Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Molly.”

“Yes?”

“Molly.”

“Right here,” Molly sighed in exasperation. This was followed by a grunt of pain as her companion listed to the left and trod on her instep. Using her shoulder, she heaved Sherlock Holmes into a (somewhat) vertical position and propped him against the door to 221 Baker Street.

“Molly.”

She ignored his call, busying herself instead with rifling his coat for keys. Sherlock, however, was not one to be ignored gladly.

“Molly.”

“Molly?”

“Oi, Hooper!”

Molly was a patient woman, really she was, but even someone as even tempered and generally cheerful as she could get fed up enough to bare her teeth and growl a little bit. “What. Do. You. Want?”

“Nothing. I just like saying your name.” Sherlock smirked, “Molly, Molly, Molly…”

“Where are your keys?” Molly wondered if she looked and sounded as tired as she felt.

“In mmmy pocket, Mmmmmolly.”

“I just checked your pocket.”

Sherlock snorted, “They are not in my coat pocket, Mah-leee.”

“Of course,” Molly said with another put-upon sigh. She was too irritated to either be gentle or blush at the contact as she shoved a hand into each of his trouser pockets.  

“Now I’ve got a Molly in my pocket.”

“John was right. You do enunciate more precisely when you’re drunk.”

“I am not drunk. I had one drink.”

“On top of the cocktail of pharmaceuticals they gave you after surgery. You’re high as the proverbial kite.” She finally managed to snag a key and open the front door to the building as she continued the lecture. “You, Mr. Graduate Chemist, know perfectly well you can’t mix drugs and alcohol, and yet you did it anyway.”

“Are you going to slap me again?” Sherlock’s expression changed slightly as he said this, but Molly couldn’t tell if it was fright or excitement making his eyes light up, so she ignored it.

“No, I’m not going to slap you,” Molly said, giving him her sternest look, “I’m going to do something worse.”

Sherlock gave her a suitably wary look coloured with a hint of confusion.

“You, Sherlock Holmes, are a moron.” Molly jabbed a finger into his chest and did an admirable job of not laughing at the look of offended outrage on Sherlock’s face.

She didn’t give the man a chance at rebuttal, merely guided him up the last few steps and through the door to his flat. She gingerly settled Sherlock in his chair by the hearth and then turned to light the fire making a mental note to thank Mrs. Hudson for laying it earlier.

Had Sherlock not just been shot a few days ago, Molly would have shoved him through the front door and made a break for it, but, regardless of the total idiocy of the man, she couldn’t leave him alone in such a condition. She had known from the start that he would check himself out of hospital too soon (she and John had discussed contingencies while Sherlock was still unconscious), but no one had predicted that he would simply do a runner, through a second floor window no less.

Had it been anyone else, up to and including Mycroft Holmes himself, Molly would have rung up an ambulance immediately, but she had known Sherlock long enough to understand the likelihood of that ending well. Instead, she decided to mitigate any damage he had already done to himself as much as she could and try to get John over as soon as Sherlock wasn’t paying attention.

“Don’t call John,” Sherlock blurted. So much for not paying attention.

“Sherlock,” Molly started, but was quickly interrupted by an oddly more sober Sherlock.

“I just need to sober up. I’m perfectly fine. If you could brew some coffee, Molly.” After a small pause, he added an abrupt, “Please.”

Molly bit her lip, but shuffled off to the kitchen and busied herself with finding the necessary accoutrements for coffee. It didn’t take as long to find everything as she feared, but involved moving about many more biohazard containers than she would have been comfortable with had she not been the source of the containers to begin with. She was spooning sugar into his cup when she noticed the humming. She peered over her shoulder at the man now mumbling the lyrics to “Molly Malone.”

“What’s that?” She asked Sherlock as she brought in his cup.

“It’s a fairly well-known folk ballad with Irish origins.”

Molly’s lips quirked. She really should know better than to ask the wrong questions. “Why are you singing that fairly well-known Irish folk ballad?.”

“You’re father taught you that song.”

“Well, yes,” Molly acknowledged, more than a little flustered, “I wouldn’t have thought you’d remember that.”

“I remember everything you tell me Molly,” Sherlock responded casually. He took a large swallow of coffee, which seemed to perk him up a bit, but did nothing to hide the peakiness in his complexion.

“You remember everything…?” Molly squinted at him and sat on a chair pulled from the nearby table. She didn’t comment on the noticeable absence of John’s chair.

“Yes, everything. Especially our discussions on forensic science. Your lectures have provided boundless amounts of useful information.”

Molly sat looking at the man as he sipped the drink. Sherlock was not one for the common niceties, but he could be effusive in his praise, if one knew how to read him correctly. Molly, in spite of herself, felt a blush creeping up her neck.

“I’m glad I could be of use.”

“Yes, you were extremely useful when I was shot,” Sherlock continued as he set his cup aside, “Your instructions were very precise and logical.”

“My instructions?” This was clearly going to be one of those conversations in which Molly had to play catch up.

“Yes. Well, not you literally. I remembered our discourse on bullet trajectories and the behaviour of tissue in gunshot wounds. It allowed me to chose which way I should fall, thus buying time for the ambulance to arrive.”

Molly felt equal parts proud, concerned and sick. Even knowing he would survive, the thought of Sherlock being shot made her light headed. She was, of course, flattered that he regarded her knowledge so highly, but the fact that he chose to say so left her convinced Sherlock was still high.  

“Yes, well you were certainly very lucky.” She really did need to convince him to go back to hospital before he ripped something open. When Molly would have said something, Sherlock spoke again.

“With that in mind, I need to draw on your professional knowledge once more.” As Sherlock spoke, his face took on that calculating look that he wore while in the middle of figuring out a particularly baffling puzzle. “Given what you know, how much luck would you honestly say was involved in my survival?”

It took Molly a moment to fully parse the question. Sherlock clearly had some theory in the works about his shooting, one he was looking to her to confirm. She hedged by saying that she would need to take a good look at his chart and, since that was back at Bart’s, shouldn’t they…?

Sherlock scowled. “You’ve already looked at my chart, Molly. Several times in fact.” He suddenly looked slightly embarrassed and his eyes darted away briefly. “Your crying was louder than the morphine.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. Molly didn’t know what to say to that. She had thought it safe to cry over him as she read his charts because he was (so she thought) thoroughly unconscious. Setting aside her discomfort, which by all appearances rivaled that of Sherlock's, Molly gave in and considered the question.

“It was a very lucky shot. A centimeter to the left and it would have pierced your liver and lodged in your spleen, done more damage to your intestines…”

Sherlock gave her a very direct, very Sherlock look. “You’re a scientist, Molly Hooper. You don’t believe in luck any more than I do.”

Molly frowned. “How else do you explain your survival? Someone was trying to kill you. Either he was a lousy shot to have missed at such close range, or you moved or something and got very, very lucky.”

“I didn’t move. There were no variables to explain a lucky shot.”

Molly sighed and rubbed her forehead. “You’re actually suggesting that the person who shot you, chose to shoot you in that precise spot.”

Sherlock leaned forward, wincing slightly as he did, “Is that what I'm saying?”

Molly considered his wound, mentally holding it up against the vast body of knowledge she had accrued over hundreds of autopsies. After several moments of careful deliberation, she was forced to admit, “Yes. Setting aside for a moment the plausible idea that it was luck, and accepting the idea that your shooter hit exactly what he aimed at, that shot was perfectly placed to ensure you had a chance at survival. Whoever shot you wasn’t trying to kill you, not right away, at least,” Molly said with cool professionalism. She still felt compelled to add, “In spite of almost succeeding in doing just that.”

Sherlock shrugged off the statement and, with obvious care, sat back. If possible, he looked even paler than when she had found him loitering in front of her building an hour ago. Now that she had an inkling of why he had chosen to sneak out of a window rather than sign himself against doctor’s advice, she was even more concerned.

“Sherlock, you can’t chase the man who shot you in your condition -and don’t even pretend that’s not exactly what you were planning to do,” Molly said, pointing an accusing finger at the pouting man across from her. “You need medical attention.”

Sherlock considered her for several moments, his expression wavering from shrewd to weary and back again. “If I promise to call John, will you allow me stay?”

Molly almost scoffed at the use of “allow.” As if she had the power to prevent him. He was being manipulative again, Molly knew, but she also knew that Sherlock knew that she knew and… now she had a headache.

“You sobered up remarkably fast,” she said instead, “My coffee must be stronger than it looks.”

“Must be,” Sherlock said with a rather smarmy smile.

“You didn’t have to pretend to be drunk to convince me to help you, you know.”

“Old habits,” Sherlock said with an unrepentant shrug. “Besides, you didn’t mind.”

“Oh? What part of ‘stop falling on me you great oaf’ suggested to you that I didn’t mind?” Molly replied sweetly.

“Yes well, I noticed your hands lingered in my trousers a bit longer than was strictly necessary to retrieve my key.”

“Pockets ,” Molly corrected, frowning down a blush, “your trouser pockets and if you didn’t wear your trousers so tight, my hands wouldn’t have gotten stuck.”

Sherlock gave her a look over the rim of his coffee mug, drained the last of the liquid and set the cup aside. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you avoided answering my question. If I promise to call John, will you hold off on calling for an ambulance?”

“Are you going to let me stay while you wait for John?”

“No.”

“Are you going to let me listen while you call John?”

“No.”

“Are you going to tell me who shot you?”

Sherlock paused. “I don’t know.”

“Yes you do,” Molly said flatly. “You must really be in pain. That was the worst effort at lying I’ve ever seen from you.”

“Lying to you doesn’t work as well as it once did. I didn’t see the point of putting out my best effort. How much of a head start do I get?”

Molly took stock of the obvious signs of his condition, added in the less obvious and calculated how long it would be before he did serious damage to himself. Once she had a timeframe, she cut it in half. “An hour then I’m calling 999, Greg Lestrade and your brother. Not necessarily in that order.”

“Agreed,” Sherlock said with a nod, “Now, if I agree to sit here like a good little detective, will you move a few things for me before you leave?”

“A few things” turned out to be John’s chair back to its usual place (and how had Sherlock managed to squeeze it into the lavatory of all places…); a padlocked box from the box spring of Sherlock’s bed (she, quite generously, did not comment on what else she found there); and a side table from the corner. As soon as the table was in place, Molly plopped down on the edge of John’s chair, careful not to scoot to far back. It was a large chair and she was too short to get herself back up with any dignity.

Sherlock looked around the room for a moment before his eyes fell on an object just out of reach on the table to his left. Molly got up and picked the item up before he could rip open his stitches trying to reach for it.

“Clare de Lune” she read from the perfume bottle as she offered it to him. “Expensive stuff.” He nodded to the small side table.

“Put it on that table,” he directed, “adjust it so the silhouette faces the chair… a little to the right. Yes, perfect.”

Molly knelt by his chair and pressed her fingers to his wrist. His pulse was steady, but slow. She then indicated to Sherlock that she wanted to check his eyes.

“You know, I’ve never been able to identify your perfume.”

“Oh, I don’t wear any,” Molly replied as she checked his pupil response,  “Makes me sneeze.”

“Then why do you always smell like honeysuckle?”

“My shampoo?”

“No, you use Hydralicious . Unless you have a date, then you switch to Tousle Me Softly. Neither smell of honeysuckle.”

Sherlock pushed his nose into her neck and inhaled. Molly yelped and couldn’t quite control a shiver.

“Just h-how I smell, I suppose?”

“Hm.”

“You are drunk, aren’t you?” Molly said breathlessly as she gave his shoulders a half-hearted shove.

“Maybe a little bit,” Sherlock agreed as he pulled back, “but perfectly functional all the same.”

“Just two degrees off kilter.”

“Something like that. Thank you for not taking advantage and doing something annoying, such as running your fingers through my hair. I have a very sensitive scalp, you know.”

“I’ll just file that tidbit away for future reference.”

“Why? Oh! Wait, are we flirting? I should take notes.”

Molly shook her head and stood. “I should kosh you over the head and drag you back to Bart’s.”

“You probably should, but you won’t because you believe I know what I’m doing.”

“You’re right,” Molly nodded as she headed for the door. “But you’re still a moron.”

She had the very great satisfaction of closing the door on Sherlock’s outraged response.

Molly, who until an hour and a half ago, had been quite looking forward to a hot shower, a cup of cocoa and brushing her cat, decided that she would not be able to relax for the rest of the evening. She went back to Bart’s, morbidly hoping for a two-car pile up or a drug buy gone bad or something to take her mind off the situation. It was futile, of course. First, she never really wished anything bad to happen to anyone and secondly because the situation returned to her front doorstep just before she would have called an ambulance herself.

If possible, Sherlock’s second time in casualty was more traumatic for Molly than the first. She, along with both Greg and John, blamed herself for not watching him closely enough. Molly had the additional, unvoiced burden of knowing she could have reported him sooner.

She also found herself playing unwitting (and unwilling) audience to the drama unfolding between the Watsons. It was uncomfortable, not just because two people she genuinely liked were having a very public (yet very oblique) fight, but because she had begun to suspect that they were somehow mixed up in Sherlock being shot in the first place.

Molly had had a disturbing suspicion from the first time she took a look at Sherlock’s chart. Perusing the surgeon’s notes and other details, that suspicion began to solidify into the beginning of a theory, even before Sherlock had escaped his hospital bed and shown up on her doorstep. The events after had merely proved she was on the right track. Being associated with Sherlock Holmes invariably rubbed off on people, made them view the ordinary through critical lenses, but Molly had gone a bit further and studied Sherlock’s methods.

So, it would have been no surprise to Sherlock that Molly came to the conclusion, even before Lestrade, that Sherlock had known his attacker. Not just known, but trusted enough to allow that person stand as close as a meter away. That Sherlock was not revealing that person’s name suggested he was either playing another Moriarty-esque game or that he was protecting someone. There were precious few people Sherlock would deem worthy of such play and even fewer that he would feel compelled to protect.

There were only so many names Molly could reasonably put on that list and it made her sick to think of any of them, so she didn’t. Not until Sherlock was on the mend and complaining about his parents coming to retrieve him for a "family holiday."

He had escaped again, though this time only so far as the labs where Molly’s office was located. She allowed him to rant about meddling families, then reminded him he was fortunate to have family at all. She hadn’t meant it to sound as though she was bucking for an invitation and hastily pointed that out when Sherlock invited her to go along.

“I know you weren’t trying to wrangle an invitation Molly. It’s simply that I don’t enjoy Surrey, especially this time of year and I would prefer to have someone along with whom I can conduct an intelligent conversation.” Sherlock raised a hand to stop Molly’s response, “Before you suggest it, no, I don’t count talking to Mycroft as he still speaks to me as though I was ten...yes, yes, I’m sure you have a million jokes about my maturity that you wish to insert here, but keep them to yourself. I’m still healing, remember.”

Molly giggled, keeping her smile in place even as she felt a lead weight pressing on her chest as she asked, “What about John and Mary, then? You like talking to John and, when he gets annoying, you’ll be able to talk to Mary. I’m assuming they’re doing better since they both agreed to come?”

“Yes, well, I have high hopes in that area, if my earlier conversation with John is any indication.” He suddenly frowned at her, squinted, then said, “That’s the second time you’ve done that.”

“Done what?”

“Winced when I mentioned the Watsons.” Sherlock sighed, “How long have you known?”

“I don’t know now. I suspect and you’ve confirmed that’s it’s one of them.”

“And who is your chief suspect?”

Molly paused, not sure she wanted to go down this road, but Sherlock appreciated directness. “Mary. Mainly because John’s had plenty of chances to shoot you over the years and hasn’t done more than bloody your nose. “ She paused as Sherlock nodded. “Do I get to know why?”

Sherlock gave her what appeared to be a genuinely apologetic look, “It’s not my secret to tell, Molly. “ He paused and his look morphed into something colder. “Nor is it yours”

Molly waved off his mildly threatening tone, “If I was going to rat someone out, I would have told Greg about my suspicions weeks ago. I won’t say anything.” Molly paused and took a deep breath. “Just tell me if I have a reason to worry.” Sherlock looked confused for a moment then his expression cleared.

“Not in the least. We’ve all come to an understanding.”

“Okay,” Molly said, mainly because she couldn’t really say anything else to that.

“Molly, I know I’m asking a great deal of you.”

“Per usual.”

“But it really is going to be all right. The person truly responsible will be taken care of soon and then all will be back to normal.”

“As normal as your group of friends gets.”

“All I’m asking is that you extend a little of the forbearance you show to me to Mary. Trust my judgement on this, Molly.” He gave her a piercing look. “Or don’t you believe in me anymore?”

“I believe that the first woman you had feelings for was a blackmailing sadist. I believe your brother regularly instigates international incidents to relieve stress. I believe that your best friend keeps illegal firearms, one of which his wife used to shoot you with scary precision and for reasons you refuse to state!”

“Yes, yes, and my landlady was a stripper married to a drug kingpin and my university flatmate was a serial killer. What’s your point?”

“Oh, for…” Molly let out a frustrated noise and rubbed at her face. “You have the most dangerous friends, Sherlock.”

“I do, don’t I?” Sherlock agreed with a smirk. It was the pride in his voice that prompted Molly to slug his shoulder. Hard.

“Ow.”

“Oh go back upstairs and wait for your parents.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come along?” Sherlock said, carefully not looking at Molly as he did so. “My parents will fall all over themselves over you.” He sounded equally disgusted and proud of that fact.

“And thus, neatly distracting them from you and your brother? No, thank you. I’ll avoid the outtakes from Coronation Street this year, if you please.”

“There will be pudding,” Sherlock said, his voice low and seductive, “I’ll trip Mycroft and you can have the extra portions.”

Molly couldn’t contain the giggle at that, but still shook her head, “No, I think the expeditionary force to your parents’ home is quite large enough without adding me to the mix. Besides, I don’t think I’ll like whatever it is you’re up to.”

“What makes you think…,” Sherlock stopped at the eloquent look on Molly’s face and conceded the point. “All right, fine. It’s perfectly harmless, I assure you, and completely necessary.”

“I have no doubt.”

Sherlock started to walk away, but turned back and hesitantly reached out towards Molly, offering his hand. She obliged and placed her hand in his, no less skittish about it than he.

“It’s been a difficult year, hasn’t it?” Sherlock asked with a sincerity that was becoming increasingly more common in his interactions with Molly. She squeezed his hand and nodded. Sherlock smiled, a little sadly Molly thought, and leaned towards her for what she has assumed to be a light peck on the cheek, because that was something he did regularly now.

Molly closed her eyes, fully expecting the familiar feeling of chapped lips against her cheek along with the spicy scent of cologne. She got the whiff of cologne, but the lips landed squarely on hers. It was a brief kiss and Molly cursed herself for not shaking off her surprise quickly enough to kiss back. When she opened her eyes, it was to find Sherlock staring back with an unwavering, intense gaze.

He brushed his fingertips against her jaw, lingering there as he leaned forward again. He paused a moment as though expecting Molly to react and, when she didn’t he kissed her again. Molly took full advantage this time and would have memorized every second had she been able to actually think. It was Sherlock that ended the kiss, allowing his hand to fall away as he straightened.

“That felt like a goodbye,” Molly said, trying for upbeat, not concerned. Her fingers had strayed to her lips, hovering a few centimeters away.

“More a farewell,” Sherlock corrected, flipping up the collar of his overcoat. “Until the New Year, Molly.”

With a smile, Sherlock turned and walked away, his swagger not hinting the least at the trauma his body had suffered over the past few months. Molly watched until he pushed through the doors at the end of the hall and left the morgue. She had a queer feeling of uneasiness in her stomach which she tried to ignore. He was just going to his folks’ for the holidays, she reasoned with herself. He said himself he would be back for New Year’s and that was only three weeks away. What could happen in three weeks?