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The door to the morgue banged shut behind the last member of her team, and Molly slumped back against the countertop with a sigh. A quick scribble on her clipboard, a signature, and that was that sorted, paperwork and all.
“Thanks for doing this, Molly. I really hate to call you in on your day off,” Sally said with a sympathetic smile.
“Oh, it’s no problem! That’s why they call it being ‘on call’, after all.” Molly winced at her unintentional rhyme. Stupid. She handed Sally her copy of the signed form and straightened the other papers on her clipboard to hide her awkwardness.
Sally folded the form in half and tapped it against her open palm. “It’s always good to see you, though—and you’re amazing to watch in action.”
Molly flushed. “Oh, you really think so? I know I can be a bit of a terror when I’m in charge of a research team, but I like to see things done right.”
“Definitely amazing. You took no flak from those guys whatsoever. I can’t imagine the stress of being a doctor, and I say that as a detective who hunts serial killers.”
“Well, my particular brand of doctoring is a bit less stressful, considering all my patients are already dead,” Molly said with a wry smile.
Sally laughed. “Okay, point taken. But then you have poor sods like me popping in at all hours, saying ‘drop everything and figure out why this man died! The safety of London depends on it!’ That can’t be easy.”
“Yeah, okay, that part can be a bit tense. I don’t mind, though.”
“Well, either way, I appreciate you coming in this evening. You want to… go grab a drink? Unwind a bit?”
“Oh!” Molly’s eyebrows shot up, and she looked down at herself. Plain outfit, bit of cat hair, skipped the makeup—she hadn’t planned on going anywhere with anyone. It was so rare, a random invitation like this, that it was shocking to have something other than an evening of cats and tea and back issues of Histopathology ahead of her.
“Um … yeah, okay,” she said, discreetly picking a few cat hairs off her slacks. “I’m a bit of a mess, but if you don’t mind …”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Come on, I’ll take you to my local. They’re still serving supper for another hour or so. No fancy dress, no fuss, just a pint and some good company, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Molly echoed, nodding. “Okay. Just, give me a minute to put away my coat and … oh, that’s brain matter. I’ll just go freshen up, shall I?”
Sally laughed and waved her away. “I’ll meet you by the staff exit. Take your time.”
As the door clicked shut behind Sally, Molly shrugged off her lab coat and smiled to herself. Sally had always been kind to her, though she was awful to Sherlock. Maybe there was more to her than Molly had thought. She hoped so.
It would be nice to have a friend.
* * *
Molly loved the pub from the second Sally held open the door for her. The main room was cozy and warm, alive with chatter and clinking glasses and delicious supper smells. The conversation dulled a bit when Molly walked in, but picked back up as soon as Sally strode in after her.
“We don’t get many new faces here,” Sally murmured in her ear, directing her to the bar with a small gesture. “They’ll warm up to you in no time. Hi, Thom,” she said, directing the latter to the bartender.
“Sally,” he replied with a nod, eying Molly as she slid off her coat. “Gonna introduce your new friend?”
“This is Molly,” Sally said. “Be nice. I’ve got the first round—pint of bitter for me, and Molly will have …” she trailed off, studying her for a moment. “Pint of lager?”
“Yes, please,” Molly said with a grin. “Pulling a bit of a Sherlock there, eh? Deducing my beer preferences?”
Sally’s face fell a bit, but she gave a small chuckle anyway. “Yeah, but at least I have some tact.” The comment was lacking the legendary bite Sally was famous for when faced with all things Sherlock, and Molly felt the shame rising into her cheeks.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to bring him up. Probably the worst thing I could say, right? I know you two don’t get on, and I didn’t mean to compare—”
“Hey, stop, all right? It’s fine. Yeah, Sherlock and I have a bit of … history. He’s never going to be my favorite person. But after all the … well. After he …”
“Died. For a bit.”
“Yeah, that. Look, I know you’re … fond of him—”
“No!” Molly said, then winced at her interruption. “I mean, I’m over that. Long over that. So don’t worry about saying … whatever you want to say. He’s still my friend, sort of, but believe me, I fully understand that he can be hard to take.”
Thom set their pints down in front of them, and Sally ordered their dinner absentmindedly. She seemed nervous, like she was stalling for time. When she finally turned back to Molly, her eyes were determined.
“Look, I know everyone thought I was out to get him, and that it was all personal vindictiveness or something. But here’s the thing. Doing what I did … it was career suicide, okay? I’m honestly shocked I still have a job. But I just had to know that there was no possible way we were wrong about Sherlock. Even if I was wrong and it cost me everything I had worked for. I had to be sure.”
Sally pursed her lips and took a deep breath in through her nose. “The evidence was there, and if it turned out that he had been behind everything and we never investigated, I never could have lived with myself. It would have been my fault as much as his. And I did try going to Lestrade first, but—well, I’m glad he at least forgave me for going over his head.”
Sally fell silent, and Molly immediately felt awful for every negative thing she’d ever thought or overheard about ‘that Sergeant Donovan bitch’. “You really could have lost your job?”
Sally gave a humorless chuckle and took a pull from her pint. “I don’t know what it’s like in the medical field, but in the police force you do not go outside the chain of command. Ever. Had things not shaken out the way they did, and if Lestrade weren’t such a decent human being, I wouldn’t just be out of a job—I’d be blacklisted. Do you know how hard it is to make Sergeant? Especially in Criminal Investigations? And as a Black woman?”
Molly bit her lip. “I imagine it’s nearly impossible. Bit of a boys’ club, isn’t it?”
“Too right,” Sally said. “The fact that I had this job to begin with was unbelievable. Going to the Chief Inspector about Sherlock … well. I knew what I was risking. But I couldn’t have that on my conscience.”
Thom returned a moment later with two hot plates of steak pie, and they chewed in semi-awkward silence for a bit until Molly couldn’t take it anymore.
“Sally, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, I’m sorry to make things so heavy. We’re supposed to be unwinding and getting to know each other, and I—”
“You have nothing to apologize for. If anything, everyone else—”
They paused and stared at each other for a moment, then burst into giggles.
“We’re completely ridiculous,” Molly gasped.
“Yeah, we are, a bit.” Sally looked down at her food and grinned, her curls falling down around her face. They ate in a much more companionable silence for a few more moments, until Sally continued: “So, what about you?”
Molly blinked. “What about me?”
Sally gestured at her with the last bite of steak on her fork. “You know, your job. Can’t be easy being a woman in your field either. How’d you get where you are?”
“Oh, the usual way,” Molly said. “Awkward girl, good at science, good in the lab, not so good with people. Five years of medical school, four more on the wards. Plenty of awful people along the way who told me I wasn’t tough enough to make it, but here I am.” A surge of pride pushed the corners of her mouth up, and she fiddled with the edge of her sleeve. “My job may not be glamorous, but I love it, and I’m good at it, and I worked really hard to get here. I’m happy to have made it.”
Molly looked up to see Sally smiling at her, her eyes warm and liquid brown. She was close, their forearms nearly touching on the bartop, her head leaned in to listen.
Molly’s eyes darted down to Sally’s lips, still curled into that fond smile—and her eyes widened.
“My brother is gay!” she said, the words bursting from her without permission. She winced and closed her eyes. Idiot.
Sally drew back, the smile falling away. “Okay … is this going to be one of those ‘I have a gay friend so I’m totally fine with it, but ...’ sort of things?”
Molly flushed bright red and shook her head frantically. “No, it’s not that at all! It’s just …” She opened and closed her mouth a few times, her mind a whirling mess—until she felt something click. A little self-deprecating smile took over.
“It’s just, you’d think that it would’ve occurred to me by now, growing up with all that, right? I’m thirty-five years old. But I always sort of thought, no, what are the odds? I’m probably just letting my acceptance of my brother color my feelings. Or something like that. I’m just acknowledging possibilities out of open-mindedness, not out of interest.”
She laughed at herself a bit, looking down into her drink, then back up at Sally. “I know it's a lot of mental acrobatics to get there, but I...don't exactly have a lot of experience dealing with this sort of thing. There aren’t many people who want to spend time with someone who cuts up corpses for a living. I guess you would think I would have gotten there faster than average, considering my brother and all, but maybe sometimes the opposite is true.”
Sally hesitated for a moment, then ventured: “So, you’re saying …”
Molly grinned shyly. “I think I’m … bi.”
“And you just figured that out right now.”
“Right this very second, yes,” Molly said with a snort. Her face fell a bit. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”
Sally laughed. “God, of course it is! I mean … congrats, I guess, on getting things figured out?”
Molly laughed with her, a warm feeling spreading through her chest. She felt … light. Like she had helium balloons tied to every limb, and only Sally’s hand on her arm was keeping her from floating away.
Sally’s hand on her arm. Molly’s breath shortened. When had that happened? She looked up to find those deep brown eyes studying her.
“You do know why I asked you here tonight, right?” Sally asked, hesitant.
“Yeah. I do now, at least,” Molly added with a laugh. “I guess that means you’re … bi, too?”
Sally nodded. “I’ve known since … forever, basically. I’ve always been attracted to more than just men, but my parents made it easy for me: They completely and utterly disapproved, which only made me want to come out more. I’m not really into the extremes—really hyper masculine or hyper feminine—but anything else, I can at least see the appeal.”
Molly hesitated for a moment, then ventured: “But, Anderson …”
“Exactly. You see my point.”
Molly hid a giggle behind her lager and took a long pull from the glass, emptying it. Sally followed suit and signaled for the check.
“Now him I’d really rather not talk about. That was an awful mistake,” she said, inching back into Molly’s space. Her knee brushed hesitantly against Molly’s, and Molly barely suppressed the urge to jump. The point of contact burned, and she felt coiled tight, full of potential energy. She dropped her hand to her own thigh, then inched it forward, barely brushing the tip of one finger against Sally’s knee.
“So you’ve … been with women before, then? If that’s not too personal a question?” she asked. She couldn’t bring herself to look Sally in the eye again, so she stared instead at her finger where it met the smooth black fabric of Sally’s trousers. Her lungs felt too empty and too full all at once.
“Yeah. A few,” Sally said. “But I’m guessing you’ve never …”
“Nothing. Anything, I mean. With women. God, that’s probably awful. I’m completely inexperienced, so I understand if—”
Sally’s hand came to rest next to hers on their knees, and Molly froze. Her eyes followed as Sally so very gently traced up the inside of Molly’s index finger, then dipped into the soft space between before dragging back down. Molly’s breath stuttered, and she wet her lips, a new fire running up her thighs to pool between her legs.
“You want to get out of here?”
Molly’s head whipped up. Sally’s pupils were wide, her lips slightly parted. Nervous, a bit. Molly was nervous a lot, but she put on a soft smile and hooked her finger around Sally’s.
“Yeah. I live really close, actually—walk me home?”
Sally smiled. “Yeah. ‘Course.”
Pulling herself away from Sally to put on her coat was the hardest thing Molly had done in a long, long time.
* * *
“We must be neighbors if you live walking distance from my pub,” Sally said, her shoulder brushing Molly’s as they walked.
“Yeah, I had no idea we lived so close. That’s convenient. Or, it could be, I mean. If, uh ...” It was a good thing the wind had already turned her cheeks pink, Molly thought. Presuming too much, too soon, stop it.
“Yeah, it is. Convenient,” Sally said. She hooked her arm through Molly’s elbow as they turned the corner and Molly’s building came into view.
Molly smiled. She loved Brixton with a fierce sort of pride. It wasn’t the prettiest of neighborhoods by a long shot, and there were an awful lot of sirens at times, but she could afford the flat on her own salary with plenty left over for cat food and internet service. It had become a bit of a weird place in the past few years, with vegan cupcake stores opening up next to tiny takeout shops and cultural markets. Prices were rising, things were getting shinier, and Molly was sure she’d be unable to afford it in a few years. But for now, it was home. She looked at Sally out of the corner of her eye and could see how she fit here, too.
Molly pulled them to a stop outside a shabby old Victorian house, divided into four separate flats and squashed up against the surrounding buildings.
“This is me,” she said, releasing Sally’s elbow so they could stand face-to-face. Their eyes met, and Molly’s breath caught her in throat. They hadn’t looked directly at one another since they’d left the pub, but the charge was still there, hot and promising in Sally’s eyes. Molly’s fingers twitched forward, seeking Sally’s; those long, slender fingers found hers and traced their length again, this time dragging up to tease the sensitive skin inside her wrist. Molly took a breath, steadied herself, and slid closer, stepping one foot between Sally’s so their lips were mere inches apart.
“Would you like to come up for another drink?” she asked, her voice low and breathy. “Something a bit stronger?”
Sally’s lips curled into a smile, and her fingers traced up Molly’s forearm until they found the soft curve of her waist.
“I’d like that.”
And then Molly couldn’t keep her hands to herself anymore. The heat burning low in her gut took over, lifting her hand to Sally’s hip, tipping her head to the side just so, and there. She kissed her, kissed Sally Donovan’s wicked, smiling lips, and pulled her closer until their hips aligned. She sank her other hand into Sally’s curls and traced her bottom lip with her tongue, and oh my god, oh my g—yes, definitely bisexual, definitely, yes, this is—
She pulled back just a fraction, her forehead still pressed to Sally’s.
“Skip the drink?”
Sally huffed a small laugh, and pressed forward for another brief but solid kiss. “Yeah,” she said.
Then she slipped two fingers just under the hem of Molly’s jumper.
Molly gasped into Sally’s mouth, and her brain’s last act before it went offline entirely was to provide her with a perfectly clear mental image of those fingers on the bare skin of her inner thighs, skimming upward to—
“Come on,” Molly said, and pulled Sally back toward the stairs by her coat pockets.