A/N Not my characters, don't profit. All in good fun.
Most of this was an outtake from "Unnamed Things." I took it out because it was too big a digression to fit into the length of story I wanted, but I couldn't bear to delete it. Since I'm having some trouble with "That Dear Perfection" at the moment but am trying to write every day, I dusted this off and finished it.
As it turned out, having Sherlock Holmes ask you on a date was one thing. Actually getting to go on that date was another. After a few cases and bodies got in the way, they finally managed to be free the same Saturday. She had been meaning to visit the Bodies exhibition forever and had actually squealed when she'd gotten the text from Sherlock inviting her. It was an absolutely perfect idea for their first date.
What she wasn't prepared for was how dreadfully unprepared Sherlock was for anything resembling a date. He did come to collect her, but she hardly recognized him when she opened her door. He was wearing a baseball cap, pale blue polo shirt, khakis and boat shoes. He looked like an American frat boy. Having never seen him in anything but a suit, she was gobsmacked.
"Sherlock, are you- What are you wearing?"
"A baseball cap, polo shirt and khakis. If your question is really 'Why?' well, For some reason, the newspapers still seem to be interested in my personal life, so I sometimes have to go to desperate measures to keep from having a photo of me picking up my dry cleaning in the Mail. If you disapprove we can certainly go back to Baker Street so I can change. That is, if you're ready for your press nickname. Or maybe they'll skip the Perky Pathologist rubbish and get right to a portmanteau. Do you prefer Sherlolly or Mollock?"
"Oh," she managed.
"Right. Mollock sounds too much like bollocks, doesn't it? Shall we?" he took her hand and led her to the waiting taxi.
That hadn't been the worst of it. It was actually the best. Once at the exhibition, Sherlock plowed through it as if he were by himself. Since he was so quick to observe and such a fast reader, he only spent seconds at each display before moving on. Molly was out of breath and seething by the time they got to the end but Sherlock was exhilarated as he ushered her into a taxi. He gave the driver an address on Northumberland Street.
"Excellent," he said. "Not sure why I didn't go sooner. The one who'd had the kidney transplant was fascinating, don't you think?"
"Sherlock, I barely remember a thing, it's all a blur of veins and bones and muscle!"
He looked at her blankly.
"Sherlock, when you go to something like this, a museum, or whatever, with someone else, it's not just about seeing everything as fast as possible."
His eyes narrowed a bit, clearly not understanding.
"You—you talk about things, as you see them, and it's not just about looking, it's about sharing a mutual interest."
"But that's what we're doing now."
"No, but we went too quickly and I didn't get anything out of it!"
He took off his baseball cap, ran his hand through his hair, and shoved the hat back on his head, muttering.
"What was that?" she asked.
"I said I knew this was a bad idea. I'm not—this isn't something I do."
"No, that's the problem, you're doing things the way you do them, by yourself. I know you haven't had much dating experience but—"
"How do you know that?"
"Well, okay, I don't know it, but it seems that way. So why didn't you ask John for advice?"
"Ask John? Why? For tips on sappy poetry and serial dating?"
"It would have been better than this!"
There was the slightest twitch of his brow and a momentary downturn of his mouth before he turned away, facing forward. He gave the driver her address. They had left her house less than two hours before. She touched his arm.
"Sherlock, you don't have to take me home. We can still go to dinner. Surely we can't screw that up."
He was quiet for several blocks.
"Could we get it to go and take it back to yours?" he asked, still looking straight ahead.
"Of course."
He told the cabbie that they were indeed going to Northumberland Street. The cabbie shrugged and changed direction. Sherlock made a phone call.
"Angelo," he said. "Slight change of plans. We won't need that table after all." As Sherlock ordered for both of them, in Italian, Molly decided that the short sleeved shirt really wasn't that bad, as it afforded her a rare glimpse of his forearms. She caught herself reciting the names of the muscles as she watched them move under his skin.
He ended his call and looked at her. She blushed under his scrutiny. He couldn't tell that she'd been thinking about the tendons in his hands and how dexterous they were, could he?
"I ordered you the Carbonara."
"Perfect," she said. Was it luck or had he remembered her tomato allergy?
They pulled up in front of an adorable restaurant and Sherlock hopped out. He came back a few minutes later with two bags of food. A large, jovial looking man in an apron peered out the door and waved enthusiastically at her when he spotted her. Molly waved back.
"I take it that's Angelo?" she said as Sherlock got back in the car.
"Yes. He was quite disappointed to not get to meet you. He's always had a vested interest in my love life for some reason."
"If he's your friend, he wants to see you happy."
He hummed noncommittally and they spent the rest of the ride in silence. At her house, he took the bags into the kitchen and started unpacking them.
"I ordered the Bolognese, but I told him about your allergy, so there won't be any cross contamination. Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like you did after the last time I kissed you."
Oh. That time. When he had purposefully left his scarf in the lab and had pulled her into her office when he came to retrieve it. After the third time they had to cancel their plans. When he'd apologized as he was leaving and she wasn't sure if he was apologizing for breaking their date or for kissing her.
"Nothing, I'm just—you remembered. About the allergy."
"Well, as much as anaphylaxis would be a brilliant bookend for the beginning of this evening, I'd rather not finish out the night in A&E. What kind of wine do you have?"
He looked positively sheepish when she kissed him on the cheek. She let her hand linger on his arm for only a moment before taking her food into the sitting room.
"There's a pinot noir in the cupboard." She came back to find the corkscrew, which was inexplicably in the junk drawer.
"It's a screw top," he said when she handed it to him.
"Oh. It's been there for ages. I actually think it was a gift."
He had taken her hand when she handed him the corkscrew. He hadn't let it go.
"I'm sorry about earlier. I'd like to try again, if we're ever both free on the same day again."
"Of course." She ran her thumb along his knuckles and looked down at his hand, for once not thinking about how strong it was, but how unsure it could be. "You know, the good thing is that it can only get better."