Right, so this popped into my head one evening as I was rewatching some House. Normally, you'd peg Molly Hooper for a Cameron more than a Cuddy, but in my fictitious mind, Molly Hooper is a super-goddess who can do both. :)
Hope you enjoy :)
"Mr. Holmes, I said I would be available at seven! Until then you may stand outside the hospital and serenade me for all I care, I am not changing my hours!"
"Not even for –" he began briskly.
"Not even for Tesla and his bloody death ray!" she announced him cordially, walking away at lightning speed.
Molly Hooper was downright enraged with the man's nerve. She had the entire fourth floor ambushed with new interns and he was demanding her attention!
"Blame the young generations who are all eager to work with decomposing flesh, if you will," she muttered angrily, pulling her robe tighter.
When Sherlock and John were left alone in the hallway after she had swiftly disappeared through a pair of large doors, the latter whistled to himself amused and sat down on the nearest chair, feeling a twinge in his leg. They'd been following Miss Hooper around like lap dogs.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes in complete annoyance and threw his hands in the air.
"Once again, that imbecilic woman is standing in my way with her insufferable arrogance. Not that I shouldn't have seen it coming. She is the sole preventer of justice and scientific discovery in this country! She should take the blame if Mr. Kettler does not get his daughter back by tomorrow evening. The spiteful wench!" he sputtered uncontrollably.
"Spiteful wench? That's a new one," John remarked, trying not to snigger. "Getting a bit too personal, are we?"
"Not at all, if not more accurate every day. She is spiteful and terribly jealous. Because she knows she is nothing special compared to me and she is seething on the inside. She can't stand that I am the brilliant one and she is just the foolish, power-hungry little woman stuck in a morgue."
John raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't put it quite like that. She's the best in the hospital."
"The best at what she does, only," Sherlock spat, annoyed at being contradicted unnecessarily.
"Well? Isn't that something still?" John persisted. "I hardly think she's stupid."
"Did I say she's stupid? Of course not. Compared to the vermin she has authority over she must be downright clever. But compared to me she is a buffoon!"
John rolled his eyes dramatically. In the span of two months, Sherlock had managed to harbour so much loathing for one single woman that it was formidable he hadn't swallowed her up yet.
It all stemmed from one grievous mistake on her part. She had spurned him by being the first to tell him no.
Sherlock had barged in that day as was his way into the morgue without a care in the world, ready to order his coffee and muffin from the kind and industrious Mrs. Gladstone. Even the name. Vera Gladstone. Oh, she was such a mundane comfort. The morgue was practically his. Not to mention she doted on him like a veritable smothering mother.
He had already taken three steps towards the laboratory, when a sudden scratch of heels caught his attention and a sharp, shrill voice stopped him in his tracks.
John, who had been slightly absent-minded, bumped into him from behind.
"Excuse me? Where exactly are you two going? I do not see you wearing any robes or visitor passes. Even so you wouldn't be allowed to go any further."
They had turned rather awkwardly to find a short, stout and fierce-looking young woman with auburn fiery hair and sparkling black eyes staring daggers at them. Her mouth was small and malicious. Or so Sherlock would remark later.
At first, he tried to be affable and win her with his irresistible charm.
"Oh, pardon us, we had no idea we were not allowed to go in, seeing as we have been permitted entry as part of the Scotland Yard division. We are inspecting a recent murder case, but please let me present our apologies, we were accustomed to be received by the kind Mrs. Vera – "
"Yes, yes, old Gladstone, she must've been a very sentimental woman, indeed, to believe such nonsense," she cut him off immediately. "You're as much Scotland Yard as I am Lady Godiva. I would've taken you for interns if you had only shut up. Let me guess, you two found each other online when you realized you both had an obsession with rotting flesh and you've been coming here ever since?"
Sherlock had never been thus addressed in his entire life. Or if he had (which he had probably), never with such precision and force. There was no intelligence, he sneered, only a wild and impenetrable desire to subject others to her will.
It had taken a special visit from Inspector Lestrade to even convince her they were not sexual offenders and then another two to provide them with legal documents and Scotland Yard passes in order to be allowed to look over the bodies.
The outrageous thing about it was that now, because of Molly Hooper, they both indirectly worked for Scotland Yard, something Sherlock had never thought he would be reduced to. Not in a million years.
Here was enough reason to detest her for all eternity.
When she had finally come to understand he was a bit special, a bit brilliant, as he put it, and that he even had a sturdy side-kick to help him fight crime – well, the first thing she had done was laugh.
Her laughter was like the barking of rabid dogs, he noted as he wrinkled his nose.
Then she had made an attempt to apologize for her extreme rudeness. But it had been brief. She had dwelt too little on that aspect.
"A mind like yours is easily offended but your brains should help you get over the injury, shouldn't they? I mean what's the point of harbouring a grudge," she joked, smiling forcefully.
He had almost walked out.
After that, she had found pleasure in testing him, or asking him to prove his genius. She was not doing this out of malice. She was truly curious. But he took it the wrong way of course.
"I am not your lap dog, Miss Hooper! Nor am I a circus oddity! I am not going to expand my method unless I see fit! So no matter how many times you badger me with such asinine questions, I will always reserve the right of not responding!"
"Oh, come off it, Sherlock. I am only intellectually curious. I don't want to steal your game. And I am not going to take advantage of your deductive skills and write about them in a personal blog or something – oh, wait, Watson's doing that already, isn't he?"
What irked him most about Molly Hooper was that he could guess she was jealous of him, but she never showed it. And she constantly tried to persuade herself that it didn't matter. That it was just fine, that she was well-adjusted to the idea of her normalcy, of her commonness. And what was more scandalous, that she deserved equal esteem despite being only slightly brighter than John.
It was not to be conceived. If at least she had been a bit more humble, more friendly, more – well more Vera really.
Instead, she was a brash and violent fool. The world was already full of them, but to have one so close, it was quite damaging to his psyche.
If only she were a quiet fool, he often said to himself.
"A bit of patience won't kill you, Holmes!" she snapped as he almost pushed past her into the morgue when she finally allowed him entrance that evening.
"Oh, of course it won't kill me, Hooper, but my client's daughter is probably history as we speak."
"I find it hard to believe you'd let that happen. She must be hanging by a thread, so don't waste any time now," she signalled him nonchalantly.
And that was the other thing that really set him off about her. He had tried to manipulate her applying the old Catholic guilt. But it hadn't worked. Strangely enough it was supposed to be a compliment to him that she never doubted his ability to get the job done tolerably fast, but it was still unnerving and quite cruel how she ignored his pleas for another human being's life almost every time.
A real emergency had to be called in by Lestrade. Goddamn Lestrade.
"Oh, well, since you've made my job so much easier I might take a minute or two to compose," he retorted angrily.
"Don't pout, now, Mr. Holmes, it's not exactly flattering on you."
"Well, neither is your entitlement complex, Hooper, but at least my facial expression does not prevent you from doing whatever it is you do to maintain the illusion of authority."
"Are you implying I kept you from doing your job? Because I really hope you're not starting that tired old argument again."
"You do keep me from saving lives by strutting around this morgue as if you owned the place!"
"Holmes, stop being so dramatic and go find something to do. You know better than I that in the two months we've known each other you haven't lost a single case. If my methods were truly so draconic, there would be more casualties."
He pinched the bridge of his nose in utter frustration.
Blast her for being right and for tracking his personal record.
But that was only circumstantial! It had only been a string of coincidences that he had maintained a clean score so far.
He almost wanted to fail in order to show her how despicable her "methods" really were.
Of course he was too obsessed to ever really wish that upon himself, too proud and too fretful of anything similar to failure.
Still, he harboured that perverse fantasy.
"Um, Sherlock, maybe we should just go see the body," John intervened somewhat awkwardly. He wasn't terribly fond of Molly Hooper either, but she did amuse him by picking on Sherlock relentlessly.
She was as indefatigable as a hawk.
"Oh, I see Mr. Watson is constantly the voice of reason in this relationship. Perhaps you owe him your auspicious spell," she commented more amiably, sitting down at her office.
"Now, I've left you the case file at the girl's feet. It should provide considerable help. And make your work easier, that is if you want it made easier," she muttered, already half-ensconced in her own material.
Sherlock nodded impassively, keeping his grimace to himself, as he strutted towards the adjacent room. He knew about her ridiculously intricate case files. He rarely used them. Only as a last resort.
Even though John insisted they were quite good.
When the time came to call it a day, Molly arranged her things and placed them neatly into her bag, grabbed the briefcase from her desk, shut the lights off and stopped by the lab to tell Sherlock it was time to go.
John was already half-asleep in a corner, muttering to himself about taking out Sarah's dog.
Sherlock did not even look up when she came in, clicking her heels in her demanding way.
"Come on, Holmes, it's time you tucked Watson in. Look at him, dozing off in the corner. It's rather sweet. You need some rest too, though. You look awful. I'll be expecting you first thing tomorrow. Don't be late."
He was certainly looking up though after she had finished ordering him around like that.
He didn't know what part of her statement was more insulting. Probably the 'you look awful' one.
"Had you let me in earlier, John wouldn't have become more useless than the furniture he's resting on and I would have finished my research in due time. But no, I'm glad things turned out this way since, obviously, your ego weighs much more than a child's life and I wouldn't want to concern myself with unimportant matters."
Molly only raised an eyebrow in condescension.
"One more hour and then you lock up and call me to say you locked up. If I don't get that call, expect hospital staff, security and Lestrade to make it for you. All right?"
Sherlock glared at her for what seemed like an eternity. He kept his mouth stubbornly shut, although it pained him to do so.
"All right, Mr. Holmes?" Molly asked again, rolling her eyes. "Come on, some of us have lives to get to."
"Oh, let me guess," he drawled impatiently, "six hours of Grey's Anatomy, two of some vampire show you tell yourself you watch ironically, Top Chef reruns, refrozen waffles and playing with your cat in your empty bed. Or maybe this is the night you finally finish The Kite Runner and you cry yourself to sleep."
Molly opened her mouth in surprise. She had no idea how he had guessed she was reading The Kite Runner, although if she thought a bit harder she would've probably figured out he sometimes listened in on her conversations from the adjacent room. Instead of asking him how he had so easily pegged her one night off, she smiled ruefully and placed her hands on her hips.
"So then, you watch Grey's Anatomy?"
Sherlock blanked. "What?"
"Well, how else would you know about this week's six-hour marathon?" she asked slyly.
There was a pause. Not a normal-human-being-pause, but a-Sherlock-pause that Molly instantly caught.
It was a blink of an eye.
"John likes to waste his already deflated mind on poorly written soaps. Who am I to judge him?"
"So John told you there would be a six-hour marathon tonight because he watches Grey's?" she continued, undeterred.
"Obviously, otherwise how would I –" Sherlock began with uncertainty in his voice.
"Mr. Watson!" Molly suddenly yelled, banging her bag against his chair.
Poor John almost jumped out of his skin. He blinked wearily as he looked around him for the source of his distress.
"Ah, good, you're awake. Sherlock here tells me you watch a certain medical drama, or rather, that you inflict it upon him, and that you informed him –"
"That's quite enough, Miss Hooper!" Sherlock interrupted her slightly flustered. There were two red spots on his cheeks now.
"I won't have you harass my friend with imbecile questions at this late hour of the night. I will be out of your precious morgue in less than five minutes so please be so kind as to honour us with your much needed departure!"
Molly Hooper only smiled good-humouredly and tossed her hair back amused.
"Five minutes? Oh, right then, I suppose you don't want to miss the marathon either. Good call. Don't forget to clean up your mess," she told him sweetly, clearly enjoying his discomposure and whatever irrational anger that came with.
"That vicious harpy!" Sherlock muttered darkly after she was gone.
"What – what was that? What just happened?" John asked, getting up tiredly. "Are we going home?"
"Yes, John, but not because some pathetic little doctor told us to, we are exerting our right not to labour over a dead end."
"Wait, dead end? So the body didn't supply you with any answers?"
"Not exactly, no."
"Is Hooper the pathetic little doctor in the equation?"
Sherlock closed his eyes in frustration. "Who else, John? Who else?"
Watson smiled, realizing he hadn't just dreamt up their previous exchange. His Sherlock Holmes indulged in medical drama.
Not only that but he was getting flustered.
After that, John decided it was all right having Hooper around if she could elicit such entertaining reactions from his friend.
Perhaps in another universe Sherlock Holmes even liked being badgered.