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Sherlock stared down at the ring on Molly's hand in disbelief, and shock.
She was engaged.
How did I not notice this earlier?
Of course, he couldn't tell her how shocked he was. His heart was pounding in his chest as he forced out the words, "I hope you'll be very happy, Molly Hooper. You deserve it."
He couldn't tell her that his heart was breaking. Instead he gave her a farewell kiss on the cheek, as any good friend would do. He left her standing there and went to get his chips alone.
Sherlock was back home in his flat eating the chips that suddenly had no flavour when his phone pinged. Rather disinterestedly, he pulled it out of his pocket and looked at two text messages. The number was unknown to him and the words were strange:
Save souls now! Molly or Moira Hooper?
This was immediately followed by another text.
Saint or Sinner? James or John? The more is Less?
His mind immediately registered the cipher as a skip code, and he translated it at once in his mind - Save Molly Hooper. Saint James the Less. He was familiar with the name, it was the name of a church located twenty minutes away by car.
Sherlock dashed out to the street, feeling a sense of urgency. A motorcycle came along and he flagged it down, giving the driver some nonsense about needing it desperately, that he was Sherlock Holmes, the detective. He was on an urgent case and would compensate the man for his motorcycle, if he sent a bill for it to his address at 221B Baker Street. The country would be forever grateful.
The discombobulated man got off the motorcycle and handed Sherlock his helmet. Sherlock wasted no more time but started calculating in his head the fastest route to the church.
Fear gripped him in a way he had never felt before. Molly was in danger. He had to save her, at all costs.
She had always been there for him. Now it was his turn to be there for her.
He received several more taunting text messages as he rode, disregarding traffic rules as he made his mad dash to the woman he had now realized he loved.
Finally, he arrived at the church and found to his horror a bonfire had just been lit. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he knew that Molly was inside it, possibly burning to death.
Sherlock started pushing people out of the way, yelling, "Move! Move!" Then he was scrabbling at the wood desperately trying to move it out of the way and calling "Molly, Molly, please answer me!"
Disregarding the pain as he felt flames lick at his arms, trying to eat away at the fabric of his coat, he finally managed to make a hole in the inferno and saw Molly. With superhuman strength, he dragged her out and laid her some distance from the bonfire. Her eyes were closed and for a moment he thought she was dead.
Oh God, what if she was dead?
"Molly! Please Molly, don't be dead. Please, I can't lose you!" And then her eyes opened and relief washed over him.
"Sherlock?" she croaked, after letting out a hacking cough to clear her lungs. "What happened?"
"I don't know. I don't like not knowing. Thank God I got here in time."
He looked her over for injuries and was relieved to find nothing broken. "Could someone get me some water?" he yelled to no one in particular. A minute later someone came up carrying a bottle of water, which he handed to Sherlock.
Sherlock nodded his thanks to the man, unscrewed the cap and held the bottle to Molly's lips. "Drink this," he urged her, lifting her head so she could sip at it.
"Thank you," she managed, after a few sips.
"What's the last thing you remember, Molly?" he asked anxiously.
"I…I remember you walking away from me down the street. Then a man came up to me and I felt a jab in my neck. I guess I've been unconscious most of this time. I woke up and found myself in a dark place, but I felt drowsy and claustrophobic and I guess I fainted. How did you find me?"
"I got a text from an unknown number. I figured out the code and came as quickly as I could. Oh God, Molly. If I'd been a few minutes later you would've been dead."
"Thank you for saving me," she said with a wobbly smile that tugged at his heartstrings.
Thank God she has been unconscious and hasn't had to suffer the fear of being in a dark place for long.
"You're coming home with me, and I'm going to look after you." Seeing her mouth open as if she was about to protest, he put his finger to her lips and said, "I insist."
There was a big crowd of onlookers watching Molly and himself, rather than the bonfire by this time. "Everything is okay," he assured them. "If someone could call me a cab though, I'd be very grateful."
A couple minutes later, a man came to tell him a taxi was waiting. Sherlock gently lifted Molly into his arms, despite her protists that she could walk, and carried her to the cab, putting her inside gently, then sitting next to her.
Twenty minutes later they were at Baker Street. Sherlock insisted on carrying Molly again, instructing her to fish his keys out of his coat pocket and put them in the lock, to open the door.
As soon as he opened the door, Mrs. Hudson came hurrying up to him from her flat. "What happened?" she asked. "I heard you rush out of here earlier."
"Someone left Molly to die in a bonfire," he told her. "I'll talk to you more about it later, but for now I need to look after her."
Mrs. Hudson nodded and returned to her flat.
Sherlock carried Molly up the stairs. He kicked the door open to his flat. Fortunately, he had not closed it in his hurry earlier. He went straight to his chair and sat her in it.
"I'll ruin your favourite chair," she protested.
"Furniture can be replaced. Replacing you would be much more difficult." he told her, then added with the ghost of a smile, "Besides, leather is probably easier to clean then most fabric furniture." She smiled weakly at his poor attempt at levity.
"I'm going to run you a bath. You should probably let your fiancé know you're safe, too." The word "fiancé" nearly stuck in his throat. God, he was jealous of the man who had managed to capture Molly's heart while he was gone.
"Do…Do I have to tell him? He will want to know all the details about what happened, and why. It will just worry him unnecessarily, because I have no answers."
"Don't you want your fiancé to comfort you?" he asked, feeling that damned word stick in his throat again.
Why did it hurt so much?
"I…I suppose so," she responded, pulling out her miraculously unscathed phone from her trouser pocket.
Sherlock turned on the water for the bath, then went into his bedroom to find a shirt for Molly to wear. He deposited that in the bathroom as well as a clean towel and flannel for her to use. Then he returned to the sitting room and found her with her phone on her lap, staring into space.
"Did you text him, then?" he inquired, unable to say the word fiancé again, nor could he remember the guy's name – was it Tim, Todd? Oh, that was it, Tom.
"Yes," she responded, in a guarded tone.
"Did he respond?"
"Yes," she answered again.
Seeing as she didn't seem inclined to elaborate further, Sherlock merely said, "Your bath's ready. Do you need help getting into it?"
"No, I'll be fine." She got up from the chair then and made her way to the bathroom, leaving her phone behind.
Sherlock glanced down at her phone, which had not yet turned off. Impulsively, he picked it up and looked at it. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn't resist checking her text to Tom.
What he read astounded him, yet filled him with hope. She had written, Tom, I can't tell you how hard this is for me to do. It seems so clichéd to be doing this over text as well, but I've come to a decision. Tonight, I suffered a traumatic experience. I don't want to go into details, but it caused me to reevaluate everything that is important to me in life. Much as I don't want to hurt you, I realized that I can't marry you. It wouldn't be fair to you. I just can't love you in the way you want to be loved. I'm sorry.
Tom's response was a bit of a revelation to Sherlock.
I suppose that explains why you wouldn't have sex with me.
No, Tom. You know I wanted to wait until we were married.
Sherlock's eyebrows rose at the vitriol of Tom's next words which were the end of the conversation.
Go to hell, bitch.
He set the phone back down on his chair. He knew very well he should never have looked at a private conversation, but he couldn't regret it. Could that mean that Molly still had feelings for him, after all? He'd have to find out.
When she reentered the sitting room fifteen minutes later, his breath caught at the sight of her wearing his shirt. There was something inherently intimate in that, and she filled it out beautifully.
He was sitting on the sofa, having dispensed with his coat and jacket, which both smelled of smoke. He probably needed a shower himself, but it could wait. He patted the space next to him. "Molly, can we talk?"
She sat next to him. "What about?" she asked hesitantly.
"Molly, I need you to say these words for me." He took her hand.
"What words?"
"I love you."
"Leave me alone." She pulled her hand away and tried to get up, but he restrained her.
"Please Molly, I need to know if you love me."
"I can't, Sherlock. I can't say those words to you."
"Of course you can. Why can't you?" he pressed. Perhaps he had it all wrong. Perhaps she hadn't broken up with Tom because of him. His heart sank at the thought.
"You know why." She wouldn't look at him.
"No, I don't know why." He lifted her chin and forced her to meet his gaze.
"Of course you do." He could see the tears bubbling on her lashes.
"Please, just say it." He could hear the desperation now in his own voice.
"I can't. Not to you."
"Why?"
Joy spread through him at her next words. "Because it's true, Sherlock. It's always been true."
He almost laughed with relief. "Well if it's true, just say it anyway."
"You bastard."
"Say it, anyway."
She had been looking down, but now she met his gaze "You say it. Go on, you say it first."
"What?" Was she really asking him to say it first?
"Say it. Say it like you mean it." Her voice was soft, with a pleading note in it.
He swallowed, hard. He had never spoken those words aloud, at least not since he had been a child and said them to his mother. He looked down, forcing himself to say the unfamiliar words. "I…I love you." Then he looked into Molly's beautiful brown eyes. His hand was still beneath her chin, and his other hand reached to clasp one of hers. "I love you." He put every ounce of feeling into those words, willing her to understand that he meant them with all his heart. The heart he had not known he possessed until he had feared he had lost her forever to someone else.
Then the most beautiful phrase in the English language came out of her mouth. "I love you." She leaned in towards him, and he knew she was expecting him to kiss her as her eyes closed.
He dropped his hand from her chin in sudden consternation and her eyes opened in confusion. "What's wrong?"
Sherlock could feel a flush rising in his cheeks. "I...I've never kissed anyone on the lips. I want to kiss you, more than anything, but what if I'm rubbish at it?"
Molly gave him a gentle smile. "Kissing isn't something you need to think about beforehand. It just happens. It's something you feel." Then it was her turn to blush as she said, "Actually, I have a confession to make. I would not be ready to kiss you if I hadn't just broken off my engagement with Tom."
"Well," said Sherlock hesitantly. Perhaps she would be so angry about it she wouldn't want to kiss him anymore. "I have a confession to make also. Your phone was still open on my chair, and I…well, I may have looked at your texts."
Molly glared at him. "That was completely inappropriate." Then her gaze softened. "Although it does explain why you all of a sudden wanted to know if I loved you."
"I had to know if you broke it off because of me."
"Of course I did. The moment you reappeared in my life at the hospital I began having doubts about Tom and me. Then today, when we spent the day together, I knew I was still in love with you. As soon as you walked away from me, I knew I couldn't marry him."
"Does that mean you'll marry me instead?"
Molly gave him a shocked look. "You haven't even kissed me and you want to marry me?"
"Why not?" he demanded. "I love you, you love me. That would seem to be the next logical step. You know - 'First comes love, then comes marriage. Then comes baby in a baby...'"
"Wait a minute," Molly cut him off. "Now you're talking about having babies as well?"
"Well, not until we're married of course. I saw your text about waiting until marriage."
Molly blushed. Unexpectedly, she stood, then settled herself onto Sherlock's lap, winding her arms around his neck. "Well, let's get that first kiss out of the way at the very least."
This time, Sherlock decided to take her advice and feel, rather than think. He clasped his hands on either side of her face, leaned in close and closed his eyes.
Their lips met in a kiss that both amazed and excited him. He was tentative at first, but as the sensation of the softness of her lips overwhelmed him, he allowed himself to get lost in it, the sweetness that was Molly Hooper.
Her mouth opened under his, inviting him to explore it further, and he did so, gently brushing his tongue along the recesses of her mouth, before withdrawing it and just enjoying the unfamiliar sensation of being so close to another human being. How could he have ever thought that sentiment was a chemical defect found in the losing side?
But then, this was not merely sentiment, this was love, a love that filled him with hope for the future.
When their lips finally parted and they were both a little short of breath, Sherlock moved his hands from Molly's face so he could slide his arms around her waist and said, "I think I could get used to this kissing business. But I also think I am going to need a lot more practice. What do you say?"
Molly laid her head against his chest and answered, "Yes, my love, always. Yes."