A/N: Hello! This is set immediately post-season three. I'm running on the assumption that John and Mary really did have a spring wedding and Mary was about six weeks pregnant at that time, and of course Magnussen's demise took place on Christmas Day. Hopefully the rest of the story timeline is self-explanatory. As best I can tell, not having a Pinterest account, the story cover came from Nicole Fogarty's board. If anyone could help me confirm that so I can give proper credit for the edit, I'd appreciate it. (If you're seeing a childish Ron and Hermione, reload the page. I haven't published a new story in a while and missed a few things the first time around :P Whoops, like a disclaimer.) Also, those of you who read my Harry Potter fic (hugs and Chocolate Frogs to you!) know I don't write long chapters; most of these are even shorter, in the 1000-1500 word range, so fair warning that they'll go by fast. On the plus side, I update every Wednesday :D

Disclaimer: Not mine. (More specifically, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Steven Moffat, and Mark Gatiss.)

Late entry: This is the sequel to The One After Sherlock Gets High.

John Watson unlocked the door to 221 Baker Street, flipped through the mail that had been shoved through the letterbox, laid Mrs. Hudson's on the side table, and jogged upstairs to Sherlock's flat. He came through the doorway just in time to see Sherlock Holmes throw his violin onto the sofa, shortly followed by the bow.

"Bad day?" John tossed the mail on the table that doubled as Sherlock's desk.

"Bored." Sherlock eyed the pockets of John's coat.

"No."

"No what?"

"No, I'm not carrying my gun, and no, I won't fetch it for you to shoot the walls. Anything in? Mary and I ate breakfast when Josie woke at five this morning." John crossed the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

"Help yourself."

"No case?" John asked, surveying his choices.

"Nothing worthy of my time."

"Heard from Greg—Lestrade?"

Sherlock waved the blank screen of his phone, then dropped it back in the pocket of his dressing gown.

"Maybe there's some new comments on the blog," John suggested. He doubted it (the last post was eight days ago), but cooking with Sherlock underfoot was a recipe for disaster. John picked up a skillet from the rack on the wall and inspected it to confirm it really was clean before setting it on the cooker.

Ten minutes later, John's brunch was coming along nicely when Sherlock slammed his laptop shut.

"Nothing. No additional comments, no interesting emails." Sherlock reappeared in the kitchen and filched a rasher.

John moved the plate away. "You're bored, not hungry."

"Same difference."

Arguing with Sherlock when he was like this was pointless, so John carried his bacon sandwiches and tea into the sitting room, set them down on the table by his chair, and stared at the chaos he hadn't noticed when he arrived. Fully half the sofa was covered with Sherlock's attempts to entertain himself this morning: his closed laptop sat neatly in the middle; sheet music, both printed and hand-drawn with Sherlock's careful notations, spilled over the back and arm of the sofa onto the floor; the violin and bow crisscrossed each other in one corner; wedged between a cushion and the back was the thriller Mary had bought him for Christmas; scattered between the last two issues of Journal of Forensic Science and an English translation of The Starry Messenger were multiple packs of cigarettes, the engraved lighter from Mycroft "compliments of Whitehall," and two boxes of nicotine patches; and even a deck of cards striped the seat in a black-and-red solitaire pattern.

It was the nicotine patches Sherlock reached for now, and as the sleeve of his dressing gown fell back, John noticed one long forearm already filled with flesh-colored squares.

"No," he said, lunging for the box before Sherlock could raise it out of his reach. "No more."

Sherlock tightened his grip on the box and jerked it close to his chest, starting a wrestling match that ended only when John stomped on Sherlock's bare foot (in shoes) and pulled his now-unresisting hand off the package.

"You're going to kill yourself with these things!" John said, stuffing the remaining patches in his jeans pocket before throwing the empty box back on the sofa with its twin.

"It's better than dying of boredom!" Sherlock limped to his chair.

John chuckled at the absence of his usual grace.

"It is not funny! Moriarty's face appears on every screen in the country for two minutes, then nothing! Not one sighting, not one murder or crime or cover-up or consult or even hint at an explanation." Sherlock straightened both legs and flung his head back, draping his body feet beyond the chair itself. "Leaving me with noooothing to do!"

John did not bother to point out the many things Sherlock had done in the month since "the Moriarty Mystery," as the press had not-so-cleverly named the event. Taking a large bite of his second sandwich, he picked up the newspaper that, judging from its orderly fold, Sherlock had abandoned after merely glancing at the front page.

"Why don't you go to Bart's, get some new body parts or something? I actually saw nothing but food in the refrigerator."

"Can't. Molly's working."

John paused, then looked over the top of his paper. "Isn't that a good thing?"

In a blink, Sherlock stood at the window, back towards John and hands in his trouser pockets.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock's posture didn't change nor did he answer, and John began to piece together small idiosyncrasies of the last few weeks. Sherlock, white-lipped and wide-eyed, running from the plane to Mycroft's car yelling Molly's name. Molly, pale and trembling, unlocking the lab door only when she heard Sherlock's voice and throwing herself into his arms without protest. Their first case after Sherlock's exile, when his suggestion to stop at Angelo's for take-away on the way to Bart's delayed them until Molly had got off shift. Ten days ago, when Sherlock had focused on another aspect of the case and sent John to Bart's alone—for the second time. The way Molly's face fell, then hardened, when she didn't see Sherlock enter the morgue behind him. And finally, the very suspicious, glaringly obvious, never-before-seen, 100% edible contents of Sherlock's refrigerator.

John folded the newspaper and set it aside. "Sherlock? Why are you avoiding Molly Hooper?"

"I think that wall could use another smiley face, don't you? Balance it out a bit?"

"Sherlock…."

"I could do this one exclusively in bullets. Low velocity, so they didn't penetrate the wall completely. One silver and one yellow, that would make a nice combination, don't you think?"

"I hid my gun."

"I found it."

"And the bullets?" John was not so foolish as to store both in the same place.

Sherlock glanced at him, opened his mouth, pursed it, and crossed his arms, returning to his study of the street outside.

John stood and approached his friend slowly, much the way he would a stray round of live ammunition. "Sherlock?" he said quietly. "Is there something going on between you and Molly?"

"No!"

Well, that was emphatic. And definitive. And just a bit too fast.

"Because that would be okay, you know. If you…." He debated which word to use and decided it was best to be vague. "If you liked her."

Sherlock said nothing—unless you counted the absence of his usual scathing dismissal at the mention of feeling or sentiment, which John thought said rather a lot. He probed carefully, as if he were separating the dead and healthy tissue in an infected wound, keen not to cause any more damage.

"Was there something going on between you and Molly?"

Sherlock left the window, cleared the morning's failed distractions from the sofa with a sweep of one long arm, and lay down, ramrod straight, eyes closed, hands clasped together under his chin.

"Oh, no you don't!" John grabbed his left arm and ripped off one of the five nicotine patches.

"Ouch!" Sherlock wrenched his arm away and glared.

John sat on the coffee table and faced him. "You can't possibly have any hair left as often as you use those things."

Sherlock gathered his dressing gown around himself and turned over.

John stared at his back for a moment, then rested his hands on his knees and stood up. "Well. I'll just go ask Molly, then."

"No! No, don't—just—no."

John sat back down.

Sherlock, who had sat up in panic at the threat, bent over with his elbows on his knees and scrubbed his hands through his hair, positively growling with frustration. "It wasn't supposed to go like this."

"We've all been there, mate. What happened?"

"I … stayed with her. That last night, before…."

"Well, that makes sense. Molly's flat is one of your bolt holes, yeah?" The various ways Sherlock might have offended Molly while staying in her home were vast, but she had always been endlessly patient with Sherlock.

"We … slept together. Euphemistically speaking."

If John hadn't heard it directly from Sherlock's mouth, if he hadn't seen Sherlock's lips move as he heard the words, John would not have believed it. In fact, he didn't believe it—Sherlock was having him on, surely (he was bored, after all)—not until he saw the redness spreading across those cheekbones and the way Sherlock's eyes avoided his. Still, it took John three attempts to find his voice, and that was after he regained the ability to make noise.

"You had sex with Molly Hooper?" Vague words were definitely not the best choice now. "Actual penetrative intercourse?"

"Yes." Sherlock's voice was sharp, defensive.

"I—all right. Okay." John took a deep breath, trying to adjust to this new reality. He remembered that conversation in Angelo's over four years ago, how serious Sherlock had been as he explained he wasn't interested in relationships, that sentiment was a defect, that he was married to his work. His work—surely he didn't see Molly merely as an extension of that? Was that why— Or maybe— but—

There were just so many ways it could have gone bad.

"Okay. So you slept with Molly, and then you left for Eastern Europe."

"I thought I was, yes."

"And you haven't seen her since."

"Except for—"

The day you thought she was dead, and the two of you clung to each other like life rafts.

"I see. Text?"

Sherlock shook his head.

"Phone call? Email? I don't know, a message through Lestrade?"

Three shakes.

It was worse than he thought. "Just to be clear, you're telling me that you slept with a woman for the first time— Hang on, it was—"

"Yes, John, Molly and I have not been 'getting it on' behind everyone's backs."

John relaxed a little at the return of the familiar sarcasm even as Sherlock began pacing in the narrow space between the sofa and the coffee table, stepping over John's legs with each pass.

"You slept with a woman, left her the next morning, learned Moriarty reappeared, returned to ensure her safety, and haven't communicated with her in any way in the month since?"

"Twenty-seven days."

"Trust me, Sherlock. Molly will consider it one. Whole. Month."

Sherlock pivoted and John leaned back to avoid being smacked in the head.

"I take it back. Whatever you do, don't go to Bart's and ask Molly for body parts."