Hi there!
So, I've read so many fluffy moments between Sherlock and Molly that I decided I wanted to write one...
Since I'm not a native English speaker there might be mistakes, and I would be very happy if you let me know where I wrote something incorrectly.
I used a third person perspective, but I decided to switch to a first person commentary in some points of the story.
Hope you'll enjoy it!
I do not own Sherlock or Molly, nor the book that I quote (which must be a secret until the right time).
Thank you so much to Hoodoo, you've been a great beta!
During the period Sherlock Holmes stayed at Molly's—the one which John referred to as "Oh-Gosh-I-really-don't-know-if-I-want-to-know"—the detective acquired, in his not so humble opinion, a deep knowledge of Molly's tastes in literature.
This unwavering and firm self-confidence in his own abilities led him, when he decided to tell her how he felt—and for the sake of us all we will not go further into the reasons and feelings of such an individual—to fastidiously follow the path set down by the character he had, without any doubt, distinguished as Molly's favourite.
Being not well acquainted with such a thing as a hearty declaration of profound feelings, and considering it all rather odd and plainly redundant, he decided with his typical boldness to learn all the character's speeches by heart.
And that was when Sherlock Holmes made his first mistake, which was soon followed by another.
Not wanting to waste his precious time reading such a frivolous and useless book, he typed a bunch of key-words on Google; moreover, surfing the net, he discovered that at least half of the female side of the Earth loved that hodgepodge. To be thorough, he also watched the character's scenes in a film inspired by the book, and stored the abstract in his prodigious memory.
Alas! Poor Sherlock had not the slightest idea the mess he had put himself in.
Now, for the sake of our beloved Sherlock, we have to make one thing clear: it was not that he was not really interested in making a great declaration, nor were his feelings toward Molly less than passionate and sincere. Merely he was fully aware of being reciprocated yet, and this led him to persevere more in the outlook of the declaration, than in being really convincing.
With no effort at all he learnt the speech, basically not fully absorbing a word of it because the major part of his brain was too engaged in solving a very interesting crime.
John, poor sod, tried to talk some sense to the detective, but the chat was useless, and Mary recommended not insisting on the point since, thirty-something as he was, maybe the outcome of this particular event would mean Sherlock will finally have learnt something about behaving like an adult.
Mrs. Hudson, shame on her, took the whole thing with outrageous hilarity and, when Sherlock strode out of Baker Street, began placing bets. John gave him five to ten odds to be slapped again but succeeding nonetheless, while Inspector Lestrade put it at ten to ten that Molly would collapse, overjoyed—we will ignore the fact a highly respectful member of Scotland Yard was engaged in gambling, though, in his defense, we must admit a minor government official, Mycroft, promptly contributed as well.
All of their wagers were doomed to fail, though, because of a sequence of unexpected events.
When a very self-confident Sherlock Holmes entered St. Bart's morgue, Molly was up to her elbows in a corpse's chest.
"Molly!" said Sherlock with a no-nonsense tone in his voice.
She rocked out the heart from the ribcage and waved. "Hi, Sherlock! How are you?"
Puzzled. He was puzzled, because he sensed a woman who was going to receive the type of declaration he was about to give shouldn't be holding a heart in her hand. Still, even if it was the unconventional setting for this speech, it was a setting he felt very comfortable in and this made him feel at ease.
"Fine," he answered, observing her and avoiding, once in his life, to deduce her.
"Could you please wait a minute? I would like to, you know, clean up..."
"Of course."
Molly approached the sink and began washing her hands when she sensed Sherlock had moved right beside her.
She stiffened with awkwardness.
"Er... Sherlock, do you... do you need something?" she asked tentatively.
"I do. I need to talk to you, most urgently."
That didn't make her feel any less uncomfortable. "Relax, Molly!" she told herself.
"Well, ok, then... I'm listening... so, you can go, uhm, ahead...?" she managed to say aloud.
"Of course," he answered but then stayed silent.
He had a strange frown, she noticed, but she could see he was calm nonetheless, so what on earth had gotten into him?
"Molly!"
She gave him an odd sort of look.
"Molly I..." Sherlock paused again, and then all of the thing burst out "In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."*
"Oh, for God's sake! He must be joking, isn't he?!" Molly thought, startled. She almost even opened her mouth to reply, sure as she was this was just another one of his senseless experiments, but he seemed so wrapped in the whole thing that she decided to stay silent.
With impetuousness and passion he continued, and he was indeed speaking as Mr. Darcy would have spoken, to be true, but as a proof of how strangely his mind processed non-concrete information he had begun blabbering about the inferiority of her family compared to his, and her sibling's bad manners in many occasions, such as the ball hosted in Netherfield Park. It was exactly when he began talking of a certain Jane he abruptly stopped and frowned, puzzled.
"And who, exactly, is this Jane girl?!" he demanded, interrupting his own train of thought.
Molly began giggling frantically. "Now, Sherlock, seriously! What kind of experiment is this?"
"I beg your pardon!"
"He is still thinking as Mr. Darcy," she realized, to herself, amused. Aloud she said, "I apologize, I think I may have misunderstood...?"
"I really do not know which experiment you are talking about! I find it quite rude of you to laugh at me in such a serious occasion. I have tried to make this moment unforgettable for you and you do nothing but giggle—seriously, Molly stop it!" he nearly shouted at her, for his pride was quite hurt by how this situation had turned out.
Molly fell deadly serious and after a moment of uneasy silence, asked tentatively, "What are you trying to say, then?"
"Oh, for God's sake, Molly! You're clever enough, aren't you? I was crystal-clear, wasn't I?"
And that was when, very slowly, Molly began to acknowledge the real meaning of the blabbering.
"Could you please say it in a more Sherlock-esque way?" she asked with a heart starting to flutter.
Sherlock rolled his eyes impatiently. "Well, I suppose... I find you intelligent and pleasant and all those things. Would you like to go out for a coffee? With me, I mean, not for me, you know... Or, a tea with scones, whatever you prefer..."
She smiled openly and managed not to jump for joy. "Yes, I would like to go out with you."
"Okay, then. See you tomorrow evening. I'll pick you up at 6 o'clock, your flat."
"Perfect! Oh, but Sherlock…" Molly stopped his abrupt departure.
"What?" he asked, worried he had done something else incorrectly—but, reading between the lines, we know it was being turned down that he feared.
"I really do prefer Wuthering Heights. Pride and Prejudice is too... fluffy."
Sherlock strode away half happy she thought the book to be fluffy, half hurt in his pride because he had misread her. As for her favourite book, he wisely choose to stay away from the topic as long as it could.
After all, it is a universally acknowledged truth that love makes deduction anything but an exact science.
* Quote by Pride and Prejudice