Chapter Twelve.
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Molly woke to the warmth of the sun against her eyelids and the warmth of a human body at her back. The sensation was a novel one. Her last boyfriend, a primary school teacher named Eddie, had dropped out of the picture several months ago.
Cautiously, Molly rolled over, putting a little distance between herself and the sleeping body. Greg was on his back, a long arm flung up behind his head and his face turned sideways, half-squashed against his triceps. She hadn't heard him come in. When she'd mentioned bed he'd muttered something about wanting a drink first, and hadn't returned until after she was asleep.
She wasn't sure how to feel about that.
Greg hadn't made any concessions to sleep beyond the necessary. He wore an old t-shirt and a pair of cotton boxers and had pulled a blanket half over him, but he hadn't bothered to get beneath the sheets. Even the blanket seemed a cursory gesture at best – it was bunched about his waist, covering him from the lower ribs to just below his groin.
There was a familiar fluttery sensation in Molly's belly as she looked at him.
She liked Greg. She had liked him for a while now. He was different from the sorts of boys she usually dated.
For one thing, he was a lot bigger. He was tall, obviously, but also, lying beside her like this, startlingly solid. His torso was heavy, with a deep, barrel chest and a bit of softness around the belly. He had very broad shoulders.
Molly looked at him, seeing the things that she'd never had the chance to see before. The hair that peeked from above the collar of his shirt was wiry grey, threaded with black; but the tuft that was visible in the crook of his raised arm was fine and silky, still mostly dark.
The key difference, Molly realised, was that she had been dating boys. Even Jim had been boyish: lithe figure and perfectly-shaped eyebrows and dimpled smile. Greg, by contrast, was a grown man.
Perhaps it was time she made the jump.
Greg stirred, and Molly looked hastily away, not wanting to be caught staring. It was a bit pervy, she thought, guiltily, but it was the sort of opportunity that was too good to ignore.
She'd first started wondering if there not might be something there when she was still engaged to Tom. There had been an uncharacteristic awkwardness in Greg's stance, a strange inflection in his voice when he'd asked her if it was serious. And then, at John's wedding they'd been seated beside each other, and Molly had felt terrible, knowing he was watching, painfully aware that he hadn't brought a date of his own. But then, of course, had come the horrible last fight with Tom; the realisation that, in the eyes of everyone she knew, she'd been seeking only a kinder, more domesticated version of Sherlock. Tom himself had told her as much, towards the end.
So now, Molly was stuck. She wanted to like Greg for himself; she was convinced, in fact, that she did. But Greg, as far as she could make out, didn't see it that way. And hadn't she deluded herself this way before? Was she seeing him as he really was, or was she seeing only the glamour of his profession, a merit gained by some subliminal association? She didn't have the answer.
She shifted injudiciously, jostling her bedfellow, and Greg stirred into wakefulness.
If Molly had been hoping for a conversation on the subject, she was disappointed. Greg blinked awake and stretched, hands curling and uncurling luxuriously. Then he rolled his head sideways, and caught sight of Molly. His startled face informed her in no uncertain terms that he hadn't expected to find himself in bed with her, and certainly hadn't expected to find her looking back at him when he did. He gave her a quick, awkward smile and rolled off the bed onto his feet. With what Molly considered to be unwarranted haste, he beat a shambling retreat towards the bathroom.
For a few minutes, Molly lay still, her gaze switching between the window, the ceiling, and the rumpled pillow where Greg had lain. She heard the shower start up and, over the groaning of the pipes, the toilet flushing,
She didn't know what she was doing wrong.
After a disappointing breakfast of stale cornflakes and lukewarm coffee, they had gathered once again in the Watsons' room. Everyone was edgy, strung out from trying to remember to keep their voices low, to keep themselves in character, not to indicate that they knew each other anywhere outside of their rooms. John and Greg quietly refrained from telling Mary that they'd already smashed that particular rule to smithereens.
Mycroft and Irene were due to arrive at eight o'clock that evening.
John didn't know what to think about the prospect of seeing Irene again. The last time he'd seen her, she'd been curled like a child in his own armchair, with Sherlock's blue dressing gown wrapped tight about her torso. She had sat with her knees folded to her chest, engrossed and utterly still, staring in undisguised fascination at the man who sat opposite her.
In a strange reversal of the norm, John had been struck by his own otherness, his lack of fit. In a world containing two such creatures, it was he, John Watson, who didn't belong. John didn't trust her – that was the bottom line. Not as far as he could throw her. And he had been forced into the realisation that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, he could do about it. If Sherlock wanted Irene, he would have her; would follow her, hook, line and sinker; and there was nothing John could do to stop him.
She'd worn Sherlock's blue dressing gown. She'd had long, artless, still-damp hair and a soft, naked mouth. Her eyes had snapped at him, fierce and sharp and proud and vulnerable, and so like Sherlock.
And then she had been gone, without explanation or apology, and Sherlock had gone back to being Sherlock, the way he always was.
The knowledge that Sherlock had rescued her sat in John's belly like an ulcer. He didn't understand why. Or rather, he was afraid he did understand.
By five pm, he couldn't take the tension any more. He made muttered excuses about checking in with his new contacts, and slipped from the hotel while Mary and Greg were still trying to beat Molly at Scrabble.
It wasn't a total lie. He had told the children he'd be back. With that thought in mind, John set off at a brisk jog, keeping a wary eye out for the men he'd met the night before, or for anyone else who might take a fancy to using him as a punching bag.
.
Three hours later, he'd drawn an utter blank. Half the kids he hadn't even been able to locate, and the rest had seen and heard nothing new. After providing a newspaper parcel of soggy chips with no vinegar, he did learn that Ernesto – his first patient of the day before – was six years old, that the other members of his little gang were called Maricela, Daniel, Francisco and Joseph, and that they had a total of three parents and a step-father between them. What he didn't learn was anything useful. By the time he'd made half a dozen circuits of the town without gaining anything it was twenty past eight, and John realised with irritation that he was late for their rendezvous with Mycroft and Irene.
He paused on the hotel landing to get his breath back. He couldn't hear anything from inside, but he had no doubt they'd heard him thundering up the stairs. The Watsons' room was empty, so he slipped through the door in the back of the wardrobe into Greg and Molly's suite. Their room, too, was vacant.
"Bathroom!" he heard Molly's voice call.
Perplexed, John poked his head into the bathroom and found a second hastily-sawn doorway, this one in the back of the linen cupboard. He spared a moment to pity the hotel's maintenance workers.
Ducking his head a little to step through the gap, John found himself in the corresponding cupboard of the next room over. Squeezing past the hastily rearranged shelving, he pushed the door open and stepped out. The sight of the shower cubicle was enough to convince him never to use this route unannounced. There were some things about Mycroft that he really didn't want to know.
.
Mary's eyes zeroed in on John as he poked his head sheepishly around the bathroom door. She scanned his face, noting no new damage, only the pale bruise he'd come home with yesterday and a slight nick beneath his chin from shaving. She tried not to let her relief show too plainly, offering him only a small, cheeky smile. Billie had no such compunction; she squealed, twisting on Mary's lap to grin up at her excitedly. John shot the pair of them a wink and a quick smile.
"John," Mycroft said unctuously. "So kind of you to join us."
John shrugged. "Had to meet some people."
"Yes, so I heard. Doing precisely what I asked you not to do, and bringing yourself to the attention of the garrison in the process. Well done."
John knew Mycroft well enough not to rise to it. This was Mycroft 'mildly-irritated-but-not-in-the-least-surprised' rather than Mycroft 'flamingly-hacked-off', and John treated it as such. Mary envied him that blithe ability. Mycroft didn't scare her, but she would never be able to treat him with the cavalier assurance that John managed.
"Might've helped if you'd mentioned there was a garrison," John said, mildly, perching himself on the edge of the table. "I thought they were supposed to be closing the place down."
Mycroft raised an eyebrow. "And you assumed that the entire Agency would just pack up and go home for tea and biscuits when the President whistled? How charmingly naïve."
"Oh har-de-har."
The Agency. The Brits always called it that. They'd done so for as long as she could remember, as if scorning the use of anyone's acronyms but their own. And John looked so chipper, so blithely unconcerned, standing there with his ruffled hair and his cornflower-blue eyes. To him, the Agency was just another of Sherlock's mad escapades, another dragon for the two of them to slay. Mary felt a sudden thrill of fear for him, startling in its intensity. Please God, let him never know.
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A/N: Only one single lonely review for the last chapter, so I'm resorting to outright bribery: best reviewer gets their choice of prompt/plot device incorporated into the story! If you've ever wanted to see Mary making out with Irene or Mycroft with a badger on his head, then now's your chance. Only two stipulations: (1) your request can't be "character A ends up with character B" - I'm happy to incorporate your chosen pairing if that's what you want, but not necessarily as end-game; (2) it has to be something that could conceivably fit within the flow of the story - i.e. if you really want me to write wing!lock, alpha/omega, or Mycroft-is-secretly-an-octopus, then I'll try my level best, but it may have to be as part of someone's hallucinogen-enhanced dream.
N.B. "Best reviewer" means "person who gives the most useful feedback" rather than just "person who says I'm awesome". Though obviously, I don't object to that either. I'm going to try for slightly shorter chapters and more regular updates from now on. Let me know what you think. :-)
Up next: Sherlock starts scheming, and Mycroft reveals a nasty little secret...