Chapter Text
Molly Hooper threw down her pen in frustration. Either there was something wrong with this toxicology report, or she was missing something. There was no way Mr. Barak had died from natural causes, but she couldn’t figure out exactly how he’d died. She thought there must be some kind of poison involved, but none of the tests she’d run had shown anything. Picking up the report she started going over it again, looking for clues, just as Sherlock rounded the corner into the lab, his coat billowing out behind him dramatically.
“Good morning, Molly,” he said, brightly. “How’s my favorite pathologist today?”
Molly glanced over at him. “Frustrated, Sherlock. How are you?”
“Wonderful. Stupendous. Right as rain.” He peered over her shoulder at the report. “Problem?”
“This isn’t adding up,” she sighed. “I’m missing something. What do you want, Sherlock? Do you need the lab?”
“Not exactly,” he said, his assurance fading. “I, um, need your help.”
“With what?” When he didn’t answer, she stood up and faced him. He looked suddenly worried and uncomfortable, a slight flush of pink on his cheeks. “With what, Sherlock?” she repeated, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her lab coat. “What do you need?”
He turned towards her slowly. “You,” he whispered, his eyes wide, beseeching. He took a small step towards her, pinning her with an intense gaze.
Molly’s brows began to knit together in a frown. “Oh, for god’s sake—,” she began. “Are you going to kill yourself again, because I really don’t have time for that right now. Too much hassle, finding a body. And lying to all those people for years…years, Sherlock!” She shook her head adamantly. “I can’t go through that again.”
“No, no!” he quickly assured her. “It’s not that. It’s…something else. A case. I need your help for a case.” He looked at her as if he hoped she could automatically deduce what he needed because he seemed loathe to speak the words aloud.
If she didn’t know him, she might have thought he was embarrassed. But he never got embarrassed. He sailed through life seemingly without concern for other people’s opinions of his behavior. She huffed a little, crossed her arms, and raised her eyebrows, waiting expectantly through the deepening silence whilst he fidgeted. “Well?” she finally burst out, throwing her hands in the air.
“There’s a black widow hunting on the Côte d'Azur,” he blurted out. “She moves up and down the coast between Nice and Toulon. By my reckoning she’s killed at least four men over the last five years. She’s expected to be in Saint-Tropez in seven week’s time, and I thought—“
“—You’d play the victim,” Molly interrupted. “You’re going to throw yourself into the path of a serial killer by posing as a mark.” She rolled her eyes. “You come up with the stupidest ideas, Sherlock. What do you need me for?”
“I need help with some, um, physical aspects of the undercover work.” He looked a bit pained, and wondered if this was a good idea, coming to her for help. Now that he was saying it out loud, actually asking her, it did seem kind of foolish.
“What kind of physical aspects?” she asked, suspiciously. “I’m not chasing some murderess around the French Riviera with you, pretending to be your girlfriend or something. I don’t have any holiday time and I get sunburned too easily.”
“Maybe I should leave,” he said, reconsidering. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.” He turned on his heel, trying to bolt for the exit, but she dashed around him, cutting him off and stopping him in his tracks.
“No. Tell me what you need,” she demanded, poking him in the chest with her finger. “I don’t want you going off half arsed, getting yourself killed. Or worse, arrested.”
“Really, Molly? Arrested is worse than killed?” he snipped. “Now I know your priorities. Anyway, this is just the prep work,” he explained. “I want you to teach me how to…” Jesus this is difficult, he thought, trailing off. He was down to the reason for his visit now, and he was going to have to say it. He heaved a deep sigh, bolstering his courage. “I want you to teach me how to kiss properly,” he finished in a rush. The tips of his ears flushed pink.
Molly cocked her head towards him sharply, not sure she’d heard correctly. “Beg pardon?” she asked.
“I need to be an experienced…lover in order for my plan to work,” he mumbled, looking at the ceiling.
“And…you think that I have a lot of experience with lovemaking,” she stated, evenly. He nodded, sheepishly. “That I am a…slut?” she said, the merest hint of a twinkle in her eye.
“No! No,” he hurriedly answered, near panicking. “It’s just that I...lack the practical experience,” he admitted, wishing he’d never asked. “I thought you might help me…learn things. Just the basics,” he clarified, with a spread of his hands. “After that, I reckon my natural, um, aptitude would take over.”
“Well, why don’t you get that Irene person to teach you? Isn’t that her…profession?” The bite in Molly’s voice was clear.
“No,” he answered firmly, with a shake of his head. “Not her. I…I don’t want that. She’s too…predatory. She lacks your warmth and kindness, Molly. I wouldn’t feel comfortable around her.” He paused for a moment, a thought occurring to him. “Hang on. How do you know about her?”
“Remember that Christmas? When the not-her dead body was on my slab? The one you misidentified, by the way.”
Sherlock winced, recalling that disastrous day. “I did that on purpose. To protect her,” he answered, standing up straighter and settling his shoulders. He was feeling slightly more comfortable now that he’d made his request and she hadn’t slapped him outright. He looked her in the eye. “I meant, how did you know about her…profession?” There was a pause whilst he deduced the answer, and then he nodded to himself. “I’m going to kill John,” he declared with barely concealed irritation. “That man couldn’t keep a secret if my life depended on it. What other things has he spilled?”
Molly hid a smile and didn’t answer. “How about Janine? Weren’t you…involved with her?”
“Not really,” he said, shifting awkwardly. “I wouldn’t call it ‘involved.’”
“What would you call it, then? It was in the papers,” Molly countered. “Five times a night in Baker Street.”
“Aw, she just made that up.”
“He made me wear the hat,” she persisted.
“Christ, come on, Molly,” he said, with a roll of his eyes. “It was for a case. It was only a few kisses anyway. No tongues,” he hastened to add. “Sort of. And I just let her, uh, do all the work. We never slept together. I always found some reason to…postpone. Towards the end, actually, I was running out of excuses,” he confided. “It got difficult to put her off, believe me. She’s rather…strong minded.” He looked somehow simultaneously proud and embarrassed. “She’s a lot like you in that regard, Molly.”
Molly thought for a minute, took a step closer to him and laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Sherlock, have you ever kissed anyone properly?” The question hung in the air whilst he tried to figure out exactly how to answer.
“I…I have,” he said, studying his shoes now. “I’ve kissed you.”
“On the cheek. Once you nearly made it to my lips. But I meant a real kiss, Sherlock. On the mouth. With passion and desire and…tongue.”
“Um,” he hedged, so low she could barely hear him. “Not according to that precise criteria. Like I said, I don’t have much experience. I guess the most relevant time would be at uni. There were a couple of guys I knew, but they weren’t really interested in that part of my anatomy.” He shuffled back and forth, looking down, unwilling to meet her eyes. “We…used each other,” he explained, quietly. “They used me for sex, and I used them for…for drugs. It was never very, uh, satisfactory.”
“Oh, Sherlock,” Molly breathed, her eyes glistening suddenly, her heart aching for him. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Physical intimacy should be a beautiful thing between people who care about each other. It’s an expression of regard and respect. It wasn’t…right that they used you like that.”
“Well, I agreed to it,” he said, shrugging. “Even though I’ve never really been very interested in it,” he continued. “Sex, I mean. I wanted their drugs, so I…I just…let them.” He glanced at her quickly and was amazed to see compassion blooming in her deep brown eyes.
“Even so,” she said, squeezing his arm gently. “They shouldn’t have done that to you. It was…wrong.”
There was a silence whilst he thought about her words. He’d always been the weirdo, the freak, hated by everyone. He’d encouraged the distance between himself and others with his biting words and cruel deductive skills. It was much safer that way. In his world, it had been use or get used. No woman had really cared about him in the gentle way she did. He felt a sharp ache in his chest, like a shard of ice had begun to thaw.
“You know,” he said, musing out loud, “kissing and sex seem like such strange things to do. I mean, how do you get out of your head long enough to…enjoy it? Aren’t you thinking about how weird it is that your mouths are smashing together and your tongues are slopping around? And sex is just so…I mean, you push your parts together and wiggle about for a bit.” He shivered and looked at her beseechingly, willing her to understand. “It all seems so…messy and…juicy. Am I being weird? Is this...not good?”
“No, it’s fine,” she affirmed, softly. She rubbed his forearm, trying to ground him a little. “When you describe it that way,” she said lightly, with a gentle smile, “it does sound like an odd thing to do. I appreciate that you’ve come to me, Sherlock. Really. It must be difficult to…trust someone enough to talk about this.” He nodded curtly, returning his gaze to his shoes. He was suddenly nervous again. “You’re being very brave,” she said.
He shrugged again, his stomach twisting uncomfortably, not able to absorb her compliment, wondering why he’d come to her at all. This was agonizing, he realized, but some part of him wanted to continue, wanted her help, her understanding. There was a gap in his knowledge base that he wanted to fill, and there was something else hiding inside him that he didn’t understand, pushing at him. He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
“I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, if you don’t mind,” she said.
“Okay,” he agreed.
“Do you, erm, get hard? You know, do you have…erections?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“And do you do anything about them when you get them?”
“Yes,” he said, a trifle defensively, looking over her shoulder at the wall. “Sometimes I…take care of it, and sometimes I take a cold shower until it goes away. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“Yes, of course. That’s fine. Do you think about anything or um, anyone in particular whilst you’re taking care of it?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But I’m not going to tell you about that.”
“That’s fine,” Molly said. “Fair enough. If I agree to…help you, I just need to ascertain how much you know. Where you are with it, so to speak. Are you okay with that?” He nodded. She thought for a minute, sizing him up. “Sherlock, will you kiss me?”
“You mean here? Now?” he asked, incredulously.
“Yes,” she said firmly. “Right now. Lay one on me. Let’s see how much…instruction is going to be required.” She turned her face up to his and smiled gently, encouragingly, at him.
Sherlock glanced around the lab quickly, double checking that they were alone, faced her, took a deep breath, and lowered his head to hers. Molly thought he was coming in with a bit too much velocity, but before she could say or do anything, their noses bashed against each other and their teeth cracked together with an audible clack, sending an unpleasant shock through her upper palate. “Shit,” he muttered, stepping away.
“Ow,” Molly said, clapping her fingers over her mouth and pressing on her front teeth to dull the pain. “Sherlock, it’s supposed to be a kiss, not a frontal assault requiring dental work after.”
“Well, see…this is why I need your help!” he shouted, straightening up, frustrated and angry. He raised his hands and spun around. “How am I going to seduce this black widow if I don’t know what I’m doing? I look like an idiot. Stupider than Anderson which, technically speaking, is worse than getting killed. Even he, the biggest moron on the planet, seems to know what he’s doing with this…in the sex department,” he continued, throwing a mini-tantrum of flailing arms and whirling coat. “Jesus, this is fucking embarrassing.”
“Okay!” Molly said. “Okay! Calm down, Sherlock. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to learn something. I’ll help you. It’ll be all right. We’ll go slowly. It might even be fun for us both.” She waggled her eyebrows at him with a grin before turning him around and pushing him towards the door. “Now, let me work. Come to my flat tonight. At seven. Bring some takeaway. And try to relax.” With a curt nod he scurried away, relieved to be making his escape, and with a sigh, she turned back to the problem of Mr. Barak’s unexplained death.
*****