Denying Self

Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain, but this version is Steven Moffat's and Mark Gatiss'. Alas, I am neither and so, am Sherlock-less.

Warnings: Don't read if you don't believe in asexuality.

A/N: Written for the prompt - Molly is asexual (and possibly aromantic). It's easier to fake a crush on someone she knows will never respond to her than admit to herself and/or others that she's really not interested at all. Bonus points for her knowing that Sherlock has figured it out.

You study it for years, always learning and relearning and testing yourself. You spend your teenage years watching your few friends closely, observing how they act around boys and carefully imitating them, like a child who is still learning the correct way to behave.

It is easier for you to do this, to pretend and to lie to yourself and others than it is for you to admit the truth that would surely be difficult for them to understand, that would surely see you labelled as a freak and cost you your friends.

So you stay silent and don't let on, don't ever give even the slightest sign that you're just not interested.

You don't even really understand it yourself, to begin with. You don't understand why you don't think of nothing but boysboysboys like your friends do, just like you don't understand why they think of nothing else.

You think, for a while, that maybe there is something wrong with you, that maybe you're broken. A while later, after research and a difficult discussion with a kind doctor who was more than happy to talk to you, you realise the truth: you're not wrong or abnormal or broken. You are just another girl who, like so many people in the world, happens to be asexual.

It doesn't make it easier for you to understand, knowing that there are other people like you. You know, intellectually, that it is simple biology, just as it is biology that decided that other people are straight, gay, bisexual. It is biology that makes other people want sex and chooses who they want sex with.

But, you know that there are people in the world who don't like people who aren't like them, have seen attacks of that nature reported on the television and in newspapers.

So you fake it, you act all through your teenage years and your university years, fooling friends and boyfriends and your family. You deflect every time your mother starts to talk about marriage and children, hiding your horror at the thought easily through practise.

You don't tell anyone.

You don't want to disappoint them. You don't want to make them angry at you. They wouldn't be, you realise when you think about it, but the thought of what their reactions might be scares you a little.

And then, you meet Sherlock Holmes, the only 'consulting detective'. You watch as he deduces fact after fact, unbelievable truth after unbelievable truth. You watch as he reveals things about people that he shouldn't know, that he couldn't know.

Terrified, you watch as to see if he will reveal your secret – you still don't want to tell anyone, fearful of mockery or rejection, even though you are all adults.

You know that it won't work, know that he probably worked it out as soon as he looked at you, but you keep pretending just as you pretended when you were fifteen years old and Barry asked you out, when you were eighteen and acted like your were completely and utterly in love with Mark who took you to your school's formal dance. You act silly and girlish like your friends do when they like someone new, watch him and smile, do everything he asks of you.

And . . . he never tells. He treats you like you are there to hand him equipment and break the rules so that he can carry out his experiments, like you are there to idolise him and envy his intelligence. He treats you like he treats everyone else – like you aren't good enough, like he is being kind to you just by being in the same room as you and like he is offended by how dumb you are compared to him.

You know that he worked it out ages ago. You know that he doesn't care enough to tell everyone, and that is why he hasn't revealed it. You know that he isn't doing this to be nice to you.

But that doesn't stop you from feeling ridiculously grateful to the insufferable genius.

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