A/N: Thought I'd bring back Molly. Let's see if I can still write Molly, but change her life a bit. She deserves some development too. -csf

I.

'Professor Hooper,' John sounds out, and grins his sunshine grin. Molly immediately feels herself at ease. Of course, John Watson would be supportive of this new change in her career. Taking up a few teaching hours at St Bart's Teaching Hospital. More like moving from her beloved basement morgue to the ground floors, full of eager students. It's a bit daunting, if she's honest.

For many years she avoided this career opportunity, but now she had made a life decision to try new things. Taking up running, going vegan, stop pining for dark haired dangerous men... Maybe a small step into a different professional path was just the thing. She envisioned herself in tweeds in a comfortable office (the morgue is always so cold, with all the refrigerating units for storing bodies and all), early nights in grading papers and sipping hot chocolate, her cat Toby by her feet, purring contentedly on the plush rug.

Not all that different from her life right now, except she was only scribbling crossword puzzles when she got back to her flat, and that her cat Toby was more likely to ignore her than to bask in her professional achievements.

She's fairly sure she only has a cat because she loves how independent and temperamental they are.

A bit like Sherlock Holmes. Speaking of which…

'I told Sherlock, you know?'

'You did?'

Is that caution or admiration that John is trying to hide under a polite expression?

Molly won't blame John. She too thought that she would run it by Sherlock, because if there is ever a reason why it should be a huge failure and she should avoid this like the plague, Sherlock would be the one honest person to tell it to her face.

A bit like a cat, that too. Sherlock would metaphorically hiss and turn away.

'He was okay with it,' she muses, then hastily corrects: 'I don't need Sherlock to give me his permission, it's just—'

'If you can tell Sherlock, you can tell just anybody in the world?' John surmises, with a kind smile.

She thinks that if anyone should be able to understand her, it's John. He lives with Sherlock, and has insider knowledge of how tough it can be to live up to the exaggerated expectations of the genius consulting detective.

'Yeah. He surprised me.'

'Really? Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. There's a good side to Sherlock… if we look deep enough.'

She giggles nervously.

'John… Sherlock volunteered to help me, did he tell you?'

'Help you?'

Now John cannot hide the slight hesitation in his face. Certainly concerned that the larger than the room personality of his best friend can eclipse Molly's voice in a partnership. John knows first hand that a partnership with the detective takes a good deal of thick skin and stubbornness – and that's only to survive the morning choice of beverages, let alone actually start to work together on something.

John almost shakes his head, taking up his paper cup tea again.

'He said he'd be my assistant, John.'

Molly barely has the time to move out of the way of the sprayed tea as John is caught totally by surprise.

'Sorry, sorry,' he states quickly, coughing and spluttering. 'You and Sherlock will work together on the syllabus? You know we will insist on something ridiculous like a full semester to analyse ashes alone, right?'

Molly takes John's paper cup and allows him to have a seat in the nearest chair.

'No, I don't need help with that. Sherlock volunteered to be my assistant in my role of professor at the University.'

'He did?'

'I was surprised too.'

'And you said yes?'

'Of course.' She feels her cheeks burn, hands back the tea and tries to busy herself with the sleeves of her cardigan, pulling them down over her wrists, which only makes her feel hotter all over.

'You know he will,' John comments soberly. 'He hates to break a promise he makes.'

She nods, she knows.

'He might have less time for you, John.'

The doctor nods easily. 'Of course, and I will help too if you let me, when I'm not at work at the surgery.'

The butterflies in her belly still tell her that she needs all the help she can get.

'So when is your first lecture and what is it on, Molly?'

'Oh, it's in a week's time, and it's on non-contamination of the crime scene.'

John nearly spits out the rest of the tea through his nose, and he's not even sipping tea at the moment. Sherlock and lecturing about untampered crime scenes? The man nicks evidence from the murder victim's body when no one is looking! He removes residues without bothering with a zip lock bag, a pocket will do. He's the Crown Prosecution's permanent headache, and has often doubled his own work, having to find more evidence in the proper way as a replacement, or swindling the murderer for a confession acceptable in Court.

This really is going to be something that John does not want to miss watching unfold. A bit like a train wreck, John doesn't think he could look away.

And he's worried for Molly. Can she teach a semester with an Assistant Sherlock Holmes who demonstrates all manner of things not to do?

.

'The Tweed Brigade, are we?'

John's jovial tone is amused, as he comes in from work to find Sherlock and Molly working on the syllabus of her course. They seem to have paid particular attention to a cohesive aesthetics for the lecturer and assistant roles, where Molly is overdoing a multitude of tweed patterns in one person – the skirt, the feminine vest, the scarf and the handbag – and Sherlock is wearing a tweed vest (Mycroft would be proud) and has conceded to putting on his deerstalker hat.

John has never seen so much brown in 221B; and he was there for the Big Chocolate Milkshake Explosion of 2018.

'Just a bit of team spirit, John,' Sherlock assures, pointing towards John's armchair. John follows his gesture. In the chair, a skeleton is wearing a tweed jacket. In fact, it is John's own jacket. 'The seat was meant for you, John, but you took your time getting up.'

'It's seven o'clock in the evening, Sherlock. I've been at work, not in bed all day.'

'Same thing, as far as I'm concerned.'

'And you won't have missed the empty bed when you went to my closet and took my jacket to dress up— Wait, did you get a skeleton to fill in for me?'

'Not to worry, John. It is doing a banging impersonation. A vague grin and no useful contribution whatsoever, just like my blogger.'

John grumbles and decides it is time for tea, turning towards the kitchen and the kettle.

He hears some hushed mutterings behind him, and soon Sherlock catches up with him, mumbling: 'Can I have some tea, please?'

It's as good as an apology in Sherlock's language.

'Did Molly make you ask?' the doctor still asks, a touch harsh.

'Yes.'

John closes his eyes and leans his weight on the counter, presumably counting to ten.

Sherlock inches closer in a rustle of cotton on tweed. It really doesn't suit him.

'Did he die? The boy with the severe allergic reaction?'

John shudders and opens his eyes straight at Sherlock.

Even from the distance, Molly can see the pain flashing in John's muddy blue eyes, and Sherlock's mercurial eyes narrowing in response.

'No, but it was a close call. Tracheotomy. It's always messy.'

The kettle is boiling the water now, but none of them stops it. Unimportant.

'Out of town grandparent?'

'Weekend dad, actually.'

'Why the surgery and not an ambulance?'

'They didn't want to be late to a party. We were closer. It could have cost the boy's life.'

'He's safe now.'

'Yes.'

'Would you like to join our tweed club, John?'

The doctor smiles, lifting some of the hard lines in his haggard face. 'Not really, but I'd like to join my friends.'

'The admission ticket is some tea.'

'Naturally.' John stops the kettle. 'Already on it. We are civilised people, after all.'

.

'I say we analyse the corridor leading to the lecture room, to find fibres and hairs, and all sorts of trace evidence from the students, from just having them walk past it on their way in.'

Sherlock's suggestion is sound, but a lot of work.

Molly is making notes in a flowery notebook with a purple grapes-scented pen.

John adds: 'What about a guest appearance from Sherlock Holmes turns into let's find Sherlock's trace evidence. They can use microscopes to check fibres against the ugly tweed vest he's wearing.'

'It's not ugly, have you even seen your jumpers?'

Molly shakes her head. 'It's the first lesson, I want it to be memorable.'

Sherlock and John look at each other. Sherlock raises an inquisitive eyebrow and John shrugs.

'In that case, we may have the answer you are looking for, Molly…'

.

There is a body on stage. Only it's not a dead body, and it is only the raised platform of a small lecture hall, quickly filling with students.

The body is that of a small adult male, compact, blond, laid out in recovery position. He is also breathing if one looks closely. He is only a learning aid.

Dressed in tweed only in a fitted jacket, Molly shuffles the pages with her grape-scented notes as she waits for the influx of students to find a seat and stop chatting. Particularly the last part seems to be a bit tough to achieve, so she clears her throat. Still talking. He taps her pen on the tiny pulpit. Still talking. Sherlock chooses this time to step in to the stage and glare at the room. Conversations die down under that incendiary glare.

Molly steps forward and introduces herself, her glamorous assistant (no tweeds), and purposefully ignores the fake dead body behind her. Much like John had predicted, this captivates the audience with a sense of exhilaration; who in the world just ignores a person lying on the floor behind them? A seasoned killer, or a pathologist – being the more likely types anyway.

Molly goes on to introducing the first module, and one of the students petulantly raises her hand.

Sherlock looks at the glaring lights over the stage platform and nudges Molly, while saying in a clear, sharp voice: 'The woman with the high heels and a penchant for steeling married men has a question – third row, Professor Hooper.'

Molly cringes inwardly, but smiles. 'Yes, of course. Miss…?'

For some less than mysterious reason, the student avoids giving her name after the apt description. She does, however, ask with a bit of tartness:

'Why do we need to be policed over what we wear? I don't think we should have to wear those paper suits at all. They never do it in the telly.'

Molly nods to Sherlock who has walked to the side of the stage and he pulls down a couple of buttons. Immediately the lecture hall goes fully dark… except there is a trail of glow-in-the-dark footprints all over the floor, where the students have come into the hall. And another trail of footprints goes towards the stage and stops by the fake dead body, vanishing within an arm's length.

The whispers from the audience now dies down on their own. Respect has been achieved.

Sherlock returns the lights, and most people in the room blink and rub their eyes.

'Now imagine you had been asked to walk past this stage. Without protective suits, your traces would have obliterated the killer's own.'

From the audience, someone shouts: 'He's not really dead. When can we see a real dead body?'

There's always one, Molly ponders wistfully.

'I can take care of that,' she promises without a second's delay. A shiver of engagement goes through the audience.

She meant to take them to the morgue, not to kill one of her students… In the back of her mind, she gets how easily Sherlock gets into trouble at times.

She glances at the fake dead body on the floor. John is not going to be of too much help. The doctor is starting to snore, exhausted from a long shift at the A&E, and a criminal chase alongside Sherlock that ended in the Thames' banks last night.

Molly shuffles her pages, and moves to the theory behind Locard's Principle of Exchange.

.

TBC