"My Cup of Tea"
"Fifty-five years old," Molly informed Sherlock as she showed him one of the corpses she kept in the morgue. A tall man, white as a sheet. His legs were broken, twisted in odd angles, and his arms were bruised and cut. "Suffered from amnesia. Most likely for years. Didn't know what or who he was whatsoever. He died in a car accident, we assume that he forgot he doesn't know how to drive even though he has a driver's license. Quite a tragedy, really." She showed a pitiful smile, mostly meant for the dead man, and Sherlock ignored it completely.
"How was the amnesia caused in the first place?" he asked as he inspected the man's broken body. He had minor bruises on either cheeks but his nose was most certainly badly injured. Broken, unquestionably. Three of his tooth were missing: yanked out violently: the tooth roots were also missing.
"A brain injury," said Molly from a distance, carefully not to disrupt the slender man's work. "Three years ago, approximately, if I'm right its cause was a stroke. But if you look here," she shuffled closer and carefully shifted the dead man's head to the left, "this seems to be a wound caused by a bullet, shot from up close. It's an old wound, though."
"I'll take it," Sherlock acquainted with a genuine, but fake, smile.
"Take what?" asked Molly, circumspectly. She was fidgeting with the buttons of her cardigan to keep her attention drawn anywhere but Sherlock. She wondered why she still couldn't act normal around the man. For Christ's sake, Molly, she'd tell herself, he has been living in your apartment for over two years already, don't be such a prude!
"The head, of course!" Sherlock told her, in the familiar isn't-it-obvious? tone. "Now, if you'd rather have me sawing it off, it'll be my pleasure," he directly started moving towards one of the cupboards of which he knew Molly kept her apparatus in and started rummaging through the devices the forensic barely ever used. The girl watched him flabbergasted but was afraid to argue, so she kept her arms crossed over her chest securely and her lips shut tight. Then at once, the man turned and said, "I presume that it's no problem?"
"No!" she said in an awkwardly loud volume. She swallowed and tried to smile, trying to look as halcyon as she could, and then she said in a low voice, "No, no problem at all." Her tone was awfully anxious. Once again she swallowed but felt relieved as she saw Sherlock turning away, of course, completely oblivious of her inconvenient fluster.
Sherlock sawed off the head as if it was a thing he did on a daily basis. He used one of Molly's pink towels, at which he scowled unbelievingly before he wrapped it around the bare end of the neck. Out of the horrible dishabille wound gushed a strange foul pus sort of liquid all over Molly's beloved cloth. "I hope the family wants their man to be incinerated. Imagine the shock such a corpse would cause!" and thereby, the man disappeared into the white corridors.
The only thing left of him now was his familiar scent, whereof Molly couldn't decide whether it was cologne or not (she'd never seen a bottle of any sort of perfume around her bathroom. Not to mention that Sherlock often used her shampoo when he ran out of the soap yet again). Perhaps it indeed was just his body scent. Also, an echo of "See you soon!" lingered in the rather empty room. Molly sighed. Left alone, once again.
She had genuinely thought that Sherlock had mutual feelings for her when he'd asked her to help him. She thought he finally would return her ache for affection, but nothing she had hoped to happen had happened. One courageous night she'd asked him if he wanted to sleep in her bed, whereupon he'd replied, "If you don't mind the sofa?"
She'd been left in her living room that night with not only a fit of weeping that made her feel uncontrollably, emotionally juvenile, but also with a nagging voice in the back of her head that whispered depressing comments about whatever you can make depressing comments about. And not only did she look ridiculous the next morning, her eyes puffy and her lips swollen, but she also woke up with a stiff neck and a cramp in both her legs.
That morning, she decided she was too stupid, too naïve.
Later that same afternoon, she came home to find her living room filled with a thick fog caused by cigarettes, and a strange stench that lingered in between it. She opened all windows possible and when most of the smoke had dissolved, Molly found Sherlock sitting at the dining table, with in front of him the head he'd sawed off earlier that afternoon. It was cut open neatly right on top of the skull, and Sherlock was operating in it with Molly's cutlery, scrutinizing every tiny bit of flesh and liquid that the insides of the poor man's head contained. The strange stench had presumably been a result of another experiment, which included the leftovers of the broken nose and burning acid. The debris was still hissing.
"Sherlock," she greeted him nonchalantly as she placed her bag onto one of the fauteuils.
The man grunted as a reply. He didn't even bother to look up from his experiment.
"Had a good day?" she tried.
He didn't reply, for the brains he was spading through made an odd mushy noise. He rose from his seat and picked up the head tenuously, muttering, "Interesting," and then threw it into the garbage bin with such a great force Molly swore she could hear the brains dropping out of the skull. "How remarkable!" Sherlock said, obviously agitated. "Dashing! Dandy! Marvelous!" he raged. "Oh, how incredible!"
"Sherlock-"
"Tedious!" he yelled. "Tedious! Why can't someone die an unnatural death? Just one―one unnatural death!"
"Sherlock, please-"
"Molly, shut your mouth!" the detective, if you could call him that still, cried and dropped down into the chair he had been sitting in most of his day. His expression mad, his face turned redder every second. He breathed loudly, ferociously, and then he slammed his hands onto the tabletop and furiously said, "If I don't get something alike a case within one day, I promise, I will die of boredom."
"Sherlock, you told me not to tell anyone you're alive," Molly said slowly, "where do you expect me to get a case from? I can't just nick a case out of DI Lestrade's office!"
"Oh, you are so boring!" Sherlock yelled at her. "How long has it been?"
"What?" tried Molly.
"You know what I mean!" Sherlock said, his tone dangerously ominous.
"Over two years," Molly replied against her will, "if I'm right, two years and eleven months."
Sherlock sighed deeply. "Two years and eleven months since solving a case. Two years and eleven months since entering my apartment. Two years and eleven months since playing the violin, since drinking John's―two years and eleven months since John," he added, knitting his eyebrows together. "Oh, I am a horrible man."
"Sherlock, no need to overreact," Molly once again tried to cut in.
"Who else have I left? Mycroft – well, if he counts. He probably hasn't even noticed I left." Molly tried to cut in again. She wanted to say how often Mycroft had appeared in front of the press to defend his little brother's pride. His dignity. But Sherlock didn't allow her to. "Greg – oh, how's he doing? I don't even know! My favourite, dumb-witted detective inspector in whole Scotland Yard. And Misses Hudson, I wonder how she is doing - but wait. Does John still live in 221b Baker Street?"
"Sherlock, I must admit I haven't seen John for quite a while. Neither has Lestrade. He's the only one of the four persons I have been to with recently. Lestrade told me John misses you," Molly sighed, "a lot."
"John misses me!" cried Sherlock, burying his face in his hands. "I am starting to doubt whether I am grieving now because of boredom, or really because I miss my former life. Let's say the latter is not the case," Sherlock muttered, but he found himself unconvinced of his own statement. "I did it for a reason - I did it to protect them -" he tried to defend himself, knowing that he couldn't talk away his guilt. "Maye I really just should meet up with Lestrade. Just simply to get a case. To release myself from all this mundane jibber jabber."
"It's your decision, Sherlock," Molly said.
"It is, thank you very much," Sherlock snapped. "Now let's give him a call, shall we? Ask him over for dinner."
Molly smiled nervously while nodding. Asking Greg over for dinner? What will people think?
"Just dinner, you idiot," Sherlock added.
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