AN: Thank you so much for the amazing response to this fic. It has been incredibly flattering. Also, I listened to "...og lengra" by Olafur Arnalds while I wrote this. I just fits the tone of this chapter perfectly (if you're into listening to music while you read).
Home
He stood outside of her door again. It was always her door. All of his things may have been stored at Baker Street, his suits, his skull and his violin but it wasn't his home any longer. It hadn't been since his rather impressive leap off of the roof of Saint Bart's almost three years prior. At least it didn't feel like home anymore. For two years, he'd had to avoid it completely and by the time it was his again, it was just too quite, too empty since John had gone off and rashly gotten himself married. He'd tried to make it home again, he'd tried for three weeks but one night, after a long and what he thought aimless walk, he found himself right where he was standing now.
When she'd opened the door that night, he knew. He finally knew something that he hadn't let himself realize for the past two years. This was his home. But it wasn't the flat that made it so. It wasn't the items in it. It wasn't her uncomfortable little couch that he'd first taken her on. It wasn't her ancient telly or her cramped, outdated little kitchen.
It was her.
The realization should have terrified him, well, it did terrify him but not in the way he always thought he would be if he one day found himself irrevocably attached to another human. He'd always been repulsed by what he saw in others. The way they clung to one another for support because they were too emotionally weak to stand on their own. That's the sort of terror, the sort of revulsion, he expected but it's not the one that met him. Instead, the only thought that passed was fear, actual fear, at an intensity he hadn't known since Baskerville, was that she might not always want him.
He knew she loved him, that she had for a very long time but that did nothing to assuage his fear. He'd seen people who claimed love for another be the ones to cause their loved one far more pain than anyone else around them. But Molly was sweet, and loyal. She would never hurt him, would she? She was the one that welcomed him back after those first six months. She was the one that knew him when no one else did or could.
"Of course, you're Sherlock Holmes, the worlds only consulting detective."
"Was," he'd said and it had been far more painful to say that he'd thought it would be.
"I don't underst…" But he'd cut her off, in no mood to hear what she didn't understand about him.
"There aren't any consulting detectives currently," he'd said but it was what he hadn't said that tore at him the most. 'There likely wouldn't be any ever again.' He really believed that after those first hellish six months. He'd done so many horrible things just so he could try to scrape together his life again, one he often thought was lost to him forever.
"There will be again." She'd said it with such absolute assuredness that it had stopped his mind completely. She really believed that. There wasn't a hint of a doubt in her tone, her words or her expression. Somehow she knew, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would succeed. For the first time since his conversation with Moriarty on the roof, he saw hope.
So no, of course Molly would never hurt him. She was the only one that would never lose faith in him. It certainly hadn't looked like she could that night, the first night he came back to her after returning from the ranks of the dead. She'd looked so relieved to see him. In that moment, he wondered what she had been thinking for those past three weeks since his return. She probably thought the same thing he had, that everything could now return to as it was. The relief he saw in every aspect of her face and posture made him feel so much better. It told him that she hadn't wanted everything to go back as it had been. She still wanted him.
She saw him, she wanted him and she had never lost faith in him. In that moment, he'd wanted to pull her into his body and never let her go. This was the sentiment he'd always abhorred, always ridiculed in others but now that he'd succumbed to it, he no longer cared.
He hadn't pulled her to him, despite the strong desire to do so. He'd also wanted to kiss her but this wasn't the first time he'd had that urge. He hadn't let himself do it before, knowing that partaking in such an act would turn what they did from merely sex to something far deeper. During his 'death', he didn't want something deeper, something that could seriously hurt her if he failed and never came back but now that he was alive again, he didn't want to do anything that might cause her change her mind. He would let her dictate this… relationship. He would keep to what he knew she approved of, what she liked. That night he'd walked in and she'd told him how happy she was for him, for everything he'd accomplished and regained but all he could think about was how much he liked that rosy hue on her flushed cheeks.
She'd smiled at him when he'd finally asked to have her again, oh that smile. He might have smiled himself but he couldn't remember anything about that night but her. For the first time, he let himself truly acknowledge just how much he liked everything about her. For instance, he liked the way she unbuttoned his shirt with her delicate fingers as her tongue poked out slightly from between her lips. He liked how her breath hitched when he first touched her bare skin with his hands and the way she moaned when he'd cup her small, but not too small breasts. He liked the way shuddered when he'd first press into her, her breath catching right before she sighed out a long, beautiful moan.
Yes, that night he catalogued everything about Molly Hooper that he liked and stored it away for safekeeping. He would delete the periodic table of elements before he deleted even one aspect of her from his mind. He should have done it ages ago but, he realized that night, he'd always been a bit of a coward.
That was how it went after that. Life did return to normal on all other fronts but never again did he want her to live at the periphery like she had before his fall. He'd visited again a few nights later and again, he enjoyed coming home.
The months passed and he continued to visit her flat when he wasn't on cases. She didn't seem to mind the absences. She seemed to accept them just as she accepted him into her morgue and lent her specific skill set to the task of solving mystery after mystery that he brought to her. He found he'd take cases that warranted less than a five if it meant it would let him be nearer to her. Cases were abundant but he always made sure to leave at least a week between them so he could go home.
There was one case that he hadn't been able to solve however. It was the mystery of why she never asked anything of him. He'd seen her date men before. He knew that before, she'd gone out to eat or see some vapid movie at the theater. Maybe she'd only done those due to social custom and didn't see the need with him. He'd made his opinions about just that sort of thing very clear to people in the past, perhaps she'd always felt the same.
If she had asked, he would have gone. He would have taken her to restaurants owned by people he'd aided in the past. He would have made sure that she was given only the best but she never asked. She never asked to go to Baker Street. He might have liked it if she had. Mrs. Hudson asked after Molly from time to time and it might have been nice to see the two women he was rather fond of in his life conversing with one another. He actually wanted to play his violin for her. There were times when he felt as if he could communicate everything he thought of her through one of his compositions, several of which he'd composed specifically with her in mind.
But she never asked and he could only assume it was because she didn't want anything more from him.
He could live with that. He could live with only seeing her occasionally. It would be enough as long as he always knew that at some point, he could go home. He'd just take more cases that needed her assistance and in the between times, he'd go to her.
After a while, however, things started to change. That smile he liked seeing, she stopped giving. She'd open her door and it would be little more than a slight uptick at the corners of her lips. He didn't know what caused it. He didn't know where that smile had gone or why, he just knew that it wasn't for him anymore. She stopped unbuttoning his shirts, just focusing on her own and that moan he liked so much, the one she made right as he connected with her, it went away entirely.
He tried for months to discover what had changed, what had caused some of the things he liked so much about her to disappear but nothing had changed. They were both still doing the same work they always did. They both still had the same… friends that they'd always had. She wasn't sick. No one in her family was sick either. Maybe he'd been saying things to her that he shouldn't so he made sure that John was with them as much as possible. He would tell him of he was being a git even if she wouldn't. For a time, he took fewer of the cases that needed her, thinking that maybe she was just seeing too much of him but it made no difference.
Not long after the smiles disappeared, she stopped enjoying their sexual encounters as well. She wouldn't be ready for him. Before, she'd always been so slick and wet the moment he touched her. He liked running his fingers between her lower lips and feeling just how eager her body was to accept him, to draw him in and surround him in that blissful embrace. She told him that it happened. That it didn't mean anything but it meant something to him.
She wasn't lying to him but for the first time, she wasn't telling him everything either. Still, she didn't say no. She still let him be with her, be in her. She still let him come home even though that home had gotten a little colder than it had been before. It was still enough for him. He might have wanted more but he didn't let himself think about it. He didn't let himself imagine possibilities that she wouldn't entertain. There wasn't any point. It was a waste of time and that was still something he abhorred.
So he stood outside her door and knocked. She answered it promptly and for a moment, she took his breath away. It had been a long time since she'd altered herself like this for him, too long. So long in fact that a split second after seeing her, it sent up red flags. He took what he saw as the safest course of action, or inaction as it were, and simply didn't say anything. She brought him in, fed him what she knew was some of his favorite takeout and served him some red wine, not any red wine either, something expensive, something different from her normal low end faire. He didn't enjoy any of it, too caught up in trying to determine the reasons for this change. Maybe he was off his game but he just couldn't figure it out.
They finished the meal and she took his hand, leading him back to her room without his even needed to ask. Yet another change. He'd always thought he'd be thrilled when, or if, she ever did change something but right now all he felt was a low lying dread. It didn't stop him from taking her though. It didn't stop him from touching every part of her body or sliding within her after she'd applied some of that hateful bottled lubrication.
Never before in any of their couplings had he ever wanted to kiss her as much as he did then. It's why he silently asked her to get on her hands and knees. He didn't trust himself to keep from taking her lips if they'd been face to face. He settled for just pressing his lips against her shoulder. It would have to be enough because she'd never asked him for more.
He tried so hard to make her feel as good as he did when he was inside her. He wanted nothing more than to feel her clench around him, to make all those noises that she used to but as hard as he tried, she didn't respond.
"Don't worry about me, just come."
Those words shouldn't have bothered him the way they did. They shouldn't have caused that tight ache in his chest to grow but they did. He nodded and pushed himself to finish, never fully giving up on bringing her over the precipice with him, not until it was too late. He met his end within her and even though it felt amazing, it didn't leave him feeling content like it normally did. The feeling that something was wrong, that something was very, very wrong would just not go away. It darkened everything that normally felt right about being home with her.
He pulled away and sat back to look at her, to take everything in and try to figure out what was wrong. She took a preplaced shirt from her nightstand and pulled it on, covering herself. That too was new. She never tried to hide her body from his sight before and she'd planned to do so as illustrated by her having placed it there previously for just such a reason. He needed to think about that so he took the opportunity to excuse himself to the restroom. When he came back, he did not like the look on her face, the first thing he hadn't liked about her in a very, very long time.
It pushed him to finally break his silence. "Something has changed."
She looked so apprehensive and so overwhelmingly sad. He wanted to fix it but he found himself frozen from doing anything but waiting for her reply.
"I can't do this anymore."
That made no sense logical sense. He told her as much.
"Of course you can. There is nothing preventing you from doing so." She looked annoyed by that response. He'd somehow said the wrong thing.
"Ok, it's not that I can't, it's that I don't want to anymore."
That ache in his chest that he'd felt since the moment he'd crossed the threshold of her flat suddenly turned cold. She didn't want to…
"Why?" It came out without his thinking it.
"Because I'm not like you. I need more than this."
It hit him like a ton of bricks, like gale force winds. She needed more than him. He wasn't enough. He purposely schooled his features then as best he could despite the torrent of emotions that ached to escape from every part of his being. It was too much. He wasn't used to… feeling this much. He wanted to scream, to take hold of her and never let her go but he just stood there and held everything in. He tried to ask and he did but it felt so worthless as he said it.
"What else do you need?"
"I'm 37. If I want a family, I have to start working towards that. I don't want to do something like kids alone and I know that's not something you want."
How could he deny what she'd just said? She was right. The idea of children from him was not something he wanted. He had no dislike for children in general; he just knew what he was. He knew he said terrible things without even knowing it all the time. He knew he wasn't always reliable when he lost himself in his own projects, experiment and especially his mind. What kind of father would that be? He knew the answer: a terrible one. But beyond his knowledge that he'd make a horrid parental figure was the other fear he harbored. What if the child was like him?
He put on a persona of constant egoism and he knew that those around him believed it, at least most of them did, the ones that didn't count. But it was nothing more than that, a persona. There was a reason he'd spent the majority of his childhood and early adult life entirely alone. Staying far away from people meant less chance of rejection. He'd had enough of that during his school years. He knew what it was like to be him, how hard it was, how lonely it was. He couldn't imagine cursing anyone else with that sort of life, especially not his own flesh and blood.
So he said nothing to her declaration. He had nothing he could say. She was right.
"I have to start looking for someone who wants to do that with me and I can't do that if I'm doing this with you."
Again, he had to work so hard to control his exterior. He didn't even let her words fully sink in. He couldn't contemplate the implication, not there, not with her watching. He tried to deflect, to come back to what he knew, to solving puzzles.
"And this was why you altered your normal appearance and why we had dinner? This was your way of 'letting me down' so to speak?"
She nodded and solved his mystery for him.
"Alright," he said coldly as he worked hard to make his expression entirely blank. "I won't bother you with this anymore."
"I'm sorry, Sherlock." The apology rankled. If she were truly sorry, she wouldn't do it.
"Don't be. It was bound to come to a stop at some point. I just never thought it would be you who ended it."
He saw the momentary hurt that crossed her face but this time he'd expected it. He knew it was the wrong thing to say but he'd done it anyway. He wanted her to feel even a fraction of what he was right then. It gave him a tiny amount of satisfaction to do so.
"Well, I'll just be going then."
Then he left. He wandered the city the entire night, finally finding himself in the cemetery where he'd been 'buried'. The gravestone was still there, no one had bothered to remove it even after a full year. He sat down on his own grave and let the tears slid down his face.
A few days later, Lestrade called him and offered him a case. He took it and proceeded to pour himself into his work with a fury he'd never exercised before. He took any and all cases that came his way, never mind how mundane, trivial or boring they might be. They kept him busy and they offered him the opportunity to see her from time to time. She might have cast him aside when she realized that he wasn't enough for her but that didn't mean he wasn't allowed to be around her in an official capacity.
John noticed the change. He wasn't completely useless in the art of deduction. He tried a few times to decipher what caused it but Sherlock had no desire to explain. He didn't want to tell John just how far he'd fallen. He didn't want to admit that he'd been so completely wrong, that the work wasn't actually enough, that he wasn't married to his work any longer. So he brushed off the efforts of his friend with a few well-chosen, scathing words.
Life set into a pattern he could handle for a while. He didn't like it but he could live with it. Then she met him. He was certain at first that it would not last. He wasn't right for her, not in the least. He was out of shape, chubby, had an entirely boring profession and… he simply wasn't good enough.
Sherlock then obviously broken into DI Lestrade's criminal database and ran just about every search he could on the man only to come up nothing. Then he used his brother's pass codes and office computer, a markedly more difficult task, to check even further into all forms of government databases but again was met with nothing worth a damned thing.
He was just shutting his brother's system down when the door opened to reveal the elder Holmes
"Did you really think I wouldn't notice? I'm not the county constable, after all."
Sherlock rolled his eyes and moved to leave, only to have his exit blocked by his brother.
"I warned you about sentiment."
He didn't respond but his brother didn't move either. They were silent for a long time before Mycroft sighed far less dramatically than Sherlock might have expected.
"If you have lost her, really lost her, you have no one to blame but yourself."
Sherlock didn't even question how his brother knew. Likely he'd had surveillance of some sort on his pathologist after his 'death'. He'd actually suspected his sibling knew he wasn't dead long before he'd revealed himself. This confirmed that belief.
"Do try not to state the obvious, Mycroft. It detracts from the appearance of brilliance you do try to project."
"This is not the way to gain her back."
"How! If you know, then tell me." He hated how desperate he sounded. The derision he expected from his brother for the outburst never came however. Instead he just looked at him squarely in the eyes and replied.
"Well, speak to her obviously. For someone as intelligent as you are Sherlock, you have an amazing capacity for missing the obvious."
His brother stepped aside and let him leave.
He tried to take his brother's advice over the course of he next several weeks but each time he did, nothing came out of his mouth except the worst of him. Each time he did it, he knew how wrong he was. He didn't need John's reproachful looks or his verbal reprimands to know. He could see the way she cringed; how his words made her look physically smaller until she would just leave the room. He just couldn't help himself. Each time he opened his mouth, all he could think about was the fact that some pudgy imbecile was taking his place. It enraged him and the only outlet he had for the burning sensation in his gut was his words. Then one day he pushed her too far and for the second time since he'd known her, she made him leave. This time, however, he didn't blame her at all.
The days after that were a blur. He had no appetite and he couldn't sleep. Every time it did claim him, his dreams were of nothing but her. Waking from those left him feeling nauseous. The only activity that soothed him at all was his violin. He played for hours at a time until the strings became hot and his fingers bled. He stopped taking cases. He stopped eating. He stopped taking visitors. Even Mrs. Hudson was kept away.
During the day, he stayed in at Baker Street and at night, in order to avoid the pull of sleep, he would walk the streets. It was Mycroft's advice that replayed itself in his head time and time again. Had he missed something obvious when he'd been with her? Was there something he could have done differently? Was there still something he could do to fix this? He couldn't imagine remaining like he was. He thought the initial six months of his 'death' had been hell but they didn't hold a candle to how low he currently felt. He walked back to Baker Street just as the sky started to warm and threw himself onto the couch. He had to do something. He couldn't keep this up indefinitely.
He fell asleep and he dreamt of her. She was smiling at him again as she touched his cheeks and smoothed back his hair. Then she kissed him without asking. He woke up touching his lips.
If he left now, he would catch her still at work. He left his flat wearing what he'd fallen asleep in and caught a cab to Bart's. He managed to slip into her lab without much notice by the rest of the staff and stopped just inside the door. She sat at her desk, transcribing notes from her recorder into a form on her computer. It was so nice to just see her again. She looked well. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail like it normally was when she worked and there was a hint of lipstick on her lips. She didn't notice him at all while he noticed everything about her.
It wasn't until she started proofreading her work that he noticed the final, very vital bit of information. While she read, her right hand kept lightly caressing her clavicles and neck. It wasn't something she did all the time absently. It was something he'd noticed not too long ago. Every time she'd done it before had been at the end of one of his cases. He had always made a point of making what appeared to be an offhand remark to the room that he'd solved the case. He always made sure that when he said it in Bart's, that Molly could hear him. That's when her right hand would unconsciously begin to touch her neck. She knew he would be coming to her that night. Except she was doing it now and despite how much he might have liked for it to be true, he had no plans of visiting her this evening.
She finished her work, shut down her station and left her office only to look like she might have been scared half to death by his presence. He hadn't come here to say the words that came out next but after his last revelation, the just tumbled out.
"You're going to sleep with him."
She looked shocked at first, then a bit angry.
"That's not something I'm willing to discuss with you, Sherlock. Now is there a reason for your being here besides that?"
He noted that she didn't stutter once as she all but dismissed him again. He did have a reason but he didn't know how to put it into words. It didn't help that all he could picture in his mind right then was her with him.
"You turned me away but you'll let that loathsome…"
She cut him off before he could continue on that line of thought. He was actually grateful that she did. He didn't know where he would have taken it if allowed to continue.
"Stop. Stop right now. I don't want to know one thing you've deduced about him. Not. One. Thing."
Now there was the rub. He'd not been able to find out one terrible thing about that man. So all he had were physical traits. Maybe he would have said something about his being overweight and how he wouldn't be ideal family material if he died of a heart attack in ten years. He probably would have mentioned it. No, he definitely would have.
"Why are you here?"
He still didn't know how to answer that, so he remained silent lest he say something hurtful.
"I really don't have time for this, Sherlock," she admonished as she started for the door. He didn't move an inch so she had to scoot around him but the moment her hand gripped the knob, his hand fastened tightly to her wrist, stopping her. He didn't do anything else, just kept her from leaving. "Sherlock, let me go." Again, he said nothing, didn't even look at her, his eyes remaining glued to where he was touching her. She sighed and reached out to pry his fingers off of her. "I have to go."
"I don't want you to," he mumbled more to himself than to her.
"What did you just say?"
He debated for too long on whether or not he should repeat himself but when she started to try to leave again, he blurted them out.
"I don't want you to."
It only seemed to increase her ire at him though. He'd said the wrong thing again.
"You're so damned selfish, you know that." All he could do was nod at that. He'd known that for a very long time. "And what about what I want, Sherlock?" He didn't know what she wanted but he knew what he wanted her to want.
"I want you to want me again, like you used to."
"I'm not that girl anymore," she whispered.
He didn't like hearing that. He liked that girl and the prospect that she was gone made his chest ache.
"I made her go away, made you change, didn't I?"
"A lot of things did."
"But mostly because of me, because of how I am."
"Sherlock…"
"I tried," he whispered out pathetically and for the first time since he'd taken hold of her, he looked into her eyes. She looked surprised. Well, that was better than her anger.
"You didn't try hard enough." Now it was his turn to be upset. It wasn't fair, not at all. Everything that happened between, he had done. Maybe he hadn't done it right but he had done it.
"Neither did you."
The surprise was gone and instantly replaced by irritation again. "Excuse me?" He didn't back down from it this time. It was far easier to do this while angry than with the empty feeling he'd been living with for the past six months.
"You never told me what you wanted. You never asked for anything to change. You didn't ask me for anything until you asked me to leave and so I did the only thing you ever asked me to do."
"I…"
"You never said you wanted me to escort you to dinner. You never tried to take me to some ridiculous theater for an equally ridiculous movie. You never asked me to play my violin for you or ask to come to Baker Street. You never did any of those things. I was the only one that ever asked and I was only willing to ask what I knew you would give, had given in the past." He let her go then and strode away from her. It was too much to see that expression on her face. He didn't even know what it meant but it left him feeling far too raw, too exposed.
"I thought that if I asked for more," he looked back at her briefly before he continued to frantically survey the room, "that you would think I was asking for too much."
"What would you have asked for?"
That stopped him dead. What would he have asked for? He knew without a full second passing what he would have asked her for. "I would have asked to kiss you," he barely whispered out. Even now he was afraid of rejection even though he wasn't actually asking it.
"What?" she asked quietly.
"I would have asked to kiss you!" he shouted at the back wall, anger seeping into his voice. "Are you happy? The great Sherlock Holmes brought so low that he has to plead for the affection of the only person who he never thought would stop believing in him?"
"Of course I'm not happy." It sounded like the truth. Could it be?
"Then why did you discard me?"
"I didn't…"
Oh no, she was not going to deny that. That was something he understood implicitly. She most certainly did cut him out of her life just as she would the organs of one of her autopsy patients.
"You did. I was there and I recall it quite clearly, Molly. You are not like me and you needed more than me." He pinched the bridge of his nose then and tightly shut his eyes. "I wasn't enough for you. I always knew I wasn't good enough for you, Molly but I thought…" He didn't finish; instead he rubbed at his eyes with the fingers of one hand for a moment. "And now you've found someone that is enough for you?"
He opened his eyes to look at her earnestly; it was an answer he seemed desperate to know.
"He's…" She hesitated and for a moment he wasn't sure she would answer. "I didn't know."
He knew without asking that she was referring to how he felt, not to that man.
"You didn't know that I needed you?"
She shook her head but said nothing. Did she really not know? Had he been so terrible that he hadn't even been able to communicate to her just how important she'd been to him, that she was the reason he persevered?
"I did," he said quietly. "You were everything that was right when everything else was so wrong. I thought you knew that."
"I did." She looked at him pleadingly then. "I did know that but when everything got better, when you came back with your name cleared and with John and Mrs. Hudson and Greg all safe again, I just… Well, I wasn't the only thing good in your life anymore."
"You didn't stop being important. You still mattered to me." He closed his eyes. "You still do, more than anything, Molly. More than experiments or cases. More than anyone else combined."
She let out a chocked sob and he immediately regretted what he'd just said. He hated to see her cry, especially if he were the cause.
"I'm doing it again. I'm hurting you again, aren't I?"
She shook her head, confusing him.
"No, we're both just such idiots though." His confusion only grew and he couldn't help the way that comment pricked at his pride. He most certainly was not an idiot. He was about to say as much when she reached up with both hands, cupped his cheeks and pulled him down into a kiss.
His world froze. He spent the entirety of it committing it to a crystal clear memory. If he lost her, at least he'd have this to replay in his mind. She pulled away all too soon and all he could think about was the dream he'd had right before he came here.
"You didn't ask," he said quietly.
"No, I didn't," she responded in kind.
At that moment, her phone began to chime in her pocket. She sighed and stepped away from him while he stayed stock-still. He saw the apologetic look she sent his way before she turned her back on him to answer the phone.
"Hi, Mark." He shouldn't be here for this, he suddenly realized. He couldn't be here for this. He wasn't sure what Mycroft had meant. He'd talked to her but nothing had changed. She was still talking to him, was still with him and would be with him tonight. At least he'd come away with something, even if it hadn't lasted nearly long enough. He slipped out the door as she spoke into the phone.
He needed his violin and cigarettes, lots and lots of cigarettes
AN: Hello there again. Do not worry, I've decided to extend this story into three parts. I decided that it would be interesting to see the same timeframe again but this time from Sherlock's POV. I'm going to say this right now, he's a hard character to write for. It's hard to write that 'off' quality of him when you're trying to write from behind his eyes. It's too tempting to just make him any other man. I hope I kinda sorta pulled off an aspergers-esque persona. Let me know what you think, the feedback has been amazing!