A Bagful of Toes

This story was inspired by (and is dedicated to!) every Sherlock writer who's ever referred to a bagful of toes in their story – and believe me, there are more of them out there than you think! Sometimes they're disguised as a cooler full of feet, but the idea is certainly the same. Rated K+.

"Sherlock! What the hell is this?!"

Molly Hooper was standing in her kitchen, staring at the open door of her refrigerator. Sherlock Holmes, supposedly dead consulting detective, was sitting cross-legged on her sofa, with her computer on his lap, tapping away at the keys while she shouted at him.

"It's your refrigerator, Molly, it's been here as long as you've been letting this flat," he replied without looking up. If Molly had chanced to look over at him, she might have seen the small smile fighting to break across his lips, the twinkle of amusement in his eyes, but she had eyes for nothing but the plastic hazardous materials bag sitting on her shelf next to the milk and eggs.

With an exasperated huff she snatched the bag up, holding it delicately pinched between thumb and forefinger, arm held stiffly in front of her body, nose scrunched in disgust as she marched over to her small sitting room, divided from the kitchen only by a bar-style counter and stools. Sherlock watched her from the corner of his eye, absently noting that she looked rather adorable when annoyed and aghast as she currently was, considering the contents of the bag she held so gingerly in her fingers.

She stopped directly in front of Sherlock and shook the bag under his nose. "Sherlock!" she said again, voice still pitched unnaturally high. "What. Is. THIS?" The last work was practically shrieked, causing him to wince at the volume, so close to his sensitive ears.

He finally deigned to look up, still fighting the smile. "It appears to be a bagful of toes, Molly," he said after a moment spent pretending to study the contents of the plastic container she was holding. He tilted his head to the side and squinted up at her in mock-confusion. "Surely you've seen a bagful of toes before."

She rolled her eyes, still holding the bag at arm's length in front of his face. "Yes, Sherlock," she replied in a tone of exaggerated patience. "I've seen a bagful of toes before. In fact," she continued, voice once again rising as her exasperation and annoyance surged upwards, "I've seen this bagful of toes before. In the storage freezer at St. Bart's. They belong to Mr. Lewis, who was cremated today. Without his toes!" Once again her words came out in a shriek, and once again Sherlock winced.

He closed the laptop as he did, setting it aside and inching gingerly out from beneath Molly's hand and its distasteful – unless one had a good reason for nicking them, as he had – contents. "Yes, Molly, he was cremated today without his toes. I doubt very much his family will notice the miniscule difference in weight when they're given the urn containing his remains, considering none of them will know how much it's supposed to…"

She shook the bag in his face; he reared his head back, wary eyes on the seal. He hadn't opened it yet, so it was unlikely he was about to have one of Mr. Lewis' toes lodged up his nostril, but it never hurt to be careful. Especially when a certain enraged pathologist had her dander up, as she certainly did now.

He loved riling Molly up this way, getting her worked up over something trivial. But her next words caused him to rethink that, as she lowered her hand to her side and fixed her gaze on him, all signs of incipient hysteria immediately replaced by pure, unadulterated fear. "Sherlock, you went to St. Bart's and nicked these, didn't you." She didn't wait for his nod before whispering in anguished tones: "What if you'd been caught? You're supposed to be d-dead, what if someone recognized you? Your cover would be blown and three people could die!"

Oh. He hadn't thought of that…well, actually, he had, which was why he'd disguised himself with extra care before venturing into the hospital morgue late last night while Molly slept. But he hadn't thought about how it would upset and worry her to know that he'd taken such a risk, and for such an admittedly trivial reason.

He'd nicked the bag of toes after Mr. Lewis' body had already been wheeled away for cremation, which meant no one would notice, since they were already supposed to be gone. He'd done so out of boredom; nothing was happening at the moment, he was stuck waiting for several carefully planned events to come to a boil, and had decided to conduct an experiment he'd dreamed up involving commonly found kitchen herbs and spices – more specifically, the ones Molly filled an entire cabinet with and clearly hadn't used in months if not longer.

Mostly, however, he'd brought them just to provoke a reaction out of Molly. Not, unfortunately, the reaction she'd ended at, although he'd derived a great deal of amusement from her first reaction.

Damage control was required. All these thoughts flickered through his mind in no more than an eyeblink, before his expression turned contrite and he found himself wiping away her sudden tears with his thumbs.

That last bit startled him almost as much as it appeared to startle her; he'd meant to offer an apology for worrying her, yes, but he hadn't intended to initiate physical contact…why had he done so?

It wasn't just because she was crying; he'd seen her crying before, oftentimes knowing himself to be the cause and had left her to deal with her emotions on her own, uncomfortable with them and with the knot of pain they caused him deep in his gut. Better to ignore such things, allow them to pass; to acknowledge them was to open the door to that most despised of emotions, the antithesis of intellect: sentiment.

So why was he the one opening the door, then? Molly was clearly ready to leave the room, bringing her tears and emotionalism with her, leaving him to his deductions and plans and research.

Oh. Perhaps the answer was to be found in the way his heart was suddenly hammering in his chest, breath hitching as his eyes locked with hers, drowning in chocolatey brown velvet, seeming suddenly enormous in her face. He was the one having an emotional reaction for once; well, she certainly was as well, but for the first time in a very long time her reaction had triggered something rather primal in him.

He leaned in and kissed her. Not a chaste peck on the cheek as he'd offered her that unfortunate Christmas Eve when he'd deduced her to such devastating effect. No, this was a proper kiss, a romantic kiss, even, straight on the lips and lingering for quite some time as his hands somehow found themselves cupped around her chin, thumbs still lightly pressed to her cheeks.

The tears had stopped; good. Not his primary goal, but a satisfactory secondary effect. She pulled back – not good; he frowned and ducked his head forward but her hand was between them, resting against his lips as her own mouth turned downward. "Sherlock, what do you think you're doing?"

"Kissing you," was his impatient reply. Wasn't it obvious? Of course it was, stupid of him to answer that way when clearly she wasn't asking about his actions, but rather about the intent behind them.

Before he could formulate the proper response, however, she'd pulled back even further, hands on hips, the bag of toes dangling by her thigh, forgotten in light of the new situation he'd thrust upon her. "Why?"

"Because I wanted to," he replied. Her frown deepened, which he interpreted to mean she either didn't want him to kiss her – unlikely in the extreme – or else she didn't understand and required further elucidation. "Molly, I've been in your flat for two weeks now, ample time for me to observe you outside of the work environment, which is where we've mainly interacted up until now, agreed?"

She nodded, her expression hovering between wary and worried; her body tensed just the slightest bit, as if she were preparing herself for him to say something – how had she put it that Christmas? – oh yes, as if bracing herself for him to say such terrible, awful things. Perhaps she expected him to tell her it was an experiment, or that he was bored and needed some way to pass the time?

Neither was true. The truth was something he was going to have a difficult time admitting to, and he anticipated to have to overcome a great deal of skepticism on her part before she believed him.

Still, it was true, what he was about to say, and (except for certain very specific circumstances, under which this encounter most definitely did not fall) Sherlock Holmes was ruthless when it came to telling the truth, no matter the consequences to others – or to himself. "I wanted to kiss you because you don't simply count, Molly; I don't just trust you. What I feel for you runs…quite a bit deeper, actually."

He trusted her to understand what he couldn't quite bring himself to say after all; surprising, that, since he'd never faltered in the past for words when the truth was plain to be seen. Perhaps he was testing her, somehow? Requiring her to deduce him when he'd already learned so much about her?

Enough to make him feel…more than friendship. More than he'd felt for anyone else in his life, including – rumors and innuendo notwithstanding – John Watson.

He watched while she processed what he'd just almost-admitted to, a smile blossoming on her lips as she reached the correct conclusion. The sound of a bagful of toes dropping to the floor was no distraction at all as she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him quite a bit more thoroughly than he'd just kissed her, much to his not-so-secret delight.

He was equally delighted when she wasted no more time on questions or surplus body parts, practically dragging him to her bedroom.

Which, he was just beginning to realize, was where he'd wanted her to take him ever since his arrival in her flat two weeks previous. The guest bedroom was nice, but he suspected Molly's bed would be a great deal nicer.

Especially as he intended to spend very little time actually sleeping in it.