Sherlock watches her go, her mussed hair and worn dressing gown somehow more arresting than the sight of Irene Adler stark naked, and for half a second when she disappears from sight he's tempted to leave. Just get his coat and scarf, get rid of any evidence that he was ever here, and vanish. Because the people who stay close to him end up taking blades and bullets for him, or else they get sick of him and turn their backs, and the end result is always that Sherlock Holmes is alone with his armor and his violin and the long shadows of his past.
But then he hears the shower turn on. And he doesn't know why, but that pulls him back towards the last twelve hours, to their hushed talk in the half-dark and the first time she slipped her fingers between his.
John is right. Molly is a good woman. She's assertive and intelligent and has a sense of empathy he can only wonder at, and he doesn't know how he of all people is going to deserve this when someone as fundamentally good as John Watson no longer has it in his life.
He knows Mary would tell him to get a head start by staying for lunch.
So instead he moves to the kitchen counter, where Molly's laptop is sitting idle, and pulls up online delivery menus. He studies her recent orders, the patterns that indicate which are staple favorite dishes and which are for well and truly indulging herself, files all of it away in his memory for later.
By the time she gets back he's got viable options narrowed down to four places within a one-mile radius. And, because he knows Mary would tell him to do it and John would back her up in that insufferable tag-team way they fell into naturally, he sets the default credit card in her browser autofill as his own.
He's also got twenty browser tabs open and is poring over a National Geographic article about the history of alcohol, but that's just Sherlock for you.
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Date: 2017-02-02 07:28 pm (UTC)But then he hears the shower turn on. And he doesn't know why, but that pulls him back towards the last twelve hours, to their hushed talk in the half-dark and the first time she slipped her fingers between his.
John is right. Molly is a good woman. She's assertive and intelligent and has a sense of empathy he can only wonder at, and he doesn't know how he of all people is going to deserve this when someone as fundamentally good as John Watson no longer has it in his life.
He knows Mary would tell him to get a head start by staying for lunch.
So instead he moves to the kitchen counter, where Molly's laptop is sitting idle, and pulls up online delivery menus. He studies her recent orders, the patterns that indicate which are staple favorite dishes and which are for well and truly indulging herself, files all of it away in his memory for later.
By the time she gets back he's got viable options narrowed down to four places within a one-mile radius. And, because he knows Mary would tell him to do it and John would back her up in that insufferable tag-team way they fell into naturally, he sets the default credit card in her browser autofill as his own.
He's also got twenty browser tabs open and is poring over a National Geographic article about the history of alcohol, but that's just Sherlock for you.