#all of them are scrapped now btw so you can have these gracing your feed

[demigod-of-the-agni]

old kal sketches i drew a while back

[irksomeirene]

Seeds AU

It feels rather OOC to me but I like fluffy angst so here's the (VERY UNBETA'D AND FIRST/ONLY DRAFT) answer to your question, @welcometothelosingside. Apologies for not knowing when the fuck to use “breath”/”breathe.”

BTW, as a general shout out, all my fics are open to remixing so long as I'm tagged and/or my work is linked to them.

He knocked when he arrived at Molly’s door; perhaps the first time he’d ever actually knocked on her door. He couldn’t quite remember actually deciding to come to Molly’s but he was here now and he needed to see her. Needed to know she was alive and well and that they would survive this. Together. But he would do it on her terms for once. He did not have the right to let himself into her home. He had done enough. He knocked again, louder this time, called with a broken voice to let her know who it was—though once he’d announced himself he wasn’t sure if knowing who was standing on her front stoop would make her fear him more or less.

The soft padding of her footfalls were so quiet he thought he might be hallucinating her approach at first (he still had an awful lot of tranquilizers in his system along with the lack of sleep and unimaginable levels of stress). And then the door opened to a sleep soaked, red eyed pathologist. She did not open the door as she normally did. It was not an open invitation, she did not open it and walk away, trusting in him to let himself in and lock the door behind him. No, today he saw only a sliver of her form through the crack of her doorway, her cried out eyes not meeting his, her entire form curling for self preservation.

"Molly," the name spilled brokenly from his lips. He had not thought there was an ounce of him left to shatter yet here he was, on Molly Hooper's doorstep, breaking all over again.

"What do you want Sherlock?"

His jaw worked uselessly for a long moment, so many words vying for freedom. Until he finally murmured quietly, "May I come in?" The deafening silence stretched on and on and prompted him to add, "This may take a while."

Molly tucked her face away from view on the other side of the door and Sherlock's entire form lurched forward with the gut wrenching fear that Molly might close this door on him--them. He couldn't breath. He couldn't breath.

And then she was stepping away from the door, a sucked in breath of panic before she slowly opened the door, using it as a shield as he entered. He tucked his hands behind his back to hide their shaking and the nervous fidgeting, entering with slow deliberation as if attempting not to spook a beaten dog--though whether Molly or himself was the dog in the metaphor was rather up for debate.

As he carefully removed his shoes and coat and gloves, feeling like he was trying to stretch out every single second he could. It was an all to real thought at the forefront of his mind that these could be his last moments in the sanctuary of Molly's home. He took in the strong, pleasant scent of fresh lemons; the much fainter traces of chemicals from the lab and mortuary that followed Molly wherever she went; the traces of catnip--though strangely faded as if Molly had not been spoiling Toby as she was wont to. He catalogued it all, desperate to retain it all, to keep it for himself if he was never to return.

He cursed as he tried for the fifth time to get hold of a finger of his glove to pull it off. His hands were shaking so badly and his eyes were blurry with tears again he couldn't get hold of the rich leather. And then Molly was just there as she always was in his time of need--however great or small.

Gently, she took each hand in turn, tugging gently until one glove then the other were free of him, tucking them safely into the pocket of his Belstaff. The gentle touch of her warm, faintly calloused fingers on his skin as she worked them free was grounding and made something desperate and aching spark to life in his chest.

Oh god, he loved her.

"I have a sister." It came from nowhere. He hadn't really known where he intended to start but that hardly seemed a good place.

"You never told me." She said simply, still holding his shaking hands in her own steady ones, her sad, sad eyes on his busted knuckle.

"Neither did I." He tried to make it sound light, tried to keep the smile on his lips though it trembled badly and his voice nearly broke as it crashed upon the words.

Molly looked up sharply, surprise casting away the empty eyed sorrow. Then she gives a little nod and says simple, blessedly familiar words, "I'll get the first aid kit."

And this time, when she turns away, he doesn't feel like the world is ending. For the first time, he feels the edges of ease brushing against his shattered reality. He takes up the familiar place on her comfy couch, pats his lap reflexively to encourage Toby before he notices the cat still hasn't come to harass him for affection and scraps from whatever Molly usually feeds him when he takes up residence in his favorite bolthole. It shouldn't bother him as much as it does considering how much of a nuisance the little beast can be. At any rate, he's always preferred dogs--

He suddenly feels like he's going to be sick and has to put his head between his knees rather quickly as the fabricated memories crash violently with the recently resurrected reality. He comes slowly back to the present with a soothing voice in his ear and a little warm hand running up and down his back. He can't even make sense of Molly's words for a long while but it still helps.

She gets him to breath with her; deep breathe in, hold, slow breathe out. Again and again until he feels light headed and grounded. She moves to sit on the coffee table beside the familiar first aid kit (which at this point is more a paramedic or surgeons kit than something the average person would keep forgotten under the bathroom sink). The sting of antiseptic and the bite of splinters pulling from his skin are grounding. He feels safe in her hands. He always feels safe with Molly.

"Thank you." He murmurs, though she's not nearly done cleaning up the damage he's done to himself. And god doesn't that ring a little too true of their relationship.

She glaces up from her work with eyes that have always seen him in ways no one else can, "Does your sister…does she--does she have something to do with…" She doesn't finish--can't finish.

Sherlock gives a stilted nod and swallows several times before he answers, "It was a test." And then it's all just spilling out of him. It's not linear or sensical and Sherlock doesn't know if Molly can make sense of any of it--but frankly, he can barely make sense of it himself. He gets too loud and too quiet and he's shaking then deathly still and it sounds even madder actually saying it all out loud than it ever did actually living through it all but he can't stop. He can't stop now that it's all coming out. He can feel himself trying to avoid The Call, can feel himself trying to find logic and reason and some sort of justification for it as he tells every bit of the story but that part until there's nothing left to tell.

"There was a coffin." He begins after a heavy lull filled with the knowing there's nothing left but this. He's shaking again and though he's been flitting around her living room since he began, now he returns to his seat and takes Molly's hands in his own bandaged ones. He can't do this without the reassurance that she's alive and whole and here. And Molly, bless her a thousand times, lets him, though she seems hesitant in it.

This does not spill from him with the same harried, panicked, messiness of the rest. This is careful and shaking; each word delicate and desperate.

"I couldn't risk it. I couldn't risk you, Molly." He dares to bring her knuckles up to his lips and holds them there as he whispers a broken, "I'm so sorry." He closes his eyes and presses his lips to her skin, more tears spilling from his eyes and onto her hands as he closes them against the overwhelming intensity of his second apology to her; sick with himself for always getting this wrong.

He thinks he's made the whole thing painfully clear until he opens his eyes and looks at the woman he loves across the hills of her knuckles only to find a strained, hurt smile on her face. It's too familiar to him. It's the smile of Molly Hooper taking rejection with grace.

"I understand." She says to his horror, voice soft and choked, "You did what you had to, Sherlock.--"

He can't listen to the rest, his heart rebels against the pain in her, "No, you don't." He says firmly and does not leave enough time or room for more misunderstandings, "I love you, Molly Hooper."

And even though it's the third time he's said it, it still leaves him feeling like every atom in his body is tingling with the truth of it--with the joy of it, even now in their darkest hour.

Until she recoils as if he's struck her, "You don't have to do this, Sherlock. I'm not Janine--"

"I love you, Molly." He says again, firmly. With every iteration, his confidence in these words grows. So he says it again and again and again--because he can, because he's making up for lost time, because Molly deserves to hear them for the rest of her life, because there's still doubt in her eyes and he put it there.

Her eyes spill over with tears and she sobs, shaking her head against it, "Stop."

So he does, because he'd decided to do this on her terms and he'll keep that silent promise--he'll keep as many promises as he can to Molly from now on. In the silence, he presses his lips to the knuckles he still has held in his hands again and again and again. He can't let Molly go thinking his love is a lie. If she decides he has no place in her life--in her heart--it will not be because she thinks him false in this.

"Why are you doing this?" She asks through a quiet sob, "Do you think you--you owe me this? Is it pity?--" She spits out the word and  it spurs Sherlock to the edge of his seat, crowding into Molly's space. He wants to wipe the spilling tears from her cheeks, to hold her face in his hands, to pull her close, to do something but he knows he isn't welcome yet. He hasn't earned that closeness yet, he isn't entitled to her.

So he holds her hands tighter and speaks desperately, "It's the truth. It isn't pity or a favor--it's the truth. Just the truth." He begins rubbing his thumb across her knuckles, "I know you have no reason to believe me. I know I've been an absolute cock since--well since the day we met. And…and maybe I'm too late. Maybe I've realized things too late, maybe I've made too much of a mess, maybe you can't forgive me for the way I've treated you--and I wouldn't blame you, not one bit. Whatever you decide, I'll understand, I'll accept it, I swear to you I will respect whatever you decide but--but I can't--I can't," he pinches his eyes closed and bows his head, pressing his forehead to her knuckles--it's the only tether he has to her now and it feels impossibly important to keep hold of her any way he can. He takes a calming breathe and looks into Molly's brown eyes, "I love you, Molly Hooper, and that's that. You deserve a better man--not a junky with the emotional capacity of a cactus," Molly gives a single, wet, almost laugh, "but I love you and you have a right to know. And quite frankly I've had the urge to shout it from the roof tops since I finally figured it all out." It's Sherlock's turn to give a wet little almost laugh, though his is tinged with self conscious nerves.

But for the first time, there is a faint light of belief in her eyes and Sherlock grasps desperately to the hope of that light in her eyes.

"Molly Hooper," was there a more pleasant name in all the world to speak? "Would you like to have coffee?" He echoed the first time Molly had asked him out with purpose. If she wanted to reject him as he had, she had an easy out and he'd accept it. God he hoped she said yes.

"It's two in the morning, Sherlock." But there was the beginnings of a hesitant little smile on Molly's face.

"Fish and chips then. I know a place. Gives me extra portions."

"Ah yes, Sherlock the carpenter."

"Handyman, really."

It was still watery but the up tilt of her lips was a balm to his soul.

"Everything isn't fixed, Sherlock."

He nodded quickly, "Yes, yes, I know. I've a lot to make up for and I don't really know what I'm doing--"

"There are going to be arguments and bad days."

"Yes, I know. I know."

"And I haven't… I'm not sure I completely believe all this yet."

Sherlock nods mutely, halfway bracing himself for rejection, eyes on their joined hands. He holds his breathe when Molly pulls one of her hands free of his until it comes to his cheek and gentles his gaze upwards, "I love you, Sherlock." He feels like she's punched him in the gut but it's still a bizarrely pleasant feeling.

And then she's pressing her lips to his and it's just impossibly better.

They don't have sex, though for the first time, Sherlock understands why people desire it beyond procreation and stress relief. Instead they kiss and hold each other. There are so many different kinds of kisses. Intellectually, Sherlock has known this. The way people kiss in public can tell him all sorts of things about a relationship. But actually experiencing all these shades of love and affection and heart break behind closed doors and within the confines of his own skin is a world apart from what he knows.

Molly's bed feels like a sanctuary from reality. It's safe and warm, and Molly is soft and gentle, and it feels like coming hope--like he can breathe for the first time in a lifetime. Tucked close together in their jimjams, Sherlock melts around Molly and gently into his first restful sleep in months.

There is a moment of panic when he jerks wakes. The bed is empty, the apartment quiet, and Sherlock thinks he's in a break away room in the middle of a field with a little girl on the phone for a bone rattling moment of panic. Then a note crunches under his hand and reality comes into focus.

You sleep like the dead. Gone to work. Leftovers in the oven. -Love, Molly

He is inexplicably delighted by the hurriedly penned note as he flops back into bed, rolls into Molly's space, and buries his face in her pillow to breath her deep into his rattled bones. He falls back into a light doze before his body is finally sick of sleep. He shuffles to Molly's kitchen, finds the heating instructions taped to the oven, and--for once--follows them instead of just eating the contents cold.

It isn't until he's had a shower and is half way through dressing back into his jimjams that he realizes he still hasn't been accosted by Toby. Frowning, Sherlock begins his search for the pest.

Only Toby's bowls are missing as are his toys and litter box and for a heart pounding while he thinks the cat has died and Molly hasn't told him--how distant have they become if Molly hadn't shared that with him! Only, once he opens his eyes to all manner of clues to Toby's disappearance, he realizes there are a great deal more changes to Molly's life than just her missing cat.

It isn't just his low blood sugar and shock that's made him feel chilly, the thermostat was set several degrees cooler than she used to keep it. There are fine layers of dust in places, unusual for Molly's meticulous house keeping. There are several plants that are beginning to show signs of despairing for water--again, unusually for Molly's green thumb and great attentiveness to all the living things in her home. Everywhere he turns he sees more and more signs of Molly's increasingly regular absences from her home.

He wandered through her house, startled to realize just how much of Molly Hooper’s life he’d been missing. There's a gym bag that was once filled with practical work out attire, several water bottles, healthy snacks, and a small toiletry kit that is now filled with nearly a week's worth of work clothes. At the desk that had once housed medical journals, theories and experiments she had floating about her head, ideas for papers, observations that niggled at her curiosity, stacks and stacks of notes and ongoing studies she was waiting to publish or peer review; there was now a completely different kind of meticulously organized chaos.

On the wall where there had once been a cork board full of a thousand different color post its with the occasionally interesting pictures of decaying flesh, there was now only one massive calendar. Rosie’s pediatric appoints, sitter schedule, and social outings. John’s therapy appointments accompanied by notes to double check he’d actually gone, his work schedule, his visits to Mary. Mrs. Hudson’s baby sitting availability and holidays. Mary’s check up dates and visitation hours. A dozen video conferences for that month alone at the oddest hours (he recognized a few rather impressive names—a Swiss pediatrician, and two different brain trauma specialists from Korea and Egypt). Endless notes to trade shifts with people, sitter availability scheduled then scratched out then rescheduled then scratched out again and again. Notes on John’s mental state, notes on Mary’s progress (or lack there of), notes on Rosie’s milestones. Across the desk were basic books on childcare and more advanced medical journals on the early signs and symptoms of what looked to be any and every plague known to half-pint kind.

There were journals on brain damage from blood loss—long and short term effects, the chances of waking from various types of comas, possibilities of loss of some cognitive functions, the effects and stages of muscle atrophy, how to prevent and recover from atrophy, even a copy of Mary’s charts which she really shouldn’t have had access to—there were journals on PTSD and depression, but most crushing of all, there were journals on the long term effects of opioid abuse. In these, there were detailed notes and criticisms. In one in particular, there was a half written letter of courteous fury tucked between pages dictating in clipped tones exactly what Molly Hooper thought the author could do with his judgmental pity.

That your patients feel the need to self-medicate may stem from deeper problems than their implied lack of morals you have inexplicably ascribed to sobriety. I would highly recommend you begin the search for the root cause with your bedside manner, sir.

Sherlock couldn’t help the fragile little chuckle that left him at that. Though hardly anyone respected her own title, Molly only ever denied using a fellow doctor’s title when she was right and truly pissed. But it was still hard to see all this—the evidence of Molly’s efforts to care for people on all fronts. He carefully removed the calendar from its little nail in the wall and began to turn back the clock. Through meticulous, color coded notes, Sherlock watched John’s downward spiral; watched Rosie’s various ear infections, a UTI, a brief bout of pneumonia, and some very angry penmanship beside a sitter’s name explicitly reminding herself to never call the boy ever again; watched Molly Hooper put the whole of her life on hold for her friends.

Worst of all was the discovery of an innocent little journal. It’s tan cover was plush with yellow, pink, and blue whimsical designs sewn into the fake leather. It was a baby journal dedicated to Mary.

To Mary, with all our love. I know it’s not the same as having been here but I hope this helps. -Papa Watson, Baby Rosie, and Godmum Molly

Sherlock would be rather surprised if John knew a thing about this journal tracking his child’s progress through life. The man was barely functional these days. Even if Molly had told him, there was hardly a guarantee John had heard her. As Sherlock flipped through the pages, he found Molly’s meticulous nature put to good (although sometimes a bit graphic use—he was fairly certain Mary would be quite a bit less than heart broken to have missed the misadventures of Rosie Watson’s constipation) use. But the further along he got, the more often he noticed the entries reading less like fastidious accounts of Rosie Watson’s days and more like private letters to a friend and sometimes even as near to a diary as he could ever imagine Molly keeping.

He felt heavy with the extent of it all, had to sit and bow his head in shame as the weight of realization fell up on his shoulders. Molly wrote a journal to a friend in a coma because she hadn't anyone else to talk to--to share her burdens with. It was colder because she was barely living here, no use heating an empty home. Toby was not dead, he had been given up to a coworker so he could be properly cared for and loved in Molly's constant absence. Her fridge was empty of it's usual selection of fresh ingredients for the next few meals but full of prepackaged, pre-made, store bought meals. Molly had an overnight bag to last her a week because she was holding everyone's world together nearly singlehandedly. And perhaps worst of all, Molly Hooper’s work—the thing she had loved longest in the world, long before she knew a whisper of Sherlock Holmes—had been relegated to a corner, collecting dust as she struggled to keep not only her own head above water, but everyone else’s as well. And despite her best efforts, she was drowning.

She was drowning and no one had even noticed.

Shame washed over him, hot and cold. He'd spent so many hours the night before proclaiming his love for her but he'd missed this--missed all this.

Unacceptable.

It was a single thought with a mountain's certainty behind it. He had promised he'd do better. He couldn't change what he'd done--that shame would follow him for the rest of his life, he suspected--but he could do something now. And the certainty of that determination straightened his spine and set his jaw. He could do better--he would do better.

Molly Hooper deserved a better man and Sherlock might not ever be that man, but he could damn well try.