Thank you to all for the lovely reviews! I'm so glad you like this. Special thanks to Yvanthe for beta reading and making sure this made sense. Her editor's eye is wonderful.
The story is actually finished, but the site is stripping my formatting when I upload a chapter, so I'm uploading, fixing, and posting chapters. I hope to post more tomorrow.
Sherlock Holmes was a basically self-centered man. He saw people in terms of their usefulness. He saw nothing wrong with this. It was an attitude that served him well for years. Admittedly, he wasn't quite as self-absorbed as he had been. Time and circumstance had changed him, possibly for the better (though he wouldn't commit to the truth of that just yet). Meeting John Watson and Molly Hooper had changed him. Their friendships had changed him.
Gratitude was not a foreign concept to Sherlock, but he was more accustomed to being on the receiving end, filing away favours owed him for future use, but this was different. He owed people now. He could never really repay John Watson, but had at least expressed the debt owed in his best man speech.
Sherlock needed to do the same for Molly Hooper, but the question was how? This called for more than a day playing side-kick to the great detective. There would be no opportunity for grand speeches (not that he was capable of doing that again anyway). He had to think of something, some gift he could give Molly to convey the gratitude he felt but could not express in words. Sherlock began to sort through his memories of Molly, looking for a clue to what she might consider an adequate expression of thanks.
He was suddenly assaulted with a memory from one of the many "group dinners" Mary insisted on nowadays. This one had consisted of John, Mary, Mrs. Hudson, Molly and Sherlock. Somehow, as generally happened when Mrs. Hudson was included, the conversation turned to past romances. Mary and Mrs. Hudson had regaled them (well, regaled Molly -he and John had just been bystanders) with stories of past boyfriends' grand gestures of love. Eventually the question was asked of Molly.
"Me? Oh, no," Molly said with a bright, unselfconscious laugh, "I'm not the sort who inspires poetry or serenades or dances in the rain." She shrugged, smile still firmly in place. "I'm the sort a man settles for when he's tired of looking."
It was said with a bright giggle and no sign of self-pity. Molly had resigned herself to being second best. Sherlock hadn't thought much of it that night, in spite of the predictable reactions from the two women (and even John). He knew Molly was a confident woman, more than competent in her field and not given to low self-esteem. Romance was irrelevant. Except now he felt the sting of that statement. Molly Hooper should inspire all sorts of things, but "settling" shouldn't be one of them.
Remembering that conversation, he decided that his present to Molly Hooper would be a song of her very own as composed by Sherlock Holmes himself. It was a task easily within his comfort zone and Molly would appreciate the sentimentality. It was such a simple plan that it was brilliant! So Sherlock thought, at first. After three weeks of struggling through what should have been a very easy composition, he was ready to throw his violin out of the window. Why was it that Molly Hooper always ended up being more complicated than she seemed?
