Its fifty-two days after Sherlock's suicide when John turns up at her door. She's not expecting him and her favorite show's just come on the telly but if there's one person in that world who was genuinely as in love with the man as she was, it would be John. One person who understands the utter heartbreak of a world without Sherlock Holmes, it would be John.
The very sight of him clutching his cane, a familiar redness around his eyes, makes her heart ache (almost enough to make her tell him the truth, that Sherlock's alive and it was all a trick and the bastard's been making her live with the knowledge all this time.)
(Almost enough to make her fling open the hall closet door where she had stuffed him when the doorbell rang and reveal him puffing on an unlit cigarette.)
(Almost, but not quite.)
"Won't you come in?" she asks, tugging a slightly ratty sweater around her frame self-consciously. "Can I get you some tea?"
John falters but she's already in the kitchen so he limps through the open door, the cane dragging along beside him like a ball and chain and everyone knows that's exactly what it is. She takes deliberately long with the tea so he'll be seated before she gets to the table.
She pours two cups of lukewarm chamomile, dropping in sugar for John before thinking maybe he doesn't take it? She hesitates indecisively before deciding he's grief-stricken and won't really care if his tea is a bit too sweet. She plunks the cups on the table and sits across from him.
They sip, awkward silence settling over two people who never really had anything to talk about until the man they both loved (un)selfishly stepped off a roof.
"You know, I think, in his way," John pauses to gather his thoughts and it's an extra moment of torture, "he really cared for you."
Her lips quirk ironically, wondering what Sherlock thinks of that with his ear pressed to the closet door, eavesdropping like this is actually any of his business. "I know." She slides her hand over his, thinking she understands what he needs.
(She doesn't, not yet anyway.)
"He cared for you too, John. More than anybody," she murmurs, hoping he knows what she means before deciding to clarify, just in case he's really that thick. Bugger what Sherlock will shout at her later for the remark. "He loved you, like a soulmate. I really believe that."
John flushes pink, a study in, and it's all very metaphorical and cyclical and he stutters for a moment as though this thought's never occurred to him. (Internally, she rolls her eyes.) "Yes. Yes. So many things we never said. Never even allowed ourselves to think," he agrees finally.
It takes him a moment to raise his eyes to hers but when he does, she feels the cracks in her heart deepen. He looks so utterly devastated that, again, she almost breaks her thousand promises to keep Sherlock safely hidden and dead and away.
John slowly turns his hand beneath hers, fingers linking, his thumb caressing her sensitive skin. He gives two false starts at possibly lifting her arm before ignoring any potential fallout and pressing an insistently firm kiss to the back of her hand, eyes glued on hers. Her eyes widen and for a moment he thinks she's going to pull away, awkwardly pour more tea, pretend she doesn't know what he wants.
(She almost does exactly that.)
And then he realizes her pupils are wide and he can feel her pulse racing and he didn't live with Sherlock Holmes for eighteen months and not at least learn a thing or two about body language.
He's half out of his seat, leaning across the table with his mouth slanted over hers practically before he finishes processing the idea that it's lust written across her face, not shock.
She whimpers beneath the harshness of his kiss, her free hand tangling in short blonde hair, tongue pressing and begging against his lips. He tugs her up, absent-mindedly kicking his cane aside so it clatters on the floor like warning bells that this is a spectacularly bad idea.
One arm wraps around her waist and it's all he can do to keep from shoving her onto the table and taking out the pain and heartbreak of the last few months on her, though it's far from her fault and if anything, he assumes she hurts at least as much as he does.
John pushes at her blindly until the edge of the creaky wooden table bites into her thighs. Her arms wind around his neck (of their own accord, because she's fairly certain her brain hasn't caught up to the rest of her body yet) and she finds herself kissing him desperately, tongue roughly tasting him and the weak tea and the terror of being alone forever.
Her trousers are unbuttoned and he's standing between her spread legs, his hands indecently shoved beneath the thin cotton of her pants making her moan, before he presses his lips to her ear and asks in a voice as thick with charm and insinuation as she's ever heard, "Is this all right, Molly?"
It's at those five simple words that she realizes his hands aren't shaking and he's getting off as much on the stress and conflict as he is on the idea of being inside her.
And yet Molly finds she really couldn't care less about John's inability to have a healthy relationship.
She nods fiercely, wordlessly, and shimmies out of her trousers and pants. "Yes," she breathes, bracing her hands behind her on the table. "Yes, this is very much all right."
He takes her agreement as permission to have her however he pleases and steps in close, one hand firmly grasping her shoulder for balance even as he pushes the tips of two fingers inside her, feeling her slick with desire.
(Unknowingly, he feels her slick with the knowledge that this encounter is being meticulously catalogued from the hall closet.)
She moans, tipping her head back, dark hair cascading behind her. "Kiss me," she begs in a whisper. "I want to taste you."
John obliges, his grip turning rougher with his kiss, and she shudders, collapses abruptly onto the table so she can reach blindly for his belt. The foggy edge of pain as her head connects with wood only fuels the building fervor between them and he's pushing inside her as soon as he's able.
He thrusts inside her, wickedly sharp and irregular, and Molly writhes on the table beneath him, arms stretched above her head. It's not more than a few heartbeats worth of gasping and moaning and drops of sweat before his name is clinging to her lips, her body lifting desperately to meet his.
"Jo-John-" she stutters, eyes screwed shut, so close and ready and all but begging to come-
"Sherlock." The name is soft and almost whispered but it startles her, eyes peeking open, her orgasm stayed for a moment.
"What?"
"Say it. Say his name," John demands softly, hips coming to a slow, shuddering halt, one hand sliding up beneath her clothes and over a warm, aching breast.
"What?" It's not clever or witty and surely Sherlock's rolling his eyes at her in the closet but he can't possibly mean, can't possibly want…
His free hand clamps down over her wrists above her head, eyes turning steely blue and yes, yes he can mean it, want it, demand that she scream for Sherlock while he's deep inside her.
It's so wrong, so filthy, and for the sake of her conscience, she hesitates.
For the sake of her sanity, she bites her lip, stammering out the name she's called so many times, alone in her bed, fingers fast and hard between her legs. "Sh-Sherlock." It's so quiet, it's almost a whisper, and his grip on her wrists tightens, hips beginning to thrust inside her again.
Molly moans, back arching in a desperate search for contact. "Sherlock…"
A groan escapes him and he ducks his head, leveraging his weight against the table so he can slam as deep and hard and yearning as possible. Her voice gains volume and desperation, forgetting for a brief moment that Sherlock! is listening, observing every inflection, filing everything away to judge her for at a later date.
John's thrusts grow ungainly and his hand slips down to tangle in her hair, abandoning his show of command. His lips brush across hers and she feels more than hears his whispered, "Sherlock," as he pulls away from her just in time to come.
He takes a moment to catch his breath before dropping to his knees and forcing every last drop of energy out of her with his tongue and his teeth and his talented physician's fingers.
She comes with an obliging shout of an (un)dead man's name and collapses willfully onto the table, wrung out, emotionally drained.
John rests his forehead against her shoulder for several long minutes until they are both breathing slow and steady and then he straightens, arranging his mussed clothes and running a hand through his hair.
She sits up on her elbows to watch him collect his cane from halfway across the kitchen, just a foot or two away from the closet, with his dead best friend hiding there like a coward, like a hero.
"I-" He tries to make awkward apologies or conversation but she shakes her head.
"Don't, John. I'll see you soon, okay?"
He nods a bit too gratefully but stops to kiss her, hand cupped against her jaw, before leaving her there to pick up the pieces of their mutually broken hearts.
Molly finds her pants and her trousers and makes herself remotely presentable (though she isn't really sure why she bothers.) She opens the closet door and doesn't meet his eyes, choosing to stare at the pure white cigarette dangling from his fingers.
They stand there, no words or empathy.
Just the pieces of three broken hearts.