She was waiting for him when he got back to the flat. Jim felt himself go a little tight, a little hot inside at the sight of her, sitting there so calmly in one of his £200 button-down Egyptian cotton shirt, and pair of boy shorts underneath. She had Toby the cat over on his back, and was tickling his stomach while he curled in around her hand.
He wanted to strangle her. Momentarily. The urge flexed through him, passed, and he shrugged it off, tried to get used to the shock of seeing her.
"I thought you'd gone on holiday," he said, his voice a monotone.
"I am on holiday," she said, indicating the well-appointed suite playfully. She turned her attention on him fully. "You didn't really think you could fool me, could you?"
"You shouldn't be here, Molly," he said softly, stepping behind the kitchen bar to pour himself a drink.
"You're angry with me," she pouted. Then her face tightened, and her hand tightened in Toby's fur, and he gave a little miao of protest. "You spied on me."
"Couldn't be helped," Jim said with a small sneer as he loosed some Jameson's, neat, into a glass. He knocked back a swig, and stared at her.
She rose, and stared back at him, suddenly forbidding despite her decidedly cute attire. "You tried to deceive me. You thought I was stupid."
He raised his glass to her with a small smile. "You were playing on his side. It was a forgone conclusion."
"Jim," she said, and the sweetness in her voice was suddenly sickly, and it made his skin crawl just a little. "You may have bought all of the crime scene technicians, and half the forensic department, but the official photos still made it to my desk. It still was my investigation."
He rested his elbows on the bar and looked at her with an expression that might, to an outsider, appear to be teasing at best, mocking at worst, but read to the initiated as the interest of a predator in a weak member of the herd.
"Go on," he said softly, sipping his whiskey.
She approached him slowly, her eyes narrowed. "The flies attracted to the fresh blood splatter on the roof at Bart's got stuck in the blood. In high resolution, they showed to be partially immersed in the substance. It was visually apparent that the substance was too viscous to be real blood. My guess was some kind of corn syrup base. Was I right?"
"Chocolate syrup and dye," he said quietly, his whole body going rigid. He could feel the rage surging through him like a diesel engine. "Sherlock helped you."
"He didn't," she said, and it was her turn to sneer. "It was obvious. It was elementary."
"LIAR!" he roared, and hurled his glass into the wall where it shattered. Toby hissed once, and took refuge under the divan.
Without a thought, Jim opened a drawer, and reached in to put his hand around the handle of a wickedly sharp carving knife, still a little slick from the linseed oil rubbed into it. Slowly, he withdrew it, hefted it in his hand, watching his soon-to-be-ex girlfriend with merciless eyes, but was surprised to find that she too had a weapon.
She was aiming one of his beloved chrome plated Sig Sauer Elite, her head tilted slightly as she watched him over the sights. "You're wrong, but I don't think it matters."
"Molly..." he said softly.
"This is real," she said, taking a step closer, causing him to automatically step back. "Real bullets. Do you think it'll be real blood this time? Or do you actually bleed chocolate syrup?"
"You wouldn't," he hissed, with no certainty at all. There was something wild in her eyes, something hollow and broken in her expression. She looked mechanical, inhuman. There was something wrong. There was no tearful righteousness. Just cold fury. Very unlike her.
"You don't know that," she said in an almost-calm voice. "You just assumed you could use me and throw me away again. You don't really know me."
"Is that what this is about?" he said, a laugh suddenly bubbling up inside him. "Sherlock didn't send you, you're just cross with me? Because I, what? Stopped calling?"
"You left me," she said, her voice going small, her lip trembling, but her hands still steady as she tracked him with the muzzle of the gun. "You were going to leave me. You thought I was stupid. You thought I bought it, your dumb act."
"You did buy it," he said, almost gently. He set the knife down, adjusted it slightly, kept it within reach. "Come and give us that. You don't need that."
"Clearly I do," she said, and there was something dry in her tone that almost tickled him a little. There was something new in her.
"You helped Sherlock," he continued, his tone dropping to more conversational levels. "You helped him disappear."
"I helped you disappear," she said, that something-else flashing across her face.
Jim frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I doctored the photographs," she whispered. "I perjured myself on your account. I was probably the last, the only one who knew that you weren't dead, that the body that was moved to another forensic morgue wasn't yours. I was the only one with definitive proof. Even Sherlock..."
"You told him," he accused.
"I didn't," she said evenly. "But someone broke into my office, and stole my laptop. The files are there, photoshopped out of the puddle."
"Then he knows," Jim said quietly, and nudged the knife with one finger. "You as good as told him."
"It doesn't matter," she said, and her eyes were blazing suddenly. "If there's even a chance he knows, then I can't go back there. I have to disappear, too. Even if I could convince him I'd been blackmailed into it..."
"But you're compromised," Jim interjected. "Even if he could trust you again...could you make him trust you again?"
"Ah," she said, and now her voice was soft, dangerously soft. "Suddenly I'm interesting again. Don't want to take me out for coffee? Some little office romance, Jim from IT?"
"Could you do it?" he repeated, intent on her now.
"Could I?" she echoed.
Slowly, she lowered her arm, turned the gun away from him. She stepped towards him, now, around the breakfast bar, until she was less than a foot from him, gazing up into his face with all her fierceness, all the hardness she could muster, all her fire blazing behind those eyes, doe eyes that were almost black now in the harsh florescent light.
His eyes tracked her hand as she set the gun on the bar, right next to the knife. Slowly, she put her hands on his chest, little hands that warmed his skin through his shirt front. She leaned up to him, wide and locked on his.
"Could I?" she said again, softly. "Could I make you trust me?"
"Never," he said on a whisper, a harsh breath. His heart fluttered under her hands.
"You're never going to find him without me," she said, and her words were delicate, quiet, a stillness coming over her that he associated with bated breath, even though she was breathing steadily.
"You're not going to help me anyway," he said, feeling the tension rise through him again, though it was of a different quality now.
"I'm not going to tell you anything more." Her hands pressed against him slightly, and taken unawares, he took a half step back until he was up against the fridge. Out of immediate reach of the knife, now. But part of him, most of him, was starting not to care.
"Tell me," he breathed, feeling all the tendons in his hands go taut. He could ring it out of her, he was sure of it, but that wasn't what he wanted. Not really.
"No," she said, the sweetness, the saccharine tone returning. "Where's the fun in that, Jim?"
"Fun?" he repeated incredulously.
"That is the point, isn't it?" she continued, moving in, tilting her head so that her mouth was a millimetre from his. "Fun. Whimsy. Anything, as long as it distracts you. Wouldn't it be more fun to play together? Aren't you tired of playing all alone?"
"Yes." The word was choked, a little cracked. He felt himself break. He put one hand on the back of her neck, put his mouth on hers, and kissed her hungrily, while she kissed him just as hungrily back, devouring, insatiable. He ripped open the shirt, sending the mother-of-pearl buttons flying, skittering away. She was naked underneath but for the knickers and he clawed at her skin, groping her breasts with more force than finesse.
She whimpered into his mouth as he ground his hips into hers, pushing her back against the breakfast bar, then lifting her on to it. Taking up the knife, he seized her hair, a manic grin crossing his face as he let the oily blade float across her throat, leaving an infinitesimal red line. She said nothing, did not move a hair, only watched him as he moved his hand down, and nicked the elastic band on her boy shorts with the razor edge, then very, very gently proceeded down, slicing the front of the underwear neatly in half. Then he tossed away the knife and used his hand to continue the work, easily tearing away the rest of the fabric.
Her expression was hazy as she watched him, her eyes wide and glassy, swollen lips parted. She looked almost doll-like, but used, drugged. As he pressed his hand against her, she inhaled on a high note, and the pressed back against him, letting out a soft moan.
"Molly," he purred, pressing his mouth against her ear, speaking in his softest voice. "Are you mine?"
"Mmm."
"Mine always?"
She responded with a slightly higher, less distinct noise as he increased the pressure of his hand.
"And do you trust me, pet?"
She gave the tiniest shake of her head, her whole body quivering. "No."
"Smart girl," he whispered, almost sensing the way his words coursed along her skin like smoke, curling off and vanishing into the air. He let out a gasp of his own as she seized him around the neck, one arm tight around him, the other jerking his fly down, pulling him out of designer boxer-briefs.
She lifted herself on to him, eyes locked on his, the smallest gasp escaping her. He kissed her slowly, as slowly as he rocked against her, thrusting into her in a painfully lax rhythm. She curled around him as he increased, holding tight to him, her forehead pressed against his. He braced one hand on the bar and the other at the small of her back as he worked at her, harder, faster until they were both panting, both sweating.
One hand on her neck, he lifted her violently and laid her flat against the bar, crawling on top of her, pressing a gentle little kiss to her cheek, then twining his fingers in her hair and dragging her up by it so they were face-to-face.
"You're hurting me," she said. Not a complaint. Not even a statement of fact. A small exclamation of pleasure. He warmed inside, and almost purred out loud.
He smiled, dark as fogged, filthy night. "More?"
She smiled back, but hers was bright, full of teeth, a wide grin as her fingernails sliced horizontal fissures in the skin of his back. He couldn't hold back a little scream, or the moan that followed, and he tightened his grip on her hair, using his whole body to shove her over on to her front.
She gripped the edges of the bar as he picked up the pace again, sliding into her from behind, one hand still cruelly tight in her hair, the other moving down across her abdomen, fingers teasing across her clit as he pounded into her, pressing his weight against her writhing body, not allowing her an inch of quarter.
"Mine?" he asked again, hot breath against the back of her neck.
"Yours, yours, yours," she sighed, and he could feel her tightening up, going slack in some places, going rigid in others. He held himself still, let himself feel it as she came, his his his.
"I could kill you here," he said almost inaudibly, almost to himself.
"Don't care," she said, barely able to get the words out, in the throes of it, absolutely surrendered. Maybe in a minute, she'd recover her senses, but in that instant, she was perfect, pristine, blank, suggestible to anything, and the idea of it caught him, ripped him out of himself and then he was gasping, too. The gun was inches from her hand and he didn't care, either. She could turn around and put a bullet between his eyes and it wouldn't matter, because he was perfect nothingness, with the occasional twitch. He'd twitch for while, too, if she shot him, and even that didn't horrify him. It only sent a delicious shudder through him.
They lay perfectly still for a long moment, draped over the breakfast bar like so much slaughtered meat. Finally, he pulled himself away from her, and perched at the end of it, glancing over at the myriad of bruises he'd left on her. Little shadows, imprints of himself, his hands, his mouth. She rolled over, and there was a faint bruise on her cheek from where he'd pressed down on the back of her neck, pressed her face into the hard marble. She touched a finger to it, explored the shape of it, then watched him impassively. Still, there was something Other in her eyes. Pride. Victory. And it didn't bother him at all. In fact, he found it charming.
"Come here, love," he said, beckoning, enjoying the view as she slowly approached him on her hands and knees. She was so sexy now, little Molly, learning to show off without being afraid. He'd given her that confidence, but he knew that darkness had always been there. He knew it because of her shyness, her shiny brightness, because all of them carried opposites with themselves. It followed, he thought, with Molly being such a chipper, innocent one, that her shadow was...something else entirely.
"Let me see," he said softly, and she offered her chin to him. He took it, examined the red mark that was growing redder, and then kissed it, hard enough to make it go white for an instant. Then it returned to red, and she looked as if he'd slapped her across the face.
"Should I expect social services round to question me about this?" he mocked gently.
"Only if you make me leave," she said coquettishly. "And if you did that, you'd have to kill me."
"True," he assented, then grinned back at her, thumbing her lips and then giving them a quick wet kiss. "I suppose I'll have to keep you with me, then."
"I suppose you will."
"You knew I'd square with that?" he asked shrewdly. "Very cocky, lassie-me-love."
She shrugged. "Why do you think I brought my cat?"
"To traumatise him," Jim guessed. "Or to traumatise me."
"Pour me a whiskey," she instructed, then slipped off the bar and padded over to the sofa. "On the rocks."
Feeling something between amused and chagrined, Jim obeyed, getting two fresh glasses and adding ice to both. He winced slightly, the ragged incisions in his back smarting something dreadful. He could feel blood trickling his spine, just a little, but still it hurt. He glanced over at Molly who was now playing with little Toby. The cat's tongue was flickering out over her bloody fingernails, and Jim felt a shudder of something that was a coarse blend of disgust and hilarity. She was feeding him to her cat. Lord almighty. If he started laughing now, he'd never stop, so he took a hard gulp of liquor and went back around the bar and sidled up to her.
"Ta," she said as he handed her the whiskey. She put the cold glass to her cheek and relished it, letting out a small "mm" sound.
"So. Sherlock," he said, trying to sound businesslike, and remained standing, wanting to feel a little bit in control.
"What about him?" Too much innocence there. He didn't like it. He might have to do something about that, later, in the dead of night, that would leave more bruises. Bruises on top of bruises.
"Do you think he could trace you here?" he continued casually, putting the thought aside for later and sitting down in the opposite corner of the sofa.
"I doubt it," she said nonchalantly, then turned her big brown eyes on him, an ironic smile on her lips. "He thinks I wear my hair for him, that I wear make up for him. He thinks I'm in love with him, and he'd never peg me for the vengeful, scorned one. I'm just Molly. Sweet, but guileless. Easy. Even if he's been through my laptop, he'll assume that it was someone else, that I was forced into it. He thinks I'm a few things, but clever isn't one of them."
"Do you love him?" Jim asked, surprised at the sudden red hot lance of jealousy that whipped through him.
"He thinks so," Molly said, parrying the question and giving him a thin mocking smile to go with her answer.
"Brilliant actress, you," Jim said quietly, with some grudging admiration hidden under the dangerous tone. "You've taken us both in, do you think?"
"Would I tell you?" she tilted her head. "Besides. He can be deceived. You proved that with your little gay trip."
"I deceived you, too, precious," he said acidly, wanting to needle her, wanting to break her confidence. "I watched you throw a tantrum on the monitors I played gay for everyone. It was adorable, actually."
"And I just pulled your own gun on you," she countered in a sugary voice. "There are more fun games we can play than one-upmanship on who's spun who the most."
He stopped, stared at her, took in her whole self, seated naked and utterly unafraid on his sofa, one hand nuzzling a feline that was basking in her attentions. He could sympathise.
"It is possible you could be dangerous to me," he said, amused, and not amused. Cautious. Excited. He couldn't find a medium, it was both at once, and it was rattling him.
"That's the fun, isn't it?" she purred.
He half-shrugged, taking another drink.
Shifting the protesting cat aside, Molly moved in. "Oh, come on, Jim, when was the last time anyone surprised you? I mean, really. Besides Sherlock. When was the last time you let anyone close enough to make you second guess?"
She had a point. He reached out and pulled her into his lap, where she settled quite comfortably. He hadn't run out of words, they just weren't as interesting as they normally were. The salty-tangy sweet smell of her skin was more interesting. And she had done a rare thing, this Molly Hooper girl.
"It won't last. It'll end. Someone has to die for real," he whispered. Not a threat, just...truth.
She slid one finger under his chin and tilted his head up so he was looking up into her eyes, her smiling face, those delicate features, all accented now by a hunger he couldn't quite mark. And yet, he could, because it was a bit of him, looking back at him through those eyes.
She considered him, traced his mouth with her fingertips, and then kissed it, once, twice, slow kisses, meant to last, to leave her flavour on his tongue.
"Patience," she said softly, all calm and stillness, but for the sparkle in her eyes. It hypnotised him. He was gone, lost, aching to see what whimsy she would dream up for him, this subtle one, this little bird with a vulture's taste for carnage. Somewhere in the sitting room, Toby had found himself a warm corner, and his purring was loud and steady, but he went unheard and unnoticed.
Buried six feet deep in each other, they couldn't hear anything at all.