Sherlock Holmes did not get anxious. He was a seasoned consulting detective, a man who had spent over a decade solving crimes that perplexed the country's best law enforcement organizations, disappointing as Britain's best and brightest usually were. He was not anxious. And he most assuredly was not pacing, outward appearances aside. He dropped into his chair, legs bouncing and hands scrabbling at the arms of the chair. This would not do.
The kettle's switch clicked, signalling it was done. He stalked back into the kitchen and finished preparing the tea. He heard Mrs. Hudson open the front door in response to a soft knock, and her pleased-sounding greeting confirmed that his guest was on time.
Moments later, Molly Hooper stood awkwardly in the open door frame. "Mrs. Hudson let me in…" she studiously avoided meeting his gaze and he realized he should probably say something. John was much better at breaking the ice.
"Molly, come in. Tea?"
"Please."
She toed off her winter boots and removed her coat. As she reached up to hang her coat to hang it on a hook by the door, Sherlock noticed the small but more pronounced swell of her abdomen beneath her thin jumper. A week ago, when Webber had scanned her, she hadn't appeared as pregnant as she did now. Molly was a petite woman, not in ideal physical condition. It shouldn't surprise him that she was showing a bit even at this early stage, but the visible evidence of what she'd come to discuss provoked in him an emotion that he shoved very quickly and without remorse into the pit beneath his mind palace.
Sherlock deposited the tea tray on the small coffee table and took his seat, motioning for Molly to sit down across from him. He poured the two cups of tea in silence, handing Molly hers before adding sugar to his own. He sipped the comforting brew and realized that the woman across from him was anxious too. Sherlock loathed awkward social situations like this. There was a reason he had avoided friendships for most of his life.
"So." He said at last into the silence. It was as good a place to start as any. "How are you feeling?"
"Fine, I'm fine. Finally able to sleep now I'm back in my own bed. Those hospital beds are horrid. I'm glad my patients can't complain or I'd never hear the end of it." The corner of her mouth lifted in a half smile. Mortuary humour tended to cause some awkwardness around others, but with Sherlock was effective at putting them both somewhat at ease.
"Molly," he began, at the same moment she spoke his own name. They looked at each other, and he motioned for her to continue.
"I met the Home Secretary this morning. Imagine my surprise to be standing in my dressing gown in front of one of the most powerful women in the country."
"What did Theresa want?" Molly's eyes bugged out a bit. She would never get used to how dismissively he spoke of the powerful people that surrounded him.
Molly shifted in the chair and took a sip of her tea. "She wanted to tell me about my new friends." She gestured her head towards the stairs. "The black-suited, ear piece sort."
Sherlock smirked. "You need to stop reading those novels, Molly. They're probably plainclothes. They don't like to stand out."
"You would know. Apparently you're playing James Bond these days."
"Hardly." With a mischievous look, he added, "They don't trust me with firearms anymore."
Molly blinked, clearly unsure whether he was joking. He would refrain from telling her that he wasn't. One of the many conditions to which he'd been forced to submit.
She seemed to consider and then reject the idea but she could hear some discomfort under the levity with which he'd coloured his words. Changing tack, she asked "So you've told your brother, then? And Mrs. Hudson obviously knows."
Sherlock nodded. "Mycroft would have found out as soon as he read his reports. I only had a few hours to make sure they heard it from me before he started making a fuss. My parents were already in London for the evening. The timing was convenient. And for all his power, my brother is a complete drama queen and I wasn't going to let him spoil the surprise."
"That's rich, coming from you." Molly's amused expression
He smiled genuinely. "I never could resist a touch of drama either."
Molly returned the smile. "How did your parents take it?"
"Better than expected. Mum wants to meet you. She has wanted grandchildren for years but knew better than to expect any."
"Especially from Mycroft," Molly drawled. Sherlock snorted.
"She was starting to take in strays. Mary is going to tell her to piss off, soon." Neither of John's parents were still alive, and he didn't know what country Mary's were in, let alone if they were alive, so the impending Watson addition was being claimed by Sherlock's parents.
Molly sobered and took a deep breath, the tone between the two of them shifting from something like the once companionable dialogue they had shared for several years back to the awkwardness that had once been the norm for the two.
During Sherlock's death, Molly had been one of his few regular contacts, each time he'd been called back to London, as she had necessarily been aware of the lie. Sherlock hadn't known for sure that his elaborate plan would work, and he had faced a very real risk of death. He had heard his friend's anguished cries as he fell, and John's weakly muttered he's my friend… as he observed Sherlock's motionless form on the paving slabs. He had been surprised by how his friend's audible pain struck him at that moment, and he started to understand the value of loyalty.
When the door had closed to the morgue, concealing him from view so that he could finally break character (playing dead, he had learned, was not quite as easy as he'd thought it would be,) before he could rise, Molly had grabbed him in a tight embrace, stronger than her slight frame seemed to allow. For the first time in his adult life - perhaps due to the charged nature of the moment - Sherlock hadn't quailed at the contact. He had returned the hug, and held onto the small woman for several minutes as the reality of what it meant to leave his life behind sank in. Within hours, he was on a plane to Asia.
For the two years of his death, he contacted Molly when able. She would tell him of interesting cases, and update him on his other friends. She had proven herself worthy of his trust, and the constancy of her friendship kept him from losing himself completely in the mission.
By the time he had returned for good, he and Molly had developed a friendship that rivalled his and John's, though of a different nature. It hadn't been at all awkward when their closeness lead them further soon after his discharge from hospital in mid-November. He had escaped to her flat as often as he could excuse himself from John's presence without raising suspicion. Then Christmas had crept upon them and with it the climax of the Magnussen case. He'd been held in some secret gaol, the location of which he was still unaware, until New Year, when he was to be exiled.
Since his return, he had seen Molly only in the lab. Until this last week.
"I know this isn't what either of us wanted, but it's what we've got," Molly said quietly, her voice quivering slightly. "I'm not asking anything from you, Sherlock. I don't have any expectations. But I would like to involve you in this" she motioned towards her abdomen. "If… if that's okay," she finished lamely, daring to look up at the man who seemed far away in thought.
He abruptly turned his head and met her gaze steadily. "If you're still in, I'm still in."
Molly's eyes widened. "Oh my God, Sherlock." She couldn't control herself let out a whoop of laughter, dissolving in a fit of giggles. Sherlock joined her, the deep baritone of his rich laugh laying like a balm over her over the wounds of last weekend.
Gasping for breath, eyes sparkling with tears of mirth that she wiped away with a thumb. "I can't believe you remembered that." The detective had quoted the note from one of Molly's favourite films, one that seemed oddly appropriate in the situation. On one of his first visits back to London, he had shown up at her flat while she was watching Juno and he had sat down with her, arguing with the film as he often did with crap telly.
He grinned at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he took in the red-cheeked pathologist across from him.
This was the scene that met John and Mary as they entered the flat. The Watsons each looked at the two other occupants of the room and then exchanged a confused look between them. They'd heard Sherlock's rumbling laughter accompanied by distinctly female guffaws as they had entered the building.
"We've missed something, haven't we?" John asked, releasing Mary's hand so he could take her coat.
Mary's keen eye observed Sherlock and Molly and while she could see that they had gotten over Sherlock's insensitivity, but she could not for the life of her figure out why these two were not only laughing, but looking positively happy in the circumstances.
"Out with it, you two," Mary said. She shooed Sherlock out of his chair and dropped down heavily.
"There is a sofa, Mary," he grumble as he rose.
She stretched her legs out ahead of her. "Which is perfectly suitable for you, but I can't get up off of it."
"What is going on?" John had taken Sherlock's forgotten cup of tea and sat perched on the arm of the sofa himself. He grimaced as he tasted the sugar, but kept the cup anyway.
Sherlock and Molly exchanged a look. She mimed an exaggerated shrug and nodded slightly at him, indicating he should speak. She sipped her tea calmly and waited. This should be good.
"Well?" John uttered expectantly.
Sherlock took the now slightly crinkled image from his pocket and handed it to John. The army doctor's eyes darted over it and went wide. "No…"
Sherlock smiled tightly. "Yes. Confirmed on Friday." John looked from the image to his best friend.
"What's this now?" Mary called over, straining to try to see what it was John was holding. He was stunned into silence, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to find something to say. "John, what is it?"
Sherlock spoke. "It's an image from an ultrasound scan."
"My scan," Molly piped up. "Mary, do you know what a heterotopic pregnancy is?"
The blonde woman dropped the teacup she had just lifted off the tray. "Oh my God." Molly grinned at her. "Oh my God!" she was more shrill with that one and grabbed the arms of the chair to pull herself up. "Oh my God!" Mary sobbed. She pulled Molly into a tight hug, repeating herself over and over, tears flowing freely down her face. Molly laughed lightly, but was soon fighting tears from her own eyes, overwhelmed by the force of Mary's happiness.
John looked from the two women back to his best friend. He recognized the look on Sherlock's face; it was the same one he himself had worn at his wedding reception six months before when this man had told Mary and he of his unexpected deduction. Sherlock was watching Mary and Molly with a look of unexpected, unfiltered joy.