The ride to Baker Street was mostly silent after Molly's single – futile – attempt to talk Mycroft into letting her go back to her own flat. "At least let me pack some clothes, and my cat – !"
"A neighbor has kindly volunteered to watch Toby for you while you're away – family emergency of an unspecified nature – and the necessary personal belongings have already been delivered to Baker Street."
And that, it would seem, was the end of the discussion. The occupants of the car settled into a tense silence. Mycroft busied himself with his mobile, Molly tried to keep herself from fretting, and Sherlock stared out the window, fingers steepled beneath his lips, no doubt roaming the halls of his mind palace in search of something that might help him solve this unsettling new mystery.
If Mycroft hadn't been there, Molly would have shaken Sherlock, demanded that he talk to her...and not about the fact that zombies had gone from horror-movie fodder to all-too-horrible fact, but about something that the two of them wouldn't be receiving reports about: namely, the kiss.
She got angry all over again thinking about it: how dare he do such a thing without asking her how she felt about him first? Well, of course, she'd kissed him back just as passionately so that boat had well and truly sailed, but it was the idea of it. Permission had been neither asked for nor granted, not verbally anyway...
That was incredibly hot.
Molly almost snorted at the memory of his words. Only Sherlock Holmes would be turned on by her wielding a bone saw against a reanimated corpse! Then again, if she'd known that was what it would take, she'd have staged a fake zombie apocalypse years ago!
Well, no, her conscience chided her, she wouldn't have. But oh, she would have been sorely tempted!
Their arrival at Baker Street interrupted her chaotic thoughts. If either she or Sherlock expected to enter the building on their own, they were sadly mistaken; two of Mycroft's men were waiting by the door, and escorted them inside.
Mycroft came upstairs with them as well; after he'd had a quiet word with the two guards and sent them down to take up posts inside the front door, he turned back to regard his brother and Molly. Sherlock had thrown himself into his chair while Molly investigated the small pile of her belongings that had been deposited on the coffee table. "No laptop?" she asked, although she already knew the answer as she glanced over at Mycroft.
He shook his head and gave another one of those tight-lipped smiles he favored. "No, I'm afraid not, Miss Hooper. No computers, no mobiles, no outside communication until we're certain we've got this situation back under control."
Sherlock gave an inelegant snort. "As if you ever had it under control in the first place. So when are those oh-so-detailed incident reports going to arrive, hmm?"
"First thing in the morning," Mycroft replied. Somehow it didn't sound like a promise, in spite of the confidence with which he spoke.
Sherlock gave a skeptical huff in response, raising his fingers to his lips and closing his eyes.
Sherlock gave a skeptical huff in response, raising his fingers to his lips and closing his eyes.
"Good-bye, brother dear. I'm sure you've got more important things to do than try to explain how someone managed to bring on a literal zombie apocalypse in Great Britain."
"It will never reach that level; stop being so dramatic," Mycroft grumbled. But Molly could hear the slightest hesitation in his voice, could see it in his eyes, and wondered if he was half as confident as he was trying to make them believe.
Sherlock gave Mycroft a skeptical look before barking out a single word. "Moriarty?"
Mycroft shrugged. "Unlikely, but not impossible. You didn't uncover any sort of connection to bioweapons research when you were dismantling his crime syndicate, and he never struck me as the type who wanted to watch the entire world crumble, not when he might one day rule over it instead."
Sherlock reached for his violin, which Mycroft clearly viewed as a threat of some sort as he immediately headed for the door. He paused on the threshold to add, "And Sherlock? Do keep in mind that the guards inside are not the only ones keeping watch, so if you're inclined to try and shinny down a drain pipe, rest assured, one of my very competent men will be waiting to escort you back inside."
Sherlock merely tilted his head back and waved dismissively.
With a muttered, "Good day, Miss Hooper," Mycroft Holmes left the flat, closing the door firmly behind him.
As soon as she heard the main door to the building slam shut, Molly turned to Sherlock. "All right. Explain yourself."
He cracked open one eye, his brow scrunched as he said, "Molly, I know as much as you do. Well, perhaps I might have deduced a bit more than..."
"No, not that," Molly said, brushing his words aside as if the dead coming back to life wasn't the most important thing that had happened today.
"Ah, you mean about your ex," Sherlock said with a slightly amused smirk, closing his eyes again. "Don't worry, even I have doubts that he's at the heart of this. He always was more interested in mind games than massacres. Particularly world-wide massacres."
"Still not it, you great, thick headed genius." She moved purposefully across the room, plucking the violin and bow from his hands and laying them carefully on the floor next to his chair. He allowed her the actions, watching her through narrowed eyes, but there was something in the way he was looking at her that told her she'd made the right decision to confront him. A faint hint of alarm behind the deliberately nonchalant expression he presented her with.
"Molly, I have no idea what – " Sherlock began, but Molly was having none of it; she reached out and pressed her index finger against his lips. He was so surprised that he actually stopped talking.
Molly took immediate advantage of his silence. Narrowing her eyes, she said, "The kiss, Sherlock. What the hell was that all about?" She pulled her hand away and gazed at him expectantly.
A panicked expression flashed across his face, so quickly that Molly half-thought she'd imagined it. "Heat of the moment," he finally mumbled, his hands gripping the oversized arms of his chair. "Adrenaline. The sight of you wielding a bone saw as a defensive weapon stirred some, ah, unexpectedly primal..."
"You said it was hot," Molly cut in, leaning down very deliberately so that their faces were only
inches apart, her hands close to his on the arms of the chairs. "You said it was hot and then you kissed me. Why? And don't," she added as he opened his mouth, "don't even try that adrenaline crap again. If adrenaline got your hormones going that way, then I'm pretty sure John would have punched you for trying to kiss him long ago."
His lips twitched into a reluctant smile. "Yes, well, true enough, but that would only have happened if I was gay. Which I'm not, so..." He shrugged.
"So what?" she countered, leaning even closer. He shifted uncomfortably, the smile disappearing and a definite expression of consternation taking its place. "Now I know you're not gay. So is this your way of letting me know you're also not asexual?"
His eyes flashed with annoyance. "I never said I was," he bit out, straightening a bit in his seat, feet firmly on the floor as if he might propel himself upward at any moment. Which would undoubtedly result in mashed foreheads, but Molly refused to move out of the way. "I merely chose to repress that part of my nature in favor of my intellectual pursuits."
"Right." Molly nodded; she understood that, even approved to a certain extent. Certainly Sherlock's mind was the part of himself he valued the most, and rightly so. Of course, his incredibly fit form, amazing eyes, dangerously sharp cheekbones and full, plump lips were nothing to sneeze at either. "But you still haven't actually answered my question. Why did you kiss me?"
With that question he actually did jump to his feet, adroitly grasping her by the upper arms and swinging her out of the way so that no one ended up with a bruised forehead. However, when he let her go and turned to storm off somewhere – his bedroom? – Molly dug in her heels, suddenly furious with him for this childish attempt at evasion. She'd had enough mysteries thrown at her today to last a lifetime, and this was one question she was determined to get an answer to.
With that in mind, she grabbed the back collar of his scrubs, yanking hard, startling a muffled grunt from his lips. "William Sherlock Scott Holmes!" she yelled. "Just answer the goddamned question! Why did you kiss me?"
"Because I wanted to!" he shouted back at her, tugging himself free of her grip and turning to face her, once again grasping her by the upper arms. Molly barely noticed as his fingers dug into her flesh, too stunned by his confession to do more than gape up at him. "Because I've wanted to kiss you since I returned from my 'death'," he snarled. "But you had Meat Dagger, and then I had to deal with Magnussen, and then fucking Moriarty came back from the dead...it was never the right time! It still isn't the right time," he added angrily. "But I don't fucking care anymore! Wrong time or not..." He gave her a wild look, then swooped in for another kiss, this one even more desperate, more passionate than the first.
There was never any question of how she would respond; her hands landed on his chest as he yanked her closer and her mouth moved against his with equal passion. When his tongue slid between her lips, she gladly opened for him; when he ground what felt like a more-than-adequate erection against her midsection, she hooked a leg around his thigh and pulled him even closer.
The kiss was hard and dangerous and exactly what she'd always wanted a kiss from Sherlock to be; lips and tongue, panting breaths and a feverish heat radiating from their entwined forms. Molly's hands moved from his chest up to his shoulders and from there to that glorious head of hair, tugging at the damp curls none-too-gently and pulling a groan from his lips as she did so.
They broke apart, panting and wild-eyed, only to yank off the borrowed medical scrubs and trainers they'd been given, tossing the clothing to the floor before crashing together again for another desperate series of kisses. Molly reached down and grasped his erection, not gently, and
he groaned against her lips before reaching up to tug the elastic from her hair.
She gasped as he swung her into his arms and marched at a furious pace to his bedroom, kicking the door shut behind them and not so much setting her on the bed as falling onto it with her. His mouth was impatient and demanding against hers, his hands everywhere she wanted them to be, her own urgently gripping every part of him they could reach. Legs tangled, her breasts mashed against the smooth hardness of his chest, his erection burning a hard line against her thigh, her hip, the softness of her lower abdomen. Never quite where she needed to feel it, but never more than a teasing few inches away.
"Sherlock," she groaned, running her fingers through his curls again. "Please..."
She wasn't entirely sure what she wanted him to do, but as soon as he began kissing his way down her torso, she felt a tingling sense of anticipation over her entire body. "Oh, God, yes," she moaned, fingers still playing with his hair as he pressed his lips to the underside of one breast. She sucked in a breath when she felt his hands ghosting down her thighs, sliding between her legs as she automatically opened for him. Then his mouth landed on her sex and the only thing on Molly's mind was the fact that Sherlock's lips and tongue were doing wicked, wicked things to her, things she'd fantasized about but never expected to experience in real life.
His mouth was hot against her equally heated flesh, her natural lubrication gone into overdrive as he sucked her clit into his mouth, scraping it with his teeth and pulling a near scream of pleasure from her lips. His fingers dug into her hips, hard enough to bruise, and she felt the scrape of his fingernails and knew there would be tiny scratches at the top of each bruise.
She didn't care. She didn't care how much damage he did to her, or she to him; this moment had been far too long in coming to waste on fretting over such trivialities. She dug her fingers into his scalp, tugging hard on his curls, matching his moans of pleasure with short cries of her own as he pushed her folds aside with his fingers and began tongue-fucking her in earnest. She came with a harsh cry that burned her throat, fingers clawing at his scalp and legs hugging his body tight to her. He waited until her death-grip relaxed before moving, rising to his knees and staring down at her with a wild, almost feral cast to his eyes and a hint of a snarl on his lips.
Then he descended, his lips crashing onto hers again, the heavy weight of his body pressing her deeper into the mattress, his thighs pushing between hers and his cock resting hot and hard against her sex. She murmured something incoherent against his lips; he grasped her right thigh and lifted it, and with a single thrust he was inside her.
"Sherlock," Molly moaned out his name, a prayer and a plea, begging for more and sighing blissfully as he began to move, a steady, punishing rhythm that vibrated through her body from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair.
"Molly," he gasped in response before diving down for another kiss, nipping at her lower lip then sucking it into his mouth. Her fingers returned to his hair, digging deep into his scalp, her legs wrapping themselves around his waist so she could take him in harder, faster, deeper. His mouth slipped down her throat, teeth digging desperately into the soft flesh above her pulse point, bruisingly hard and gloriously satisfying. Molly came with a near scream, crying out his name over and over again as she rode out her orgasm. Sherlock followed soon after, his movements becoming frenzied, his entire body shuddering as he spilled inside her.
Once they'd come down from their mutual highs, Sherlock rolled off her with a quick kiss, padding barefoot and utterly naked to the bathroom door. Molly heard the sound of running water, some splashing, then Sherlock returned with a warm, wet flannel and proceeded to clean her up. "Thirsty?" he asked once he'd tossed the cloth in the general vicinity of the bathroom door.
"Mm, a glass of water would be nice," Molly agreed, her throat still a bit raw. Sherlock jumped up again and disappeared into the hall. He returned a few minutes later with two glasses of water and a handful of chocolate biscuits; once they'd gulped down the water and devoured the biscuits, Sherlock took the two glasses, put them on his nightstand, and pulled Molly against his body.
He was hard again; she could feel his erection burning against her midsection as he nipped and sucked at her throat. She'd half-expected him to drop off to sleep like every other male partner she'd ever had, and was thrilled that instead he seemed as full of energy and desire as he had been earlier. Their second time was just as frenzied as the first, Molly's orgasm taking her utterly by surprise as she dug her teeth into his shoulder in order to muffle her screams of ecstasy.
After her body had gone limp, he pulled out of her; she groaned a protest, then gasped as he grabbed her, rolling her onto her stomach. "On your knees," he said gruffly, almost a growl, and she shakily obeyed, pillowing her head on her arms and shifting her legs wider apart as he took himself in hand and thrust back into her. He leaned over her, nipping her shoulder, one arm wrapped securely around her waist as he moved inside her. He toyed with her nipples, pinching and squeezing, and unbelievably Molly felt herself building toward a fourth orgasm. When he moved his free hand down to rub his thumb over her clit, she tumbled over the edge, gasping out his name as he pounded into her, thrilling to the sound of his guttural roar as he joined her in completion.
Afterwards he simply collapsed on the bed, one arm over his eyes, breathing heavily while Molly did pretty much the same. She was the one who got up this time and staggered to the bathroom, groping for the discarded washcloth, running it under first cold water, to press against her aching sex, then warm to wipe off the semen running down her thighs. When she finished she rinsed it off and brought it back to Sherlock, who took it with a grunt of what she generously interpreted as thanks. He half-heartedly swiped it over his softening cock, dropped it to the floor and pulled Molly down to lie in the cradle of his arms, her head on his chest and his cheek on her hair.