Chapter Two

'Bad Birthdays and Consulting Detectives. Whatever could go wrong?'

Her day had been spectacularly awful.

Then again, it seemed fate that her birthdays always were.

The run of bad luck she'd had this morning could only be described as divine, because the chances of all of it happening today required more than just a million to one. Her alarm clock hadn't gone off, during the night some blackout must have occurred and reset the system. Thankfully, accustomed to waking up around that time, her body managed to rouse itself before she would be later. A burned breakfast and a flustered rush into work compounded into clumsiness that had spilt coffee all over her crisp periwinkle blue shirt. While she did have a spare in her locker, it certainly didn't match anything she was wearing. Something of which she was acutely aware. And to top it off her co-workers, who despite evidence to the contrary, were older than she was, had been particularly cutting with their gossip, and snide remarks.

She'd come to relish the silence of the morgue, especially on days like this. So as soon as it became appropriate she'd fled inside of it. The careful placid aura that the crisp place provided did wonders at settling her, and she'd escaped into the mountains of paperwork she still had to do. It had, thankfully, kept her busy for most of her shift.

"Molly?"

His voice is soft, a perfectly pitched timbre that sends a delicious thrill down her spine. It startles her from the fascinating world of autopsy report which she had, at least up until now, been utterly absorbed in. She had not heard him enter, which was a feat in and of itself as the morgue was almost completely silent, save for the gentle hum of the desk lamp and the careful scratching of her pen against paper. Her eyes snap up automatically, almost greedily, to take him in.

Dressed in his usual garb; Belstaff coat, Merlot business shirt (that she'd spent an awful long time staring at), dark slacks and a navy blue scarf. He seemed far sharper to her than the rest of the morgue. As if he were more real, more in focus than anything else in the room. Her brain reminds her with a not so subtle spike that he had spoken her name, indicating he'd wanted her attention and that she had failed to make any kind of verbal response. Clumsily she answered, "Sh..Sherlock?"

Ah, her old arch enemy, the Sherlock stutter. How she loathed that little demonstration of nervousness that seemed to escape her control. It made her feel foolish and stupid, far less intelligent than her academic credit promised. She could often talk to anyone, everyone, in a somewhat confident manner. Except him.

"The lights in here are not sufficient for proper focus, it is no doubt causing damage to your eyes." His voice is calm, smooth, a balm on tired ears. But even her tired mind recognised how curious a topic it was to start on.

"I…I…" she struggles to respond. Ever since his fall, and subsequent resurrection, he'd wait for her to finish her thought, albeit with some obvious frustration. But perhaps he sensed that, in this instant, she truly had nothing to say.

"It's curious." He continues, sharp eyes roving across her face. She could almost see the deductions flickering in his gaze. She desperately tries to think of anything other than the way being the object of such intense focus makes her feel. Especially as it was just a normal gaze for him, he didn't mean anything by it.

"What is?" she responds, at last able to get a sentence out without stuttering. A small victory in the face of a monumentally bad day.

"It's Friday night. It is also your birthday. According to John, this is a day to spend with your loved ones and friends, indulging in a frankly gratuitous amount of cake and alcohol. But not you." She's not sure whether she's worried or touched that he remembered her birthday. Birthdays had long since ceased to be the fun events of her past. He titled his head, regarding her with faintly narrowed eyes. It occurs to her, not for the first time, how much she liked those eyes. That unique cerulean, almost sea glass colour, was far more bewitching than mortal eyes had any right being.

He continued, in that same matter of fact tone, "No. this night you'll spend as you've spent every other birthday since we became acquainted, in the morgue. Why is that?"

She swallows, a hot sharp lump clawing at her throat with a suddenness that was almost alarming. Though normally she could not bring herself to break the gaze of her favourite detective, she cannot help but jerk her eyes away from his. Truth was that she hated being alone on this night. But she could never find it within herself to reach out to someone, knowing that she'd be exceptionally poor company. Her birthdays hadn't been fun, not for a very long time now. Losing her father had sucked the fun from them, and sometimes it felt as if her birthdays had simply become reminders of what she had lost.

"What is it that you want Sherlock?" her voice is thick, layered with unshed tears as she desperately tried to conceal her emotional distress from the ever sharp detective. When the silence lasts a few more moments than she's used to, her gaze darts back up to him. His eyes were distant, as if he were taking her apart and piecing her back together again. She's grown to recognise that look, to love it and despise it in equal measures. But she wanted to snap at him, to demand almost childishly, that he stop looking at her as if she were nothing more than a puzzle to be solved. But she didn't. She couldn't. Just as she often wouldn't say no to this wonderfully infuriating man, she couldn't gather the will or the right words to make him stop looking at her.

'At least he is looking.' A part of her brain churlishly interjected. Pain lanced through her, sharper than any scalpel she'd wielded in her line of work. A wince flickered on her features before she smothered it.

"Hmm." It was the softest of sounds from him. The tiniest of noises to indicate that he was back in this room rather than in the vaults of his mind, "I want to conduct an experiment on bruising patterns. I require a cadaver."

At least this was normal. Although it was probably a bad sign that such a request was normal for her. She hummed non-committedly for a moment as she glanced down at the reports. Truth was that she did have a cadaver, a middle aged man who had no living relatives to survive him.

"Uhm yeah. Okay. I have one." She stands up, confident on shaky knees as she drifts past him to the waiting corpse. He follows silently, but she's ridiculously aware of him. It was the strangest thing, this hyper sensitivity to his presence. It was as if her body were reaching out to him, waiting for him to reach out to her.

She stands beside the body, feeling a slight pang of regret that she was allowing Sherlock to do this. But though he was a strange and sometimes cruel man, he rarely did things out of mere cruelty. Whatever he was looking for in this corpse would solve a case somewhere down the road. That was a worthy enough reason for it.

"This is Mister Allen, he died of a heart attack earlier today. Will he do?"

He stands opposite her, looking down at the body with a sudden sharpened focus. The body had not yet settled into rigor mortis, so soon had been the hour of his death. So anything he did to bruise the body would still show up. The longer after death it occurred, the less significant the bruising would be. He nodded once, and she smiled and drifted back towards her desk.

"Molly?" For the second time that night, his voice interrupts her thoughts. She glances back at him, but he's not looking at her. For a moment she's afraid that the body would, in fact, be useless. She did not relish having to find another. "I require your assistance in the matter, I cannot make notations and inflict the correct bruising pattern at the same time."

He was…asking for her help? Well…technically he was demanding it, but still!

"Oh! Uhm sure!" Her voice echoes in surprise and there is the faintest hint of delight that she has failed to smother.

She tries not to fumble as she snatches up a clipboard and moves to his side. As he gets to work, using a rope in a curious pattern around the cadavers wrist, she makes a few quick notations on the type of rope and the method of tying, something which would no doubt be useful later. Sherlock murmured softly, "Happy Birthday Molly. That is the appropriate sentiment, is it not?"

He doesn't look at her, so he doesn't see the brilliant goofy smile spread across her face, "Thank you Sherlock."

Perhaps it wasn't such a bad birthday after all.

Authors note: Here we go :) Thank you guys for the reviews and the messages, i'm glad you like it.

I hope you guys enjoy this next chapter and please, as always, let me know what you think in that shiny little review box down below.

I'd really appreciate it :D

Ta ta for now

~Madamred