John and Molly meet for tea and end up discussing Sherlock before John came into the picture. John learns new things about his best friend, and just how big a role Molly played in his life. Sherlolly. Rating will change.

I've got all of part I finished; I'm just editing the other chapters now and planning my next move. I hope you stick around for the entire ride. Enjoy, y'all.

Part I: Kicking the Habit

Chapter 1: For Starters

"So I'll just add that to the list of things I never knew, shall I?" John said in his quietly sarcastic way. He sipped at his tea and set the cup back on the china saucer with such force Molly was sure he was going to break it.

"To be fair, I've known him quite a bit longer than you have," she responded softly. She took a self conscious sip of her own tea. "It's not that I've been hiding it from you. It's just never come up. And no one's really asked me directly …"

John rolled his eyes and sat back in the little wooden chair. He looked at the space between them, at the tabletop and the crumbs sitting on the edge.

"So you've just been funneling him pieces of people to keep him occupied? That's it then?"

Molly sighed and lowered her teacup to the saucer.

"You've seen how he gets when he's craving cigarettes. And you saw how it was before the whole Magnussen debacle. You've never seen him really on drugs, or going through withdrawal. You don't know what he's like. And I will do anything to keep that from happening again. I will do anything to keep him from wasting his mind. If that entails giving him body parts from the morgue to keep his mind occupied, then so be it."

John watched as she twisted the gold band around her finger and she saw a flicker of pain shoot across his face.

"It would have been nice to know. I know you and I haven't been close. But it would have been nice to know. He's my best friend."

He wasn't accusatory. There was no blame in his words. Molly understood completely.

"He didn't want to make a fuss about it."

"And you do everything he wants."

"Of course I don't." Molly frowned. "You're angry at him, not me," she told him softly. John sighed, rubbed a hand over his face.

"You're right. Of course you're right. I'm sorry, Molls." He looked up at her, arms crossed. "What was he like? Back then? With the drugs?"

Molly sipped her tea, pensive. Where should she start? That particular tale was something of an epic. It was too large for a single meeting at a coffee shop, and yet its path was such a clear, clean-cut one. She smiled as she replaced her cup on its saucer, drew her finger around the edge of its mouth.

"I fell in love with him almost at first sight. I guess we can call it that, anyway. Fresh out of university, fresh at Bart's. I'd only been working there a few months when he came into the morgue. Greg Lestrade had fewer grey hairs back then, and I used to think Sherlock was the cause of them."

She smiled fondly at the memory.

"Sherlock was high as a kite. I didn't know it then, but he'd been using for years. It was strange, seeing someone so high function so well." Molly gave a sad little chuckle. "But it was almost like he didn't really know how to function. He could do the things he knew absolutely how to do—examine a body, spout off theories for Greg—but he couldn't interact with people, not well. The first thing he ever said to me was that the color of my jumper did downright alarming things to my complexion."

John huffed out a short laugh and shook his head. "That's sounds like him, yeah."

"I let him say what he wanted because he was Sherlock Holmes, and he was beautiful, and he looked at me, and I was me, and I have a knack for becoming attached to emotionally unavailable men. I'd always been the quiet sort, and not a lot of self esteem either, so it didn't really bother me that Sherlock insulted me. I think sometimes I could trick myself into believing he was trying to distance himself from people. He was always so lonely—" Molly took a deep breath, looked down at her tea. "No—I'm rambling. I'm sorry. You asked what he was like. It's something of a journey, really."

She paused, gathering her thoughts, reaching inside her coat pocket for a pack of saltines. She opened it, using the index finger and thumb of both hands to break open the packet. John waited patiently, arms still crossed, as she nibbled at her crackers.

"He was awful," she said finally. "Mostly. I met him on a day he'd been busted for possession of narcotics. Mycroft worked his Mycroft magic and had Greg pick him up. If he helped solve a seemingly unsolvable case, the drugs bust wouldn't go on his record."

"They brought a man influenced by drug use to look at a body to solve a murder." It wasn't a question; it was a statement, one of disbelief. John was dumbstruck. "Not exactly a good judgment call."

Molly gave him a knowing smile and said, "He was done in five minutes."

The lead pathologist—clipboard in hand, mouth agape, indignant—hadn't even finished the preliminary paperwork on the body. Molly, pencil and notebook in hand, was watching the events with a bemused smile. This character was an interesting one.

His hair was a mess of dark curls, unwashed and unruly. His eyes were bright as he rolled them at Dr. Chambray, eyebrows arching in unmasked irritation. There was a sweep of stubble stretching across his top lip, his chin, over his jawline, down his neck. His cheekbones were sharp, his face young. He stood erect in a gray T-shirt and dirty, frayed jeans. The plaid button-down he wore open over his shirt was riddled with cigarette burns; he'd tried rolling the sleeves up over his elbows but the cloth was in tatters and was sliding down his arms. He was thin, but not starved; angular, but not gaunt.

He'd look so elegant if he didn't look so homeless.

"How—how can you stand there and presume to know these things?" Dr. Chambray spluttered, fumbling his clipboard in his meaty hands. "Greg, get him out of my morgue!"

Lestrade put his hands up in a placating gesture while his partner stuffed his hands in his pockets and rolled his eyes.

"Sherlock's not just an ordinary fellow, now, Phil," Lestrade said slowly. "Listen to what he says. He comes highly recommended—"

"I don't care if the bloody queen sent—"

"We don't have time for this!" the thin man—Sherlock—boomed. Molly looked over at him, alarmed. His voice had a deep, resonating timbre, so low she could almost feel it in her chest. He pulled his left hand from his pocket and looked at his watch for several seconds. "I'm telling you, you fools, that this man's brother will be getting on a train to the airport in ten minutes." He looked back toward Lestrade. "Intercept him there and check the pills in his medicine bottles; I assure you they won't be the one's he's been prescribed." He turned swiftly, whipping around to pin Dr. Chambray with his steely blue-green eyes. "And you call yourself a doctor," he sneered.

Dr. Chambray slammed his clipboard on the exam table next to the dead man's leg and began storming from the room. "He's mental, Greg," he grumbled loudly, composure lost. Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, but Lestrade threw a withering look over his shoulder. Sherlock clamped his mouth shut as the two men exited the morgue, doors swinging shut behind them.

Molly stood with her arms around her notebook, hugging it to her chest. She would be lying if she said she wasn't somewhat shocked; Dr. Chambray was a noted hardass. She'd never seen him so angry and out of his league.

Grin in place, she turned her head to look up at Sherlock, but her smile faltered when she realized he was staring at her with a hard look in his narrowed eyes.

"Wh-what?" she stammered. Sherlock only looked at her for several long moments. She couldn't even keep her gaze on him as his eyes roamed obtrusively up and down her body. Instead she held her notebook tighter and kept her eyes trained on the floor. She could hear him rustling in his pockets and chuckling softly. She jerked her head up to look at him when she realized he was trying to light a cigarette.

"You can't—can't smoke in here," she told him. "This is a morgue."

Sherlock looked around the room as he drew from his cigarette. He took in the drawers and the body on the slab and exhaled, smoke wafting around his head for a moment before dissipating.

"Not hurting them, then, is it?" he asked her, nodding toward the wall lined with body drawers. He slipped his lighter back into his pocket. "I don't suppose you have any cash for a cab. I used my last fifty quid for recreational purposes."

Molly opened her mouth to respond but snapped it shut instead. Drugs. He meant drugs, she told herself. She'd never felt more naive than in that moment. Sherlock took another drag on his cigarette and began making his way toward the door.

"I'd rethink you choice of color in the future," he said over his shoulder, pushing the morgue door open with his shoulder. "Chartreuse is an appalling color on you, and you're not doing each other any favors."

Molly watched as he slipped through the morgue doors, watched them swing to and fro before coming to a stop.

"Oh," she said to the empty room, to the corpse on the table, to the corpses and body parts in their refrigerated doors. "Oh," she said to herself and her poor, mesmerized heart.