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"Oh my God, Sherlock!" Molly yelped, running to support him as he slumped against the wall. He cried out as her arm went around his waist to attempt to keep him from falling to the floor. She took one look at the gash and knew it would need butterfly bandaging at the least, stitches at the worst. She grimaced at the thought. Very carefully, she guided him to a chair at the table and settled him, immediately dashing to a utility drawer in the kitchen and retrieving her first aid kit.

"What happened?" she demanded as she pulled out gauze, bandages, medical tape, and an alcohol solution.

"Little misunderstanding," he winced.

"A misunderstanding?" she replied, baffled. She poured out the cleansing alcohol onto a cotton square. "What on earth could have been misunderstood enough to lead to this?"

She reached up to dab at the gash and was startled when he batted her hand away.

"No don't clean it!" he cried, looking at her with frustration. "Sample it!"

"What?"

"Sample it! He hit me with the same bit of dinner plate I used to hit him, if we're lucky we can pull DNA samples," he said in a rush, rummaging through her kit. "Where the hell do you keep your swabs?"

"I – I have Q-tips in the bathroom," she offered, standing to fetch them.

"Ordinary bathroom Q-tips, is that all you've got?" he demanded, cutting her off before she had a chance to respond. "That won't be good enough, they won't be sterile, Molly! I need laboratory swabs. Didn't you get the black box from my flat?"

"No, I did not, as a matter of fact," she said, feeling her annoyance start to flare.

"That was essential," he threw his hands up in exasperation. "It had equipment in it I need."

"I'm sorry," she stood her ground. "I didn't think it would have looked right to stop holding John in one piece to answer your messages and excuse myself while I gathered your things for no apparent reason to take them home with me. Think they might have figured that one out."

He knew she was right but it didn't stop him from throwing a solid tantrum about it.

"Do you have anything useful in this building, anything that can be useful for something other than a night in with your girlfriends?"

"I have a microscope and slides," she informed him. "And the Q-tips. I can sample with those, Sherlock, I know I can - "

"Fine, fetch them. I'm assuming since you can't even bother to keep something so simple as a DNA kit around I can give up the idea that this whole process can be done in the privacy of this home!"

Molly stared at him, shocked.

"I… I don't understand what you were expecting," she stammered. "I'm not a walking laboratory."

"Clearly, you'd be much more useful if you were," he barked. A few moments passed and he got no reply. He knew immediately he had pushed too hard. Chancing a look up at her, he saw her mouth pulled tight and her eyes beginning to shine with tears. It was not unusual for his actions to cause this reaction from her. He had managed many times in the past to drive her into embarrassment, upsetting the world around her. It wasn't until recently that he began to take more care with her feelings. Christmas had changed a great deal for them, making him realize she was one of the few people who stuck by him despite his behavior – for the life of him, he couldn't understand why. He knew she had had a quaint crush on him – God knows he had taken advantage of that more than a few times – but he never would have guessed that the man he deduced she was in love with that night, whom she had fancied everything up for, was him. He was not proud of his behavior that night and had been putting an effort into growing up a bit when it came to Molly Hooper. And suddenly, now, she was this brave girl whom he needed above all others to help him out. He mentally berated himself, wondering how far back he had set their relationship with his petulant and pain induced outburst. "Molly… I'm sorry."

He reached out a hand to touch hers and was taken aback when she slapped it away.

"Don't," she said firmly. "Don't, Sherlock, don't do that… you always…"

She wiped firmly at a tear that was escaping and walked purposefully towards the stairs, dashing up to her bathroom and angrily retrieving the cotton swabs. On her way back to him, she swept through the kitchen and grabbed a box of plastic sandwich bags. She set herself on a chair in front of Sherlock and tightened her ponytail before she began, actively avoiding his eyes as she masterfully gathered samples and wrapped them carefully in the bags. When she had finished, she placed the bags in Tupperware and set it securely in her satchel to be taken to the lab.

"Well," she said as she faced him. "Shall I stick to cliché and tend to your wounds or would you prefer to do that yourself?"

"I think I can manage," he answered. Her face fell ever so slightly, but she nodded and began to walk away. "However, I trust you to do a better job. Less likely that I'll end up looking like Frankenstein at the end of it."

She took her seat again and began to re-prep the cotton square. Leaning forward, she gently brushed his hair away from the wound and started to carefully wipe away the drying blood. She'd seen this scene in movies and television dozens of times, finding herself both entranced and repelled by the obvious reaction it elicited from the characters. Forced close contact, the nurturing touch of a woman healer. It was almost pathetic. Now that she found herself in the same position, however, she was almost positive that Sherlock's observant eyes would be trained on the rate of her pulse in her neck. It was the second time in a little over twenty four hours that she found herself cleaning him up, but this was the first time she had been so close to him, fingers gently touching the side of his face to steady him as she worked. How could he make her so mad and so flustered in such a short span of time? She was desperate for a distraction.

"What happened?" she asked him again.

"Mycroft left me a bread crumb," he told her. "Something I was working out last night that evolved into reality this morning. I went after someone… someone I believe to be closely tied to Moriarty's web."

"You confronted him? Sherlock, he could have recognized you," Molly pointed out the obvious, concerned.

"I hadn't planned on the confrontation. I broke into his flat and barely got a chance to begin investigating when he came home unexpectedly. Someone from Mycroft's division didn't distract him long enough. I acted quickly, he barely had the presence of mind to hit me before he tripped over his own feet and knocked me down the stairs," he winced as Molly applied the butterfly bandages to his cut.

"You think he worked with Jim?"

"I think… he was the messenger," Sherlock murmured cryptically, getting lost in his own mind. "Everywhere Richard Brook appeared over the years, he wasn't far away. He ran on a parallel line… a line that I'm hoping leads to the web spinner…"

He drifted off as Molly began to dab at his lip with a damp cloth, her fingers occasionally brushing inadvertently against his skin. He watched her intently, somewhat fascinated by the look of professional concentration on her face. She was trying very hard to remove her personal feelings from the situation and he bit his tongue before he could comment on that fact. After a few moments, she declared him fixed up and went to retrieve an ice pack from her freezer.

"For your lip," she told him. "It'll keep the swelling down. You might consider applying it to your ribs as well, you've probably strained them quite badly."

Though he took it, she knew he had very little intention of following her medical recommendation. She gave him a small smile and began to tidy up the mess of supplies from her kitchen table.

"I've interrupted your dinner," Sherlock said apologetically.

"S'okay," she told him. "I think I may just call it a night. Long day tomorrow… the body we arranged is being handed over to the funeral home and I need to present my autopsy findings for review before they're released to the press… think I may need to try to catch a bit of sleep before I lie to my superiors."

He looked her stoic face, amazed not for the first time at what she was willing and able to do for him. He shuffled the ice pack between his hands, considering his words.

"I may need to disappear for a few days," he informed her. She looked up from wiping down the table, concern etched in her face. "I should leave tonight, let you rest without my disturbing your sleep."

"I don't mind," she said, too quickly. "I mean, you're always welcome to – oh God, I just mean that it's not a bother, having you around."

"No, it's best that I go," he breezed past her nervous innuendo. "You won't have the results of those tests for at least a week and there are certain things I need to attend to in the meantime."

"Do you… can I help in any way?" she asked hopefully, not wanting to fall out of his orbit so soon.

"You're already helping, Molly," he told her as he stood up, grimacing and holding his sore side. He walked towards the stairs as he continued talking. "Those test results are of utmost importance. And you really should sleep better tonight, your eyes are starting to get rather puffy. And don't skip any meals, it makes you look gaunt rather quickly, all of which you could blame on my death, but realistically I need you in top form."

She rolled her eyes at his words, wishing he would stop paying so much attention to the changes in her physical appearance. Having finished tidying up the kitchen, she hurried up that stairs after him.

"You're one to talk about skipping meals," she pestered him as he crested the stairs. She paused in the hall as he opened the door to the guest room. "New clothes are on the bed for you. Just leave the old ones. I've gotten quite good at removing blood stains."

Slipping past him, she headed towards her room and only paused again when she turned to close her door, catching him still watching her from his doorway.

"Wherever you're going, Sherlock… be careful," she said quietly.

"I can't make any promises," he said with a small smirk.

"I know."

She gave him a half-hearted smile and closed her door.