Molly was having a rotten day.

It had started so nicely too. She'd had a lovely chat with an old lady on the tube, a cheery walk to the hospital from the station in the sunshine, an answer to an important email was waiting for her on her PC, she got to the canteen a bit earlier than usual at lunch and got first pick of the salad bowls...

And then her boyfriend of five weeks had sent her a text reading;

Hello sexy, can't wait to see you tonight. Can I stay over or will your brother be kipping on your sofa again? Been missing you.

Eric 3

Eric, who'd seemed so nice and reliable and not at all like a mad bomber, had told her he was visiting his parents tonight. And Molly didn't have a brother. And he didn't have time to miss her because he worked at the hospital too and he'd only seen her that morning! Still, she'd told herself, it could all be a misunderstanding.

When Sherlock and John had come in to use the lab, she'd shown the text to Sherlock to see if he could work out any possible reason for it.

"He's cheating on you with a younger woman, probably one with less education than him," Sherlock had announced bluntly. John snapped at him, and Sherlock had given a put upon sigh, then turned back to Molly and added "I'm sorry, I realise it must be an unpleasant way to find out." He looked to John to confirm that this had been a better response, then delved back into his experiment.

"Sorry Molly," John added, a genuinely sympathetic look on his face. "It's a rotten thing to find out, especially like that. Had you been going out long?"

"A bit more than a month," Molly told him quietly. "I feel like such an idiot."

John had reassured her that she wasn't an idiot, and let her rant at him a little while. He asked her things about how they'd met and what job he did and she told him and had a bit of a whinge. Got it all out of her system, and it was really nice of him to just smile and nod and listen. By the time she had to get back to work, she felt a little bit better, but was still upset. She'd try and confront him before she left work, she decided.

The afternoon passed slowly as her thoughts kept skipping back to Eric and the message and her own stupidity at having not realised what was going on. In retrospect, there were plenty of hints. He'd called her by the wrong name during a conversation a couple of times, but had come up with a reasonable excuse. Another time she'd seen a woman's dressing gown in the wardrobe at his flat, but he'd said that it was the one his mother used when she came over to stay, that it was in there because she used his bedroom as it was warmer than the little spare room.

She was quite cross with him by five o'clock, though it did nothing to dampen her nerves at the prospect of going to talk to him about it. She hated confrontation, but she was determined to break up with him as soon as possible. It was one thing to crush on unobtainable men or accidentally date a mass murderer, it was another thing entirely to be a complete and total doormat and that was not Molly Hooper, no way!

It occured to her that he would usually pop down to the morgue at about this time in the afternoon and hang out with her for a little while before going home. So she tidied up her office and went back to the morgue on the chance that she would find him there. As she approached the door, it occured to her that she could hear voices; a rather soft voice at first, speaking evenly and in a reasonable tone, though she couldn't make out the words. Then Sherlock's voice chimed in, telling another person to be quiet, though not, she thought, the first speaker.

That was odd. She'd known that he was in the morgue today, but who was in there with him?

She opened the door to see some sort of interrogation in progress. Sherlock and John both leaned in close to a seated figure, their head hidden by the high back of the large swivel chair they sat in, it's back to the door. Sherlock's face was angry, his eyes lit with some fierce emotion. John's was composed but intent, and he spoke quietly to the person in the chair, the other voice Molly had heard from outside. Even without the barrier of the door, she couldn't work out what he was saying, but the tone of his voice was chilling.

"Um..." she said, and both Sherlock and John immediately straightened, their faces snapping into neutral expressions as if they'd each flipped a switch.

"Hello Molly," they both said at the same time, and she looked down to see the person in the chair twisting around to look at her and-

"Eric?"

"Molly!" he cried tremulously, jumping out of the chair. He looked worriedly to the other two men and, at a subtle nod from John and then from Sherlock, he dashed across the morgue towards her.

"Molly, I'm so sorry, I didn't intend to hurt you but it was awful of me to try and cheat, and I'm not worthy of you, I shouldn't even have asked you out in the first place because I'm an asshole and I don't deserve a decent woman like you and I should have been a man and confessed and not let you find out for yourself and I'm sorry, I'm a shit and I won't ever even talk to you again if you don't want me to and oh god I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

"A-alright," Molly replied. Eric was almost crying. "Well, obviously, this is the end of us dating. And I think I would like to not see you for at least a few days, as I'm quite upset."

"Oh God, I'm sorry I upset you Molly, I'm so fucking sorry!"

"No need for foul language," John commented mildly, and Eric winced and apologised again in a strained whisper.

"Well, um, maybe you should just go home," Molly suggested.

Eric nodded jerkily at her, then turned to the other two men. Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him and John, face still blandly expressionless, said "You heard her."

Eric gave them another nod, then turned back to Molly. "Look, I really don't know what-"

"Bugger off!" John snapped at him, and a little squeak came out of Eric's throat, and he shot through the doors and off down the corridor like somebody had lit a fire under his feet.

The doors swung shut, and Molly turned to see Sherlock and John quietly settling themselves on either side of one of the big tables. The severed arm that they'd come in to look at rested between them, a barbeque fork and a pair of knitting needles now sticking out of it.

"What...what was all that about?" she asked.

John looked up from putting on his surgical gloves. "Oh, he turned up looking for you. We had a bit of a chat." Sherlock nodded, and reached out to push one of the knitting needles more deeply into the arm.

Molly stared at them.

"What's up?" John asked her.

She shook her head. "I'm...I'm just trying to decide if I'm cross with you two or not."

::

Hello lovely ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed this :D
Quite a few more of these to go, and then some of my original fiction and then back to slash! That's my schedule, watch me screw it up! Hahahaha