Thankyou to favouriters and reviewers. You make me smile!
This story follows, indirectly, from Doctor Watson's Birthday Party. It can be construed as Sherlock/Molly if you look at it through a magnifying glass with that purpose, but it was intended as my take on their rather odd friendship. I hope you like it!
I don't own Sherlock. I don't own the characters. I do, however, own several wooly jumpers. And some scarves.
4. Dancing Queen
"Molly, how are you?"
Molly Hooper looked up from her microscope, pipette in hand, and smiled at the detective who had just burst into her lab.
"Hello, Sherlock. You sound cheerful today."
"Well, I've got a new-"
'Please not girlfriend, please not girlfriend-'
"-case." He beamed at her.
"Ah, I thought it might be something like that," she smiled. "I'm afraid we've not got many in at the moment, so if you need anything specific you might have to wait a bit."
Sherlock waved this away, unconcerned. "Actually, I'm not here for your 'patients'. I wondered if you could do me a favour."
"What?" she asked, suddenly suspicious.
"Well, it's this case, you see," he replied in his most charming voice. "It's a high society blackmail, and it's going to involve an unavoidable masked ball, so-"
Molly interrupted him. "Sherlock, no! I promised myself, after Ji- after Moriarty, that I wasn't going to let anyone else use me to get close to someone. So that means no! I won't go with you to this ball as your wife. Or your girlfriend. Or your bloody fiancé."
Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, but she didn't let him.
"And I'm certainly not going to pretend to be your mistress! Got that?"
Molly realised with a jolt that, during her tirade, she had stood up and moved to within about a foot of the detective, and stepped backwards hurriedly, blushing.
Sherlock, meanwhile, was looking at the liquid which had splashed from the pipette onto his jacket with mild interest. "Should I be concerned?" he asked, smiling apologetically.
"No, it's just water. Hang on, I'll get you a cloth… Actually, no, I'm still angry. Find one yourself!"
Molly retreated back to her workspace and made a show of turning her back to the detective, who brushed the beads of water from his suit and, shaking his head slightly, stepped towards her.
"Actually, that wasn't the favour I had in mind," he murmured conspiratorially.
She whirled round, her blush deepening furiously.
"What I was going to say," he continued, "is that John thinks that dance classes might come in handy- he muttered something about his birthday, although I don't know what he meant. Now obviously I can't go to a dance class on my own, so I wondered if you might be able to help out. Would you like to join me?"
Molly looked up into his smiling face and thought 'why not?' After all, what harm could some ballroom dancing classes do? Other than causing uncontrollable giggling and potentially fatal stuttering, of course…
"I'd love to!"
"Excellent! I knew John would be wrong."
"What about?" asked Molly, her curiosity ignited.
"He seemed to think you might not agree to come. Said something about irreparable trauma from his party- goodness knows what he meant."
"I have absolutely no idea," Molly lied, laughing.