A/N: Because I have a serious fascination with Sherlock discussing his feeling with anyone but Molly about Molly.
"Sherlock, exactly what Molly Hooper is to you?" The question came unbidden and Sherlock Holmes couldn't do anything but stare at his best friend for several minutes.
"What do you mean?" Sherlock inquired, baffled at the unexpected line of questioning. They have been enjoying a quiet evening after solving a rather boring case. Usually, John would have gone home to his wife and daughter by now, but Mary was also out with Molly Hooper.
"Mary thinks you are in love with her, "John answered. "So, what are your feelings for her?"
Sherlock frowned, and muttered to himself, "She would know, wouldn't she?" Gathering his wits back, he countered, "Isn't that obvious?"
"No, no, Sherlock. It's bloody well not obvious," John shook his head, frustrated with the detective's roundabout way of answering, "You insult her, make disparaging comment about her body and yet, what I don't understand is why you even notice her figure so thoroughly in the first place. You act as if she is just the woman who helps you in the lab and yet, when it came to it, you asked her to help fake your death, to save you. You refrain yourself from deducing her fiancée but you don't think twice before giving sarcastic remarks about her broken engagement. You deduce her boyfriend to pieces but you say you are only being kind." John's eyes widened suddenly, understanding dawning on them as he continued, "You-You act like a bloody schoolboy with a crush who doesn't know what do with his feelings around her! You-"
Sherlock cuts John off with a sigh, "That's exactly what I am around her," He said, disconcerted, "A schoolboy with a crush."
"My God, Sherlock! You are in love with Molly Hooper," John blurted out.
Sherlock scowled at him, "Yes, John. Thank you for stating the obvious."
A beat. "What are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing."
John contemplated something, and then tried a new approach, "She still loves you, you know."
"No, she doesn't," Sherlock snorted derisively, "She had moved on. She made that pretty clear when she got engaged to Meat Dagger-"
John scoffed, "She got engaged to you lookalike. That doesn't look moving on to me, mate."
"-refused my invitation for fish and chips and any residual feeling she might have had, they probably disappeared the day she tested me for drugs, "Sherlock continued, completely ignoring John's point and refusing to get his hopes up.
"Ah! So, you did try something." John looked at him sympathetically.
They left it that for some time, Sherlock reverting back to his mind palace and John texting his wife.
""You really think I still have hope?"
Sherlock's voice startled John, interrupting his composition of a ridiculously cheesy poem for Mary.
John put down his phone and turned his full attention to the consulting idiot-in-love detective. "That woman helped you fake your death, risking everything, her career, her life, "John smiled wistfully, "That kind of love, Sherlock? That doesn't disappear, just like that. Never."
He could see his words gave Sherlock Hope and in time, too.
For Molly Hooper and May's voice could be heard drifting up the stairs.
"Sherlock? You wanted to see me?"
John paid no heed to the accusing glare Sherlock gave him, instead he and Mary-Elizabeth Watson sleeping peacefully in her arms bid goodbye to the two of them and practically run off before Sherlock could detain them.
"Sherlock?"
"Ah, yes. Ah! Molly, would you like to have dinner?
"Solve crimes?"
A chorused Oh.
John rolled his eyes as he rushed out of 221B Baker Street. Those idiots, he thought fondly.
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