#theleftpill

He glanced up and she was smiling that little dimply, impish smile of hers.  She was trying to murder him; cause of death—ironically unrequited love and cuteness.

"I'm telling you, the new techs they send in just keep getting worse.  I don't know where they're getting them, but..."  A pause while Meena said something that made Molly's lips twist into a half-smile, half grimace.  "Oh, he was a dope, but at least he's not a creep.  This new one, Gaz—yeah, I know, right?—spent his entire first day staring at my tits like he was trying to make eye contact with them to assert his dominance or something."

He's not going to last long, Sherlock thought darkly.  His eyes drifted to her chest, her bra-less breasts wobbling  rather enticingly under her t-shirt.  Molly would find a way to take care of it, she always did, but if she didn't, he could arrange for 'Gaz' to accidentally fall down some stairs or something else equally violent and debilitating.  One of the many perks of associating with the criminal classes.

Molly snapped her fingers in front of her chest to get his attention, then pointed rather pointedly to her eyes while pursing her lips.  They're up here.

Shit. She'd caught him looking.  And rather than being flustered or flattered or—best-case—ready to throw the phone down and whip her t-shirt over her head to let him have a go at them, she just looked annoyed.

She laughed at something Meena said and went back to tidying the worktop.

*

"Ugh, my ear feels like it's going to fall off," she said, flopping down next to him on the sofa.  It was a Herculean effort not to watch her breasts bounce as she did it; now that she knew he looked and she wasn't happy about it, it was all he wanted to do.  Well, more than he normally did, which, to be fair, was a significant amount of time anyway.

He looked at her ear, instead, which was quite red from where it had been pressed to the phone for the last hour and change.

"Now you know why I don't like lengthy phone conversations."

"You don't like any phone conversations," she contradicted, pulling that scornful face of hers that made her look like she should be wearing a ball gown, surrounded by birds and anthropomorphic mice and talking teapots.

"Texting is easier."

"Not when I'm in the middle of a post-mortem."

"That's why you have assistants."

"I have assistants to assist with the post-mortem. Not to answer questions like, 'Could you, in theory, fit three Walnut Whips in your mouth at once?'  Though really, can't complain about that one, the next day I had seven of them on my desk because apparently Ann told everyone in the department and they all wanted to know.  So, I mean, free chocolate.  Oh, don't make that face."

"What face?  This is my normal face."  He might have been making a face; that text was actually supposed to be private, since it wasn't for a case and more a matter of personal curiosity.  He'd also been eating a Walnut Whip at the time and was having other, entirely less innocent thoughts about her eating one, too.

"Well, yes, but it's a glower.  When's the last time you smiled?"

"Yesterday, though it may have just been wind," he answered dryly.

It had the desired effect; she couldn't help herself and snorted.  Molly loved a fart joke.  Maybe he could get her to watch some Monty Python again later.  

*

"I really wish Meena would come back.  She was so good at her job—no accidents, always there on time, never ran the wrong tests on the wrong samples.  And she was so much fun!  She was the one who dared me to wear her glasses when they did the new ID badge photos.  We were talking about how no one ever checks them anyway and I could probably wear a clown nose and a rainbow wig and no one would even raise an eyebrow," Molly said, her tone wistful.  

"Mm, always wondered why you had them in that picture," he murmured distractedly, deftly applying a second coat of red varnish to her middle toenail.  Being her stand-in girlfriend wasn't all bad all the time; at least he got to be physically close to her and she talked to him. "You look cute with glasses."

Bollocks, he thought.  He hadn't meant to say that out loud.  He hoped she'd just take it as a girlfriend thing, like telling her her hair was on point or those shoes were hot or whatever it was women said to each other to be supportive.

"Oh, ah, thank you," she said.  It was almost a question.  

"You're welcome?" he answered, making it a question himself.

He finished applying the varnish in excruciating silence; he was very aware of Molly watching him as he picked her foot up off his lap to blow on her still-wet nails.  It was a heavy moment.

"You're, ah, really good at that.  Pedicures, I mean," Molly said, her voice strained.

"Had a case once for a nail salon owner.  Industrial espionage, more or less—well, less, more than more, they had their own line of varnishes and care products that were being tampered with.  Learned how to do it there.  She said I could've gone pro.  I even got to keep the tips," he babbled, realizing he'd been swiping his thumb over Molly's ankle.

"Just the tips?" Molly asked, and he really wasn't sure if she was making a sex joke or asking a genuine question; he swallowed hard against the implication of the former and the very vivid image his brain supplied him with.

"Actually got a bottle of nail varnish, too.  I used it in an experiment.  It was purple."  I carried a watermelon.

Good thing she didn't know he'd actually seen (and liked) Dirty Dancing; he could at least maintain the illusion of having a working pair of testicles. There had to be an appropriate joke in there about the colour blue as well, but he was having a hard time (ha) thinking past the smoothness of her skin.  She'd shaved just the night before.

"How is your ankle, by the way?" he asked, changing the subject to something safe.

"Much better, barely feel it now.  Bruising's almost gone," she said too quickly, grateful that the conversation was moving away from weird, at least.

"I see," he said, pushing up her trouser leg under the pretence of inspecting her ankle.

"I mean, you can still wait on me hand and foot and carry me up the stairs, if you're still feeling guilty," she joked. "Wouldn't mind a bacon butty right now.  Or a glass of wine.  Or both."

He turned to her with a look of appalled affront at her gustatory choices, then let it drop.  "Actually, do you have any bacon in? I'm a bit peckish myself."

"No, but I've still got plenty of cheese."

"Grilled cheese it is, then.  Goes better with the wine, anyway," he said, easing himself out from under her feet.

*

"Mm, God, this is gorgeous," she said, using her finger to swipe a gooey string of cheese off of her chin.  "Since when do you know how to cook things that aren't potentially explosive or otherwise hazardous?"

"I'm a man of many talents," he said before biting into his own sandwich.  Using the sliced apple in it had been a stroke of brilliance if he did say so himself.  "I know how to both boil and fry an egg, too," he added.

"With skills like that, you'll make some lucky woman very happy one day," she said lightly.  "You can certainly fill out an apron." She gave him an amused mock-leer from where she was leaned against the sink with her plate.

The apron was rather ridiculous, but he wasn't going to ruin a £300 shirt with grease splatter.

"Well, if you ever come across a woman who doesn't mind the occasional potentially explosive or otherwise hazardous dinner, enjoys solving crimes, and can provide me with human body parts for experimentation, then do give her my number," he said, skirting the edge of actually flirting by injecting just a hint of sarcasm into his tone. It was either that or drop to his knees and beg her to just give him a chance to make her happy; he'd rather not ruin the evening, though.

"I don't know, a woman like that sounds awfully dangerous.  Probably has a few bodies buried in her back garden.  Could have had an ex-boyfriend that was a criminal mastermind.  Maybe he's even buried in her back garden."  She smirked before taking a bite of her sandwich.  

He was hit with the memory of when he'd told her Moriarty was dead and she needed to do something with the body until Mycroft could arrange disposal; Shall I just bury him in my back garden, then? had been her incredulous response.  Hadn't been nearly as amusing at the time.

Wait, was she flirting?  Or was she just going along with the joke?

"I like a woman who knows her way around a shovel.  Graverobbing's always much more fun with two."

"I thought that was housebreaking."

"That too. Lots of things are better with two.  Vandalism, confidence tricks, footraces, most board games..."

"Sex," she supplied.

"Probably," he agreed.

He could almost hear the needle scratch across the vinyl before she scrutinized him.

"I mean, with one person it's not really sex as such and three or more is just too many, so two for sex.  Two is the magic number there. Two people.  Having sex," he stumbled to clarify, anything to cover the fact that he had no first-hand knowledge of the act.  

"Ohhh-kay."

And it was going so well there for a minute.

*

"Sherlock," she said, pulling her calves away from his still-cold feet.

"Hm."

"If I, ah, ever did meet a woman like you described before, or, I mean, someone I thought you might like, would you, ah, ever want me to introduce you?  Because, I—I would."

"Thank you, but no."

"Women not your area, married to your work, right."

"No, that's just what I tell John when asks annoying, invasive questions." Because it was dark and he was turned away from her and there was always something about the night-time that made confessions easier, he said it.  "To be quite honest, I'm not interested in meeting any women.  I've already met one and I can't really imagine anyone else being able to hold a candle to her."

"Oh," she said quietly, sadly.  "If you, ah, ever want to talk about it, I mean, it must be hard to keep up long distance for so long..."

Long distance?  What was she—oh.  Irene Adler, John's blog and the lie he'd told about the witness protection scheme in America.  

Really though, what he had with Molly could be considered long distance; the other side of the bed may as well be the other side of the world for all the distance between them.

"It can be trying at times, but every moment I do get with her is precious," he said sincerely.  It was probably a cruel thing to do to make her think it was someone else, but maybe, just maybe, if he could get his feelings out like this, he could tell her the truth someday.  Or else he was shooting himself in the foot.

She reached over and gave his arm a gentle squeeze.

"I'd spend every hour of every day with her if I could.  Sleep next to her every night.  Apart from the cold feet, I don't think she'd mind."

"She probably doesn't mind the cold feet as much as she pretends to," Molly said, her voice taking on that gentle, heartbreaking tone of hers when she was clamping down on her own misery to ease someone else's.  

He'd maybe made a bit of a mistake, miscalculated how deeply buried the feelings she used to have for him still were.  He didn't want to hurt her.

He wiggled backwards a bit and pressed his feet against her again; this time to the outside of her leg, one foot from her ankle to mid-calf, the other above it.

"Or maybe she does mind it, but she puts up with your bullshit because she loves you too much anyway," Molly said, poking him in the back.

His heart sped up with the thought of Molly loving him in return; what a wonderful thing that would be.

"I do sometimes wonder if she does.  She's never said it.  Not in so many words, at least."

"Have you ever said it to her?  I mean, assuming you do love her, which it sounds like you do."

"Oh, I do.  More than I ever thought possible.  Never found the right moment to actually tell her, though.  The timing's always bad."

"Mm. Yeah."  A pause.  "I'm sure you'll find the right time and the right words one day."

"One hopes," he dismissed.

They settled back down to sleep, both lost in their own thoughts.  

"Molly—"

"Hm?"

"Goodnight." He just couldn't do it.  Wanted to, but couldn't.