Header notes: Written for dietplainlite's sherlolly holiday challenge, with the prompt "pine trees and nutmeg"
"Oh, damn it, nutmeg," Molly swore, surveying the grocery-covered dining table.
"Mild hallucinogen when taken in quantity, vaguely neurotoxic, can even occasionally be lethal, though not much used in murder since the hazardous dosage is much higher than you can readily introduce into the diet of an unaware subject," Sherlock replied from his supine position on her sofa, eyeing her cat which was hovering on the shelf above him, ready to pounce.
"And it tastes nice. But I didn't know all that. What's it like?" she inquired.
"I haven't personally taken every single mind-altering substance on earth, you know."
Molly just raised an eyebrow at him, and Sherlock sighed and said, "Not particularly good. Mostly visual distortions, bit of euphoria, terrible nausea. Lasts for ages, though."
"Something to look forward to, then, shame I forgot it. I'm just going to run to the shops and pick some up."
Sherlock was quite comfortable exactly where he was so he frowned and asked, "Can't you just... leave it out?"
"Have you seen how well that cow can cook? No. Everything needs to be perfect. Feel free to stay here and keep working on melding with my couch, though."
"That cow" of course being Mary Watson, who Molly has absolutely loathed ever since she'd figured out all the details of the shooting. Even though it was months ago. It had been interesting and instructive to observe the detonation of a female friendship - apparently anger and the desire for forgiveness are both shown by being aggressively nice at one another - but it was frankly getting tiresome. The two women get thrown together often because Mary is John's wife and Molly is Sherlock's... particular acquaintance, and the forced politeness they show one another grates.
He had suggested to Mary that letting the wronged party punch you in the face generally seemed to work, and she'd told him she'd consider it but he didn't actually believe that she was.
The cat was now waggling his bottom and switching his tail. Sherlock watched him. Timing it precisely, he rolled off the couch and stood, just as Toby landed claws-out right where Sherlock's groin had been a moment previously. Catlike reflexes his arse.
"I'm up," he said, "So I might as well come along."
Molly smiled at him. It's always been far too easy for him to make her smile. The converse of that is also true but does not bear thinking about.
The days were short in midwinter, and the shadows were already sharp on the Hoxton streets as they made their way to the Waitrose. Sherlock glanced down at Molly as she walked next to him, slowing his pace to match hers. He'd normally have expected her to be anxious about the upcoming dinner-for-eight she was going to have to begin preparing upon their return to her flat, but she was still smiling. At everything: the crowds, the lighted window displays, the cheery drunks smoking outside the pub. Combine that with the cold-induced roses in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes and he had to admit the overall picture was… very becoming.
Then he rolled his eyes, entirely disgusted with himself. "Becoming" indeed. Intrusive thoughts were all well and good but the intrusive thoughts that seemed to originate from the Victorian era were starting to get ridiculous. He wondered if he had finally given himself brain damage on that aborted flight.
The contemporary word is "attractive." And a happy Molly Hooper is certainly that. Sherlock cleared his throat.
"You- actually enjoy Christmas, don't you?"
"Of course I like Christmas," Molly replied, "Why, don't you?"
"No, because I'm an adult."
"Could have fooled me. But lots of adults like Christmas."
"Not sane ones," Sherlock snorted, putting a guiding hand behind (but not on) her back as they hustled across a temporarily vacant intersection.
"John likes Christmas."
"John has never been sane," Sherlock declared as they reached the opposite side, "In addition his brain has been temporarily turned to yogurt by the prospect of taking another five hundred identical photos of his sprog slobbering over things, in this case brightly-colored red and green things. Before this year he had a reasonable understanding of the fact that once you've passed the age where believing in Santa Claus remains a viable option, Christmas is a month-long annual ordeal during which you must choke down thousands of calories of inedible food-"
"Says the man who actually requested mince pies."
"-engage in forced extended company with people, listen to the same dozen abysmal popular songs on endless repeat, spend huge amounts of money to provide people with objects which they could have acquired more efficiently and economically by themselves had they truly required them, and in return allow them to guess with their wallets and give you books."
Molly made a face at him, although Sherlock thought the smile was still hidden under the surface.
"Been saving that one up for a bit, Ebenezer?"
He sighed, and said, "I can tell from the context that you're making a pop cultural or literary reference. Can we please acknowledge that I will very rarely 'get' those, and move on?"
"One," Molly declared, raising a magenta-gloved finger in the air, "You aren't fooling anybody. We only have to see you with that baby for thirty seconds to know you adore her. Two, you also actually do enjoy eating, music, at least some of the people in your life, and figuring things out about them. Thus you are deciding to be a huge grump about doing all of that because it isn't happening 100% on your terms. And three, the reason you get books is that you are extremely difficult to shop for."
"Cash would express the same sentiments much more efficiently. And precisely. As in, "I feel forty-seven fifty worth of affection this year.'"
"You wouldn't like that either. You had a six month old cheque for nine hundred pounds being used as a page marker in the Lancet last time I went to your flat. I had to deposit it for you."
"Ah, but you see, that was a cheque," Sherlock explained, "Cash simply goes into my wallet."
"Or the toaster."
"That was an experiment."
It wasn't.
"Oooh, hold on one second."
Molly had jerked to a halt at a pop-up Christmas tree merchant's and started… yes, she was literally petting the bedraggled late-season specimens.
"Aft'noon, Molls," the salesman (fifty-two, widower with a professional baker girlfriend, a Yorkshire terrier, and gout) said in a chipper Isle of Dogs chirp, before nudging Sherlock in the ribs and saying, "You should get your girl a tree, mate, she keeps coming back 'ere. 'Alf off since it's the last day."
"I'm not his girl, Dan," Molly corrected absently, taking a deep whiff of a blue spruce.
"I am however happy to buy you a tree, if you would like one, Molly," Sherlock said. It was unusual for him to be able to buy things at cash-only businesses like this one, but in what he recognized as confirmation of her implicit "Sherlock is bad about money" critique he had in fact been carrying eight thousand quid and a ten-carat uncut emerald in his coat pockets since the successful conclusion of a case back in mid-November.
Molly sighed, and ruffled the tree fondly.
"I'd love one. But Toby attacks them. He actually knocked a seven-footer down and broke a window a few years ago and I finally gave up."
"What a charming animal you have."
"He's a big softy, really," she said, delusionally, "Though I do miss the smell. I have a scented candle but it's really not the same."
They walked on. And she was still bloody smiling, and somehow that inspired him to say, "As gifts go, I did like the gloves you got me that - that one Christmas."
You know, that one where he'd made her cry, very clever of him to remind her.
Sherlock hastened to add, "It's hard for me to find gloves that have long enough fingers and don't ruin my dexterity. But I lost them, in Serbia. I'm sorry."
He was, too, though "lost" is less accurate a description than "had them stolen along with all the rest of his scant possessions while imprisoned."
Molly shrugged and replied, "It's just gloves. The ones you have on now look nicer anyway."
Technically they are, costing roughly three times more and made-to-measure rather than off the rack. But he had liked his old ones, very much. They had fitted comfortably, and were warm, and back then he hadn't had anything else to remind him of-
Home. Nothing to remind him of home.
Molly broke into his thoughts with an, "Anyway I do like Christmas. I agree that sometimes it gets a bit much but…"
She was smiling and sparkling all over the place now, and it was just generically problematic.
"When I was a little girl, what we did on Christmas Eve every year was go to midnight mass. I would be so sleepy every time, and it would just be our little church that we went to every week anyway but it would be dark and then there would be thousands of candles shining out and we would sing "Silent Night" and the baby Jesus would be in the creche and- and that's what I like. That sense of the miraculous."
They walked on for a block and then he said, slowly, "I hadn't realized that you were religious."
"I'm not," Molly replied wryly, "The shine of Catholicism started to wear off when I was eight and realized that even though I was always the best in sunday school I never got to be the virgin Mary in the nativity play... because I wasn't blonde."
"I remember when I was three and figured out that Father Christmas was just Uncle Vernet wearing a false beard. The whole house of cards basically collapsed after that."
Molly laughed aloud, then, a clear and ringing sound.
"You and Mycroft must have been… really just a treat to raise."
"We were delightful," Sherlock dryly pronounced, and was rewarded with another laugh and Molly tucking her gloved hand into the crook of his elbow as they walked.
"But I do think they have a point about setting this holiday right now," she continued, "There's just something about the time of year, isn't there? It's so cold, and so dark, but you know the days are going to start getting longer soon..."
"Due to the entirely non-miraculous axial tilt of the earth away from the plane of its orbit, yes."
"You know that?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes, and said, "Christmas 2010. "The Boy's Big Book of Astronomy." Someone thought that he was being witty."
"Anyway. We're halfway out of the dark, so anything seems possible. You couldn't have God be born any other time, really. It's when we have new beginnings."
Sherlock did get that particular pop cultural reference, though he would sooner have leapt off another building than admitted it.
The Waitrose was an island of fluorescent-light glow in the sea of gathering gloom. It was, of course, packed. But despite the synthetic pine needle fragrance being pumped through the vents and the country-and-western version of "Good King Wenceslas" coming through the loudspeakers it wasn't quite as unpleasant as normal shops were. Molly's smile was only one of many, shopping baskets were mostly filled with alcohol and sweets, strangers were talking gaily to one another as they waited in the huge queues.
It was, actually, hatefully… merry. Though Molly did unhook her hand from his elbow and leave him bereft as she set off on a beeline for the spices.
Selecting the nutmeg was the work of thirty seconds, and they joined a twenty-person queue to pay.
"Just because something's new doesn't mean it'll be better, you know," Sherlock eventually said into their companionable silence, "I mean statistically half the time new things have to be worse than the old things."
"That's always a risk, I suppose. Though I will point out, Mr. Grinch, that at the beginning of this year you were en route to your death in eastern Europe, and at the end of it you are in your favorite city in the world about to eat a delicious dinner in the company of seven people who love you, only three of whom have ever violently assaulted you. So it seems to me like you're on the upswing at the moment."
"Five. And it's battery."
"Sorry?" Molly asked, furrowing her forehead.
"Five of you have battered me… assault is just the threat or attempt," Sherlock explained, ignoring the eyeroll he got for this, "Fatty got plenty of shots in when we were boys. And Melita Watson took a bite out of my hand last week."
Molly laughed. Giggled, even. She had to be doing this on purpose, surely, it was really very unkind of her.
"Poor Melita. She really is having a hard time with the teething, isn't she?"
"Poor Melita? Poor Sherlock. I wouldn't have expected someone that young to have that sort of mandibular strength but she has once again surpassed expectations."
Molly sighed theatrically, "Poor Sherlock Holmes, done to death by his nemesis, the Napoleon of babies, the extremely small, chubby, and nonambulatory biting spider at the center of her web of evil."
He gave up. At a certain point it became impossible to remain uncomprehending in the face of the happy, and you had to just go along with it. So, in the queue for the self checkout at Waitrose, surrounded by strangers, Sherlock nudged up Molly's chin with his bespoke-gloved hand, dipped his head down, and kissed her.
Kissing her was more or less exactly like he'd imagined on all of those occasions when he'd barely avoided doing it in the past. There was even a soft "Oh, Sherlock" once they'd stopped... but the 'less' bit came in when he looked down into her deep brown eyes and found that her smile had gone entirely.
"Um. Sherlock, was that-?" Molly rubbed her lips together nervily, "Do you need something from me? Or is it a case? I don't- I mean that is to say I do mind but I won't be angry and you, you, you need to tell me if it is."
"It's neither of those," he hastened to explain, "It's- a new beginning. If you'll have it. And. Well. Me."
He trailed off in the end of the sentence because it was just now occurring that to him she might, actually, not… given the tortuosity of the path leading up to this moment and the fact that it was him on offer. But Molly, who always helped him in so many ways, managed to do it one more time.
Slowly, perfectly, she smiled. And this time it felt quite natural to smile back.
"I think," she said, "That we should get back to mine and have dinner. And then who knows what a new beginning might bring?"
"Have dinner" was probably not a euphemism in Molly's case, although there was a faint gleam in her eye which made him wonder. Only briefly, though, because she tugged him back down by his lapels and kissed him again, and it became surprisingly challenging to think about anything at all but that. That first attempt had been rubbish by comparison, since enthusiastic Molly put in much more skilful effort than startled Molly.
Eventually someone behind them cleared his throat and said "Get a move on, lovebirds" and they advanced to the till. Sherlock paid. In cash. Molly threaded her gloved fingers through his, and together they walked out into the future.
Closing notes: The title and the pop cultural reference Sherlock didn't admit he got are a line stolen from the 2010 Doctor Who holiday special, "A Christmas Carol."
This was obviously written before we knew the official name of Rosamund Watson. I'm keeping "Melita" because this fic is a prequel to "Competition" and "Gentlemen at War" and that's her name in those. Should you like to know how it works out for Molly and Sherlock in this now noncanonical `verse.
And because I feel bad about leaving our best girls unhappy with one another I present the opening of the upcoming follow-on fic:
The knock at the door interrupted Molly in the middle of a quiet evening in with a lovely warm lap-kitty and a good book. She frowned, because she hadn't been expecting anyone and the likeliest person to turn up unannounced generally just let himself in, with lockpicks if necessary. She frowned again when she looked through the peephole and recognized the red-coated figure outside, but sighed and opened the door anyway.
Mary Watson took a deep breath, and began with, "So Sherlock's been saying I should let you punch me in the face. But I thought that a few hours with you, me, and this might work better."
Molly looked down at the amber liquor being extended to her, and said, "That's a seventy-quid bottle. Seems a bit nicer than being punched in the face."
"Not if you ask me. Scotch tastes like suffering. May I come in?"