Disclaimer: This fanfiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended. Originally published on tumblr.

THE HONEST DETECTIVE

~ Leave Your Message At The Tone ~

"You see- hic- You see, the thing is, John, the thing is that Molly is perfect," Sherlock slurs into his phone.

"PER. FECT."

And though he knows his friend can't see him, he nods firmly to himself to reiterate his point.

"And that's what you just don't seem to understand! I mean, have you smelled her hair? Of course you haven't, Mary would have murdered you, but her hair smells like, like sunshine and new books and being happy! Yes, I said happy! And, and, her eyelashes are like, they're like these lovely, soft, lovely, silky spiders of loveliness on her face!

"And her mouth is so sexy, and little, I think it might be the best mouth ever. And her tits, oh god, Christ, she has the most perfect, perky little tits and the most lovely, round little bum and her smile and her voice and her silly jokes are… Ungh!… So I suppose what I'm trying to say, John, is that I know you think I want to shag The Woman but really I don't anymore, because I want to shag My Woman, and My Woman is Molly Hooper and-"

Beep.

The answering machine must have him off.

Sherlock swears to himself loudly and attempts to redial, determined to share some more drunken thoughts with his best friend.

Before he manages to do so, however, he passes out cold-

While on the other side of London (in the dead centre of town), Molly Hooper stares into the darkness and wonders how she'll ever get to sleep after hearing him say all that...

~ Hangover Interruptus ~

There is only one way in which narcotics are preferable to alcohol, Sherlock thinks groggily as he stares up at his ceiling.

Drugs might kill me, but they never gave me a hangover like this.

And he whimpers to himself, turning onto his side and curling up while he waits for the room to stop spinning. Bile rises but he manages to force it down through willpower alone- Well, that and the fact that there's nothing left in his stomach to bring up.

(The breakfast Mrs. Hudson brought him in sits, untouched and cold, to his right).

Trying to dispel the pounding in his temples he closes his eyes, and as he does so something flits up from his subconscious. A flash of memory, recall of talking on the phone to John about- Oh God, about Molly Hooper…

A feeling of … dread trickles through Sherlock's chest.

Not really sure why- and yet certain that it's necessary- he lurches off the couch and grabs his mobile.

With shaking hands he pulls it under the housecoat he threw over himself last night and taps open his home-screen. Goes through his list of phone-calls from last night, looking for John's number and some indication of how long he talked the good doctor's ear off. He just knows John's going to be tedious about this- He always bloody is. No call to John appears however, though there are texts to clients, one particularly long call from his mother, a short call to Molly Hooper at 2 in the morning-

Sherlock stops.

Stares.

Shakes his head to himself.

As if in slow motion, he taps on the record for the call, takes in its timing. It's duration.

"Oh titty-fuck-shit-fuck-buggar-on-a tricycle," he mutters to himself.

With a dawning sense of horror he checks the current time- It's 3.30pm, even if he didn't talk to her but merely left her a voicemail, she'll definitely have seen it by now…

Panic flares. Like a bohemian, extremely hungover rocket, he darts towards his bedroom. Starts tearing through his wardrobe. He needs to get dressed, post haste, and get to Bart's so he can out find just how much of a mess he's made.

As he's pulling on a shirt he hears the door to the flat open, and without even stopping he thunders, "Not now, Mrs. Hudson, unless you want to see your favourite tenant nearly bloody naked-"

And to add a sense of urgency he storms out of his bedroom, clean boxer shorts barely covering his hips and a pair of socks his only other concession to modesty-

Which is why it's so embarrassing when he comes to a halt to see not his landlady but Molly Hooper standing there.

In his front room.

Staring at him in his undies.

"Oh Jesus Christ on a hobby horse," he mutters.

"Quite," is her only reply.

~ The Honest Pathologist ~

For a moment silence reigns.

Sherlock staring at Molly. Molly staring at Sherlock.

The hideousness of the whole experience staring them both in the face.

But then-

"I didn't say anything and you can't prove that I did!"

Admittedly, this is not the first thing Sherlock had intended to say regarding drunk-dialling Molly. In fact, had he had the time the universe owed him in which to dress, get in a taxi, think about what he'd done and construct an air-tight apology/excuse, well then he wouldn't have said anything so oafish or gauche.

But he hadn't had any of those things and now Molly is standing in front of him and really, this is on the universe for not letting him deal with this in his own way- Stupid bloody universe, he thinks-

"It did happen, Sherlock," Molly says quietly, and it's the oddest thing but where a moment ago she had looked pink-cheeked and embarrassed, now she looks... Now she looks pissed off. Really pissed off.

Oh, Sherlock thinks.

Oh bugger.

"It did happen," she says, stalking towards him. "You did ring me in the middle of the night and drunkenly tell me that you love my "perky tits," and my "round little bum," and you did tell me that you wanted to shag me-"

She sucks in a breath at the words.

So does he.

By this point she's right in front of him.

"It did happen, Sherlock," she reiterates quietly. "I know because I was there. So don't you dare tell me otherwise."

And she looks up at him with those big, brown eyes of hers. Her mouth a thin line, her arms crossed over her chest. She looks like a very tiny, very adorable, infinitely furious Valkyrie, and at the thought a wave of both tenderness and exasperation passed through him, though whether either emotion relates to himself or her he cannot guess. (He never can).

Instead he opens his mouth to speak, then closes it when he realises he doesn't know what to say to her.

"Sorry," he finally manages to mumble.

She leans in. "What was that? Didn't catch it."

"Sorry." This time he enunciates carefully, glowering at her. Straightening up to his full height so he can look down his nose at her, his near-nudity be damned.

Unfortunately for him, however, this impresses Molly Hooper not at all.

Rather, she cocks an eyebrow and despite himself, his breath hitches. His cheeks heat. A spark flares between them and the longer they maintain eye-contact, the brighter it seems to burn. For he likes it when she does that. He always has. Not Having It Molly is his favourite, infinitely preferable to Simpering Girlish Molly, or Sad and Trying Not To Show It Molly, and especially to the detested Engaged To An Idiot Who's Utterly Undeserving of Her Molly-

"You do know you're saying that out loud, don't you?" she asks, and at the words Sherlock blinks. Stops and mentally runs back through the last few seconds.

Turns out he had been speaking- How unutterably ghastly.

Wrong-footed and abashed, he stares down at her; Those lovely lips of hers are now threatening to tick up into a smile. Where once she was angry, now her eyes are dancing. For a moment he's tempted to claim she's being ridiculous but before he can she rolls her eyes and snaps, "Oh, for God's sake, Sherlock, we both know what happened, just stop pretending already-"

So he does as she says.

He stops "pretending, already."

And by "stops pretending already," he means reaching down until he can grab Molly around the waist and kiss her, hard, the pounding in his head and the surprise on her face and the absolute terror of rejection be damned.

For a moment Molly freezes, unsure. His sudden lunge has also knocked her off balance, and she's forced to cling onto him to stay upright. But once that millisecond of initial shock wears off, she takes charge. Starts to kiss him back like the lively little vixen he's always known she'd be. Suddenly her hands in his hair and her lithe, sweet legs are wrapped about his waist and it's funny but he doesn't remember deciding to splay them both into John's old chair but well, now they're here they might as well make use of it- It's not like the chair hasn't seen worse, anyway-

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he gasps.

"Shut up, Sherlock," she gasps right back, nipping at his lip. "Of course I bloody do!"

"Right you are, Molly-" he manages to get out, and then any further conversation is rendered difficult by her decision to start suckling on his tongue. Also, by his decision to start squeezing her bum, which is every bit as delectable as it looks.

For what feels like eternity they do nothing but snog and then breathe and then snog and then breathe and then snog and then breathe some more. Her little hands everywhere. Her little body rocking in his lap. Those perky little breasts he's dreamed of so often pressing into his chest until, really, he can't help it but fill his hands with the weight of them- Squeeze them until she moans for him-

Somewhere along the line- Sherlock's not sure where- his socks get tossed aside. Then his shirt. Then Molly's shirt.

Then her socks.

Her shoes.

Her bra.

The only reason his boxers or her knickers stay the distance is because he's fully aware of what he and Molly will likely do together if either garment were to be discarded, and the first time they have sex is not going to be in John's chair after a argument- That's clearly more of the sort of thing you do after your sixth or seventh fight, even he can see that.-

Eventually they have to come up for air - and, possibly, sustenance- and when they do they're both mussed. Both gasping.

Somewhere along the way Molly has managed to suck a rather dark, rather obvious love-bite into his neck, and when she notices she's so proud of it she grins.

Unbelievably, it makes her look even more adorable and Sherlock has the rather terrifying thought that he may, indeed, have just met his most undefeatable foe-

"So," she says, still in his lap. Her hands now splayed across his chest. "You want to shag me, do you?"

The urge to lie- that damnable fear of rejection- rises within him, but given the events of the last ten minutes he supposes he should just come clean.

It really would be ridiculous to do anything else.

"Yes!" he says, sighing like a martyr. Just because he's being sensible, it doesn't mean he has to make things easy- That's not his thing. "Yes, I want to shag you, and I have for a long time. Yes, I think your-"

"Tits and arse," she prompts when he can't bring himself to say the naughty words. .

"-I think your breasts and derriere are lovely," he corrects primly, earning a playful clip at his ear which he answers with an entirely un-playful kiss to her lips.

This quite knocks the cheekiness of of Miss Molly, as well it should.

"So what now?" he asks when they part and their laughter has died down. "I mean... Obviously I want to shag you, but I also, um, want to... You know."

""You know,"?" she mimics. "No I don't know, Sherlock. That's how we got here."

He rolls his eyes. "I. Want. To. Go. Out. With. You!" he tells her, enunciating again. Now he's listening to it, it actually is rather annoying. "I want to spend time with you! I want to- I'm not going to use a ridiculous term like "boyfriend," but I want to be with you, and shag you, and show you absolutely how much I love your tits, and your arse, as you insist on calling them, and your-"

"You want me."

She says the words, and though they should be a statement there's a question in them. A touch of wonder too.

When he looks at her, for the first time in all this he sees the vulnerability in her gaze.

It sets something tender loose in his chest that he can't rightly name.

"I want you," he says, more gently, running his thumb along her cheek. Her lip. Funny how he finds it so easy to be gentle with her now. "I've wanted you for a long time: I was just stupid enough to need a drink before I could say it." And he presses a small kiss to her lips. Holds his breath. "So I suppose the question becomes: Is that what you want, too? To be with me?"

And he stares at her, willing her to give him the answer he wants. Willing his stomach to settle and not heave as he worries about what she's about to say, because that would ruin the mood, but then-

"Yes, Sherlock," she says quietly. "Yes, I want to be with you. Me, and my breasts, and my derriere, we all want you. Always." She kisses him. "Always, love."

And with that, Molly Hooper- and her tits, and her arse, and her lovely thin lips and her delectable, beautiful, long-suffering soul- takes ownership of one Sherlock Holmes, Esq.

He's far too pleased with himself to mind, and he fancies she is too.