and very smiley grinning at him.

“I - ” he tries, but he’s feeling a little disoriented and can’t seem to make the words work.

“Don’t bother denying it,” says the woman. “I’ve seen you come in here and stare at her day after day.”

“Oh,” he says, and feels himself blushing. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to - ”

“None of that,” says the woman, looking surprised at his reaction. “That wasn’t the point.”

“Then what was?” asks Sherlock, feeling mildly irritated. He doesn’t like being surprised, and he also doesn’t like being asked about things.

“Do you want to meet her?” asks the woman, smiling again. 

Sherlock’s heart skips a beat. 

Meet the woman he’s been thinking about incessantly? Look her in her face and say hello? What if she didn’t like him? Worse still, what if he didn’t like her ? What if it turns out that he only likes her when she’s performing? What if - 

“Yes,” says Sherlock, because he does. He does want to meet her. He wants to take the risk.

“That’s what I thought,” says the woman, grinning. “Follow me.” They make it off the bleachers and she adds, “I’m Mary, by the way.” 

“Sherlock Holmes,” says Sherlock automatically, and she grins wider.

They make their way down a long hallway, and then Mary is knocking on a door and a voice is saying “come in” and Sherlock is nervous. Why is Sherlock nervous?

Mary pushes the door open and says “There’s someone here who’d like to meet you,” and Sherlock’s stomach is suddenly full of butterflies. Why is it full of butterflies?

“Hello, Miss Hooper,” he says, and his voice only trembles a little. “It’s an honour to meet you. I - you’re very lovely.”

And then his face feels very hot. What is he saying ?

Miss Hooper smiles and says, “Call me Molly, please.”

“Right, sorry,” says Sherlock, feeling dazed. She’s even prettier up close. It’s all a bit overwhelming.

“May I ask your name?” asks Miss Hoop - Molly. Sherlock hasn’t felt this awkward in a very long time, and he is not enjoying the feeling. 

“Sherlock Holmes,” he says. “I quite enjoyed - I really - your routine is delightful.”

“Thank you,” says Molly, smiling. 

She’s so beautiful.

“Of course,” he says. 

There’s an awkward silence, in which he realizes that Mary disappeared at some point. 

“Did you need anything else, Mr. Holmes?”

“No!” says Sherlock, moving towards the door before he even realizes what I’m doing. “It was just an honour to meet you. I’m sure you’re very busy. Apologies.”

“No!” says Molly, standing up. “I just - I didn’t want to keep you. I’m sure you’re busy.”

“Oh,” says Sherlock.

There’s some more silence.

“You could - could I see you again?” asks Sherlock, and then immediately regrets it. He considers just leaving . Forget propriety. 

“Yes,” says Molly shyly, and he abandons his escape plan.

“Oh,” he says again, this time grinning like an idiot.

“I have another show, but if you were willing to wait we could have dinner after?” she suggests, when it’s clear that he’s not going to say anything else. (He couldn’t say anything else. He was so full of happiness.)

“Yes!” says Sherlock. He thinks about saying I’d wait a lot longer for you but thinks the better of it. That’s a little much for a first meeting. “I’d be delighted.”

“Well, good,” says Molly, smiling back at him. 

“Right,” says Sherlock, and when he leaves her dressing room shortly after he is walking on air.

Chapter Text

Molly angles her phone away from Sherlock and scrolls through texts from the real estate agent.

It agitates him when she talks about moving to the country, getting away from the city and being able to breathe . He’d never admit it, but this is because it makes him feel like she’s providing for him, which makes him feel inadequate, which makes him feel uncomfortable. She wishes he’d just say it, because then she could come back with an “oh, get over yourself,” but he won’t. 

He’s too busy being angsty .

She has to admit that Sherlock makes a splendid vampire. He was already pale and moody; now he just has the fangs and bloodthirst to match. He mopes around her flat most days, except for the ones where he finds a case on the internet and gets excited and solves it remotely and sends an anonymous email to Scotland Yard. When she’s home, he’s very clingy, which is to be expected. He doesn’t get very much human contact anymore. Mycroft and his parents come and visit fairly regularly, but they’re only visits. 

Molly has been seriously considering getting a dog.

But she’s also been closing in on a small cottage in north Yorkshire. She suspects that she will own it within the week.

She also suspects that Sherlock will be furious with her for not telling him, and he will have every right to be but she won’t apologize. She doesn’t want to live like this anymore. She can’t live like this anymore.

Someone came to the door the other day. Sherlock’s existence had been reported, and obviously labeled suspicious since Molly didn’t make it clear to everyone that he existed. She’d managed to keep her wits about her, and Sherlock was fortunately bright enough to stay hidden when he heard an unfamiliar voice in the apartment. 

She feels rattled just thinking about it. Sherlock must sense her distress, because he throws an arm over her waist and snuggles close. She puts her phone down on the bedside table and turns around to face him. 

A benefit of vampire Sherlock: he is so cuddly. She doesn’t know how she survived without constant snuggles before. 

“Something wrong?” he rumbles, and she reaches up to brush some curls out of his eyes. He needs a haircut.

“Just don’t like how much danger you’re in,” she murmurs, letting her hand slide down to trace his jawline. “How dangerous the law makes it for vampires to exist. Don’t like that.”

“Me neither,” he says, looking at her, “but there’s something else.”

She flushes with guilt and nods. She wasn’t planning on telling him so soon, but why not? Maybe if she tells him now he’ll be done throwing his fit by the time they’re ready to move in. 

“What is it?” he asks softly. “You know you can tell me anything.”

She can. She can tell him anything and she can trust him to stay with her even if he’s angry, even if he doesn’t like it. Something else that’s nice about vampire Sherlock. And it’s not about safety, either. It’s about… an awareness . Something he didn’t have before. He’s become more emotionally conscious. Molly, an emotional being, has appreciated it greatly. 

That won’t stop him from being angry, though.

She takes a deep breath in and lets it out.

“You know how I’ve mentioned moving to the country, getting away from here to somewhere with less people?”

Sherlock immediately stiffens and she sighs.

“I know you don’t like it, love, but we’re running out of options. We can’t do this forever. I can’t do this forever. Constantly wondering if you’ll even be here when I come home from work, if something unspeakable will have happened to you… can’t do it. You’re too important to me.”

He looks torn, and she knows he wants to be upset but is softened by her words. 

“If we get this cottage I’ve been looking at, we can go for walks at night. Together. Outside. Without worrying.”

He looks very torn at that. She knows he’s been feeling incredibly cooped up. She feels guilty for manipulating, but she also knows that it’s for the greater good.

“And the village is mostly vampire friendly,” she adds, which makes him raise an eyebrow. “Supportive. Recognizant of your humanity. Can you imagine? We could go get dinner somewhere, feel safe .”

His eyes are soft, and she knows she’s more or less won.

“Well, dinner. There’s a problem. How will I - how - ”

Molly finds herself grinning. 

“Vampire-friendly village, remember? To the point of taking regular blood drives. And if we run out, I’ll let you go track down some corrupt politicians. As a reward for good behaviour.”

He all but beams , and then frowns again.

“Jobs. money. What will you do?”

She slides her hand down to his chest and starts fiddling with the neckline of his t-shirt, unwilling to meet his eyes. She never thought of herself as someone who would take this kind of job, but desperate times and all that. She just - she doesn’t want him to laugh. 

“I’ve found something,” she says. “Mostly online, would require trips into the city every so often but… well, I think it could be good.”

“What is it?” asks Sherlock, looking genuinely intrigued. Molly opens her mouth and then frowns.

“You have to promise not to laugh,” she says.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow but says, “I promise.”

“I’m going to be a children’s book illustrator,” she says, and then closes her eyes so she can’t see him scoff at her. 

The curiosity is too much, of course, so she opens one eye to peek at his expression.

He’s grinning madly, ear to ear, but there’s not a hint of amusement in it.

“You will be wonderful,” he says, and she frowns. 

“You don’t mean that,” she says, and he puts a finger over her mouth.

“Don’t do that,” he scolds gently. “You will be wonderful, and you know it, or else you wouldn’t have taken the job.”

Molly doesn’t have much to say to that, because he’s right. 

“So I’ve convinced you, then?” she says, changing the topic. “We’re moving to Yorkshire?”

He hesitates, and her heart flip-flops.

“I still have concerns,” he says, “but yes. Let’s move to Yorkshire.”

“I win!” says Molly, trying not to gloat but failing miserably.

“Oh, shut up,” says Sherlock, and covers her laugh with a kiss.

Chapter Text

Sherlock is lecturing John on the finer points of tobacco ash when a hurricane bursts into his shop.

Upon closer examination, it is not, in fact, a hurricane, but rather a small woman with brown hair and browner eyes and a furious expression on her face.

She storms up to the counter and John subconsciously takes a step back. Sherlock stands his ground, but is, it must be said, quite impressed with whoever this person is, and the sheer magnitude of their fury.

“Hello,” he says, noting that in her fury her eyes are almost sparkling . “Welcome to Baker Street Florists. How can I help you?”

“How do I say eff you in flower?” says the hurricane, slapping money down on the counter like in films. 

“‘Eff you’?” repeats Sherlock, amused.

“Oh, sorry, I meant fu - ” 

 “Right this way!” says John loudly, eyeing the four year old that is happily browsing with her grandmother. 

The hurricane follows his eyes and blushes profusely. 

“Sorry,” she says, following John. Sherlock, almost subconsciously, is following her. He feels a bit as though he’s been pulled into orbit. “I’m a bit… worked up at the moment.”

“Obviously,” scoffs Sherlock, which earns him a glare from both John and the hurricane. He shuts his mouth.

“What’s happened to upset you?” asks John. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Got cheated on,” says the hurricane, and Sherlock feels the most ludicrous pang near his heart. Why should he care what the romantic partners of this person have done? Why does this matter? It doesn’t . Why - 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” says John. “I can understand why you’d want to say ‘eff you’ to your ex.”

“Oh, no,” says the hurricane. “They’re not for my ex. They’re for my former best friend, who also happens to be the girl he was cheating with.”

John winces, and Sherlock feels even worse . This makes no sense. Why does he care ? 

He doesn’t. He doesn’t! He won’t! He doesn’t - 

“May we ask your name?” he says, and then wants to cover his mouth. Where’d that come from?

“Molly,” says the hurricane, appearing not to notice how uncomfortably awkward Sherlock is. Thank the Lord for small mercies, he supposes.

“Ah,” says John, giving Sherlock a look that says you are not getting away that easily . “Well, I’m John, and this is - ”

“Sherlock Holmes,” says Sherlock, who has apparently lost his mind.

(It’s not his mind, just his heart, but he won’t figure that out for a while.)

“Pleasure to meet you both,” says Molly.

“You too,” says John. “Though, obviously - wish it were under different circumstances.”

And at that Molly cracks a smile, and at that Sherlock’s heart pounds. 

“Indeed,” she says, and then John stops in front of a flower section.

“Okay,” he says, narrowing his eyes. “For your, er, needs , you’ll definitely want orange liles.”

“Ooh,” says Molly, “what do they symbolize?”

“Hatred,” says John.

Sherlock finds himself smiling at the look of shock on Molly’s face. He suspected as much. She seems far too kind and gentle to genuinely want an ‘eff you’ bouquet.

“Or,” he interrupts, stepping forward into Molly’s line of vision, “if ‘hate’ is too strong a sentiment, you could try yellow carnations.”

Molly quirks an eyebrow.

“Disappointment,” he says. 

Molly frowns.

“We can put some of those in,” she says, “but I’m not giving up the orange lilies. I like them.”

Sherlock feels oddly hurt that she won’t abandon John’s suggestion for his, and then he feels silly. At least she didn’t reject him. 

Suggestion. His suggestion. At least she didn’t reject his suggestion.

“Meadowsweet,” suggests John. “Symbolizes uselessness.”

“Good,” says Molly, nodding.

Sherlock feels the strangest surge of jealousy.

“Geraniums,” he says quickly. “Stupidity.”

Molly breaks into a grin.

“Perfect,” she says. “That’ll be a banger of a bouquet, gentlemen.”

“Does your friend - ex-friend, I suppose, sorry - know the language of flowers?” asks John, scribbling the list of flowers on a notepad and handing it to Sherlock. Sherlock feels irritated at being dismissed and motivated to make the bouquet the most beautiful, charming, aesthetically-pleasing piece he’s ever put together. 

“Not really,” says Molly, her voice fading away as Sherlock makes his way to the other side of the greenhouse. “Irene isn’t big on that sort of thing. I just like the thought of it.”

Sherlock puts much more effort than he would ever admit to into perfecting the way the flowers rest against each other, and then he heads for the front of the shop to wrap it up. 

“All right,” says John, stepping behind the counter and starting to ring her up. “That’ll be - ”

“On the house,” says Sherlock quickly, pretending he doesn’t see John’s ‘what are you doing you spontaneous moron’ look. “To - er - help. Hopefully. With the whole…” he waves an arm around, trying to communicate.

John is looking at him like he’s officially gone insane. Molly, on the other hand, is glowing .

“Thank you,” she says. “Really. That - thank you very much. But I insist on, you know, a little bit.”

And she slides a few notes across the counter. 

“Thank you ,” says John, still eyeing Sherlock like he might start doing pirouettes at any moment. (And, honestly, the expression on Molly’s face is enough to make Sherlock seriously consider some pirouettes. Consider them more seriously than he would normally, anyway.)

“Okay,” she says, smiling. “Thanks again for everything.”

And she gathers up her flowers and starts for the door.

Sherlock, who is at this point committed to being and sounding like an idiot, calls, “be sure to let us know how that works out for you!” and she turns around, smiling, to say, “I will!”

John doesn’t give him a moment’s peace about it all afternoon. Sherlock thinks about the deep brownness of Molly’s eyes and the fact that he might get to see them again, and he finds he doesn’t mind so much.

Chapter Text

Molly doesn’t go with him to red carpet events.

She did, once. She had a stylist and a makeup team and her hair was done professionally. She was objectively stunning, in a sparkly dress with sky high heels, but she hated it. Every second. After that night, they agreed that it would be best for Molly to cheer Sherlock on from afar. He would never ask her to do anything that caused her distress.

But he does wish, he reflects as Irene smiles with sharp and scarily white teeth, that his colleagues were a little more… palatable. He likes modeling. He does not like models.

“Sherlock! Sherlock! Over here!”

He also does not like the paparazzi.

Journalists are all well and good, he supposes. After all, Mary is one, and he quite likes Mary. But entertainment journalists, the ones that delight in ruining marriages and wrecking homes, he doesn’t like those. In fact, he quite actively dislikes them.

There’s been a lot of speculation about the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler. The favourite fan theory is that they’re having amorous relations. Everyone seems to have forgotten about Molly, even though Sherlock mentions her to the press every chance he gets.

Apparently the public doesn’t care about people they can’t see. It irritates Sherlock to no end.

“You could put a little more effort into seeming happy to be here,” Irene whispers into his ear, smiling the entire time. 

“That would be lying,” says Sherlock. “I have a strong moral code - ”

“You’re ridiculous,” says Irene. “You couldn’t care less about lying. You’re just missing your little Molly.”

Very perceptive, is Irene.

“I am,” he agrees. “What of it?”

“This is your job ,” she says. “Your job is to be beautiful and look like you’re having a good time, even when you’re not.”

He makes a noncommittal grunt but he does smile for the cameras. And in his head he counts down the moments until he can go home and cuddle Molly and watch some crap telly until they both fall asleep.

*

It is a glorious evening, and in the morning they decide to go out for breakfast. Molly cheerfully bundles herself up in a ghastly neon scarf overtop of approximately three jumpers. (One has cats, one has cherries, one has Christmas trees. It is February.) She throws her favourite squashy coat overtop and beams up at him.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Ready,” he says, trying not to grin at her outfit. She always says he’s being patronizing. He’s not . He just happens to think that her awful fashion sense is one of the most adorable things he’s ever seen. Probably because he’s been forced to dress well his entire life, first by his parents and then by his manager, but that’s beside the point.

They hold hands as they skip along the pavement. (Well, Molly is skipping. Sherlock is trying not to look amused.) They hold hands as they enter the restaurant. They hold hands when they leave.

Sherlock really, really likes holding Molly’s hand. 

They go home and lounge around and are thankful for Sundays and fall asleep early and wake to a flood of notifications.

Sherlock takes one look at the first screenshot and feels his heart sink.

“Love, stay off of your - ”

But it’s too late. She’s looking at her phone and going very pale when he looks up from his own.

“I’m sorry,” he says, not knowing what else to say. “Molly - ”

“‘S okay,” she says, dabbing at her eyes and setting her phone down. “They’re all silly, anyway.”

“Yes,” he agrees, relieved to have something he can believes in so profoundly to agree with. “Very silly. Incredibly silly. I can’t believe - ”

“Do you think that?” she asks, and her voice is very small. She wraps her arms around herself, curls in. Something hurts in Sherlock’s chest.

“Of course not!” he says, hoping that his horror at the question is evident on his face. He thinks about the article, whose sole purpose was making fun of the love of his life, and feels ill. “Molly,” he says, “you know I think you’re beautiful, right?”

“You’ve told me once or twice, yes,” she says, looking a little better. 

“Right,” he says, relieved, again. “And your clothes - they’re endearing, Molly. Adorable. Very out of - well. Not conforming to modern - er - trends, of course, but that doesn’t matter . You’re beautiful. And your clothes are you. And - and I’m glad. That you wear the things you wear. I’m sorry that - these absolute bastards  - ”

Her eyes are still glistening, but she looks much happier. 

“Okay,” she says. “Thank you.”

“Not good with words,” he mumbles. “Wish I could - ”

“But you meant it,” she says. “That - thank you.”

“Oh,” he says, feeling embarrassed. “You’re welcome. I don’t  - stupid journalists. Stupid clothes. Stupid industry. You deserve better than me. You know that, right?”

“Mmhmm,” she says, leaning in to kiss him. “But I don’t want better than you.” 

And that makes him feel better than any headline ever could.

Chapter Text

Sherlock owns Intelligence Ink. 

(He did not name it. He inherited the shop from his mother after making some regrettable life choices involving illegal substances, and she’d only let him have it if he promised to leave the name alone. He will never understand why. It’s silly and over the top and dreary and he cannot comprehend why the name means so much to her. But it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, so he tries not to think about it too much.)

He enjoys his job. He’s always loved art; making it and looking at it and thinking about it. It’s fun (and quite touching, when he thinks about it, which he tries not to do very often) that people trust him enough to let him make permanent art on their skin. He doesn’t love the people themselves, but John, his receptionist/assistant/self-appointed platonic life partner, does enough socializing with their clients for the both of them. 

He’s having a pretty good day today; Lestrade came in for the final touches to his sleeve, which turned out even better than Sherlock had hoped for. Greg himself (who came in enough that Sherlock knows his first name now - not an easy feat. The first time he successfully called the man by his given name John was in shock for hours.) was very pleased with the results, and when Greg is pleased with something it more or less means free publicity.

He’s humming to himself as he cleans up his station, and then his phone dings with a text.  

Irene

Why did your girlfriend just come in here??

Seen 2:34pm

Sherlock

I don’t have a girlfriend

You know that

Seen 2:36pm

Irene

Well yours just made an appointment

Seen 2:38pm

Sherlock’s day is promptly ruined.

Technically, what he told Irene is true. He doesn’t have a girlfriend. Hasn’t had one. Ever. 

But he kind of wants one. And one time, when he was out with Irene commiserating the fact that they can’t do drugs together anymore because they both like their lives the way they are, he told her who he wishes was his girlfriend.

She laughed at him, and he blocked her until she apologized.

He’ll be the first to admit that Molly isn’t sophisticated. She isn’t elegant. She’s clumsy and she trips at least five times a day and she’s awkward and most of her clothing is frumpy and has garish patterns on it.

But she’s also incredibly kind and fiercely loyal and she never once judged him for being an addict, way back when everyone was judging him for being an addict, and she helped him get clean and he thinks he might love her.

And that’s very scary so he tries not to dwell on it often.

Anyway, he told Irene and Irene (once she got over her own snobbery - she really is a horrible person. Sometimes he wonders why he’s friends with her and then remembers that he’s a horrible person, too.) was charmed and has since called Molly his girlfriend, probably because he always blushes profusely when she says it.

He really has it bad.

Anyway , Molly has promised him - on multiple occasions, he might add - that if she ever decides to get a tattoo, she’ll let him do it. 

And now she’s at Irene’s parlour, going to get something done there , and that stings. She promised .

He mopes around until John, fed up with his forlorn sighs, drags the reason for his moping out of him.

John is not sympathetic. John tells him to stop moping and go talk to Molly, and Sherlock, for possibly the first time in his life, listens to John.

It turns out that bursting into your friend’s tattoo shop to stop the woman you wish was your girlfriend from getting a tattoo, only to find her listening carefully to aftercare instructions while another woman is standing next to her with a wrapped forearm, is just as awkward as it sounds. 

“What are you doing here, Sherlock?” asks Molly, sounding like she wishes she was more surprised.

“Yes, what are you doing here?” Irene asks, sounding delighted.

The newly-tattooed individual looks confused and a little alarmed.

Molly sighs.

“Meena, this is Sherlock. Sherlock, Meena.”

“Hello,” says Meena.

“Hi,” says Sherlock. “I’m just - er - good day to you all.”

And then he leaves, like the coward that he is.

*

Molly calls him later, because of course she does.

“What was that about?” she asks, sounding like she knows exactly what it was about. 

“Just - I dunno,” says Sherlock, pouting. “Wondered if - um - ”

“If what?” says Molly, and when it becomes clear that she’s going to make him say it out loud, in words, he decides to get it over with.

“If you were going to go get a tattoo somewhere that wasn’t mine,” he says, mumbling a little.

She’s silent as she mulls this over. 

“It was scary,” he ventures, when she doesn’t respond. “The thought.”

“Sherlock?” she says.

“Yes?”

“Come let me up.”

He looks out his window and lo and behold there is Molly, looking up at him, with an unreadable expression on her face. 

He dashes downstairs and lets her in, trying not to look as anxious as he feels. 

“Well?” he says. 

“Have I ever broken a promise to you?” she asks.

Sherlock gulps. He did not want it to go this way. He wanted free comfort and assurance that Molly will always be his friend no matter what. 

“No,” he admits. 

“What made you think I would break this one?” she asks.

He can’t look her in the eyes.

“I don’t know.” He can feel her looking at him and sighs. “I don’t know , Molly. It just - I don’t know.”

“I would never break a promise to you,” she says, and when he squirms a little she says, “ Never . And of course not one as important to you as that.”

“Not that important,” he tries to mumble, and she cuts him off.

“Don’t even try lying to me, because it won’t work. I know it’s important to you and I would never break a promise to you and I certainly wouldn’t hurt you like that and it hurts me to think that you think that I would.”

“... ‘m sorry.”

“As you should be.”

Shame burns hot in his chest until she says, “but of course I forgive you.”

“Yeah?” he says, trying to pretend that it doesn’t mean as much to him as it does. 

“Of course,” she says again. “Now let me hug you, you git.”

He does, and he quite enjoys the hug, and then she lets go and they chat for a while in the entryway until she says she has to go and then she does and he’s left to walk up the stairs, secure in their friendship and determined to ask her to be his girlfriend.

Soon.

Chapter Text

"I just want to make sure that my feelings on this are very clear," Molly hisses.

"You could not be more clear about your feelings on this if you tried," Mary returns, stirring the potion.

"Well, I'm going to try," says Molly. "I think dosing Sherlock Holmes with a love potion meant to make him fall in love with me - me of all people! - is a terrible, awful, horrible idea."

"Yes," says Mary absently, ladling the potion into a vial. "I'm aware."

"Then why are you still doing it?"

Mary corks the vial and turns to face Molly.

"Because I am convinced that he's already in love with you. He just needs a little nudge, some encouragement to make the first move, and then he'll be glad it happened."

Molly scowls at her, but doesn’t knock the vial out of her hands, which she knows she would do if she really meant it. Truth be told, she’s a little bit intrigued. Is Sherlock Holmes even susceptible to love potions? Will it do anything? She can’t help awaiting the answer with interest.

*

Turns out, the answer is no. Sherlock doesn’t do a single thing differently. He doesn’t ask her out, doesn’t plant a smacker on her lips, doesn’t even say anything other than “please don’t, Molly,” when she tried to crack a joke to lighten up the room. 

Prat.

She’s not sure how she convinced herself that the potion would do anything, but she did, and now she’s finding herself very disappointed. 

“He can’t be completely unaffected,” hisses Mary. “That’s the strongest - ”

“Well, he’s clearly stronger than it,” Molly snaps back. “And I’ll thank you kindly not to get my hopes up again.”

Mary glowers, but she also obliges.

*

Molly manages to forget about the day of the disheartening potion. It takes some doing (and some ice cream, and a couple rom-coms), but she gets it out of her head. 

And then it gets back into her head, because Mary shows up at her door at two in the morning with a potions textbook and a manic expression.

“I knew it!” she says, when Molly inquires gently about her mental health. “I knew it!”

“Knew what?” asks Molly, putting the kettle on (if Mary is going insane, maybe tea will help) and taking another sip of her own chamomile.  

“That Sherlock is in love with you!” says Mary triumphantly. Molly chokes and tea comes out her nose. 

Once she’s recovered a little from the burn, she manages a weak, “what?”

“Look at this!” says Mary, flipping to a marked page and shoving it in Molly’s face. Molly, still coughing from the tea that made its way into her respiratory system, takes the book and squints at the page. (It’s two in the morning. She doesn’t have her contacts in, and she didn’t think to put on her glasses.) 

It takes her three or four tries to actually take in the information, but once she understands what Mary is so worked up about she looks at her friend with wide eyes. 

“I told you,” she says, triumphant. 

Molly just swallows. Her throat is suddenly very dry. 

She doesn’t get much sleep that night.

*

It takes her a while to work up the courage to bring it up to Sherlock. After all, there must be a reason he hasn’t mentioned it until now. She’s not particularly keen on getting Mr. Darcy’d and told that there are things about her that make her undesirable even to whoever has the misfortune of falling in love with her, and given the way Sherlock has spoken to her in the past he will have no problem detailing the ones he has with her. 

But she wants to know - needs to know, even - and so one day, while he’s sitting on his sofa telling her about his most recent case, she takes a deep breath and bites the bullet. 

(Figuratively.)

“Sherlock,” she says, and he looks at her attentively. She wavers, but reminds herself that she needs this. “Do you love me?”

He freezes. For some reason, the sheer and utter panic in his eyes gives Molly the courage to push. 

“Do you?” 

He blinks at her but otherwise shows no signs of life.

“Because…” oh, she’s going to regret this, this cannot end well, she’s spent so long internalizing… “because I do.”

“You love you?” he says, and his voice is a little hoarse but she knows that he’s being annoying on purpose.

“You know what I mean,” she says, and she wishes her voice wasn’t so shaky but she supposes that’s what happens when you love somebody and you suspect they love you but you’re not sure yet.

She looks at him. He looks at her.

“... yes.”

“You know what I mean?” 

“Stop it, Molly.”

But he’s smiling, and suddenly she is, too. She’s not sure who reaches for whom first but somehow she finds herself wrapped up in a warm, tight hug, and she finds herself very, very happy with this arrangement. 

“I do, you know,” she says, voice muffled by his chest. “I love you.”

He inhales sharply and squeezes her tighter. 

“I love you, too,” he says, and it’s gruff but there is so much emotion packed into it and Molly can only marvel at how she had no idea. 

“You really do, don’t you?” she muses. How strange. Sherlock loves her. 

“Hmm?” he says.

Apparently she mumbled. 

“Never mind,” she says, nestling closer. “We can talk about it later.”

Chapter Text

The first time Sherlock meets her, he’s surprised by how much he likes the look of her.

The perpetually unrealistic peppiness of baristas always irritates him, but hers doesn’t.

Although perhaps this is because she isn’t peppy . She is friendly , and warm , and it was genuine , and he is intrigued. She seems truly glad to be taking people’s orders, asking them how their day is going, handing them a pastry. 

And she has pretty eyes.

He’s so impressed by her that he tries to reciprocate some of her kindness - something he’s never done before in his life . He returns her smile, and if his is a little stiff that’s because he never uses it. He tells her his name, and she scribbles something on a cup, and he’s so distracted by the way her ponytail swishes when she turns to call out to her coworker that he completely misses the fact that she messed it up.

That is, until she hands him his paper cup, and he looks at it after taking a sip. 

Shrock , she’s written. Shrock .

He’s had his name mangled by coffee shop employees before, of course. Multiple times. Sherlock is a somewhat strange name, after all. No, the mistake isn’t new.

What is new was his reaction to it.

Instead of the normal irritation, the kind that crawls up your throat and is hot and itchy, he feels amusement. Understanding. Fondness . (And isn’t that odd? He doesn’t even know her.) 

Instead of contemplating the uselessness of half-deaf baristas, he spends his walk to work reflecting on how understandable it is that she misheard him. The cafe was bustling and noisy and he wasn’t speaking loudly. (He will deny it until the end of time, but the smile she sent him made his throat go dry.) 

For some strange, inexplicable reason, he feels happy. All day. 

*

He goes back. 

Of course he goes back. How could he not, when he knows that she has hair and eyes and a smile?

He goes back, and he manages to focus enough to take a surreptitious glance at her nametag. Molly . Isn’t that fitting, he thinks, when the name warm and soft and gentle in his mouth - thank you, Molly - and matches the warm and delighted grin she wears. 

You’re welcome, Shrock , she says, beaming, so proud of herself for remembering his name, and Sherlock cannot find it in himself to correct her. He wants to, of course, but then he considers the fact that she might be embarrassed, that the smile might dissolve and be replaced with something hot and burning and ashamed, and he decides that he can wait. Shrock is very far away from the worst thing he’s been called. 

*

He keeps going back, and his decision to tell her that his name is not, in fact, Shrock, dissolves. He keeps coming up with new excuses, and none of them make sense. What they really boil down to is that he wants to have the you’ve had my name wrong the entire time we’ve known each other conversation outside of the coffee shop, somewhere where they have time and privacy, and he doesn’t want to be the one to say let’s spend time together outside of the coffee shop.

It’s silly, and if he thought about it he’d realize this, but why would he think about it when he can think about Molly instead?

(And think he does. He thinks about her truly awful jumpers and the way they make her face glow and how horrified anyone with a lick of fashion sense would be to be seen in them and how oblivious Molly is of their hideousness. His tummy flutters when he thinks about the way she always lights up when she sees him, and then he gets gloomy when he thinks about the way she lights up when she sees anyone . A true lover of people, his Molly.

No, no, not his Molly. Of course not his Molly. She doesn’t even know his actual name, after all.)

So he just goes to the cafe and smiles when she calls him Shrock and nurtures secret, silly fantasies that will never come to pass because he is a coward.

Which is fine.

*

One day, he’s sitting in Baker Street with John, talking a mile a minute about their latest class and what a bore the professor is, and John throws his head back against the couch.

“I want coffee,” he announces, “even though it’s too late for it.”

Sherlock, without thinking, says “I know a good place.”

John raises an eyebrow and Sherlock tries to backtrack but it’s too late. So he puts on his coat and he grabs his wallet and he wishes very much that he’d kept his mouth shut.

Images of John bursting out laughing when Molly calls him ‘Shrock’ flash before his eyes. He thinks about how humiliated she’ll be. He thinks about how this is exactly what he didn’t want to happen.

He wants to scream, but it’s too late now.

*

Molly beams when she sees him, like she always does, and Sherlock feels his heart flop around in his chest, like it always does. 

The cafe is quiet, because it’s almost eleven in the evening on a weeknight. This is exactly what he was dreading. If it was busy there’d be a chance that John would mishear.

Now it’s a sure thing.

“Hello!” says Molly, with the enthusiasm that makes her such an excellent barista. “What can I get for you tonight?”

John places his order, looking at Sherlock with bemusement and a musement and something else Sherlock doesn’t care to put a name to, and Sherlock gives her his.

“We’ll have those for you in just a moment,” says Molly, smiling, and when she goes to assist her coworker John turns to Sherlock with his eyebrows nearly reaching his hairline. 

“Who is she?” he whisper-says in as sing-songy a tone as he can manage while whispering.

“Molly,” says Sherlock, “obviously. Did you not read her name tag?”

“No, I did,” says John, “I just wanted to see if your voice sounded any different when you were talking about her.”

“Oh,” says Sherlock, and then, “did it?”

“It did,” says John. “It was soft and fond and very strange. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

Sherlock feels a lot of feelings at that but can’t think of a way to express them before Molly comes back with their drinks.

“A latte for John,” she says, handing it over, “and a grande coffee frappuccino with an extra shot of espresso for Shrock.”

John spits out the sip he’d taken and starts laughing. 

“ Shrock !” he says, laughing. “Where’d you come up with that one?”

“It sounds like my name,” says Sherlock, frowning and trying not to be cross because it’s really not John’s fault.

“What?” says Molly at the same time.

Sherlock and John turn to look at her. She’s bright red, and there’s a glassy layer of tears over her eyes, and she looks more upset than she did the time that customer shouted at her for getting his order wrong.

(Sherlock hadn’t physically assaulted the man, but it had been a close call. He had escorted the man off the premises and threatened him with the wrath of the British government if he ever came back.)

“I meant to tell you - ” Sherlock begins.

“I’ve put my foot in it, haven’t I,” says John, looking apologetic.

“No, no, it’s fine,” says Molly, who is clearly not fine. “I just - I’m so sorry, Sh - I don’t even know your name. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe - all this time - I’m so incredibly sorry. I couldn’t begin to tell you how mortified I am.”

“Don’t be,” says John, “he’s a prick.”

She offers a halfhearted smile, and picks up a pen and a gift card. (They write on their gift cards here. It’s a very small and quirky coffee shop.) 

“I’m so sorry,” she says again. “We’ll make it up to you.” She scrawls a number on the card and then says, flushing red again (it was beginning to wear off), “What - could I have your name, sir? Again?”

“Sherlock,” says Sherlock, and he’s never felt so awful for having a unique name. “I’m truly sorry, Molly. I never meant - this is precisely the sort of situation I was trying to avoid.”

“I understand,” says Molly, sniffling a little. “I understand completely. This whole thing is on me - ”

“It’s really not,” interrupts Sherlock.

“ - and I’m handling it much worse than I would normally. I got some bad news today and - well. It was all just a bit much.”

She takes a deep breath and gives them a wobbly but genuine smile before handing Sherlock his gift card. 

“This really isn’t necessary,” he says. 

“Please take it,” she says. “For me.”

He resists the silly urge to say something like I’d do anything for you and tucks the card into his pocket instead, to prove it with his actions. 

“Well,” she says, laughing a little. “This day has not gone at all the way I thought it would when I woke up this morning.”

“Happens to the best of us,” says John. “Anything we can do to help?”

“Anything,” Sherlock adds, because he doesn’t like how easily John is interacting with her. It’s not fair.

“Be an expert in physical chemistry?” says Molly, laughing ruefully.

John looks at Sherlock. Sherlock looks at John.

“As it happens,” says John, “Sherlock is very, very good at chemistry - physical and otherwise.”

He’s smirking to himself, and Molly is blushing, and Sherlock feels like he’s missed something but he’s distracted by Molly’s eyelashes.

“Would you - ” she winces. “I hate to ask - especially since I’ve had your name wrong this entire time - but would you mind helping - maybe - sorry, you’re probably busy, I shouldn’t - ”

“I’d love to help,” says Sherlock, and then feels himself blushing. “If that’s all right.”

“More than all right!” says Molly quickly.

They smile at each other for a moment.

“Well,” says John, “I should go. Final papers, you know.”

“Of course,” says Molly. “Thank you for stopping by! And I apologize for, you know, everything.”

“No worries,” says John. “I hope the chemistry sorts itself out.”

And he looks very pleased with himself as he leaves.

“I’m truly happy to help,” says Sherlock, feeling awkward and uncomfortable but not wanting to leave.

“Thanks,” says Molly. She twists her fingers together.

“I’m sorry for - ”

“I was wondering if you’d like to have coffee.”

They blink at each other. 

“Why would you be sorry?” asks Molly. “ I’m the one that called you by the wrong name for six months.” 

“I have coffee,” says Sherlock.

They blink at each other some more.

“I meant coffee with me,” says Molly at length, and she’s bright red again but her eyes look much less miserable and much more cautiously hopeful. “As - well, whatever you want it to be as.”

Sherlock is both stunned and incredibly delighted.

“I would like that,” he says. “I would like that very much.”

“Well, good,” she says.

“Yes,” he says.

Another moment passes.

“I really should go,” he says. “I have to get back and do… something.”

“Me, too,” agrees Molly. “Floors to be mopped, that sort of thing.”

“Well,” says Sherlock.

“Yes,” says Molly. 

“See you,” he says, and leaves.

He’s halfway home before he remembers that you need to have someone’s contact information in order to contact them.

He catches Molly just as she’s leaving the cafe, oversized bag slung over her shoulder and very puffy coat zipped up. 

“Mobile number,” he gasps. (Running all the way back was quite unnecessarily dramatic, in hindsight.) 

“What?” she asks, sounding both amused and glad to see him again. It makes him feel warm.

“I need your mobile number,” he says. “So we can decide when to have coffee.”

“Oh!” she says, and pulls her phone out. “What’s yours?” she asks. “I’ll send you a text.”

He rattles it off, and she programs it into her phone. His buzzes in his pocket.

“Got it,” he says. 

“Great!” she says.

They look at each other. He thinks about how much he’d like to kiss her, and then he thinks about how little she really knows him. Better to wait. 

“Can I walk you home?” he asks instead.

“Yes,” she says, blushing again. 

He walks her home, and says goodnight, and goes home and sends her a text. 

Sherlock

When should we have coffee?

Seen, 12:03AM

Molly

didn’t save your number in my phone, whoops, but

this is Sherlock, right?

Seen, 12:06AM

Sherlock

Yes, but you can call me Shrock.