BBCTV!Sherlock Holmes fic: Dear Jim
Title: Dear Jim
Author: Furius
Pairing: Jim/Molly
Rating: PG
Word count: ~4700
Summary: In order to meet Jim Moriarty, Molly Hooper had to meet Sherlock Holmes first.
-=-=
In 2004, Molly took her degree of doctor of medicine, a couple of years younger than the rest of her class. After half a summer of cowering at her grandparents' desperately missing the Gothic lines of the dreaming spires, she packed up her cases of books, a suitcase of clothes and proceeded to London for her foundation years. And before her mother and her grandparents could protest, she finished her exams and began the five year training program in histopathology. There was always a shortage of histopathologists, but instead of working for the NHS, she went on to secondment at St. Bart's. There would be more exams, but there would also be peace and quiet even in the city, where she was just one among many and no one knew her.
The phone call came very early in the morning. The messy lights of the London traffic spilling into the bedroom window were already faint. That afternoon, she burst into tears over a corpse and had to excuse herself.
And the day after she learned her grandfather had died abroad, Stamford swanned in with his airs and his obliviousness and perpetual good cheer. The combination of the latter two qualities Molly thought would could give her a reasonable defense in any court if she had the means to act upon the intent. She knew how, of course. As it were, she knew she was merely especially quiet that day and was demurring very little to Stamford's words.
"We should come back later, Stamford. I don't think she's as friendly as you think she is."
Molly looked at the door, startled. She must really not be herself not to notice Stamford had a companion, who was, for a lack of better word, lounging against the doorway. He was tall, with a mop of dark messy hair, and a scarf which was only half-unwrapped his neck.
"Sherlock," Stamford began. "I thought you needed a body for your work."
Sherlock, what a name, she thought, and hoped he was as exceptional as the name implied. She didn't meet many people, but the accent was not giving her much comfort.
"I do, but not at the risk of being considered a suspect in your murder," Sherlock drawled, one hand on a mobile phone.
"My murder? Suspect..." Stamford was confused.
Sherlock was flashing her a half-smile. He opened his mouth to speak. "Her mother-"
Molly had to stop him. "No, there's nothing. Of course you may have a body." She mentally reviewed the list in her e-mail this morning. She had written the reports for the less interesting ones already. He could have one of them. Just in case someone checked that the autopsy really was performed. The business was dreadfully messy. Anyways, it would give her more time to look at Sherlock. The suits were rally quite beautiful-- subtly notched collars, the latest silhouette that flattered his figure, but his hair was unfashionable.
"That's my girl," Stamford said. Molly thought it healthier for herself if she pretended Stamford didn't exist. He did it often enough.
Sherlock's eyes were very pale. He stayed by the door, silent. Molly wondered if he had perceived the pact or was merely being sociable.
Molly took a deep breath and counted to ten. "Follow me."
-=-=
The body hadn't been prepared yet. Still in the clothes that gave the body an identity, she had been thinking about the scuff on the side of the shoe before they showed up to disrupt her routine. Stamford knew she would be still in. Being predictable was one of the unavoidable side-effect of having a routine, but not having a routine meant she would be subject to other disturbances- people ringing her up at all hours. Or worse, family ringing her up: "What should I eat to lose weight?" "Do you think McMurdo's daughter should get tested, I know she's only fifteen, but..." "My doctor thinks it's nothing, but I'm worried about this rash..." and "Your mother's off to that terrible continent again. Shouldn't you start dating at some point? I know your side of the family tend to be late, but really, Molly-"
Now the other shoe on the corpse was being removed. She watched Sherlock observe the soles of the feet carefully, watched him strip away the layers that spoke of a cold winter, a bad washing machine, a negligent wife, a long unemployment, a recent trip to the botanical gardens, and a son in university.
The body revealed was not interesting. The body was skin and meat and bones. It was an object. She watched him examine the tattoo on the arm, the road rash alongside his ribs, before shedding his jacket and rolling up his sleeves.
"You sure you know how to do this?" she had asked him.
"I've been taught," he said simply, convinced of his own charm. "And I practise as often as I can." But she had always known boys and men like him. More importantly, what they were like to girls and women like her and no number of quick smiles was worth her placement.
"You needn't worry, Molly. I know Sherlock. He has a knack for everything. And this is important work he's doing, or so he says," Stamford said, laughing. "He had my entire schedule memorized when we bumped into each other this morning."
Sherlock was not a medical doctor then. That morning, Molly had Stamford shout that having a knack for cleverness was no longer enough when they'll be working on real people with real lives in their careers. One of the residents had left the room crying. Meena had been all over her with the tissues and "hush" "hush" as if future-doctors should be cooed over like a kitten.
"Police work," Shelock said.
"They asked you?"
"They should," he had replied loftily. And for some reason, perhaps the fact that it seemed so odd to her to be so reassured or perhaps there was an air about him that seemed somehow...safe... but she had acquiesced and merely mentioned that she must remain in the room.
Molly watched Sherlock reach for the scalpel. His suits were dry cleaned, his fingers shapely, but there were band-aids and old burns. Some of them were black. Molly shuddered. It was an undergraduate mistake and he had a musician's hands. He must be impulsive.
Sherlock drew one unhesitating line down the abdomen with the scalpel. That was the moment, usually. It separated the scientists and the doctors from the civilians. Molly looked down at her notes. She had brought the printed copy in, just in case anyone asked why she was blithely bringing in unauthorized individuals to the autopsy room.
Sherlock was striking. Everyone would notice and remember him.
Molly wanted to remember him even as he was standing in front of her, every one of his movements graceful and practised as he pressed curiously at all the organs he revealed.
"Post-mortem bruising on the organs," he said without her asking. She didn't remind him that the answer was likely in one of the reference books on the shelves. Also, on the organs?
He was a practical experimentalist and right now, he wanted to know more about whatever about the body for himself rather than about Molly.
No one wanted to know about her. She wanted to know everything about everyone, quietly. She knew all about the cadavers; they didn't mind being watched or studied or prodded. And they were always silent.
But she didn't think he would mind if she watched him. He had faint little track marks on his inner forearm and looked like a strong wind could blow him over.
"Recently rebellious. Could afford to be bored," she wrote down in her blurring notes. Damn it, she was crying again.
-=-=
"I did him a favour. The favour was returned," he said when she saw Sherlock, alone this time. "I'd like a ear. A pair, if you could, pierced and with some fingers, not pierced. Yes, for policework. The last case went well. This time it's official. You could read about it in the papers. "
Sherlock, she realised, could be a dangerous man to know if she had a secret. He answered all her questions unprompted. In a way, it was relaxing. It was eight already and she had been up since five. She was knackered. Not having to speak was actually nice. It seemed like he could read her mind. It would be just like having a relationship without all the accompanied bother of thinking what to wear, what to do, what will he think. Sherlock was probably still thinking about whatever had caught his curiosity this time.
She fetched him the items. The requisition forms would have to wait until next morning, after she slept. She wasn't feeling very creative and a part of her was annoyed that he could presume, so rightly, that she would do as he asked. She was susceptible, she knew, but he could at least help with the annoying stuff.
"You could just write Lestrade's name."
"Who?"
"The detective inspector. It's his case." He fished out a police inspector's ID from his pocket. She must've looked hesitant. An offended look came into his face, he added, "It's real."
"You picked his pocket," she said, gratified. Her tone of admiration was probably lost on him though because he saw something on the pinna that would be useful and let out a whoop of triumph.
"I'll see him tomorrow. He wouldn't even know it's missing," he said absently, and asked her for a fixating kit. Clearly tired of justifying himself, he left the ID on the table and settled to work.
Molly went to fetch herself a cup of tea. In the kitchen, she reconsidered and took the entire kettle and two cups. She could study while he worked. It was quiet in the lab and it would be a nice view.
She glanced up occasionally to look at him, still in the throes of considering whatever problem he was attempting to solve. Companionship of the living could be nice, after all.
-=-=
Sherlock didn't come in as often as he could, but he did come into St. Bart's quite often. At first he came only in the evenings, then once enough people were used to the sight of him entering restricted areas, he grew bolder and came in the mornings. It should mean that Molly would miss him, but he had her scheduled memorised, or figured out. Either way, since no one else ever mentioned him making odd requests, it must mean he came only on the days or hours she has to herself. Oftentimes, it meant lunch hour, but Molly had little enough to do on her lunch hours that she tended to greet the sight of his figure perhaps a little too enthusiastically to be seemly. But then, no one could judge how "seemly" she was and it probably suited his vanity. There was always one more button than necessary left unbuttoned at his throat and he had stopped rolling up his sleeves when he caught her frowning at his elbows once.
He still gave her the quick smiles. Her payment, she thought a little viciously to herself sometimes, but they were very nice smiles and it was better than not to have them at all. It didn't cost her much- just a few strokes on a keyboard. And ever since she discovered he could become too talkative about whatever case he was working on if she offered him a sandwich as well she had stopped with that.
Sherlock was looking stronger by then and was, vexingly enough, more distracting than before and she still needed to pass her final set of exams and interview boards.
She didn't remember giving him her number, but he texted her nonetheless. He never called, for which she was grateful.
"Need fresh tomorrow."
Tomorrow was her off day. It was good of him to warn her, but fresh bodies were rare. At least, they tend to be more closely tracked.The morgue attendants didn't like her, probably thought she spent too much time in there. Coreena had made a comment the other day about how "floral blouses and cadavers don't mix" apparently forgetting that Molly didn't just come in for night shifts.
"NA," she texted back, then thought about it again. "Come anyway." She waited. He didn't text back.
She had twelve hours, approximately, to find Sherlock Holmes a fresh body.
"Anything wrong?"
"What?" She glanced around.
"You look sad."
"I do?" she asked, then supposed she did. She's never quite sure what her expressions were. People generally just assumed, but Brian was nice. He was sixty-seven, had a heart condition, and a wife who disapproved of his workplace and baked constantly. All old people were nice to her. They actually noticed her. Sometimes Molly thought it was because of some innate knowledge to their shared proximity to death. "Nothing's wrong," she said blankly, finding her gaze had strayed to the coffee mug she was holding. "Just tired," she added and ran hurriedly back to her office, her heart beating very fast.
Everyone had left by then. She couldn't concentrate on her books. Sherlock Holmes had a website: "Science of Deduction." It made her suspect his education had not been as formal as it should've been from his manner. Either that or he was very egoistical. But Sherlock Holmes was eccentric, he was likely both. She knew about it already so why was she feeling suddenly so hopeless?
The Internet at a research hospital was much more secure and much faster than the one at her London home. Queries could be strange without raising an eyebrow. She googled: "how do I find a fresh body?" Then, after a moment, it's a bit like consulting a magic Eight-Ball, she typed, "for Sherlock Holmes."
-=-=
Brian arrived the next morning in a body bag. It was the heart attack, but still suspicious enough that it came to the hospital morgue instead of going to the funeral parlour.
Molly had been looking forward to seeing Sherlock Holmes all day. She had grown so used to seeing him around. She was afraid that he wouldn't come. But he did. She heard him speaking with Stamford in the corridor. He had a case and wanted Stamford's expertise in finding a flatmate.
She was hiding. Well, perhaps not hiding, just not making her presence obvious. There was no point in overexposure.
"Who'd want me for a flatmate?" she heard Sherlock say. And for the first time, let in a little despairing note in his voice. Stamford, with no wife, no family, and a very large flat, made some conventionally sympathetic sounds and offered to keep an eye and a ear out. Sherlock was holding something concealed against his leg beneath his coat. He hadn't offered to show it to Stamford.
He had snuck it in for whatever he was going to do to the body. Molly was pathetically grateful at this small secret between them.
"We'll start with the riding crop," he announced.
"Oh," she said. Thankfully, the leather on the riding crop was new and probably more plastic than hide. It meant the sound would be different. She could sleep tonight.
"Well, we should be moving along now," he said, impatient.
"It's just that it would be loud," she said, disappointed that he still couldn't tell after all that time, this uncharacteristic failing of his.
"You can watch from the window," he said. "It's almost soundproof"
There was no tea in the teabag drawer. There could be coffee, she imagined, wincing at the sound of the whip slashing through air. Sherlock was growing flushed with the exercise and she had finally received the final set of her qualifications. She was older now, and she didn't know if she wanted to remain in London. Toby was still small cat, easy enough to travel with.
Molly went to put on her lipstick then became so startled that he noticed that and not her good news she wiped it off.
When she came back with the coffee, there was Stamford and another man leaning against a cane. He was wearing the clothes of a younger looking-man-- military jacket, plaid shirt. He was much unlike Stamford, very much unlike Sherlock, and apparently, very much going to live with Sherlock.
Sherlock, Molly knew, had never lived with anyone voluntarily and Dr. John Watson seemed to like hearing Sherlock talk.
She handed him Sherlock his coffee and left, defeated. She was thirty-one. She wasn't sure if she was going to remain at St. Bart's.
-=-=-=
-=-=-=
"Would you like a cup of tea?"
He looked around her house, curious.
The proud tiger's head had been mounted over the wall above the piano. The broad gorilla palm stood on the bookshelf.
He wasn't like the others. He didn't say: "I didn't imagine your father would be a hunter." Molly had all the excuses ready at her lips. Her grandfather had been a naturalist of the old school, her father much the same. Taxidermy was in the blood, though when it came to her, the sense of death-defying adventuring seemed to have been stripped out of her genes, much to her family's disappointment, but a peripetic education in clapboard houses and tents had only make her long for strong stone walls and cities constantly ablaze with electric lights. Her rebellion took place in the quiet of the civilized morgue. The jungles were always loud, animals howling murders every night.
Jim Moriarty from IT -- impeccable 1cm band of underwear, gratingly nancy accent, terrible clothes and beautifully manicured hands with tapered fingertips-- he merely turned to her, long lashes semi-lowered over his lovely round eyes.
"Yes, please," he said.
The tea was in a bag in a kettle. It was efficient. Sherlock had never been fastidious about it. Molly ripped opened the packet. She should stop thinking about Sherlock.
Then of course, she began to talk about Sherlock. And Jim was very interested. Jim was so interested that he didn't notice that the tea went cold, the the biscuits were a little stale, the tint of his eyebrows was rubbing off on her white cushions, and that Toby was racking his kittenish claws on his thigh. It made things, Molly thought, rather suspicious. He was sitting uncomfortably close. She kept trying to shift away.
"Do you imagine what he does when he's alone?" he asked, with a tone that Molly had never heard anyone use. Molly shook her head and managed move three inches away. "He's a very clever man," she said. "I'm sure he has ways of occupying himself." Then she remembered it was the first evening she had to herself for a very long time. There was books and no Sherlock and no messages. But of course, he had that army doctor.
"I mean, outside of his work." He was pressing closer. She could feel the heat of skin. Suddenly, she realised she had invited a stranger to her home when she didn't know him. Nothing about him made any sense. She didn't know what would happen or how it would happen. She had never even kissed anyone. The ignorance was exciting. It makes her feel heady, like the moment before essaying her first illicit dram of whiskey from her father's flask.
"Molly," he began. "I think you should know I-"
"You don't work in IT. I don't care," she said. He looked surprised, but it wasn't a deduction. It was merely from an occupational medicine textbook. She looked at his hands. She almost reached for them except they would be warm and soft, alive. She looked at where the vee of his shirt dipped low on his softly rising and falling chest where beneath, his heart was beating.
She leaned forward and kissed him with her small mouth. He recoiled at first, then relaxed into it. Thankfully, he didn't open his mouth. His lips were soft and a little chapped. It was almost comfortable, if very odd. When it ended, he looked endearingly triumphant. She had no idea what she looked like, but he didn't say anything and didn't touch her.
"When would you like to meet Sherlock?" she offered him. She wasn't very good with the living, but she had watched Sherlock for a very long time, and had learned to know when he was pleased. The look that came into Jim Moriarty's face was exactly like the very subtle warp of muscles on Sherlock's face before he spams Scotland Yard with his texts.
-=-=
Jim was busy on the day Sherlock accosted her in the canteen. After Jim had practically moved into her house. It was, she knew logically, the natural course of things. Unfortunately, consequently, she had to sleep facing the other side, which meant re-organizing the contents of her bed.
She still wasn't sure if she liked sleeping with someone else beside her. He nodded off readily enough. She felt jumpier than her cat, who snuggled toward Jim like they were born from the same litter. She wasn't used to the idleness. The hospital wanted her to stay. They were giving her too much time and Jim wish to occupy it and she would let him except she really couldn't.
So, she was pondering supper choice -- unhealthy or unhealthier -- instead of being at home, sleeping, and Sherlock Holmes showed up behind her like a specter and noting the different part of her hair. He noted it. He didn't consider it important. She hadn't seen him in such a long time that she would've shown him the new bodies anyway, with or without the smiles. Now she had a basis for comparison, she did think Jim had nicer ones though Sherlock's were familiar, even if this particular set arrived as if he just remembered he had to make them.
It was disappointing, Molly thought, in its way, but she didn't know what else she expected from him.
"What did he want?" Jim asked her when she returned.
"Why are you sitting in the dark?" Molly asked, turning on the lights. She knew his answer before he made it. It was ridiculous, like from a bad romance novel. It was, she supposed, a little bit like being Sherlock Holmes, who probably considered everyone to be from bad romance novels if he had ever made their acquaintance.
"You shouldn't let him push you around," Jim said, quietly, as if hurt.
"I do what I like," Molly said, suddenly alarmed.
"Did he need another fresh body? I did work in IT, for a while. Long enough to read the search queries, anyways," said Jim, sotto voce.
And Molly suddenly knew absolutely knew she had to leave London. This must be be what trapped her grandparents, her parents, doomed her to their permanent homelessness: army, journalism, the observational sciences. This curiosity about what would happen if she could just watch the inevitable unfolding violence was a terrible thing. It seized her, took over her mouth, her tongue, her voice. The jungle had followed her into the city.
"He did need another fresh body. I don't know his schedule. He doesn't come in as often or as regularly as before," she heard herself saying, no longer here just for the silent aftermath.
"So he needs a schedule," Jim had said, half-wonderingly. "And then you would know when he's coming in."
"He would tell me," Molly said. "But I think perhaps, since the weather's warming up-" She was stammering a little. She wasn't sure what Jim Moriarty was, but he was a untamed, strange, and if she wanted to stay, she shouldn't be so close to him.
That night, she moved the gun and the knife back to where they should be. They were familiar antiques from her grandfather. She slept better with half of the bed cold.
-=-=
But when Sherlock Holmes told her that Jim Moriarty left him his number, there was still a pang in her chest.
The man, Sherlock's companion, looked appalled. Molly thought he should be appalled, since Sherlock practically just described himself, minus the tinting and the underwear. Sherlock had his pressed suits and his "not eating when working". She read somewhere that it was how the the gay Labour party's Peter Mandelson kept his figure.
Molly was very forgiving. She was, in her way, oblivious and detailed at the same time. She had never noticed Sherlock's lack of sympathy for his cases, she had noticed his cufflinks. She didn't remember John Watson's name but she knew he no longer had a psychosomatic limp and that he tend to remember her name because he remembered everyone's names and likes and dislikes though he could miss very obvious things, like the fact that Sherlock let him rifle through his jacket pocket.
There were too many living things to notice in her life and for the living, everything was changeable. Life pass into death. Grief into happiness, then sadness again. Companionship to loneliness. The past turn to the present and then into the future. Nothing was settled.
"I have a proposal," Jim said. He was waiting in her house again, sitting cross-legged on her carpet so that he was looping up at her with his face angled to its best advantage. She had never given him a key. Her life was full of presumptuous men, but this time he was wearing a suit. Even half a life time of suppressing her social-instincts for the sake of her studies and her work her heart still leapt a little at the phrasing and at the decorations. Thankfully, he wasn't holding a box.
"What exactly are you proposing?" she asked him, warily. "Sherlock Holmes said you are gay and he is never wrong."
His face lit up in in a smile. "He believed me."
"I believe him." After all, she knew what she was and by what she was attracted.
"A partnership then," he said, then cleared his throat and said. "A colleague."
"In what?"
"I have a criminal empire," he attempted. He was casting a lure. He knew what she was. Molly had no secrets, otherwise Sherlock Holmes would know them. Molly had no secrets until Jim Moriarty came into her life and she realised her entire adult life since she was sixteen had been so quiet, so unassuming, that she had become someone with no secrets because her entire life had been secretive.
"I'm a forensic pathologist who can afford to live alone in the city with a cat," she stated firmly.
"You're all that," he agreed, "You're also thirty-one years old. Sherlock Holmes had just found his heart. You know that, but you can't find yours. In fact, you'll stop looking because you've met me."
She hesitated and looked down. He was still waiting, one hand extended, which should've been awkward but he was somehow stretching the moment of anticipation. It was the eyes, she decided. They were very wide, as if he was in a state of perpetual surprise as if nothing was what it seemed. It was very flattering. They were looking her- solid colours and a steady gaze. They were not ghostly pale and passed over her like a convenience, someone only about as handy as an access card. Sherlock Holmes had noticed everything about her, but never wondered.
James Moriarty would not be boring, she thought and he had a soft voice when he spoke to her.
"Dear Jim," she said, "don't kill Sherlock." She didn't take his hand.
He stood and laughed then looked at her. "You are serious," said he, disbelieving.
"I wouldn't meet you without him," she said. "I like him."
"It wouldn't be fun." James Moriarty said after a moment, thoughtful. "Your grandfather didn't ask me to find you, you should believe me." Molly didn't, but Moriarty wasn't finished. "But I've always wanted to know, what was it like to live with the Colonel, growing up?"
Molly thought of the rifle in her piano bench, the cartridge of soft-nosed bullets in a hollowed copy of A Passage to India, the reminders of constant of vigilance.
"You'll have to find out," she said.
-=-=
Author: Furius
Pairing: Jim/Molly
Rating: PG
Word count: ~4700
Summary: In order to meet Jim Moriarty, Molly Hooper had to meet Sherlock Holmes first.
-=-=
In 2004, Molly took her degree of doctor of medicine, a couple of years younger than the rest of her class. After half a summer of cowering at her grandparents' desperately missing the Gothic lines of the dreaming spires, she packed up her cases of books, a suitcase of clothes and proceeded to London for her foundation years. And before her mother and her grandparents could protest, she finished her exams and began the five year training program in histopathology. There was always a shortage of histopathologists, but instead of working for the NHS, she went on to secondment at St. Bart's. There would be more exams, but there would also be peace and quiet even in the city, where she was just one among many and no one knew her.
The phone call came very early in the morning. The messy lights of the London traffic spilling into the bedroom window were already faint. That afternoon, she burst into tears over a corpse and had to excuse herself.
And the day after she learned her grandfather had died abroad, Stamford swanned in with his airs and his obliviousness and perpetual good cheer. The combination of the latter two qualities Molly thought would could give her a reasonable defense in any court if she had the means to act upon the intent. She knew how, of course. As it were, she knew she was merely especially quiet that day and was demurring very little to Stamford's words.
"We should come back later, Stamford. I don't think she's as friendly as you think she is."
Molly looked at the door, startled. She must really not be herself not to notice Stamford had a companion, who was, for a lack of better word, lounging against the doorway. He was tall, with a mop of dark messy hair, and a scarf which was only half-unwrapped his neck.
"Sherlock," Stamford began. "I thought you needed a body for your work."
Sherlock, what a name, she thought, and hoped he was as exceptional as the name implied. She didn't meet many people, but the accent was not giving her much comfort.
"I do, but not at the risk of being considered a suspect in your murder," Sherlock drawled, one hand on a mobile phone.
"My murder? Suspect..." Stamford was confused.
Sherlock was flashing her a half-smile. He opened his mouth to speak. "Her mother-"
Molly had to stop him. "No, there's nothing. Of course you may have a body." She mentally reviewed the list in her e-mail this morning. She had written the reports for the less interesting ones already. He could have one of them. Just in case someone checked that the autopsy really was performed. The business was dreadfully messy. Anyways, it would give her more time to look at Sherlock. The suits were rally quite beautiful-- subtly notched collars, the latest silhouette that flattered his figure, but his hair was unfashionable.
"That's my girl," Stamford said. Molly thought it healthier for herself if she pretended Stamford didn't exist. He did it often enough.
Sherlock's eyes were very pale. He stayed by the door, silent. Molly wondered if he had perceived the pact or was merely being sociable.
Molly took a deep breath and counted to ten. "Follow me."
-=-=
The body hadn't been prepared yet. Still in the clothes that gave the body an identity, she had been thinking about the scuff on the side of the shoe before they showed up to disrupt her routine. Stamford knew she would be still in. Being predictable was one of the unavoidable side-effect of having a routine, but not having a routine meant she would be subject to other disturbances- people ringing her up at all hours. Or worse, family ringing her up: "What should I eat to lose weight?" "Do you think McMurdo's daughter should get tested, I know she's only fifteen, but..." "My doctor thinks it's nothing, but I'm worried about this rash..." and "Your mother's off to that terrible continent again. Shouldn't you start dating at some point? I know your side of the family tend to be late, but really, Molly-"
Now the other shoe on the corpse was being removed. She watched Sherlock observe the soles of the feet carefully, watched him strip away the layers that spoke of a cold winter, a bad washing machine, a negligent wife, a long unemployment, a recent trip to the botanical gardens, and a son in university.
The body revealed was not interesting. The body was skin and meat and bones. It was an object. She watched him examine the tattoo on the arm, the road rash alongside his ribs, before shedding his jacket and rolling up his sleeves.
"You sure you know how to do this?" she had asked him.
"I've been taught," he said simply, convinced of his own charm. "And I practise as often as I can." But she had always known boys and men like him. More importantly, what they were like to girls and women like her and no number of quick smiles was worth her placement.
"You needn't worry, Molly. I know Sherlock. He has a knack for everything. And this is important work he's doing, or so he says," Stamford said, laughing. "He had my entire schedule memorized when we bumped into each other this morning."
Sherlock was not a medical doctor then. That morning, Molly had Stamford shout that having a knack for cleverness was no longer enough when they'll be working on real people with real lives in their careers. One of the residents had left the room crying. Meena had been all over her with the tissues and "hush" "hush" as if future-doctors should be cooed over like a kitten.
"Police work," Shelock said.
"They asked you?"
"They should," he had replied loftily. And for some reason, perhaps the fact that it seemed so odd to her to be so reassured or perhaps there was an air about him that seemed somehow...safe... but she had acquiesced and merely mentioned that she must remain in the room.
Molly watched Sherlock reach for the scalpel. His suits were dry cleaned, his fingers shapely, but there were band-aids and old burns. Some of them were black. Molly shuddered. It was an undergraduate mistake and he had a musician's hands. He must be impulsive.
Sherlock drew one unhesitating line down the abdomen with the scalpel. That was the moment, usually. It separated the scientists and the doctors from the civilians. Molly looked down at her notes. She had brought the printed copy in, just in case anyone asked why she was blithely bringing in unauthorized individuals to the autopsy room.
Sherlock was striking. Everyone would notice and remember him.
Molly wanted to remember him even as he was standing in front of her, every one of his movements graceful and practised as he pressed curiously at all the organs he revealed.
"Post-mortem bruising on the organs," he said without her asking. She didn't remind him that the answer was likely in one of the reference books on the shelves. Also, on the organs?
He was a practical experimentalist and right now, he wanted to know more about whatever about the body for himself rather than about Molly.
No one wanted to know about her. She wanted to know everything about everyone, quietly. She knew all about the cadavers; they didn't mind being watched or studied or prodded. And they were always silent.
But she didn't think he would mind if she watched him. He had faint little track marks on his inner forearm and looked like a strong wind could blow him over.
"Recently rebellious. Could afford to be bored," she wrote down in her blurring notes. Damn it, she was crying again.
-=-=
"I did him a favour. The favour was returned," he said when she saw Sherlock, alone this time. "I'd like a ear. A pair, if you could, pierced and with some fingers, not pierced. Yes, for policework. The last case went well. This time it's official. You could read about it in the papers. "
Sherlock, she realised, could be a dangerous man to know if she had a secret. He answered all her questions unprompted. In a way, it was relaxing. It was eight already and she had been up since five. She was knackered. Not having to speak was actually nice. It seemed like he could read her mind. It would be just like having a relationship without all the accompanied bother of thinking what to wear, what to do, what will he think. Sherlock was probably still thinking about whatever had caught his curiosity this time.
She fetched him the items. The requisition forms would have to wait until next morning, after she slept. She wasn't feeling very creative and a part of her was annoyed that he could presume, so rightly, that she would do as he asked. She was susceptible, she knew, but he could at least help with the annoying stuff.
"You could just write Lestrade's name."
"Who?"
"The detective inspector. It's his case." He fished out a police inspector's ID from his pocket. She must've looked hesitant. An offended look came into his face, he added, "It's real."
"You picked his pocket," she said, gratified. Her tone of admiration was probably lost on him though because he saw something on the pinna that would be useful and let out a whoop of triumph.
"I'll see him tomorrow. He wouldn't even know it's missing," he said absently, and asked her for a fixating kit. Clearly tired of justifying himself, he left the ID on the table and settled to work.
Molly went to fetch herself a cup of tea. In the kitchen, she reconsidered and took the entire kettle and two cups. She could study while he worked. It was quiet in the lab and it would be a nice view.
She glanced up occasionally to look at him, still in the throes of considering whatever problem he was attempting to solve. Companionship of the living could be nice, after all.
-=-=
Sherlock didn't come in as often as he could, but he did come into St. Bart's quite often. At first he came only in the evenings, then once enough people were used to the sight of him entering restricted areas, he grew bolder and came in the mornings. It should mean that Molly would miss him, but he had her scheduled memorised, or figured out. Either way, since no one else ever mentioned him making odd requests, it must mean he came only on the days or hours she has to herself. Oftentimes, it meant lunch hour, but Molly had little enough to do on her lunch hours that she tended to greet the sight of his figure perhaps a little too enthusiastically to be seemly. But then, no one could judge how "seemly" she was and it probably suited his vanity. There was always one more button than necessary left unbuttoned at his throat and he had stopped rolling up his sleeves when he caught her frowning at his elbows once.
He still gave her the quick smiles. Her payment, she thought a little viciously to herself sometimes, but they were very nice smiles and it was better than not to have them at all. It didn't cost her much- just a few strokes on a keyboard. And ever since she discovered he could become too talkative about whatever case he was working on if she offered him a sandwich as well she had stopped with that.
Sherlock was looking stronger by then and was, vexingly enough, more distracting than before and she still needed to pass her final set of exams and interview boards.
She didn't remember giving him her number, but he texted her nonetheless. He never called, for which she was grateful.
"Need fresh tomorrow."
Tomorrow was her off day. It was good of him to warn her, but fresh bodies were rare. At least, they tend to be more closely tracked.The morgue attendants didn't like her, probably thought she spent too much time in there. Coreena had made a comment the other day about how "floral blouses and cadavers don't mix" apparently forgetting that Molly didn't just come in for night shifts.
"NA," she texted back, then thought about it again. "Come anyway." She waited. He didn't text back.
She had twelve hours, approximately, to find Sherlock Holmes a fresh body.
"Anything wrong?"
"What?" She glanced around.
"You look sad."
"I do?" she asked, then supposed she did. She's never quite sure what her expressions were. People generally just assumed, but Brian was nice. He was sixty-seven, had a heart condition, and a wife who disapproved of his workplace and baked constantly. All old people were nice to her. They actually noticed her. Sometimes Molly thought it was because of some innate knowledge to their shared proximity to death. "Nothing's wrong," she said blankly, finding her gaze had strayed to the coffee mug she was holding. "Just tired," she added and ran hurriedly back to her office, her heart beating very fast.
Everyone had left by then. She couldn't concentrate on her books. Sherlock Holmes had a website: "Science of Deduction." It made her suspect his education had not been as formal as it should've been from his manner. Either that or he was very egoistical. But Sherlock Holmes was eccentric, he was likely both. She knew about it already so why was she feeling suddenly so hopeless?
The Internet at a research hospital was much more secure and much faster than the one at her London home. Queries could be strange without raising an eyebrow. She googled: "how do I find a fresh body?" Then, after a moment, it's a bit like consulting a magic Eight-Ball, she typed, "for Sherlock Holmes."
-=-=
Brian arrived the next morning in a body bag. It was the heart attack, but still suspicious enough that it came to the hospital morgue instead of going to the funeral parlour.
Molly had been looking forward to seeing Sherlock Holmes all day. She had grown so used to seeing him around. She was afraid that he wouldn't come. But he did. She heard him speaking with Stamford in the corridor. He had a case and wanted Stamford's expertise in finding a flatmate.
She was hiding. Well, perhaps not hiding, just not making her presence obvious. There was no point in overexposure.
"Who'd want me for a flatmate?" she heard Sherlock say. And for the first time, let in a little despairing note in his voice. Stamford, with no wife, no family, and a very large flat, made some conventionally sympathetic sounds and offered to keep an eye and a ear out. Sherlock was holding something concealed against his leg beneath his coat. He hadn't offered to show it to Stamford.
He had snuck it in for whatever he was going to do to the body. Molly was pathetically grateful at this small secret between them.
"We'll start with the riding crop," he announced.
"Oh," she said. Thankfully, the leather on the riding crop was new and probably more plastic than hide. It meant the sound would be different. She could sleep tonight.
"Well, we should be moving along now," he said, impatient.
"It's just that it would be loud," she said, disappointed that he still couldn't tell after all that time, this uncharacteristic failing of his.
"You can watch from the window," he said. "It's almost soundproof"
There was no tea in the teabag drawer. There could be coffee, she imagined, wincing at the sound of the whip slashing through air. Sherlock was growing flushed with the exercise and she had finally received the final set of her qualifications. She was older now, and she didn't know if she wanted to remain in London. Toby was still small cat, easy enough to travel with.
Molly went to put on her lipstick then became so startled that he noticed that and not her good news she wiped it off.
When she came back with the coffee, there was Stamford and another man leaning against a cane. He was wearing the clothes of a younger looking-man-- military jacket, plaid shirt. He was much unlike Stamford, very much unlike Sherlock, and apparently, very much going to live with Sherlock.
Sherlock, Molly knew, had never lived with anyone voluntarily and Dr. John Watson seemed to like hearing Sherlock talk.
She handed him Sherlock his coffee and left, defeated. She was thirty-one. She wasn't sure if she was going to remain at St. Bart's.
-=-=-=
-=-=-=
"Would you like a cup of tea?"
He looked around her house, curious.
The proud tiger's head had been mounted over the wall above the piano. The broad gorilla palm stood on the bookshelf.
He wasn't like the others. He didn't say: "I didn't imagine your father would be a hunter." Molly had all the excuses ready at her lips. Her grandfather had been a naturalist of the old school, her father much the same. Taxidermy was in the blood, though when it came to her, the sense of death-defying adventuring seemed to have been stripped out of her genes, much to her family's disappointment, but a peripetic education in clapboard houses and tents had only make her long for strong stone walls and cities constantly ablaze with electric lights. Her rebellion took place in the quiet of the civilized morgue. The jungles were always loud, animals howling murders every night.
Jim Moriarty from IT -- impeccable 1cm band of underwear, gratingly nancy accent, terrible clothes and beautifully manicured hands with tapered fingertips-- he merely turned to her, long lashes semi-lowered over his lovely round eyes.
"Yes, please," he said.
The tea was in a bag in a kettle. It was efficient. Sherlock had never been fastidious about it. Molly ripped opened the packet. She should stop thinking about Sherlock.
Then of course, she began to talk about Sherlock. And Jim was very interested. Jim was so interested that he didn't notice that the tea went cold, the the biscuits were a little stale, the tint of his eyebrows was rubbing off on her white cushions, and that Toby was racking his kittenish claws on his thigh. It made things, Molly thought, rather suspicious. He was sitting uncomfortably close. She kept trying to shift away.
"Do you imagine what he does when he's alone?" he asked, with a tone that Molly had never heard anyone use. Molly shook her head and managed move three inches away. "He's a very clever man," she said. "I'm sure he has ways of occupying himself." Then she remembered it was the first evening she had to herself for a very long time. There was books and no Sherlock and no messages. But of course, he had that army doctor.
"I mean, outside of his work." He was pressing closer. She could feel the heat of skin. Suddenly, she realised she had invited a stranger to her home when she didn't know him. Nothing about him made any sense. She didn't know what would happen or how it would happen. She had never even kissed anyone. The ignorance was exciting. It makes her feel heady, like the moment before essaying her first illicit dram of whiskey from her father's flask.
"Molly," he began. "I think you should know I-"
"You don't work in IT. I don't care," she said. He looked surprised, but it wasn't a deduction. It was merely from an occupational medicine textbook. She looked at his hands. She almost reached for them except they would be warm and soft, alive. She looked at where the vee of his shirt dipped low on his softly rising and falling chest where beneath, his heart was beating.
She leaned forward and kissed him with her small mouth. He recoiled at first, then relaxed into it. Thankfully, he didn't open his mouth. His lips were soft and a little chapped. It was almost comfortable, if very odd. When it ended, he looked endearingly triumphant. She had no idea what she looked like, but he didn't say anything and didn't touch her.
"When would you like to meet Sherlock?" she offered him. She wasn't very good with the living, but she had watched Sherlock for a very long time, and had learned to know when he was pleased. The look that came into Jim Moriarty's face was exactly like the very subtle warp of muscles on Sherlock's face before he spams Scotland Yard with his texts.
-=-=
Jim was busy on the day Sherlock accosted her in the canteen. After Jim had practically moved into her house. It was, she knew logically, the natural course of things. Unfortunately, consequently, she had to sleep facing the other side, which meant re-organizing the contents of her bed.
She still wasn't sure if she liked sleeping with someone else beside her. He nodded off readily enough. She felt jumpier than her cat, who snuggled toward Jim like they were born from the same litter. She wasn't used to the idleness. The hospital wanted her to stay. They were giving her too much time and Jim wish to occupy it and she would let him except she really couldn't.
So, she was pondering supper choice -- unhealthy or unhealthier -- instead of being at home, sleeping, and Sherlock Holmes showed up behind her like a specter and noting the different part of her hair. He noted it. He didn't consider it important. She hadn't seen him in such a long time that she would've shown him the new bodies anyway, with or without the smiles. Now she had a basis for comparison, she did think Jim had nicer ones though Sherlock's were familiar, even if this particular set arrived as if he just remembered he had to make them.
It was disappointing, Molly thought, in its way, but she didn't know what else she expected from him.
"What did he want?" Jim asked her when she returned.
"Why are you sitting in the dark?" Molly asked, turning on the lights. She knew his answer before he made it. It was ridiculous, like from a bad romance novel. It was, she supposed, a little bit like being Sherlock Holmes, who probably considered everyone to be from bad romance novels if he had ever made their acquaintance.
"You shouldn't let him push you around," Jim said, quietly, as if hurt.
"I do what I like," Molly said, suddenly alarmed.
"Did he need another fresh body? I did work in IT, for a while. Long enough to read the search queries, anyways," said Jim, sotto voce.
And Molly suddenly knew absolutely knew she had to leave London. This must be be what trapped her grandparents, her parents, doomed her to their permanent homelessness: army, journalism, the observational sciences. This curiosity about what would happen if she could just watch the inevitable unfolding violence was a terrible thing. It seized her, took over her mouth, her tongue, her voice. The jungle had followed her into the city.
"He did need another fresh body. I don't know his schedule. He doesn't come in as often or as regularly as before," she heard herself saying, no longer here just for the silent aftermath.
"So he needs a schedule," Jim had said, half-wonderingly. "And then you would know when he's coming in."
"He would tell me," Molly said. "But I think perhaps, since the weather's warming up-" She was stammering a little. She wasn't sure what Jim Moriarty was, but he was a untamed, strange, and if she wanted to stay, she shouldn't be so close to him.
That night, she moved the gun and the knife back to where they should be. They were familiar antiques from her grandfather. She slept better with half of the bed cold.
-=-=
But when Sherlock Holmes told her that Jim Moriarty left him his number, there was still a pang in her chest.
The man, Sherlock's companion, looked appalled. Molly thought he should be appalled, since Sherlock practically just described himself, minus the tinting and the underwear. Sherlock had his pressed suits and his "not eating when working". She read somewhere that it was how the the gay Labour party's Peter Mandelson kept his figure.
Molly was very forgiving. She was, in her way, oblivious and detailed at the same time. She had never noticed Sherlock's lack of sympathy for his cases, she had noticed his cufflinks. She didn't remember John Watson's name but she knew he no longer had a psychosomatic limp and that he tend to remember her name because he remembered everyone's names and likes and dislikes though he could miss very obvious things, like the fact that Sherlock let him rifle through his jacket pocket.
There were too many living things to notice in her life and for the living, everything was changeable. Life pass into death. Grief into happiness, then sadness again. Companionship to loneliness. The past turn to the present and then into the future. Nothing was settled.
"I have a proposal," Jim said. He was waiting in her house again, sitting cross-legged on her carpet so that he was looping up at her with his face angled to its best advantage. She had never given him a key. Her life was full of presumptuous men, but this time he was wearing a suit. Even half a life time of suppressing her social-instincts for the sake of her studies and her work her heart still leapt a little at the phrasing and at the decorations. Thankfully, he wasn't holding a box.
"What exactly are you proposing?" she asked him, warily. "Sherlock Holmes said you are gay and he is never wrong."
His face lit up in in a smile. "He believed me."
"I believe him." After all, she knew what she was and by what she was attracted.
"A partnership then," he said, then cleared his throat and said. "A colleague."
"In what?"
"I have a criminal empire," he attempted. He was casting a lure. He knew what she was. Molly had no secrets, otherwise Sherlock Holmes would know them. Molly had no secrets until Jim Moriarty came into her life and she realised her entire adult life since she was sixteen had been so quiet, so unassuming, that she had become someone with no secrets because her entire life had been secretive.
"I'm a forensic pathologist who can afford to live alone in the city with a cat," she stated firmly.
"You're all that," he agreed, "You're also thirty-one years old. Sherlock Holmes had just found his heart. You know that, but you can't find yours. In fact, you'll stop looking because you've met me."
She hesitated and looked down. He was still waiting, one hand extended, which should've been awkward but he was somehow stretching the moment of anticipation. It was the eyes, she decided. They were very wide, as if he was in a state of perpetual surprise as if nothing was what it seemed. It was very flattering. They were looking her- solid colours and a steady gaze. They were not ghostly pale and passed over her like a convenience, someone only about as handy as an access card. Sherlock Holmes had noticed everything about her, but never wondered.
James Moriarty would not be boring, she thought and he had a soft voice when he spoke to her.
"Dear Jim," she said, "don't kill Sherlock." She didn't take his hand.
He stood and laughed then looked at her. "You are serious," said he, disbelieving.
"I wouldn't meet you without him," she said. "I like him."
"It wouldn't be fun." James Moriarty said after a moment, thoughtful. "Your grandfather didn't ask me to find you, you should believe me." Molly didn't, but Moriarty wasn't finished. "But I've always wanted to know, what was it like to live with the Colonel, growing up?"
Molly thought of the rifle in her piano bench, the cartridge of soft-nosed bullets in a hollowed copy of A Passage to India, the reminders of constant of vigilance.
"You'll have to find out," she said.
-=-=