He thought he'd got away with it, but then came the erotic dreams. Persistent. Relentless.

It didn't seem to matter whether he'd seen Molly the same day or not, or if he had, what the circumstances were – she could have been eating crisps in the morgue, or telling him about having to administer worming tablets to Toby, his body was apparently quite undiscerning when it came to stimuli. He felt like a bloody fifteen-year-old boy.

This should have made things awkward when he and Molly next shared a bed – but the context firmly put pay to that.

Mary was dead, his nose was fractured from a beating meted out to him by John, he'd narrowly escaped the machinations of a celebrity serial killer, and he was coming down again. The withdrawal was bad this time, and Sherlock wondered whether it was because he was getting old – hard drugs, he thought wryly to himself, were perhaps a younger man's game.

Molly was on the babysitting rota, and when she came over for the first time, Sherlock was shamefully aware that he might have been a bit 'handsy' with her in the ambulance. He tried not to think about it too much – and Molly seemed to have accepted a general apology for his conduct during that investigation, so he opted not to make specific reference to his wandering hands.

Molly had started out that night on the sofa, but suddenly she was on the bed with him, and Sherlock realised the noise that he could hear was coming from him – a growling, keening, guttural noise that barely sounded human. Sweat was pouring off him, his heart thundering in his chest, and he was tearing at his skin in a desperate attempt to rid himself of the coke-bugs. Molly acted quickly, knew exactly what needed to be done. She grabbed him by the wrists and held on with an incredible force, and although he couldn't register all of the words, she could hear her voice soothing him, saying his name, telling him she was there.

They stayed like that until the burning itch subsided enough for him to regain control, and for his pulse to begin to slow. Without thinking, Sherlock reached out and gathered Molly into his arms and, after a moment, he felt her own arms creep around his back. His heart continued to thud against her, as he breathed in the reassuring, calming scent of her skin, her clothes. There was a new sound now – gasping, gulping sobs, and they, too, were his. Molly shifted on the bed, moving up onto her knees so that she could hold him more closely; Sherlock felt the fingers of one of her hands wind through his hair, and her lips press tight against his temple. In return, he tightened his grip around Molly's waist, holding on like she was the only safe port in a storm. Hot, tears ran in rivulets down his face, mingling with the rank, salty sweat from his fever.

He was disgusting, helpless, weak.

But when they separated, the look on Molly's face didn't tell that story. She kissed his forehead, gently wiped away a tear with the pad of her thumb.

"I'll be right back," she murmured, looking into his eyes to reassure before slipping off the bed and leaving the room briefly. Sherlock could have sworn he heard the word 'sweetheart' at the end of that utterance, but he was hardly in a position to query her on it.

When Molly returned, she was carrying a flannel and a bowl of cool water. She set it down on the bedside table, and offered Sherlock her arms to help him to stand. He allowed her to help him strip down to his boxers and then manouevred him to the chair; he closed his eyes while Molly applied the cold flannel to his face, his neck, his chest. He was a mess and the worst thing about it was that he wasn't even her mess to clean up.

"Will you take something?" she asked a few minutes later, when she'd fetched him a glass of water.

He shook his head after taking a gulp. He hated the anti-emetics, which usually only made him feel even more vile. And the only kind of painkillers he was allowed to have were tantamount to trying to cool the ocean with an ice cube. Anyway, the hard way was no less than he deserved.

"Spare sheets?" she asked, and he pointed her in the direction of the linen closet.

He sat in the chair, still in his underwear, head thumping, while Molly stripped the bed of the sweat-sodden sheets and replaced them with fresh ones. Strangely, it was only then that it registered with Sherlock that Molly was dressed only in a singlet and pyjama shorts, and he forced himself to avert his gaze. She certainly didn't deserve to be leered at by a junkie.

Molly held back the sheets for him, a gesture that made him feel like a child, and Sherlock vowed to himself that he wouldn't allow this dynamic to be a permanent state between them. He didn't want her taking care of him – he wanted them to take care of each other. But in that moment, he couldn't have been more grateful, more indebted.

"I'll be next door," Molly whispered. "But call me if you need anything. Anything."

His voice was hoarse when he replied.

"I need you."

Her hand reached across the covers and found his.

"I'm here."

"I want," he began, licking his cracked lips. "I would like…to hold you…Would you let me do that? I, I think it might help."

He watched her reaction, could see her thought processes. She was wary – that was understandable. Sherlock knew he was in no position to be asking for anything, but he hoped that with this gesture, he could give her something, too. Convey some of the things he couldn't express in words.

Molly gave a quick nod. Sherlock shifted his aching body along in the bed and waited for her to get in beside him before lying down, positioning himself. He expected to spoon himself around her, but instead she turned to face him, tentatively reaching her arms up and looping them around his neck. This action – and the reassurance in her gaze – encouraged him closer, and his hand naturally found a resting place at her waist. It was almost as though they were dancing. Maybe it was the lingering effects of the drugs in his system, but every point where his body touched hers felt as though it was aflame. The coke-bugs didn't stand a chance.

And when he allowed his eyes to land on her face, he saw – with some surprise – that there was shyness there. Molly was, after all, he realised, almost completely flush with his bare chest, and she was in little more than underwear herself. Sherlock wished more than anything that this - the single most intimate thing that had ever happened to him – wasn't happening in these circumstances. Although at least the drugs meant that he was unlikely to have any embarrassing physical reactions to their cuddling.

This should have felt like too much, too claustrophobic. When Janine had been sharing his bed, she would paw him and cling to him and try everything she could to wring certain reactions from his body. He had started to run out of excuses for sleeping on the sofa, and at the very least he would ease himself away from Janine as soon as she fell asleep.

But this… this was wanted. It was comfort and closeness and trust, and all of the other things that had previously seemed either pointless or terrifying. Right now, he was broken – horribly broken – but perhaps if he allowed Molly to take control of the pieces, she could help him to build something better than the original.

000000000

He slept better than he should have done, and when Sherlock woke up the next day, Molly was already dressed and bringing him a cup of tea, which he forced down out of politeness and gratitude. He could hear the washing machine turning over in the background. Molly waited while he showered, helped him into fresh pyjamas and then offered to help him shave, insisting that it would make him feel more human. You make me more human, he almost said before catching himself.

His immediate response to the offer was to refuse – it was too much – but then she'd pointed out that his hands were still shaking, and that gave him the justification they both needed.

He sat on the edge of the bath next to the sink, his jaw tilted upwards to allow her to work. She was in his space, standing between his parted knees. Watching Molly as she took his face in her hands, carefully moving the razor over the contours of his skin - the tip of her tongue poking out in concentration - now ranked as the second most intimate thing that had ever happened to him. It took all of his remaining strength to resist the urge to pull her into his lap.

It brought a white-hot spike to his guts to think that she must have done this before, for another man. And probably not for a man who was too helpless to do it himself, but for other reasons that he supposed existed between men and women.

"All done!" Molly announced with a smile, swiping a stray blob of shaving foam from his jaw and stepping back out of his personal space.

Yup, he thought. He was. Completely.