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There were many things that Sherlock found annoying. His brother, Anderson, incompetence, rules, people meddling in his life, the attention the media still continued to heap on him...the list was long and it almost felt there were new things being added every day. Before his fall he would have let it affect his mood the entire day, being cranky and short with everyone he came into contact with. He would have let each and every annoyance sour his mood and found nothing good in the day to counteract it, even if there were things that pleased him. But two years away with his life in constant danger had changed him, and so now he tried his absolute best to let the annoyances slide off his back and not affect him. It seemed to be a better way to live, at least most of the time. Today there had been the brief interaction with Lestrade's superior that had had the beginnings of being a pissing match, but Sherlock knew he was right and in the end the man backed down. He found himself in relatively good spirits when he made his way down to the morgue, and he was sure his good mood would be better once he saw Molly. She always managed to make his mood better when he was annoyed with the world, so he could just imagine how he would feel after encountering her while he was in a good mood.
He still wasn't quite sure how he and Molly had evolved from friends to a romantic relationship to their most recent state of becoming lovers. There had been an ebb and flow to it all: she had fancied him and he paid her no mind, seeing her as a tool, and then they had become friends and it seemed she no longer had any romantic interest in him. He had felt he could be content to simply be friends until he returned and found her in a serious and committed relationship with someone else. It took him time to admit it but he was jealous. And before he even had the opportunity to do anything regarding that very foreign emotion he was playing the part of devoted boyfriend to Janine as Molly's relationship fell apart. Of course he threw away any chance of anything developing when he pulled the trigger on Magnussen Christmas Day, and it was only because Moriarty chose to make his return known to the entire country at once that he was lucky enough to get a second chance. He took advantage of that second chance with such speed that he was fairly sure everyone thought he had lost his mind, but Molly had completely reciprocated and had not said anything about the speed with which their relationship had progressed, and he was grateful for that. He enjoyed what they had and wished he had gone after her much earlier than he had.
He opened the doors to the morgue and saw Molly had her back to him. He could clearly see a body on the table in front of her and the recorder near the deceased's head. She wasn't speaking out loud at the moment so he assumed she was actually in the middle of the autopsy or sewing him back up. He cleared his throat and she turned around. “I wasn't expecting you for another two hours,” she said, giving him a smile.
“I need to work on a case. I believe you have autopsy results for me?” he said, moving closer. Yes, she was just finishing up, and he could see it was his victim. “Or you will in a few minutes.”
“Try an hour or so, Sherlock. I still need to run tests and then type it all up,” she said with a laugh. “And aren't I supposed to give them to Greg first?”
“But you like me more than Lestrade,” he said, leaning closer.
“You know the rules, Sherlock. You do not get to kiss me until I'm done with my work and in my office,” she said, continuing to sew his victim up. “It's too much of a distraction otherwise.”
“Very well,” he said with a sigh. He moved away from her and went to her tray. He picked up a jar and looked at it. “Stomach contents?”
She looked up and nodded. “I still need to run an analysis of it, but it appears that he hadn't eaten in at least twelve hours.”
“That's curious,” he replied. “There were crusts of bread and a few smashed peas at the crime scene, and they weren't dried as they would have been if they'd been there for over twelve hours.”
“Are you sure it was the crime scene?” she asked.
“Fairly sure,” he said, setting down the stomach contents. “Though depending on the results we may have to see about discarding that theory.” He then moved over to the body on the opposite side of her and leaned in to take a closer look before pointing to the man's throat. “Those marks don't match the chain found around his neck”
“No, he was strangled with someone's bare hands,” she said. “And there were two people involved.” She stopped doing her sutures for the moment. “You see the marks? How they face the opposite way than you normally see them when a person is on their back and being strangled? The person who strangled him was on the floor by his head, leaning over. Someone else was kneeling on his chest, and exerting quite a bit of pressure.” She gestured to bruising that was fairly evident there. “See?”
“So he died from strangulation?” he asked, moving to look at the marks.
She shook her head. “It was done while he was in the middle of having a seizure, but it was the pressure on his chest that killed him. Several of his ribs fractured and one pierced his heart. That was what killed him.”
“That seems to be overkill,” he said with a frown. “I can understand someone holding him down if he was having a seizure, even though that's the worst thing to do, but why kneel on his chest and have someone else strangle him?”
“I have no idea,” she said, going back to her sutures. “Figuring out things like that is not my job. I am not the world famous consulting detective, after all.”
“Well, this world famous consulting detective would be lost without his favorite pathologist,” he said with a grin.
“So you're seeing other pathologists?” she teased.
“Occasionally, in the course of business,” he said. “But there is only one who I have seen and explored every inch of.”
She began to turn red. “I am very glad I turned off my recorder already,” she said.
“As am I,” he said. “Not that I particularly care if it got caught on tape when you could easily go back and delete it.”
“Not without deleting the last twenty minutes of my findings,” she said. “And I'm not in the mood to dictate them again.”
“What are you in the mood to do?” he asked.
“Finish sewing up the body so I can go into my office and snog my boyfriend for a few minutes before I start typing up his report,” she said with a grin.
“I only get a few minutes?” he asked, and he gave her a fake pout when she looked up.
“If you want a complete autopsy report I still have tests to run so yes, you only get a few minutes,” she said, rolling her eyes. “And even if you don't care to have the complete report sooner rather than later Greg would.”
“Ten minutes,” he said. “All I ask is for ten minutes of your undivided attention.”
“Five,” she countered. “Less if you don't let me finish.”
“Seven,” he said.
“Sherlock, you're going to get me all to yourself as soon as my shift is over,” she said as she shook her head.
“Not if Lestrade has any say. He wants me working hard on this case so there are no more victims, and with the revelation that two people were close to the body when the victim died he's going to want me to double down on it. I think it is going to be a late evening.”
“Five minutes now and I will wait up for you and give you my undivided attention then,” she said. “I may even be nice and dress for the occasion.”
He thought for a moment. “The black lace set with the garters under the Burberry trench coat?”
“Well, I was thinking I'd show you something I picked up yesterday in red, but if you prefer the black set I can wear that,” she said.
“Something new?” he asked, licking his lips slightly. “I think I would like to see that.”
“So you'll settle for five minutes?” she asked. He nodded in response and she grinned. “All right. Go wait in the office and I'll join you shortly.”
He moved around and then headed into her office, a grin on his face. He could make the most of five minutes, and the promise of having her undivided attention tonight would make for a very compelling reason to work as hard as possible as quickly as he could. That would definitely make what he knew was going to be an annoying afternoon infinitely better.