The first thing he noticed was that Molly had her hair down.
She never had her hair down.
John peered at her curiously. She was hunched over some paperwork, her hair artfully masking her face. John called it artful because every so often, she adjusted the strands so that her head and neck were hidden behind it.
John thought this very odd.
Not so subtly, John strolled up to Molly, who did not look up from her paperwork. He cleared his throat. "Molly," he said.
The girl started and whipped her head up to look at him. "Oh, John," she breathed. "You frightened me."
John hardly heard her. He was busy squinting at her neck.
With his brow furrowed, John snatched a pencil from the counter and lifted Molly's hair with it. He nearly lost his grip on the slender stick as he saw.
"Oh my god," he whispered, his face one of horror. There were bruises all over Molly's neck, as if someone had grabbed her delicate throat and squeezed.
Immediately Molly knocked his pencil away and flattened her hair down over the bruises. "It's nothing," she insisted, her cheeks turning red.
Oh lord, John thought. She's going to cry. "Molly, it's fine, it's all right. Why don't you tell us what happened?" He looked back at Sherlock who was sitting stiffly at his microscope and not looking up.
"N-nothing happened," Molly stammered, now covering her neck with her hands.
"Stop that, I'm a doctor, let me see them," John snapped. Reluctant, Molly removed her hands, her cheeks a brilliant shade of crimson. John examined the injuries with utmost care. "Molly, you poor thing, if you were attacked, why didn't you tell us?"
Molly avoided his truth-seeking gaze. "I wasn't… attacked," she managed.
"Sherlock," John called, "do you see these?"
Sherlock looked up from his microscope as if he had just realized there were others in the room. "Hm? Oh, yes, very tragic. John, come and see what I've found. It's more interesting than Molly's neck."
John stared at his friend in disbelief. "She's been attacked," he hissed. "Don't you care at all?"
"It's nothing serious," Sherlock informed him. "The bruises will fade in a few days. And they were completely unintentional."
"No one unintentionally chokes someone," John retorted, looking back at Molly.
"She wasn't choked," Sherlock said shortly.
John scowled, but continued to examine Molly's bruises. With Sherlock's claim in mind, he began to see irregularities with the dark purple marks. Like how they didn't quite line up like a hand would, or that they seemed a bit… puckered. John frowned. It almost looked like they were…
Blinking in realization, John looked back at Sherlock, then at Molly, then back again. "Are these… hickeys?"
Molly blushed even more furiously. Sherlock's response was delayed.
"Truly your powers of deduction know no bounds," the detective quipped, not looking up from his lens.
The phrase may soon start to suit him, because John picked up on the delay. He blinked several times, adding things up in his mind. A gasp escaped his lips, and he pointed at Sherlock in shock. "Your teeth?"
Sherlock did not reply.
John was speechless. "Oh," he said eventually. Sherlock kept staring into his microscope and Molly kept blushing and studying the wall. John suddenly felt very awkward. "All right then." He ran a hand through his short hair. "Excuse me a moment. I need to check the skies for pigs." And he left the room in a hurry.
