Spoilers: Up to end of S1
A/N: Graciously betaread by exbex. This plotbunny sprang up from some comments on the sherlockbbc LJ comm's Make Me A Monday Week 28 post a whole year ago about fem!Moriarty – I'm late to the party there but this had to come out, one way or another.
The cups sit at diagonally on the speckled-brown plastic table top of the cafeteria. It's far too hot to drink, yet the other cup is picked up by her companion, long fingers with chipped red nail varnish winding around the thin cardboard without a care for the heat. Lips painted in a jarringly light, fresh, pink curl and form a pout to blow cool air over the liquid. Deep brown eyes look at her, out of a pale face surrounded by mussed up wavy black locks.
The hello's over, Molly purses her lips, wondering how to best start a conversation without coming off weird or awkward like she unfortunately tends to.
Coffee, with a girl from IT. Molly isn't sure why she accepted; she is the least technologically competent person she knows and she hasn't a clue what they have in common. Reasons why she shouldn't say no had been abundant, sure. It would be impolite, it wouldn't do to refuse a potential friend at work, it wouldn't be good to annoy someone she might need advice from in the future (and IT help she was guaranteed to need).
Jemma smiles, sweetly, and Molly feels her discomfort dissipate. Whatever it was Jemma saw on the blog it made Jemma want to know her, so she bites her nervousness down and accepts that fact.
"I don't make friends easily," Jemma prompts randomly before Molly can utter anything, "I'm pretty new here and my department is fully of blokey blokes spouting off crude jokes and making all sorts of assumptions about me. I thought it'd be...nice, to have a friend. Someone else who understands what it's like working with so many men who think they're eternally right."
"I can definitely understand, sympathise. I've been here a while myself," Molly downplays her two years deliberately, wanting to avoid seeming a pathetic loner, "...but I don't know many people either though, my hours are antisocial," she leaves out the part where people tend to consider her interests that too, "I work night shifts mostly, on rotation."
"Oh snap! Me too. The gremlins never rest." Jemma grins excitedly, an expression that looks fractionally wrong to Molly for no discernible reason. She shakes the thought off, finding a light touch on her arm. "We should stick together, you and me."
"Yeah, sure. Why not."
It makes sense at the time. She can't find a reason to say no, not with confidence.
There's coffee, with Jemma. Once a day, for a week.
Then there's lunch, with Jemma, every day of the next week and beyond. They still take the coffee break together too. Seems right and feels fun. Starts to become normal too, Molly and Jemma striding down the corridor, giggling over their respective specialities, morbid jokes and tales of PICNIC errors. The latter are also oddly informative for Molly, not that she would ever admit it in million years to Jemma; she rarely understands the lingo and acronyms but has learned exactly what point to recognise for when to express amused disbelief so she never gets called out for it.
Three weeks and two days into their friendship – Molly isn't meant to care how long it's been, tells herself she's just being observant, practicing, testing her memory – is when Jemma suggests they meet up outside work.
"Bet you could do with a rant about the Sherlock fella, and I could recount today's hilariously dumb chat up lines to you. I swear they're enough to put you off men entirely."
Jemma flashes her a saccharine, slightly shy smile as encouragement. Molly resists a little despite her instinct to agree immediately.
"I dunno."
"Night shift? I thought you were on days at the moment."
"No..."
"Oooh, do you have plans? Hot date, do spill Molls."
She blushes, stammers at the idea, embarrassed to admit the droll excuse. "N-no. I-I was going to watch a TV show."
"TV's on all the time Molls. Can't you record it? "
"Well, no, actually. I haven't got one of those things to."
"What, no magic recording box?" Jemma pipes back with shock, incredulity and mocking in the tight, snarky manner Molly is getting used to; most insults she hears are cold, factual stings from Sherlock and Jemma's style is biting but warm, enticing her to think of retorts back. More often than not Molly isn't quick off the mark enough to think of any decent ones on the spot, meaning she lets them slide and merely smirks at the teasing, relishing the comfortingly familiar play between her and her friend.
Jemma must realise a PVR is a bit beyond her knowledge. Molly had wanted one but not known where to start and decided TV, a DVD player and boxsets were infinitely easier.
"I was going to watch Glee. You could come watch too. If it's your sort of thing. "
"My kind of thing?" Jemma replies, voice intense but devoid of identifiable tone and face inscrutable.
Molly gulps, scared her comment is going to be a death-knell. Of course Glee wouldn't fit Jemma. High school drama, musical, practically screams teenage wish-fulfillment for anyone watching over the age of 18. Molly wanted to be able to sing, to perform, to be talented and noticed. She'd missed her chance and so here she was watching overage actors live out that dream themselves on the small screen.
There's a hint of a squeak, startling Molly, and Jemma's face lights up for her. Jemma looks happily at her. Molly thinks it must have been too long ago anyone looked at her that way, since it makes her stomach flip. Her days are all too full of graven faces of officials investigating suspicious deaths and people reluctantly identifying bodies.
"Molls! Gods yeah, that's my ab-sol-lute favourite show. I adore the drama," Jemma says stretching out the word adore low and languorously, making it close to obscene by her tongue.
"R-really?"
"Definitely." She leans in conspiratorial, over the drinks – Molly's 10th mug, afternoon tea – and Molly finds herself mirroring the move. "Didn't want to admit it, did I. Was worried you'd think I was a right loser. Thirty-something and yearning for the stage. I never could sing; got laughed off."
Jemma picks at her teeth, unconsciously, sight fixated on either something in the background or an imagined past trauma. Molly's breath catches, wondering what moment she is sharing with her friend, sensing her teetering on an admission of importance.
"They lived to regret it of course."
There is a flash of curiosity in her mind - taking in the tone and the choice of words - that flickers and dies before Molly can get her head round it. She ignores the brief nagging thought, of what and how Jemma is suggesting with that statement, and settles to focus on what is obviously present instead of who they both used to be.
"Yeah, now you're in IT. Good stable job here, decent money. In London too. What more could you want?"
"Fame comes with a price doesn't it, Molly?"
Jemma stares into her eyes. Only a few inches separate them still, as Molly clutches her cup, staying in her place. To move back now would oddly feel like a retreat, backing down, though she can't fathom what from exactly. The atmosphere is off, air tensely drawn around the two of them. It's a serious question where there needn't be. She can't figure out what Jemma is asking when everyone knows clearly about the downsides of the press hounding celebs and whatnot.
Molly slouches into the chair in the end, feeling meek and soft, unwilling to press herself against the sudden sharp edge of Jemma, "Well, everything worth doing comes at a price. Look at me, seven years for a medical degree and foundation, and that's before the pathology training starts. Crazy I know, but true."
There's a pause that is awkward and unlike how they are these days, wherein Molly is uncertain what's going on and if she's killed the conversation somehow without knowing it. The scrutinising look Jemma gives her in the quiet reminds her uncomfortably of someone else's gaze.
"You're so wise." Jemma coo's, making to leave with her tray, and Molly forgets the previous thought, consumed by a blush in response to the unexpected compliment.
The sweet smile returns, wide and giddy, half what she interprets from Jemma and half identified in herself. A more familiar set of nerves return.
"What would I do without my dear Molly."
Molly has hardly processed the statement when Jemma swoops in, a gentle peck on her right check.
"See ya tonight, sweets."
Five minutes later Molly takes a sip of her coffee and discovers it cold. She touches the spot on her face and imagines it warm, hot breath from those peach lips skirting the skin. She immediately stands, hurrying to the loo's to wash the evidence off. If anyone notices anything different that afternoon it is her cheek scrubbed red and rash movements about the room done with an undirected fury.
Molly inadvertently acts tougher that evening, suppressing cries of excitement when her favourite songs come on, and carrying herself stiffly around Jemma, edging away on the shared sofa. She's civil more with her guest and less in her own head. Every thought she has she analyses, rejects 90% of them as daft or pointless.
The episode practically over, the girl next to her is curled up, hogging the sofa and giggling her heart out. She goes to high-five Molly unexpectedly, and her face drops at the sight of her.
"Don't tell me that wasn't awesome."
Molly feels worse for spoiling her friend's enjoyment.
"Yeah. Yeah, it's the best episode I've seen so far. There's a few minutes left, we should -"
Good job, Molly. One lacklustre, suspicious response delivered. Jemma studies her, hand expertly picking up the remote to the side without looking and flicking off the TV.
"What's wrong Molls? You seem wound up. Sherlock, again?"
"No! No. I haven't seen him for days."
"Whatever it is, you can spill your guts to me. I'm so good at fixing things, my best mates call me Jim, you know." Jemma winks and switches flawlessly to an indecently good Jimmy Savile impression, "Now, what can I do for you little lady?"
Molly's restraint crumbles and she chuckles. "Seriously, forget it. I'll figure it out on my own."
Jemma stares at her and for a moment Molly thinks she'll push the issue, demand that she tell her because that's what friends do, isn't it? Share the burden, split the pain, and nurse their worries together – and Jemma isn't likely to have the faintest clue that this isn't one of those things that is between friends. It's rather more, and that's rather more than Molly can admit right now. The moment is judged, filed away, and it passes without further comment, though she is sure it's not without note.
A cheeky grin protrudes from Jemma's otherwise passive face. "Good thing I brought wine then, we can both forget it."
Jemma fetches them glasses and proceeds to pop the cork on a bottle of fizzy stuff with a flourish. If the glass handed to her is fuller than she'd serve herself she overlooks it, wipes it from memory along with her worries and the sense of wrongness surfacing whenever she thinks too much. She resolves to think a little less for the rest of the night. Molly switches the TV back on, relieved for noise outside her own thoughts and picks the most absurd of the reality shows airing.
Getting onto the sofa again, Jemma stretches out a little more, hooks her free arm through Molly's spare one and rests her head on her shoulder without invitation. The position is less than ideal for imbibing wine, resulting in spillage when Jemma tries, which tipsily they laugh off and Jemma never does drink it. There are, however, two empty glasses resting on the table come morning, plenty of blanks in Molly's memory, and a tinge of happiness as she gets ready for her journey to St. Bart's.
It becomes a regular thing. Molly loves watching Glee, always had, and Jemma does too so they share it, like friends would. It makes perfect sense, so they sit and squeal like school girls, attempt to sing along off-key and forgetting half the words. Just hearing the title, the word Glee, makes Molly grin in anticipation.
And when Sherlock sullies her mood beforehand, causing her to subtly laugh quieter and shift closer for comfort during their viewings, Jemma can pinpoint the culprit. The wine flows quickly on those occasions and the nights full of company fly by. In confidence Molly's belated smart remarks dart out of her mouth hours too late to hurt the target, but they make Jemma smile, in the same tight, predatory way she teases Molly and she likes to believe also a little protectively. Jemma clearly looks out for her and it's a pretty good feeling, having someone about, someone interested.
Jemma who strokes Toby on her lap innocently, hanging onto her every word and apparently unaware that Molly watches those slender fingers weave in out of the fur carefully with each pass. Jemma who continues the petting, soothing the creature into submission, as Molly babbles on, relaxing herself. Jemma whose gaze rests evermore on Molly and smiles lightly even as the cat's claws dig in.
Molly doesn't consider the why anymore. She drinks deep and forgets to wonder, accepting Jemma's long fingers massaging her shoulders, grinding her objections to dust and drowning her worries until all that is left is a flood of felicity.
In her drunken sleep she doesn't really remember fevered dreams of hands warm and firm, precise in their movements, travelling from her shoulders to elsewhere – one through her hair and the other dangling lazily to graze her side. There's the lingering feelings, unidentified in their source and occasional flashes of desire put down to not getting enough since...well, ever.
No, Molly doesn't remember wanting that, but she feels apprehensive when she gets ready every time Jemma is over, desperate to make herself look like she could belong next to her. For all her longings, she needs a friend really, can't bear to mess up because for a person to notice her, listen to her, is a rare thing.
What she needs, she decides, is the antithesis of Sherlock.
Luckily there is Jemma, who slots into the place in her world she's been holding open.
She never wanted Jemma to meet Sherlock, rationalising the reason as the chance Jemma will like him despite herself – like Molly had – and from then on disagree with everything she complains about, spoiling her bashing sessions and by extension her time with Jemma.
"Jemma! Hi. I-Come in, come in."
As her friend steps around the door tentatively, looking like she's concerned she's in the way of work, Molly braces herself. Jemma's here now and there's no avoiding whatever Sherlock is going to blurt out, she might as well be straight-forward about this all.
"This is Sherlock Holmes"
"Ah"
It's hard to tell what Jemma is expressing by that slight and uncharacteristically weak disclosure, almost like she's surprised at what she's finding compared to what Molly has said.
"And ...err...sorry?"
Molly cringes, racking her brain for the name of Sherlock's...companion, as of late. Or is it colleague? She's not really clear where the guy fits in when it's not like Sherlock himself has a proper job, he just tends to turn up and demand things, citing crime solving and Met backing as the reasons why she should comply, when everyone present – this new ever pleasant jumper clad man included, and perhaps especially - knows in actuality it's about the puzzle of it. He takes pity on her within a few seconds of frantic blinking and hesitant stalling gestures.
"John Watson. Hi."
There's a perfunctory "Hi..." from Jemma to John, before her attention naturally shifts, the same way it invariably does for anyone when there's a room with them and him in it, "So you're Sherlock Holmes. Molly's told me all about you. You on one of your cases?"
"Jemma works in IT upstairs. That's how we met. Budding friendship."
And please don't screw it up for me, she pleads internally.
"Not gay," Sherlock says, never looking away from the microscope – the glance to the door when Jemma came in was apparently enough to form an opinion from, but that single random thing he says bluntly and like lightning is far from what Molly had prepared herself for.
"Sorry, what?"
"Nothing, um. Hey."
"Hey," Jemma returns, the greeting softer on her lips, focus on Sherlock still, so focused it appears that she clumsily knocks over a petri dish from the bench as she puts her hand out to lean closer. Molly frowns; this is not going well.
"Sorry, sorry." Jemma splutters, bending over to retrieve the equipment and gingerly placing it back down on a pile of books, even though the damage is done already, both literally and figuratively.
"Well I'd better be off. I'll see you at The Fox about 6ish?" Jemma asks quietly, unlike her, distracted Molly thinks, annoyed at it, though she doesn't shy away from Jemma's double kiss. One for each cheek, an exaggerated puckering up, in a manner that only now feels strange as it is witnessed by others. A farewell that is significantly punctuated with a turn towards the pair of strangers to her, who, Molly suddenly realises foolishly, were the real target of this interruption. "Bye. It was nice to meet you."
Sherlock is silent, leaving John to do the honours in the politeness department.
"You too."
Molly counts to ten, entirely too fast, but it's not until after the door swings shut behind Jemma that she erupts verbally.
"What do you mean not gay? Wait, that doesn't – I don't care about that kind of...She's my friend."
"And devoted friendship must suit you, Molly. You've put on 3lbs since I last saw you"
Damn the wine.
"Two and a half."
"No, three." Sherlock corrects casually.
"It doesn't matter if she's straight. Or gay, I mean. It's – why do you have to make everything about you? It's doesn't matter either way."
"With the way you're reacting about it I think you do care, very much."
"Because Molly's protesting it you think she must be gay? I have to explain all the time that we're not 'together'," John interjects.
"You correct people, there's a difference. No, no. The dilation of Molly's eyes and the blush when the woman walked in the room indicate her interest. I don't think you merely have friendship in mind, do you Molly? And then there's the tattoo."
"Her tattoo? What tattoo?"
"Visible above the waist on her back when bending over. Ornate vines, two faces in different directions. Roman god of Chaos, Janus. Uncommon choice. Add to that the farewell kiss. European style for a reason. Allowed her to be unbalanced, the corners of your mouth touched, not accidental, deliberate. That plus the extremely suggestible fact that she just left her number under this dish here and I'd say you'd better break it off now and save yourself the pain. She's a manipulator."
"She's – she's not like you. Why do you have to spoil everything?"
Molly goes home sick to her stomach. She can't face the pub tonight with Sherlock's 'facts' shrilling at her, setting off alarms of thoughts she's suppressed. She'd been fooling herself but no one fooled Sherlock and he would never suffer seeing anyone else doing so.
The next morning she logs on at work, fires up Outlook and receives a hefty sized email from an address she doesn't recognise.
From: fairytalescometrue-1989 at hotmail . com "Jemma M."
Subject: All about the journey
Hell-O Molls,
Hope you're not still sick. A beautiful day, have to appreciate it. Makes me want to jump for joy.
I'm just exploding to let you know my fab news too. There'll be tears but I have to say, I'm leaving. Transfer/Promotion, of a sort. Three cheers for me and a hurray at the pub last night. You should've seen it, glorious end to my time at Barts.
Mustn't gossip but I don't think my tedious bosses' son Freddy boy will ever grope another body in his sad little life. Left him in a spot of bother at Piccadilly Circus this morning. The lesson's fun even if it never teaches him anything. Bad bad me.
I've a tiny confession to make too. Don't hold it against me for keeping a secret. Everyone has them, try as hard as I did to pry all yours out of you. I met a guy a while ago, he's always always on my mind. One of a kind. Exactly your type. I know you'd approve. Great minds think alike.
Oh well, bye-bye. I'm off onto more challenging tasks. Be happy for me.
Ta-ra,
Jim-jems
XX
Attached is a file: Somethingtoremembermebysweets . JPEG
A photo, in glorious high definition, far too large for her screen, making her scroll across to appreciate it chunk by chunk. It's a photo of Jemma, who is more than the Jemma she knows, and different to the Jemma she knows. Clothes flashy, each item carefully placed, says styled, dressed up. Not dolled up, no. Everything about her is more like the Jemma she imagines secretly than the busy technical woman she has seen before. Her long black locks are razor straight for a change, hanging down yet not obscuring her face; there's a prim proper tailored blouse and crisp jacket over the top; makeup drawn severely, bold red lips to match the colour of those chipped nails she'd perpetually sported (perils of a physical job, she'd explained every time) and smouldering dark grey eyeliner, like she's painted for a battle.
This makes Molly feel as if what she has been seeing is the act and suddenly reality has reared its head. There is the fear again. The crawl of notions scratching under her skin, unable to pin down why, until days later Lestrade visits. The truth creeps up on her unobserved – still sensed - until that moment he explains what they all know now and the idle doubts are ripped from her, creating a gaping wound around her heart. Molly will patch it up and carry on, the way you do.
Being dramatic in her post-revelation thoughts, Molly decides she died a bit that day hearing Greg's kind words, or perhaps it was slowly by grades with every second she spent with Jemma, because she'd thought she'd mattered and she had, hadn't she, but it's never how she wants or needs.
She'd been wrong. Sherlock had been right. Usually she accepts his statements without much bother as long as he explains logically, even if it's a touch begrudgingly at times when she wishes she was right, but this time...she truly hates him for once, for being right about this of all things. Moriarty and he are alike. She has a type, regardless of gender, and it's abhorrent. They see her alright but it only lasts as long as they need; a body, an answer, a pawn, a person to play with.
Every time she deletes the email with the picture, there it is renewed each morning.
She doesn't understand how. She doesn't need to ask why.
She keeps on trying to rid herself of it, but never too hard. She could beg a solution from someone, yet she won't. After all, is there ever any escape? Two clicks and the evidence is gone, temporarily at least, and she is done with it for the day. Memories don't work the same.