Chapter Text
The first day Molly saw Sherlock wearing a tie, she almost choked on her tea.
Ever since Molly knew her, Sherlock had always been a sharp dresser. While Molly herself was content to wear whatever comfortable clothes she first pulled out of her closet in the morning, she’d hardly ever seen Sherlock wearing anything less than a designer suit, dress shoes and Dolce & Gabbana shirts. It was part of what made her so intimidating but also so stunningly attractive; with her blue-grey eyes, her high cheekbones, the contrast between her dark, almost black hair and her pale skin, the curls that loosely framed her face whenever she let her hair down. Sherlock cut a striking figure even before she revealed the full extent of her genius. Molly could hardly be blamed then, she thought, for her awkwardness around the other woman. What had started as a brief relapse into her teenage insecurities had quickly snowballed into attraction and then an outright, hopeless, crush. It was bad enough being attracted to and borderline in love with someone she knew would never reciprocate her feelings - even worse when said person could almost certainly deduce her feelings from her perfume choice or something equally innocuous.
She’d learned to live with it over the years. She’d gotten to know Sherlock better and learned that her poise, grace and disdain for most of the general public was nothing more than a front and the expensive way she dressed simply a natural byproduct of growing up absurdly rich; that surely helped negate some of Molly’s lingering insecurities and tendency to compare her somewhat shabby George At Asda t-shirts and jeans with Sherlock’s sleek blazers and tight dress shirts. Even more so when she finally met Sherlock’s brother and realised that Sherlock was rather dressed down comparatively. It left Molly with the freedom to actually appreciate rather than overthink. And appreciate she did. She’d let go of any lingering hope of any sort of proper relationship happening for the two of them; the one and only time Molly had gathered the courage to ask her out it had backfired spectacularly and then of course Doctor Watson had appeared on the scene. Molly wasn’t jealous, she wasn’t. There was nothing to be jealous of for a start, no matter that everyone and their mother thought there was. And, yeah, if she was really honest with herself maybe she had been at the start but no more. Molly had settled herself in for a life of quietly pining away, only occasionally getting a bee in her bonnet about moving on (almost always after a long conversation with her mother featuring her lack of marriage at her age, but that was no one else’s business).
And then Sherlock walked into her office in the morgue wearing a tie. And Molly nearly choked on her tea.
She’d never, in all the years she’d known Sherlock, ever seen her wearing a tie and as thoughts of knotting it around her fingers and pulling it tighter or using it to direct Sherlock anyway she wanted flitted through her mind before she was able to stop them, she glanced up to see Sherlock already looking at her intently, eyebrow raised. She blushed deeply, sure she had just been caught out and cleared her throat.
“S-sorry,” She cringed at the sound of her own voice, croaky and weak both from choking and embarrassment. Sherlock raised her second brow as she watched her from the door. Her dirty thoughts must have been written all over her face.
“Are you alright?” Sherlock asked, a touching sort of concern hidden with brusque impatience, inaudible to anyone who didn’t know to listen for it. Molly almost smiled to herself hearing it.
“Yeah, sorry, went down the wrong hole.” By God, that was even worse , Molly cringed, taking another sip of her tea to distract herself and soothe her throat. “Did you need something?”
“Yeah, I need to see the John Doe that came in yesterday.” Back to business then.
“How did you know he was on my-” She paused, realising she already knew the answer and sensing the sardonic sort of smile Sherlock usually gave whenever she asked such obvious questions. “Never mind,” she chuckled, shaking her head as she stood up, “just this way.”
And that was that. In typical Sherlock fashion, once she was shown her way to the body, her hyperfocus on the puzzle at hand took over and though Molly dithered about a bit to watch her work, distracted constantly by the tie dangling from Sherlock’s neck and the gentle, almost instinctive way Sherlock reached to hold it back from knocking into or contaminating evidence, she didn’t allow herself to stay for long. With a case at hand, there would be no talking to Sherlock about anything else, or hardly at all.
She’d ask her about it later, Molly told herself but for now she had urgent paperwork to be filed. She should have known, really, that she wouldn’t get a chance to ask. She’d been lucky at all that Sherlock had come to her to ask to see the body rather than simply breaking in, Molly wasn’t surprised when she saw Sherlock rush past her office door and out of the morgue without a glance let alone a goodbye an hour or so later.
It played on Molly’s mind a lot more than she wanted it to. She could hardly stop thinking about and her mind would drift back to it and to all sorts of lurid fantasies at the most inappropriate times. Really, Molly told herself, doing her best to stop thinking about it, it was all a bit much for one scrap of fabric, she was hardly a swooning teenage girl anymore. As the weeks dragged on, she found herself thinking about it less and less, until several months later she’d all but forgotten about it. She hardly saw much of Sherlock, as per usual, so the renewal of her embarrassing crush wasn’t too bad.
When it happened again, Molly was ready to start questioning if the universe had it out for her.
This time, it was Doctor Watson she noticed first. Sherlock had swanned past her office and into the morgue in a dramatic blur of coat and loose curls. John, bless him, always stopped to say hello and actually ask if she was too busy to have them traipsing about in her workspace or for Sherlock to commandier her equipment on case business.
“Hey, Molly,” He said as he popped his head round the door, giving the doorframe a quick knock, “Not too busy, are you?”
“Nothing major.” Molly shrugged, she only had a couple of forms to fill out for bodies to be released but over the years she’d gotten used to leaving those until the very last second just in case Sherlock needed to have a look at any of them, and besides she could do those in her sleep at this point. Whatever the two were working on was bound to be more interesting than that. She glanced up at John after dotting her i’s and crossing her t’s on the current form, doing a double take as she saw his suit. It was nice, not too nice, but smart looking, not something she’d usually see John wearing, who as far as Molly had gathered was much more of a jeans and cardigan person like herself. Maybe it was a Doctor thing, she mused. “Oh, you look nice.” She said, suddenly aware she might be staring.
“This?” He wrinkled his nose as he tugged on the end of the blazer and shrugged, “It’s just a court suit.” He explained, “Nothing fancy.”
“Court suit?” Molly asked.
“Yeah, well, we both had to be witnesses this time, thought we’d best make the effort to look smart, yknow?” He looked to where, no doubt, Sherlock was helping herself in the lab, “Had a job and half convincing Her Nibs to wear hers.” He rolled his eyes.
Hers? Molly’s brain stopped working for a moment as she tried to compute what John had said.
“She always wears suits?” Molly said, confused.
“Well, not really.” They started walking together from her office to the lab as John spoke, “Not like all the - “ He gestured to his own tie and cufflinks, “You know she hates those.”
And Molly did. She figured it was part of what had thrown her so much seeing Sherlock wear one the first time. For all that Sherlock dressed smartly, anyone that knew her knew she hated anything like that. Molly didn’t think she’d ever seen Sherlock accessorise at all unless she’d done so as part of one of her many disguises, her scarf being the only notable exception.
“She hates what?” Sherlock’s own voice came echoing back at them from inside the lab as they stepped inside. She sounded distracted and barely glanced up at them from where she was already setting up an experiment, preparing a slide of something or another to go under the microscope but it was clear that she wasn’t pleased about being talked about. From where Molly stood, she could see a navy tie, similar in colour to Sherlock’s signature scarf dangling from her neck, skew-whiff where she’d no doubt already been pulling it out of her way. Molly’s mouth went dry. She wondered if the colour choice was deliberate.
“Your tie.” John answered, though Molly barely heard him at first, then to Molly, “Couldn’t convince her to wear anything else with it, mind you, just the tie was bad enough.”
“Obviously.” Sherlock grumbled, “Damned thing’s impractical.”
“For lab work, but not for court, Sherlock. I told you, the jury’s more likely to take you seriously as an expert witness if you look the part.” John sighed and Molly could tell this was an argument the two of them had probably had a hundred times over by now.
“Why should I pander to a bunch of-” Sherlock started, cut off with a curse when, as if to prove her right, the end of her tie knocked into the petri dish in front of her as she looked up, nearly sending it falling into her lap. “For God’s sake-” She hissed, catching it just before it fell and setting it back on the table in a rush before rearing back and scrambling to pull at the tie, trying to pull it off. She only succeeded in pulling it tighter, the more frantically she pulled at it and the more frustrated she got. A vicious cycle of frustration, pulling it tighter and getting more and more annoyed at it ensued and Molly watched on, first in vague amusement at their domestic argument and then concern.
“Stop!” She cried out when it was clear Sherlock wasn’t getting anywhere, a little louder than the situation called for, causing both of them to turn concerned, incredulous looks on her.
“Stop,” She said, gentler this time, “You’re making it tighter. Here, let me-” She said, stepping forward to gently loosen the tie and slide it out from beneath the collar of Sherlock’s shirt and off her neck. She’d acted in instinct, not even realising just how intimate what she was doing was until it was too late, and then it took everything she had not to blush and to keep her mind from wandering to severely inappropriate places. She wouldn’t allow herself one second to imagine doing this for Sherlock for any other reason, she made herself act efficiently and clinically and when the thought came to her to undo Sherlock’s top button for her too, for she never saw it done up, she pushed it away and stepped back. She stuffed the tie into Sherlock’s pocket for her, ignoring her shocked look and blushing hard.
“Thank you-?” Sherlock half asked, confused and looking at her strangely after an awkward silence.
This was it, Molly thought, she’d really fucked it up now. All these years she’d managed to keep her feelings underwraps and they’d politely ignored them (there was no way Sherlock didn’t know how she felt, not with how observant she was and how obvious Molly had been when they first knew each other) until now.
“You’re welcome.” She choked out, her face still burning with embarrassment; she could feel a panic attack creeping up on her and both sets of eyes on her only made it worse. She had to get out of there, “I’ll just- I’ll just leave you two too it then.” She stammered, turned sharply on her heels and rushed out back to the safety of her office before either one of them had a chance to say anything.
It had been a long time since she’d been so embarrassed in front of Sherlock and she hated it.
She hated feeling embarrassed, as anyone did of course, but in front of Sherlock was even worse. Molly could never deal with embarrassment normally, it piled up and piled up, making her clumsy and made her fumble both socially and literally, a neverending cycle that, when she was younger had caused more than a few panic attacks. It hadn’t been so bad with Sherlock, once Molly had realised that Sherlock was just as bad as she was socially and Molly had thought that her social fumbles were her biggest issue, it had stopped bothering her so much once she’d realised she wasn’t alone. Now though, she knew it was because it made her feel like an idiot.
One embarrassing moment piling up and overwhelming her always made Molly feel that way. She was a capable doctor, goddammit, she was no idiot, no matter how clumsy she got when she was anxious. But Sherlock, Sherlock was so clever; she noticed things that no one else would ever think to notice, she put the little things together to draw conclusions no one else would ever think to make and she loved science like no one Molly had ever met, not even in medical school. And she was good at it, much better than Molly could hope to be. To make an idiot of herself in front of Sherlock was upsetting enough, even if Molly didn’t have feelings for her and even without Sherlock’s disdain and impatience for people she considered unintelligent. Molly never, ever wanted Sherlock to think of her that way. If she didn’t already then losing her cool and falling all over herself over a stupid tie would no doubt change her mind.
Molly swore to herself as she shut the door to her office and leaned heavily against it, she would just act normally next time.
Xxx
Sherlock was curled up on the sofa, long legs pulled up close to her chest, lightly dozing. She could hear the pages turning from where John sat reading in his armchair opposite, she could tell he wasn’t going to finish it but John hated it when she told him things like that so she kept it to herself. Mrs Hudson bustled in with tea and collected their dirty cups, borrowed from her when they’d run out clean ones of their own, tutting at them as she did; neither of them said anything. She left again as quickly as she’d come. As far as Sherlock was concerned, it had been a nice afternoon, the only thing that could have made it better was a case.
That was, until John, already bored of his book just as Sherlock predicted he would be, announced;
“She has a crush on you, you know.”
“Mrs Hudson?” Sherlock pulled a face, not bothering to open her eyes or move, “I hope not.”
“What?” John had no right sounding confused, as if she had been the one to announce such an important revelation out of nowhere. It felt strange to be on the receiving end, Sherlock mused, no wonder nobody liked it when she did it. “No, I meant Molly.” John continued.
That stopped her short and she finally opened her eyes, needing to check that John was serious and that this was not his poor idea of a joke. He looked completely serious and Sherlock unwound herself from her curled up position on the sofa to sit up. “Molly?” She repeated, incredulous. “No, she isn’t.”
“She is.” John insisted.
“John, please, I would have noticed if Molly…had a crush on me.” She scoffed, waving the idea away. The words felt wrong in her mouth, ‘a crush’ how juvenile, like they were all still children. With no idea what had brought this on, it was leaving her all a bit wrong-footed and she was eager to have this particular conversation over.
John just raised an eyebrow at her, in a pointed way like she was being dense. She was not being dense, for Chrissake, she was a genius, it was nearly impossible for her to be dense. She sat even straighter, offended.
“John! I would have noticed.” She insisted. He had the gall then, the absolute audacity, to shrug, looking at her as if to say ‘if-you-say-so’ before he turned back to his book without saying anything.
Her mouth dropped open, shocked and offended. She tried to think, going over any interaction she’d had with Molly that might have given John that idea but came up blank. Sherlock wasn’t even sure Molly liked women that way, and if she did, Sherlock was hardly prime crush material.
“She’s not. I would have noticed, John.” She mumbled, mostly to herself but despite how eager she had been for the conversation to be dropped earlier, she wasn’t going to let it go now. John would say that it was because she hadn’t gotten the last word, which…fair enough but also as wrong-footed as she’d felt to have the subject brought up so suddenly, to have it dropped just as fast with no explanation was just as bad. “Seriously, where did you get that idea?”
“Did you not see her the other day?” John eventually gave in, he knew her well enough by now to know that she would stew and sulk about it and pester him about it until he gave her the answers she wanted. He sighed and gave her an exasperated look though, as he looked up from his book, when she just shook her head. Honestly, Sherlock thought, as if this confusion was her fault when he’d been the one to bring it up in the first place. “After court, when we went to the morgue? You were wearing the tie? She helped you take it off. Ring any bells?”
Sherlock could have done without the condecsension thank you very much. She remembered, but couldn’t for the life of her think why John was so convinced Molly fancied her because of it. “So she helped me with the tie, that hardly means she’s pining away for me, John.” She rolled her eyes, annoyed with him now, for getting her hopes up.
“Not just that. Her reaction to you wearing it, mostly.” John explained, “She thought you were hot in it, Sherlock. She fancies you.”
“Oh, you can read minds now, can you?” She crossed her arms over her chest, glaring daggers at him.
“No, but listen, I’ve been wingman for my sister often enough to know the signs. She liked you in that tie, Sherlock.”
“Even if that’s true,” Sherlock still had her doubts but then again, John was more experienced in those matters than she was, and much more in tune with other people’s emotions. She wasn’t ready to accept that he was right yet though, “Finding me attractive in a tie hardly means she’s pining away for me.”
Sherlock was hardly ready to accept that Molly had been physically attracted to her, let alone the idea that she was nursing some long-lasting crush on her. That meant deeper felt emotions after all, the idea that Molly might feel that way, for her, seemed impossible. John must have read her thoughts on her face as he put his book down properly to give her his full attention, his tone gentling when he spoke again, “Seriously? You’ve never noticed? Sherlock, everyone knows how gone Molly is for you. It’s been plain since we met, probably before then.”
That was even worse. It was bad enough that she, Sherlock Holmes, world-class detective, who prided herself on her observation skills so much so that she’d made a career out of it, hadn’t noticed while seemingly everyone else that knew her had. That they had all been privy to it and she wasn’t was abhorrent to her. That nobody had thought to tell her until now was worse. It had been the wrong thing for John to say, and he must have realised, if the pitying look was anything to go by.
“Sorry, Sherlock. We thought you knew.” He apologised, not that it did any good, in fact, he’d somehow managed to make things worse still. Her mood was thoroughly ruined now. She stood with a huff, not able to stand one more second with John looking at her like that but with nothing more to say, she flounced out to stew and sulk in the privacy of her room with an unintentional but suitably dramatic swish of her dressing gown.
She didn’t know which was worse; not knowing or everyone, probably Molly included, assuming she knew which logically meant they assumed she didn’t feel the same. The worst part was that she could hardly fault them for coming to that conclusion; it was the logical assumption to make if one assumed she’d noticed. Sherlock was hardly the most emotionally expressive person and had never shown an interest in relationships in general, for good reason, but she was a highly observant person and had always lacked tact, why else would she not have said anything if not for lack of interest? Of course that was all based on the faulty assumption that she had observed. Living with John had taught her that relationships and romantic entanglements were her biggest blindspot if they didn’t end in murder. Particularly where she herself was concerned. A therapist would probably blame it on terrible past experiences. Sherlock just never thought that anyone would fancy her, so she stopped looking for it. All the usual signs of attraction she could pick out when they were directed to other people simply passed her by if they were directed towards her. Of course, logically Sherlock knew she was attractive; it was a thing she could use, if she wanted to be she could be sexy, she could play the part if she needed to and she could turn it on and off at will. But that was all a mask, a performance, not real, something she only ever turned on when she needed something, or for a case. Those people were only ever interested in the physical or the fake version of herself that she presented to them, never the real her.
Most people she knew assumed, mostly correctly, that Sherlock had no desire at all for relationships, sex or love. There had only ever been a select few people that Sherlock had felt that for, she couldn’t say why, she hated labels and hadn’t the skill for self-reflection to parse out a common trait between them; the people of her past were better left unspoken of but Molly had been one of those people. Of course, in assuming as she had that Molly would have no interest in her (God knows Sherlock hadn’t been the best version of herself when they met, not at all the sort of person she imagined Molly fancying) and the experiences of her uni days with Sebastian and Victoria looming in the back of her mind, she’d locked those feelings away deep in her mind palace.
Even now, she could hardly believe that John was right, not that she didn’t trust him but she knew she would need to see for herself to believe it. There was only one way to know for sure, she thought as she lay on her bed, staring at her wardrobe. An experiment.
John had used Molly’s reaction to her tie as an example, well, Sherlock thought, if she could just recreate that situation and that reaction then she would see for herself and know.
It was a perfect plan, she reasoned, despite not having a clue what she would do with the knowledge once she had it. That would be a bridge to cross another day, and she stood to begin rifling through her clothes, for now she just needed to find out if John was right.
John had given her a stern look of disapproval when he figured out what she was up to a few days later. Sherlock had decided to give it a while before putting her plans into action, to at least wait until she had a reason to go back to the morgue. Timing would be crucial to it’s success after all, it wouldn’t do to skew her results by going back so soon.
John didn’t agree.
“I don’t think you should be doing it at all, Sherlock.” He’s argued, “It’s a terrible idea.”
Sherlock had elected to ignore him. She wouldn’t believe him until she’d seen for herself and this was the only way she could think to provoke a reaction. On some level, John must have realised that because he’d stopped arguing with her after that.
The first experiment had been a veritable disaster. John had rolled his eyes and said he told her so when she grumbled about it to him but Sherlock was still ignoring him. There had been no reaction from Molly at all; she’d knocked on the door to Molly’s office and pushed the door open without bothering to wait for an answer, the light was on inside so she knew Molly was there anyway, working on more of her mindnumbing paperwork no doubt. Perhaps that would skew the results slightly, Molly was always pleased to see her when Sherlock interrupted her paperwork and who wouldn’t be when presented with something more interested than stupid bureaucratic forms.
Molly had looked up at her as she stood in the doorway, leaning on the doorframe; she looked bored, Sherlock noted, and tired, she hadn’t been sleeping properly if the dark circles under her eyes were any indication. She’d perked up when she recognised Sherlock standing in the doorway though, that wasn’t hard to notice. Molly’s gaze did flick down to her tie but didn’t linger there and the lighting in the office wasn’t the best (Sherlock made a mental note to send Molly some medical journals on the correlation with migraines later) so she couldn’t be sure if Molly’s pupils had dilated or not. She was too far away to note any of the other symptoms of attraction she would usually keep an eye out for on a case. Maybe John was on to something, but the evidence so far was hardly conclusive. Too many variables.
“I wasn’t expecting you today.” Molly said, looking back at her.
“I’ve run out of those toes you gave me.” She said, which was true. She was half-convinced John was so disapproving of the experiment because he knew she’d likely come back with more.
“Oh. Well, I’ve not got any spare right now, sorry.” Damn, no hope there then. She couldn’t let herself get too disappointed though, it was hardly the real reason she’d visited for.
“Fingers?” She suggested, hopefully.
“N-no, sorry.” Molly stammered. She looked genuinely apologetic at her disappointment. Though, she had no idea it wasn’t the lack of body parts that Sherlock was disappointed by. The way John had been talking, Sherlock had definitely been expecting more of a reaction.
“No matter.” She sighed, inviting herself into the office and pushing herself off of the doorframe to step inside where she usually would have left. She sat opposite the desk from Molly, leaning back and taking the time to unbutton her blazer. It wasn’t hard to affect her usual nonchalant boredness, keeping an eye on Molly as she smoothed down the front her shirt, hands lightly grazing over the end of the tie as she did, making sure it was noticed. “Has nothing interesting come in at all?”
“N-nothing you’d be interested in,” Molly stammered, hardly looking at Sherlock at all as she flicked through the paperwork to check. “I can see if anyone else has anything for you?”
“No.” Sherlock sighed, resigning herself to the failure. “Let me know when you get something?” She’d asked, only staying long enough to see Molly nod before she left.
The second time, Sherlock had chosen a tie that matched her outfit perfectly, perhaps too perfectly; she'd worn the tie on the case, attracting all sorts of strange looks from the people at the Yard and ignoring them too, it was Molly's reaction she was interested in, Sherlock couldn't give two fucks what the people at Scotland Yard thought about her. Only there had been nothing. She'd put up with the stupid thing getting in the way of examining the body, had put up with it constantly getting in her way at the crime scene, all because she thought it would be worth it in the end. But no, that time Molly had only given it a brief glance before she took the bodies out of the cold storage for her and left her to it. Maybe it blended in too well with the rest of her clothes, Sherlock had thought. Molly had acted the same way she always acted around Sherlock, no differently at all. Sherlock had even made sure to watch out for all the normal signs of attraction she'd usually take note of in other people; diltated pupils, raised heart rate etc. But there had been nothing at all different and Molly had just looked at her strangely when Sherlock had tried to contrive a way to subtly take her pulse. John had had nothing to say, when she related it all back to him, other than a supremely unhelpful 'I told you so' and to roll his eyes at several intervals.
She didn't need his help anyway. So the first couple had been a disaster, fine, experiments were made to be repeated. And repeat it she did.
The third time, she chose a different tactic and went for one with a splash of colour, brighter than anything she usually wore but not too bright, just enough to be noticeable - still nothing. Several times over the next few months, she'd taken to wearing a tie whenever she knew she would be going to the morgue. She'd tried all different types, just to be certain, and all she got out of it were weirder and weirder looks from the Yarders and disapproving looks from John. Every time after that was the same. She turned up to the morgue thinking this would be it, this would be the time she got the reaction she was after but left disappointed every time.
It was too much to keep up with. Sherlock still hated wearing the things, and without the results she was hoping for, she saw no point in continuing to put herself through it. Besides that, people had definitely started to take notice of her change in wardrobe to an embarrassing degree. When Mycroft had seen her wearing a tie twice in a row, he'd made a stupid comment about it, so Sherlock had immediately retaliated with a comment about his weight to shut him up. It was all starting to look a bit hopeless. Sherlock was never one to throw in the towel so easily, stubborn was an understatement when it came to describing her personality, but even she started to think that maybe it was time to admit that John was wrong.
When she said as much to him, John just rolled his eyes.
"I'm not wrong, Sherlock." He insisted, "You're going about this all wrong. Why don't you just talk to her instead of playing all these games?"
Sherlock had scoffed and stalked off in a huff at that. She was hardly playing games. And she could hardly confront Molly about it without all the facts. No, she thought, she would make one last ditch effort, one last grand try at this experiment before she concluded that John had simply been mistaken. For this, she would have to go all out, she knew. The ties were too subtle, it was time to try something more.
So she stood alone in the hallway outside the morgue, feeling strangely nervous. She'd had to go shopping for this; having chosen in the end, to go for a white dress shirt, similar enough to her usual ones but tighter, much more fitted, with a white a black striped tie. She'd added a tie pin to keep it in place because really, the past couple months she'd quite had enough of them dangling in her way. To complete the look, she'd added a set of plain black brace suspenders, clipped to a pair of tight, fitted pin stripe suit trousers to match the fitted pinstripe blazer and a pair of practical but slightly heeled black Mary Janes. Her hair she had left loose, parted in the middle so that her riot of black curls, recently trimmed, framed her face. She wasn't sure if she looked much different than usual but if the way John had done a double take and raised his eyebrows when he saw her leaving the flat were any indication, she looked good. If this didn't work, she really would have to admit defeat. It was strange really, she hardly ever felt nervous at all. She shook her head at herself then and made her way into the morgue.
Molly was nowhere to be seen when Sherlock stepped inside and she let out a breath she didn’t realised she’d been holding. If she wasn’t there, then Sherlock would just have to wait for her; she wasn’t about to let all her effort getting ready that morning go to waste and if she didn’t try this now then she never would.
She’d had no particular reason for visiting the morgue that day, other than her experiment so she struggled to find something to entertain herself with while she waited. She’d puttered around doing not much of anything at first before that had gotten mindnumbingly boring. Molly had told her a thousand times not to break into the equipment or to handle the bodies without her present but really, Sherlock thought as it hit the 15 minute mark of waiting, she could hardly be expected to just stand here twiddling her thumbs and doing nothing. She knew better now than to actually take her own samples without permission or to disturb anything in a way that would get Molly into trouble so she settled for looking the samples that had already been taken to examine; a second opinion on those couldn’t hurt, especially when the second opinion was hers.
She’d gotten distracted by the science, by the time Molly had shown up. Her blazer had been strewn haphazardly across one of the lap tables and her sleeves messily rolled up to her elbows. The tie was wonky despite the tie pin and a pair of latex gloves had joined the ensemble. She hadn't even realised Molly had joined her at first, she'd been so absorbed in her work. It was only when she looked up to change the slides that she saw a shape in the doorway and looked up properly.
Molly stood, still in the doorway and from the looks of it, Sherlock got the impression she'd been standing there a while. At first, Sherlock thought she was angry: she'd caught Sherlock doing the one thing she'd warned her a thousand times not to do after all, if it had been John, he'd already be halfway through a lecture by now. She went to apologise, putting down the equipment and taking the gloves off but, as she stood up, she realised, Molly didn't look angry at all.
She was staring at Sherlock, a deep blush coloured her cheeks and Sherlock could feel her darkened gaze flicking over her, from her face to her waist and back again. Sherlock watched, with a strange sort of vindication as Molly watched her, for once seeing the unadulterated, unhidden desire in her eyes and liking it. She saw the exact moment Molly realised she'd been caught watching, saw the way desire turned so suddenly to panic, then to a deeper flushed mortification when Molly realised Sherlock knew exactly what was going on.
“I- I'm- I..” Molly stammered, seemingly unable to get more than a single vowel sound out. Sherlock couldn't have held back her smug smirk if she'd tried, she was never more pleased to be wrong. All these months of wasted efforts and it was this that had finally given her the answers she wanted. So caught up in her own smugness, she almost missed the way embarrassment had quickly turned to anger for Molly; her cute panicked expression quickly morphing into a defensive scowl. Sherlock had no doubt that if they'd been standing closer she'd no doubt be on the receiving end of a slap (and the less said about the way that idea sent a frission of arousal through her the better). She couldn’t imagine what she’d done in the past few seconds for Molly’s mood to change so drastically and it left her feeling more than a bit wrong-footed as her smugness gave way to confusion. She’d had no plan for what came after her experiment was completed; no idea what she would do if John was proved right, she’d simply not allowed herself to think that far ahead but whatever she had been thinking would happen, it was certainly not this.
“Seriously? These past few months…has it just been a joke to you? Have you been doing it on purpose?” Molly ground out, glaring over at her.
That brought Sherlock up short, smug grin falling from her face, “What? No!” She paused, “Doing what?”
“Are you serious? The dressing up, the teasing! Has it just been one long joke for you?” Molly was starting to look genuinely upset now and Sherlock had the feeling that perhaps John had been right about her experiment being a bad idea too.
“No! It was an experiment!” She defended herself. Clearly, it hadn’t worked - Molly’s face crumbled and she let out a bitter sounding laugh.
“An experiment? Of course it was.” Molly shook her head. She sounded like she was about to cry and Sherlock couldn’t say why but it made her feel horrible inside, to know that she was the reason why. She didn’t want to see Molly cry, certainly not to be the cause of it. She’d never felt like that before, usually Sherlock didn’t care at all if people cried, even less if she made them, these feelings were all too new and too big for Sherlock to compute all at once. It left her feeling a horrible sort of lost, unmoored with no idea on how to fix the situation.
“Not like that!” She tried again, moving to step closer to Molly, overcome with the strange and sudden urge to comfort her although God know Sherlock was terrible at comfort. She had no idea on how to even begin and stopped halfway, hands faltering between them in an aborted effort to reach out. “I simply meant…” She trailed off with a frustrated sort of growl at her own inability to express herself clearly. She ought to start at the beginning.
“It’s all John’s fault, really,” She started, “He told me you fancied me and of course I didn’t believe him, he’s coming along well as an assistant in my work to be sure, but his observation skills are hardly anything worth praising yet, but his evidence seemed sound. So of course I had to see for myself. I’d never noticed before you see, and so I set about on an experiment to prove it to myself…except, you didn’t seem all that interested at all. And well, I should have given it up a while ago but John was insistent that I was wrong…it turns out, I was.” She trailed off. John would tell her she ought to apologise, she probably should but she wouldn’t lie to Molly like that. She wasn’t sorry, she was sorry to have upset her, but if she hadn’t gone to all the trouble she would never have known, and Sherlock liked knowing.
“You…didn’t know?” Molly asked, as disbelieving as John had been.
“No.” Sherlock answered, shaking her head.
“How could you not?”
“It never occured to me that you would.” Sherlock gestured to herself, “It’s me, after all. I’ve enough trouble making and keeping friends let alone….well.”
“Oh, Sherlock…” Molly trailed off, stepping closer to her. “It never occurred to you to just ask?”
“For the same reasons it never occurred to you either, I imagine.” Sherlock, in her customary defence against the barest hint of pity she’d detected in Molly’s tone, bit out, scowling. Molly knew her better than to rise to it, she simply shook her head.
“We’ve both been a prize pair of idiots.” Molly sighed. An accusation that Sherlock immediately took offence to.
“I beg your pardon-” She cut herself off at the raised eyebrow her defence had earned but also as she realised just how close Molly had gotten to her, close enough to feel her body heat, to smell her perfume and feel the barest brush of Molly’s lab coat against her front. Chagrined, she grudgingly admitted, “Yes. I suppose we were.”
Xxx
“You’re still being one now.” Molly whispered, fondly, amused, laughing at the outraged look Sherlock gave her.
“How-?”
“Kiss me, Sherlock.” She chuckled, reaching up to hook her fingers under Sherlock’s brace suspenders like she’d been imagining doing since the moment she’d first walked into the lab and saw Sherlock hunched over the microscope.
The past few months had been utter torture. Having carefully hide her reactions whenever she saw Sherlock. She’d not been able to get the images out of her mind the whole time, to know now that Sherlock had been doing it on purpose, had been trying to goad her into a reaction made more sense than Molly was willing to admit. For a moment early on, she’d worried that Sherlock had found someone she’d wanted to impress, that that was why she was suddenly dressing so much smarter and more formal than usual. It was a dizzying relief to know that it had been her all along that Sherlock was showing off for. It gave her a well of confidence she didn’t know she’d possessed.
She wasn’t about to turn her down now, or make either of them wait any longer. She’d been dreaming of doing just this for years; she pulled Sherlock down and kissed her.