For five long years

I thought you were my man

But I found out

I'm just a link in your chain

The doorbell buzzes, a tired electronic version of a real bell.

Molly is in bed, watching television. You watch a lot of television when you are single and work shifts. Television stands in for the friends whose free time does not coincide with your own. Although tonight it is merely helping her relax after a night at a pub in Camden with Dee, watching 'Gin and Tonic' and their small band. They gave a competent rendition of some more Cliff and a bit of Cilla, among others. Phil texted her from the Beehive begging her and Dee to go down there after, but Molly was too tired. It is cold outside despite being April and the rhinestones on tonight's dress do not provide insulation.

The doorbell again. Whoever it is, they are determined.

She climbs out of bed, her foundation garments forming a robust silhouette under her fluffy blue dressing gown, and feels for the slippers. Flap, flaps to the hall. Looks through the spyhole.

Sherlock is outside in the grimy corridor, wrapped in his big black coat, looking impatient.

Molly takes a breath and touches the ruby pin, the Billie Rae pin. She thinks of how she can silence a roomful of people simply by walking onto the stage, before she has sung a single note. She can handle Sherlock at midnight.

She unlocks the door, takes off the chain, and lets him in. "Sherlock, it's half eleven at night."

"Is it?"

What utter bollocks. He knows the time of day in a dozen countries without thinking about it. She has tired of his adorable genius act. It is not cute that he apparently forgets common knowledge in order to manipulate others into doing things for him. He can name every bone in the human body, he can certainly look at his watch.

She takes a breath, pulling the dressing gown round her and tying it tightly. "Yes. What's the matter? Why are you here?"

He is looking all round. "John's in Baker Street. Throwing a work party. People. I couldn't stand it."

She stares at him, trying to look disapproving. She knows it does not work, and wouldn't work on him anyway: he is immune to other people's opinions. "So naturally you came here."

Is it meant to be a kind of compliment, being dragged to the door in the middle of the night?

"I don't have a wide range of people who might answer the door to me at this hour," he says.

So he did know. Of course he did. And now he's trying for pathetic . It's working, but probably not in the way he hopes.

"Right," she says with a heavy sigh. "D'you want a coffee? You can crash here tonight. I suppose."

A year ago she would have been hurrying to dress, to stay up late, to entertain him. Now she trudges into the miniature kitchen and fills the kettle, switches it on and stands blankly waiting for it to boil. After a bit she opens the nearest cupboard and pulls out two mugs. Decaff for her. He gets the normal stuff. "It's not real coffee," she says over her shoulder, and realises he has gone.

She rolls her eyes and emerges from the kitchen. The flat is tiny – it was tiny or flatshare and she was not going through that hell again, John Watson has nothing on her stories – and checks the living room, the hall. He must be in the bathroom. She rattles the door. "Sherlock?"

It might be considered a bit rude to hassle someone in the bathroom, but he has this habit of vanishing and she does not want to be the chump making coffee for someone who has remembered a more exciting engagement elsewhere and simply walked off. Not again.

He is not in the bathroom.

"Molly."

She swings round and he is standing in the doorway of her bedroom. Her bedroom!

"What are you – Come out of my room, please." Thank god the wardrobe doors are shut. And there is no extravagant underwear on the floor because she is still wearing it all.

She steps aside in the narrow passage to encourage him to pass.

He doesn't move.

"Why are you watching this?" he asks.

"What?" A biopic of Erma Franklin on DVD. The screen is frozen on a shot of her performing in a glittering dress. "Just interested."

He frowns. He is giving her the look, the working you out completely, sucking you in and spitting you out as a series of dry facts, look. She used to like that look. It used to be sexy, watching him do his thing. But she would rather he saw her as a person, as she sees him.

"Coincidence," he says at last. "It does exist."

Her turn to frown. "What coincidence? Erma Franklin... you know, the singer." She manages to sound vague, as if she has not spent an hour memorising Erma's stance, delivery, the way she draws those big notes up to belt them out into the audience.

His eyelashes flicker as he gazes at her. "Erma Franklin. She did a song called Piece of my heart."

Those words, in his voice, give her an old fashioned thrill. Her abandoned fantasies rear up for a moment. "Yes," she says. "What about it?"

Sherlock bites his upper lip. "Not deleted," he says obscurely.

Molly goes back into the kitchen and makes the coffees. On impulse she makes him decaff as well. If he is going to crash here she doesn't want him roaming the place all night, she wants him flat out on the sofa immobile until a convenient hour tomorrow morning.

They sit in the lounge, she in her armchair with a seventies bedspread as a throw, he on her small sofa, shoes kicked off and his knees drawn up under his chin.

He sips coffee, wrinkles his nose, sips some more, watching her over the rim of the mug, and then puts the mug on the coffee table, still mostly full.

"So how was the party?" she asks, feeling strange. It has been a long time since she and Sherlock have done small talk. If they ever have.

"You've changed things," he says, looking around the room.

She follows his gaze. "Yes. A bit."

He has been here once before, after his fall, and for about ten minutes. Of course that would have been sufficient for him to take a complete mental snapshot of her home.

"The curtains are new. Except that they are old." He is frowning. "Why did you deliberately buy something old to replace something old?"

The curtains are a brilliant retro find from Brick Lane. Giant stylised flowers in orange and brown on a white background. They are funky and also they match the brown carpet, which she cannot change. "You can't get that style any more," she says. "And that's the style I wanted."

Is she really justifying her home decor choices to Sherlock?

"But why not have something new?" he asks.

She stiffens. Billie Rae does what she pleases and does not need to explain herself. "You have the world's oldest wallpaper in your flat," she says. "Why don't you have something new?"

He blinks.

That's right Sherlock, I do bite back; you've just never been on the receiving end before. You should see the journalists run.

"The wallpaper belongs to Mrs Hudson," he says. "I didn't choose it."

"Ok, your suits. You wear a suit every day. It's your style. Well, this is my style." Like it or lump it, thinks Billie Rae. I am who I am. I always have been, but you never saw it.

"My suits are new," he says, sounding a little aggrieved.

"But if you couldn't get them the shape you wanted -" Involuntarily her eye traces that shape, close fitting jacket down through the chest, trousers snug over the narrow hips, following the outline of his slender legs, narrow at the ankle. "Then what would you do?"

"Have them made." He seems genuinely puzzled.

She relents a little. He doesn't get it. "I like old things," she says. "Those curtains. They remind me of my childhood. My great-grandma. She was so old, frail, but she was always so pleased to see me, made a real fuss of me, she was lovely."

Sherlock is calm again, watching her face. "The memory makes you sad," he pronounces. "But happy. Nostalgia."

"Yes. The curtains remind me of the good times, even if they're gone. When I look at them I can picture Grandma's house, all her funny ornaments, her doilies, the bottle of Ribena she kept on the counter just for when I came round. It's like I'm back there again."

"A kind of time travel," Sherlock exclaims, and his expression is wondering.

"I suppose it is," she says.

"It would be invaluable in my work," he says then, unfolding and laying his legs across her coffee table.

"If you could go back and witness crimes and find out who the killer was, would people still kill?"

"People will always kill." His voice is flat: the inevitable evil of humanity.

"Even if they knew it was you hunting them down?" It is a fact that he excels at his adopted job.

"It doesn't stop them at the moment," he says. But he seems pleased by her compliment.

"With time travel, you'd be invincible," she says with a horrified smile.

"No," he says, turning his head to gaze full at her, "I'd be bored."

She laughs. He smiles. "Drink your coffee," she tells him. "I'll find the spare duvet."


She is, luckily, mostly dressed when Sherlock opens the door to her bedroom next morning. "Hey!"

He waves a hand, his eyes nowhere near her. Asks about coffee, which cupboard. She tells him and he vanishes again.

Hmmn.

When she is ready she comes through into the lounge, work clothes on, make up in place, feet in comfortable shoes, overall depressing sense of anti-glamour pervading.

He is picking some tiny object off the sofa - duvet already rolled up and stowed under the coffee table - and his brow is creased in a dark frown.

There are two cups of coffee on the low table. "Oh. Thank you." She takes the one which is not black. Sips it. "What coffee is this?" Nothing she recognises.

"Your own. Three teaspoons."

It works. She thinks she is about to treble her instant coffee bill. "Thank you," she says again, mainly out of surprise that he has done something considerate.

"What are the dresses in your wardrobe?" he asks. He has pocketed whatever he found.

She freezes. When did he see them? Last night when he wandered in there? Or in the split second in her room, just now? He is a liability and this is precisely why she has kept this stuff a secret from him. "Dresses," she says, trying to make it as dull, feminine and ordinary as possible.

"Ballroom dancing dresses?"

Oh. Is that his best guess? "Kind of. Yes." Well, you could dance in them. For Strictly, you'd need to chop about three foot off the hem, add some tassels, hope your knickers didn't show. She has never understood what kind of ballroom those Strictly dresses would be appropriate for.

Sherlock frowns.

She pats her hair, feels the ruby pin. Billie Rae is safe. And Billie Rae is mischievous. "There are two thousand five hundred sequins on the Happy Birthday dress worn by Marilyn Monroe," she says. "And every one was hand stitched."

There. Take that and stick it in your mind palace. Will it live between Football (Pointless) and Soap Operas (Insultingly Pointless)? Or does it get its own room, Sequins, Thousands Of?

She smiles, picturing him filing away sequin data.

He stares at her.

She picks up her handbag. "Let's go."

He lifts his coat and throws it around his shoulders, thrusts his arms into the sleeves. He is still looking at her curiously, his eyes shimmering. Good.

In the narrow hallway Sherlock stops before he unchains the door. They are standing close together and he is looming in his long black coat. "Molly. Thank you. For this. For - everything."

She was fumbling in her bag for the deadlock key. At his words, she stops dead. Sherlock is eighteen inches away, projecting sincerity. She does not trust it. "No problem," she says. "Any time," she adds, because he is still staring at her with his intense blue gaze and the space between them is becoming uncomfortable.

He moves his right hand slightly then adjusts his coat collar with it. The hand returns slowly to his side.

Is he going to ... hug her?

She can hardly imagine a less Sherlock action. Billie Rae is ready with a derogatory comment if he tries to increase plausibility through a display of affection.

He yanks the chain off the hook and pulls open the front door. "I'll hail us a cab," he says, and strides out. A second later she hears him, sprinting down the stairs, two at a time.


Author's note:

It's actually hand-stitched rhinestones on the Monroe dress, which sold some years back for one and a half million dollars. Marilyn had to be sewn into it for her performance, it was so tight-fitting. Now that's commitment.

Chain of fools - Aretha Franklin