A/N: I just kind of felt upset about how BBC Sherlock reduces Molly to a convenient character (in the sense that she's always there to help whenever he needs her and apart from her huge, irrevocable crush on him we don't see any other part of her life) and I really love Molly so here she is and I hope I gave her some form of empowerment! The concept was also kind of inspired by John Green's analysis of Jane Eyre (which I love) about how Jane started out being of lower rank than Rochester and they only got together after she managed to bring herself up to meet him, in every sense of the word. So here is Molly, hopefully more empowered and more fleshed out, and on a better level to meet Sherlock Holmes. (wow I can really ramble on)
Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock
"Molly, I need a favour." The doors of her lab swung open, admitting Sherlock Holmes, arsehole extraordinaire.
She arched an eyebrow at him in expectation, waiting for him to spit it out. Ever since she'd agreed to let him use her apartment as a hide-out for the past two years or so, she had become much less adoring of him. At first, she'd been eager to please, packing up the place before he came in, giving him her room while she took the guestroom, cooking him breakfast before she left and bringing dinner back whenever she could. A fortnight later, though, she was seriously reconsidering her situation, and wondering how John Watson could put up with Sherlock's idiosyncrasies. He was often making a mess in her kitchen, leaving scorch marks everywhere, and subjecting her to finding Toby in parts of the house the cat would never have gone to before, and consistently insulting her, her family, her friends, and pictures of said family and friends. Maybe he hadn't meant to hurt anyone's feelings, but feelings had been hurt and had been dealt with by her, and during that time she had allowed herself to finally acknowledge that perhaps she hadn't been in love with Sherlock Holmes the whole time, but rather she'd been in love with the idea of being in love with Sherlock Holmes. So when he'd run off in the last three months with nothing but a note with his estimated date of return (without so much as a thank you) she'd sat down and properly sorted out her feelings, and then had gone back to work feeling better than she'd had in ages. So excuse her if she didn't fawn over him like she used to do; something he was still clearly not used to, as shown by his slight hesitation when she didn't immediately agree.
"Could you let me use the examination room, and one of your corpses?"
She waited for a while before replying him, allowing him to shift slightly in his own discomfort. Okay, maybe she wasn't 100% over the idea of being in love with Sherlock Holmes, and maybe she was doing this so she could prove that she certainly didn't need the smarmy idiot's approval. But knowing she wasn't in love with him wasn't the same as understanding it, and besides, she firmly believed that he needed to get put in his place now and then. And anyway, she enjoyed the feeling of having some modicum of power over him.
"When?" She finally asked, after putting her pipette down.
He blinked. "Next Wednesday."
She nodded shortly, before turning back to her work. "I'll have it prepped for you by 2 in the afternoon, in Room 2."
Out of the corner of the eye, she could see Sherlock give a short, sharp nod before turning, and leaving the room in a flurry of long coat and swinging doors.
"Molly, I need a favour." Sherlock Holmes was back in her lab again, waiting for her to turn and acknowledge him. She indulged him, looking up from her microscope and leaning her hip against the table-top.
She'd seen him just hours before, during John and Mary's wedding; had seen him standing there in the crowd looking lonely and confused, had seen him walking out of the wedding early, a hard, shuttered figure on the winding path in the night. She'd wanted to go to him then, to say something, anything, to remove the glass in his eyes and the glass in his bones. But she'd held herself back, and watched him walk away. Because sometimes Sherlock Holmes needed to be saved and sometimes she wasn't the one needed to save him.
"I need some eyeballs for an experiment, in various stages of decay."
She paused for a while, thinking. Then she turned back to her microscope and noted down some details, and said, "I'll have them ready for you in two days' time."
This time, Sherlock almost made a noise of acknowledgement before spinning on his heels and leaving the room, the doors still swinging behind him.
"Molly, I need a favour," Sherlock walked in through the doors, his hands stuffed into his coat pockets, the ridiculous hat still perched on his head. She looked at him expectantly, allowing her hands to flutter to a stop next to her dissected frog.
"I'm conducting an experiment on whether caffeine would have any effect on teeth," he told her. She raised an eyebrow. "After death," he clarified.
She considered him for a bit. It had been five months since she'd seen him last, after passing him the eyeballs. He seemed fundamentally changed, as if he was different on some molecular level. He seemed just a shade paler, and his cheekbones protruded out a little too much. She wondered vaguely if he'd been spending too much time on Moriarty's case—his sudden comeback through technology scattered around London had been dramatic, putting more pressure on the Famous Detective to solve it quickly. So far, though, Moriarty hadn't made a move—if it had indeed been Moriarty (she'd been the one to process the body, and she'd known enough to recognize it by... not his face)—and Sherlock had had no other clues to go on.
"Come here," she beckoned, and he stepped forward, crossing some invisible borderline. "Look at this." She put down her scalpel, and inserted her hands into the frog, feeling its taut, brittle muscles in her own firm fingers. She moved them slightly, allowing the frog to swim out of the water, even in death. He looked at her, face expressionless, waiting for an explanation. She let the frog go, abruptly feeling stupid. "Never mind, it's nothing. I'll have the teeth ready for you in two days, as usual."
He stepped back with a firm nod, the warmth of his body lingering a while beside her before it dissipated in the cool air-conditioning of her lab. He disappeared with the same swish of the coat between the swinging metal doors she'd come to characterize him with.
"Molly, I need a favour," Sherlock reappeared just two weeks later, crossing the room over to her.
"Hold on a moment," she murmured, trying to ascertain the exact moment the colours in her test tube changed. Sherlock waited patiently next to her as she scribbled down timings, and different proportions of chemicals, her notes an organized mess around the bottles of chemicals strewn around the table-top. When she looked up at him, his eyes weren't on her meticulous notes and conclusions, as she'd expected, but were rather fastened on her. "Sorry," she told him. "I thought I was really on to something there, but it turned out to be nothing."
Instead of ridiculing her experiments as she half-expected, he simply nodded at her. "Perhaps if you try putting the chlorine in first," he said.
She paused in her motions of pulling her gloves off, turning the idea over in her mind. A slight smile spread across her face; she'd been all ready to give up on it and call it quits, but Sherlock's suggestion seemed plausible enough to work. "You're right," she said. "I'll get right on it—sorry, did you need something?"
"That's alright," he reassured her (funny; she hadn't known he could sound reassuring without being clumsy at it). "I'll wait."
She prepared the chemicals hastily, driven by the pressure of Sherlock waiting with a patience which extended beyond what anyone could have hoped for, but mainly by the excitement and hope of an experiment working. It was a complete success. She noted down everything in complete detail, meticulous as always. This time, as she turned to face Sherlock, she was beaming. "What did you need?"
"Teeth can still be affected by caffeine after death." Sherlock announced. "I'm going on to check how long the heart has to be dead for electric shocks not to affect it anymore."
She paused slightly. "Sherlock, does this have anything to do with Moriarty?"
"No," he scoffed slightly. "He hasn't done a single thing yet; even I don't have much to go on. Would it concern you if it was?"
"No," Molly said. "I was just wondering. The hearts might take me a little longer to get. You'll have to come back in four days,"
Sherlock nodded, and prepared to leave, his coat collar turning up, the brim of the hat pulled down over his forehead. By the doors, he turned around slightly. "Thank you, Molly." Then he was gone, coat billowing behind him, doors swinging freely after him, without giving her the opportunity to react suitably. As it was, she could only blink owlishly behind him, and watch as the swinging doors gave her quick, passing glimpses of him walking away.
"Molly, I need a favour," Sherlock was back again, crossing the room in his quick, measured steps.
She looked up from her computer, the worried lines on her face easing away slightly. "How was your experiment?"
"Inconclusive," Sherlock dismissed. "Is anything the matter?" He gestured slightly at her computer.
"It's Toby; he's been acting strange recently," Molly shook her head. "I was just trying to do some research before bringing him to the vet tomorrow for an appointment."
"Hmm."
"What did you need?" She asked, shutting her laptop with a click.
"I have a new experiment," he said tonelessly, face impassive. "Something about the matters of the heart, and chemicals in our brains,"
"I don't have enough hearts to spare you for a while, I think," Molly said, with a furrow of her brows. "You took quite a few the previous time,"
"That's fine," Sherlock said, still expressionless. "Because I'll be needing two beating hearts this time. Two very specific hearts,"
"You want to experiment on people who are still alive?" Molly asked, slightly disbelieving.
"Only if they're both completely agreeable to it," he told her. "At least one of them is; I've come here today for the other one."
Molly cocked her head slightly, trying to understand. "Sherlock, are you telling me you want to experiment on me?"
"On us," he corrected, standing directly in front of her, the two of them separated by the cool metal table on which her laptop sat. "I can't guarantee that either of us won't be hurt during the experiment, nor can I guarantee that our hearts will remain the same after it,"
"What do I have to do?" Molly asked, still slightly confused.
"Kiss me."
"What?" Molly blinked once, then twice, unsure that she'd heard him correctly.
"My hypothesis is that I've fallen in love with you, Molly Hooper," Sherlock said, as if he was reciting from a report taken from her desk, and still managing to sound as sincere as she'd ever heard him since the day she met him. "And that you share similar feelings towards me. I'd like to experiment and see if my hypothesis rings true,"
She looked at him then, and found that she didn't see Sherlock Holmes, Detective anymore, but rather, sherlock. And she found she rather liked him, and found herself moving forward, lips meeting lips in gentle pressure.
"My heart's beating rather quickly; how's yours doing?" He murmured, his breath hot against her cheek. She let out a startled laugh, hands pressing against the table-top for balance, and some support.
He didn't leave her lab after that, instead sitting in a corner and watching her experiment and research, and occasionally sneak a glance at him only to catch his eye and a small smirk lift the corner of his mouth. Maybe she was another John Watson, attracting and attracted by sociopaths and psychopaths and all the different paths you could find. But somehow she couldn't find it in herself to regret it, or to push herself away from the one she found herself straying on to.
That night the doors swung behind two people, one in a billowing blue coat, and the other clad in a green-grey jacket. The lights in the lab flickered on, off, on, off, as the doors swung, allowing quick, passing glimpses of them walking away.