Plays on a theme I've toyed with before - Sherlock going to Molly because he can't go to John. John going to Molly because he thinks Sherlock is dead. Molly, knowing she's a stand-in for them both but she can't say no to them, won't say no.

He comes back to London on a beautiful and warm sunny day, and when he steps off of the train at St. Pancras, he can hardly believe that this is the same city he left in the wind and the cold, six months ago.

He's only come back for one night; he's come back to collect some money that he'd had hidden away years ago for a day such as this. [But he could have gotten that money another way, couldn't he have? He came back because of -]. He curses himself inwardly for his sentimental nature; six months away in the cold and dark expanses of Northern Europe has left him craving familiarity, craving the places he knew, craving home.

He breaks into her flat easily, letting himself in the way any half intelligent burglar would [faulty lock, just a bit a pressure, voila]. He waits several hours on her sofa, not caring about the passing time, and when she steps over the threshold, he catches her bag as it falls when she reacts to his presence with surprise.

"Y-you're back," she breathes, and he shakes his head no. Her face falls with the sense of disappointment that she tries to cover up a moment later.

"Have you eaten? What do you need?" she asks, moving towards the kitchen. He answers by grabbing her wrist, his long fingers winding around her soft, warm skin.

Her eyes dart back to look at him. "Sh-Sherlock?"

He doesn't answer, just draws her closer, tight to his body. She smells so familiar, smells just like what he remembers, like the hallways of Bart's where he and John would stride down, on their way to the morgue; she smells like the air in the city, where he and John would run to stop a witness, or sprint to escape a suspect; she smells like everything he had to give up when he jumped from that roof, tumbling down to a messy death below.

When he kisses her [which he does, many times], he revels in the memory it evokes, that feeling of closeness to other humans that he once sworehe didn't need. He likes Molly, to be sure – she saved him and she counts and she matters in ways he didn't realize before – but Molly to him, in this world that he lives in now, is the embodiment of all the things he misses. She is his London incarnate, she is all his crime scenes and all his puzzles, and most of all, she is John. When he touches her body, he doesn't just feel Molly [but Christ, does she feel good]; he feels everything he misses, everything [everyone] he likes [loves].

He leaves in the morning, but not before she wakes – she looks up at him from the bed, uncharacteristically quiet, and his heart pangs against his own will when he realizes how much he does care for her – he kisses her on the cheek to say goodbye, and grabs his coat from where he'd discarded it onto her floor.

His hand is on the doorknob when he hears her voice behind him.

"When are you coming back? For- for good, I mean?"

He doesn't look back at her. "I don't know," he murmurs into the frame of the door, before sweeping out of the room, already feeling the emptiness creep back into his heart.

She isn't a fool.

She knows that she is a stand-in for him; she is a replacement for the things he can't have now that the world thinks him dead. She could tell, when he kissed her, his eyes closed, that he was thinking of something [someone] else – and that's okay, oddly enough. Her love [her stupid, all-encompassing, hopeless love] for him makes her want to be that for him, makes her want to be anything for him, anything to help make that pain go away. She let him touch her and taste her and she knew that her heart couldn't [and can't] take it, but she let him do it anyway, because she's always let him take anything from her, let him take everything from her.

Maybe she is a fool, she supposes, after all.

John meets Molly Hooper for coffee on a beautiful late Sunday afternoon, in a lovely café near Hyde Park. The coffees are all overpriced and the atmosphere inside is so unbelievably posh that they take one look at each other and step back onto the pavement, walking silently until they spot a Costa down the road.

John can't say that he knows her particularly well; in fact, he can't really remember any sort of prolonged interaction he'd ever had with the young pathologist, but in the months after the death of his best friend, he's found himself longing for any sort of connection with him at all. So he buys Molly a coffee and a little cake, and they sit together in the coffee shop, making small talk at first, and then turning gradually to a conversation revolving around nostalgia, for days gone by and about a man that they used to know.

Evening settles in more quickly than they'd like, and when John walks Molly home, she invites him into her flat, neither of them willing to part company just yet. They sit on her sofa and they laugh about Sherlock until they're both crying, crying over that stupid and arrogant and brilliant detective they both once knew.

He's not quite certain what makes him lean forward and kiss her [deep down, though, he knows], and he's pleased when she doesn't move away. They don't even leave the sofa, his hands framing her face as his lips meet hers, over and over again. When he closes his eyes, he can breathe in her scent, familiar in a way that hasn't been familiar in a long time, the faint smell of formaldehyde still sticking to her skin [only in their strange world would that be comforting], the subtle scent of her perfume embedded in her clothing [he can still smell it in his memory, the faint perfume in the morgue, even as Sherlock pushes past him, striding into the room first]. He clings to this sense of familiarity, clings to it with like a drowning man would to a life raft, finally anchoring him after so many months adrift in the wake of Sherlock's death. When he touches Molly – strokes Molly – tastes Molly, he feels the most alive, the most sane he's felt since he'd watched his best friend plunge down from the sky to the earth below, leaving only a shell of what he'd been behind.

He falls asleep there, on the sofa, his body draped over hers, and he sleep soundly for the first time in months [with dreams revolving around a man smiling widely in the dark, bright eyes gleaming, beckoning John forward to him].

She isn't a fool.

She lets John sleep, his body heat keeping her warm, as she lies awake on the sofa underneath him. She knows that she is a stand-in for him; she is a replacement for the things he can't have now that the one person he wants [likes, loves] in the world is thought to be dead. She could tell, when he kissed her, his eyes closed, that he was thinking of something [someone] else – and that's okay, oddly enough. Her love [her stupid, all-encompassing, hopeless love] for Sherlock makes her want to be these things for John, makes her want to be anything for them both, anything to help make that pain go away. And even if neither of them love her, even if she's just a stand-in for either of them, she still wants to do this for them, to be what they can't have, the connecting piece in the puzzle that is their lives.

Maybe she is a fool, she supposes, after all.