@mel-loves-all shared some good news and I asked her for a prompt to help celebrate. I hope this works for you, my dear! Special thanks to @lilsherlockian1975 for looking it over (and inspiring the title by her comments).
Mel-loves-all: Aww, you’re so lovely to offer. Thank you. I shall take you up on it!! Hmmm, how about: A first kiss in the rain. I am a sucker for a wet Sherlock and first kisses.
TFP dialogue gratefully borrowed from the episode transcription by Ariane DeVere.
The storm breaks while she’s waiting for someone to explain to her just what the hell that phone call was all about. She’s tried calling him back (direct to voicemail), calling John (ditto) and even, in a moment of desperation, calling Mycroft - all to no avail. Mycroft’s unflappable assistant had answered, explaining that Mr. Holmes was currently ‘indisposed’, that she had no idea where Sherlock and John were, and given a few not-so-subtle hints that she had better things to do than talk to Molly Hooper.
Answers of a sort are found when she finally thinks to call Mrs. Hudson. Molly is stunned to learn that Baker Street has been bombed, Mycroft has been hospitalized, and John and Sherlock have run off (presumably to find the bomber). Rosie, according to Sherlock’s rather shaken landlady, is with the Stamford clan, so there’s one worry sorted at least.
Molly’s just had the shittiest of all shitty work days, and none of this is making her feel any better. She’d thought Sherlock’s unsettling call to be the icing on the cake, but everything Mrs. Hudson’s just told her…well, it’s worse than she thought, no two ways about it.
It doesn’t explain the phone call, but if someone’s just blown up Baker Street - and if that someone wasn’t Sherlock himself in a fit of pique - then perhaps it hadn’t been one of his stupid, random games after all.
She tries to put it all behind her, tries to continue her evening routine but soon gives it up for a bad business. Her mind won’t let her rest, but it won’t let her concentrate on anything else except That Call.
She resorts to a glass of wine before bed, after another attempt at reaching someone - anyone - who might be able to explain things. She even considers calling Greg Lestrade, but with nothing more to go on than a disturbing phone call from Sherlock - who was, according to Mrs. Hudson, mostly unharmed after the blast that leveled his flat - she thinks better of the idea.
In the morning. If she doesn’t hear anything by the morning, she’ll call him. Then she puts on her most comfortable pair of pyjamas, gulps down her wine, feeds Toby, and crawls into bed.
Hours later - how many, she’s not sure, as she refuses to look at either her too-silent mobile or the alarm clock on her bedside table - she gives it up as a lost cause. The rain is coming down in earnest now, usually a soothing sound, but now it grates on her nerves. She swings her legs over the side of the bed and shuffles into the kitchen. Maybe she’ll actually be able to drink a cup of tea if she makes one now.
She hugs her arms to herself as she roams her kitchen, waiting for the electric kettle to boil, fretting over the meaning of That Call in the context of the new information she’d received from Mrs. Hudson. She replays both sides of that puzzling, upsetting conversation with Sherlock as best she can, but keeps coming back to the almost manic tone with which he was speaking at times.
Molly, I just want you to do something very easy for me, and not ask why.
Molly, no, please, no, don’t hang up! Do not hang up!
You’re my friend, we’re friends.
She’d thought stupid game during the call; she’d thought back on drugs oh Sherlock please no after he’d hung up (or they’d been disconnected?) and now…now she doesn’t know what to think.
Molly, please, without asking why, just say these words.
You say it. Go on. You say it first. Say it like you mean it.
What the hell does it all mean?
Lightning flashes, thunder rolls, and the sound of squealing tires outside her front door all interrupt her roiling thoughts. She startles, turns toward her front door, takes a single step and stops.
She knows it’s not just a passing motorist even before she hears the pounding at her door, the desperation in his voice as he shouts her name. “Molly! Molly, please, let me in!”
She unsticks her feet after a long moment, moves toward the door with dread in her heart but a curious calm in her mind. Her thoughts haven’t just settled, they’ve actually stopped, as if someone hit the pause button on a DVD player. She’s moving on auto-pilot, heading for some kind of avoidable collision with the man she’s finally confessed her feelings to. All she has to do is tell him to go away, leave her alone, let her try to sort herself out before he pushes himself back into the center of her universe, but she can’t.
He’s there, leaning on the doorframe, one hand lifted as if to pound on the cheerful yellow painted wood. Their eyes meet, and he steps back into the downpour that’s already drenched his curls and soaked his coat. Lowers his hand.
Straightens up and lets her look her fill.
She’s no deductive genius but she knows the signs of strain - sees the lines around his eyes, the tightness of his lips, the tension in his form. She makes an inadvertent noise when she sees that his knuckles are bandaged; he silently offers them to her when she makes an abortive move to reach for them. “What happened?” she finally asks, looking up once again to meet his gaze.
“I smashed the coffin she made for you.”
Molly stares at him blankly; his words make no sense. “What coffin? Who’s ‘she’?”
“My sister, the one I forgot - deleted,” he corrects himself. “She said there were explosives in your flat. There aren’t, but she said - and you had to say the words. So I made you. I’m sorry. It’s now how it should have happened.”
He’s still not making much sense, and refuses when she tries to pull him into her flat. “Sherlock, you’re soaking wet, you’ve been injured and you’re not making any sense. Come inside.”
He shakes his head, his eyes wild and hands shaking as he pulls them out of her gentle grasp. “I can’t. Not after I…I know you hate me right now and I don’t blame you. I should have called as soon as Lestrade came but I wanted to tell you to your face.” His expression intensifies, sharpens, and Molly catches her breath, one hand to her chest as he repeats the words he said to her earlier. “You’re not an experiment. You’re my friend, we’re friends - at least we were, if Eurus…if I haven’t ruined that. That’s the truth, even if it’s not plain and simple, and it was also true when I said it.”
She shakes her head, takes a step back, but he pins her with his gaze as he says softly, “I love you, Molly. I said it like I meant it, just like you asked - demanded - that I do. And the only reason I could do that was because I did mean it. I love you.”
He lets out a shuddering sigh; lighting flashes, illuminating the sharp planes and angles of his face, the vulnerable curve of his lips, the naked truth in his quicksilver eyes. “That’s all. I just needed to tell you that I wasn’t lying, and that I’m sorry, and…”
She can’t stand it a moment longer; with a small cry she rushes into his arms, uncaring of the downpour that now soaks her to the bone. She wraps her arms around his neck, tugging him down, looking up at him as he stares down at her in alarm and confusion - but his arms are holding her close and he’s waiting patiently for her to do or say something. “You meant it,” she breathes, studying his face as intently as she’d ever studied a slide under a microscope.
“I did,” he says quietly. His hands slide up her back. “I do. I love you, Molly Hooper.”
“Good,” she says, and pulls him down for a gentle kiss.
Gentleness quickly gives way to urgency; his fingers dig into her shoulders, the back of her head; she tugs at his sopping wet curls and presses herself closer to him and he kisses her with a fierce desperation that matches her own. When the kiss ends he presses his forehead against hers, breathing heavily. His eyes close and she can see how exhausted he is. “Come inside, Sherlock,” she says, and this time he nods. Wraps his arm around her shoulder. Allows her to bring him inside as the rain slows and the storm finally passes.
Inside there is tea and warmth and the serenity of knowing that two wounded hearts are finally on the mend.
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