"Someday, when I'm awfully low
When the world is cold
I will feel a glow just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight."
The Way You Look Tonight – Frank Sinatra
It had literally been a day since he was released from his... holiday, and people were already annoying him again. He and Mrs. Hudson had apparently been conspiring against him.
They were having a party. For him. And they hadn't even the decency to tell him.
So now there he was, in the middle of Baker Street, in bloody house shoes and a dressing gown, while the party carried on.
It wasn't much of a party. To be honest, it was more of a small get-together than anything. There were only six people there (willingly), and two of them had a direct hand in the planning. Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson apparently planned the whole thing while he was away, and sent out invitations a month in advance.
The guest list boasted such characters as the party planners, Mike Stamford, Ray (the obese, halitosis-suffering cafeteria worker), and Mrs. Hudson's horrifically near-sighted sister Mrs. Gifford. Dull.
Sherlock sat in his chair, hands steepled under his chin, making observations simply to keep himself from bursting in tears of boredom. Lestrade's wife was mad at him. (He kept glancing at his phone and frowning.) Mike was trying to find a polite way to ask for a fourth slice of cake. (Keeps picking crumbs from his plate, glancing nervously around.) In the corner, Mrs. Hudson and her sister were tittering about something mundane, Mrs. Gifford's thickly-rimmed glasses repeatedly falling down her nose.
Were there alcohol involved, Sherlock would have poured himself a glass of something strong and smelly. However, Mrs. Hudson apparently found it in poor taste to include a psychoactive drug at the "Welcome Home" party of a man away at rehab.
He was just about to excuse himself to his bedroom (and from there hopefully crawl out a window and escape this dreadful party) when a noise echoed through the room. It was a knock: soft, polite, and unsure. Mrs. Hudson leapt to open the door, revealing what Sherlock immediately recognized as the form of Molly Hooper (he'd learned her name when Lestrade visited him in rehab.)
Only, it wasn't. Well, it was Molly Hooper, as in, she was definitely standing in the doorway, but it wasn't in the sense that she was not wearing her signature white coat or hideous brown loafers. Her hair was not pulled back from her face (instead pulled over one shoulder) and she was most decidedly not wearing her normal hideous attire (instead a knee-length baby blue dress with a conservative neckline and quarter-sleeves). For reasons unknown to Sherlock, something about the sight made his stomach feel like it had flipped over. A strange, almost burning sensation shot through his chest and arms as she looked over Mrs. Hudson's shoulder and gave him a shy smile.
He looked to the floor, and Molly Hooper did not bother him for the rest of the night.
The celebration ended as evening turned to night, and Mrs. Gifford loudly announced that she needed to go to sleep or she would pass out on the drive home. Mrs. Hudson gently reminded her that she was staying downstairs, and hadn't driven a car since the late seventies. Lestrade made some remark about "getting home to the wife", and everyone else sort of dispersed until it was only Mrs. Hudson, himself, and Molly Hooper. Molly Hooper in a blue dress that made her look like not-Molly Hooper. He couldn't decide whether it was good or bad.
Mrs. Hudson wished her a safe trip home and ushered her to the door. Molly Hooper took one last glance back to Sherlock. Their eyes met for a moment, and then she was gone.
"Well," Mrs. Hudson sighed after a moment, "She's quite the pretty one, don't you agree?" She chuckled and set off to the kitchen, obviously not expecting an answer.
"Hmm." He pushed up and out of his chair, headed for his bedroom.
For the next several weeks, he busied himself with conducting experiments on why that dress has such an effect on him. He found the dress online and, from the price, could only deduce that it was a knock-off, unless she had someone in her life that would spend over five hundred pounds on a dress for her. He knew she would never spend money so frivolously.
Days and days he spent, when not on a case, reliving that three second moment when she smiled at him. Why would she smile like that? What did she know about him? He conducted research on the tells in a person's facial expression when they are being secretive, but he couldn't for the life of him think what she could possibly be secretive about.
One thing that his research could not explain to him, however, was the jolt of pain that seared through him at the sight of her. Still, it wasn't exactly an unpleasant pain. He tried to simulate it with electric shock, but to no avail.
After all of this, Sherlock found that Molly's drawer in his mind palace was upgraded to entire bureau, and then again to a small room. This small room of hers soon became one of Sherlock's favorites; enough so that he moved it to replace his room on exotic mushrooms, which was closer to the heart of the palace and easier to access. Whenever he was particularly bored or uneasy, all it took was a simple stroll down the corridor and he knew he would find her waiting in that blue dress, shy smile directed at him.
He made visiting the morgue a priority on cases, and always (discreetly) made sure that Molly Hooper would be there. There was something about her... he didn't know what, but something in his heart logic made him feel like, when the time came, she would count.
