When the kiss ends, she leans away so she's just looking at him nose to nose, her head sharing his pillow (that's is really hers since they're in her bed). A small smile plays at her lips. He's not disappeared far into his own head since they started this, something she didn't quite expect. She thought he would need more to process all of these changes and new information so far outside of his comfort zone. She expected more trips to his mind palace, more space needed between them. All of it is surprising. But she expects at some point this could get overwhelming and he'll retreat a little but she's prepared for that. Or at least she thinks she is.
For now, she'll just keep letting him surprise her.
Though he won't know or acknowledge it for several years yet, in a way Eurus has sort of given him a gift. The cleanup and rebuilding effort ensures he has to spend time away from Molly, which gives him an opportunity to be alone with his thoughts but not so deeply that he starts leaning towards self-destructive behavior. There will be moments, going forward, when he has to back off and process just how far they've come and how he's begun, in small ways, to become more like the man his younger self might have been if his sister had never murdered his best friend.
But as terrifying and strange as all of this is, he's with someone he trusts absolutely.
He smiles back at her, contentment warming him with every breath.
And then his body, which has had a run of good luck lately with getting its various needs met for once, decides to assert itself yet again. His stomach growls loudly into the intimate quiet between them.
Which is so ridiculous he can't keep himself from giggling.
Molly huffs out a surprised noise before she also starts to laugh with him. Add that to the list of new things about Sherlock - his stomach does actually make noise when he's hungry, like a normal person.
"Sounds like I should let you out the bed to feed you," she jokes. Molly is hungry too but not yet quite that hungry. "If I must."
She leans in to press her lips to his one last time.
"More than," he says fondly, still laughing, "as I'm sort of a crap cook."
Sure, cooking is chemistry and he's great at chemistry, but he's also fairly easily distracted and driven to experiment in a way that's innovative for science and possibly disastrous for meals. Not that he couldn't bang out something impressive if the circumstances called for it, because he's a showy bastard, but most of the time he doesn't really bother.
He starts to sit up, running a hand through his rumpled hair and stretching unselfconsciously like a pleased cat.
"Remind me to show you where the good crepe trucks are sometime. There's one that's round Bart's every Thursday, but most of the staff don't seem to know about it, which is a shame."
Molly is surprised that Sherlock even knows what kind of cook he might be, since the only thing she's ever seen in his kitchen are science experiments and drugs paraphernalia. She'll leave that second one in the back of her mind where it belongs when they're having such a lovely morning.
She can't help but watch him stretching and preening a bit. Although, she only gives herself a moment, for fear they will never eat anything but each other again.
"Mm, I love crepes," she says as she stretches herself and then sits up. "I could make those instead. They're easy enough. I'm thinking I might want to shower first though. Between last night and this morning, I'm more than due."
So is he. Not that his scent is bothering her. She's been around when he's smelled far worse.
He grins at her. A brief break will give him time to wake up a little more, to make them both some coffee (and possibly remind himself where Toby's food is so a hungry cat doesn't shred his Belstaff in revenge for being forgotten about) and make sure there hasn't been any sort of emergency with Rosie. He's a bit more protective of that little girl than he's willing to let on.
He hasn't bothered to bring pajamas with him, so he slings one of the sheets around himself casually. If she complains, he figures, he can always offer to do the laundry or just take the sheet off again.
"Alright," she says and kisses him before getting off the bed and pulling on her dressing gown. "Don't get too hungry and burn the place down. My security deposit on this place is a fortune."
She smiles at him and finds the toga he's making out of her sheet amusing.
"And don't light yourself on fire either."
She puts her feet in her slippers and then makes her way out to the bathroom to shower. She'll be sad to wash him off her skin, but it'll just give her an excuse to wrap herself around him again later. As with the last time, she's not sure what his plans are for the day, when he plans on heading back to John's. She's not going to worry about it though and just let the day unfold however it does. Thursday it'll be back to work again and she has an overnight shift on the weekend, so she doesn't know when she'll see him again after today (unless he has to come into Bart's for something).
"Thanks for letting me know your priorities are in order," he calls after her, still grinning.
For a second after she's shut the bathroom door, he lets himself breathe in the scent that lingers after her, of warm skin and sex. Even though they're not touching, it's still a form of contact, of bringing her in close to him. Which is a bit disorienting but also quite pleasant, and which he decides he likes quite a bit.
He also decides he'll nick a pillowcase before he leaves. Her work schedule after today won't leave them much time to be alone together for a few days--days he can spend on case work and in his mind palace--and while he knows there's a distinct pleasure in reunions, he also doesn't have as many reminders of her in his own space as he'd like. Particularly not since the explosion at 221B.
After a properly lazy moment, though, he slings himself out of bed and pads into the kitchen. Toby makes his way in from the living room, well aware that movement means food. And Sherlock, not wanting any interruptions any time soon, finds Toby's canned food and the treats Molly's stashed in the same cabinet.
It doesn't even occur to him yet to check his mobile or go look for a newspaper or anything. He's content to observe--to really take in, for the first time, in this wonderfully new context--what kinds of things Molly fills her space with, what sorts of books she has and which ones she obviously likes best.
Her laugh echoes down the hallway before she disappears into the bathroom.
The shower she takes is quick. She doesn't want to be away from him for long. It's so silly and not something she'd necessarily say to him, but it's how she feels right now. She wraps herself back in her robe before she pads back to the bedroom to dress. It's when she spots his dress shirt from the night before, flung over her chair that she remembers her thought when she first saw him in it. She smiles and goes to retrieve it.
When she returns to find what he's up to in the kitchen, she is wearing his purple shirt, a fresh pair of knickers and her slippers. The shirt feels and smells divine. He'll be lucky to get it back ever.
"I smell coffee," she practically purrs. Speaking of, she sees Toby eating from his bowl happily and she smiles. Well done, Sherlock.
It's hardly the dress-and-heels combination that knocked him speechless the night before, but Sherlock finds himself mesmerized for a moment by the sight of Molly in his shirt. Yes, Janine liked wearing his shirts too, but that was always just sort of inconvenient. On Molly it's legitimately sexy.
Though, again, maybe that's just the importance of context asserting itself.
Either way, he likes the look.
"I see you kept the skeleton mug," he says, a bit cheekily. "And now I'd better shower, because I did tell you I wanted to have intercourse after breakfast and that will never get done if you and I share the room for more than another two and a half minutes at the most."
Molly goes about the kitchen like she's not wearing his shirt and he's not staring so openly at her.
"Well, someone was supposed to return it," she points out as she takes said mug full of coffee from him. She can hardly blame him from being distracted from the task though. "And I can't exactly waltz in there with it with no good explanation of why I even have it since I can't exactly say that you broke in to make me a latte and forgot to put it back."
Plus, she does love the mug and it's a very nice little reminder of how this all started.
She smiles as he implies that her getup is serving its purpose well.
"Go shower. As soon as you smell crepes cooking your priorities might change."
As she turns away from him he kisses her temple, just a quick press of lips against her damp hair. He may never quite get used to the fact that he wants to touch her more than he's ever wanted physical contact with any other single person--and that having her physically close, while it may be distracting, is pleasant. It doesn't feel invasive, the way it usually does. (John's seen him flinch from a stranger touching him without warning, a handful of times.) And there's always some familiar sensory input nearby, calming him, helping soften the sometimes-overwhelming rush of stimulus that can come at him while he's trying to find a focus on something.
Yeah, he's definitely nicking a pillowcase. Or maybe this sheet.
He takes a quick detour before the shower, though, to hang up his Belstaff and her own coat--both utterly forgotten the night before--and grab his overnight bag from the hallway.
Again the shower feels like the best part of a very mellow high. A bit like one of the better strains of cannabis he'd tried in university, really: his skin is warm and tingling, details feel vivid without being too sharp or coming at him too quickly, and an easy smile tilts his mouth. There's none of the sluggishness or confusion of weed, though, even if he is ravenously hungry.
(He is momentarily a bit distracted by the detachable shower head, now that he knows what Molly does with it besides washing her hair, but... actually there might still be time to redo his bathroom at 221B so it's got more space for sex. He'll save that thought for later.)
Once he's toweled off and dressed he practically swaggers back into the kitchen, barefoot and still a bit rumpled but looking as if he's about to explain to everyone exactly how he knows the murder weapon they're looking for is a toffee hammer.
The flat is rapidly filling with the delicious scent of cooking crepes. His mouth waters, and for a second it's hard to tell whether that's over Molly in his shirt or the smell of what's shaping up to be a good breakfast.
The quick kiss Sherlock gives her before retreating to the bathroom means maybe more than any of their more heated and pointed kisses they've shared since Saturday. The fact that it's so unnecessary is what strikes her. He just kissed her for really no reason at all except that he must have felt like it. It's a very intimate gesture in its way. It speaks of a certain comfort level and that makes Molly very pleased.
So pleased that she doesn't stop humming to herself the whole time she's preparing the batter for crepes and frying up the sausage to go with them. By the time Sherlock re-enters the kitchen, she has a stack staying warm on a plate in the oven while she finishes up the last batch. She's also put out various crepe adornments on the table - butter, cinnamon and sugar, a jar of nutella, bananas, strawberries she had in the freezer, cream cheese and marmite.
She looks over to see him enter looking clean and shiny, hair wet and tousled, slightly rumpled button down uncharacteristically untucked from his trousers. It's unfair how goddam sexy his is all the time and without really trying.
"Good shower?" she asks with a smile before she focuses back on flipping the current crepe before it burns. It looks like he just got knighted during the shower the way he's sauntering in.
Speaking of, his attention turns to the spread she's laid out. He's been at her flat enough times to deduce that she's a competent cook, but actually seeing her skills in action is very different from something he can figure out secondhand.
Distantly he remembers a question he asked John not long after they'd first met. "Is that what girlfriends do--feed you up?"
Apparently the answer is yes, but if you're ridiculously lucky you get one who's got the keenest eye in the morgue, is some kind of secret sex genius, and will go to the ballet with you. So he'll take the trade-off.
"Nutella and strawberries?" He strides over to the fridge. "If you've got a lime here somewhere you'll never be rid of me. Our grandmother used to do lime juice and sugar on ours. Never did figure out where she got the idea."
"Good," she says as she flips the final crepe onto a small stack. Molly thinks Sherlock could use some extensive "feeding-up" so he'll just have to deal with it.
She bends to pull the larger stack of crepes out of the oven and combines them all together before bringing the plate over to the table.
"Oh! I did mean to put out a lemon to go with the cinnamon and sugar," she says. "I didn't think of limes but there should be one in there."
(Molly enjoys a gin and tonic after work every now and again.)
"I've never had lime juice on a crepe before."
She returns to the stove and puts the sausage on a plate and brings that over as well before she refills both their coffee mugs and surveys everything before she decides she can take a seat.
"Try it, then. Not, you know, by itself, but with the sugar it's excellent--aha, there it is." He snags the lime off one of the shelves, then strolls over to find a knife to cut it into slices and sit beside her. "I remember she made them at Christmas. Granny Helen lived through the worst of rationing during the war, and it made her a bit mad for fruit once it was available again."
Giving in to the whole being-fed concept, for now, he snags two crepes. One he loads with the nutella and strawberries, the other gets sugar and a slice of lime squeezed over it. And then he grabs some sausage too, because an increased protein intake seems like a good idea in light of all the recent and imminent sex.
"Well done, by the way. That was, what, less than twenty minutes from start to finish?"
"I will," she says with a smile and finds she likes listening to him talk about his grandmother. She realizes she doesn't know much about his family. She knows his mum and dad come to visit some and of course there's Mycroft and this new sister, but she doesn't really know anything about them. Although, it's probably a bit early to ask him to start talking about his family, given last week's debacle.
Molly takes two crepes for herself and gives one the sugar and lime treatment, the other gets nutella and banana. She'll save the sausage for if she's still hungry or just needs some salty to balance out all the sweet.
"Thanks. I've had some practice. Crepes were one of Tom's favourites..."
It's out of her mouth before she can stop herself and she just freezes. Tom hasn't been a topic of conversation in quite some time and not that it's a topic they should necessarily avoid forever (he had been a big part of her life there for a couple years), but it's terrible etiquette to be talking about her ex at the breakfast table.
He's actually thinking along the same lines--that he knows and can deduce a certain amount about her father, and at least a few certain basic facts about other family relationships, but he'd like to know more--and then she drops Tom's name casually, and he goes still in the middle of licking nutella off his fork.
The memory of that day he'd spent solving crimes with her is still a bittersweet one. He'd been first debating and then planning it for a few weeks before he'd gotten back from exile, imagining it with only slightly less enthusiasm than he envisioned meeting up with John again. Except then he'd seen the ring, and known that this had to be a friendly goodbye instead of... anything else.
Sherlock isn't sure if he'll ever be comfortable enough with this huge and complex tangle of emotions to tell her that he considers last night their second date.
Or that he'd thought at John's wedding that maybe he'd stay afterwards and ask Molly to dance, once he'd seen her stab Tom with that fork.
"Sorry," she says when he looks uncomfortable at the mention of Tom's name. She blushes a bit in embarrassment. "I mean...sort of. I guess. Sorry that I brought him up right now. But...he was my...boyfriend for...a while, so he's probably going to come up. Occasionally."
It's just a fact that she was engaged to the man. She can't change that, just like she can't change having dated Jim or the other blokes she'd dated before that. They were all part of her history and who she is. Sherlock is her present and (she hopes) her future.
It's really mostly weird because he's met the man face to face, has at least some idea of what he must be like (at least from what Sherlock could deduce at the time and what he's reasonably sure Molly will and won't put up with), and because Tom is the only person he's ever been jealous of in this specific way. He's not sure how to deal with that, and he's not sure how to articulate any of it because he's never learned to negotiate being in love with someone.
Sherlock's brain is, for once, fairly useless in this situation. So, as hesitantly as that first time on Saturday morning, he allows his untested heart to do what it wants.
He leans over and kisses one of her red cheeks.
"The awkward leading the awkward, I suppose," he manages quietly, which sounds far more lame once he's said it aloud than it did in the half-second it took for it to bubble up through him, but which he hopes she understands.
The kiss to her cheek is an utter surprise. She brings up her ex and he's kissing her for it. Will he ever stop surprising her?
She huffs out a small laugh at his all too true statement.
"It really is," she agrees and catches his hand with hers, giving it a squeeze to show she does understand and to thank him for understanding too.
"Tom will always be my ex-fiance, but what I felt for him...it wasn't this."
She's not sure what makes her want to reassure him. It's probably unnecessary because she's here with him and Tom is...wherever Tom is. She doesn't really care actually. But she just wants Sherlock to know.
He can't keep the relief off his face when she takes his hand. It's startling and comforting, every time, when Molly intuits something he can't put into words himself. This is another thing, he thinks, that he's never understood about love until now--it's a colossal risk, but if you're lucky it comes with its own safety net.
And not only is the odd tightness in his chest eased by the contact and her quiet words, but the intellectual part of him lights up again with admiration. In a way, Molly's been deducing him this whole time, using the cues he gives as a way to figure out the best path forward and letting him read that she's sincere about it.
"I know," he says. (Some brief electrical connection between his heart and his brain files away part of what she says and turns it into a promise: Tom will always be her ex.)
Molly can see that relief in him, can feel the way his body relaxes again and it hits her then that it's her, it's her touch that does that to him. It's really quite an extraordinary power, she thinks. To her it's a natural thing, to reach out and offer comfort, but she knows it's not something that Sherlock has always been willing to receive. It's just another one of those little changes that are really great big ones.
She huffs out a laugh at his statement.
"Well, if you ever bump into him, you can thank him," she jokes and then realizes that Sherlock would in fact probably do that. "But don't really do that."
Talk about awkward. And she doesn't need to hurt Tom anymore than she already had.
Then why--oh. Oh, she's joking. His face warms with a smile, more out of pure fondness for her and her brand of social clumsiness than out of actual amusement.
"Wasn't planning on it," he says, leaning against her a bit. And though he still feels just the slightest bit startled by what's just happened--an unexpected emotional hiccup catching him off-guard--she's still keeping him steady. Even when they both stumble, he's no longer quite so afraid that a stumble will turn into a headlong pitch downhill.
And, as a sort of gesture of goodwill--the kind of thing only a few people can ever coax out of Sherlock--he picks up his fork again with the hand not holding Molly's, and forks himself up another bite of the nutella-and-strawberries crepe he was partway through.
Molly smiles back in return, immediately feeling better.
"Well, one never knows what will come out your mouth," she teases. "Not that I plan on running into him.
But she did meet him through friends so their social circles do overlap a bit. It's not out of the realm of possibility down the line.
Molly is pleased to see him start eating again. Always a good sign that someone is alright - food intake. She goes back to her own breakfast when her cell phone chirps with a text message. Looking around, she realizes she has no idea where it is. It's only when it goes off a second time that she spots her clutch on the floor of the living room.
"Excuse me," she says as she lets go of his hand and goes to check the phone. What she sees first is a message from Mina that has a lot of exclamation points and question marks and not many words.
SHERLOCK HOLMES?!?!?!?!?!?!
Molly is confused at how Mina could have found out already. She hasn't told anyone and Mina doesn't know John and she certainly doesn't know Mycroft.
Then she sees the text message and photo from her co-worker that came in in the middle of the night and she groans.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zvi
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Date: 2017-03-05 06:12 am (UTC)For now, she'll just keep letting him surprise her.
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Date: 2017-03-05 06:08 pm (UTC)But as terrifying and strange as all of this is, he's with someone he trusts absolutely.
He smiles back at her, contentment warming him with every breath.
And then his body, which has had a run of good luck lately with getting its various needs met for once, decides to assert itself yet again. His stomach growls loudly into the intimate quiet between them.
Which is so ridiculous he can't keep himself from giggling.
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Date: 2017-03-05 10:17 pm (UTC)"Sounds like I should let you out the bed to feed you," she jokes. Molly is hungry too but not yet quite that hungry. "If I must."
She leans in to press her lips to his one last time.
"I hope eggs and sausage are alright."
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Date: 2017-03-06 01:46 am (UTC)Sure, cooking is chemistry and he's great at chemistry, but he's also fairly easily distracted and driven to experiment in a way that's innovative for science and possibly disastrous for meals. Not that he couldn't bang out something impressive if the circumstances called for it, because he's a showy bastard, but most of the time he doesn't really bother.
He starts to sit up, running a hand through his rumpled hair and stretching unselfconsciously like a pleased cat.
"Remind me to show you where the good crepe trucks are sometime. There's one that's round Bart's every Thursday, but most of the staff don't seem to know about it, which is a shame."
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Date: 2017-03-06 01:58 am (UTC)She can't help but watch him stretching and preening a bit. Although, she only gives herself a moment, for fear they will never eat anything but each other again.
"Mm, I love crepes," she says as she stretches herself and then sits up. "I could make those instead. They're easy enough. I'm thinking I might want to shower first though. Between last night and this morning, I'm more than due."
So is he. Not that his scent is bothering her. She's been around when he's smelled far worse.
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Date: 2017-03-06 02:24 am (UTC)He grins at her. A brief break will give him time to wake up a little more, to make them both some coffee (and possibly remind himself where Toby's food is so a hungry cat doesn't shred his Belstaff in revenge for being forgotten about) and make sure there hasn't been any sort of emergency with Rosie. He's a bit more protective of that little girl than he's willing to let on.
He hasn't bothered to bring pajamas with him, so he slings one of the sheets around himself casually. If she complains, he figures, he can always offer to do the laundry or just take the sheet off again.
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Date: 2017-03-06 02:32 am (UTC)She smiles at him and finds the toga he's making out of her sheet amusing.
"And don't light yourself on fire either."
She puts her feet in her slippers and then makes her way out to the bathroom to shower. She'll be sad to wash him off her skin, but it'll just give her an excuse to wrap herself around him again later. As with the last time, she's not sure what his plans are for the day, when he plans on heading back to John's. She's not going to worry about it though and just let the day unfold however it does. Thursday it'll be back to work again and she has an overnight shift on the weekend, so she doesn't know when she'll see him again after today (unless he has to come into Bart's for something).
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Date: 2017-03-06 02:45 am (UTC)For a second after she's shut the bathroom door, he lets himself breathe in the scent that lingers after her, of warm skin and sex. Even though they're not touching, it's still a form of contact, of bringing her in close to him. Which is a bit disorienting but also quite pleasant, and which he decides he likes quite a bit.
He also decides he'll nick a pillowcase before he leaves. Her work schedule after today won't leave them much time to be alone together for a few days--days he can spend on case work and in his mind palace--and while he knows there's a distinct pleasure in reunions, he also doesn't have as many reminders of her in his own space as he'd like. Particularly not since the explosion at 221B.
After a properly lazy moment, though, he slings himself out of bed and pads into the kitchen. Toby makes his way in from the living room, well aware that movement means food. And Sherlock, not wanting any interruptions any time soon, finds Toby's canned food and the treats Molly's stashed in the same cabinet.
It doesn't even occur to him yet to check his mobile or go look for a newspaper or anything. He's content to observe--to really take in, for the first time, in this wonderfully new context--what kinds of things Molly fills her space with, what sorts of books she has and which ones she obviously likes best.
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Date: 2017-03-06 03:20 am (UTC)The shower she takes is quick. She doesn't want to be away from him for long. It's so silly and not something she'd necessarily say to him, but it's how she feels right now. She wraps herself back in her robe before she pads back to the bedroom to dress. It's when she spots his dress shirt from the night before, flung over her chair that she remembers her thought when she first saw him in it. She smiles and goes to retrieve it.
When she returns to find what he's up to in the kitchen, she is wearing his purple shirt, a fresh pair of knickers and her slippers. The shirt feels and smells divine. He'll be lucky to get it back ever.
"I smell coffee," she practically purrs. Speaking of, she sees Toby eating from his bowl happily and she smiles. Well done, Sherlock.
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Date: 2017-03-06 03:38 am (UTC)Though, again, maybe that's just the importance of context asserting itself.
Either way, he likes the look.
"I see you kept the skeleton mug," he says, a bit cheekily. "And now I'd better shower, because I did tell you I wanted to have intercourse after breakfast and that will never get done if you and I share the room for more than another two and a half minutes at the most."
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Date: 2017-03-06 03:48 am (UTC)"Well, someone was supposed to return it," she points out as she takes said mug full of coffee from him. She can hardly blame him from being distracted from the task though. "And I can't exactly waltz in there with it with no good explanation of why I even have it since I can't exactly say that you broke in to make me a latte and forgot to put it back."
Plus, she does love the mug and it's a very nice little reminder of how this all started.
She smiles as he implies that her getup is serving its purpose well.
"Go shower. As soon as you smell crepes cooking your priorities might change."
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Date: 2017-03-06 11:10 pm (UTC)As she turns away from him he kisses her temple, just a quick press of lips against her damp hair. He may never quite get used to the fact that he wants to touch her more than he's ever wanted physical contact with any other single person--and that having her physically close, while it may be distracting, is pleasant. It doesn't feel invasive, the way it usually does. (John's seen him flinch from a stranger touching him without warning, a handful of times.) And there's always some familiar sensory input nearby, calming him, helping soften the sometimes-overwhelming rush of stimulus that can come at him while he's trying to find a focus on something.
Yeah, he's definitely nicking a pillowcase. Or maybe this sheet.
He takes a quick detour before the shower, though, to hang up his Belstaff and her own coat--both utterly forgotten the night before--and grab his overnight bag from the hallway.
Again the shower feels like the best part of a very mellow high. A bit like one of the better strains of cannabis he'd tried in university, really: his skin is warm and tingling, details feel vivid without being too sharp or coming at him too quickly, and an easy smile tilts his mouth. There's none of the sluggishness or confusion of weed, though, even if he is ravenously hungry.
(He is momentarily a bit distracted by the detachable shower head, now that he knows what Molly does with it besides washing her hair, but... actually there might still be time to redo his bathroom at 221B so it's got more space for sex. He'll save that thought for later.)
Once he's toweled off and dressed he practically swaggers back into the kitchen, barefoot and still a bit rumpled but looking as if he's about to explain to everyone exactly how he knows the murder weapon they're looking for is a toffee hammer.
The flat is rapidly filling with the delicious scent of cooking crepes. His mouth waters, and for a second it's hard to tell whether that's over Molly in his shirt or the smell of what's shaping up to be a good breakfast.
Ha! I love Drunk History! I didn't know there was a UK version.
Date: 2017-03-07 12:47 am (UTC)So pleased that she doesn't stop humming to herself the whole time she's preparing the batter for crepes and frying up the sausage to go with them. By the time Sherlock re-enters the kitchen, she has a stack staying warm on a plate in the oven while she finishes up the last batch. She's also put out various crepe adornments on the table - butter, cinnamon and sugar, a jar of nutella, bananas, strawberries she had in the freezer, cream cheese and marmite.
She looks over to see him enter looking clean and shiny, hair wet and tousled, slightly rumpled button down uncharacteristically untucked from his trousers. It's unfair how goddam sexy his is all the time and without really trying.
"Good shower?" she asks with a smile before she focuses back on flipping the current crepe before it burns. It looks like he just got knighted during the shower the way he's sauntering in.
It's glorious. XD Anthony Head is Lord Nelson in one of the eps, it's GREAT
Date: 2017-03-07 01:43 am (UTC)Speaking of, his attention turns to the spread she's laid out. He's been at her flat enough times to deduce that she's a competent cook, but actually seeing her skills in action is very different from something he can figure out secondhand.
Distantly he remembers a question he asked John not long after they'd first met. "Is that what girlfriends do--feed you up?"
Apparently the answer is yes, but if you're ridiculously lucky you get one who's got the keenest eye in the morgue, is some kind of secret sex genius, and will go to the ballet with you. So he'll take the trade-off.
"Nutella and strawberries?" He strides over to the fridge. "If you've got a lime here somewhere you'll never be rid of me. Our grandmother used to do lime juice and sugar on ours. Never did figure out where she got the idea."
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Date: 2017-03-07 02:14 am (UTC)She bends to pull the larger stack of crepes out of the oven and combines them all together before bringing the plate over to the table.
"Oh! I did mean to put out a lemon to go with the cinnamon and sugar," she says. "I didn't think of limes but there should be one in there."
(Molly enjoys a gin and tonic after work every now and again.)
"I've never had lime juice on a crepe before."
She returns to the stove and puts the sausage on a plate and brings that over as well before she refills both their coffee mugs and surveys everything before she decides she can take a seat.
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Date: 2017-03-07 02:38 am (UTC)Giving in to the whole being-fed concept, for now, he snags two crepes. One he loads with the nutella and strawberries, the other gets sugar and a slice of lime squeezed over it. And then he grabs some sausage too, because an increased protein intake seems like a good idea in light of all the recent and imminent sex.
"Well done, by the way. That was, what, less than twenty minutes from start to finish?"
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Date: 2017-03-07 02:48 am (UTC)Molly takes two crepes for herself and gives one the sugar and lime treatment, the other gets nutella and banana. She'll save the sausage for if she's still hungry or just needs some salty to balance out all the sweet.
"Thanks. I've had some practice. Crepes were one of Tom's favourites..."
It's out of her mouth before she can stop herself and she just freezes. Tom hasn't been a topic of conversation in quite some time and not that it's a topic they should necessarily avoid forever (he had been a big part of her life there for a couple years), but it's terrible etiquette to be talking about her ex at the breakfast table.
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Date: 2017-03-07 11:23 pm (UTC)The memory of that day he'd spent solving crimes with her is still a bittersweet one. He'd been first debating and then planning it for a few weeks before he'd gotten back from exile, imagining it with only slightly less enthusiasm than he envisioned meeting up with John again. Except then he'd seen the ring, and known that this had to be a friendly goodbye instead of... anything else.
Sherlock isn't sure if he'll ever be comfortable enough with this huge and complex tangle of emotions to tell her that he considers last night their second date.
Or that he'd thought at John's wedding that maybe he'd stay afterwards and ask Molly to dance, once he'd seen her stab Tom with that fork.
"Ah," he says, awkwardly.
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Date: 2017-03-08 01:21 am (UTC)It's just a fact that she was engaged to the man. She can't change that, just like she can't change having dated Jim or the other blokes she'd dated before that. They were all part of her history and who she is. Sherlock is her present and (she hopes) her future.
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Date: 2017-03-08 02:03 am (UTC)Sherlock's brain is, for once, fairly useless in this situation. So, as hesitantly as that first time on Saturday morning, he allows his untested heart to do what it wants.
He leans over and kisses one of her red cheeks.
"The awkward leading the awkward, I suppose," he manages quietly, which sounds far more lame once he's said it aloud than it did in the half-second it took for it to bubble up through him, but which he hopes she understands.
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Date: 2017-03-08 02:16 am (UTC)She huffs out a small laugh at his all too true statement.
"It really is," she agrees and catches his hand with hers, giving it a squeeze to show she does understand and to thank him for understanding too.
"Tom will always be my ex-fiance, but what I felt for him...it wasn't this."
She's not sure what makes her want to reassure him. It's probably unnecessary because she's here with him and Tom is...wherever Tom is. She doesn't really care actually. But she just wants Sherlock to know.
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Date: 2017-03-08 03:23 am (UTC)And not only is the odd tightness in his chest eased by the contact and her quiet words, but the intellectual part of him lights up again with admiration. In a way, Molly's been deducing him this whole time, using the cues he gives as a way to figure out the best path forward and letting him read that she's sincere about it.
"I know," he says. (Some brief electrical connection between his heart and his brain files away part of what she says and turns it into a promise: Tom will always be her ex.)
"And--to be fair, the practice did pay off."
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Date: 2017-03-08 03:45 am (UTC)She huffs out a laugh at his statement.
"Well, if you ever bump into him, you can thank him," she jokes and then realizes that Sherlock would in fact probably do that. "But don't really do that."
Talk about awkward. And she doesn't need to hurt Tom anymore than she already had.
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Date: 2017-03-08 11:27 pm (UTC)"Wasn't planning on it," he says, leaning against her a bit. And though he still feels just the slightest bit startled by what's just happened--an unexpected emotional hiccup catching him off-guard--she's still keeping him steady. Even when they both stumble, he's no longer quite so afraid that a stumble will turn into a headlong pitch downhill.
And, as a sort of gesture of goodwill--the kind of thing only a few people can ever coax out of Sherlock--he picks up his fork again with the hand not holding Molly's, and forks himself up another bite of the nutella-and-strawberries crepe he was partway through.
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Date: 2017-03-09 12:17 am (UTC)"Well, one never knows what will come out your mouth," she teases. "Not that I plan on running into him.
But she did meet him through friends so their social circles do overlap a bit. It's not out of the realm of possibility down the line.
Molly is pleased to see him start eating again. Always a good sign that someone is alright - food intake. She goes back to her own breakfast when her cell phone chirps with a text message. Looking around, she realizes she has no idea where it is. It's only when it goes off a second time that she spots her clutch on the floor of the living room.
"Excuse me," she says as she lets go of his hand and goes to check the phone. What she sees first is a message from Mina that has a lot of exclamation points and question marks and not many words.
SHERLOCK HOLMES?!?!?!?!?!?!
Molly is confused at how Mina could have found out already. She hasn't told anyone and Mina doesn't know John and she certainly doesn't know Mycroft.
Then she sees the text message and photo from her co-worker that came in in the middle of the night and she groans.
"Bollocks."
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From:back from vacation~! <3
From:\o/ I hope you had a great time!
From:omg it was amazing. *_* and hopefully snow day from work tomorrow...
From:Awesome! And I already have a snow day. :D
From:UPDATE SNOW DAYS ARE THE BEST
From:THEY ARE.
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