Chapter Text
What started as a sliding, toppling pile of books and binders has evolved into a strategic balancing act that Molly Hooper is pleased to have mastered. No longer must she carefully place each book to optimise on height to carry them all in one go. These days she can have a stack up to her forehead and have no problem navigating herself and the items in question around her workspace. She can make a single trip to or from her office with any reference material needed for the task at hand, all without using her eyes.
It’s one of the many things on her mind when she enters the lab walking backwards, the collection of journals and textbooks in her arms supported by her laptop underneath and a novel tucked into her armpit. She doesn’t worry herself about the noise she makes setting down and separating her pile, since the only other person in the room is busying himself between a microscope and a notepad. Textbooks and journals to one side, then, laptop to the other... then the novel, which she carries across the room and sets beside the microscope before returning to her place.
“I see you’re finally taking initiative,” he says to her back.
“Did you get that from my shoes?” she replies blandly, opening her laptop without looking up. In her periphery she sees him pick up the book and turn it over. “You seemed interested.”
“What was interesting was that I’ve seen you reading it on four different occasions. You left your laptop open on your desk yesterday when I needed to know the gestation period of an African bush elephant.” Molly can’t help her face scrunching up in a moment of befuddlement before she is able to disconnect the two statements. “I assume you’ve been looking for some time.”
“A while,” she admits. “Nothing good has turned up and I don’t want to move in the middle of winter but I also don’t want to live somewhere that requires me to aim a space heater at the wall.”
A little ball of anger flares up in her chest and a scowl settles on her face. Every winter it gets worse and worse, her pipes freezing to the point where she fears they’ll burst and flood her flat, and every winter she gets more and more impatient at her cheap landlord not doing anything about it. Sherlock’s referring to her search for a new place as taking initiative is the most accurate way anyone could have put it.
When she looks up properly she sees his eyes are once again lit by the light of the microscope. The conversation apparently over, Molly opens a document on her laptop and sets to work on her own specimens, typing out her results as she assumes Sherlock is writing his.
It took them nearly a year to get back to this place. At first she had his lab and mortuary access revoked, which she expected to result in him begging her to let him in but which ended with him simply nodding and walking away without a word. It was sad that she could tell he believed he deserved to be turned away. She wished she could feel good about having that power, but when the days turned into weeks and then months she found herself worrying about him again.
Months later she was told he’d been cut off from every external source, only allowed to take cases given or approved by his brother. The same day she learned this, she sought him out and offered to allow him access once again, but with conditions; it was much the same ultimatum that Scotland Yard gave him if he wanted to return to their service. It felt like starting from scratch, rebuilding their acquaintanceship and then their business relationship until they had a semblance of friendship again. Better not to think about how hard it must have been for Sherlock. He was the only one at fault for his situation.
Molly allows herself another peek while she considers this, expecting Sherlock to be engrossed in his experiment. She’s surprised when she meets his gaze an instant before his eyes flicker back down to his slides. She watches him for a few more seconds before turning back to her own work.
A half hour later Molly is left alone in the lab to finish her tests, the room giving no indication that there was ever anybody else inside. Once she finishes, she leaves her area as spotless as Sherlock left his and proceeds to start her work properly, heading straight for the mortuary after depositing the books and journals in her office. She flits through the rest of her day like any other, except for the lunch she takes in solitude, inhaling her meal and using the rest of the hour to scan various sites and papers in search of a new place to live.
The thought of space heaters makes her mad enough to put a hole in the newspaper as she scribbles a star next to one decent-looking advert. She drops her pen with a sigh, sitting back in her chair and frowning at all the little red marks on the newsprint.
You’ve lowered your standards, she thinks, rereading the offer of a studio apartment across the river. She nearly picks up the pen to draw a large X over the paragraph when she spots the one below it, detailing a newly renovated and pet-friendly one-bedroom... Oh, basement. Perhaps not. And on Baker Street. Perhaps definitely not. Living too close to Sherlock wouldn’t just be maddening, it would be… better than another winter where she is, honestly.
“Can’t possibly be worse than that,” she says to herself, reading the number from the paper and tapping it into her mobile. She ponders the advert as she brings the phone to her ear and waits. The second ring barely starts to chime when it is interrupted by the voice across the line.
“Hello?”
Molly’s mouth is half open when she registers the owner of the voice. She pulls her phone away from her face to check the number and sees that it has been replaced by the name set to the number already in her contacts list. “Mrs. Hudson?”
“Oh, hello, Molly dear! How are you?”
“I’m... good? Sorry,” she says, trying to squash her confusion while she frowns down at the paper in front of her. “Maybe I put in the wrong number. This isn’t your advert in the paper, is it, for the flat?”
“The flat? I asked them to print it next week!” Mrs. Hudson tuts on the other end of the line, and Molly imagines her shaking her head. “I’ll have to put in a word.”
“It’s for 221C, then?”
“Oh, yes! It’s all being redone, new walls and insulation and pipes; they’ve even lowered the floor! I didn’t even know that was possible until the contractor said...” Molly listens patiently to Mrs. Hudson’s description of the work going into 221C, at some point having pulled a notepad toward her and started listing the details of the remodelling. “I’d hoped to put the advert out next week when we’ll have the washer and dryer hooked up. They’re really quite nice. I’d have liked them for myself!”
The pen stills in Molly’s hand and she blinks down at the paper. She currently does her laundry in coin-operated machines on the bottom floor of her building and didn’t even consider a place where she’d have her own set. With an entirely remodelled place with new pipes, the idea of Baker Street has gone from terrible to rather tempting, even if it is a basement flat.
“Would I be able to take a look?”
“Of course! I’ll have to see when they’ll be all cleaned up, first. Ring me when you’re finished work and we can make it a date!”
When the call ends, Molly places her mobile beside her notepad and rolls the pen between her fingers in thought. Lips pursed, she looks over her notes, wondering what the catch could possibly be. She knows the big one, of course, the one she’d have to figure out for herself, and writes it down on the bottom of the paper: You’d be Sherlock’s neighbour.