Chapter 1.
"I have to quit that job. I just can't take it anymore!" Mary shouted in the general direction of the kitchen as she flopped down, face first, onto the 1980's couch that occupied a large space in the tiny flat's main room.
"You say the same thing ever night when you come home," a sweet voice said from the kitchen.
Moments later a thin woman with long chocolate colored locks emerged from the next room carrying a tray with two mugs, a bowl of sugar, and two shots of tequila.
"I wasn't sure if the day was chamomile bad or liquor bad."
Mary perked up at the sound of the tray being gently set on the coffee table. "Definitely Jose tonight. Like, the whole bottle."
"Drink the tea first while you tell me what was so bad, then we go spring-break crazy and forget why it sucked with Mr. Cuervo. Deal?" Molly bargained.
"Deal," Mary said grabbing the mug as she began to vent to her flatmate.
Mary had met Molly Hooper when they were at uni. Molly had always been the studious one. After acing nearly every class she took (Mary never let her live down that C she got in her ceramics class.) Molly went on to medical school, passed her boards and became a doctor. Her shyness kept her from practicing with the living so after a few years Molly found herself working in the pathology department of Saint Bartholomew's.
Unlike Miss Molly Hooper, Mary was not the type to be found with her nose in a book. After barely making the marks to graduate, she found herself hopping from mundane job to mundane job. Currently she was working as a waitress in a café on Baker Street in London.
The café was in walking distance of their flat and Molly worked close enough she could pop in on her lunch breaks.
Knowing she would see Molls a few times a week was the only salvation Mary found at the café. While most of the clientele were sweet old men looking for their daily tuna melts or groups of women coming to share the newest gossip over a cuppa there was one patron she abhorred.
Mary quickly downed her tea and scuttled to the kitchen to grab the bottle.
"He was back today," she shouted to Molly.
Molly blushed, she knew exactly to whom Mary was referring.
"Oh?"
"He's always so insensitive and needy. I really don't see what you see in him, honey."
Molly blushed a more vibrant shade of red this time.
"Molls, seriously? He is so… so…"
Finally, Molly mustered up the courage to defend her crush, cutting off Mary's thought mid-sentence.
"He really isn't that bad, Mary. Sure he's curt and tetchy, but deep down I think he really has a good heart. I mean, he even has a flat mate now."
"That Watson bloke? He's cute, but I don't see that lasting any longer than a snowball in the desert." Mary wasn't about to admit to her shameless and frequent flirting with Dr. Watson to Molly.
A few shots later Molly was beginning to feel a pleasant tingling sensation throughout her body.
"You need to take more risks," a not entirely sober Mary muttered.
Puzzled and slightly drunk, Molly looked at Mary with glazed eyes, her eyebrows knit together.
"You need to make the first move!" Mary shouted, golden liquid sloshing out of her glass.
Molly blushed a lovely shade of crimson at the thought. She decided the best way to get Mary to let the idea go was to play dumb and innocent.
"What do you mean?" Molly asked, trying to play as though the alcohol was affecting her generally sharp mind.
Mary saw through her ploy and wasn't going to give up easily.
"You need to text him… tonight. Right now!"
"Who?" Molly muttered before downing another shot.
"Sherlock Holmes!"
...
"Bored!"
"Sherlock, could you please stop with the riding crop?"
"BORED!"
"Sherlock, we just bought this chair."
Try as he might John Watson's pleas weren't going to stop his flat mate from beating the tar out of the brand new chair they had found. Tragic too, it was quite comfortable.
"I saw that woman again today," Sherlock interjected between blows to the furniture.
"Woman? What woman? The Woman?!"
Sherlock paused, mid swing. "John, we both know Irene Adler is dead. I meant that ginger girl in the café you always are making eyes at when we stop for lunch."
The world's only Consulting Detective when back to abusing the chair.
"Oh. Mary?" John blushed wishing he had gone down to lunch with Sherlock today instead of eating left over casserole. "Did she say anything about me?"
Pausing again, Sherlock dropped his weapon and threw his long, lean body onto the chair he had just tenderized and let out a displeased "hmph." He disliked when John flirted with waitresses at places they frequented. When the relationship inevitably ended he could no longer dine there on the days he was actually hungry enough to eat.
"I think she might be friends with Molly Hooper." John added in a feeble attempt to engage his bored friend. "You know, Molly, from Bart's."
"Yes, of course I know Molly." Sherlock barked, "What would give you any indication that I was unaware of Miss Hooper?"
At that moment Sherlock's phone buzzed across the room.
Unfolding himself from the rather now lopsided armchair, he glided over to the desk and unlocked the phone.
"Well, speak of the Devil." He remarked in his baritone voice. "It appears as though Miss Hooper has found herself drowning her sorrows in tequila this evening."
"What? How could you possibly know that?"
Sherlock tossed the phone across the room so he could read the message.
'Sherlock, come at once. I need you. xxx, MH'
"Sherlock it sounds like she needs help, not like she's drunk." John said as he jumped from his chair, somehow simultaneously pulling on his coat. " We should go check on her."
"No. She's fine. She always texts me when she's, how do I put this delicately, 3 sheets to the wind."
"Fine," John snapped, rather perturbed at the man's insensitivity, "I'll go!"
"Have fun. Give my regards to Dr. Hooper… oh and ask if she has any spare eyes lying around the morgue. I need some for an experiment!" Sherlock shouted as he picked up his violin.
Before he could start playing the door of 221b slammed shut. Sherlock paused for a moment and wondered if he shouldn't join John. Putting his bow back to the violin, he hesitated once more.
"JOHN!" he shouted out the window as he watched the doctor hail a cab, "Wait for me."
'This had better be good,' He thought as he shoved his arms into his signature coat and burst out the front door into the cold London air.