John entered the home of Molly Hooper, tired, drained and emotionally exhausted. His clothes crumpled, skin rough and mind in disarray. The loss of Sherlock looked set to take it's toll for the forseable future and it seemed any energy his life had regained was to be sucked from him, leaving him limp and lifeless. Molly didn't look much better than he felt, but a smile adorned her face nonetheless, in an attempt to keep her emotional state distanced from not only John, but herself. It was almost working.
Changing the sheets and making up the bed that had served her father when he was at his lowest physical trough, was the thing that pushed Molly over the edge. It reminded her of how much she had lost and how many people had slipped through her fingers into the unruly clutches of death. So, wrapped in a half made duvet, pillows thrown in haphazard anger against the walls, she let herself cry selfishly, it wasn't fair that she should loose every person who she had fought for, every living breathing human who ever meant anything to her, who meant the world and more to her, turned to dust and ash. Through her wracked sobs and her muffled toneless words she heard the slight sniffles of the man she had momentarily forgotten had been stoically sitting on her sofa, and through the uneven layers of the bedspread that covered her she felt to comforting circles, usually her job to administer, being rubbed on her back. When both sobs and sniffles had subsided into silence, seconds passed as hours as both gained comfort from the other's warmth.
48 hours had passed since a selfish man had taken a fall, and 36 hours of silent comfort and aimlessly meandering round his new borrowed home, John's searing pain had turned to a dull ache, almost seconds passed without his name clouding John's vision. The sounds of soft breath came from the living room, Molly was the first to fall into a restless sleep that lasted longer than the blink that started the notion, still in three day worn clothes, uncomfortable and not quite fitting on her pale green sofa. Wait, I didn't noticed her sofa was green. John hadn't really noticed anything about Molly's home, and so in those seconds, that were barely moments, in which his mind was not filled with a shock of black curls matted with blood and rain, John decided to finally see, nee observe, a flat that was now his own.
Molly's flat was not small, but quaint, each room had it's own colour scheme, and from the front door, with the doors open, most every room was visible. It was nowhere near the size of 221b, but it's clutter-less floors a crisp cream walls, that let the light bounce around the space given, gave a more open and less stuffy feel than John's previous residence.
The living room, dining room and kitchen all fell into one open plan area, with only a wide archway as separation, if John were taller, and lying down he could be in all three rooms at once. The pale green sofa that Molly was sprawled across, faced the opposite corner of the room. Not up against a wall, but just in front of the archway, it gave a good view of the TV that was nestled into the join of two floor to ceiling bookshelves, painted a pastel green that mirrored her upholstery. The lower shelves contained DVDs that ranged from SciFi to RomCom and stand-up through to SitCom and if you looked closely a rather extensive collection of well worn Disney VHSs lay behind them. Her books spanned a range of authors, a range of recommended ages for reading and a range of hideously large medical text books and journals; it was clear that Molly had been published in a few, as those that contained her work and research stood in their own section of the bookshelf that neatly above on the thick sturdy wooden shelf had a swirly 'Molly's' painted in a dull pale gold.
The floor of these three rooms was a pale wood, that added to the modernity of the London flat, although the cream rug that covered much of the sitting room's floor added to the warmth of Molly's home; it was thick and soft underfoot and John wandered if, having a cat, Molly had chosen a moveable rug over a carpet so she could roll it up and take it to the dry cleaners, rather than spending any hours she had away from her busy job, using several expensive and pungent products to clean and scrub at a carpet. A square wooden coffee table, clearly painted cream by Molly herself, gave a victorian charm he was sure to miss, and it sported some impressive coffee and teacup rings. She had a few pictures in multiple mix and match frames, clearly gifts, hanging from the walls, perched on the window sill (of the bookshelf-less wall) or sitting in front of the dustier books; the pictures seemed to have a pattern of Molly at varying ages, mostly with one or both parents, or more recent photos of Molly and a rather attractive women he seemed to recognise, probably from Barts then.
There was one photo that certainly caught his eye, it sat in a green and gold frame that matched the room to a tee, which could only mean Molly had bought this one herself. specifically for the picture it contained. It had caught his eye though, not because of the frame, but the familiar faces that shone on the glossy paper, a man he hardly recognised and a face he couldn't stop remembering next to a bemused but, as always, smiling Molly. Mike had insisted upon it, 'you're practically morgue staff, you're here enough, and each team in the faculty needs a representative picture of the staff, new rules!', Molly was hired by Mike so didn't have an out, John (if he remembered correctly) 'couldn't resist a picture with a pretty woman' and Sherlock was genuinely afraid of reduced access to equipment and body parts, if he declined. The picture made him smile, but he wasn't yet sure if it was genuine.
Moving out from the living room, the dining room was nothing special, just a few more mismatched frames, a wide clear window and a large pastel blue dining table that emphasised Molly's penchant for hand painting secondhand classic furniture. The only wierd thing was that, even though the table was a large rectangle only two chairs occupied it, both of different styles but upholstered in the same pale floral fabric, one more worn than the other. As you passed through, you stepped into the modern (and it seemed hardly used) kitchen, in a contrast to the lighter wood of the floors and the maintained cream of the walls, the cupboards that lined the walls and the countertops, in which sat a ceramic sink, were a dark wood. There was no extra colour in the room, apart from the curtains that were the same green as those in the other two rooms and the myriad of colourful, spotty, stripy and floral utensils that littered the surfaces and filled the draws; unlike the other rooms the kitchen seemed to have no strict colour pattern and alongside the plates of many different colours and designs, it reminded John of the brick-a-brack sales he would visit with his Mum in his pre-teens.
John found it mind-numbingly beautiful to stroll around Molly's home, just those three rooms alone, drawing out ideas of Molly's character, being shocked by the uniformity of it all, the colour schemes; then being extremely less surprised by the brick-a-brack nature of what appeared from a distance to be chic.
As he passed into the tiny hallway, John peered into the simple bathroom with classic blue and white tiled walls and floors and the occasional sea blue ornament, it was quite basic and instead of the shower he had become accustomed to, there was a large ceramic bath pushed up against the right hand wall and in hitting distance of the door. There was a simple mirrored cabinate and daring to take a look inside he found more toothbrushes than was customary for a single woman with no housemates and less bubbly, smelly things than he would have guessed.
The door opposite the bathroom, he identified as his, it had been where, when on autopilot, he had gone to an exhausted and vulnerable Molly. At some point he remebered finally making the bed with the milatry presicion he was trained to, but again had not noticed the room on a whole. The room would certainly have been larger if it weren't filled with a double bed, in comparison to the rest of the house this room was darker, a deep blue covered on of the walls and a darkwood wardrode sat next to the door, the window was directly above the bed and the windowsil was again used to host frames and trinkets, although it was 'spare' the room felt lived in. John knew why the bed was large and pictures of Molly and her mother filled the walls, why there was a collectors edition Aston Martin toy by the bed, Molly's father clearly had taste.
John daren't look in a lady's room, and that's all that remained, Molly's room. If John were less of a gentleman and the door were slightly more agar he would have see a room of a somewhat odd shape, and clearly that of a woman's. It lacked the splash of pastel colours that seeped into the other rooms and was a stylish pallette of beige and browns, there was a somewhat pretentious canvas above her double bed that took on the same colours of the room, trinkets lined the windowsil once again and this time in matching wooden frames pictures of her parents and friends sat in the unoccupied spaces of the walls, opposite the bed was a long corridor lined with an integrated wardrobe taking up most of the wall space (seemingly unessecary for the pathologist fashion forgot, but for fashion forward nights out Molly it held as much as a girl dreams) and sat in the corner it created with the wall was a petite cream vanity table, that was cluttered with the little makeup, fragrance and jewellery Molly owned. It wasn't as girly as you would expected from the cherry jumpered woman, but it held the class of the person you got to know in Molly Hooper.
As John re-entered the living room, Molly stirred. She normally awoke from naps on the sofa with a slight smile gracing her lips, as she remembered the faint dreams of beautifully lost worlds or Meena's drunk dancing, but the moments of sleep she caught was smashed with the thought of two broken men, and she awoke with a frown.
Sorry this became quite a lengthy descriptive chapter of Molly's home, but in my first draft it was so glossed over that I felt that the place inside my head, the place they're about to share really deserved a little description (and then things got a little out of hand). Also sorry for the all most abrupt ending, they're was going to be more but it seemed better than chapter 3 had that responsibility (see you hopefully in a week) and thank you so much for reading :)