Prompt from Books4evermore over on tumblr about their personal headcanon of how Sherlock and Molly meet: through a case, and when Sherlock finds out Molly is a pathologist he decides to visit her at her labs. Because she is nice and sweet, she lets him. It was fun to do, though it did meander a bit away from the original idea as I wrote more and more.

Enjoy!

If anyone at the time had asked Sherlock why he took the Hooper case, he would have begrudgingly admitted that he found the woman—Molly Hooper—quite pretty and in possession of a sweet personality. He wouldn't have wanted to, knowing of course the ensuing gumshoe-detective-femme-fatale jokes, but that was the original reason. He hadn't asked any demanding questions, searching for the grain of bizarre in her case as he did almost all others, he'd only set to work on helping her.

She was being blackmailed, over a stolen cat. Molly had adopted the elderly black cat, intent on giving it a good last few years of life, and then had had her flat broken into in the middle of the night. The men had held her at gunpoint while one of them collected the grouchy feline.

Mr. Holmes, Hugo is really quite old so you can't mind his grumpiness he can't exactly help it.

Sherlock, please.

O-okay.

Molly had been traumatized by the experience, but other than having her cat stolen nothing else had happened to her or her flat that night. It was the next week when the shelter called her, saying the cat had been claimed by a former owner and they needed it back immediately. Molly had been distraught, telling the man on the phone that her cat had been abducted recently and she didn't know how or where to find it. The shelter had threatened to blacklist her from future adoptions unless she produced the cat or the police records for the break-in.

Except Molly had been too frightened the night of Hugo's abduction to call the police.

And I could—I could've dealt with the blacklisting. I mean, what kind of person doesn't give a pet back to the person who loves it? Wh-what kind of heartless person would do such a thing?

But there was more to it, you soon found out?

More? More the size of Scotland, Sherlock!

Days later she returned from work to find a ransom note slipped into her letterbox. It listed out the prices and conditions she'd have to meet to get Hugo back, as well as how to contact the person who had ordered Hugo to be taken. This was where she'd gotten the strange feeling that the catnappers and the cattery were working in tandem, and also where she'd brought in a consulting detective. It was the curiosity of why cats that kept Sherlock focused on the case.

That and Molly compulsively made him coffee when he visited her for more details and she made lovely coffee.

In the end, Molly's feeling that something wasn't quite right helped Sherlock topple a minor blackmailing ring. He also, once the perpetrators were in handcuffs and being loaded into police vans, collected the one black cat out of the bunch and gently loaded into a carrycase. The cat growled at him the whole walk to Molly's flat, but settled into hesitant purring as he took the stairs up to her flat. The purring was warm and loud by the time he knocked on her door.

Molly hadn't cried with happiness when he handed the cat to her, but her grin had been so wide it looked like it hurt. Her incredulous laughter was lovely to hear. She'd invited him in for coffee and sat on the couch cuddling Hugo as Sherlock sipped on his drink.

"What do you do, by the way, Miss Hooper?"

"Doctor—Doctor Hooper. Um, well," she bit her lip and the shine seemed to go out of her a little bit. Embarrassment, reluctance—Sherlock wished he hadn't asked. "Well, I'm a pathologist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. I, um, well, a pathologist is like a coroner. That's—that's what I do." With every word she seemed to shrink, to back away, no doubt thinking that Sherlock would be like every other person she'd probably ever explained that to. People were leery with those who dealt with the dead. Luckily Sherlock wasn't 'people.'

"Are you an assisting or the head?"

"Assisting, but if Stamford ever retires then I'm first in line for the job," the bright cheeriness returned to her face. Just a little but enough for Sherlock to know that, as all gumshoe detectives were, he was doomed.

Molly's squeak of surprise the next day was memorable as she whipped around to face him. He'd been trying to slip her check back into her pocket, having decided in the last fifteen hours that access to her labs—and being around her—was a much better payment than a monetary one.

"Sherlo—"

"Molly," he made sure to smile as warmly as he knew how without looking like he was on his way to be committed, "I was wondering if I might be able to beg a tour of your labs?"

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