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“Just pretend to be my date.”
She could see by the way Leonard was smirking that this was going to be a fun conversation, with emphasis on the sarcastic tone for “fun,” and she probably should have started the conversation an entirely different way, but she was desperate. “Well, hello Leonard. How are you this fine day. Why, I’m fine Molly. How are you? I need a favor. I am in desperate, dire need of you to be my date for…?”
Molly rolled her eyes and then huffed as she tossed herself into the chair across from him at his desk. “Sherlock’s getting an award. Everyone involved with Scotland Yard has been invited to go, including me. I tried to back out but my superiors said it would look good on Barts if I was there.”
The amusement dropped from his face. “So, obviously, we should go together to make him jealous,” he said.
She shut her eyes. She didn’t feel that way. There was more to it than that. Yes, they were shagging and all, but she liked being around him. She knew how these events would go and it would be at least two hours of boredom but Leonard would make it bearable, at least, if not fun. She hadn’t even really thought about Sherlock until just then. “It wasn’t that.”
“Oh?” he asked, sounding skeptical. “I thought that was part of our arrangement.”
She grit her teeth. “I just wanted to go with someone I wanted to spend two hours with. These events are boring. You being my pretend date would make it bearable.”
There was silence after that. After a moment she opened her eyes to see him studying her. “So you and Sherlock…?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “I still care, but if it doesn’t happen, I suppose I can live with that. I mean, it would be nice, but it’s not a focus right now. I have papers and studies to deal with, and he has cases, and there’s other company that usually wants me around, and...I don’t know.” This wasn’t like her. It wasn’t at all like her to sound like a petulant child when it came to how she felt about matters of the heart. What was it with Leonard and his damn snooping tactics?
“When is it?” he asked.
“Next Friday,” she said, relaxing a bit. “It is black tie, so that means tuxedo. Can you get one in such short notice?”
“Leave that to me,” he said. “Do I need to pick you up or am I meeting you there?”
“You could pick me up, I suppose,” she said thoughtfully. “Us arriving together will make more of an impact.”
He nodded. “What time, then?”
“It starts at seven but there are cocktails at six,” she said. “So I suppose half past five? We can arrive for the cocktails a little late.”
“I’ll show up by five thirty. Just make sure you’ve got bells and whistles on. You have an impression to make.”
She nodded and then got up, moving to the door as he bent his head to look at paperwork. She paused at the door. “Thank you, Leonard,” she said, getting only a grunt in acknowledgment. She opened the door to his office and let herself out. Suddenly, she wanted to get out of the surgery as quickly as possible, and hopefully avoid John and Mary in the process.
Maybe this was all a mistake, she thought to herself as she made her way outside, the cold air hitting her face and feeling like a slap to her senses. Maybe she should just go stag, no matter how pathetic it looked. Keep what she and Leonard had to “friends with benefits” and not bring it out in public. Oh, she knew by now that their friends knew something was going on between them, even if the two of them were coy about it. Their friends weren’t stupid. But there was a difference between being coy while being together in private and going to a function like this together, even if the date was pretend.
Especially if she wasn’t sure she wanted it to be pretend.
The more time she had spent with Leonard, both in and out of bed, the closer she felt to him in a way she usually did with the men she dated. But it went deeper than that. There were men she had dated that she had never felt this close to, and here she was, with a man centuries from her own time, feeling as though she’d met someone who could very well be her damn soulmate, and she’d stupidly set them up from the get-go as “friends with benefits.”
Oh, she was an idiot.
It was all going to be a mess. If he didn’t want more, if he just wanted to bed her and stay friends and didn’t want the hassle of a relationship again after his wife, then where did that leave her? Without him, obviously, but also heartbroken in a way she doubted she ever had been before. And if he did...she really didn’t know where to go. What if there was a way for him to go back? Would he go? Would he ask her to go with him? Would she go? Those were all things to consider, and she should, but it was all a moot point until she found out how he felt, and she was too chicken shite to do that.
So that left this pretend date, and more nights together where she’d fall asleep in his arms and wonder how much longer this could last and hope it could last just a little longer because she wanted nothing more than to spend another night in his arms. Just as many more nights as she could get, that was all she wanted.
So long as nothing changed.