theonewhocounted | (no subject)

[ooc: haha. go us! We could also continue in a new thread at any point if you wanted.]

"Okay, I'll see you later," she says to Sherlock before she hangs up. The desire to say "I love you" before she says goodbye is strong, but she's not sure they're there yet. There's one thing to say it with great emotional context during serious conversations, it's another to start using it as part of regular conversation. She's not sure if that'll ever be in the cards with Sherlock, the casual "Love you" before saying goodbye, but maybe she's wrong.

After Molly hangs up with Sherlock, she sees John's text and feels guilty that she's been having phone sex instead of keeping an eye on Rosie. She checks the monitor again though and she's still sleeping soundly. No harm then, she supposes.

To: John
From: Molly

1:00 PM: Thanks John. It's nice even just to know that he's talking about it with you. Even better to know that he's talking about it in the long term. Feels more real I guess. It's still a bit surreal all of it.

1:02 PM: You're a good friend John. A lot of this change in him is due to you. I hope you realize that.

Molly sees Sophie's text along with John's but avoids it for the time being. She's not sure what to say and she needs to go get washed up and order herself some food before Rosie wakes up.

She finally texts her after she's had lunch and got Rosie changed and in her bouncy chair that she loves. It plays music and has hanging things she can try to play with and it means Molly isn't holding her all the time.

To: Sophie (Work)
From: Molly

2:30 PM: It's very new. We haven't told most people yet. So far he's wonderful though.

Molly is giving Rosie another bottle when her phone chimes with a text from Sherlock. She's not sure why he can't knock on the door like everyone else, but she stands up, putting Rosie on her hip as she goes to let him in.

"Hey," she says with a huge smile as she sees him for the first time since they said good night outside her flat on Saturday. Her stomach feels like someone just let out a jar of butterflies into it and her heart rate picks up just from the sight of him and from knowing he's hers.

Edited (Sorry for all the edits!) 2017-02-18 21:14 (UTC)

(She won't know it for a while, but John has to excuse himself for a minute to swallow back a sudden lump in his throat when he gets her texts. He'd never have expected this kind of emotional growth from his best friend, and while objectively he's aware it couldn't have happened without him... well, it's different to hear it, and it touches him, and makes him miss Mary because he knows she'd have been proud of them both.)

To: Molly
From: John

2:31 PM: Thanks Molly.

To: Molly
From: Sophie (Work)

Well, that much I can tell just by looking at you! ;) Is there ANYTHING you can tell me?? Otherwise I'll just keep imagining it's Daniel Craig.

When he sees her again, Sherlock's face lights with the same kind of slow smile he usually reserves for John--only because it's aimed at Molly, it's different, its warmth just a single degree softer than he lets anyone see.

"Hi," he replies, and because it's been approximately three days too many since the last time, he bends to kiss her. Right there, on the front step, in full view of the surveillance camera he knows his brother has pointed at the door. (Hell, if Kitty Riley is still bitter that his reputation's been redeemed twice over by now, she'd be welcome to watch and tweet about it too. He's been through a shattering ordeal and somehow emerged from it having earned the privilege of being the only person who gets to kiss Molly Hooper like this. Sherlock thinks he's more than allowed to show off.)

The kiss doesn't last long, though. Rosie isn't quite big enough to reach Sherlock's curls yet, but she does manage to get a fistful of his coat lapel and yank on it insistently, burbling excitedly.

"Ow," he says fondly as he pulls back. "Manners, tiny Watson."

To: Sophie (Work)
From: Molly

2:35 PM: Oh my god, Soph, how did you know about Dan?! ;) Kidding. He's better. To me anyway. But I just can't say anything yet. Sorry. :/

The smile on Sherlock's face tells her everything she needs to know about how he feels about her and what they're doing. He's missed her. And more than just what she can do with her hands.

His kiss right out on the stoop in broad daylight surprises and pleases her. Molly's the one who has every reason to shout this new relationship from the rooftops (although she doesn't look forward to the scrutiny and probable cruel opinions she'll be subject to when the relationship is inevitably written about in the gossip rags) and Sherlock's got every reason to keep it under his hat (so to speak) for as long as possible. Although, their date tonight might get some people talking. People who have nothing better to do but speculate about others' lives.

Molly returns the kiss and then laughs when it's inevitably interrupted by Rosie.

"Be nice to Uncle Sher," Molly says to her before kissing his downy head. She's taken to shortening his name, knowing Rosie won't be able to manage 'Sherlock" until she's approximately 5 or 6. "He's going to change your next nappy."

She smiles at Sherlock as she leads them into the flat. Rosie is still gurgling and swinging her little fists at her newest visitor.

"We're in the middle of bottle time," Molly says as she brings Rosie back to the couch to finish her feeding.

Sherlock notices that abbreviation, by the way--notices how she means it as a private joke and not as some misguided term of endearment--and promptly decides he's going to get his revenge on all of them by giving Rosie a violin when she turns three. Granted, if she turns out to be a musical genius and not just a toddler with a string instrument then it'll just make him the favorite godparent (he hopes), so whatever the inevitable outcome, he wins.

He hangs his coat and scarf on the back of the door, the way he would if he were at home, and after he wheels his suitcase over to the threshold of his room he heads back over to settle in next to her.

"So I see. I'd have brought you a souvenir, Rosamund," he chided, "but I know you're still hazy on object permanence, so instead I'll read you something later. Treasure Island, maybe. You'll like that one."

His gaze flicks upwards to catch Molly's, and in the same moment he realizes three things: he's just been talking to an infant like she can understand him; he's done it in front of someone other than John (or Mary) for the first time; and Molly isn't going to say anything barbed about it.

No, Molly certainly isn't. In fact, what he'll find when he looks at her is absolute adoration on her face. Sherlock Holmes talking to a baby is in fact, her new favourite Sherlock Holmes. She has many. Later it might be Sherlock Holmes who spends a lot of time with her in her bed. He's new. Right now, though this one is her favourite.

She smiles at him before she cradles Rosie into the bend of her arm and against her chest as she gives her the rest of her bottle.

"How was the case?" she asks him as Rosie suckles away.

"Well, most of being in Cardiff was waiting around for one thing or another, but it went well. Caught someone who was trying to gaslight their way into a massive inheritance, which I wasn't actually expecting. No doubt John'll have it up on the blog soon; we had a couple of remote consults while I was there, since someone needed seeing to back in London."

He gives Rosie a wry look. She blinks up at him and Molly with huge dark-blue eyes as if to say, What? I'm innocent.

"Work's been going well for you, I see." He leans into her warmth a little. "Certainly sounded productive from your texts."

"Not getting into too much trouble on your own?" she teases but it's an actual concern of hers - him running around without John there to help him or keep him out of the worst of it. She looks down at Rosie and can't fault John for working remotely, she just wishes he had someone else to watch his back when John wasn't around.

Molly maneuvers Rosie around so she's over one shoulder so she can burp her.

"Yes, things are good. And I saved one of your experiments from being binned on Sunday. You're welcome. You've apparently got 2 days to do something with them or they're going out to make way for some official lab business that needs space in the fridge."

"One of--oh, shit, I'd completely forgotten." He's had a lot going on--they both have--and quite a few things dropped to the bottom of his priority list during the very recent reorganization it's had over the weekend. "Hang on, let me put an alert in my phone..."

He grabs his mobile out of his pocket to do exactly that, but before he unlocks it, he glances over at her again. There's something important to do here, something that matters because he knows it's a way to communicate at least part of the tangle of emotion that underscores everything he's thinking right now.

"Thank you, Molly."

Sherlock Holmes says thank you the way another man would tell her I love you.

"It's alright, I'd forgotten about them too," she says as she pats Rosie's back. "And really, they're my responsibility as the person who's actually employed by Bart's."

Really it's him who is her responsibility. He's been given a ton of leeway there thanks to his brother, but for years Molly has been his unofficial minder (at least that's how the rest of her department sees it).

Although, if things keep going the way they have with him, she may be out of her unofficial job. He's actually concerned that he's putting them out by forgetting about his experiment and he's even going to remind himself to see to it. Old Sherlock would have either ignored her or waved her off and she would end up cleaning his mess. She feels like maybe she should have given him a handjob ages ago.

She almost laughs at her own awful, internal joke before he punctuates everything with the most sincere thank you she's ever been given for doing something really rather small. It makes her blush. A thank you. She doesn't know how he does it.

"You're very welcome, Sherlock," she says warmly in return.

Rosie chooses that moment to let out a burp that could come from a much larger human and Molly laughs.

"Oh, good one, baby girl."

Her laughter is contagious, drawing a low, helpless giggle out of him. It's the same kind of relieved, surprised giggling that seized him after their first kiss.

"God, we've got a disgusting goddaughter."

The sentence slips out of him before he can really grasp the full impact of what he's said. They're all tied together now, a strange little human network of people who've chosen to share parts of their lives despite (and, let's be honest, because of) the danger involved. But Sherlock's not quite ready to process an emotional revelation like this today, especially since Molly's laughing and that's a sight he tucks away as proudly as any really clever scientific insight.

"Wait 'til you see what she does to her nappies," she says, still laughing and enjoying his own participation. Molly registers the way that their appointed titles sort of tie them together even without any further emotional context on their part. No matter what happens, they will be Rosie's godparents. She also decides not to follow that path of thinking too far at this point.

She lays Rosie on her back on her lap and tickles her belly so she can laugh with them. Her smile is her mum's and it's gorgeous. Her little uncoordinated limbs flail about.

"She's been so happy today," Molly says as she smiles down at her and then looks over to Sherlock. "Do you want to hold her?"

It really is uncanny, how much Rosie's smile resembles Mary's already, and for the first time since her death there's more sweetness than bitterness in the resemblance for him. If John is as much of a brother to him as Mycroft (more so, sometimes), then Mary was far more of a sister to him than Eurus ever could have been.

"I think I can risk it," he replies, holding out his arms for her. "Come on, then, tiny Watson. You can gum my shoulder all you like, I've got a change of clothes nearby anyway."

Molly picks up Rosie and hands her carefully to Sherlock. She then transfers the burp cloth from her shoulder to his.

"That should help," she says and then watches him with her for a moment. "I'm going to go wash out the bottle. Be right back."

She gets up and heads for the kitchen.

He watches her go, smiling a little, thoroughly enjoying the sight of a happy Molly. But Rosie's small fingers groping for his face keep him from drifting too deeply into his own thoughts, and he turns a lopsided smile down on her.

"Yes, I know there's research to back up how fascinated you are by the human face," he tells her fondly. "It's the greatest teaching tool you have at this stage of development. You're learning how to imitate human behavior to express yourself. And you know something, it's pretty entertaining to watch."

Molly can hear him talking to Rosie from the kitchen and it fills her with such warmth. She imagines "babysitter" is another one of those roles that Sherlock assumed most of his life he would never embody. Really, it's clear that the man has so much love to give and he's been denying himself the opportunity to give it.

She goes about washing out the bottle and then puts the kettle on for tea before returning to the sitting room just to watch them. Sherlock is holding Rosie up so her feet are pressing into his thighs and still talking to her. A man with a baby, being good with a baby has got to be one of the sexiest things. She knows that feeling is purely evolutionary in nature, but it doesn't change the fact that the sight of Sherlock with Rosie makes her biological clock go into alarm mode.

It won't be too much longer before Rosie will need to go down for her afternoon nap and then soon after that John should be home.

Edited 2017-02-19 16:32 (UTC)

"Oh yes," Sherlock's saying, when she comes back into the sitting room, "very soon, you little snot elemental, you'll know that when I'm hiding behind my hand I haven't actually gone anywhere."

The thing is, she's not wrong about his heart--something in him shut down after Victor, after his sole early start at living a life where his emotions and his genius coexisted was shattered by his sister's betrayal and his brother's misguided attempts to shelter him. He's been holding himself apart from humanity for decades, all the spikes and armor and nasty remarks hiding a little boy's fear that he can trust no one. John's been his first steady connection, his lifeline back to the human part of himself. With someone in his life he trusts, it's easier to let himself be something other than the cold and brilliant Sherlock he's presented to the world for so long.

It's easier to play with this child, to take in not only the microcosm of early human development she represents but the budding hints of her personality and the pleasure of how strongly she resembles two people he cares for.

And it's easier to let himself want someone closer to him than even a dear friend, closer than blood relatives.

"She's--oof--" Sherlock's face does something that would probably be a meme within seconds if Mycroft's cameras were trained on him, as Rosie grabs his nose. "--decided that spitting up on me is less fun than trying to pull my face off."

Molly laughs at Rosie's antics and Sherlock's expression and thinks, not for the first time, that this child will grow up knowing so much love. It won't make up for the lack of her mother, but she hopes, that by their collective power, they can make that hole a little less gaping.

"For now, anyway," she jokes. "She changes her mind quite often about that one."

The kettle whistles and she goes to make their tea, coming back soon with two steaming cups, milk and sugar for him, just milk for herself. She sets his on the coffee table and sits back against the couch with her own cup before taking a sip.

"It's pretty incredible, isn't it? The fact that John and Mary made her. I know all the biology and science behind it, but it just hits me sometimes."

And the idea that a little part of Mary lives on, is always a comfort.

"Yeah," he agrees, studying that little face. He can't be sure, yet, whether she'll look more like John or Mary or simply like herself, but he knows he's looking forward to finding out. And despite how stubbornly he may protest that children merely contribute to an overpopulation problem and so forth, this particular child is extraordinary to him because his two dearest friends created her.

He glances up at Molly, her face warm and open. The smile really does make a huge difference. It's going to be very difficult not to kiss her senseless before John gets back.

"By the way," he hears himself saying, "in the lower pocket on the front of my suitcase. For you."

One of his contacts in Cardiff is a shop owner who specializes in Welsh woolen goods, and on his way out of her shop a very soft shawl caught his eye. It's hand-dyed in rich shades of brown and russet, colours that remind him of her, and though he's rarely seen her wear a shawl somehow it seemed like it would be wrong not to see it on her at least once.

When he looks at her, Molly's own gaze moves from Rosie to Sherlock and somehow she can tell he's thinking about kissing her. She doesn't have time to think on it too much before he's speaking to her and she's blinking in surprise.

"You brought me something?" she asks and she flushes slightly, pleased, even as she protests. "You didn't have to do that."

It's not like he was on holiday. He was off on a case. She's surprised he would take the time.

She finds herself standing to go find out what it is though, heading to his room and then into his suitcase to pull out the butcher paper wrapped package. She brings it back to the couch with her and sits down with it on her lap.

"It's too light to be a body part," she jokes and looks over at him and Rosie.

"Too light to be most body parts," he corrects with a broad wink. "And I know I didn't have to, that's sort of the point."

It's something he's learned from John, and that Mary had a substantial hand in teaching him as well: people like to know that Sherlock thinks of them when they aren't right in front of him. (Well, they like that when anyone does it, but he's a special case because he's an oblivious bastard.) And not only that, but... there's a kind of smug pleasure in anticipating how pleased she'll be. Before Saturday he hadn't seen Molly happy, or at least not the way she is now, and he's the first person who's brought that out in her and that has the same ring of triumph to it as a case well solved.

She huffs out a laugh.

"If you brought me a well-wrapped ear, Sherlock, I'm definitely going to stick with 'you didn't have to,'" she jokes before she starts to unwrap the parcel. Her eyes light up when the shawl is revealed.

"Oh. Oh my. It's beautiful."

She lifts it up and feels how it's also soft and probably so warm. She brings it to her cheek to feel how it will be on her skin.

"Sherlock...it's so lovely and thoughtful. Thank you."

She smiles and leans in to kiss his lips and wonders if John told him to buy her things or if it's all him. Either way, he's actually done it and she's not lying when she says it isn't necessary, but it does please her that he has.

Edited 2017-02-20 00:10 (UTC)

What's the expression? Achievement unlocked? Sherlock's every bit as proud of himself for this as he was when he got her bra unhooked in one go. Thoughtful, he's learned, is a compliment that tells him the way his heart and brain connect on problem-solving is actually working.

And then she kisses him, and that's even better than a compliment. He leans into it, relaxed despite the baby still on his lap, smiling against Molly's lips.

It's actually probably a good thing that Rosie's there to chatter and push at him before he gets too lost in re-learning the taste and feel of Molly's mouth against his own.

"Mm--" He pulls back, adjusting Rosie so she's tucked into the crook of his arm, no longer "standing". "--you're welcome. Thought you'd appreciate that more than the beer John asked me to smuggle back across the border."

"You thought correct," Molly says as she smiles at him and then down at Rosie. She would also be happy to get lost in Sherlock's kisses for a while, but they've got responsibilities at the moment. "Although I might have to steal a sip of said beer to see what I'm missing."

She carefully re-folds the shawl and gets up to go put it with her things so there's no chance of baby drool getting on it.

"It's almost time to put her down again. Do you want to give it a go?"

"Oh! Yes, I actually figured out a trick to it." He grins at her. "She really likes Shakespeare. Puts her out like a light. John gets a bit weird about it when I do the tragedies, but there's plenty of other good solid iambic pentameter to knock her out."

Carefully he gets to his feet, shifting Rosie to his shoulder as he does. "Come on, infant, time to plug you into your crib to recharge."

"That's funny, Shakespeare sometimes does the same to me," she jokes with her own grin but can't help but be endeared by Sherlock's naptime hack.

Molly stands to and slides her hand over Rosie's head before she presses a quick kiss to it.

"Good night, Rosie Posie. Go to sleep well for Uncle Sherlock."