Author's note:
I don't like to do these, they break the flow for people reading the story all at once, but I felt like this one was necessary. This story was complete before I posted the first chapter, but sometime over the past week I just decided that I hated everything I had originally written after chapter six. I blame the pregnancy hormones (I'm five months along). The same thing happened while I was writing "Marriage, and Other Miscalculations" (pregnant with my first wee one). I promise this one will be completed, I'm still writing, but updates might be a bit slower than they were at first, and there may be more typos, so I apologize in advance. Thanks to the kind reviewers. I know this ship is unpopular, so I value the encouragement and feedback you've given even more. Now back to playing dolls with someone else's characters.
Thanks,
Angharabbit
MHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMH
"Good morning, sunshine," a sleepy, warm voice said in Mycroft's ear. He groaned, turning away from the sound and burrowing into his pillow. Molly wound herself around him, and stroked at the long muscles in his bare back.
"Get away, devil woman," he muttered, tasting regret in the back of his throat.
"How late was Sherlock here," she asked. He could hear her amusement.
"I'm sorry we woke you, we stayed out in the garden."
"You didn't wake me," she admitted, gently kneading his shoulders. "You smell like cigarettes and cognac. Sherlock doesn't really drink, so I'm guess the cigarettes were during, and the liquor was after he left. Bad visit?"
"The usual. He came by to follow up on something he'd been doing as a favour for me. It was clear that he's been using again. We were at each other's throat in minutes."
"Oh dear, I'm sorry to hear that. For such clever people who pretend to have no hearts, you really know straight where to go to dig into each other's."
"He sends his regards, by the way," Mycroft moaned, as Molly's fingers worked her way up his neck.
"I'm sure he said more than that on the subject," she said. "Are you planning on going to work this hung over?"
"No, will work at my club. Quiet, dark, better tea."
"Will he let you help him at all?"
"No, and when I brought it up he offered some suggestions and phrases I had to google."
"Anything he'll let me do?"
"I'm sure he knows that I'll tell you. He seems to have all sorts of assumptions about what is or is not between us. My guess is that until required, he's going to avoid Bart's."
"Do I want to know what he's assumed?" Her hands paused a moment, and then began to rub his scalp under his thin brown hair. It felt heavenly, he couldn't remember anyone doing that before.
"Oh, that you've made my grinch heart grow three sizes, that sort of thing, followed by a jibe about my weight and a recommendation to see my cardiologist before my swollen arteries are completely blocked by fat and sentiment."
Molly laid her head down his chest and listened. In his bleary state, he found the gesture unusually sweet.
"Good and strong," she patted his sternum.
"Yes, I actually saw my cardiologist just last week and she agreed," he replied, a little smug. "My heart hasn't been this healthy in years, told me to keep doing whatever I'm doing."
"Well, what you're doing is me, so I have to concur with her medical opinion." Molly gave him a soft kiss on the mouth and made a mock noise of disgust. "Eugh, smoke."
She got up and used his shower, preparing herself for the day.
"I just had a thought, while I was having a wash," she said, sitting on the end of the bed to detangle her wet hair with a wide-tooth comb.
"Hmmf?" His face was back in the pillow.
"Your people at work, they must generally know that there's something going on between us, since they've known to find you at my flat and all. Do they never wonder that I'm a security risk for you, having dated Jim Moriarty?"
"Are you a security risk," he asked lazily. "Should I be dragging you off for interrogation in the cells under my office? Could be fun."
"You have interrogation cells under your- no, never mind, I probably shouldn't know. Obviously I don't think I'm a threat to anyone, but this-" she waived between them, "whatever it is, it hasn't compromised you, has it?"
He made a noise that was somewhere between dismissive and derisive, and reached over to the nightstand for his phone.
"Let me check MI6." Accessing the database he wanted, he quickly scanned through their files on himself, and on Molly.
"Mycroft, you're looking paler than you did even before. Something troubling?"
He cleared his throat, and considered an answer that wouldn't be a lie. I'm too hung over for this.
"It's noted that we likely have a sexual arrangement, but no question of you being a risk in any way. Your file's always made it perfectly clear that your association with Moriarty was in passing."
"That's good," she said hesitantly, suspecting he was holding more back but not wanting to pry. He put down his phone, running over and over the lines of the files in his mind while he watched her dress. There was something he always liked about the way she'd dress bottom to top, something sexy about her in her jeans and shoes, bare breasted with her hair loose about. It wasn't currently enough to distract him.
Surveillance teams note frequency and duration of time spent together points to an intimate, personal relationship between M. Hooper and M. Holmes. Clear indications of romantic partnership and projection that arrangement, if continued, will likely progress to cohabitation in near future. Further assessment of security implications recommended, summary of reports forwarded to R. Smallwood.
She crawled onto the bed and straddled him, bending down to give him a toe-curling kiss.
"I'm busy the next few evenings, catching up with the girls and some mates from school, but I'll text you Dover plans if I don't see you at night."
"I'll be at a conference in Luxembourg from tonight until Friday afternoon, but I'll see you Saturday morning to go to the train," he confirmed, trailing his fingers up her body to make her shiver.
"Alright, enough of that, I've got to go pack up my things and head out," she kissed him again.
His decision from the night before was on the tip of his tongue, but the words from the report floated back into the forefront of his mind, stalling him: will likely progress to cohabitation in near future.
Don't be ridiculous, Mycroft Holmes.
"In the interest of efficiency, and with the assumption that you'll be back, would you care to leave a few things here? You can always retrieve them another time if you don't intend to visit again."
"That would be handy," she admitted, climbing off of him and putting on her bra and shirt. "Where would be best?"
"There are a lot of empty drawers in the bathroom, any of those work."
"This house was designed for a family of twelve, wasn't it," she laughed.
She left shortly after, and he lay in bed, groaning with embarrassment that Lady Smallwood had received reports about his personal life. She'd have to contact him if she had any concerns about his discretion, or Doctor Hooper's reliability, and it would be a horribly awkward conversation.
If any major red flags were raised, it could go to the entire committee for review. It had happened before with other members and department heads who had begun relationships with potentially unreliable individuals. It's not a relationship, he reminded himself, it's just sex. But he couldn't see himself saying that to the committee either, and in any case, it wouldn't make a difference to them what they were doing as long as they were spending so much time in each other's company, and the access to information and potential for slip-ups that implied.
Could just simplify matters and end it, he considered once again. Sherlock had brought up that possibility the previous night, and it had sounded just as unpalatable then.
"It would be kinder just to end it now, Mycroft," he had said angrily, lighting another cigarette in the darkness of the garden. "Molly Hooper may be satisfied with with a robot for a boyfriend now, but what she wants more than anything is someone to love her. You know that, I know that, and neither of us could ever give her that. The longer this drags out, the more attached she becomes, the harder it will be later on."
"You were the one trying to convince me that I was lonely, Sherlock. All your attempts at cleverness, trying to make me form attachments. I did, I made a friend out of Molly Hooper, and now you expect me to drop that because our friendship isn't taking a form you recognize? Expand your horizons, brother mine, we're not all monks living in our own personal mental monasteries."
"You're going to break her heart even worse than I did. She deserves someone normal."
"She deserves more credit than you're giving her."
They were silent, both uncomfortable with the emotional turn the conversation had taken.
"Who did you punch? Looks like a good, single hit, from what I can see of the remaining swelling pattern, but it is dark."
"Hardly matters," Mycroft had answered, coughing around a mouthful of smoke.
Sherlock raised and eyebrow, and Mycroft felt exposed. Life had been easier before Sherlock had made friends, before he had grown better at analysing facial expressions and reading emotional responses.
"Don't fuck this up, Mycroft," Sherlock warned, fading dramatically into the night. He would be out of touch for several weeks, completing a favour Mycroft had demanded in exchange for not confining him to a rehab program, and Mycroft was already nervous about what Sherlock would get up to in the down times of his mission.
"Don't fuck this up, Mycroft," he repeated to himself, crawling out of his warm, cosy bed to throw himself into the shower and his day.
MHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMH
The conference didn't go as planned.
It was day two of the summit, and Mycroft was in a stunning hotel ballroom lined with tables draped with snowy white linen clothes. The painted ceiling was accented with gorgeous chandeliers, reflected again in the polish marble floor. In his ear was the smooth voice of the English translator, unnecessary at the moment as he was following the French speaker.
Bored, he had just doodled what he considered a rather fine duck in the margin of the official agenda for that afternoon's session when all the air was sucked out of his lungs, and he felt every inch of his body slammed backwards off his chair by a wall of forceful heat.