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“I think I should tell my boyfriend that I love him,” Molly said.
“I don’t see what I have to hear this,” Sherlock said, slouching back in his seat.
“Because you want me to not let anyone know you’re alive,” Molly said, resisting the urge to reach out and ruffle Sherlock’s orange dyed hair. He couldn’t exactly hide who he was if John saw him, but Sherlock was brilliant at disappearing in plain sight. The only physical changes to Sherlock were a change of clothes (closer to something John would wear) the hair dye and the brown contacts Sherlock wore, yet Sherlock seemed like a completely different man. He walked different, spoke different, acted different. None of it felt wrong, though. When she tried to down what felt off about Sherlock’s new persona she never could, even when he wasn’t acting anymore. If anyone saw him being himself, and he then slipped into his act, no one would question him as acting and no one would think he was Sherlock Holmes.
“Don’t you have a girl you can talk to?” Sherlock asked.
“You already know the answer,” Molly said. She didn’t have anyone she’d been close to, not really. She had people she talked to at work, and she’d had her crush on Sherlock and she’d had a cat. Now she just happened to have an ex-military sniper.
“He’s told you that he loves you already,” Sherlock said, deducing too keep in practice. “You haven’t said it back and he’s said it enough that it’s becoming uncomfortable, but that’s not the only reason you feel like you need to say it now when you didn’t before” Sherlock said.
“No, it’s not,” Molly said. It’d been four months since Jim died, and Sebastian had basically been living in her flat since Jim’s funeral. He still slept on her couch, though. She missed Jim badly, but while the pain of losing him didn’t lessen in anyway, there was something very final about it all. He wasn’t coming back, he wasn’t Sherlock Holmes; he didn’t have that will to live. He wasn’t coming back. Molly didn’t have to hope for him to show up one day. She did his autopsy. She knew better than anyone else that he was dead.
“Maybe he’s gay,” Sherlock suggested.
“What?” Molly asked, startled by Sherlock’s words breaking into her thoughts.
“He’s not sleeping with you right now, and you’re hoping to get him in bed if you tell him you love him too,” Sherlock pointed out.
Molly shook her head. She probably should be furious for how much Sherlock had figured out, but she wasn’t. He didn’t have anyone else to connect to or bounce ideas off of. Worst of all that was that he trusted her and the man he was staying dead for was also the only other man Molly was protecting. Of course he couldn’t find the last sniper.
“No, Sherlock, he’s not gay,” She said with e very gentle but firm tone. She didn’t have to look up to see Sherlock’s frown. She was talking to him more like a nurturing mother than like a woman who had a crush on him… but she didn’t, not anymore. Jim’s death had cleared that up. She only had space in her heart for two things: Grief and Sebastian.
“Your last boyfriend was.”
“Jim wasn’t gay,” Molly said with exasperation.
“He played it very well,” Sherlock pointed out.
“To try and fool you,” Molly pointed out. “Trust me, he was a very engaged lover,” she said, flipping through her notes.
“You had sex with James Moriarty?” Sherlock asked.
“What and you didn’t?” Molly asked. She stared in horror at her own words, her eyes locked on Sherlock. Sherlock was just staring. It was like Jim had come right out of her mouth, stood up and waved hello.
“You spent a bit too much time around dear Jim from IT,” Sherlock said.
“Possibly,” Molly said, blushing. That seemed to make Sherlock relax. A blushing Molly was a normal Molly. Sherlock didn’t quite know how to deal with a sarcastic Molly yet.
“Why is your new boyfriend not performing, then?” Sherlock asked.
Molly didn’t bother to get angry or to tell Sherlock off. “My other boyfriend died a while ago,” she said. “Not dear Jim from IT,” she added. Jim from It wasn’t her boyfriend… James Moriarty wasn’t either. She was his occasional lover. She was his. He never belonged to her.
“Two boyfriends at once.”
“Seb never cared,” Molly said. “I think he liked it that way. Tom was his friend.” Tom was the name of one of Jim’s aliases.
“Dear me,” Sherlock said. If anything he looked amused. He was reassessing her and the image he had of her before. “When did you become such a good liar?”
Molly shrugged. “Don’t complain. I wouldn’t be any use to you if I wasn’t,” she said. She’d learned from Jim. She knew that the two best types of lies were opposites. The one was the big lie: you tell a big lie and you say it loud enough and long enough that people start to believe it. The other was the half-truth: have only one lie and wrap it all in truth. For Jim’s final lie he did both. Molly didn’t think she’d ever be as a good as liar as Jim Moriarty, but then she had managed to cheat Jim Moriarty out of his final win.
“Just tell him that you love him,” Sherlock said. “Even if you don’t mean it he’ll probably believe it. It only matters that he believes it.”
~~~
Molly had the words heavy on her tongue when she got home. Sebastian had been living with her for almost two months now, but they hadn’t so much as held hands. They didn’t touch at all. She missed Jim, but he was gone and she could start to move on. But Sebastian was right there in front of her and she couldn’t touch him at all. It was possibly the worst torture she’d ever experienced. She’d never told Jim that she loved him because Jim would have throne her away if she told him… but Sebastian wanted her to love him… she just didn’t want to betray Jim.
“Are you leaving?” Molly asked when she saw that Sebastian had moved everything off the sofa. He washed the sheets, but this wasn’t a sheet washing day.
“I uh…” Sebastian stopped what he was doing, looking for a moment like a deer caught in the headlights. The expression would have been cute if it didn’t terrify Molly down to her toes. She knew that Sebastian was like a caged animal (as Jim had described him) a terrified Seb would lash out and try to escape.
“What?” She asked, hoping her voice didn’t sound harsh.
“I thought that I might try… well… sleeping in your bed,” Sebastian suggested. Molly stood mute for a while, her thoughts racing. It was such a fight every day just to call each other by their names and not to revert back to ‘Colonel’ and ‘Ms. Hooper’. Sherlock had been wrong to think that Molly hoped to get sex out of Sebastian when she told him she loved him. She hoped he would just hold her, kiss her maybe. She wanted to try and move forward. She just hadn’t expected this at all. “Molly… is this okay?” he asked.
“Yes… Seb…Sebastian do you really mean it?” she asked, not daring to even move or breath.
“Yes, I mean it,” he said with a very uncomfortable smile. He closed the distance between them fairly easily. He reached up and touched her cheek. She could see it in his eyes. He too wanted to try and move on. He wanted to try living again. “Is that okay?”
“I love you so much Colonel Sebastian Moran,” Molly whispered, feeling tears prick behind her eyes.
“What?” Sebastian asked, the word coming out more like a joke than a question.
“I love you… I am in love with you, and I have been for a long time… I think since you confessed to me… Sebastian, I really rather fancy you.”
That surprised a laugh out Sebastian who dragged her into his arms and dipped her into a kiss that mimicked a very famous one from the end of WWII. Molly knew exactly what he was doing. Even for how sweet and lovable he could be, a part of Sebastian would always be military, always be loyalty, always be war. That was fine though, because he was a Tiger, and he wasn’t going to let anyone into his territory who didn’t belong, especially when Molly was around.
“I love you too,” he said. She knew he felt like those words were a long time coming from his lips. They sounded wonderful to her ears.
“I love you too,” she said, leaning up and catching his lips. “Would you like to go to bed, Sebastian… I want you to hold me.”
The words had barely left her lips before he’d lifted her up and started to carry her to her-their bedroom. This was what she wanted, more than what she wanted. In that moment she felt like he life was perfect.