Molly
The first girl to kiss Sherlock Holmes told him she'd done it to make him shut up. One minute, he was trying to explain that night's homework to her, the next she had pulled him and kissed him, hard. He paniced a little, then his mind went blank.
It turns out, the girls in Advanced Biology didn't think Joanne could ever get that weird younger kid to kiss her. They'd offered her a challenge; could she do it? She could, she told them, and she would.
And she did, and for the rest of the term, they kept at it. They were usually in the library or the lab, because he spent hours there after school and nobody else did. To Sherlock, labs never stopped meaning sex. Sex and the promise of it, wanting it the way a sixteen-year-old boy would. The smells the long, cold tables, the florescent lights, it all came together to be his biggest turn-on.
The first time Sherlock saw Molly Hooper, she was in the lab-like morgue wearing a lab-coat, the knee-length kind and it was fastened to the last button. She wore her hair pulled back in a ponytail, protective goggles. Sherlock just stood and looked at her, couldn't speak. He was afraid he might say the wrong thing.
No-one excited him more than a a girl in a lab coat. A girl in a lab-coat was a girl wearing something that looked serious, blank, cold. She was dressed for work. A girl in a lab-coat could be all soft and curvy or she could be willowy and svelte; he'd have to get her out of the white coat to see. Those white coats just begged to be ripped off and thrown to the floor.
This Molly Hooper wore high boots which Sherlock also loved . Black boots, leather, he liked those. How did anybody know if she had anything on underneath her cover-up? She could pierced, tattooed, shaved. Shaved?: Sherlock shook his head, he didn't like that. He had to get rid of that image.
Sherlock Holmes was still standing in the doorway of the morgue. when Molly, shrouded in mystery walked toward him. "Hello. Can I help you?"
She was both pretty and plain. Certanly pretty, just plain pretty nothing you'd notice. Glasses, pulled-back hair, all the more to undo. "I believe you can."
"I hope so." She sounded like she wanted to be helpful. She waited. "What is it that you need."
He started looking past her shoulder to a spot on the wall. "I need a female, around thirty, no smoking, drinking, etc."
She laughed a little, "You need a WHAT? Are you sure you're in the right place."
Oh God; did he say that! He started looking all around; everywhere but right at her. Hs started talking very, VERY fast.
"I need a dead body. A dead woman, as fresh as possible. Must be between twenty-five and thirty-five, and 'clean-living'. Have you got one?"
She was looking at him, staring. Her eyes looked wide. She may have stepped back from him just a little.
He tried to sound like a man on a mission, not like some crazy perv.
He looked right at her. "I need to run some experiments on the adrenail glands of a recently dead woman. I'm not mucking about this time. Scotland Yard needs my help, and I need your's. I've got permission and everything. Check with them upstairs, they know me. I'm Sherlock Holmes. You must be new here; are you?"
Her being new might work to his advantage. If she was new, nobody would have warned her about him. This meant she might be more willing to help him and more open to his advances.
"Just started yesterday. I'm Molly Hooper." She had s tiny voice.
Not exactly forthcoming, this Miss Hooper. Sherlock snapped into all-business he didn't have time for this. "Well Molly Hooper, have you got a nice body for for me?"
Molly giggled. "Actually Sherlock, I just might. I'll check."
She walked away from him toward the drawers where the bodies were kept. He watched her. If she was wearing a skirt, then it was a short one; best kind. Again, it was nice that the coat left so much to the imagination.
In no time, Molly wheeled her over on a gurney bearing literally the perfect subject. Covered with a sheet, the woman looked very peaceful; as if she'd pulled the sheet up to her chin for a wee nap. The woman had strawberry blond hair and that really beautiful skin some heavier women have.
"Ms. Laura Oxbridge, aged 32." Molly read off a chart. "Says here that she died of a ruptured appendix. Fair haired, fat and fertile, isn't that who they used to say?
"Who used to say what" Sherlock was confused.
Molly looked very uncomfortable. "They used to say that women who were in the twenties and thirties um, you know. . . . Women ' of child-bearing age."
She was looking at the floor, twisting her hair.
"Women ' of child-bearing age who had fair hair and were, well, heavy were more likely to get appendicitis than other people. Don't know why they said it, but they used to..."
"Bunk! Don't believe it. My brother's appendix turned on him last Winter, and he's not what I'd call fair-haired. It's just the body getting rid of something it never needed anyway. Mycroft said it hurt like hell, but he's never been good with pain."
Sherlock congratulated himself. He'd just assured her that he thought outdated assumptions were laughable, and without meaning to, worked in a dig at his older brother. Saying that Mycroft wasn't good with pain might suggest a certain bravery in him.
"Laura Oxbridge's sister brought her in today around two pm. The sister said that Laura'd called because she felt horrible and didn't think she should be alone. By the time the sister'd arrived, Laura'd already called the doctor. She was in Emergency for four hours waiting for a surgeon, but they didn't get to her. Pretty busy for a Thursday. afternoon."
She was very new, new to the city too. Some towns might have afternoons, but not city hospitals like Saint Bart's.
"No, not really. This place can be crowded in the afternoon, that's when all the kids who've injured themselves one way or another come through. People who were told to come back if things don't get better come in then too. People who get found by the postman or a neighbor looking in or the landlady. . .."
He stopped. He'd started thinking about when people would start missing him, so he'd stopped.
"I hate to hear that kind of thing. It makes me sad, and nervous. I live on my own see."
"I do too, I'm an appalling flatmate. If I had cats, maybe the pitiful hungry mewling might be a sign that something was amiss in my apartment"
"Either that, or the smell!" Molly seemed to regret those words as soon as she'd said them; even so, she giggled. "Sorry!"
"Actually no, probably not. " Sherlock was starting to get a little nervous. He started looking at his hands; why did he do that? "I do a lot of experiments at night in the flat, and some of them involve some noxious things. The hallway must smell god-awful."
"So, what is it that you do?"
This was the longest conversation he'd had with a woman, ever! She actually asked about his experiments, and women never did that; not even the ones in lab-coats. It was time to sound important.
"I am THE consulting detective, the one and only. If Scotland Yard is lucky, I'll find out what they need to know. They stick to their obsolete methods, but I don't. Today they need me to run some experiments on a recently dead woman. I should have results by the time their Medical Examiner has shown up for work."
"Sounds interesting." Molly really did sound interested. "Are you going to be here late?"
"All night, I assume."
"Yeah, me too. I've got the overnight. I was about to go get something to eat. Want anything?"
Most of the people who worked in the morgue seemed to like ignoring him; alright with him if they did. They did their work, he did his. Nobody offered to get anything, but he never ate while he worked anyway. However, he needed coffee.
"I don't eat when I'm working, wastes energy and time."
"Don't you get hungry?" Was that concern in her voice?
"I do, when I'm finished. When I'm finished, I'm starved! I've eaten whole loaves of bread when I've finished. I've eaten two dinners in one sitting." Funny thing to brag about, Sherlock supposed.
Molly was laughing. "Coffee then?"
"Coffee, yes! Black, two sugars."
"That's sweet."
"Sweet? What's sweet?" Nothing about him had ever been called 'sweet'!
"How you take it, your coffee I mean; dark but sweet. I need a little milk, to smooth the edge."
"I like the edge." He'd said that last thing just to say
And she was gone, off to get the coffee. She left him to his thoughts.
Melanie Campbell © 2012 10 of 10