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It all started out pleasantly enough.
Molly smiled shyly up at him, shyer then she should have been with his penis still softening inside of her.
Sherlock’s lips spread into an artless, lopsided grin that lit up every part of his face. It was one of his rare genuine smiles. The intensity of it, inches away from her own face and focused entirely on her, felt somehow almost more intimate than the sex had been.
Their first time had been unexpected and awkward in its own way, but bloody fantastic. They’d been arguing about whether it was remotely acceptable for Sherlock to set his homeless network to shadow her without her knowledge. A mob kingpin had threatened his “nearest and dearest” and while the man was no Jim Moriarty, Sherlock was not inclined to take chances. Especially a scant five months after the death of Mary Watson with life only just settling into a new version of normal.
She’d worked herself into quite a temper by the time he finally arrived at her home. “Just a teensy bit of warning would have been nice!”
“Well it's hardly my fault that you were unusually observant! On most occasions a troupe of circus performers could tramp through your living room and if Strictly Come Dancing were on, you’d never notice.”
“I threw a box of thumbs at the poor girl’s head. Thumbs, Sherlock! One got caught in her hair!”
It had devolved quickly from there, though she still wasn’t entirely certain how. They never made it to the bedroom. Hell, they didn’t even make it to a couch. They made love in the entryway of Molly’s little house, a scant five minutes after she’d met him at the door. It was sweet and a bit less suave than she’d always imagined it, and therefore infinitely more real and far better than her (very vivid) fantasies could have concocted. It was also deeply satisfying.
Now they lay tangled together, panting. They were half on top of his coat in a nest of mangled clothing. Sherlock’s curls brushed her forehead and she giggled. He chuckled in response, eyes crinkling at the corners, and the sight of him mussed and gorgeous and still inside her somehow only made her laugh harder, and in a moment they were two idiots laughing at everything and at nothing at all.
Stretching in a single golden moment, everything felt spectacularly perfect (which probably had something to do with post-coital hormones and also meant that one of them was bound to ruin it). The laughter faded slowly, and the prolonged eye contact became uncomfortable.
Sherlock rolled away from her and onto his back. She could feel the solid warmth of his body along her side, shoulder to kneecap. She stared at the ceiling as her breathing regulated, desperately searching for something clever to say, knowing he was doing the same.
Finally, he broke the silence. “Molly, I… I think you should know that I…”
Her brain whirled. Oh God. Oh God! This was the part where Sherlock Holmes dashes the hopes of foolish little Molly Hooper. Molly, I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work. Or perhaps: Molly, I think you should know that I care deeply for you as a friend. And because her brain was operating on a ridiculous cocktail of oxytocin, endorphins and fear: Molly, I think you should know that your performance was subpar; perhaps a 4 on my rating scale. I’ll put a thorough report on my blog that will detail your areas of improvement. At least that one was unlikely; even in her panic she knew that her performance had been far from subpar.
This was the part where they would have to have The Talk, cement that this really happened, and agree never to do it again. It was going to make things awkward, and they’d only recently stopped tiptoeing around each other after the events of Sherrinford.
She ought to brace herself and just be a woman about it. Really, she’d done things requiring far more courage. You are the woman who threw a corpse out of a bloody window, Hooper - get it together! Just talk to him!
“I'm going to take a shower.” Coward. There's a reason you spend more time with dead people, Hooper. She patted him vaguely with the hand that had been sandwiched between them in what was meant to be a friendly gesture. She quickly realized with horror that she may be making more of a statement than intended as she was lightly slapping his genitals. “Oh! I'll ah… see you around,” she managed to squeak, and fled to the bathroom with what remained of her dignity.
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After the longest shower of her life, Molly piled her hair on top of her head and pulled her florid orange-on-pink dressing gown around herself like a shield. Sherlock ought to be long gone by now; she’d given him until the water ran cold and then spent extra time drying her hair for good measure. She went downstairs long enough to turn off all the lights, feed the cat, and lock the front door (there was still a theoretical vengeful mob boss out there somewhere, after all).
She looked askance at the pile of rumpled clothing near the front door as she passed it, but couldn't bring herself to be bothered with tidying it tonight. Strangely, it looked like Sherlock had left some of his clothing on the floor. Then again, he’d never been the most modest of consulting detectives and he’d probably been in a hurry. The thought of him wandering around Marylebone at midnight wearing nothing but his belstaff made her giggle as she made her way back up the stairs and into her room.
“Glad to see that your interminably long shower didn’t strip away your sense of humor along with the top layer of your skin. Feeling cleansed?”
Molly caught her breath and gripped the doorframe. Sherlock was tucked comfortably under her cheerful blue-flowered bedspread, texting rapidly on his phone. She could see his lithe arms and shoulders above the comforter; he was wearing the soft grey cotton pyjama top that he’d been leaving in her closet for years.
So… not gone, and not wandering the streets of London mostly naked. Okay then. He was here, in her bed, but not naked. Her thoughts were moving much slower than she felt they should be. All of the careful work she had done while in the shower to not think to hard about what the sex had meant was rapidly becoming meaningless. He hadn’t left, though she’d given him ample opportunity, so he must not be panicking about it. He was in her bed, which actually told her very little as he slept in her bed at least a few times a month. He was wearing pajamas, so he didn’t have expectations . Perhaps he was still worried about the mob boss?
“Are you coming to bed anytime soon or are you going to keep hovering, Molly?”
She startled and realized she’d been standing frozen in the doorway. She moved to the closet, quickly selected a pair of pyjamas, and after an awkward moment of consideration shrugged off her robe and quickly put them on. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already seen “the goods”.
“You’re still here.” She crawled under the covers on her side of the bed.
“Your powers of deduction are even more finely attuned than John’s. Well done.” His voice was a bit too casual. She knew Sherlock Holmes, and he was trying just a little too hard to be aloof and offhanded and Holmes-ish (and yes that was a word, his brother was at least as bad). He was nervous. And he was staring at the phone clutched in his hand as if he wanted to burn a hole through it. “I’m hardly leaving now, it’s half-one in the morning. Besides, I thought perhaps we should… well… I’m given to understand that people...”
Bollocks. He’s working himself up to having The Talk again.
She couldn't do it. She was too tired and would probably end up weepy and irrationally furious and he would be awkward and overly polite and thirty years from now she’d reflect that tonight was the best sex of her life and that she should have done it more than once and really she just couldn't do it.
So Molly did what any rational red-blooded pathologist would do. She snatched the phone from his hands and reached across him to toss it onto the nightstand beside him, then pulled herself astride him in one quick movement. “Shut up, Sherlock.”
She took a moment to feel rather satisfied at his look of astonished arousal before she covered his mouth with her own. She felt him mumble against her lips in a low rumble, and realized belatedly that he’d replied, “Yes, Ma’am.”
Hm, interesting. She made a mental note to file that away for later, but in the meantime his hands had found the belt of her dressing gown and negated any sort of rational thinking. He really was obnoxiously good at everything he tried.
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When they were finally sated, she didn't need to pretend to fall asleep before he could try to instigate The Talk again. They'd both fallen asleep swiftly, wrapped up in one another’s arms.
Molly had always disliked falling asleep after sex without cleaning up first, but there was something about Sherlock that made it seem effortless and sensual instead of sticky and sweaty. Or perhaps that had more to do with the fact that it was nearly 3 am.
Whatever the reason, she slept deeply and was aware of nothing until blinking slowly awake into the late morning sunlight that filtered through the blinds in her bedroom. She became aware slowly that she was naked, and then rapidly discovered she was sore in places she hadn't used for quite awhile.
The previous night came rushing back to her with abrupt clarity. She sucked in a breath and rolled to find Sherlock’s side of the bed rumpled and empty. It seemed oddly forlorn, and she realized she was still holding her breath. She released it slowly, a multitude of emotions running through her - relief, loss, arousal, confusion.
She told herself it was for the best and went to tidy herself up in the bathroom. After a brief shower, she retrieved her dressing gown and made her way down the stairs. She needed coffee, food, and some paracetamol - she hadn't tried to be that athletic in years and she could feel it in a variety of extremely personal places. You're certainly not 20 anymore, Molls.
She smelled a delicious combination of coffee and eggs, and wondered if it was a trick of her imagination.
It wasn't. As she reached the kitchen, she discovered the world's only consulting detective frying eggs wearing only his pants. Damn. Daaaamn. Even in her own mind, she couldn't decide whether she meant it literally or suggestively. He looked delectable in only a pair of grey boxer briefs. The long muscles of his latissimus dorsi planed up his slender torso, his trapezius muscles flexing as he scraped the sides of the pan. She could see the silvery scars on his shoulders, old now, and merely a part of him. It made him more human somehow, less like a statue. His hair was flat on one side and frizzy on the other. She found herself disgruntled that he could look this good first thing in the morning.
The eggs smelled surprisingly delectable as well. She had no idea he could fry anything (well, anything not composed of human remains).
“Smells good, Sherlock.”
He startled, and she had a brief moment of satisfaction that she had surprised him for once. He recovered quickly. “Molly! Ah, good morning. You didn't have much in, but I made do. There's coffee.” He gestured at the machine with his spatula before returning his attention to the stove.
She didn't have to be told twice. She made a beeline for the coffee maker, poured some into the nearest mug (a beautiful monstrosity with a glassy-eyed kitten on the front which read, “you’re kitten me, Smalls!” She’d bought it mostly because she knew it would make Sherlock apoplectic with disgust), and drank it down in one extended guzzle. She usually took it with cream and sugar, but today black coffee tasted like the nectar of the gods.
“If you intend to consume your eggs in the same way, Molly, please warn me. I'd rather not watch you unhinge your jaw like a snake.”
“You should've seen me at University,” she retorted, and couldn't resist raising an eyebrow and leering at him suggestively. “I have an excellent gag reflex.”
His open-mouthed buffering look was priceless. It went on long enough that she considered finding her camera phone, but in the end, she just helped herself to a plate of eggs and sat in her favorite stool at the kitchen island.
The eggs were annoyingly good - lightly spiced, cheesy, and just slightly runny. He really was good at everything. Git. She ate a few bites as she watched him snap out of his immobility and collect eggs and coffee for himself.
As he sat down next to her, she couldn't help thinking that she could get used to eating breakfast with a mostly naked Sherlock every morning. Her heart contracted painfully with the knowledge that this was probably the last and only time it would ever happen.
She managed another two bites of egg before he launched inexorably into the one subject she wanted to avoid.
“Molly, I have always placed a high value on our friendship. As you know, such things do not come easily to me.” His voice was stilted as if he were reciting a prepared speech. He had definitely practiced it while she was sleeping this morning. “John informed me that we have to talk about things like this--”
Ah, there it is. Suddenly, the reason he hadn’t run fast enough to make a consulting detective-shaped hole in the wall became abundantly clear.
“-- And since we are both rational beings I’m sure we can do so without too much… messiness.” He wrinkled his nose in distaste and made a fiddly dismissive gesture with his fork.
Or I could stab myself with a fork to get out of having this conversation. Or… A thought hit her. “Or I could unhinge my jaw and prove that reports of my gag reflex are not exaggerated.
“I think you should know,” he continued, and then his giant idiot brain caught up to what she had said and his face slackened in surprise. “I… I… um… yeah, okay. That’s… that works too.”
She took his hand, led him to the living room, and pushed him into an armchair. She knelt in front of him and fingered the waistband of his pants, savoring the look on his face. Sherlock was staring down at her with a strange mix of longing, desperation, tension, and... tenderness? Don't be stupid, Molly. Don't make more of this than it is.
She gave him her best confident vixen smile, and pulled pulled his pants down to rest under his balls. He was already excited, and it was quick work to bring him to full attention. She took a moment to appreciate the beauty of him. They’d been in a hurry the first time and in dim lighting the second. Now she could enjoy the sight of him under her fingers - the fine hair that trailed down his flat stomach to meet the thicker patch at his groin. His member was lovely as well, and there was something about seeing all of him like this that took her breath away. She’d known him for so long (loved him for so long), and spent so many days and night with him in the lab and her little house and elsewhere, that seeing him so unguarded in this way was a gift.
She slipped her mouth over the head of his cock, and he fell heavily against the back of the chair. She hollowed her cheeks and flicked her tongue around him, taking him further into her mouth; she had always enjoyed performing this particular act. Despite his size, Molly was able to swallow him down to the hilt. She’d learned to deep throat during medical school - all you really needed was willpower and a good gag reflex, and she had both of those things in spades.
Sherlock was remarkably reactive. He jumped and gasped and moaned for every flick of her tongue, every suck and twist. He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands - he grasped the arms of the chair tightly, then fluttered his hands near her hair, then return them to the chair after a moment. His brow scrunched as if in intense concentration or in pain.
It made her wonder whether he’d ever had a blow job before. Surely he had - the man was practically sex on a stick and she knew he’d been romantically entangled with The Woman and Janine Hawkins and who knew who else in his drug-addled youth. He was certainly no virgin; not even Sherlock could be that good on the first go ‘round. But there was an intense vulnerability about him in this moment that was breathtaking.
He reached his peak quickly and intensely despite this being his third orgasm in less than 12 hours. She swallowed the bitter/sour liquid and kissed the head of his cock, then tucked him back into his pants. He ran his fingers along her cheekbone with a look that was too close to reverence for her comfort. She stood quickly with a too-bright grin and an irreverent, “That settles that.”
It was easy enough to get him dressed and shoved out the door after that with the promise to talk later. She wasn’t lying when she told him that she had Sunday lunch plans with Meena, though she had more than two hours before she needed to start getting ready.
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From there, things got… complicated.
He showed up at her doorstep after dinner the following evening. She managed to get him talking about his latest case and then jumped him in the living room before he could even begin The Talk. They knocked half her knick-knacks off the shelves (and broken her favorite taxidermied chipmunk) and shagged on the sofa, and then again on the floor. They both ended up with carpet burns, but neither had any desire to complain about it.
When he seemed as if he might launch into discussion the next morning, she found a sudden and urgent need to dry her hair for a lengthy period of time, then rushed off to work (It hadn’t been easy to get dressed while operating the hair dryer, but she’d managed).
The next night, he showed up within minutes of her arrival home from work and requested (demanded) dinner. She got halfway through cooking pasta before he started into The Talk. Panicking, she peeled off her jumper and threw it at him. From the blank look on his face, he had not expected that. She quickly followed up by flinging her bra as well, which succeeded in thoroughly derail him.
“Not too small now, are they?” She smirked and leaned against the counter behind her.
“Don't make jokes, Molly,” he growled hoarsely. She felt a thrill at the knowledge that she was responsible for the desperation in his voice.
They made love on the kitchen counter, and damnit if it was well worth burning the pasta to the bottom of the pan for it. Afterwards she had gotten his clothing mostly like on and shoved him out the door with a peanut butter sandwich in hand.
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It went on like that for two weeks. Through a masterful combination of sex, corpses, and running away, she managed to avoid talking about anything substantial at all. She had one dicey moment when he managed to catch her alone at work, but she’d managed to shove him into a supply cupboard and that had been the end of talking.
Molly kept thinking eventually she’d accept that the conversation needed to happen, but each time she thought, maybe just one more time. It’s really too good to stop now. Just one more.
She could tell that he was growing increasingly impatient to talk, but was remarkably easy to distract. She’d never thought of herself as a woman of great seductive prowess - she wasn’t a bombshell who could use her body to make others do what she liked. She had accepted that long ago when her breasts stopped growing at barely a B cup, and was content with having a sharp mind and a certain “girl next door” appeal. But the way Sherlock reacted to her - eyes dilating when she removed any amount of clothing, biting his lip when she was particularly clever in the morgue, losing track of his thought when she said something licentious - made her feel powerful and sexy.
There were some downsides. Chafing being the biggest - one could just not sustain this much sexual activity without lingering soreness. She never thought she’d reach a point where she would prefer having a quiet night of dissecting eyeballs to having passionate sex with Sherlock Holmes, but here she was. Not that the sight of him didn’t still move her - it was impossible to look at him and especially impossible to touch him without feeling that spark of arousal. But the human body had limits, and Molly had found hers.
The other downside was that she missed him. It sounded ridiculous even to her own ears, but she was so busy shagging him and worrying about what might come out of his mouth next that they hadn’t actually talked in weeks.
The clock ran out eventually, as she knew it would, with a text message.
Come to Baker Street after work. SH
If convenient. SH
Sorry, can’t - busy tonight! xM
She’d managed to evade him once already at Baker Street by pretending to misinterpret why he had asked her to come and dragging him into his bedroom, then dashing off to visit with Mrs. Hudson when they were done. She suspected that wouldn’t work a second time, however.
Come anyway. SH
Please. It’s important. I’ll provide dinner. SH
She bit her lip. You are a grown-ass woman, Hooper! You were never going to be able to keep this up forever. Just talk to him so that things can go back to normal. Then your lady-bits can heal properly and you can actually ask Sherlock’s opinion on the thesis for your research paper because you’ll be friends who communicate again.
Okay. See you tonight. xM
She trudged up the stairs of Baker Street with more than a little trepidation and found Sherlock’s door open.
He was sitting in his grey leather and metal chair with every indication of casual relaxation, wearing his favorite blue dressing gown over a cobalt blue shirt and trousers. Shite, why did he wear that shirt? I love that one. She watched the buttons strain as he reached to set down the book he’d been pretending to read. She knew he hadn’t really been reading it - he nearly always read stretched out on his couch or at his kitchen table while multitasking with an experiment. He was nervous again, and had probably been pacing until the moment he heard the downstairs door open.
She moved farther into the room and said (too) brightly, “Hi Sherlock! Where’s dinner?” She’d learned long ago not to bother with pleasantries; he hated them.
“Molly, do come in. I thought we could order Chinese food later, if you still want it.”
That wasn’t ominous or anything.
He continued, “I think you and I both know that we ought to talk. Have a seat.” Sherlock gestured to the chair across from him, and the buttons of his shirt strained again.
He’s torturing me. Actual torture. He’s going to sit there straining out of his shirt and being gorgeous like some stupid amazing Adonis while he tells me he wants us to stay friends. Familiar panic rose in her chest and she felt her resolve crumble.
“Of course, Sherlock.” She ambled to him in what she hoped was an attractive fashion and sat herself on his lap rather than the other chair. She put one arm around his shoulders and ran the fingers of her other hand up the center of his chest over the goddamn buttons. “What do you want to talk about?”
She heard him catch his breath and she had a second to gloat internally at her victory. Then he shifted with lightning speed and she felt the cool press of metal against her wrist. He dumped her off his lap and onto the chair as he scrambled up and away from her. “Aha! Human behavior is so predictable!”
Molly righted herself and pulled on her right wrist to realize that she’d been handcuffed to the metal bar of the chair. “What the absolute hell, Sherlock?!”
“We are going to talk about this, Molly. It’s hardly my fault that I had to resort to extraordinary measures.”
She made a valiant last ditch effort. “I’m not opposed to a little bondage play, mister, but it’s good manners to talk about it first.” She ran her free hand down the front of her jumper, pausing at her breasts and settling suggestively at the crotch of her sensible trousers.
His eyes began to dilate and his mouth parted slightly (which was remarkable considering that he’d once described this particular jumper as something a toddler might throw up after eating cat hair). For a glorious moment she thought that she’d succeeded in derailing the conversation. Then he shook himself, turned to face away from her, and strode to the far end of the room.
“Stop that, you she-devil! We are having this conversation and you can’t use your-- your feminine wiles to get out of it!”
She sighed and slumped in her chair. “Fine. It’s overdue, I know it is. Just say what you need to say, Sherlock.” She fixed her attention resolutely on the skull on his mantle, knowing that if she looked at the man she loved, she would start crying. She could preserve some shred of dignity.
From the corner of her eye, she saw him stomp back and settle himself in the chair opposite her. “Molly, I am more than a piece of meat! I need more out of this that just carnal relations. Not that I am unappreciative of your creativity, but I am 40 years old. I can't… no I mean I can, but I shouldn't. I am sore in places I didn’t even know I had, woman!”
“It’s not exactly as if I held you down. Or handcuffed you,” she responded pointedly.
“That’s not what I… look, I had this prepared. Allow me to start again.” He crossed his legs and steepled his hands on his knee, then started talking in a rush. “Molly, I think you should know that I meant what I said at Sherrinford. I… care very deeply for you and I have been thinking a great deal these past months about what that means and what to do about it. I didn’t intend for it to come out quite in this way, but I’m not sorry it did. I know you have… cared for me for a long time and that I have never deserved it and have constantly let you down. I have made terrible choices in the past year, and I understand if you don’t want more from me than a colloquial ‘fuck buddy,’ but I can’t be that to you. I could never be with you but not with you. I hope you can understand that.” He got the entire speech out in one rapid declaration, and then lapsed into abrupt silence that stretched out for over a minute.
Molly couldn’t wrap her mind around what he had said. It was too strange, too good, too steeped in sentiment. Perhaps she’d finally cracked?
Sherlock grew impatient. “Well? It’s your turn to talk. A conversation requires two participants.”
She felt faint. “Could you repeat that?”
“Which part?”
“All of it.” He made a noise of protest and she glowered at him, feeling as if she were regaining her footing slightly. “No, all of it! I know you can.”
“Oh, fine,” he grumbled, and recited his speech word-for-word in a rapid staccato. When he was done, he raised his eyebrows and gestured expectantly. “Now you.”
“So to be clear, you... love me.”
“Yes.”
“You want to be with me.” She felt a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“Yes!” he responded irritably.
“You thought I only wanted you for your body.”
“Molly!”
“And you had to handcuff me to a chair to find out. That’s…” her smile bloomed into a grin and she couldn’t stop herself from giggling, then from laughing so hard that tears were streaming from her eyes.
“Molly Elizabeth Hooper, desist laughing immediately! This is important!”
That only made her laugh harder. Finally she gasped out, “we are terrible at this, Sherlock!”
“Ah… well, yes,” and then he was laughing too, in great belly shaking gasps.
She reached out a hand for him, and he crossed the room in an instant. He knelt in front of her and wiped the tears that were streaming from her eyes with his thumbs.
At his touch, she finally controlled her laughter but her face remained in what she was certain was an idiotic grin. “You brilliant man-child, of course I still love you. Of course I want you in every way that matters.”
She pulled on the lapel of his dressing gown and kissed him soundly. It was equal parts wet from tears, warm, and positively heavenly. They were both still smiling.
She started to wrap her arms around him and realized that one was still handcuffed to his chair. “Sherlock? Could you uncuff me now?”
“Ah, right - yes.” He lifted Billy the skull, snatched up the key, and reached across her to put it in the lock.
“I wasn’t joking about the bondage play, by the way.”
At her words, he fumbled the key and dropped it into the chair. She giggled. She managed to dig into the chair and retrieve it, then freed herself. “On another night. I recall you said something about not being a piece of meat. I’d hate for you to feel I was taking advantage of you.”
“Molly,” he groaned in frustration, still half in her lap.
“Would you like me to take advantage of you a bit more?”
“Good God, yes.”
Things with Sherlock Holmes would never be boring, or normal, or safe, but she knew they would be extraordinary. After all, he really was good at everything he tried. Git.