The flame from the Bunsen burner glowed bright blue as gas hissed through the line. There was the initial odor of methyl mercaptan and then it faded. Molly let her fingers rest lightly together on the table as she waited.

"If you want an accurate temperature I suggest a thermocouple," a voice said from the table behind her. Molly stared at her hands and didn't reply. The mixture began to simmer and she adjusted the flow of propane before sitting back in her stool again.

"This is a bit simple for advanced chemistry," Sherlock said. He moved to the stool besides her and scowled at her experiment like it was something offensive.

"Don't touch that!" she said quickly, slapping at his hand as it reached for her samples. Molly took a deep breath and marched over to the supply cupboard. She practically threw the nitrile gloves in his smug face before sitting down again.

"Oh I see!" he said, grinning as he donned the gloves. The sound of the rubber slapping against his skin made her cheeks flush and Molly quickly ducked into the fume hood again. Sherlock's hands flashed past her. Before she could stop him he had pinched the residue and sprinkled it directly into the flame, briefly turning the blue fire to green.

"That isn't how it's supposed to be done," Molly said. She bit her lip then went back to mixing the now cooling solution.

"Tell me Molly Hooper – how should it be done?" he said close to her ear.

"Safely," Molly said in a whisper. Her eyes remained firmly on the glassware under the fume hood.

"Boring," was the immediate reply.

Molly took a deep breath and concentrated on slowly adding the barium chloride to the test tube, the cloudy solution confirming the presence of barium sulphate.

"Really Molly, forensics? Dull. You'll hate it," Sherlock said with a ghost of a smile at his lips.

"It's interesting."

"No it isn't."

"Alright it isn't," Molly said, covering her giggles with two hands like a school girl. She forced her hands back down to her sides where they clutched at her lab coat. He would ask for something now. He was only charming when he wanted something from her. Molly ignored the voice screaming in her head how ridiculous it all was as her heart beat furiously against her chest and her head slowly filled with cotton.

Sherlock threw himself back down on the stool and buried his head in his arms.

"I have to go home for Christmas," his muffled voice said against the table top.

"What?" she asked surprised.

"Christmas. With Mycroft," he said with his eyes pinched tightly closed. "The family must celebrate his glorious rise in government. Assistant to a parliamentary private secretary. Mummy is so proud."

Molly rinsed her glassware slowly under the sink. Sherlock's oldest brother had finished his dissertation that spring. Something with British foreign affairs. No one would ever read it. According to Sherlock it had been confiscated along with his thesis advisor. The thesis advisor had been released the following day. The thesis remained in custody after being declared a state secret.

Mycroft always called her Miss Hooper and gave her that tight smile when he came to see Sherlock. Once he had found her in the library where she'd fallen asleep over her text books. She had given a shriek of surprise when she opened her eyes and found him looming over her, hand stretched as if he'd been about to shake her awake but couldn't quite bring himself to touch her.

"Add a decanter of brandy to that book and you'd have the perfect evening," he said with a half-smile.

All solemn charm, dressed up to the nines even at midnight in smooth slacks and a button up shirt, he'd looked every bit the politician. He did so worry about his brother, he had told her, and would she be ever so kind to let him know if Sherlock started behaving oddly, disappeared for a few days, or seemed otherwise not himself. And then Mycroft had turned and started walking away like she had agreed, like she wasn't still rubbing the grit from her eyes and trying to get her fuzzy brain to process information again.

She had almost called him back again, had opened up her mouth to say no she wouldn't. But she supposed he already knew that if he was anything like Sherlock. So she had let him go, watching the lift doors close and hide those raised eyebrows and chin.

Molly finished cleaning up the lab space then grabbed her purse to follow Sherlock's retreating figure down the hall towards the refectory. They sat across from one another as she picked at her sandwich and tried not to look at the head of dark curls bent over a thick book.

"What are you reading?" she finally asked.

"A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem," he said without looking up.

"Seriously?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes and closed the book with a thump.

"Certainly not. Who has anything new to say about the Binomial Theorem at this late date?" he said.

They left together for the lecture hall, Sherlock walking slightly ahead of her instead of next to her. He was lost in his own head but his eyes constantly darted to the people walking past them. How did he see past the arms full of books and papers, the faded jeans, the conformity of hair and clothing and even speech? All Molly saw were students at uni.

"It's strange you know. What you do. I don't mind. It's just… odd," she had confessed to him once after he'd gone through a painful analysis of her childhood issues, dredging up memories of her father and a life left far behind.

"It's in the past. Why does it still bother you?" Sherlock had said as he slowly exhaled the smoke from his cigarette. Molly's nose twitched at the smell, hearing her father's voice, her head full of memories and ghosts and hurt.

"Because it's never really in the past," Molly said in a whisper.

Sherlock took a long drag, watching her, thinking. Finally he nodded.

"You could forget it. That's what I do," he said.

Even with her limited observational skills Molly could see that Sherlock came from money and a loving home. As painful as he claimed his childhood had been Molly knew there'd been no abuse. The only thing that had made youth difficult had been perhaps Sherlock himself. She wondered what kind of memories he could possibly need to shed.

"You erase your bad memories?" Molly asked. Sherlock had grimaced, mouth thinning. She didn't normally ask personal questions and they didn't talk much about the past or home. But he had started it, she told herself.

"Sometimes. If they aren't important," he said as he ground the fag into the ground with one foot. "If they're causing me to lose focus or interfering with the work."

The work was his passion. He had taken the ordinary and made it different and fascinating. It was the one thing he would always talk to her about. The work was his and his alone, something that no one could take away from him. He protected it like one would a child, with careful rules and boundaries and high walls. Molly thought he was an artist. He certainly acted like one - with his sudden angry outbursts, bouts of dark depression, and carefully selected social circle.

"If they make you feel something," Molly said carefully.

Sherlock had looked at her down that long nose, mirroring an expression much like his brother Mycroft liked to use, and she'd known she was right.

"When I was younger my mother fell in love with someone who wasn't my father. Father chose blindness but it was impossible for me not to see. Everywhere I looked there were traces. I have to live with this other man forever and he isn't even alive anymore. Emotions are good for one thing and one thing only - understanding motive. I can't afford to give in to sentiment. It's distracting and it throws doubt on the mental results. Emotions get in the way," he said dismissively.

"Emotions make us human," she replied.