Sherlock Holmes was angry. No, not angry – he was bloody furious. And worried, which pissed him off even more.
"Are both of you alright?" John asked he and Sherlock entered Molly's apartment. He went to kiss Mary's cheek. "We came as quickly as we could."
Sherlock remained quiet while his friend was checking up on his pregnant wife, and he focused on the distressed Molly. She was starting at the floor and tried to calm her trembling hands.
"We would've come sooner, if someone thought a visit from Irene Adler was something worth mentioning," he finally grumbled. Molly looked up to meet his intense glare and looked away as soon as her mind involuntarily imagined him in a bed with the beautiful woman who most certainly interested him more than her.
"I thought it was a dream," she defended herself. Sherlock snorted.
"The fact she left you a phone number clearly shows that it wasn't," he spat.
"Molly, do you remember her visit?" John asked, hoping the fragile woman would just ignore the annoyed consulting detective.
"Um, yes, I remember everything," Molly said. "I just don't know how she managed to make me fall asleep again, though. I checked myself for puncture wounds or any other injuries, but I haven't found any."
"Just tell us what exactly happened," John said. Molly blushed and sneaked another glance at Sherlock, whose eyes were still fixated on her.
"Well, I was awoken by a crash in the living room, as if something was knocked over. I thought it was Toby, so I went to check if he didn't hurt himself and if whatever fell wasn't too damaged. Just in front of my bedroom door there was this dress," Molly pointed to the dress which remained on it's place on the sofa, "and in the living room I found her ... naked."
Neither of the men were surprised with that information. Sherlock even rolled his eyes.
"Then what?" John asked.
"She was glad that I found a dress and then commented on how she would rather walk around naked, since she didn't even like it. Then she reminded me of the Christmas when she faked her first death." Another quick glance at Sherlock. This time the anger was softened by guilt. She wasn't sure if it was because of the insults he threw at her at the Christmas party or because of something else which involved Irene. "She walked towards me until she got me pinned to the wall and said she would teach me to ..."
She stopped, scolding and kicking herself in her mind as she blushed in a deep shade of scarlet and looked to the floor.
"Teach you what?" John asked. She wouldn't answer. "Teach you what, Molly?"
"Nothing important," she mumbled, wishing so desperately Sherlock and his piercing eyes weren't in the room.
"Everything is important, Molly. Stop being childish and just tell us what she said," Sherlock said, not in the mood for her embarrassment, no matter how adorable he found it. Molly looked at him straight in the eyes and then she remembered something valuable.
Sherlock Holmes felt immensely uncomfortable when talking about sex.
"She told me she will teach me how to pleasure you," she said, keeping her gaze fixated on him. Sherlock tensed up and his eyes became wide for a moment. He averted his eyes and until he spoke there was a silence in the room.
"Sherlock did you ..." John started. "Don't tell me you two ..."
"We didn't," Sherlock cut him off with a growl. "It was obviously a lie to make Molly feel more vulnerable."
"And why would that make her vulnerable?" Mary questioned him. Molly and Sherlock exchanged looks. Molly pleaded him with her eyes not to say what they both knew he was going to.
"Because it's obvious that Molly is still in love with me."
There, he said it anyway. If it was because of his anger or because of his need to forget about Irene's failed attempt to seduce him after he saved her life all those years ago, he would never know. John didn't look very impressed with the deduction and Mary looked at Molly worriedly. Molly herself was just standing there, glaring daggers at the Consulting Detective, while he waited for her answer and hoped silently he didn't do much damage.
"She left me Tom's number," Molly changed the topic instead of saying anything about his unnecessary comment. "There had to be a reason for that."
"Perhaps to provoke you even further," Sherlock offered a theory. "He works with them and you two were close. It would be the only logical thing to show you that you were once again fooled by men."
"Or maybe it's another clue," Mary suggested after noticing Molly wincing. She turned to her in hope to help her redirect her attention. "You said you've been getting strange phone calls. Maybe Moriarty left you clues in them."
"Wait, wait, wait," John intervened. He turned to look at Molly. "You've been getting strange phone calls and you didn't tell us?"
"I didn't think it was very important," Molly mumbled, crossing her arms over her chest. "You were all busy with Moriarty and I didn't want to bother you with silly threats ..."
"You kept it to yourself that you've been getting threatening phone calls from someone just when Moriarty is on the loose and is connected with your ex-fiancé who undoubtedly knows your phone number?" Sherlock asked with anger rising word by word. He laughed humorlessly. "Oh, that really is brilliant, Molly! What were you thinking? That it was more sensible to think it was just a few kids playing around instead of a psychopath who now knows of your importance to me?"
Only when he was finished he realized he moved towards her and was now facing the big brown eyes with tears glistening in them.
"You think I didn't connect the dots?" she asked with a weak voice. "Do you think I didn't want to call you every time I got one of them?"
"Then why didn't you?" Sherlock asked through clenched teeth. He could almost see his furious face after his outburst in her teary eyes, which now looked straight into his while trying to blink away the tears, and it made him feel guilty and reminded him to breathe and calm down.
"Because I know how you work, Sherlock," Molly said. "The only important things are the evidence, and a phone call with a blocked number is just not enough for me to think you would have anything to go on. So I decided to stay low and let you deal with the important things."
Nothing is more important than you.
He almost said these words out loud. The only thing keeping him from doing just that was John and Mary's presence in the room. The sentence was way too intimate to be shared with so many people aside from the one person for whom it was meant to.
"Could we all just calm down now?" John jumped in. "Molly, could you tell us anything about those calls?"
"It wasn't much – just threats, as I said," Molly said and stepped away from Sherlock. "I wrote them down in my diary, if ... well, if after this was all over it could still be a case for the two of you."
She went to her bedroom and returned with a blue notebook. She opened it and flipped through the pages quickly.
"Here it is," Molly said and handed it to John. "There were only two. In one they said that they know what I did, and in the other they played a track of the phone call between the two of you just before the Fall."
Sherlock went over and examined the notes in Molly's rushed handwriting over John's shoulder.
"Naughty," he murmured to himself and then looked at Molly. "Did he specifically said you were a naughty girl?"
"Yes," Molly nodded. "As cliched as it sounds, he did."
She expected Sherlock to make a snide comment about it but instead she found him being lost in thought.
"When Irene Adler visited me," he said, "she described your taste of men as the ones that are a bit naughty. She even emphasized it with her voice. Something is in this word. It can't be a coincidence that it was specifically mentioned twice under vaguely the same circumstances."
"It must mean something," John followed his logic. "But what?"
"An anagram maybe?" Mary guessed. Sherlock closed his eyes, entering his mind palace.
N-A-U-G-H-T-Y
any thug
gay hunt
hut yang
nay thug
tang yuh
tanh guy
tung hay
yang hut
yuh gnat
"Nine possibilities, none especially sensible," Sherlock said. He took the diary from John's hand and read through the notes again.
"There was one more thing," Molly said. "I don't know if it's helpful or not, but there have been things disappearing and being replaced around my flat and workplace."
"What kind of things?" Sherlock asked as his eyes snapped up to meet hers.
"The most random of them," Molly shrugged. "Like the pen I lost in my office the other day when you two came in. My hairbrush has been moved to my living room, even though I remember leaving it in my bathroom the night before, Toby's bowl has gone missing, and so is one of my favourite books."
"In what order did this happen?" Sherlock asked.
"Why is it important?" Molly answered with another question. Sherlock shot her a disapproving look.
"Alrighty, then," Molly sighed. After some quick thinking she continued, "I first noticed Toby's bowl was missing when I wanted to feed him in the evening two days ago, then my book went missing from my nightstand, and yesterday morning I barely found my hairbrush and as you know I lost my pen later that day in my office."
"And you still haven't found any of those items?" Sherlock asked. Molly shook her head at his question. Sherlock wordlessly disappeared in her bathroom and came back with Molly's bright red hairbrush in his hands, examining it whilst walking.
"You know where Molly keeps her hairbrush?" Mary asked, more than slightly amused.
"I lived here for a week, I think that would be enough time to memorize where she keeps her things," Sherlock dismissed her.
"I thought you delete things you don't deem important," John teased him further, but innocently. "You once forgot where we kept the tea in Baker street."
Sherlock stopped what he was doing and looked at John as though he wanted to murder him on the spot. John and Mary failed horribly at their tries to suppress their giggles, while Molly ignored the friendly exchange and rather had her mind occupied by wondering once again how could someone as sweet and caring as Tom be a part of something so evil.
"Shut up," Sherlock finally said after a few seconds of not being sure what to do. He took another look at the hairbrush. "They didn't take this one, but it's important because they made sure Molly would be paying attention to it. But there is nothing here. So what is so ..."
He stopped in the middle of speaking once he looked at the brush from another angle. The sunlight shone on the few hairs stuck on it and one of them didn't match Molly's hair. It was red, and a great deal shorter than hers. He took it out and showed it off with an excited smile.
"We need to see to whom this belongs to," Sherlock said. "Bart's, now."
"Let me just get dressed," Molly said and headed to her room, but was stopped by her phone ringing. She picked it up. "Hello? ... I know, sorry, something has come up. I'm on my way now ... Oh, dear god. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
She hung up the phone and looked at the others.
"There's been a murder," she said. She looked at Sherlock. "With a message for you."
(A/N: I am SO SORRY for the very long wait (and if you've seen the error my computer made, when I accidentally posted an empty chapter, I'm sorry for that too)! I've had an enormous writer's block and couldn't get past Sherlock's comment that Molly is still in love with him -.- but I have more bad news: you may wait quite a while for my next chapter, because this whole month I will be showered by exams ... I'm sorry! But I am taking prompts for oneshots and drabbles on tumblr, if you're interested (I find it to be a great writer's block cure :P) – my url: iou-a-burning-heart
P.S. I know that the chapter is a bit badly written, but I finished it off yesterday at 2 am, so please, bear with me!)