A/N: Hello, new fandom! This is a request from the very talented Lady Heliotrope, whose writing is lovely and unexpected and you should really go read all of her everything if you haven't already. I hope I've done it justice, because it was a really interesting idea. I'll put the actual prompt at the bottom, because I figure I should give this story a chance to make its own point.
Set in Series 1, hints of established Johnlock.
Bright lights and bright smiles and sharp edges, and oh for a cigarette to make everything just the slightest bit farther away. The harsh fluorescents of the morgue beat down on Sherlock's head as Molly's precariously teetering smile beats on his mind, and really it's more of a grimace than a smile.
Mustn't snap, don't knock that smile over, John will be cross.
"Sherlock?" Molly's expression says she's called his name more than once. "The hydrofluoric acid."
He takes the beaker and nods a dismissal, then can't help watching her scurry away. Adults should not scurry. It makes his teeth hurt.
With a deep breath, he returns to his experiment. Acid. Human skin. Asphalt. An oak leaf. The killer was clever, but not thorough. What, he wonders, is the point of one without the other? Dull, dull, dull.
"Molly!" He doesn't look up from the microscope, knows she'll be fidgeting around the edges of the morgue somewhere. She never leaves until he does. "Get my phone."
She appears at his side blinking and biting her lips. "Where is it?"
"Jacket."
"The – the one you're wearing?"
He sighs and feels her flinch, feels his own stomach roll with anger and pity and sick self-loathing and none of these things show on his face as he says, "Yes, Molly, the one I'm wearing. Be a dear and reach in there and get my phone for me?" A candy-fake smile finishes her off and her hand trembles against him as she fumbles his phone out of his pocket.
He dictates a text and her fingers quiver over the letters and when she sets the phone back down on the table he lets her go. Under the microscope, the gleaming edges of acid-eaten mineral offer no complications.
***SHERLOCK***
Molly and John in the same room; what mad capricious god allowed this to happen? John had avoided Molly since he and Sherlock had become – whatever it was they were these days, Sherlock balks at labeling it and refuses to examine his motivations for that – but here they both are in the lab at St. Bart's and somehow the combination is making the spacious room claustrophobic.
And John is being so nice to Molly, over and beyond his customary politeness to the world at large, chuckling at her weak jokes and fixing that sparkling grin on her.
"John!" Sherlock calls, without a fixed purpose in mind, just stop that stop that because people do not benefit from the kind of pity with which John is treating her.
John ambles over, hands in the pockets of his jeans, so warm and relaxed it's all Sherlock can do to keep himself from burying his face in John's jumper-clad chest. "What's up?"
"I need coffee."
"You've a cup just to your left there, if you'll notice." Laughter in John's voice.
"It's cold."
"Well, if your need for coffee was so dire, why didn't you drink that cup?"
Before Sherlock can reply, a soft voice – "I'll warm it up for you, I don't mind."
"No, Molly, don't encourage him, he doesn't – "
"Yes, that would be lovely. Bring one for John, too, if you would." Sherlock doesn't watch as she takes the coffee and leaves, but when he looks up John is looking after her with lines of pity around his mouth and when he turns back to Sherlock they sharpen into irritation.
"You don't need to – "
"Yes, John. Now come on, we need to get down to the morgue. It's entirely possible that there will be fertilizer underneath the victim's toenails!"
John opens and shuts his mouth, then sighs and shakes his head and follows Sherlock. When they come back to the lab, there are two steaming cups of coffee next to the microscope, and Molly is perched on a chair, texting furiously. She looks up and shuts her phone when they come in.
"Oh – you're – good, I was worried – about the coffee, getting cold, I mean, not – well. Did you find out something useful?"
"Yes."
There is a beat of silence which Sherlock is aware he supposed to fill with more information. He refuses to on the grounds that looking hopeful and being excessively polite will result only in being trampled, and someone Molly's age should really know that by now.
John sighs and fills Molly in on their conclusions and she nods and chirps and makes entirely unnecessary encouraging comments. Sherlock spends another ten minutes looking at things in the microscope and then gets up and leaves as quickly as he can, saying nothing to either of them.
Neither he nor John drank a drop of their coffee, he realizes with a twitch of a smile.
***SHERLOCK***
Molly's wide eyes and soft voice and trembling presence stay with Sherlock after he leaves St. Bart's, following him out into the rain-edged air and down the street, and neither deep breathes nor John's appearance at his side do anything to dispel her. He grinds his teeth and clamps down on the urge to ask John for a cigarette, because that conversation always turns into begging within minutes.
They arrive at the crime scene to find Lestrade on the edge of true anger, not quite bellowing at his subordinates but clenching his fists and gesturing with short, sharp movements, sending uniforms scattering.
Lestrade's face when he sees Sherlock is a battle between relief and further irritation, and he barks, "Took you long enough. This one's the same as the others, no ID, no teeth, no fingers. What've you got?"
Sherlock opens his mouth to reel off his discoveries, pinned beneath Lestrade's impatience, then sees Molly nodding and smiling and closes his mouth again with a snap. He does not simply follow orders. He is not some half-wit uniformed lackey, he is Sherlock Holmes, the only one in the world, and Lestrade does not get to make demands of him.
"You mean you haven't put it together yet?" With a sweep of his coat, Sherlock ducks beneath the crime scene tape and holds it up for John. "Good Lord, Lestrade, the killer's practically signed his name! On three separate crime scenes; surely even you aren't this oblivious. It's all right here, unless one of your crack team has managed to contaminate it."
"Right." Lestrade says flatly, then turns away. "John, come get me when he's got it out of his system, yeah? I'll be with my crack team, gathering evidence." And then he strides away, shouting at Anderson to move, demanding statements from onlookers and generally handling the scene without another glance for Sherlock.
Something cold and bottomless opens up in Sherlock's chest and it's not until he feels John's hand in his that he realizes he's simply standing and staring after Lestrade with his mouth open. "All right?" John says.
Sherlock shuts his mouth and swallows. This is not happening; he was not just dismissed by Lestrade. He whirls and wraps his hands around John's face, staring into his eyes, his own reflection tiny but still clear – tall, imposing, solid.
"Sherlock. Are you all right?"
"I – yes." He says, because the fear that he had somehow transformed into Molly Hooper when he wasn't looking is simply too ridiculous to say aloud.
John puts a hand on his cheek and opens his mouth, but his eyes are blue pools of what looks like pity so Sherlock pulls away and goes marching after Lestrade, uniforms parting before him. He lays out the case for the DI, watching with satisfaction the customary shift from annoyance to disbelief to resigned admiration.
"And, obviously, he thinks these men are trying to replace his father, which is a ridiculous sentiment for which to commit murder, especially as his father's been dead for at least four years by now." He finishes with a flourish and turns to leave, then catches the look on Lestrade's face.
Pity. Head cocked to the side, eyes soft, lips pressed together, unmistakable pity.
"John!" Sherlock whirls and is definitely not running away. "Time to go."
"What is wrong with you today?" John asks softly as the cab slides through traffic toward Baker Street. "You were practically manic at that crime scene."
"Nothing. There is nothing wrong with me; I'm not the one with the problem."
"So there is a problem."
With a growl, Sherlock crosses his arms and huddles against the window, shutting John out. Comfort is for other people, normal people, boring people. Needy people.
Like Molly.
Oh, for God's sake.
"Stop!" The cabbie stops and looks back at them with a placidly annoyed expression and Sherlock says, "John, get out."
"What?" A disbelieving laugh, a hint of warning in it. Good, excellent, antagonistic is infinitely preferable to concerned.
"Get out. I'm going back to the lab, you should go home. It's likely I'll be late."
A hand grabs his shoulder and forces him to look at John, who searches his face and finds nothing, because Sherlock allows him to see nothing. Finally, John throws up his hands and says, "Fine. But if I'm asleep when you get home don't wake me up, I have work tomorrow." With that, he exits the cab.
"St. Bart's, please," Sherlock says to the cabbie and pushes away the sight of John's small form with his arms crossed over his chest, watching him go.
When the cab lets him out at the hospital, he stands in front of the doors for several minutes, trying to come up with a believable excuse for being here. The case is wrapped up, he has no separate experiments ongoing, and if he is honest with himself, curling up in bed and letting John make him forget this whole unsettling day sounds unutterably appealing.
At last, with a sigh and a mental white flag to which he will never admit, he turns and begins walking home, planning ways to make John forgive his rudeness without actually acknowledging it.
***SHERLOCK***
"You bastard!"
Sherlock's head snaps up from his microscope and he looks around, finding the lab empty apart from himself. The door is open, and he hears soft sniffling coming down from down the hall. He gets up to close the door, but glances out into the hallway and sees Molly sitting against the wall, clutching her phone and covering her face with her hand. He is about to shut the door and withdraw when she looks up and meets his eyes.
"Oh – oh, sorry, I didn't – didn't know anyone was here," Her voice catches and wavers and more tears leak from her red eyes. She pushes herself to her feet and drags a hand across her face.
Sherlock begins to turn away and leave her to her mess of emotion but John's voice in his head says not good and he sighs, because John is always saying obvious things but somehow they're more difficult to dismiss when he says them.
"It's fine. Are. Are you… all right?" Now he's picking up her speech patterns. If he goes home to find high heels and lipstick in his room he will shoot more than walls.
His words appear to have paralyzed Molly. She stands staring at him with bloodshot eyes and trembling hands. The course of action from here is clear: appear concerned, get her some sort of tissue or cloth with which to clean her face, possibly touch her back or arm if she does not appear to be on the verge of further hysterics. He's done it a million times to shaky witnesses to get them to open up.
However, under Molly's shocked stare he cannot seem to arrange his face into the familiar façade of caring, and somehow he has become the one waiting on her, how did that happen?
With a loud sniff, Molly straightens her back and says, "I'm going outside for a smoke, care to join me?"
It's possible he should make note of the date and time, because Molly Hooper has just surprised Sherlock Holmes, and the sheer novelty has him nodding and following her to a little side door and out onto a concrete stair.
She retrieves a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and tugs one out, then offers the pack to him. True surprise is a little like being drunk, he reflects, as he watches his own hand take a cigarette apparently with no regard for the fact that John will smell it on him and assume the worst. He has no idea what's going to happen next; surely he can't be held accountable for his actions.
They smoke in silence for a minute. Then, curiosity overwhelming him, Sherlock says, "I didn't know you smoked."
She gives a little laugh. "I know. I could tell by your face. I don't, really, not often, just when… things get a bit… much."
That's some sort of social cue that John would turn into an opportunity for her to tell her entire life story, but Sherlock has no idea how. He's also a bit concerned that he wants to, but tells himself he's still under the influence of surprise.
She continues without his input. "That was my, well, ex-boyfriend on the phone. Turns out he's married. Should've guessed. I mean, it was pretty clear he was just in it for the sex, but still." She takes a long drag of her cigarette, watches the smoke float away.
Memories of university, of being propositioned by drunk girls and drunker boys on the grounds that he was "gorgeous, love, and you always look so tense," and the affront on their faces when he brushed them off. The few relationships before John, in which he twisted himself into knots attempting to figure out what they wanted until they gave up. The number of times he'd heard some variation of "you're beautiful, but you're just not worth it."
"It's your own fault, you know. For letting them use you." And how exceptionally not good, Sherlock can practically see the disappointment on John's face, and furthermore he may not have actually meant to say that out loud.
But Molly laughs, and throws him a bitter smile. "You mean like you do?"
He doesn't drop his cigarette, but it's a near thing. "I – what? I certainly haven't – "
Another laugh, gentler this time. "It's ok. I know I'm easy to walk all over. It's just, I don't know, I think it might be easier than being you. It must take so much energy to be so – much, all the time."
He's staring again. He wonders if this is how other people feel when he dissects them.
"You're like… a character in a novel, sometimes, you know? With the brain and the looks and the mystery. And everyone's always looking at you when you're around, and sometimes when you're not, and I guess it might be fun to be like that for a while, but I know I'd get tired."
There is no response to that that doesn't make him sound like a blithering idiot, and he's come close enough for one day. They finish their cigarettes in silence, and when she leaves, Molly touches his shoulder, and he doesn't resent it.
Original prompt: Sherlock fears he is actually like Molly on a deep level, which is why he treats her so badly. Maybe she picks up on this.
Reviews, be they positive or negative, are always welcome! Peace.