Hi! This is my first 'Sherlock' fanfiction.

Obviously, I'm American so I'll most likely make mistakes in British phrasing and the like. Sorry. Obviously, I'm also human, as well, and so will make the inevitable grammatical errors also. Sorry again.

This story's about Jim Moriarty and Molly Hooper and their 'relationship' (and by relationship I mean blatant manipulation of the latter by the former) and will follow the two from a bit before the third episode of the first season up until the third of the second (and perhaps even after if Moriarty managed to survive shooting himself in the head).

The first chapter is a bit more introspective than the rest'll be and takes place before 'The Great Game'.

I hope you like it!

Please read and review!

Adorable.

The word described his brown puppy-dog eyes, his sheepish grin and his nervous laugh when he was embarrassed.

And he was almost always embarrassed, which was also adorable.

Like the way he had told her, during their second coffee 'date', that he had had a crush on her for about two months already but he had been too shy to talk to her in person and it took him weeks to even gather enough courage to comment on her blog.

And that was just adorable, so adorable.

And here adorable was now, Jim from IT, sitting cross-legged on her couch watching 'Glee' (of all things) while she stood in the kitchen waiting for the popcorn to pop.

Normally, if Molly had a man over she wouldn't recommend an American television show concerning covers of show tunes and teenage drama, since it wasn't the kind of thing a man usually enjoyed (they were supposed to like action movies and pornos, right?).

But then again, Molly didn't normally have men over.

And she had seen Jim's music-player and knew he would like it. He was just so sensitive, and so much of a music lover and a perceptive follower workplace drama (despite not actually participating in it) that she knew he would, just knew (and he did).

He was just so adorable.

Molly turned away from where she had been watching Jim watching television. He had his back to her and against the sofa, he was fidgeting, tapping his fingers lightly in-tune to the music probably trying to keep himself from singing along embarrassing himself.

She looked back at the microwave, four more seconds to go; as soon as it read '00:01' she pressed the button to avoid the beep, opening the door.

Socks sliding across the tile and then padding onto the carpet of the living room floor, Molly approached the couch, without spilling a single popped corn kernel.

She had been silent (so as not to disturb by muffling the voices coming from the television's speakers) and so she didn't think Jim had noticed her coming.

He had.

And he turned around, looking back at her with those wide, adorable eyes and embarrassed, adorable smile.

It was almost like he was ashamed of everything he was doing, like he was a child feeling guilty knowing he was doing something wrong and getting away with it.

"I heard the popcorn stop popping." He explained, and then added with a nervous chuckle, "I'm hungry."

"Me too." Molly smiled, moving around the couch, sitting down next to him and handing him the bowl, "Here…whoa! Careful!"

Molly couldn't tell if it had been her clumsiness or Jim's but the bowl of popcorn had slipped from their hands, about a fourth of it spilling all over them and the sofa.

"Sorry!" Molly and Jim apologized at the same moment, looking down and then back at each other and then down again.

Really, Molly didn't think it was possible to find someone on this earth as awkward as she, someone on this earth who had as little a clue on how to be likeable (let alone loveable), what to say and how not to embarrass one's self in every social situation possible.

But then she had met Jim.

And so now she was beginning to think that a person's social skills had a relationship inversely proportional to their intelligence (which definitely explained a certain handsome genius that Molly was trying hard not to think about while on a date with someone else).

Jim, after jumping a bit in shock at dropping the bowl, quickly started to pick up the fallen kernels up from his couch cushion and put them back into the bowl that was now positioned steadily on the coffee table between the sofa and television.

Molly began to do the same.

"Five second rule, right." She said, glancing up from her lap where the popcorn had fallen at Jim.

"Actually," he began, also looking up and meeting her eyes, "It's more like 45 seconds or longer even…I read it on the internet, some study with food dropped on the floor collecting germs…"

"Oh." Molly replied, Jim always knew all these odd facts, "That's interesting…well, good then. It's safe to eat. No germs."

She moved the corners of her mouth up, attempting what couldn't really be passed as a smile but could still be recognized as a valiant attempt at being polite.

"Yeah no germs." Jim agreed, and then his eyes widened when he realized that his words had mostly likely offended Molly and turned away from her. He hurriedly added, "Not that your couch is dirty or anything. I'm sure it's all clean. But I mean everything has germs and most of them are harmless anyway and you probably clean all the time…"

He trailed off like he usually did after a long ramble.

It really was adorable.

Molly decided to laugh now, it was nervous, like Jim's, but it was really the only way to kill the awkward silence quickly thickening between them.

Jim joined her and they laughed together and it was adorable.

When it was quiet again…

(and not the awkward, heavy kind of quiet, the warm kind of quiet like the fading blush on the face of someone who has realized there was no need to be embarrassed, and so is now calming down and laughing about how silly it was)

… Molly and Jim both noticed that both of their hands were both reaching into the crevice between their respective sofa cushion to retrieve the same piece of popcorn at the same time.

They looked down at their fingers, which surprisingly did not pull away upon feeling other fingers against their skin, and then up at each other.

Molly giggled (nervously and embarrassedly, of course) but then stopped when she realized Jim wasn't laughing his usual nervous laugh.

His finger (a bit sweaty, but soft) was stroking hers.

Now it had become somewhat of staring contest to see who would be the first to look down and away from the other's eyes.

Molly thought it would be Jim first but she was wrong, she found herself unable to maintain the prolonged eye contact and her eyes turned towards the most justifiable excuse.

The television.

'Glee' was still playing...but it was almost over.

She recognized the episode, it was one of her favorites. This was the one where the 'will-they-won't-they' characters would kiss for the first time.

Why was she embarrassed? Why was she nervous? why couldn't she do this?

Molly always asked herself these questions when she was still single of Valentine's Day or saw a happy couple sitting together on the train on the way to work or made a fool of herself in front of the date a friend had set her up with (or in front of that unnameable consulting detective).

Her answered used to be that it was her job.

Examining dead bodies for a living was a turn off for most men but Molly wasn't stupid. When she realized that revealing her occupation at first was deterring potential boyfriends she decided to be vague about 'working over at the hospital' and not tell the whole truth about her job until at least the fourth date.

However Molly's relationships still rarely reached the fourth date, despite her omissions.

But this was supposed to be different.

Jim was supposed to be different.

He was just as shy and as awkward and as nerdy and she was, if not more.

In fact his entire personality was like a male version of her own taken to the extreme. She was even the more well-adjusted of the two.

They had so much in common it really should have been easy.

But it wasn't (because it never ever was for Molly, never).

("Just grab the first guy you can and hold on to him" her younger (yes younger, Molly was reduced to listening to unsolicited advice from her younger sister) had told her, "that's why I did and that's why I'm happily married now. Just grab onto him and never let go.")

Well here Jim was, admittedly crushing on her for months now and ripe for the grabbing (and even if he was shy, Molly was sure he'd go along with anything if she initiated).

So why was this so difficult?

Was it was because he was so nerdy and feminine almost?

No.

Molly was not picky.

She knew she would never get the rugged, muscular jock, or the suave, slick-suited professional. Hell, she couldn't even get the coffee-shop intellectuals or the workaholics who sat typing on their laptops in the corner of the subway car.

Was it because he was not that person Molly was not going to think about?

No…

...well not exactly.

Molly had just decided that that unnameable person was a lost cause; a fascinating piece of antique jewelry behind glass at a museum that she could admire but never own or put on.

And so why?

Molly didn't have time to think of the answer to her question.

She had been staring blankly at the television and didn't even notice that the show had reached the kiss scene that had satisfied a season's worth of anticipation, when the hand that hadn't been caressing (and that was now holding) her hand between the couch cushions, rested against her cheek and gently turned her face away from the television screen.

Molly stared at Jim's face that was smiling-but not the nervous, sheepish smile.

His mouth cocked to the side, like the head of a confused puppy (but for once he didn't look confused), and moved towards hers.

And the lips that were smiling (but not nervously or sheepishly) met hers.

There was no question now.

And so there was no need for an answer.

The questions of 'why was she embarrassed? why was she nervous? why couldn't she do this?' were gone now because now Molly was no longer embarrassed, or nervous and she was definitely doing this.

And the question of 'why was this so difficult?' was also gone.

Jim had been the one to make the move, rendering the question inapplicable to the situation.

But if Jim hadn't been the one to make the move, removing all the questions (temporarily) from Molly's mind, then Molly might have realized, that very night, the answer to why this was so difficult.

Jim was sensitive, sweet, caring; the ultimate 'nice guy' (that normally finished last-(which, in some situations, wasn't always a bad thing)).

(So much so that he was adorable.)

Jim was perfect.

Not perfect perfect (because no one ever was).

But for her, he was perfect.

Too perfect.

The answer that all of this, come all of a sudden into her lonely life, seemed too good to be true.

(Which, of course, it was.)

And it was getting excruciatingly difficult not to laugh at this fact...

...but Jim Moriarty had years of practice.

And despite these years of practice it never ceased to amaze him how incredibly stupid people were.

It was kind of adorable, actually.

Just like Molly.

The word described her so perfectly it was almost like she was trying.

(Which of course she must have been because when one is already so adorably awkward what else could they do but play it up a bit?)

But that, in turn, would mean that Molly was self-aware enough to realize this about herself, which she was because was always so embarrassed about the way she was, adding to her awkwardness which then added to her embarrassment and so on and so in an inescapable cycle that was just too damn adorable.

Pathetic, yes (like her cautious attempts to wear a little make up or go out on dates) but adorable.

The kind of adorable that made Jim want to laugh and vomit and tingle, all at the same time, and all of which he refrained from doing while in Molly's presence.

Especially now, since it would ruin the kiss.

Their first kiss, just like the characters on the television show.

He had seen it more than few time because he had to find something to do while he was bored…and then he had found Molly.

And Sherlock.

Yes, the magnificent, brilliant, (and sexy) consulting detective Sherlock Holmes whom Jim had become quite taken with the day far before he had uncovered his little taxi driver game.

Jim brought Sherlock to the forefront of his forever buzzing mind whenever he was bored.

And yes right now Jim was bored.

Just like he was that night he was re-reading John Watson's blog about Sherlock and he just happened to notice the incessant commenting by one Molly Hooper, who just happened to have her own blog that just happened to more than obviously indicate her crush on the oblivious Sherlock Holmes.

Adorable.

But who was Jim to judge?

If nothing else he and Molly did have that in common.

Which was what interested Jim in her in the first place.

That she would be so kind and accommodating to anti-social know-it-all that everyone else treated coldly.

That she would have feelings for a seemingly feelingless man who everyone else felt nothing for but annoyance, resentment and grudging, jealous admiration.

Perhaps Molly had thought, at first (because to think it now she would have to be an above average idiot, rather than the completely normal idiot she was), that because Sherlock was so unpopular that she would have a chance with him.

How cute, how naïve, how adorable.

Molly wasn't stupid (she did graduate medical school, after all (and she had done so on the merits of her own brain (-not her back))) and so it continually caused Jim's (internal) laughter that she had yet to figure out the truth about her new 'boyfriend'.

Not the fact that Jim Moriarty was the world's only international 'consulting criminal', of course... but the fact that Jim from IT was a flaming homosexual with his legs dangling out of the closet, kicking the can-can dance.

Had Molly really not noticed the quite fruity (ha, ha) cologne he had been wearing everyday? His tight shirts? The way he had very visibly and purposefully checked out every male he could see on the street, and flirted with at least three of them in the coffee shop?

Was she really just that blind?

No, Jim didn't think so.

He refused to believe Molly was oblivious the same way he refused to believe that the young medical examiner who examined the often horrifically disfigured corpses of the often brutally murdered still thought that the nature of man was essentially good as she had told him during a walk they had taken this evening on their third date (the first and second they had almost exclusively discussed the amazing exploits of Sherlock Holmes).

No one could have seen so much and still been so stupid.

Then again, the idiots of the world were always, always surprising Jim.

("As always," Sherlock had told one of those idiots; his own personal idiot sidekick John Watson, "you see but you do not observe.")

But Molly had observed.

She had seen Jim's playlist including numerous showtunes illegally downloaded during work hours on a work computer (Jim really did love his new part time job at the hospital although he preferred disco music to Broadway) and taken note.

That's why she had recommended 'Glee' for that night's entertainment.

So it wasn't like Molly didn't know or at least didn't have a suspicion…

No, it was more like she was pretending.

Pretending to have faith in human nature, pretending to have faith in herself.

Pretending to have hope.

Hope that a member of the opposite sex would find her attractive in both looks and personality enough to fall in love with her, hope that Sherlock would one day appreciate and pay attention to her, hope that Jim from IT wasn't gay and wasn't too good to be true.

Jim often toyed around with the idea of his own suicide but he knew for a fact that if he was living Molly's boring, lonely, hopeless life he would have already done it. Years ago.

Hopelessness broke people.

Human-beings could suffer through seemingly unimaginable tortures (seemingly because Jim had done more than just 'imagined' them) if they had the hope that they would be rescued and things would get better.

A broken person rarely got fixed, it was so much easier to just throw it away and get new one.

Once a person's hope was gone, so was their will to live.

But still Molly lived on, with only the hope, contrary to all the evidence of her experience, and her complete awareness of its falsity.

It was adorable.

And it was fascinating. So very fascinating.

Getting to know her at first he could hardly believe it, really; how she refused to wallow in self-pity as so many other normal, educated, lonely city dwellers and lash out at the source of her depression and dysfunction (others, or herself; homicide or suicide).

Just what was this tiny, pitiful, fascinating mystery that was little Molly Hooper.

Jim wondered how to break someone who was already hopeless and only pretending to have any hope at all.

And as Jim kissed Molly, the hand that had stroked her stroked her fingers softly gliding its way up the side of her arm and then neck until both his hands cupped her face, he resolved to find out.

I hope you liked the first chapter and if you did:

Please review!

(It's my most powerful motivation to write).

Thanks!