Take two, he began with, "I've come to the conclusion, Hooper, that we really ought to get married."

Molly didn't look up from the corpse (floater pulled from the Thames, lifelong dipsomaniac, embezzler, dull), but she rolled her eyes and said, "Are you seriously going to do this every time? It's going to get irritating."

"Not out of obligation or convention," Sherlock said, folding his arms across his chest and smiling smugly, "But because you and I are uncommon well suited to one another."

She did stop, at that, setting down the bone saw.

"Consider, for example, that you and I both have a strong professional interest in both pathology and murder. Despite your fussiness, we share our domicile in peace and comfort-"

"I really don't think that 'No experiments in the bathtub' counts as 'fussy,' Holmes," Molly frowned.

"You don't mind my erratic habits, bad temper, and consuming career. I don't mind that you wear men's clothes and spend your days up to your elbows in corpses. And I believe…"

He lowered his voice to a growl.

"That our new activities are quite mutually satisfactory. Therefore we should marry. Who else are we likely to meet who's preferable?"

A faint blush had spread over Molly's cheeks, but she frowned and said, "Shall I begin the list of reasons why not with the fact that we're both, nominally, male? Or end there?"

"You'd have to switch back, but-"

"I cannot do that, Holmes. I'm sorry, it's very kind of you, but it just isn't possible. Now unless you have something to contribute to this post-mortem I'm afraid I will have to ask you to leave."

Molly came home very late that night, to find Sherlock lounging in the doorway.

"I believe," he said, undoing her cravat and tracing his lips over her throat, "That I can convince you."

Molly pursed up her lips into a moue, thought about it, and said, "I suppose you can try."

So Sherlock flung her over his shoulder and carried her to the bedroom, ignoring her shrieks of laughter.


Late one night there came a knock at the door, just about the hour a man gives his first yawn and glances at the clock. Watson rolled his eyes and kept on with his newspaper. Mary put her needlework (Well...leatherwork. Well... she was making lead-weighted coshes to distribute to the more reliable ladies of the campaign in advance of next week's march on the houses of Parliament. The committee had agreed that no violence would be initiated, but that outrages against the persons of the members were to be met with force) down in her lap and made a little face of disappointment.

"A patient!" said she, "You will have to go out."

"Shan't," John replied briefly, "I know that knock."

And indeed, far sooner than anyone could have reached the front door, the rattle of lockpicks could be heard. A consulting detective inveigled himself into the dim parlor, and said, "She's… like an irresistible succubus, in a waistcoat. I don't quite understand how it keeps happening but it definitely does."

"A professional tip, Mr. Holmes," Mary replied dryly, "When things like this 'happen' it's generally best if they keep 'happening' all night long rather than the gentleman leaving midway through to go annoy his friends."

"Mary!" Sherlock bristled.

"Yes, Mary, really," Watson agreed, turning the page of the newspaper.

"Thank you, John-" Sherlock began, before Watson interrupted him to say, "Clearly he accidentally stumbled and fell on her. It could happen to anyone."

"Oh, very nice," Sherlock spat, "Both of you are conspiring to mock my suffering now."

"You don't… actually seem to be suffering all that much, Sherlock," Mary said, "And we can't help it if it's hilarious. Though you two really should try to formalize this arrangement before she ends up pregnant."

Sherlock exhaled through his nose, and replied, "Despite your direful example, Mrs. Watson, it is entirely possible to successfully operate a contraceptive."

You could have heard a pin drop. Watson slowly lowered his paper, and asked, "What was that, Holmes?"

Mary, meanwhile, made repeated "pfft" noises as she walked to the secretary in the corner, from which she took a battered clothbound memorandum-book. Though this book contained nothing more secret than the washing record and minor household notes, she always wrote it in a variety of elaborate ciphers in order to irritate Sherlock, who tended to rummage through other people's private possessions when left unattended. She opened it to the last completed page, then paged back.

And then further back.

Then she put a hand up to her mouth and sat heavily back down on the sofa and said, "John… he might actually be right."

"Of course I'm right," Sherlock said indignantly, "Puffy-sleepy-nauseated… expectant. You really didn't know?"

"It's been nearly three months," Mary said, sounding lost.

"Three?" Watson spluttered, "How did you miss that?"

Mary flung her hands into the air bewilderedly and said, "Well, I mean… seven years of, of nothing so I'd given up and I'm forty- oh, dear God, I'm forty- if I thought about it at all I guess I was thinking it was the start of the climacteric."

"How did you miss that, Watson? You're a physician, allegedly. Didn't you notice Chadwick's sign?" Sherlock asked.

Watson folded his paper, sat up very straight, and said coldly, "I do not put her on an examination table under a strong light, Holmes."

"What's Chadwick's sign?" Mary asked, confusedly looking between the two men.

"Never mind," Watson said.

"Bluish discoloration of the vaginal mucosa occurring as early as the sixth week of pregnancy," Sherlock said smartly.

Mary's eyes got wide, and she gasped, "It changes colors?!"

John scrambled to his feet and sat next to her on the sofa, nearly knocking Sherlock over as he went, "It's very subtle, Holmes got that out of a book and he's got no bloody idea..."

"But… everything changes," Mary said, reaching out desperately. John took hold of her hands and folded them together in his.

"I suppose it does," he said, "But… it's a happy change. Isn't it?"

"Oh, God, yes," Mary said, her tears starting to flow.

Holmes, eventually, let himself out.


Some time later, somehow, without Sherlock knowing it, the third formal marriage proposal degenerated into a shouting match, only terminated when Mrs. Hudson slammed a broom handle onto her ceiling and screeched up at them, "Pipe down, you two."

Molly accused Sherlock of being a delusional idiot who only cared about himself to the point that he'd want to ruin her life and enslave her simply in order to ensure his own domestic contentment. For Sherlock's part, he possibly called her a heartless trollop who only viewed him as a sex aid and didn't give a damn about his feelings which just incidentally, Molly, were not all that easy for him to come to grips with.

When the pounding from below broke into their argument, Molly glared at him, fire in her eyes, before stalking up the stairs to her room and slamming the door. For his part Sherlock had a furious smoke of his pipe and then went to bed himself, feeling tension in his jaw and an odd pain in his chest.

After an hour, candlelight crept under his door, and he heard Molly's quiet knock.

"It's not locked," Sherlock said, after consideration.

Molly came in and closed the door behind her. Sherlock shifted off to one side of his bed and made space for her. Setting her candle on the table at his bedside, Molly blew it out and climbed in with him.

She seldom shared his bed except when she 'shared his bed,' and feeling her soft warmth at his side made Sherlock realize that this was a foolish omission on their part. He got an arm round her back, and she rested her head where his shoulder became his chest.

"I withdraw 'trollop,'" he said eventually into the darkness, "It was both untrue and unkind of me to say."

"I don't really think you want to enslave me. And obviously you aren't an idiot, you're the cleverest man I know," Molly said in a thick voice, "Holmes, are you truly so unhappy with our life as it is?"

Sherlock sighed, and ran his fingers through the short curls at the nape of Molly's neck.

"There are aspects of it that I dislike, yes. I don't much care to kiss you when you're wearing your mustache, for example. It's unbearably ticklish, I've no idea how Mary stands it. And…"

He considered how to say it, and slowly began, "Ever since Watson's learned that Mary is enciente, he's been… terribly proud, and protective of her. As for protective, it's absurd, she once killed a man using only her thumbs-"

"I believe Mary was being facetious about that."

"Mmm," Sherlock agreed, though he believed no such thing, "But when I watch him watch her I can't help but think that it would be… good, if I could stand in front of the world and say, 'This particular one, with her beauty and her gentleness and her diamond-like mind and her surgeon's hands...' Incidentally, I'm speaking about you now, not Mary-"

"Yes, I've got that."

"Anyway, to say, 'This one chose me, above all others.' I'm not accustomed to feeling envious of Watson, and I don't care for that either. But no, I'm not truly unhappy. I never could be, with you."

Molly buried her face in his chest, and mumbled, "Six years."

Lifting her head again, she chuckled bitterly, "Six bloody years. That's how long after I started that they first began letting girls into the medical schools. If I had just been a bit more patient and tough I could have been one of the pioneers-"

"And you'd have been stuck in pediatrics or obstetrics, not pathology. Never pathology. Who knows when Scotland Yard will allow women to work there?"

"But it's too late for even that, now. If I admitted to being a woman, that would be… it. The scandal would be enormous, I'd never be allowed to work again, even in the hospitals that accept women. I'd lose everything I love, besides you."

Sherlock kissed the top of her head.

"It would be unconscionably selfish of me to ask you to. I know better than most how the work can define who you are."

Though part of him did, secretly, sort of, wish that she would.

"I would so like it if I didn't have to pretend. If I could proudly say, "I've chosen this man, above all others." If I could be myself here and out there," Molly sniffled.

"Molly in the morgue," Sherlock singsonged softly to her.

"At the dead center of town," she agreed.

Sherlock got his other arm around her, and murmured, "But that isn't the world in which we live."


Molly came home to Baker Street, sore-footed and tired and in desperate need of a brandy. She'd developed an excellent reputation since working with the Met, but the trouble of an excellent reputation was that it put you in demand, and four post-mortems in a single day was just a bit much, thank you. It had given her plenty of quiet time to think, though, and therefore she was content… just bone weary.

Holmes's stick and tall black silk hat were on the rack, and Molly smiled at the thought that he was home. She nodded to Mrs. Hudson on her way in and trudged up the stairs to 221B, only to find a very tall woman standing in the parlor, adjusting her veil in the mirror.

"Oh, good evening, Madam," Molly said, automatically dropping her voice into the raspy 'Manfred' register, "Are you here to see Mr. Holmes? I'm not sure where he's got to…"

She trailed off, because the client had turned around in a swish of aubergine silk skirts, and there, towering his accustomed eight inches above her, was Sherlock. He smiled down at her benignly through the netting of his fashionable bonnet.

"Good Lord," Molly said.

"What do you think?"

Molly struggled to find the words, and finally said, "You're… you're such an attractive man, Holmes. I don't see how it is that you manage to make such an alarming looking woman."

"It is rather impressive. But being… less than perfectly beautiful... is actually more appropriate for the case," Holmes acknowledged, turning back to the mirror and pursing up his lips.

"Did you stitch ruffles into your corset cover?" Molly asked curiously, noticing a subtle curved swell to his chest that was not there normally. That had been one of the chores she'd been glad to leave behind her, though it always secretly annoyed her that she didn't really need to do much to pass for a man in that regard herself.

"Certainly not," he said, sounding offended, "The modiste did that."

"Naturally," Molly chuckled, because of course he wouldn't ever think to do his own dressmaking, "What's the case?"

He blushed. Holmes factually, blatantly blushed. And then he took a small velvet box off the mantelpiece and shyly extended it to her, saying, "The Adventure of the Marrying Man."

"Oh, no," Molly said, taking a step backwards in alarm.

"Oh, yes. Now hear me out, Hooper," Sherlock said sternly, "I've done a great deal of thinking on this subject and come to the conclusion that you are right. Molly Hooper can't marry, not openly, not without losing everything else in her life that matters to her. But when it comes down to it, neither can Sherlock Holmes."

He sighed, and Molly could hear the faintest bit of wistfulness to his next words, and despite herself, she reached out and gently squeezed the hand that wasn't holding the ring.

"I have… far too many enemies, and the rare people I am known to care for have targets painted on their backs. Both John and Mary have been threatened because of their affiliation with me and, if you'll pardon me, you're far less capable than they are to deal with that sort of danger."

Molly shrugged. She knew that. There was a reason the brides had chosen stealth and anonymity for their operations.

"But," Sherlock continued, "Manfred Hooper is an entirely free agent whose intimate life concerns nobody but himself. Thus-"

He extended his arms out, placing all of his feminine finery on display.

"Wilhelmina. Cousin of Sherlock, single at an advanced age because of her striking physical appearance-"

Molly laughed a little bit. She couldn't help it.

"Holmes, are you seriously proposing you would live your public life as a woman from now on?"

"By no means," he scoffed, "Do you know how fortunate I was to be born male? I entirely see why you prefer it. This would simply be for the purposes of the ceremony and the banns and all that rot."

"Or," Molly said dryly, "And I know that this isn't quite as sensible as going to church in full drag and lying about our identities in front of the Lord, I had the thought that… we could take a trip."

Smiling, she reached out, took the ring box from him and set it on the mantel. Then Molly took both Sherlock's hands in hers.

"We could go, for example, to Paris. Or to New York, or Gretna Green, or really any place where we aren't known. And there, I could wear a dress, and my wig... and if I may, that hat that you've got on, it's the sweetest bonnet I've ever seen… and there, Margaret Hooper and William Holmes can be married. It won't be public, it won't be known… but it will be true."

Sherlock looked terribly uncertain, though that was probably enhanced by his dress.

"You… you really want that?"

"Life is very short, Sherlock. And when it's over, this is what I want us to have been."

So it went.


They finally managed it in a small cliffside village in Apulia, in the aftermath of a case involving the forgery of one of Italy's most expensive wines and its replacement by the rather rough reds of the region. The case was an excuse, obviously. Neither of them gave a damn about rich idiots being fooled, but it was an excellent opportunity to take a holiday.

The Watsons had wished to be in attendance, but they'd left it long enough that Mary's state made it inadvisable for her to travel, and indeed upon Sherlock and Molly's return to England, they were able to greet the very small, very perfect, very angry Rosamund Watson for the first time.

The sindaco was an elderly man, who after performing the brief civil ceremony clasped their hands together in his gnarled ones, and said in a faint voice, "My children, this is the most beautiful day of your lives."

Which was appallingly sentimental but not, they had to admit, entirely false.

In the morning, Molly woke before Sherlock. Wrapping a sheet around herself, she walked out onto the balcony of their hotel to watch the sun rise over the strait of Otranto. After a while, she could hear her husband moving behind her, and she smiled.

A pair of strong arms wrapped around her, and a unshaven, bristling cheek rubbed against hers.

"Good morning, Doctor Holmes."

Molly laughed.

"Good morning, Mrs. Hooper."

Notes:

By 1896 women had been able to attend medical school in the UK, on a small scale, for about twenty years. Therefore I'm aware of my errata and did it anyway since this is all modern-day Sherlock's drug-induced hallucination and maybe he just didn't know that, okay? The beginning of the scene in which Sherlock acts as the angel of the annunciation to Mary is taken quite directly from the beginning of "The Man With the Twisted Lip," and some details of the Watson courtship are from "The Sign of Four," both by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In TAB the Watsons seem to be recently married but in Conan Doyle-verse they got hitched probably more like in 1889, and I have chosen that.