Had I known there was a decorating committee, I definitely would not have put Molly in charge.
The whole lab is strewn with red and pink banners, All You Need Is Love is blaring from the speakers in the background, and everything smells like roses.
"Everybody swap cards!" Lestrade bellows, and the relatively calm lab instantly becomes a frenzy.
I grimace and sit at my desk as my colleagues bustle around, chucking cards on each other's workbenches with huge happy grins. After a few seconds, I close my eyes.
When I open them again, there's a pile of cards on the table in front of me, and everyone's thanking each other. I pick them up and begin to read out: "Hmm...'Get a boyfriend, monkey features', definitely Donovan, 'I hate you and you take too many drugs', thank you very much, Anderson, 'To the best consulting detective in the whole world xoxoxoxo', that's your handwriting Molly, I'm flattered..." I pick up a novelty card, squinting at the bright colours. "'You're a bear-y great friend'? Lestrade, that's not even funny." He rolls his eyes at me, and I throw the card at him.
"'You make everyone in the lab happy! Don't ever change'," reads Molly, and she smiles. "Oh, John, thank you," she says, putting down his card, and walks over to him and kisses him on the cheek. Kisses John Watson. In plain sight.
I watch in surprise as he smiles back at her and she whispers something in his ear. He nods and glances at me nervously.
John and Molly?
To be honest, I'd be less surprised if Anderson got up and hugged me.
It's around noon when I first notice the card.
Lying on my desk, it's the plainest thing I've seen all day. I pick it up and read it.
You're an idiot, and I love you.
I turn it over in my hands, searching for any possible clue as to who wrote it. No signature, no idiosyncrasy, nothing. Just seven words in Georgia type, right in the middle of a blank white card.
A smile works its way onto my face as I realise that this is just another case to crack. A puzzle to solve.
But still. Those last three words.
I don't hear them often.
The first person I ask is Anderson, just to rule someone out. He just calls me a poofter and goes back to playing Robot Unicorn Attack. Donovan does the same, but she's pretending to be 23 on Omegle. How classy. I would ask John, but he said I wasn't getting a card and I trust him.
It takes me half an hour to work my way around the whole of Scotland Yard, and half an hour to get no answers.
There's one interesting thing, though; when I ask Molly if she wrote the card, she truthfully says no. But her eyes lack the curiosity and confusion that all the others' do. She may not have written it, but she knows who did.
I'd ask her if I thought she'd ever tell me.
By lunchtime, I'm starting to go insane.
"There has to be an answer to this!" I say, turning the card back and forth in my hands, much to the amusement of my co-workers. "Think, Sherlock, think. You're an idiot and I love you. Somebody in this room wrote me a card, and yet none of you did it!"
Anderson sniggers.
Molly coughs and says quietly, "Well, Sherlock, there is, erm, one person you haven't considered might have been lying." She lifts a finger and points behind me.
With a frustrated sigh, I turn around. John stands by the wall, making the coffee. He always makes me coffee. And he always does the shopping, and comes to my cases even at three in the morning, and stays up all night to help me, even though he tells me I'm an id –
Hold on.
I read the card once more.
You're an idiot, and I love you.
I look back up at John, who's tracing his fingertip over the rim of my coffee cup with a look at the floor that's half dreamy and half nervous.
Oh my God.