Opening note:
For basketcase1880, from her 2020 Sherlolly Secret Santa! And also for sunken_standard, who gave me the title as a "fic I won't write" prompt many eons ago.
This is probably set somewhere close to the same universe as "One Inch to the Right" and "Two Weeks Ago." No need to read those but the critical plot points that carry over into this story are:
-Mary survived being shot but was extremely seriously injured
-Sherlock and Molly had a VERY brief fling while he was using drugs and tracking down Culverton Smith, which is partly why she's so upset with him in the "I love you" scene.
5 December 2015
London.
What a miserable godforsaken hole of a place.
Oh, sometimes he might be misled by its deep history, its subtle nuances, its vibrant parade of fascinating crimes…. but now Sherlock Holmes could see into its black heart and know the truth. It was a wasteland containing absolutely nothing that a thirty-six year old pathologist from Northamptonshire would consider even remotely acceptable as a Christmas gift.
He needed to be impressive. Christmas mattered to people and first Christmases with a new parter presumably mattered more. But books? As a dedicated reader she undoubtedly already had all the ones she wanted. Clothing? Molly had her own idiosyncratic personal style and there was a bit of history there which might make him look an arsehole if he provided her with others. A spa holiday perhaps? No, it turned out somewhere in the mind palace he'd tucked away a rant she'd once made about receiving pedicures as part of a bridal shower which included the phrase, "Uhhhhhgh I had to let a STRANGER touch my FEEEEEET."
Mrs. Hudson, bearing the tea things, glanced over his shoulder as Sherlock clicked closed another browser tab with a grunt of irritation. She smiled.
"Oh, look at you, Christmas shopping like such a lovely boyfriend-"
"Nearly forty, Mrs. Hudson, haven't been a boy in some time," he corrected absently.
"I'd worried about you, you know, after John moved on with Mary. But Molly's so lovely too, and so good for you. Though she probably can't hit quite as hard… I know you like that."
Sherlock looked quizzically up at her, decided (yet again) that correcting her erotic tenant fanfic wasn't a good use of either of their time.
"What are you wanting for Christmas, Mrs. Hudson?"
"Like always, dear, I'm getting myself a plane ticket somewhere nice and charging it to your rent. I'm thinking Mustique in February might be nice this time."
"Very good. I was actually wondering about what's… what's an appropriate gift for a first Christmas?"
Martha kicked off her shoes, poured some tea into the second cup she'd bought up, and sat in John's old chair. Blowing the steam off her cuppa, she sighed reminiscently and said, "I remember the first Christmas gift Frank ever got me. A lovely jewelry set… necklaces, rings, bracelets… even anklets!"
She tittered scandalously.
"All in twenty four carat gold. So luxurious and beautiful."
Sherlock considered. Jewelry. Not particularly creative or unique, but timeless, elegant, and-
"Wait, I'd thought that twenty four carat gold is too soft to be good for jewelry?"
"Yes, dear, but you can sell it weight for weight and wear it on an international flight and not attract the pigs' attention like you would carrying a briefcase full of cash."
"I'm not specifically shooting for something that'll enable her to evade US Customs and Border Protection."
"Obviously not, but it's a lovely bonus,isn't it?"
Islington, February 2015
She opened the door when he knocked, saw him, and immediately slammed it again in his face.
Sherlock hammered on the white wood.
"Fuck. Off. Sherlock," Molly growled, "I'm done with you. Go away."
"Molly," he groaned.
"I said go away!" she shrieked.
He leaned his hands on the door and shouted back, "We need to check your flat for bombs."
Then he fell forwards because Molly had opened the door. She came into the hallway, pushed him vigorously and screamed, "BOMBS?"
She pushed him again. She was surprisingly strong, enough to make him stagger. "There are BOMBS in my FLAT?"
"Possibly. Possibly not. We need to check. The police are on their way"
She stared at him blankly, unshed tears standing in her eyes, then stalked back into her flat, picked up her disgruntled cat, and left for the street. In the distance the sirens of the Metropolitan Police force were just starting to be heard.
He had some words to be had with the bomb squad but after Sally Donovan had shown up and they'd uncuffed him again he ambled over to Molly, sitting a bench outside the police tape, her face buried in Toby's fur.
"You've ruined me, Sherlock," she said, muffled by the cat, "I used to have a life. And it wasn't nearly as exciting as this one but it was a good life and you ruined it."
"I never meant to."
He sat awkwardly at the far end of the bench as Molly lifted up her tearstreaked face.
"So fine. What was that all about?"
Staring off into the distance, he told her the whole sad, sordid story. She didn't interrupt, although some fresh tears popped up here and there.
"Why would she do that?" Molly asked, once he'd wrapped it up.
"Why does anyone do anything?" Sherlock shrugged with a nonchalance he really didn't feel, "Love. Thwarted and destructive love, but love nonetheless."
"And why me?"
"I doubt she considered you for a second except as a weapon to use against me." Sherlock rose to his feet and stretched, before smiling a crooked humorless smirk.
"She was so much smarter than Jim Moriarty. Played him like a cheap pianola. He never knew, but she figured out something I wasn't even aware of myself until I stood in front of that coffin. Very clever girl."
Molly angled her head, peering silently at him in the street light. Sherlock chuckled.
"Oh yes. Thwarted and too late for it to do me any good and unexpected and alarming but… nonetheless."
"Ohhh." More a sigh than a word.
Silence in the street.
Then Molly stretched one hand out for him to take.
"Maybe not too late."
Marylebone, 8 December 2015
"Probably my testicles to keep in her handbag and/or another baby, not sure which. Either should probably finally get me out of hock."
"What?"
"What?" John shook his head, "Sorry, thinking out loud. No, I actually signed us up for a pastry making class at a cooking school. We'll get a sitter, have dinner out, get a hotel room, make a night of it. She mostly likes "doing" gifts and it's not too physically demanding... she's having a hard time with her lungs now that it's got cold again. Why?"
"That wouldn't work… Molly already makes excellent pastry. Mycroft's put on six pounds."
"And you've put on…?"
Sherlock glared at the older man until John chuckled and raised his hands, "Sorry, of course you haven't gained any weight."
"Thank you," Sherlock uttered.
"Fat and happy, definitely can't be Sherlock Holmes," John hastened on before Sherlock could reply further, "So you don't know what to get her for Christmas?"
"Evidently."
"What I've always found," John uttered in tones of profoundest wisdom, "Is that people tend to give gifts that they would secretly like to get for themselves. What did Molly get you for Christmas last year?"
"As you might recall, I was off my tits on drugs and hiding from her."
John frowned.
"Bugger. And then on your birthday you were…"
"Detoxing, yes. Doubt she'd really go for cake followed by a dose of buprenorphine."
"How about the year before that?"
"Ah," Sherlock smiled fondly, "For my birthday it was actually very good… a dicephalic foetal pig preserved in mineral spirits!"
"You know, jewelry is always appreciated."
High Wycombe, March 2015
"Do I really come off as gay?" Sherlock asked into the dark.
An odd question when asked by a half-clad man with an equally half-clad woman lying mostly on top of him.
"Huh?" mumbled the aforementioned half-clad, half-asleep woman.
"Gay. Is it just universally assumed that I am? The clerk apologized for there just being the one bed-"
"As well she should. This isn't even a double. Where are they able to buy sheets this size?"
"Which is entirely opposite of when I'd travel with John. Then they assumed we were a couple. It was hilarious. You could see him physically forcing himself not to loudly aver his heterosexuality."
"Oh,well," Molly rolled a bit (as a bit was all that was possible) off of him, and sighed into his chest.
"No, not gay, so much as… fancy."
"Fancy," Sherlock repeated.
"You're always… you look like you just walked off a runway at fashion week most of the time. You're so tall and debonair and well-put together and… people don't believe someone like you would be with dumpy, frumpy, me."
She'd got quiet towards the end, and when Sherlock reached out a hand to switch the bedside lamp she averted her eyes. Arching an eyebrow, he began, "You do realize the reason I go to the effort of being 'well-put together' is that it's the only way to distract people from the fact I look like an alien and am approximately sixty percent neck."
Molly snorted an unwitting laugh.
"By any rational standard you're the attractive one in this room. Delicate features, slender elegant curvature, silken skin… gamine, is the word."
"Like the bacon?" Molly inquired, a faint smirk quirking around the corner of her mouth.
Sherlock groaned, "Now your sense of humor, on the other hand… that's a terrible joke, Molly. Gamine and gammon aren't even pronounced the same. You're pixyish. With beautiful hair."
"Beautiful hair is important," Molly mused, "At least we can have that in common. Still frumpy, though."
"You work in a wet chemistry lab and in a refrigerated basement filled with corpses. How else are you meant to dress?"
Molly blushed, including, Sherlock was intrigued to note, down to the tops of her breasts where they rose above the lace-trimmed edge of her camisole.
"So you… you do think I'm pretty, then?"
"You're exquisite," Sherlock said honestly.
Molly nibbled edgily at her lower lip.
"I'd sort of wondered, because you haven't… I mean, we haven't, um, yet. You know," she mumbled, flushing an even brighter pink, "And I didn't know if, if, if, it was something you'd want to do. If you maybe didn't find me..."
"I do. And we have, technically, just not since…"
"The call."
"It's not you, it's me."
Molly lifted her head and looked him in the face purely in order to roll her eyes at him.
"That is literally never soothing, Sherlock."
"It's true. Because although I obviously have had sex, I have also never had it while not- high."
Molly's face softened.
"So you're just nervous?"
"Scared shitless, technically."
Smiling sweetly, Molly angled her chin up to place a soft kiss on his lips. Leaning across his chest, she flicked the lights out, saying, "Don't worry, I'll be very gentle."
In the comfort of the dark, two sailors set forth onto strange and new seas.
In a very small boat.
Twickenham, 12 December 2015
Watson toddled up to her mother as Mary was getting the teabags from the cupboard, tugged at the leg of her sensible trousers, and yawned a sleepy, "Mumma, Wosie up. Up."
Sherlock watched the depressing calculus that these sorts of situations forced upon Mary flash behind her eyes: Overtired cranky toddler + having to bend down + having to lift a sturdy small someone who bids fair to be significantly taller than either of her parents = pain to be had. Quite bad pain, though she'd laugh it off if asked.
More than a year later.
He took matters into his own hands, plucking the little girl off the floor by the back of her overalls and parking her comfortably on his own hip.
Mary frowned at him, switching on the tea kettle.
"You're usually weirdly good at getting presents for people, sweetie. What's giving you so much trouble this time?"
"It's not weird, it's part of my whole…" Sherlock waved his free hand vaguely at his head, "Thing. Human emotions and behaviors can be mapped quite precisely once you know how to do it and the desire to own a "Learn to do Calligraphy" kit becomes almost as predictable as the desire to defenestrate your employer."
"No, Swock," Watson grumbled.
"Hang on. You…" Mary frowned, "You got me a learn-to-do calligraphy kit for my birthday. Which I liked."
"Yes?"
"And John is my employer, technically."
"Well, come on. I've seen how you look at him when he makes that slurping noise eating soup."
"Swock, NO," Watson interjected firmly, trying to wriggle away from him, "Mumma!"
Mary sighed, walked over to the kitchen table, sat, and extended her arms for her baby. Sherlock obliged her and Watson settled in, quite comfortably for all parties concerned.
"It is very rare for me to think anything like that about John. But you can't do this with Molly because…?"
"Because Molly isn't like other people. She's endlessly variable, unpredictable, as constant as the rising sun and yet as ever-changing as the moon. I could spend a thousand years trying to understand her and she would still be as great a mystery as I have ever encountered."
"Wow," Mary replied eventually, staring up at him as Rosie tugged on the chunky silicone teething necklace that her mother wore for that exact purpose.
"What?"
Mary smiled wryly and said, "That is a puzzler and one I don't think you're likely to solve unless you get given an androgen blocker or something. Can I suggest dinner, wine, dancing, flowers, jewelry? Not earth-shattering but lovely all the same."
The tea kettle reached the boil and clicked off. Mary nudged Sherlock's foot with her own, and said, "Make yourself useful, since you're too big to be ornamental."
Obediently, he rose again and combined teabags and water and mugs, carrying them back to the table to steep.
"Jewelry is what everyone says. Even Eurus!"
"I'd… I thought your sister doesn't talk anymore?" Mary asked hesitantly.
"No she bloody well does not," Sherlock snorted, "But she apparently decided to make an exception. Middle of Boccherini, Opus 3 Number 5, she just pauses and says, "You know that jewelry, being portable wealth maintained in the control of the woman, will enable her to flee you freely should that become necessary. Providing it for her is therefore a gesture of trust, similar but of lower level to handing her the ear poison and then rolling over and going to sleep."
"That is… startlingly valid. How does she know you're seeing Molly? Did you tell her?"
"God, no. Deductions. They're magic, apparently."
"At least she's rooting for you. We all are, Sherlock. Though I must say that you seem to be turning out to be a very good boyfriend."
Sherlock angled his head, and said hesitantly, "Given my newfound relationship skills, may I venture to offer some advice?"
Mary looked at him, curiosity alight in her wide eyes.
"You could probably stand to tell John that he's forgiven about my sister. Using your words. He's really not picking up on it."
Mary glanced away from him, ran her fingers through Rosie's fine curls. "You're right. I will."
"Good."
"Right after I've learnt to make Napoleons and received twenty minutes of hotel room oral sex."
"There are innocent ears, woman!"
Love, Sherlock thought as Mary giggled over the baby's head, Strange and wondrous chemistry indeed.
Bond Street 19 December, and Islington, 22 December 2015
Family was something that had given him particular difficulty in the last year, but finally Sherlock went to the family jewelers anyway. The shop had that for decades, simply because the style of jewelry sold there was appropriate for slightly quirky women with eccentric tastes married to wealthy overbred arseholes… which was as good a description of "Holmes Family" as you could get.
Also Sherlock had literally no idea what the hell else to get and the clock was ticking so he was desperate.
Necklaces were too commonplace. Molly wore them routinely, even at work. He wanted to get something she'd choose to put on for more special occasions. She didn't care for brooches. She never remembered that she owned earrings. A wristwatch was dull. Presenting her with a ring box might set off expectations he wasn't prepared for (though he had the odd thought "Not frightening but also not quite yet.")
And so Sherlock stalked into Asprey and stalked out ￡16,000 poorer, but in possession of a gold bracelet bearing a single cherry charm in enamel, diamonds, and tsavorite.
Three days later a freak anticyclone bought a cold wave to the British Isles, and combined with a windstorm that made landfall in Southern England brought Snowmageddon to London.
Nearly... a full inch. And as was customary the city acted like it was another Great Frost Fair and shut down, including the criminal classes and the road gritters.
Normally Sherlock would have minded their laziness, but sitting in Molly's elegant flat in front a warm fire, a blanket over their legs, and two glasses of wine inside him… he found he couldn't quite manage minding. They sat quietly looking out into the dark as the flakes fell.
"Would you like to do Christmas gifts now?" he asked, "Since you're stuck working on the day?"
Molly giggled and agreed, darting off into her bedroom for two cheerily home-wrapped packages (a book and some sort of… small lightweight item of fabric. A scarf perhaps?) as Sherlock got the small purple box out of his coat.
Handing her the small package, his heart in his mouth, he said, "You first."
She undid the ribbon, ran a finger under the paper, and...
"Ohh… it's gorgeous," Molly said, looking at the bracelet, "Thank you, Sherlock. I love it."
One of the reasons he liked her was she was a very good liar, but in this case, "It's wrong," Sherlock grumbled, "I can tell. What's the matter with it?"
"No, really, it's beautiful! Is it from Pandora?"
"Not quite. Molly, tell the truth."
Molly looked guiltily at her feet, and finally said, "I was kind of hoping you'd get me a compost tumbler. I did hint pretty hard."
"A compost. Tumbler."
She looked at him, all doe eyed and innocently cute, "I'm really wanting to experiment with mulch in the garden this year."
"Mulch."
"But it doesn't matter… they sell them at B&Q for eighty quid and I can't really start using it until summer anyw- mmmphg!"
Shortly thereafter, Molly pulled back a bit. Her hair was mussed and her lips were kiss-swollen and he'd never seen anyone so lovely.
"If it's any consolation I really did try quite hard," he murmured, tucking an errant lock behind her ear.
She shrugged.
"It's the thought that counts, and you have more thoughts than almost anyone. It's perfect."
Curling up under his arm and tugging the blanket back up around them, Molly leaned in.
"Merry Christmas, Sherlock."
"Merry Christmas, Molly."
Closing note: doesn't allow links to be posted but both Molly's charm and bracelet are viewable at the Asprey site. Links are posted on the AO3 version of this story.
If you're curious Molly got Sherlock a 1930's edition of "The Moonstone" by Wilkie Collins for him to enjoy being superior about the deductions, plus a cute little lingerie set for her to wear if he's well-behaved. She spent about twenty minutes of effort and £200 to do this because she really isn't all that interested in Christmas, which is why she usually volunteers to be on call at the morgue.
Sherlock adored both.