This is my first fic - or, at least my first in this fandom and my first in almost two decades (Eeep! That makes me feel old!). I'm really keen for some feedback. This work is unbeta'd - so please forgive any glaring errors!
I was inspired by a scene from Aaron Sorkin's ill-fated show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I'll credit the scene when I get to it (saying anything more now will give the game away!). It's a cute moment which I thought would work well between Sherlock and Molly - and somehow as I was thinking about it a whole fic grew around it.
I hope you like it.
In the end the greatest threat to Molly's life as a result of her relationship with Sherlock didn't come from a master criminal like Moriarty, nor was it from a minor thug hell-bent on revenge, or even from Sherlock himself - at least not directly. The threat which had caused Molly to be admitted to casualty and rushed into emergency surgery came entirely from within.
As he stood in the doorway and gazed at her pale form clad in a hospital gown that only added to her appearance of helplessness, Sherlock wondered if it had all been worth it. If he knew that night over a year ago that his choices would lead them on a path that led to this day, would he change anything?
And if he could change it, would he be strong enough to?
Would he really be able to stop himself from knocking on her door that night, knowing as he did that it was meant to be his last night in England before his protracted death sentence. When faced with the reality of death - even a death promised to come in three months' time - he sought out the woman who had helped him die before. Somehow, the idea of equating Molly with death comforted him, and it was comfort he sought that night as he stood, hand poised over her buzzer.
Moving towards Molly as she lay on the hospital bed one year later, not yet recovered from general anaesthesia, Sherlock realised that the moment before the buzzer was pressed was the moment which directly led to this one now as a nurse busied herself taking blood samples and testing blood pressure and attaching IV bags and cannulas to Molly's arms - arms which carried more bruises than he'd noticed before that day.
But he did press her door buzzer that night, and he can still remember the worry in her voice over the intercom, matched only by the widening of her eyes when she saw him, a broken man in her doorway. She could always see him.
"I could have picked the lock, but I didn't think you'd appreciate having a recovering drug user break into your flat at midnight."
She ignored his attempt at humour, pulling her robe more tightly around herself, an armour as well as a shield from the cold air which entered her apartment as he did.
"What's wrong?" She asked, unmoving.
By way of answer he brushed passed her, sitting down on her lounge in the same spot he always did. He stared at a fireplace which now held nothing but embers, mere ghosts of heat.
She joined him, pulling an afghan around herself, more armour.
"Sherlock?" She spoke only his name, but conveyed so much - a question and a warning and a hint of anger mixed with concern.
He couldn't look at her, eyes fixed on the fireplace, wishing it back to life - a wish he held also for himself. He didn't know how long he has been silently staring before she reached out. Her hand on his was an electric shock or a jolt from an ECG.
His eyes met hers and he knew he couldn't lie.
"I'm going to die."
His tone so final, so defeated, making it clear that there would be no miracle this time, nor would she be able to save him.
"What's happened?"
He told her everything - about Magnussen and Mary, about convenient drug relapses and fake fiancées, about Christmas in the Cotswalds and murder most foul. Each event recited like a series of facts, his facade only breaking when he reached the moment he pulled the trigger. Pausing briefly to hide the emotion in his voice, he turned away from her compassionate gaze. He couldn't look at her, didn't want to see the moment he stopped being her hero, or whatever it was she'd created him to be, and discovered he was a cold-blooded murderer as well as a high-functioning sociopath. He knew she wouldn't be able to hide the disappointment in her eyes. He could always see her, too.
Recounting the moment he pulled the trigger was like an incantation, recreating the event before his own eyes - the weight of the gun in his hand, the sting of the wind whipped up by Mycroft's helicopter, the look of shock on John's face and the pool of Magnussen's blood slowly forming on the pavers around his now unrecognisable head. Spilled like the secrets he dared to share with the world.
Molly must have sensed he'd left her then, travelling back to that moment outside Magnussen's Palatial Appledore estate, and it was her touch which brought him back to her. A soft hand on his shoulder made him turn to her again.
Her touch was not unwelcome that night. Nor was it unexpected. Molly's visit to him in hospital during his recovery from Mary's gunshot was like the breaking of a dam for them. Sherlock remembered waking one morning from a morphine-induced stupor to see Molly curled up in the visitors' chair and using his mattress as a makeshift pillow. The state of her hair revealed to him the fact she'd been there the whole night. He didn't know if it was the morphine or pity or just plain curiosity which caused him to reach out and thread his fingers through her hair. It was as soft as he imagined, strains sliding though his fingers like silk tendrils.
The sensation caused her to make a slow transition from sleep to wake rather than shoot up with the shock of his touch. That shock came later when the small smile on her face fell the moment she realised where she was. Contentment replaced with an anger similar to that which burned in her eyes the day she slapped him for failing that drug test. For failing her.
"I meant to leave before you woke up." She said in using her professional tone while she stood and smoothed down the wrinkles in her shirt and pants.
"You can stay if you like." Sherlock found himself using his low, seductive tone, and paused, wondering if it truly was the morphine which had robbed him of his inhibitions or if it was something altogether different.
"No, Sherlock. I can't." The anger in her eyes was matched by the anger in her voice.
Resigned, all Sherlock could offer was an "ok" and she turned and headed out the door.
Something made her stop before leaving, something made her say, "just because you almost died doesn't mean I can forgive you."
A bigger man, or at least one with more emotional maturity would have left it at that, maybe accepted her feelings with a simple "ok", but emotional maturity was not one of Sherlock Holmes' many gifts. Instead of accepting her words at face value, he couldn't let her get away with what he saw to be a blatant lie.
"You're wrong."
"Excuse me?"
"Not only can you forgive me Molly, you already have."
"Shut up"
He used the bed adjuster to raise himself to sitting, gearing himself up for a fight, "You've spent every night in this room since I was re-admitted six days ago. You might plan to leave before I wake up but you can't hide the strands of your hair I've found or the smell of your shampoo in my sheets. And before you slept in my room, you'd sit outside. That one wasn't so hard to deduce, one of the nurses told me - a fill-in who you obviously hasn't had the chance to ask not to tell me like you had with all the others."
She shook her head. "I hate you."
"Molly, you've kept vigil at my bedside and gone to great lengths to keep it from me. I'd say that shows you definitely do not hate me."
Molly advanced on him. "Perhaps, but it doesn't show I've forgiven you for throwing away years of hard fought sobriety and risking turning back into that junkie I met on my first day at Bart's. A man who was so desperate to escape the confines of his mind he'd pollute it with anything he could get his hands on. A shell of a man. You'd risk everything you've become - or worse - risk dying - just for a case. How stupid would I be if I was willing to forgive you for that?"
"I think you are exactly that stupid, Molly Hooper."
And with that the dam broke, and Sherlock's heart ached at the sight of each of her tears.
"I am. I am that stupid. I do forgive you. And I hate myself for it."
Molly all but collapsed in the visitors' chair, a mixture of physical and emotional exhaustion. Sherlock couldn't help himself, reaching out to wipe each tear as it fell from her cheek.
Without thinking, he replaced his hands with his lips, kissing the places where her tears fell. Molly first closed her eyes to savour the feeling, but soon pulled away, unwilling to allow anything more than chaste lips on salty cheeks.
Wordlessly, she left him alone.
Molly didn't return to the hospital again.
But something passed between them that day, an unspoken acknowledgement that their relationship had begun to change.
Once he left hospital, he found himself making a pilgrimage to her flat more regularly than he'd care to admit to himself. At first he'd find a pretense - a book he wanted to borrow or a case that had him on that side of London. But after a while he'd just stride in and flop down on her lounge.
Pretense or no, their routine would be the same. Molly would act as if he wasn't there and he would enjoy the quiet companionship he'd be missing since John moved out and retreat into his mind palace. Every once and a while he'd make some exclamation related to his current train of thought, and Molly would stop whatever she was doing, join him on the lounge and let him explain his latest discovery. Often it was related to his current case, but other times it was a scientific theory or once a reaction to the poor quality of the detectives depicted on a show she'd made him watch days ago - almost like he'd been replaying the episode in his head.
As they would sit on the lounge together, the outside of their legs would brush, but neither of them would make a move apart. More and more they became comfortable with occasional contact, hands brushing while they washed dishes together, or lingering on each other's arms after helping the other shrug into their coat on the way out to dinner at Angelo's.
So when Molly placed a soft hand on his shoulder, bringing him back to her after he was lost in the memory of Magnussen's murder, Sherlock found it to be a welcome relief.
And when she looked him without disgust but with compassion and, he hoped, love, there was no wonder Sherlock found himself kissing her.
