Okay, you know what? I blame whyimmathere. Go to her. She's causing people to convert to Molliarty, and she is responsible for this.

On another note: she's lovely, this is dedicated to her, and it is MY FIRST MOLLIARTY.

As always, I have to show off my #literariness by using #LiteratureReferences in everything. For the chapter titles, I originally wanted to use quotes from the Bible, but I've only read that up until Exodus, and I have virtually no memory of it. You're going to have to settle for the chapter titles being picked out of Milton's Paradise Lost.


When the name first appeared on his arm, he grinned.

Sherlock Holmes

The handwriting was interestingly posh, the right kind of calligraphy you expect from a school as expensive as his own, in fact. He waited for the second name to appear, but was not surprised when it didn't come. He had always thought his 'soulmate' would be the person who was also his 'destined' arch nemesis. It was fitting. Particularly since Sherlock Holmes had been the name of the young boy who had interfered with the Carl Powers case, as far as he could remember.

Oh, the second name wasn't expected. But it came – just like the possessor of the name, it came slowly – it crept onto his arm, and he didn't realise it had placed itself there until late in the night, when he changed.

Molly Hooper

Jim put away his toothbrush and prodded at his arm. As clear as the water that was flooding the sink. He looked at it interestedly, the messy, disorganised writing which was careful not to take up too much space – saving paper, perhaps poor – and it occurred to him, that someone with so plain a name simply could not be his 'soulmate.'

He was judging these two individuals through himself. Sherlock Holmes lived up to the mark – suitably insane, for one thing. Molly Hooper, on the other hand –

The plainness of the name made him wonder how mad she would have to be to be one of the names on his arm.


He had looked, almost certainly. The stupidly irritating name eluded him every time – Sherlock Holmes was easy enough to handle. Jim grinned at the thought of what a long, long connection theirs was – simply aeons! Molly Hooper, however, was impossible to catch. Her name was absolutely basic – one thousand Molly Hoopers paraded around Great Britain, attempting to solve their little problems.

But he had faith in his little Hooper. He had faith that she would be insane – that she would be completely nuts, that she would want to murder, or torture, or hurt, or cause pain, or – if not that – cause chaos.

There was nothing lesser possible on his arm.


Getting the attention of one of his 'soulmates' was easy – Sherlock Holmes was easy to play games with, his sister was easier to gain the attention of (someone worthy of a spot on his arm, he was fairly certain – if Molly Hooper and her tiny handwriting wasn't scrawled all over it) – the cab driver ended up dead, and the word echoed.

Moriarty.

He was wondering whether Sherlock's arm tingled, whether he knew who was being spoken of and whether he was as madly in love with this as Jim was.

And yet –

Molly Hooper failed to show herself.

Jim had plans with Sherlock, and they didn't last very long. They culminated in death, and he was almost sorry he wasn't going to get to meet Molly Hooper.

And then –

It happened.


"Boss, here's the background checks for all of Holmes' men."

"His men, Sebastian?" asked Jim, playing with his phone – throwing it up in the air, without a care of its fragility. "You give them more credit than their due, my dear chap."

Moran rolled his eyes. "Read the files, for once."

"I simply cannot be bothered to hear out how many more times Philip Anderson and Sally Donovan are going to fuck."

"Fine," sighed Moran. "There's someone new though. We overlooked her before because we barely ever saw her – but she's the Pathologist who seems to be responsible for Sherlock."

Jim continued to throw his phone up in the air.

"Molly Hooper, apparently."

The phone dropped.

"Oh, not again, boss," said Moran.

"Easily replaceable," sang Jim. "Hand me the file, Sebby dearest."

"You just said you didn't –"

"I am so changeable, didn't you know?"

"Fine," repeated Moran. "Fine."

He left the room, dropping the file on the table.

"Oh, and Sebastian?" called Jim loudly. "Full background checks on Doctor Hooper, please!"


He scanned the picture –

Brown hair, brown eyes, by the way genes seem to go – lab coat, ridiculous taste in clothing, small, nervous, awkward, helplessly clumsy, clearly more intelligent than given credit for –

He was surprised.

This didn't happen often. He would have been a little more at ease had Molly Hooper been a mass murdering psychopath, or perhaps a little more chaotic – like Little Holmes – or perhaps even the cold icicle that was Eldest Holmes.

Molly Hooper was a disaster of the first order, no doubt. Just not the disaster he had been expecting.

And while Jim Moriarty was a bit horrified that this underwhelming specimen had found her way on his arm, he was also, notably, surprised.

It was an emotion he treasured, and one that Molly Hooper had clearly tapped into – with her plain, bland life, with two cups of tea every day, her penchant for cherry jumpers, her ridiculously unflattering pants, and her ability to make even the simple act of walking a balancing act which demanded applause at successful completion.

Even Sherlock Holmes had not managed to surprise him as much as Molly Hooper's reality had.

Moriarty had laughed when he saw pictures of her tripping or dropping articles which had been supposedly safely in her arms.

She was a wreck.

There was always a perverse pleasure in watching disasters.


The background checks came through in a while, and he learned that funnily enough – there was nothing in Molly Hooper's past.

Well, figuratively speaking. She was born, her father had passed away when she was ten, her mother had shifted to her Grandmother's house to make ends meet, she came from a distinctly middle-class family, and she worked hard to get the scholarship that allowed her to finish medical school. Somewhere in the middle, she had taken a trip around Europe, she had travelled a little to present papers – but she didn't have much of a standing in the medical community as a lecturer due to her ineptness at speech.

Moran had managed to grasp his hands on one of her papers.

It was on close range gunshot wounds.

Molly Hooper continued to surprise him.

Oh, her every day was predictably entrancing – everything from her walk to the Tube, where she will drop her purse at least once – to her arriving at her workplace, leaving for lunch to pick up a coffee – everything – was predictable.

And yet.

There was something so delightfully refreshing about Molly Hooper, and he was unable to say what it was.

There was only one thing for it –

He needed a closer look.


She had a vomit-inducing blog.

The kittens and the pink was bad enough, but the comic sans really did it. He had to force himself not to abandon the whole thing altogether because anyone who used comic sans was obviously his most destined enemy. But that left Sherlock Holmes, and for some reason – he found himself more interested in laughing at this mess of a woman than playing with Sherlock while he was busy with other cases.

And the game with Sherlock would be starting soon enough – so, for now, time to turn to the neglected half of the names on his body.

Coffee. That was the 'reason' to meet her.

"Oh – um – hi," she said, blushing almost immediately. The tomato red ought to look unappealing, but Jim found himself even more interested.

"Hello," he said. Who was he playing? Jim from IT. Shy, sweet, small Jim from IT. As small as the tiny Doctor Hooper.

"Um – I – well, um – you – you read my blog?" she asked.

The most obvious question.

"Yes," he nodded with an appropriate amount of nervous, Jim from IT gusto.

"Um – I'm – I'm sorry, I'm not very good at – well, erm – this," she said, looking helpless.

Oh, she was almost adorable with that level of social awkwardness.

"That's alright," he said charmingly.

"No – I," she clutched her hands, and then released her fingers. "I work in the morgue, you know. Um – dead people – really good company, as you may have guessed."

Jim had to train himself to not guffaw at that one.

"Sorry – jokes – bad at that – as well –" she said, cringing.

"Molly," he said, stopping her midway. He tilted his head. "I think it is adorable."

He was not even lying entirely.


They went to the Fox for drinks, and she hated it.

Oh, he loved this. He loved how uncomfortable she clearly was amongst so many people – and around him, a stranger. He loved how many times she was considering texting her best friend – Meena (Jim didn't do his research half-arsed). He loved how she swilled her drink more than drank it.

"I can see you're not quite comfortable," he mused.

"Bars – not really my thing –" she said. "Not that –" her drink splashed. "Not that – I'm not – I'm not having fun."

He laughed a little. "It's okay Molly," he said. "We can go somewhere else."

Molly slopped a little more of her drink, and despite himself, Jim asked (perfectly in character, of course): "How do you do that?"

"What?" she asked.

"Drop things?" he continued, in perfect Jim from IT wonder. "You dropped three items very comfortably in your arms on our way over here alone."

She went red again. "I'm clumsy," she said.

This was fun.

She was such an unalterable wreck. He had wondered whether she might not be that clumsy in real life, however – Molly Hooper was a mess.

"So, where would you like to go?"

"Um," she said. "Well – there's this place I go to for books, sometimes. Could we – erm – go there?"

A bookshop. How quaint. If this became any more stereotypical, he might find himself in a rom-com. Of course, he had never expected himself to be in a rom-com.

"Okay," he said. "Lead the way."

She smiled, putting her drink down eagerly. "You're going to love it. It's so cute – it might just kill you." She giggled, more to herself than for him.

Once again, Jim had to train himself not to laugh.

The tiny, twee pathologist made death jokes.

And puns.


It was a small bookstore – nothing like a large, megachain with its coffee counters. Molly waltzed in with a surprising amount of grace, and said "Hi Barbara," to the unimportant twenty-something that was hanging about. Jim resisted the urge to shoot something.

She went – almost immediately – to the fantasy fiction section. Jim raised his eyebrows.

"Fantasy?" he asked. "You, a doctor?"

Her eyes widened. "I – well, you deal with death so often – it's just a nicer escape, I think. Although – um – I wouldn't say always – sometimes – fantasy can be – really – really dark. Um – if you know what I am saying."

"Is it?" he asked. She liked how she shrugged her shoulders uncomfortably – two words could make her such a mess, it was just so much fun.

"Um – have you read Harry Potter?"

Again, Jim raised his eyebrows. "No. I have heard of them, however. Children's books, aren't they?"

"Well," said Molly fingering the spine of a book, "Essentially – I suppose. But there's a lot of darkness in them – Voldemort – the villain – he's not the only one, either. I like to think about how Harry Potter shows children the way – well, the way institutionalised power structures work. And Voldemort – erm, he taps into them – he uses the weakness of the Wizarding society and that's when you know – it's not the villain that's causing the – um, the problems. It's the society."

That was considerably more eloquent than he was expecting it to be.

"You'd like Game of Thrones," said Molly thoughtfully. "Politics and manipulation."

That intrigued him – manipulation, she said. He was fairly certain he hadn't broken character even once while speaking to her, so the observation was doubly interesting. Jim was tempted. He mustered up the Jim from IT gallantry: "Well, then I'll buy the first book of both."


And when the date ended, he kissed her quickly on the lips, and left – appropriately nervous, of course – and she smiled, and looked perfectly incandescent.

It was nauseatingly enjoyable.

Oh, this was exciting. He loved playing a character, a character that would break her heart. He revelled in it – he had always known that there was going to be little difference between his soulmate and his enemy, and he loved that he got to fuck at least one of them.

Jim wasn't mad about sex, not like most people. He didn't kiss – it was a personal rule of his: kissing was off the table unless being used specifically by him to manipulate someone. But sex? Sex was never off the table, and never on the table either. He had never had a satisfying sexual encounter. The only one that came close was The Woman, and god knows what she was up to.

But he was looking forward to sleeping with Molly Hooper. It would be the coup d'etat that would satisfy all parties immensely – Sherlock in particular.

All of this culminated in one thing, and one thing alone:

He had to meet her again.


"You want another background check on her?" asked Sebastian, surprised.

"Oh, yes," said Jim, the tips of his fingers touching.

"But why, boss? Nothing has come up. She's as clean as – well, I dunno. No one is as clean as her."

"Must be something you missed," sang Jim.

"No, I've checked everything. I haven't done such a good check on John Watson."

"Oh, this Won Jotson is thoroughly annoying to me. Focus on what I am telling you to do, Sebastian dearest. It's only me that finds it hard to believe that there is so little about her to be investigated, and you know what it is about my hunches."

"Jim, come on –" began Sebastian.

"Shh. Just do it, kiddo."


Their second date delighted Molly. She liked small coffee shops, unintrusive in nature. She was smiling a lot more, and Jim wondered what she would look like if she was wielding a weapon while she did that.

The small Molly Hooper delighted Jim. Oh, she was boring him to tears currently talking about her education – but she delighted him in many ways.

One of them was thinking about how fragile and deliciously breakable she was.

His arm tingled at the very thought of it.

Molly had to be encouraged in almost everything apart from talking about the books she liked. He had to tune in to hear her talk about all that, and even found himself mildly interested when she started talking about Mary Shelley. Some sort of inspiration, one would argue.

She smiled, and Jim grinned to himself.

This time, when he kissed her, her lips parted just a little bit, and he found himself interested once again.


"Oh – hi, Jim," she said, blushing with pleasure when she saw him.

"Bad time?" he asked.

Her hands were half covered in blood. Jim licked his lips.

"Um – let me just – finish up – sorry, it went on a while. Do you mind waiting? You can wait outside, if you want…"

"No, it's alright, I'll stay."

She looked nervous about the proposal.

"I have one autopsy to finish."

"I don't mind your job, Molly," he said with the easy charm. And while Molly looked uneasy about this, Jim had other motives.

He wanted to see her conduct an autopsy.


Oh, Jim knew what he had been expecting.

It wasn't as if he wasn't familiar with autopsies. He had seen a few in his good days when he was still directly involved in the murders that he committed.

This wasn't any of that.

Once again, Molly Hooper surprised him.

The neatness of the autopsy made almost any other autopsy seem a little more like a chicken being carved on a dinner table. And although Jim was very good at carving (he was fond of cooking, if he had to admit) Molly Hooper wielded the knife better than him.

Jim felt the racing of his heart, and to his intense delight, found himself aroused.

Fucking Molly Hooper was going to be extremely enjoyable.

Right before she got the call over how much pain young Jim had caused around the city, and her face crumpled into tears.

He had to remind Moran to bug her apartment. He didn't want to miss the reaction.


Jim was pondering the many ways he would like to kill Molly Hooper after the whole ordeal was over. He would have to see to it himself, of course. As someone who had a position on his arm, she deserved the best honours.

"You're going to love it!" she said, grinning at him.

Glee.

It was exactly at this moment that Jim wondered whether she wasn't actually the destined enemy. He had never considered the soulmate and enemy category mutually exclusive, but watching all of those teenagers sing truly made him question his world order.

It didn't help that the gay teenage boys had something compelling about them.

He didn't know how but he could swear Molly Hooper knew that he just had a fondness for music.

Molly grinned at him as the episode finished. Jim tilted his head to one side while he looked at her.

"I like you," she said boldly. "You aren't put off by – well, you know how people normally are about someone who does – um – pathology – and you aren't put off by it!"

She seemed so genuinely surprised by that Jim wondered what she would do if he revealed what he was to her. She was a strange girl, this one – he was tempted to pull a gun on her and see what she would do.

The idea of a terrified Molly Hooper was breathtakingly arousing.

He kissed her, then – in his standard, Jim from IT way. And almost to test it out – he increased the pressure, biting her lower lip and sucking it in a not-so-Jim-from-IT way. Instead of being surprised, Molly Hooper responded with fervour, pulled back and smiled at him:

"You're a really good kisser!"

Jim tilted his head to one side again.

When he reviewed the story in his head, he would be lying to himself if he didn't admit that this was the point where the pretences stopped. He gripped her by the waist, dragging her on his lap, kissing her again as his arm tingled. Jim from IT would be interesting to play – particularly during sex – what was more interesting, however, was how much more Molly Hooper liked Jim Moriarty.

Because as he bit into her neck Molly Hooper's mouth opened into an unmistakable moan.

He threw her down on the floor, without pretending to be gentle and comforting. Her eyes were bright, excited, curious, and Jim grinned at her. He gripped her thighs, unbelievably uncaring of whether or not she might bruise. Jim from IT really ought to care about that.

"Oh," whispered Molly, arching upwards.

With a small growl, Jim tore through her shirt. The buttons popped easily – and Molly (for once) was the one who was surprised. But the brief flip between them over surprise was righted almost immediately.

Molly Hooper's arms were blank.

She noticed where he looked and she went red.

"Um – I – didn't ever get any. Names, that is," she clarified unnecessarily.

Jim regarded her again.

"Then would you mind if I kept my shirt on?" he asked courteously.

"No – no!" said Molly. "Of course – your – private affair – I wouldn't -"

"Dearest," said Jim softly; his arms winding behind her, unhooking her bra. "Be quiet."

And Molly Hooper could not speak words after that.


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