Apologies for the delay on this, I got a little sidetracked by tasertricks... Thank you so much for all the kind reviews and PMs :) It's my birthday tomorrow so I thought I'd celebrate early with this update, enjoy!
O is for Opportunities
Over the next few months, whilst helping with wedding planning for both John and Molly (it felt like all he was doing now), Sherlock had built a small room in his mind palace to store Tom's misdeeds, dislikes, allergies and general pet-hates. During John's wedding planning, he made sure that the colour scheme was one Molly would love, and Tom would hate. He planned to leave early (no matter what anyone said) knowing that Molly would likely follow. She did love to help a damsel in distress after all. For Molly's wedding there was the matter of the small trimmings, like favours and stationary that he could put in ideas that were either wildly out of Tom's budget, and offering to pay for them, or ones that were so bad Molly was in hysterics. He kept bringing the ideas he detested from John and Mary's (like karaoke) and telling her they'd be a good idea. Tom hadn't quite managed to persuade her to stop Sherlock being her maid of honour, even after he'd point blank refused to call him the man of honour, and offered just to let him attend all day as a guest. Sherlock however, had seen quite the opportunity here, and would only go as her man of honour now, and nothing less. He was also working on John being a bridesmaid. What better way to irritate and cause issue (two of the primary things Tom said he kept doing that he didn't), than to infiltrate the wedding via the bride. He also took advantage of every opportunity to keep her in the lab- continually quoting that he wasn't allowed to go anywhere else and had to be supervised.
Little did Tom know, Sherlock was not the only one conspiring to bring an end to his and Molly's relationship…
It was also highly unfortunate for Tom that Anthea had a fondness for Molly, and a dislike for him. She had begun by putting a few low level agents on a series of missions she'd designed to make him prove to himself, Molly, and her employer (although she knew the latter was mostly for cake based reasons) that they were supposed to be in a relationship, and that they could cope with all that life, and the Holmes brothers would throw at them. After the attempted team building weekend, she had permission to do much more than that. Despite not being there in person, the events of the teambuilding weekend had not passed her by. Naturally it had been her Mycroft was on the phone to, he needed some shopping done, dry cleaning picked up and to give her his blessing to monitor Tom however she saw fit now that it appeared his brother was going to cause trouble. The Monday de-brief was a suspended in favour of Mycroft showing her pictures of Sherlock dressed as a nun, as all things Mycroft however, the pictures had more value than just hilarity. The one that caused Mycroft the most concern was one that reminded him of the great sock war of 1990, where he had been stupid enough to think he could borrow a pair of his brother's socks without consequence. The look of betrayal and loathing that was thinly masked could mean only one thing: Tom was in big trouble. By Wednesday she had people following him, his best friend, placed at his work, at his fishing club and a couple of cameras at his parents' home. Just a little light surveillance to begin with she told herself, as she watched some of the parental footage on her blackberry.
Perhaps the most unfortunate thing for Tom, was that Anderson had sensed an opportunity to further promote his theories about Sherlock and Molly. Thus far, they were a couple, or should be, or were married, with a particular favourite being the secret children theory – he brought that one up at least once a week. This kept the notion that they weren't meant to be together at the forefront of everyone's minds. The rumours had spread and blossomed in such a fashion that they were the talk of the tabloids, the tabloids that happened to be read religiously by his co-workers, and fishing buddies. Half of his friends and acquaintances seemed to think he was in on an elaborate ruse set up by Sherlock and Molly, the other half convinced he was being cheated on quite thoroughly.
Mrs Holmes and Hudson had also seized the opportunity to scheme. Mummy had never met Molly, and wanted to thank her for everything she had done for Sherlock. She was also very concerned that should Molly marry then both of Sherlock's primary babysitters were unable to keep an eye on him. Her concern had nothing at all to do with the fact that she was convinced that she really wanted grandchildren. Nothing at all. Mrs Hudson was more concerned that when Molly was married she'd spend less time at Baker Street, and would be too busy to clean out the body parts she gave Sherlock properly (not by burying them in her garden for dogs to dig up). The two older women often had tea, to catch up, reminisce and put the world to rights. During their meetings, Sherlock came up a lot less often than one might think, mostly because his more irritating moments were Mycroft induced, and thus he became the more talked about child. On this particular occasion however, the two women's primary interest was how they could use Sherlock to break up Tom and Molly. A formal dinner was in order, and they knew just the way to get them there…