Hello again readers! This was a prompt from bluegreyme over on tumblr. The prompt was originally for a oneshot, but once I started writing, ideas just kept pouring in to my mind, so I decided to tackle my first ever multi-chapter fic.
This story is set after TRF and before TEH. The prompt was for some fluffly warm Sherlolly in the winter complete with hot cocoa, but for some reason I instantly thought of Sherlocks hiatus, when he was supposed to be "dead". I have headcannons galore about what exactly he did during those two years, and nearly all of them involve everyone's favorite pathologist. While there is certianly hot cocoa mentioned, it's not quite the fluffly Sherlolly blue asked for YET. I promise to get there eventually.
A massive shoutout to of-nicolette on tumblr for being such an amazing beta for this chapter! Her notes and suggestions were priceless!
NOTE: All characters belong to ACD and BBC. i own nothing, I'm just borrowing them for a bit :)
Keep Me Warm
Chapter 1
Sherlock Holmes was freezing. Wandering around a small backwater town in Eastern Europe, in the middle of January, donning a homeless mans disguise wasn't the best of ideas; even if it was necessary.
Sherlock shivered in the helicopter as it made its way to the secret government hanger where a small plane would transfer him back to London for the night. Mycroft arranged a briefing in the morning to let him know where he was to go for next assignment. After ten months of undercover work, Sherlock was satisfied with the way Moriarty's network was starting to crumble.
"Coming up on the hangar, Mr. Holmes! The plane is ready for takeoff as soon as you get there! Should be less than an hour's flight until you are back in London!" The pilot said loudly into his mouthpiece, making Sherlock wince at the sudden loudness coming through his own headset.
He nodded to the pilot, clenching his jaw against the cold that was still threatening to creep deep into his bones. A headache was starting to press behind his eyes; the kind of headache that builds in the sinuses and could only be caused by prolonged exposure to the cold air. Sherlock flexed his long musician's fingers against his thighs as the helicopter started its descent towards the helipad.
One thought was on Sherlock's mind as the pilot expertly landed the helicopter: getting to the only place in England where he could get warm. Because there was only one place in Europe where he knew he would be welcomed with open arms and no questions:
Molly Hooper's.
Sherlock kept the thought of Molly Hooper's tiny warm flat in his mind as he boarded the small plane and buckled himself in. He thought of a decent hot meal and a whole pot of his favorite tea, thought of sitting on Molly's small broken down sofa with her, organizing his mind palace while she lost herself in mindless television.
True to the pilot's word, the flight only took forty-two minutes to get from the hangar back to London. Nodding to the small planes pilot as he made his way down the short flight of steps to the Tarmac, Sherlock pulled his dingy windbreaker tighter around him and started making his way towards Molly's street.
Sherlock walked for over an hour, sticking to alleys and side roads to avoid being seen. Eight-thirty in the evening didn't leave the main streets empty enough for him to make it to Molly's as quickly as he would've like, especially in the freezing rain that began to pour from the clouds. When he finally walked out of an alley a block from her complex, he threw caution to the wind and hurried down the street, pulling his wool cap down more securely over his ears.
Molly Hooper was sitting on her sofa, in her most comfortable pajamas, glasses perched on her nose, and a bowl of mango sorbet in her lap.
It had been a long day at the morgue; a fire at a retirement home had ensured that. Molly, along with three other morgue technicians, had spent the long sixteen hour shift performing autopsies on over thirty elderly bodies. Every time she would finish with a body, an orderly would wheel another one in. By the end of the day Molly was so mentally and emotionally drained, all she wanted to do was watch telly and eat her weight in frozen treats.
Molly had just settled on a rerun of her favorite television program when she heard the unmistakable sound of the lock on her door being picked. Glancing at the clock and realizing it was almost ten o'clock at night, Molly started to get worried. Grabbing her mobile and the cricket bat she kept next to the sofa, Molly waited with her thumb hovering over the emergency number on her phone.
As the door swung open, Molly raised her cricket bat just as the raggedy man in the doorway raised his hands.
"A cricket bat? Really, Molly?"
The unmistakable smooth baritone voice of Sherlock Holmes greeted her ears like a favorite song.
"Sherlock!" She exclaimed, dropping the bat and her mobile on the armchair.
"May I come in?" Sherlock asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I gave you a key! Why didn't you just use it instead of picking my lock? And when you are wearing a disguise! I could've bashed your brains in!" Molly exclaimed, gesturing wildly towards the cricket bat.
"Not likely, Molly." He said, a ghost of a grin quirking up one corner of his mouth. "Not with your size, and your potential victim being me."He was fully grinning now, looking down at her, his tired eyes twinkling.
Molly tried her best scowl at him, but the edge of her mouth betrayed her, fighting to curl into a smile.
"So…May I come in?" Sherlock asked again.
"Oh! Of course! Yes, come in!" Molly said, rushing to grab the door and shut it behind him. Sherlock stepped into the short hallway and pulled the damp wool hat off of his dark curls, running his hands through them. Molly noticed water steadily dripping onto the floor of her entryway and swept her gaze over him; he was soaked to the bone and shivering.
"How long have you been walking around in the rain?" She asked, frowning as she watched him stuff the wool cap into the pocket of his grimy windbreaker.
"About an hour," Sherlock replied, wiping at his wet face with the cuff of his jacket.
"Why don't you go take a hot shower and I'll make you something to eat. Maybe a something hot to drink?" She asked gently, smiling at him. He just looked at her curiously for a moment, before he nodded and removed his jacket. Underneath he was wearing a jumper riddled with holes and pair of dark jeans in much the same shape. He kicked off his muddy trainers and handed Molly his sodden jacket.
"Do I still have spare clothes in your bedroom?" He asked, pulling the jumper over his head and handing that to her as well.
Molly was momentarily distracted by the way his movements caused his dingy white t-shirt to ride up and reveal his pale stomach and the indents of his hipbones.
Molly blinked a few times to clear her head and nodded, balling up the wet clothes she was handed.
"I'll just pitch these in the bin and start something to eat, then." She said, gently giving Sherlock a nudge on the arm to get him moving towards the bathroom. He just nodded again and stifled a yawn, heading towards the back hallway.
Molly watched him enter her room and emerge a few moments later with a stack of fresh clothes. Sherlock glanced at her as he disappeared in the bathroom. Molly smiled softly at him and then pushed through the swinging door of her kitchen, dropping the wet clothes into the bin on her way to the fridge.
Sherlock stood underneath the hot spray of water, hands braced on the tiled wall and head hanging down, letting the heat work its way into his sore and cold muscles. Seeing Molly Hooper's face had done more to warm him up than any amount of time spent in the hot shower would.
Realizing his feelings for Molly had been something of a surprise to him. At first, Sherlock put it down to the fact that she was the one person besides Mycroft who knew that he was alive and well when everyone else in the country believed him to be dead. Molly was his one normal connection to his beloved London; so of course he thought of her often. She was forbidden to contact him in any form while he was out of the country, but Sherlock would occasionally send her short texts from a burner phone when he was stuck during the case, using her as a sounding board, or (he was embarrassed to admit) when he was lonely.
The texts soon morphed from the occasional Interesting mould in this motel, I will get a sample so you can analyze it for me. To You would enjoy the morgue I just broke into, they have the most interesting display of diseased organs. To I read the headline about the accident on the M5 as I was passing a news vendor. You should treat yourself to a hot bath tonight. I suggest the lavender bath salts to help you relax.
As always, Molly came up with a clever solution to the problem of the one sided conversation. She started to keep a journal, writing the date she received the text from Sherlock, copying the text itself into the journal, and then writing her response underneath it in a different color of ink. When Sherlock would show up at her door, either freezing, bleeding, or starving, Molly would push him towards the shower, patch him up, or place a plate full of food in front of him. Once he was taken care of, she would hand him the journal, bid him goodnight, and go quietly to bed.
Sherlock secretly admitted to himself that he looked forward to his brief visits to the pathologist's small flat, just so he could read her responses to his texts, or (if she didn't hear from him for a couple of days) the account of her day at work. She would include precise details about interesting autopsies, or make her observations on some experiment he had asked her to perform at the lab.
Sherlock tilted his head back and swiped water from his face, shoving memories of a particularly horrible day a fortnight ago behind a locked door in his mind palace.
As the water started to cool, Sherlock suppressed a shiver and quickly scrubbed his hair and body before turning the water off and grabbing a towel. As he rubbed the towel over his hair, the smell of food and the sound of Molly's quiet singing came seeping under the door. Sherlock smiled and pulled on his fresh clothes, his stomach rumbling.
Molly just finished loading a plate with pasta and placing it on the kitchen table when Sherlock walked into the kitchen wearing trousers and a dark green dress shirt.
"You know you could always wear jeans and a jumper when you're here, you don't have to dress up just for me." Molly teased, smiling cheekily at him.
"Your jokes still haven't gotten any better, I see." Sherlock commented, rolling his eyes and hiding his grin.
He sat down and tucked into his pasta, Molly was at the sink washing up the few dishes that had accumulated there throughout the day, humming softly to herself. The whole scene was so domestic that Sherlock almost cringed. Or he would have if he wasn't so content.
He was content to be back in London, even if it was only for twenty four hours. He was content to be in clean clothes, in a warm flat with a hot meal in his stomach. He was content to be at Molly Hooper's cramped kitchen table, watching her wash dishes in her atrocious flannel pajamas with hearts all over them. How many times had he wished for this very thing while he was kneeling in a flooded ditch, wearing week-old clothes trying his best to avoid Moriarty's goons?
Once Sherlock had finished his pasta, he took his plate to the sink, picking up a dish towel and drying the finished dishes, placed them in the correct cupboards. Molly dried her hands and picked up the text journal off the counter.
"I'm off to bed. I made the bed in the guest room up with fresh linens while you were in the shower." She said, handing Sherlock the journal.
He looked down at the small leather notebook in his hands and thought for a moment.
"Would you be going to bed so early if I wasn't here?" He asked.
"Well, no. I planned on having some cocoa and reading the new science journal that came out today before I headed to bed." Molly answered, cocking her head to the side.
"Would you….would you like to sit on the sofa with me while you read?" Sherlock asked, barely meeting her gaze. He held up the journal. "I would like to catch up on some reading myself."
Molly's smile could've melted the whole of Antarctica. She nodded and gestured towards her small sitting room.
"Give me just a mo to get the cocoa and I'll be right back!" She said, smiling again. Sherlock watched her practically skip to the kitchen to get the mugs of hot cocoa.
Sherlock might have admitted his feelings toward the tiny pathologist to himself, but he barely understood them, let alone how he would go about informing the pathologist herself of his need to be near her and know she was safe.
Thank you so much for reading chapter one! I will be back soon with the next installment, so be on the lookout!
I can be found on tumblr as ladycumberbunny