One Week Later

"Sherlock! Dammit, man, where are you?"

With a sigh, Sherlock returned to his feet and readied himself to face his friend's ire. Obviously John had finally been approached by Dr. Hooper regarding his intentions for his daughter's future.

Sure enough, the next words out of the older man's mouth were: "Why didn't you warn me Dr. Hooper wished to find a husband for his daughter as well as a partner for his practice?"

Sherlock gave him an irritated glance as he rearranged several of the disassembled pieces of apparatus and glassware on the table. "I did tell you to conceal your marital status, John," he pointed out. "Surely you understood I had reason to do so?"

John had reached the table and batted Sherlock's hands away from the pieces of copper tubing with which they'd been fiddling, waiting until his friend met his angry glare before speaking again. "You implied it was simply a condition of the 'temporary' post which I was to take on, that Dr. Hooper preferred someone without ties to inherit his practice!" he snarled, moustache bristling with the force of his ire.

"Which it was," Sherlock agreed, folding his arms across his chest and rolling his eyes. "Surely once you realized he had an unattached daughter of marriageable age the reasoning was obvious!"

"No, Sherlock, it wasn't bloody obvious!" John growled, his face reddening as his anger only increased. "Nothing about this so-called 'case' is bloody obvious! You'd better tell me what the hell is going on, or so help me God, I will march out of this room, replace my wedding band on my finger and inform Dr. Hooper that I am going into Town to spend the rest of the week with my wife!"

The last words were practically shouted, and Sherlock felt his unease growing. "John, I implore you, try to restrain your temper," he said, lowering his voice and darting his eyes toward the still-open door to his private laboratory. "The servants scuttle about like beetles day and night, and they gossip worse than the ladies in my mother's circle!"

John snapped his mouth shut, his glare firmly in place, and crossed his arms to mimic Sherlock's previous stance as his friend crossed the room, glanced down the hall – empty, thank God – and carefully shut the door. "Fine," he growled once Sherlock had returned to his former position behind the table. "I will attempt to calm myself. But I do vow, Sherlock, that if this is some misguided attempt to separate me from Mary, I will not hesitate to beat you to a bloody pulp. Are we clear?"

Sherlock was a bit taken aback at this accusation, not to mention stung by the fact that his friend thought so poorly of him. "No, John, this has nothing to do with your relationship with Mrs. Watson," he snapped, the words coming out a bit harsher than he'd meant them to. "You have made it quite clear that any misgivings I might have are entirely my own and not to be shared with you or anyone else, especially not your wife." Said misgivings were purely selfish, anyway; he missed having John available at the drop of the proverbial hat whenever Inspector Lestrade had a case that left him baffled and in need of Sherlock's assistance.

He and John had first met, in fact, on such a case, when the murder suspect had had the unfortunate idea of taking a hostage and holding a blade to his throat – the hostage in question being a recently invalided former army doctor who had no intention of being so used. In spite of his still-painful shoulder injury, John had made short work of the desperate man, separating him from his knife with a cool proficiency that Sherlock could not help but admire.

That chance – and chancy – meeting had led to a friendship that Sherlock valued above all others he had developed. He only hoped that his current path would not damage the relationship, although having survived his drug use and John's marriage to the former Miss Mary Morstan, he suspected it would take more than his arguably honorable intentions (even with dishonorable results) to cause irreparable damage.

"Then why have you set me up in so untenable a position?" John demanded, not one whit placated by Sherlock's attempt at reassurance. "Tell me why I'm here, Sherlock. Now."

His friend sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and leaned back against the sideboard-cum-storage cupboard for failed experiments. "It's not your marital status that needs adjusting, John, but mine. My parents have arranged a marriage for me to a woman with whom I have no interest."

"And how do I fit into...oh. No," John said, as the light appeared to dawn. Sherlock waited with interest and not a little trepidation to see if the doctor had actually stumbled upon his friend's true intentions. "You had me come out here to prevent Dr. Hooper from finding a suitable husband for his daughter...because you wish to marry her yourself?"

Sherlock's brow lowered, and he couldn't help a flash of annoyance at being so accurately deduced, coupled with pride that John's deductive abilities had come so far since the beginning of their acquaintance. "Very good, John," he said with grudging approval. "You've driven right to the heart of the matter on your first try."

"Don't try any false flattery with me," John muttered, but Sherlock could tell he was pleased, both by his correct deduction and by Sherlock's sincere praise. However, he immediately returned to his previous annoyance with his next words. "If you want to marry the girl, then why not approach her father yourself? Dr. Hooper seems a reasonable man who would not deny your suit if you presented yourself properly. Why all the subterfuge?"

Before Sherlock could answer, John seemed to realize the problem. "Of course; it isn't her father you're worried about it's your parents. They would never approve of you marrying beneath your station – at least, your father would not," he murmured, brow knitting in a frown as he considered his friend's quandary. "Which is why they've arranged a marriage with...whom, exactly?"

"Miss Janine Hawkins." Sherlock spat out the name in distaste. "Heiress to the Magnussen fortune. Not my first choice had I been given one. Nor my second, nor my twenty-third, nor my last, come to that. My father seeks only to add to the family coffers. There is no consideration for what I might want in a wife; had I been aware that Father was unwilling to wait until I'd completed my studies at Oxford before foisting a bride on me, I would have found a different way to approach the matter. Now I've been put on the spot, as it were, which is why I called you away from your wife and practice in London."

John's ire appeared to have completely dissolved at the raw honesty in his friend's voice, and he waved away the inconvenience as if it were nothing. "Henderson has agreed to take on my practice and Mary is very tolerant of my frequent absences to assist you," he reassured Sherlock, who found himself somewhat at a loss for words at that unexpected admission; he'd been led to believe that the former Miss Morstan preferred to keep John on a short leash. Perhaps he'd been a bit hasty in his rush to judgment of the woman... "So you wish to marry Miss Hooper," John mused, a smile growing on his lips as he interrupted Sherlock's thoughts. "That's...unexpectedly romantic of you, falling in love with the girl next door."

Sherlock, who had leaned down a bit to examine the contents of a beaker that had caught his attention – the liquid inside should be violet, not green, hmmm – snapped his head up so quickly his neck cracked. He settled a glare on the still-smiling John and said: "I haven't fallen in love, don't be an idiot. Molly is simply the best option available to me at this time."

When John simply continued to smirk and raised a skeptical eyebrow, Sherlock felt compelled to continue: "She is a known quantity, having lived on the estate since early childhood, when her father inherited his uncle's practice upon his unexpected death." The man had been a drunken idiot who had fallen from a horse he should never have been riding in the first place; fortunately his nephew had proven to be disinclined to fall to the evils of drink as well as a better physician than his predecessor. "She is intelligent enough for a woman of her class, not to mention far more intelligent than most of the simpering idiots of the ton. She has always been willing to assist me with my experiments – at least when we were younger, before such interactions were deemed inappropriate by our parents," he added with a sneer.

Molly's mother, in fact, had been very adamant that her impressionable young daughter no longer keep company with the Earl's son as soon as her anatomy began to develop some rather intriguing – at the time, to Sherlock's fifteen-year-old-self's mind – changes. Then the woman had fallen ill with consumption and died two years later, leaving Dr. Henry Hooper alone to raise his daughter as best he could. Molly had been allowed to study subjects considered even more inappropriate than the chemistry Sherlock had been instructing her in, which, although he would never admit it, was one of the reasons he had chosen to study medicine after his first expulsion from Oxford (which was entirely his father's fault for insisting he read Law in the first place).

He didn't bother explaining any of this to John, who would no doubt regard the information as further 'proof' that Sherlock's 'feelings' for Molly were of a romantic rather than a practical nature. It was also why he refrained from confessing that their shared music lessons had been…not unpleasant.

John's predictability was proven by his next words. "And she's very pretty, in her own way."

Sherlock scowled at his friend's obstinate insistence on casting this as a romance rather than the cold-blooded business transaction it actually was. "Her mouth is too small and so are her breasts," he said, attempting cruelty and knowing it for a mistake as soon as the words left his mouth.

John's eyes lit up and his grin broadened into a smirk. "Ah, so you've noticed her mouth and her breasts! It must be love!"

"It isn't love!" Sherlock snarled in response, raking his fingers through his disordered curls so that they stood even more wildly on end than usual. "It is the most sensible response to an outrageous situation! I only wish to marry Molly Hooper because it will satisfy my father's ridiculous need to control every aspect of my life, while at the same time keeping me from being saddled with an imbecile!"

John's expression remained skeptical. "Right. Whatever you say, Sherlock. You still haven't explained to me how you intend to bring this situation about. What with having an inconvenient fiancée already waiting your formal proposal and all," he added, clearly needling his friend.

Sherlock felt his face settle into another scowl, and smoothed his expression with effort. Normally he was the one who set John's teeth on edge; how had he allowed this situation to descend to the point where he felt he was on the defensive? Time to return matters to their normal orientation. He stretched his lips in a wolfish grin as he said: "Quite simply, actually. I'm going to bring Molly into Town with me…and ruin her."