A/N: As promised! This week is going to be one of the best yet for the story, I think. If you like the sexy, that is. You've all been waiting for the Picnic Kiss: the wait is over. Gratuitous "Love, Actually" reference in this chapter. A cookie for you if you catch it.

But first, please give me just a few minutes to give thanks to some reviewers: eccentricpetal, somethinginthewayful, ber1719, Heartgrater, ThisLooksLikeAJobForMe, PurpleYin, Bexi, Agatha, T.N. Weston, Murmeltierchen, kelly1981, Artemis Sherwood, booda77 and MuteBanana. You have all been faithful reviewers of many, many chapters, and I love you for it. I love all my reviews and read and try to respond to each of them.

Special thanks to everyone who has fic rec'd me, and to celeryy for her assistance and insight. There will be more fic recs Wednesday.

BTW: I took a "which Sherlock character are you?" quiz yesterday for Tumblr. Who wants to guess what character I am? (One hint: it ain't Lestrade.)

Most of all, though, a very special thank you to my Best Girl, my Watson, BritMel. Were it not for her, I would not be the person and writer I am. You bring light in to a dark place, sweetie, and I will love you always.

S&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS&MS

Sherlock's mind was racing. And every direction he went, every which way he turned, a door opened into another door and none of them actually led to anything except more questions and places he'd already been.

It was Molly that Moriarty had 'stupidly, ordinarily' fallen in love with. He'd taken staying on the same page to a sadistic extreme that Sherlock was only now beginning to grasp the full complexity of. Most disturbing was: why did Moriarty want him to know? It wasn't just to show him the circle. Moriarty never did anything that didn't have a deeper, darker purpose. Now he had to figure out what it was.

He didn't understand. If Moriarty had loved Molly, why did he want him to love her as well? Moriarty didn't strike him as the type of man who shared his toys, and everything he did he did for a reason that gave him his own perverse brand of pleasure. There was a plan, an end to the movie, and he had to figure out what it was in time to stop it.

The sound of Molly sniffling brought him out of his mind, back to the reality that for all intents and purposes, he was on a date with a woman who had no clue what was going on behind the curtain. Analysis would have to wait.

He maneuvered them again so that they were lying down, him on his back and her on her side as before, her face buried against his neck and shoulder, and simply held her as her sniffles evolved into sobs and she cried a bit. He'd never done that before for anyone and it was an odd mix of feelings. He felt awkward, but lots of men did in a situation like this, he imagined. He felt uneasy. He wasn't used to being around someone crying: not someone he had to try and comfort. He'd made plenty of people cry in his life and hadn't been very concerned about it. It was all temporary. They'd be fine. He had a case to solve. That's how he'd always rationalized it.

Molly was different. She meant something to him. And even without Moriarty pulling his strings, he'd have felt obligated to do… something. The fact that he was being manipulated like a puppet made comforting Molly both easier and harder. And the final feeling, compassion, wasn't something he'd had this much of before John. John and his frequent biting reminders of timing and not good and could he at least try not to be a machine. And Molly, too, reminding him of his humanity. The horrible things he always said. Every time. Always.

No. Not always. Not tonight.

She stopped crying after about two minutes, wiping her eyes with her fingers. "Thank you," she said with a sniff, then sniffed again. "I know how hard that had to be for you."

"What do you mean?"

She smiled wanly. "Comforting someone. Being exposed to a big mess of emotions."

"My reputation precedes me," Sherlock said without humor. "It's fine, Molly."

"But you -"

"Molly," he interrupted gently—pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and handing it to her—"It's fine. Now dry your eyes and blow your nose."

She thanked him and obeyed, feeling small and self-conscious blowing her nose in front of him, but it helped ease her stuffy head and the throbbing behind her eyes. She carefully folded it when she was finished and put it in her pocket, stopping herself from telling him she'd wash it and give it back to him. She doubted he was in desperate need of having it back.

She let her head fall back onto his shoulder with a sigh.

"Have I ruined it?" he asked, bringing his right hand up to stroke her hair.

"Ruined what?"

"Our date. I don't think it's either customary or advisable to bring one's date to tears."

Molly laughed, sniffling again. "No. You were perfect."

"Perfect," he repeated slowly. "Molly, I am many things, but I am not perfect."

"To me you are," she said softly, moving to look up at him again.

Sherlock was strangely at a loss for words. No one in his life had ever told him they thought he was perfect. Not ever, and especially not with a look of adoration in their eyes.

She saw his confusion and smiled again. "You could just say thank you."

"Thank you," he said, drawing out the 'T' as he'd done that day in the lab when she'd confused him.

She looked down. "I've never told anyone the whole story," she said, her tone sounding like a confession. "Not even the police. I told Lestrade the basics but not the details. I swore I would never talk about what had happened."

Sherlock's face scrunched slightly. "You told me."

She looked into his eyes, surprise evident on her face that he didn't understand. "You asked me to."

"Surely other people-"

Molly shook her head. "You asked me to," she said quietly, and now he understood.

"You're not angry with me for it? For causing you to cry?"

"You didn't cause me to cry: he did. The memory did, rather. And no I'm not angry. You… you are who you are, Sherlock. I told you before: if I can't accept that, I've got no business being with you. And I don't intend to stop being with you. Moriarty or no Moriarty."

The strength and resolution in her voice made him raise his eyebrows in surprise. He gently turned her on her back and leaned over her, cupping her face in one hand and staring into her eyes, puzzlement plainly written in his. "Who are you, Molly Hooper?" he asked, his voice a curious caress.

She managed not to giggle. Instead, she reached a hand into his curly black hair and softly tugged his face down closer to hers, eyes sparkling with an inner light, her lips curved into a mischievous smile.

"Why don't you kiss me and find out?"

As his mouth met hers, he felt her pulse speed up.

As the kiss deepened, Sherlock felt his pulse speed up.

Definitely not ruined.

He nearly gasped as Molly traced the outline of his bottom lip with her tongue.

When she gently took said bottom lip between both of her lips and sucked on it, he heard a soft moan and was shocked to realize it had come from him.

Was this how kisses were meant to go? Where had she learned to kiss like this?

Practice, obviously, coupled with instinct.

From the way his body was responding, it seemed he had some instincts, too.

Desire. Something he'd rarely tasted and never indulged in, save that one kiss years ago in uni.

When he'd tasted desire in the past, he'd always run away from it. He knew what it led to. Clouded judgment, rampant emotions, brains changed by neurochemicals of lust and attachment. He'd never wanted to be at the mercy of the sexual heptagon: testosterone, estrogen, adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and vasopressin. The lack of control, the lack of reason they brought was frightening.

Now here he was, at nearly nine at night, in a secluded area of Holland Park, making out with Molly and experiencing a neurotransmitter overload that was threatening to turn his finely tuned, sharper than steel brain into pudding.

He shouldn't have been experiencing this. He should have been above all this. But the only thing Sherlock Holmes was currently above was Molly Hooper, who was lying underneath him and kissing him and touching him and doing her best to turn him into a hormone-addled seventeen-year-old.

And somehow, despite everything Sherlock thought he knew about himself, she was succeeding.

He didn't understand why he was having this alarming, fierce arousal. And it was all because of the sick whims of Jim Moriarty, criminal madman mastermind. Even worse was the fact that, because of said madman, he couldn't do what he wanted: couldn't pull away from Molly and run away, run to his mind palace and calm himself, get his body and mind back under control. Moriarty's words in the taxi came back with contemptible cruelty: don't fight it, Sherlock. It'll be easier for everyone if you just give in.

But how could he give in to this… this madness!

Sherlock was out of his depth and about to be out of control.

He desperately wanted to stop kissing Molly.

He desperately did not want to stop kissing Molly.

The conflict was going to cause him more harm than making a choice.

Not that he had any real choice to make.

If he was the kind of man that didn't care about other people's lives, he wouldn't have been there in the first place.

But he was. And that was what kept him from being Moriarty.

Moriarty would never put himself in a position like this to keep people from dying. He'd let them die and laugh about it.

The only people who helped Moriarty were the people he gave obscene amounts of money to.

There was no one Moriarty could go to for help simply because of who he was.

He, Sherlock, might be Moriarty in intellect, but he had something Moriarty did not and never would.

He had people like John, and Molly, and Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson.

He, too, counted.

Sherlock didn't know how, when it was all over, he could properly convey to Molly the things he genuinely felt for her, had experienced with her. But for her sake, for his, he would try.

For now, the surge of the passion was still beckoning to him, a tide whose pull he could no longer resist. He jumped into the waters of his wanting, no longer afraid, knowing that he trusted Molly and that somehow this trust would keep him safe.