A/N: So this is a bit of a beast that has taken forever. There will be a follow up to this, and another piece that I'll drop in at some point down the line. Thanks to everyone who reviewed Filling the Silence, so glad you liked it. :)
Never Again
by Flaignhan
He always sits away from everyone, and she can't help but wonder if he's lonely. He doesn't look lonely, and he certainly doesn't sound lonely when he boredly answers questions in lectures, but she's never seen him within ten yards of another human being. He's very lean, and rather pale, with thick dark hair that he'll absentmindedly ruffle when he gets bored. Her friends tease her because she always smiles when he does it, but she knows that they look too, even though half of them have got boyfriends.
In the lab, he always chooses the same bench, the one next to the one with the sealed off gas tap. He does go to extraordinary lengths to not be near anybody, and Molly wonders exactly what his issue is. He rolls his eyes at least a dozen times a session, never contributes anything positive, cuts people down (including the lecturer) and nearly killed Andy when he accidentally knocked his petri dishes off of the work bench, sending them and their contents smashing to the ground. But, despite all this, Molly still smiles when she sees him, and she doesn't know why.
She has thought, at least half a dozen times, that she ought to ask him if he wants to come down the pub with them all. If he missed out on fresher's week, or just didn't feel like joining in, he'll have missed all the bonding that goes with it, those first friendships forged outside of night clubs at three in the morning while someone's being sick into an alleyway. Every time she's worked up the nerve to do it, however, she's chickened out, telling herself that he's probably busy, or that he might be working on an assignment, or that he's probably got much cooler friends that he hangs around with in much cooler places than the Slug and Lettuce.
She arrives in class early one day, feeling fairly fresh even after a night in the student union. She knows full well that most of her friends will skip out on today's seminar - in fact most of the class will. When her friends discovered that Molly had a magical talent for drinking just the right amount on a night out, she was deemed official note taker, and before she heads back to the halls, she will stop by the library and photocopy her day's work to pass around to her nausea-stricken friends. No matter how decent she's feeling (it's only relative after all) she still scrunches up her face when she walks into a blazing row, between the dark haired boy and Professor Quinn.
"It's part of the requirement, Holmes! There's no getting around it without failing the entire unit!"
"This is ridiculous, why on Earth should I be judged in conjunction with someone else's capabilities? They'll only drag me down." He turns at the sound of Molly entering the room, throws her a venomous look, then snaps his attention back to Professor Quinn. "I'm not doing it."
"Then you fail," Professor Quinn says with a shrug. "And as for your assertion that you'll only be dragged down…"
Holmes stiffens, and even without seeing his face, Molly can tell that this comment doesn't go down well.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asks coolly.
"Well, genius though you undoubtedly are, Holmes, you're not the only one consistently achieving high grades. Hooper's working on the same level as you for this unit. I don't know what she's doing in other units, but in this one certainly, she's more than a decent match for you."
This is apparently enough for Holmes to throw her another glare over his shoulder. "I've told you. I work alone."
"Not if you want to pass the unit, you don't. Now, stop being a stuck up little pillock and go and ask Hooper nicely if she has the patience to be your presentation partner, before somebody else does, and you're left with Rudge."
Holmes pulls a face at this, looking like he's got a hideously unpleasant taste stuck in his mouth. Professor Quinn is apparently done with the conversation, because he turns away and starts scrawling on the chalk board. After a moment, Holmes turns, stares at Molly, then eventually approaches.
"Would you consent to work on this irrelevant and demeaning task with me?"
"Nicely," Professor Quinn calls over his shoulder. "Come on Holmes, surely you can dredge up some niceness from somewhere."
Holmes closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, and when he opens them, he flips the chair in front of Molly's desk around and sits down opposite her. He plasters an eerie smile on his face, then says: "It would be my honour if I could share this enlightening experience with you, Miss Hooper."
"Genuine wouldn't go amiss, either," Professor Quinn mutters, and Holmes rolls his eyes, his smile dropping off his face instantly.
"Are you insane" Molly asks, frowning at him.
"You see?" Holmes says, standing abruptly and knocking the chair away from him. "She doesn't want to!"
"I didn't say that," Molly says quickly. "I just asked if you were insane. It seems a reasonable question, and one that I should probably know the answer to before I agree to spend evenings in a chemistry lab with you."
He digests this information, his scowl diminishing, and then he repositions his chair and sits down again.
"I'm a high functioning sociopath," he tells her.
"Explains a lot," Molly says, and it does. It most definitely does. All his time alone, all his social ineptitude, his assertion that solitude is better all makes sense, and she wonders if the problem is only exacerbated by other people deciding that they don't want to deal with a sociopath, high functioning or not.
"Does it?" he asks boredly.
"Yes," Molly replies. "It does."
He rolls his eyes then leans over the desk. "No chatting, no giggling," he says, counting off his rules on his fingers. "No interference with the project without my consent."
"That goes both ways," Molly interrupts. He frowns at her, as though he wonders why she might make such a request.
"Is that really necessary?"
"Yes," Molly replies. "And no being a prick either."
His jaw drops a fraction at this, his lips parted, eyebrows drawn together in an offended frown.
"If you're going to have rules then I'm going to have rules," Molly says. "And that's final."
Professor Quinn sends her a wink, and Molly smiles, hoping that she might actually achieve some sort of control in this situation. It's a long shot, but she'll give it a bloody good go.
Were she worse at this, he would be impossible to work with. As it is, her own perfectionism pre-empts any criticisms from him, so all she ever really hears are intakes of breath or half formed words that cut off abruptly. They make notes in silence, recording their observations, and when their pens still, they swap notebooks, scanning their eyes down the other's work to ensure that they're both on the same page. It's the easiest way to avoid too much discussion, which seems to be his preferred way of doing everything. She's sure that he would do the whole project himself and tell her to stay away, were she not so keen on earning her high grades through hard work and attention to detail.
Their collective patience is tested when, a few days before the deadline, they turn up at ten o'clock in the evening to a bustling lab, microscopes on every bench, test tubes and petri dishes scattered haphazardly all over the place. Sherlock takes one look at the mess then turns on the spot, grabbing Molly by the upper arm and hauling her away from the lab.
"What are you doing?" she demands, wrenching her arm from his grasp. "We've got to check on our - "
"We'll come back. I'm not prepared to work with those morons running about."
"Oh come on," Molly says exasperatedly. "They're all so wrapped up in their own projects that - "
"That the chances of them even being aware of the fact that other people have work out too is slim to none. I'm not having another incident like I did with that Jameson idiot."
"That was an accident," Molly argues.
"An accident that put me three weeks behind," Sherlock snaps. "I'll come and collect you from your dormitory at a quarter to five. Don't oversleep."
"Collect me?" Molly asks incredulously. "What d'you mean collect me?"
"I'm not going to let you walk across campus alone at that time of night," he says briskly. "It's not safe."
"Oh," Molly says, a little takenaback. She hadn't expected an answer like that. She had thought the point in him collecting her was to ensure that she was adhering to his schedule and his schedule alone. She hadn't thought for a second that it was due to any real concern for her safety. "Is quarter to five really necessary?" she asks, not much warming to the idea of getting up that early, especially not with a full day of lectures ahead.
"The others will have given up by then," he says, clasping his hands behind his back. "And they won't be back until half past six at the earliest. That should give us plenty of time to collate our final results."
"Right," Molly says, knowing there's no use in arguing with him. They head towards the exit in silence and traipse back over the wet grass towards the halls, Molly shivering despite having donned both her university hoodie and her heavy woollen coat. She knows that when they make the return journey in a few hours time it'll be far colder, and she resolves to wrap up much warmer, even to the point where she looks a bit of a tit, because it's only Sherlock who'll see her, and he won't give a damn what she's wearing.
"You look utterly ridiculous," he tells her, glancing down at her when she opens the door. He's wearing his usual black pea coat, a fine burgundy scarf looped around his neck. He is a stark contrast to her, with her jumper, hoodie, coat, thick fluffy scarf, chunky mittens and woolly bobble hat.
"Well I'll be warm on the inside and the outside," Molly says. "Unlike you." She steps through the gap between Sherlock and the doorframe, and closes her dormitory door behind her. From the corner of her eye she catches the corner of his mouth twitch into a smirk.
"Sociopaths don't do warm," he says coolly, turning towards the main doors.
"Do they do frostbite?" Molly asks cheerfully. "Because if you don't have any gloves…"
She thinks he might have expected her to be slightly more downbeat, and wonders whether that might have been a factor in his choice of time slot. By the time they make it outside, he's already got a cigarette in his mouth, his thumb flicking the lid of his lighter open. He turns his back on the wind to give his cigarette a fighting chance of lighting, and soon they're walking briskly, Molly trying to ignore the frequent puffs of smoke that float in her direction.
When they arrive in the lab, the place is a bomb site. There are smashed test tubes on the ground, equipment left out, petri dishes with various growths abandoned on tables. The box of litmus paper is on its side, coloured strips spilling onto the floor. There's a trail of iodine around one of the desks, granules of phosphate scattered over the floor.
Molly looks over to Sherlock, who looks positively murderous at the mess. She bites her lip, not wanting to say anything that would aggravate him further, but also not wanting to deal with the stony silence.
"I'll…clear a space, shall I?" She heads to the most respectable looking desk and clears away the abandoned pages of notes, stacking them neatly on the window sill in case anybody comes back for them, She removes a slide from a broken microscope then carries it back to the cupboard, straightening up the others in there, which have been knocked askew in the other students' haste earlier in the night. Sherlock tugs the orange rubber tube off of the gas tap and slams the bunsen burner onto the desk behind, then sweeps the mixture of powders and crystals onto the floor, where they crunch and crack underfoot when he walks over them.
"All right?" Molly asks, and she opens the fridge door, sinking down to her haunches to pull their tray of petri dishes out.
"It'll do," Sherlock says with a scowl, still trying to sweep away a few stray gritty granules that are caught in the wood grain. "They're animals…absolute animals."
"They just leave it to the last minute and panic," Molly says with a shrug. "All of them do. It's only us that've been working on it since the beginning."
"Well maybe they should spend less time getting drunk and vomiting and more time doing what they're supposed to be," Sherlock says through gritted teeth. He sits down heavily on his stool and rapidly unbuttons his coat, tossing it onto a stool on the row in front and tugging off his scarf. Molly tries to ignore the smooth skin of his neck as she carries their tray over and sets it on the table.
"Have you ever actually been out before?" Molly asks, sliding onto the stool next to him. He leans over and grabs the microscope from the next desk, and Molly opens her bag, taking out her notebook and pen and flipping to the section dedicated solely to her project with Sherlock.
"Of course I've been out," Sherlock says dismissively, adjusting the settings on the microscope until he is content with them.
"To a club, I mean," Molly continues. "On student night."
"I don't have time for such trivial nights of desperation," he says primly. "Only idiots - "
"I go out on student night," Molly says firmly.
"Case in point," he mumbles, preparing their first slide.
Molly swallows down the acidic retort she had planned to send his way, and instead says: "You know if you ever wanted to try it, you could always come out with me and my friends. They aren't that bad, and they don't get stupidly drunk."
Sherlock ignores her, focusing all of his attention on the eyepiece of the microscope. Molly sighs and sketches out a results table, scribbling the date and time in the top right hand corner of her page. She is certain that if he gave it a chance, he'd enjoy himself. Even sociopaths have to have fun at some point, right?
"This is amazing!" he yells at her. He's standing three feet away from her, but she still struggles to hear him through the heavy bass shaking the walls of the club.
"I told you!" she calls back. He can't hear her however. He's far too preoccupied with dancing, on his own, in the middle of the dance floor. He's had at least half a dozen girls try and dance with him, and even a couple of guys, but every time he's been approached he has point blank ignored them. Molly bites her lip, smiling as she watches him.
"How the hell did you get him to come out?" Becky shouts in her ear.
"I told him it would be a good experiment," Molly replies. She takes a sip of her Bacardi Breezer then glances at her watch. She's still on track for a good night out, with two more drinks left in her allowance, should she want them. Becky has already overtaken her on the drink front, and is stumbling around in her heels looking like she's liable to break her ankle at any moment. Sherlock has outstripped even Becky. His presence has ignited the interest of so many people that he's had drinks pressed into his hand all night, ranging from bottles of Bud, to artificially flavoured and coloured vodka shots (they'll give him hell in the morning), spirits and mixers, and even, at one point, an elaborate cocktail that looks like it has half the fruit aisle from Sainsbury's crammed onto the rim of the glass. She had warned him of the dangers of mixing his drinks so extensively, but he had waved her concerns aside, telling her he would be fine.
She looks over to him again, just to make sure he's still standing, and he's still on the dance floor, spinning around and around, his arms outstretched. She shakes her head, smiling to herself, and allows Becky to grab her by the hand and yank her over to her new group of friends she's made in the last five minutes. (One of them has apparently bought her a drink, so naturally, they are best friends for life as of now.)
Suddenly, someone barges into her. Molly is knocked off balance, stumbling into one of the rugby team, who catches her and smiles down at her. Molly offers an awkward smile in return and straightens herself out, smoothing her clothes down as she stands on tip toes, craning her neck to see what the fuss is. There is a huge space in the middle of the dance floor, and it seems the entire club has shifted, knocking people askew in the confusion.
When the crowd parts, Molly sees the source of the upset and sighs, passing her bottle to Becky. She pushes through the crowd to Sherlock, who is on his hands and knees, feeling the full force of the consequences of drink mixing. It's not a pretty sight, but Molly's seen far worse in her lectures. She grabs a bottle of water from someone's hand without asking, and they don't argue so she assumes they don't mind, and she lowers herself to her haunches, twisting open the cap of the bottle and waiting for Sherlock to finish. He takes the water gratefully and starts to drink quickly, and Molly tries to grab his arm and stop him, but he dodges out of reach. Moments later, the second wave comes, though this time it's mostly water and bile.
"Slowly," Molly says into his ear when he turns to the water again. "Just little sips." She brushes his fringe away from his forehead, which is sticky with sweat, his hair clinging to it, his pale skin changing colour as it reflects the flashing lights of the disco ball hung from the ceiling. When he looks like he's empty, Molly stands up and pulls him to his feet, slinging his arm around her shoulders. He doesn't argue, despite the fact that she knows he hates human contact, and she leads him stumbling towards the exit, before the bouncers get wise to the incident.
It's a good job that he's so light. He can barely walk, and so Molly totters along on her ridiculous wedge sandals, that seem so silly now she's dragging a six foot tall boy back to campus. He babbles incoherently for most of the journey, and they have to pause at a bus stop while Sherlock wretches, one hand thrown against the shelter to steady himself. Molly checks her watch and tries to ignore the hacking and gagging, and once he's finished, he straightens himself up again, slings his arm around Molly's shoulders and wipes his mouth with the cuff of his coat.
"And you do this four times a week?" he slurs.
"I don't do this," Molly says, struggling under his weight. "I go out, I have a few drinks, a good time, and then I go home. You're a lightweight with no experience, no wonder you're falling to pieces."
He sighs heavily but says nothing as they arrive at the campus gates. Molly jabs in the key code, batting Sherlock's interfering hand out of the way, and hauls him through the gates. He points vaguely in the direction of his building and Molly guides him over, her shoulders aching from the ever increasing amount of weight that he's resting on her.
He struggles with finding his keys for no more than ten seconds before Molly intervenes, thrusting her hand into his coat pocket and pulling out a keyring with at least a dozen keys attached to it.
"What are these all for?" she asks incredulously as she flips through them, trying to find the one similar to her own which will get him in to the building.
"Stuff," Sherlock says, slumping against the wall, his eyes glazed as he watches her. She unlocks the door, closing her eyes in contentment as a blast of warm air hits her from the overhead fan heater, then grabs Sherlock by the shoulder of his coat and pulls him inside.
"Floor?"
"First," he says, his hand slapping onto the bannister before he makes a great deal of fuss hauling himself up the first step.
Molly glances at her watch again, and thinks that Becky and the others will probably be home before she is. She wonders if they'll have the decency to leave her a cup of tea out on the counter, but she thinks that's probably optimistic, bordering on fantasy.
It takes another ten minutes for Sherlock to deem himself victorious in the battle against the stairs, and there is yet another door for Molly to unlock. Sherlock nearly falls through it when it swings open, and Molly has to grab him quickly before he topples onto the floor. She closes the door behind them as quietly as she can, but apparently there are people still awake in this flat, because a dark haired, pointy nosed boy sticks his head out of the kitchen and gives Molly the once over.
"Bloody hell boys," he sneers, "He's even brought a girl back!"
"And your girl is currently shagging the vice-president of the student union," Sherlock says smugly. The boy's expression falters, but his over confident smile is pasted back on in a split second.
"And what makes you think that?" he asks cockily. "The parting of my hair? Colour of my socks?"
"No Sebastian," Sherlock says patiently, standing up straighter. "Because she had her hand in his trousers and her tongue halfway down his oesophagus when we were in the club."
Sebastian's face falters, and Sherlock staggers forward, shoving Sebastian out of the way and dragging Molly with him until they reach the door at the very end of the corridor on the right. Molly jams the key in the lock and twists it, glad to be at the end of her journey. Sherlock manages to take himself inside and collapses onto the bed, sprawled on his front. Molly sighs, knowing she'll have to sort him out before she leaves, and so she sets her handbag down on his desk along with his keys.
"I'm just gonna use your loo," she says, not bothering to wait for a reply as she slips in to the en-suite that is identical to the one in her own dormitory. She glances into the mirror, pleased to see that even if Sherlock looks a total state, she's escaped rather unscathed. She washes her hands, very conscious of the splash back from his first round of vomiting on the dance floor, then neatens up her hair and returns to his bedroom.
To her surprise, he's standing up, his wardrobe open, and she thinks he's finding some clean clothes, until she hears the trickling of liquid and sees the puddle growing on the floor as it drips off of the edge of the base of his wardrobe.
"What are you doing?" she asks cautiously.
"Going to the toilet. A little privacy wouldn't go amiss, Hooper," he says haughtily. She fights to keep her smirk at bay, knowing full well that she has done idiotic things while drunk as well. Admittedly she has never been so bad that she's relieved herself inside a wardrobe, but accidents do happen.
"You know that's the wardrobe, don't you?"
He frowns, zips his jeans up, then takes a step back. "Well observed," he says, nodding slowly, his face slack. She knows he'll remember very little of this in the morning, if any of it at all. She pulls back the duvet on his bed before going over to him, wrinkling her nose at the smell emanating from his carpet, and unbuttons his coat, slipping it off his shoulders as he stands there, watching her closely, his arms like jelly as she tries to pull them out of his sleeves. She tugs the scarf off of his neck, undoes an extra button on his shirt, and then guides him over to the bed, pushing him gently onto it.
Taking his shoes off is a rather unpleasant task. They have fared the worst this evening, and it's with a great deal of care that she unties his laces and removes them, making sure she doesn't inadvertently end up with a palmful of vomit. His socks are less daunting, and are off within seconds. When she looks up, his head is slumped forward, chin resting against his chest as he softly snores. She shakes her head and gently lowers him onto the mattress, resting his head on his pillows before lifting his legs and rotating them so he's comfortable. She covers him with the duvet, takes one last look at him in the most vulnerable state she will probably ever see him in, then smiles and turns off the light.
"Never again."
She smirks and he slides onto the stool next to her. She can practically smell the hangover on him, despite the fact that he's clearly had a shower. His hair is fluffy and scruffy, and he's even paler than usual. He buries his face in his hands, his shoulders hunched and thankfully, most of the class were out last night, and so have skipped the session to nurse their hangovers.
"How do you do it?" he asks. "How do you turn up here so bloody happy after a night like that?"
"Because I know my limits," Molly says brightly, turning to a clean page in her notebook and taking the lid off of her pen.
Sherlock shakes his head. "No…it's witchcraft…there's nothing wrong with you. You look like you had an early night."
"When I say I know my limits," she says, leaning closer to him and lowering her voice as Professor Quinn begins to write up some pointers on the chalk board. "I don't just mean I know when to stop before I throw up. I mean I know biologically what my limits are."
He opens his eyes and frowns at this. "Go on…"
"Well, it's just a question of time period, blood alcohol level, type of alcohol, hours of sleep needed to make it through the following day reasonably well, water intake…"
"You work it out?" he asks, sitting up a little straighter, his interest growing.
"Of course," Molly says. "I'm not an idiot."
"No…" he says slowly, scrutinising her. "You're not, are you?"
She should feel offended that he's only just arriving at that conclusion now, but having gotten to know him, she realises it's actually quite the compliment.
"About last night," he says, suddenly sinking down in his seat again, his voice barely above a whisper. He looks around, conscious of eavesdroppers, but when he realises that nobody's listening, he continues. "Don't tell anyone about the…incident, will you?"
"Incident?" Molly asks. She knows perfectly well what he might be referring to, but just on the off chance that he's talking about something else and the latter part of the night has been wiped completely from his mind, she decides to play dumb.
"The wardrobe," he mutters.
"Oh yeah, that," Molly says, feigning recognition. "Don't worry, won't say a word."
He gazes at her for a moment longer, and Molly knows he's trying to work out whether he needs to issue some sort of drastic threat or whether he can trust her, and eventually he diverts his attention from her, pulling his notebook out of his satchel and dropping it loudly onto the desk. He winces at the noise and Molly shakes her head as she scribbles the date in the corner of her page.
"You'll look back and laugh in ten years' time," she tells him cheerfully. "I promise."
He ignores her, and Molly smirks. Maybe not ten years then. Perhaps fifteen.
The End.