Note: Just a short I wrote while I was trying to pull myself out of a little block. It helped. Well, enjoy. This is mostly my interpretation of how Molly and Sherlock met and how their relationship started and turned into.
Molly woke up.
She brushed her teeth. Showered. Changed. Pulled on her mother's sweater and pair of old trousers with a hole near her hip. It didn't matter; her lab coat would cover it.
Balancing a piece of toast between her teeth, she opened a can of cat food and dumped it into a round hand-made bowl. She set the bowl on the floor and her little kitten, Toby, came prancing from the bedroom and began his breakfast just as Molly finished hers.
She took a bus to work. Molly was a pathologist at St. Bartholomew's hospital in London. She wasn't an old or new employee. She was easily forgotten by the staff there and no one really paid her much attention. Molly didn't mind. She continued her work silently like a ghost.
Her life was very consistent and she had become a creature of habit. She went to work, she had her lunch - which was usually the roast beef, and then continued work until the end of her shift. Then she went home, had dinner with Toby and watched movies until sleep called upon her. Tomorrow would just be another repetition of the day before. And she was content with that.
Molly pushed open the doors to the mortuary and found a co-worker, Markus, waiting with a pen and a notepad. Next to him on the table, a dead body laid facing up with a white sheet covering his legs and chest. Markus looked up and gave a brief acknowledging smile. He thought for a second and then raised his head to look at her again, this time, a wider smile played on his lips.
"Molly!"
She repaid his smile with a kind one of her own. "Hello, Markus." Molly walked around the table to sanitize her hands. "How are you?"
"Good, good." He scratched his neck with the pen. "Listen. I'm needed in the second floor for some, um, lab work. I was wondering if you could take care of this cadaver for me."
Molly dried her hands with some paper towels and gave him a cheery nod. "Yes, that's fine. Go ahead, I take care of him." Her eyes roamed over the dead body.
"Great!" Markus shut his notebook and slipped it inside his coat. "The files on Mr. Henry Blake are right over here. I haven't gotten a chance to really look over him yet but – oh! Yes, um, Detective Inspector Lestrade will be here shortly. He'll want to know what you think about the cadaver to help with the case. I wrote down my findings." He leaned in and whispered, "They think this here Mr. Henry was murdered." He arched his eyebrows up and down knowingly.
Molly frowned, instantly feeling sorry for Mr. Henry. "That's sad."
"Well, you know. Maybe he deserved it?" Markus said. He turned to leave. "Thanks, Molly. See you later." He strode out, the doors shutting loudly behind him.
Molly let out a deep sigh and lifted the sheets off Mr. Henry and then picked up the files and read over what Markus had written down. It wasn't much and she concluded he had very bad penmanship with sloppy letters that curved and swerved in awkward places making them look like other letters. J's were T's and P's were D's.
She set the files down and looked over Mr. Henry. Some of his skin was damaged around the neck. It was easy to conclude that he was probably strangled. But there were also some smaller wounds around his arms. They looked like self-inflicted harm. Some were old and some looked as if they were done recently.
Molly continued her work for another half hour by herself in the dimly lit morgue with a florescent light hovering over her. Her bliss was interrupted when the doors opened quickly. She nearly squeaked at the noise and looked up, blinking.
There were two men who entered. One she had seen previously and had come to understand as the local Detective inspector Lestrade. He had grey hair, fairly handsome, and she usually thought he was rather tall but the man next to him towered above DI Lestrade easily and made him look puny.
Molly's breath nearly caught in her throat as she regarded the tall stranger. He had locks of fine curly dark hair, pale translucent skin with wide sculpted lips. His eyes however, were an entirely different story. They were striking, blue-green, with black pupils and dark lashes. His expression was that of mere triviality. The tall stranger was wearing a long coat, a suit underneath and a navy blue scarf. Goodness, he looked like he had simply stepped out of Vogue magazine and into her morgue.
"Eh…erm…" Molly tried to say something but nothing was coming out. She flushed, blinking rapidly and wondering what she should be doing with her hands. She was reduced to rubbing them together.
DI Lestrade pointed at her and laughed jokingly. "Now, I know you're not Markus. Where the hell is that git?" he asked.
Molly tried to say something but as the stranger approached, all that came out was gibberish.
"Excuse me?" DI Lestrade asked, unable to register her words.
Molly, with sheer force, ripped her eyes off the tall stranger and took a deep breath. "Oh, I'm Molly Hooper." She reached out to shake his hand, but she didn't need his help, her hands were shaking just fine on their own. "Markus had to take care of some important lab work so I'm helping him with Mr. Henry. He told me y-you'd be coming. Um…I'm not usually the coroner here but um, I can help."
DI Lestrade made a long face. "Er…I'm sure you mean well and all Miss um, Hooper? Sorry, but I would really prefer it if you could get Mark-"
"It's fine," the tall stranger interjected, rolling his eyes. "We don't really need a special pathologist. You do remember you have me," he added dryly.
"Right." The officer snorted. "Okay, Miss Hooper. If you could tell us what you know about Mr. Henry that would be fantastic."
Molly smiled at the stranger and he gave her a weird look, as if he wasn't sure she was smiling at him. He averted his gaze to the body.
She handed DI Lestrade the files. "Mr. Henry seems to have been strangled here. Ligature strangulation. The tissue around his anterior neck structure is damaged and bruised. The larynx isn't fractured but that's quite rare anyway. I think a small scarf might have been used based some patterns here." She pointed. "There were no skin fragments or nails so it wasn't manual needless to say."
"What else?" the stranger asked, looking bored but still observing the body. "What's this?" he pointed at the man's arm. "They look like knife marks. Was he harming himself?"
Molly shook her head. "That's what I thought at first but I looked into it. His skin is actually charred. They're burns, probably done by something small and thin."
The stranger smiled widely, as if she had just gave him a birthday present. "Excellent." He turned to Lestrade. "It was his son."
"His son?" Lestrade asked, baffled. "How the hell do you know it was his son? Why would a son kill his own father?" he asked, perplexed.
Molly blinked, watching them silently. Mostly the stranger. He was suddenly filled with this new energy and he seemed to be vibrating with radiant happiness, filling her dull morgue with life.
"Think about it, Lestrade. Come on," the stranger encouraged, slightly irritated. "His son is adopted, bitter, cold, and his adoptive father had spoiled him silly. His son was dismayed; no money for his new car, his credit card was taken away for over-spending. He knew if his father died, he'd get the inheritance, so twenty-six year old Harvey Blake strangled his father when he didn't give into his demands? Humans, selfish creatures they are." He clapped his hands. "Arrest the son. He did it."
"I can't just arrest him like that!" Lestrade argued.
"Of course you can. The patterns right here will match his scarf, no skin fragments but with the time-frame working in our favor, this case is easy to solve, detective inspector," the stranger said matter-of-factly. "These burn wounds are probably done by his son as well, a sort of violent way of getting what he wanted without killing the man but that didn't turn out so well, his patience snapped. Look into Harvey's records, he was treated in a psychiatric ward when he was sixteen due to violent behavior at his public school, released two years later for good behavior. Came back, did this to his father, wanted money, wanted to get away. Come on, did you really not see this?"
Lestrade made a noise but quickly pulled out his mobile nonetheless. He took a few steps back. "Donovan," he said into the receiver.
Molly smiled a bit and looked at the stranger. "I've never seen you before. Are you new at the department?"
He observed her. "No. I hate Scotland Yard. I'm a consulting detective."
"A…consulting detective?"
"A specialist. When the police don't know how to do their job, they consult me."
She nodded slowly. She had never heard of a consulting detective but it sounded interesting. "I see."
"No you don't."
She chuckled. "You're right, I don't."
He arched a brow at her inquiringly.
"What's your name?" she asked.
He narrowed his eyes again, as if she was asking something no one had ever asked him before.
"Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes." He extended his hand to her and she shook it enthusiastically with a wide grin.
"It's nice to meet you, Sherlock Holmes."
"Hm, we'll see how long that lasts."
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing."
"Sherlock, you coming with me? We're going to get Harvey," Lestrade said.
"I suppose. It might be entertaining. I do hope he tries to resist arrest. Cause a fuss. Much better than telly." He turned around to leave with Lestrade but paused momentarily. Looking over his shoulder at Molly, Sherlock gave her a glimpse of a smile. "Well done, Miss. Hooper. Far better than I imagined. Sorry for casting your bar so low."
"Right!" Lestrade added, feeling left out. "Much better than Markus," he mumbled. "Hope to see more of you. You new here?"
Molly shook her head. "I've been here for a few years…I think we worked together before but it was a long time ago, you probably don't remember me."
Lestrade put on a thinking face. "I…I'm sorry, can't say I have."
She gave him a sweet smile. "It's alright, no worries. Um, hope the case goes well." She waved.
They left, the doors shutting behind them. The morgue was still breathing with the life Sherlock left behind and the tingle in Molly's heart was…peculiar.
###
Molly went home that afternoon with butterflies in her stomach. Sherlock was devilishly fetching, she hoped to see more of him and based on his speech, he was quite intelligent and had that tall, dark, and handsome thing down amazingly well. She wondered if he had a girlfriend. Oh, guys like him usually did. She frowned at this realization and dropped into her sofa, cuddling Toby on her lap as she watched Dr. Who.
The next day was the same. She woke up, showered, had breakfast, and took the bus to work. However this time, she was a bit happier. Sherlock, the mysterious 'consulting detective' told her she had done well so apparently, she was doing something beyond someone's expectations. With this in her heart, she worked contently for the next week.
There were no murders, no forensic pathology that needed looking over so she continued her usual work, examining cultures in the lab and keeping track of the dead bodies, looking over diseased tissue samples and such and such.
That is, until the third week when Markus interrupted her one afternoon in her lab.
"Molly?"
"Oh, Markus. Hello!" she beamed at him, taking her eyes away from the microscope.
He gave her a grudging smile. "Some detective guy named Sherlock is asking for you downstairs in the morgue. I told him I'd look over this new cadaver but he's making a fuss, wants you specifically."
Molly's eyes widened for two main reasons. Sherlock was here, in the hospital. Second, he was looking specifically for Molly? She tried not to let it get to her and succeeded. "Okay. I'll be down," she said coolly.
He nodded and left.
Molly put away her petri dish and cleaned up her table. She glanced at her reflection in the plastic glass case for the fire extinguisher, fixed her hair a bit, rubbed her eyes and smiled.
Downstairs, Sherlock was hovering over the cadaver with upmost curiosity. He turned swiftly when she entered and smiled at him. He didn't smile back and only straightened himself. "Miss. Hooper, I apologize if I'm asking for your assistance at an inconvenient time." He didn't look one bit sorry.
"Oh, it's alright. What did you need from me?"
"Your professional opinion on this corpse is much appreciated," he replied, putting his hands behind his back and regarding her carefully through his blue eyes.
Molly was honored but it didn't seem right. "Doesn't the department have their own specialist?"
"Anderson?" Sherlock laughed. "His IQ barely reaches two digits and his face is revolting. Can't stand it. He repels me."
She looked over her shoulder. "I'm not exactly the one in charge of aiding the police department with these sort of forensics…M-Markus can help you, he's much better suited for-"
"No. He's not." Sherlock raised his eyebrows knowingly. "Markus is dirty, with poor hygiene as he scratches himself using anything within hand-reach, has relationship problems and is quite frankly unstable at the moment with lack of appreciation for his work. You, on the other hand, are very mundane, simple and do your work." He smiled at her. "I prefer you."
She felt good, honestly, but. "The paperwork…"
He took a step towards her, his smile still showing. "Miss. Hooper, I've used some…ulterior methods to get into this building today. I'm not exactly well connected with the police force and have limited access to certain things pertaining to Bart's." He watched her carefully. "This is a small case given to me by a private client."
"But…"
"You would be helping someone receive justice if you allow me to stay here and use your expert knowledge on cadavers and postmortems to benefit me in finding the culprit behind such atrocities."
She looked up at him with wide brown eyes and gulped. He wasn't exactly part of the department, he wasn't exactly allowed in here either for that matter but he was a detective – some sort of detective and he was working to put criminals behind bars…right? And she could possibly help him? She swallowed her fear after a few thoughts. She had never done something like this before.
She smiled brightly. "Just…don't get me into trouble, Mr. Holmes," she added with a serious tone.
He laughed. She didn't find it particularly sound, he didn't seem like the person who laughed easily but he found her remark funny for some reason. "Please, call me Sherlock."
"Molly."
And they began their work.
For months, Molly and Sherlock found peace, or chaos, working with one another. He'd come at odd times, ask for her while she was in the middle of something but she would always go. Always help. He made no approach, no signs that he was interested in her as a woman and solely needed her for her the cadavers. Soon, he was working with her in the labs and asking her for body parts which she gave him if they weren't necessary and after a short period of time later, Bart's had become accustomed to Sherlock and knew he was Molly's Detective Guy who annoyed everyone and deduced them until they told him to piss off.
People gave Sherlock fingers and cursed him behind his back but Molly didn't care for them. At times, she defended him. Of course that led to more isolation. She continued to help him with his endeavors regardless, coming in at nights, on holidays when no one else was taking the shift. She was always available to him whenever he needed her.
She had always hoped, however. That maybe one day he would see her. He didn't though. Not once.
Sometimes he even made comments on her appearance – that was when they grew a bit closer. Dropped all formalities and were comfortable enough to give each other advice – it was mostly Sherlock giving the advice. He seemed to have a special interest in showing off his vast intellect.
But ever since Sherlock entered the little world of Molly Hooper, her life had changed. She wasn't filled with apathy when waking up, she was excited. Wondering if Sherlock would come in with a crazy case, if he'd join her for lunch and comment on how pathologist shouldn't eat roast beef if they were slicing up cadavers. Sometimes he talked about his cases. He really loved to talk about them, especially when he ended up proving everybody wrong in the end. Molly found his stories quite riveting and he told them in an effortless manner using such vivid descriptions with his level of vocabulary that she could see the entirety of it play out in her head.
These occasions only happened sometimes. They weren't rare but they weren't common. Sherlock held her at arm's length, close but not far. Enough for him to grab her if he needed and leave her behind when he didn't. She knew this. Yet still hoped. Because for Molly, hope was all she had and frankly, hope made her find Sherlock exciting. New. Fantastic. He never failed to surprise her. And the hope of one day actually meaning something more than just 'his pathologist' was a fantasy she held onto. Sometimes, this very thought helped her get by certain dreadful days.
However, it had now been a few years since she met Sherlock. She felt it was time for a change. Maybe he didn't like taking the initiative in such matters? Putting on a brave face, she pulled out her lipstick and applied an even tone over her thin lips. She never wore lipstick at work before. The change was drastic and she wanted to wash it off but told herself to be courageous.
She went into the morgue after he finished beating up a cadaver with a riding crop for a new case. She was all smiles. "So…bad day was it?" she asked.
"I need to know what bruises form in the next twenty minutes. The man's alibi depends on it. Text me," he replied, taking off his gloves and opening his notepad to scribble something down.
She bit her lip and stood straight. "Listen…I was wondering…maybe later…"
Sherlock raised his head and caught something. He squinted. "You wearing lipstick? You weren't wearing lipstick before."
Uh-oh. He caught it. She quickly scanned for an excuse. "I…er…refreshed it a bit," she lied, smiling.
He passed her a skeptic look. "Sorry, you were saying?" He returned his attention to his notepad.
It came out fast and quite even. "I was wondering if you'd like to have coffee." She was a bit surprised at how her voice hadn't cracked.
He shut his notebook. "Black, two sugars please. I'll be upstairs." He gave her a slight nod and turned around, walking away.
Molly stood silently in the morgue with the beaten cadaver. "Um…okay…" She failed. He thought she was literally asking him for coffee. Ah well, that was Sherlock.
She returned to the restroom and wiped away her lipstick and then made a coffee for him. She went upstairs and found two other men in her lab. She didn't know the second man who was standing at the edge with a walking cane, leaning awkwardly to one side as Sherlock texted away on his phone.
"Ah, Molly! Coffee," Sherlock said. "Thank you."
She wasn't sure if he was saying it to her or the short man on his left after handing back his phone. She handed him his cup. He quickly noticed the difference.
"What happened to the lipstick?" he asked, taking the cup.
"It wasn't working for me," replied Molly, smiling still.
"Really? I thought it was a big improvement."
Her face fell. It was?
He turned around and walked back to his microscope. "Mouth's too – small now." He indicated with his fingers and took a sip from his cup.
She sighed. "Okay..."
He was obviously busy with these people in her lab. It was probably something to do with his new case so she left him alone. She walked down the hall silently. Perhaps it was pointless to waste so much of her emotions on Sherlock. Perhaps it wasn't. She didn't know but she decided to just go with what she was feeling. Sherlock was a great man, he had some amazing talents and she respected him for who he was and didn't define him based on other's opinions. She knew him.
Molly smiled and continued her way down to morgue to monitor the cadaver he told her look after because well, when he needed her – she was there for him.
And it was as simple as that.