All was quiet in 221B, Squish was watching Waterloo Road from her position on the sofa, her foot propped up by the three pillows that Mrs Hudson had insisted be put under it and John was blogging at the table. Neither one of them had seen Sherlock for several hours as he had disappeared into his bedroom at around lunchtime and neither had ventured in to see what he was doing. Not that this was from lack of trying on the part of Squish. Although she was unable to move, she had nagged at john for the past half hour.
"Go on John, just poke your head round the door and see…"
"No"
"Go on, what harm will it do?"
"No"
"Just a little peek? Go on we don't know what he's doing. He could be building a nuclear bomb for all we know, and that is a health and safety risk."
"He won't be building a nuclear bomb in his bedroom" John said, pausing from his typing and looking across the room at her.
"Only because Mycroft banned uranium from the house after Mrs Hudson complained about the men in biohazard uniforms the last time" she said darkly.
John stared at her for a minute then jumped up and was making his way across the room to knock on the door, when they heard movement. John froze then hurtled across the room to throw himself into his chair and resume typing, just as Sherlock came out of his bedroom. He stared at the two of the, who stared innocently back, before resuming their chosen activities.
"Keys, keys" Sherlock muttered to himself as he patted down his jacket pocket. At this Squish's ears pricked up.
"Oh I'm sure; one of you can answer the door if I get locked out." Sherlock decided as he turned and went into the kitchen.
"Umm Sherlock" said John, "where are you going and what time will you be back?"
"Nowhere special. And what does the time matter?" Sherlock asked, as he scrabbled through a drawer.
"Well, I might be in bed and Squish can't move on that ankle and besides as her LEGAL medical carer I'm prescribing bed rest so she will be in bed by 10 anyway."
"I thought it was a good idea to tell the hospital that you were a doctor, and therefore able to legally take care of me and Sherlock do you have a DATE?" said Squish, turning from her position on the sofa and stared at the tall man
Sherlock looked at her.
"Where would you have got that information from?" he asked stonily.
"You do! I knew it! Who is it?"
Sherlock again simply looked at her.
"Oh My God. It's Molly, isn't it?" She waited for a reply, "It is!"
"YES!" Sherlock said, "Yes allright! Allright. I am going out for dinner with Molly and I don't know when I will be back. Are you happy?"
John also began to stare at Sherlock, "Sherlock are you serious? Are you actually going on a date?"
"Yes John." Replied Sherlock with a roll of his eyes, "as far as I know I'm not speaking Finnish. But if it makes you understand- Aion illallinen Molly Hooper."
And with that he turned and went out of the door.
Squish fell back on the cushions with a sigh and a giggle, which turned to a sharp intake of breath as her battered ribs also hit the side of the sofa. John looked at her in silence and bewilderment.
"How did you know?" She inclined her head at him; she looked puzzled, "about where he was going?"
"Oh, he asked about his keys. You don't want keys unless you don't want people to know when you come home. And his shirt"
"His shirt?" John asked with an incline of his head.
"It was the purple one."
"So" John was looking increasingly perplexed.
"Molly likes the purple one, she's said so and it's the one he thinks he looks particularly cool in and…while he was in the kitchen he kept checking how he looked in the fridge"
"Right. What time do you think he'll be back?" John asked as he turned back to his computer.
"I don't think anyone can deduce that." She said as she turned back to the television and began to flick through the channels. "This has never happened before John. This is something new."
A few hours later when London was quiet and the streets shone with the newly fallen rain. The taxi's stopped outside nightclubs and drunken women clambered in. Tramps reached for their empty bottles and finding them empty huddled a little closer to their doorways seeking warmth. And Sherlock Holmes walked Molly Hooper home.
They walked in amiable silence until they reached the outside of Molly's flat.
"Well this is me" she said, coming to a halt outside her door.
"I know" he replied, "I um I had a nice time tonight. Um with you." He clarified. He felt uneasy. Nervous, he hadn't felt like this for a very long time.
"Um, I… I did… I did too." Molly said, silently cursing her stammer. "Despite being thrown out of the restaurant."
He scuffed his shoe from side to side, "All I did was tell him a fact that he needed to hear"
Molly gave a small laugh, "You told him he needed to leave his mistress because his wife was pregnant." She shook her head, "with twins!"
"It was something he needed to know! I was trying to be kind!"
"I know" she said, thinking of another instance where he had tried to be kind, "I know."
He looked down at her awkwardly. He ran his hands through his hair worriedly.
"I'm sorry."
"Well um I should probably go inside" Molly said and started to walk towards the door to the building.
"Wait." Sherlock said, and he reached out and grabbed her hand, "just wait a second. Please"
"What is it?" asked Molly, blushing slightly at the contact between them. In all the time that they had known one another, she hadn't seen him touch another person intimately. The only other time she had seen him touch anyone, like he was touching her now was at the hospital, when his child was hurt and unconscious.
"I never apologised. For that day. Telling you that he was gay."
"Oh, don't worry about it. It's not important." she squeezed his hand, in what she hoped was a non-threatening way.
"It upset you. Of course it's important"
They stayed that way for a long time. Just holding hands. Inside Sherlock's mind, he was thinking a mile a minute. He was feeling nervous, excited, and strangely hopeful. He realised that his heart was beating faster than usual, his pupil's was dilating. This was… unusual. But not unpleasant
Finally Molly pulled away.
"Will I see you tomorrow?" she asked as she put her door key into the lock
"Definitely" he replied, "Goodnight Molly" She watched as he disappeared into the night.
It was nearly 12 O'clock by the time he got to the front door of Baker Street, he pushed at the door and realised that John would of course have left it open. There was a key in the door with a not that said 'Lock the bloody door; I don't want to be murdered in my bed. John.'
He smirked as he closed the door and locked it, but left the key in the lock. He climbed up the stairs and walked into the living room, he wasn't feeling particularly tired and it would be a good opportunity to check his experiment on how quickly the serotonin levels in toenails decreased after death. As he walked in he became aware that there was someone else in the room. Someone who was sitting in the darkened armchair.
"So how did it go?" asked Squish as she turned on the lamp, "your late home for someone who got thrown out of a restaurant by a screaming Italian man?"
Sherlock looked at her in something like shock, "News travels fast"
"Network of spies" from the look on his face, "Brian saw you as he was coming out the pub; he also said you walked away together?"
"I walked her home; I thought that what you did on dates."
"It is but its…you. And it takes 10 minutes for you to walk from the restaurant and 5 minutes from there to here so what happened…"
"Nothing we just talked"
She smiled mischievously, "then why are you blushing" she asked innocently.
Sherlock drew himself up to his full height then let out a deep breath, "Do you need help getting to bed"
"I can manage, the swellings almost gone anyway, I just wanted to make sure you were ok."
She slowly got to her feet and reached for the crutches, wincing as she put a little of her weight onto her foot. She carefully made her way through the teetering piles of folders like a long legged spider
"Goodnight Sherlock" she said and vanished inside. He looked after her, yet another thing for him to ponder, maybe there were a few patches left in the box under the floorboards.