Title: Hearth
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences
Pairing: Gen
Length: ~870 words
Content notes: Post-Reichenbach.
Author notes: For fan_flashworks Challenge #28, "Warmth".
Summary: Molly feels ridiculous, but it's worth whatever it takes to be able to think, howsoever briefly, about something other than how she's lost all sensation in her feet.

* * *

Molly gets cold easily, always has. Her first winter out of uni was especially bad; she was living in a tiny, ancient flat with bad insulation and old windows. She originally started taking night shifts mostly because her flat was warmer during the day, and it was easier to sleep. This winter, her flat is newer and better-maintained and a small but noticeable bit bigger around the edges, but it's not all that much warmer, honestly. She's still cold all the time.

She reads up on DIY insulating tips on the internet and wears three jumpers and woolly socks all the time. She feels ridiculous, but it's worth whatever it takes to be able to think, howsoever briefly, about something other than how she's lost all sensation in her feet. In December, she buys a new dressing gown, because her old one is wearing thin and doesn't hold the heat any longer; In January, her cat starts sleeping in bed with her, which she's never let him do before, but he's warm, a furry little ball of heat against the small of her back, drowsy and comfortable. She drinks even more tea than usual, enough that she finally decides she really does need to switch to something herbal after three or four in the afternoon, and makes soups, stews, roasted vegetables, shepherd's pie. She starts playing games with herself: forcing herself to dance whenever Lady Gaga comes up on shuffle on her iPod; to run up the even steps on her way up to her flat, run down the odd ones on the way back down. On a whim, she joins a knitting group that meets in the small and overheated cafe just around the corner; they start meeting on Fridays and Saturdays for drinks, too, and she learns how to make Trappist Monks and Dutch Treats and Ski Lifts, but never properly learns how to knit. She finds three new-to-her bookshops and a little shop specializing in hand carved wooden toys, just trying to get out of the cold on her walk home. Her mum gives her a Snuggie for Valentine's Day.

At the end of March, Cassie and Jen from her knitting group, Sam from the toy shop, and Danny from oncology at Barts are all crammed into her living room playing Carcassonne when Sherlock comes back—via the window, because of course he can't try the door, which is unlocked. Cassie and Jen exchange looks—and oh, no, Jen's been looking, too; Molly'll have to explain about Sherlock later—but Sam is already scooting to the side on the sofa to make room, so Molly goes into the kitchen to mix up another hot buttered rum. Sherlock sniffs it very suspiciously, then takes a sip, then spends the evening tucked into the corner of her sofa with his knees tucked up and his coat wrapped around himself, hugging his mug and watching.

"Are you staying?" she asks, after the others have left.

"Interesting friends you have," he says, then adds, "yes," so she gets her two extra blankets and the second pillow off her bed and tosses them over to him on the sofa. He wraps them around himself, over the coat.

"It was warmer in Baker Street," he says.

"Then go to Baker Street," she says.

"John wasn't pleased to see me," he says, which isn't really relevant. John hasn't been living in Baker Street.

"Go to sleep, Sherlock," she tells him, and goes to brush her teeth.

Over the next seventy-two hours, Sherlock takes five showers, drinks endless cups of tea, wears her blankets like a toga, and shivers. It's March. The worst of the winter has passed. Molly herself is down to only one jumper, even if her socks haven't got noticeably less woolly, and she knows how to recognize a psychology gone rather out of bounds when she sees one.

"You could try apologizing," Molly suggests, but Sherlock just draws himself up to his not at all insignificant height and hisses, "For saving his life?" and Molly drops the subject. It's not worth the effort. John is a big enough blind spot in Sherlock's understanding of human behavior that Molly, at least, is unwilling to spot him through it; she already has a full-time job. So instead she loans Sherlock her extra blankets and her second pillow and leaves him to shiver on her sofa and fail to socialize with her friends, and hopes, in a vague sort of way, that John will turn up and fetch him eventually. Molly can smell spring in the air, only just stirring; she and Cassie have been talking about trying their hands at windowsill gardening, even though both of them have killed every plant they've ever had, and Sam keeps looking at her like he's working up to ask her something, and Danny's horrified that she's managed to escape seeing any of the Brat Pack movies and has been planning to bring them all over and make her sit through the lot, all in a row. Her flat really just isn't quite big enough to accommodate both Sherlock and everything else she wants to fit inside.



Archived: 15 November 2012, at AO3.