Nine Weeks and Four Days Ago. 221B Baker Street
He could get used to this, Sherlock thought: coming home to find a beautiful, smiling woman waiting happily to see him, to ask him how he was, to eat dinner with him, to laugh with him, to sit in companionable silence reading along side him, to nag him about his diet, to care for him. But, one way or the other, when this case came to its end, so did this arrangement. Selfishly, part of him wished Irene Adler had given him a twelve year deadline instead of twelve weeks, not only because he and John were both failing spectacularly in their respective assignments so far, but because, despite all the pressure and tension the case was causing him, a part of him really loved this time with Molly.
This part of the day, in particular, the time between dinner and bedtime, was proving to be one of Sherlock's favorites. He and Molly had settled into a kind of routine. They cleared the table, washed the dishes, and read or talked together in the living room. Having just cleared the table and being especially tired this evening after interviewing some five of Irene Adler's clients during the day, he proposed to Molly that they just let the dishes sit in the sink overnight, soaking.
"Oh, if you're tired Sherlock, I can do them myself. Don't trouble yourself, really."
"Molly, just let them sit. Just letting them soak in the sink one night will not result in alien mold spores growing all about the flat or some heretofore non-existent virus coming into being."
"I know that. I just might as well do them now, that's all."
"You can't let them sit, can you?"
"I can. I just don't want to."
"Ok, you say you can. I want to see it. I want you to leave them in the sink, dangerously unwashed, until tomorrow."
Molly stood shifting from side to side, a little agitated. "What will that prove?"
"That your OCD is at least manageable. That you don't need medication."
Molly huffed in indignation. "Me? I'm OCD? Me? There's a mirror in your bedroom, Sherlock, go take a look in it."
"We're not talking about me. We're talking about you and your OCD."
"You have some nerve, Sherlock Holmes."
"Just look at your lab, Molly Hooper. It screams OCD."
"It's a lab, Sherlock. Everything should be in it's proper place and be clearly labeled for safety. That's not OCD, that's being responsible."
"Oh dear, the worst ones are always the ones that don't recognize they have a problem."
"I don't have a problem."
"Really? You want to take a look at my cabinets?"
"Ugh. You're still on about that."
"Ok, prove you're not OCD. Leave the dishes overnight. Live dangerously."
"Fine," she said, a little sulkily.
"Fine," he said in response and then he saw Molly make a break for the sink, but he caught her around the waist, making her squeal. "Aha! You can't do it, not for one night." She was laughing hard in his arms and then he seemed to realize that he was holding her completely, so he let her go, against his own inner will.
"Really, Sherlock. I'll don't mind doing them myself if you're especially tired tonight."
He glowered at her. "Move over, Dr. Hooper, I'll wash, you dry."
"Fine, Mr. Holmes."
That command—"I'll wash, you dry"—never had such a seemingly innocuous statement had such a catastrophic result, Sherlock thought later. Why, why hadn't he said the opposite?
He filled the sink with hot, soapy water to begin to wash the dishes and then hand them to Molly. Still in a playful mood, he splashed her with the water from time to time, teasing her and making her laugh. Tired or not, he was having fun. Having fun doing the dishes? What is wrong with you, Sherlock, he thought to himself.
About half way through cleaning the night's dirty dishes, the text notification sounded on his mobile phone, which was on the table right in back of them. Innocently, Molly said, "I'll check it for you, your hands are all wet." Sherlock thought nothing of it. Then he heard the mobile phone drop to the floor and Molly gasp. Suddenly, he remembered what day it was. There were ten weeks to go.
"Molly!" He yelled, turning around to see her ashen, frozen.
"You fucking bastard," Molly yelled. "You bastard. You've had the photos all this time, been seeing them, and you said nothing!"
"Molly, it's not what you think. I can explain."
Molly covered her mouth, beginning to become hysterical and crying. "All this time. You'd seen them and have been laughing at me or pitying me. That's why you've been so nice! And all this time I thought you . . . I thought you . . . "
"No! That's not right, no! That's not it at all. Molly, please."
Molly gathered up her work bag from the living room and headed for the door. He tried to intercept her and put a restraining hand on her shoulder. "Don't you fucking touch me! Don't you ever fucking touch me again!" She yelled this so loud that the security man outside the door came rushing into the flat and put himself between Molly and Sherlock.
"Let her go," the man demanded.
"Sod off, I just need to talk to her."
"She apparently doesn't want to talk to you." With Sherlock held back, Molly ran out the door and down the steps. Sherlock tried to get around the much larger and more muscular guard by ill-advisedly attempting to push the man out of the way. The Secret Service man yanked Sherlock violently to the floor and kept him pinned there, unable to fight back.
The man currently pinning Sherlock helplessly to his own flat's floor took out his radio and called out, "Malcolm here. Molly on the move outside. Follow. I repeat: Molly on the move outside. Follow. I have a attacker subdued. I repeat: I have an attacker subdued." Two other men answered on the radio, letting him know they received his message.
"Attacker! Attacker?" Sherlock was apoplectic with rage. "I'm the one protecting her, you moron. Let me go, I have to talk to her."
"We obey her orders, not yours, asshole." Sherlock stopped resisting, realizing that he had no way out of the hold this larger man had on him and starting to feel the pain of having his arm pinned so far and so tightly back behind him. He was in physical agony and yet somehow he knew that greater agonies lie ahead.
Hours passed since Malcolm, the burly man who had had Sherlock pinned down in his own flat, had let him up with a warning to stay away from Molly unless she initiated contact. Since being released and warned off, he paced his flat endlessly, trying to construct a narrative for Molly that could explain the photo text in a way that didn't give up the whole awful game. Finally satisfied with his rehearsed speech, he took a taxi to Molly's flat, believing that that might be where she had gone after leaving Baker Street.
He walked up to the main door of the building, but, before he reached it, a Secret Service man, a different one from the man who had tackled him earlier, grabbed him from behind.
"You need to leave, sir. Or you will be detained."
"Mycroft Holmes is my brother. Call him. I need to talk to Molly."
"We have been in touch with Mr. Holmes. We've been directed to respect Dr. Hooper's wishes not to see you."
"What? What!" Sherlock couldn't hide his sense of betrayal. He looked up at the windows he knew to be Molly's and started to yell, "Molly! Molly! I need to talk to you."
"What did I just say?" The man reached into his pocket and gave an order on his radio. Seconds later, a car pulled up and he was manhandled into it and whisked away to a private government detainment facility for the night.
Sherlock didn't sleep at all in the cell. He lied there awake, stewing in his own anger and self-reproach until the morning came. Then he heard the doors to the outer cell open and the sound of footsteps. So he stood up, knowing just who those footsteps belonged to.
Mycroft Holmes and John Watson came into Sherlock's cell, both of them looking sad and disappointed. As angry as he was at Mycroft's betrayal of the previous night, he had more important things with which to deal right now.
"I need to see Molly."
"That's not going to happen unless she wants to see you, brother."
"I have to explain. She saw the text, the photo. I have to explain to her . . . "
"We will be explaining everything to her today," Mycroft said.
Sherlock looked concerned. "Everything? You don't mean everything . . . "
"Yes, everything Sherlock," John said. "We were wrong to keep all this from her. Surely you must see that yourself by now."
"No, I have to be the one . . . "
"No!" John yelled. "She doesn't want to talk to you, Sherlock. We haven't been respecting her throughout this whole case and it's about time we started. She needs to know and she needs to prepare."
"You're giving up," Sherlock said, feeling betrayed first by his own brother and now by John.
"No, we still have time to work on other solutions, but you have to admit: so far we've gotten nowhere, mate. We have to plan for contingencies."
"No, I won't let it come to that."
"You might not have a choice. There's a very real chance we might fail. And then what? How long do we wait? She needs to know, Sherlock."
The detective just shook his head. "I need to go there. Talk to her, make her understand."
Here Mycroft spoke again. "The members of he Secret Service detail have been ordered to follow her wishes on all things. If you attempt to see her, you will be forcibly detained again."
Sherlock looked at his brother with seething rage. "You son of a bitch. Your plans are going to get her killed."
"My plans? My plans? May I remind you that her life wouldn't be in danger at all if you hadn't let your infantile infatuation with Irene Adler cloud your judgment in the first place? She's alive because of you, Sherlock. And if she manages to kill Molly, that'll be on you!"
Sherlock hauled off and punched Mycroft in the face. First John, then prison guards, wrestled him away and down to the ground.
"Let him up," Mycroft eventually told John and the guards, while nursing the side of his head. "He's more of a danger to himself than he is to me."
John walked over close to Sherlock. "Get yourself together, mate. You are out of control. Go back to Baker Street. I'll come by later. But Sherlock, I mean it, go home and don't leave your fucking fucking flat today."
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