Sherlock and all its characters are property of BBC Wales and Steven Moffat, Sue Vertue and Mark Gatiss.

This story and all of my other sherlolly one shots can be found on AO3 under my pseudonym youalwayscount.

Molly Hooper was not a woman of vice; in fact, if you were to ask her if she had any, she would reply with only two. One; a well-made cocktail, and Two; books.

Molly Hooper was a great and passionate lover of books; almost to the point of being unhealthy. Of course, it was entirely her father's fault for having practically raised Molly and her sister in his small bookshop which he had opened after having a sudden epiphany and quitting his fifteen yearlong soul sucking career as an insurance salesman. In addition to the classic Grimm and Andersen fairy tales and other childhood staples, Frank Hooper had sent his daughters to dreamland on passages from the Iliad and the Odyssey and Beowulf, vivid images from The Veda and The Epic of Gilgamesh, and countless other folk stories from cultures otherwise unimaginable to two little girls from Sussex. Molly especially consumed this nightly ritual of story time with unabashed worship and fervor; often lying awake long into the night entertaining fantasies filled with dragons and spirits and vengeful gods and longsuffering heroes and fair damsels in distress being carried away by swashbuckling rogues who hid piles of treasures in rocky coves surrounded by treacherous seas froth with danger and monsters and sirens.

It's needless to say that Molly took to reading much earlier than her peers; and her tastes in literature; while always varied, were always far advanced. At six, while everyone asked for Frog and Toad, she asked for La Petit Prince. At eight, when everyone was clamoring for the next Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys mysteries from America, she buried her nose in Dante's Divine Comedy and Voltaire's Candide. Her mother had often said that if I weren't for the bookshop below their two story flat, Molly would have been perfectly content to live in the local library. For Christmases and birthdays she forwent asking for toys and clothes and games; all she wanted were books, and her father completely and utterly spoiled her with them.

Almost to the point of it being a problem. She was always loathe to give any of her precious volumes away for rummage sales and spring cleaning, and so they piled up in haphazard stacks in her and her sisters room, until one Christmas when she was twelve and learned about a charity that collected used books and gave them specifically to third world children to promote literacy rates and quality of education. That year they received a rather large and heartfelt donation from their Crowborough book drive; and every year after Molly took especial care to send them at least one new book.

Even with this yearly giving, Molly had quite the collection; and she was constantly expanding it. If there was ever any topic she found even the least bit fascinating, it was a guarantee she had at least one book on it. In her 6th and 7th years she fancied herself a lover of philosophy and collected piles of volumes of the ancient Greeks and Romans and Enlightenment thinkers. In high school and university she discovered her love of science and amassed obscene quantities of volumes on chemistry, biochemistry, biology, anatomy, physics, and astronomy. After deciding that an MD was not suited for her, she discovered pathology and pathoanatomy and consequently started leaving around stacks of densely written, graphically diagrammed and illustrated tomes about disease and cadavers and flesh eating bacteria and viruses that, more than once, had put her roommate off her lunch when she had picked them up to put them away.

Time went on; graduations were had, degrees were obtained, friends from uni stopped dropping by regularly, seasons passed, a job at Bart's was obtained, boyfriends came and went, but one constant was always her private little library, which effectively consumed about 80% of her flat.

This proved a problem when she found herself suddenly harboring a supposedly dead consulting detective from the attentions of both the media and the remains of an international crime syndicate formerly run by her more than slightly insane late ex. Now there was a plot for a book if there ever was one.

She colored slightly as she watched Sherlock take in the chaotic disarray that was her front/sitting room/library. Her three Ikea ceiling height bookshelves pushed against the far left and back wall were all filled two rows deep, her dilapidated work desk from uni was stacked high with the research books and documents she had been using for her latest paper, there was no room for coffee on her coffee table, and there were at least six different stacks of varying heights stationed on and around her couch and end table. "Sorry for the mess," she apologized as she hurriedly tried to shift some of the stacks into the corners of the room to make the space a little more liveable. "They like to migrate all over the place, and I can never be bothered to put them away most of the time." She explained.

"I had deduced that you were fond of books, but not quite to this extent." He remarked absently, picking up a hardback collection of Henrik Ibsen's plays which had been adorning the television set and flipping through it. "You wouldn't happen to be a smuggler of ancient Chinese artifacts, would you?"

She spun around, "What?"

"One of the first cases I worked with John. The smugglers used a book cipher and both had an extensive personal library." He explained. "We spent almost an entire night sorting all out all the books; crates upon crates of them." He put the Ibsen down. "I mean to say, I don't particularly mind the mess." Although he didn't say it, Molly heard an additional, "It reminds me of home." in his low tones, and it pained her heart a bit; because as insufferable and obnoxious and icily arrogant Sherlock Holmes could be, it was obvious to her how much the events of the past 48 hours had affected him; losing everything from his reputation and allies, to his home and his friends. Life was going to be difficult for him from here on out, and it was the least Molly could do to provide some small comfort in the ways she knew how.

"Well," she said, picking up a few volumes and cradling them to her chest, "As long as you're staying here, feel free to use any of my books as you like." She thought for a second, "Except not, you know, in experiments. I would probably have to kick you out for that." She said with a bit of a half laugh.

He nodded in thanks, silently trying to gauge whether or not she was actually serious.

Over the course of the following months, in between the times he ventured out in disguise to gather information about Moriarty's network and his associates, Sherlock surprisingly found a lot of use for Molly's library. He had honestly expected it to be largely filled with silly, fanciful fictions and common booklist picks, and while there were a good number of those; he found scores of books on histories and cultures from all over the world, books on economic practices of Middle Eastern nations, books on government and philosophy, books on psychology and anthropology and archaeology, and more volumes on biology and pathoanatomy than he had ever owned himself.

It was therapeutic and almost nostalgic, spending so much time with his nose in books again. Since becoming the world's only consulting detective, he hadn't found much time for reading. Though consuming so much literature may have cluttered his mind palace a bit, Sherlock found that it surprisingly didn't bother him as much as it should. He rationalized it as a chance to expand it a bit.

And the more he made his way through Molly's library, the more he learned about Molly herself; her likes and dislikes based on which books had more wear, the names of her family and old friends and former lovers from the little handwritten "To Molls with love" notes scribbled on fore pages, her sentimental side in her tear smudged volumes of poetry; especially in a particularly well-worn collection of Keats; and he learned just how much he had underestimated her intelligence by the well highlighted and in depth annotated volumes on biochemistry and pathology and neurology. He had even snooped through her desktop to find several drafts of a paper on the genetic restructuring of bacteria that he thoroughly did not expect. But of course, she was still the familiar Molly Hooper, who had a box of dime store smut novels hidden in a box under her bed, which he had of course discovered completely by accident, and it was a complete coincidence that that same box vanished after he had casually asked her how Desires Unchained turned out over takeaway one night.

On some of the quieter nights where it happened that both of them were home in the evening, after dinner in the sitting room (Sherlock's experiments had laid a long term claim to the kitchen table and counters), they would both fall silent as they read; Molly curled up in the overstuffed armchair with Toby on her lap, Sherlock sprawled across the sofa on his back. Sometimes they listened to music (usually Chopin or Hayden; though Molly often tried for rock and roll), sometimes the listened to Radio One or Radio Four, or they put the telly on as a background drone, and sometimes they didn't listen to anything but the murmur of the city outside. It was all very domestic, but Sherlock didn't mind so much; not that he would ever admit it to anyone, much less Molly herself.

Over the past few months, every illusion Molly had had of Sherlock fell away as she saw, well, just how difficult a flatmate he could be (petri dishes of mold samples in the medicine cabinet, taking up all the hot water, tempestuous moods that usually escalated into childish lashings out and ended in silent sulking, complete and utter lack of privacy etcetera); but she privately enjoyed getting to know the real Sherlock Holmes, not the ethereal mysterious consulting detective in the funny hat, but the man who took two showers a day, who left nicotine patch wrappers in the couch cushions, who took honey instead of jam on his toast, who slept at inconceivably odd hours in the strangest places (i.e. the bathtub), who greatly enjoyed the works of Thackeray and Rousseau and Edgar Allan Poe, who was often more courteous to Toby than she had ever seen him be to certain members of the Met, who at the same time was less and more of a mystery, both ordinary and extraordinary.

The first Christmas after Sherlock's "death" was a quiet, subtle one. Molly had foregone her yearly visit to Brighton to visit her mother, and after paying a visit to John and Mrs. Hudson, spent the 24th of December curled up on the sofa in her ugliest Christmas jumper, enjoying a glass of wine and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein while listening to the Radio One Christmas programme. The small twinkly plastic tree on the endtable had only two gifts underneath it. The smaller was for her from Martha, who never failed to send her a gift every year in between all of her top secret, high clearance work for UNIT and Torchwood and other mysterious entities around the world. The larger though, was for someone else.

That someone else had just unlocked the front door, shedding the leather jacket he had replaced his iconic Belstaff with, along with his hat and muffler. He sighed in exhaustion, and practically melted onto the couch, depositing his legs into Molly's lap.

"Sherlock I'm sitting here?" she pointedly said, resting the spine of her book on the side of his shoe.

"So?" he asked in the voice that displayed his zero intentions of moving.

"Nevermind." She reached over and grabbed the larger package and placed it on his close eyed, pensive face. "Open your present."

He sat up and removed the package from his face, dubiously eyeing the festive wrapping patterned with black Scottie dogs wearing elf hats. "What's the date Molly?"

"You're joking."

"No; If I already knew, I wouldn't need to ask now would I?"

'Sherlock, did you really not know it was Christmas?" she asked incredulously. "For a detective, that seems like a pretty big thing to miss."

"I've been distracted." He looked down at the package. "I-" he started softly. "I neglected to get you a gift; I'm sorry Molly."

She hesitantly reached out and patted his shoulder. "It's all right; you didn't need to get me anything. Just open your gift."

He meticulously unsealed the tape and unfolded the paper, revealing a handsome burgundy hardcover book. "A Scientific Study of the Culture of Apis Mellifera." he read from the gold embossed title. He looked up at her.

"You mentioned a while back that you really liked entymology, especially bees. So, yeah. I hope you like it." She said with a bit of a flush as she twisted her fingers together.

He opened the front cover to the title page. "Dearest Sherlock, Merry Christmas, Love, Molly x" He looked up at her again. She smiled as she drew her knees up to her chest, and Sherlock felt a private rush of strange affection for this mousy woman who listened to him when he monologued about beekeeping, who chided him for leaving experiments around, who lent him her beloved books to help him pass the aching hours of confinement, who did little things like putting honey on his toast and remembering how he took his coffee and humming Vivaldi's Four Seasons while she moved about, who had opened up her home to him, who had risked her career for him and their friends, who could deduce him as easily as he could deduce others, who had given her help willingly and had yet to ask for anything in return. Molly Hooper; the woman he though he knew, but who had turned out to be someone completely different from what he had ever thought her to be.

"Sherlock?" she asked, breaking his train of thought. "Do you like the book?"

"Hm? Oh, yes. Thank you Molly." He smiled a tiny bit. "Merry Christmas."

She toasted him with her half empty wine glass. "Merry Christmas Sherlock."

Sherlock was gone from Molly's flat before New Year's was over. Dismantling the network now required his action abroad, and it would be some time before he could return. "Possibly two years. Thank you for graciously hiding me for these last few months Molly. Don't try to contact me; for your safety as well as the safety of myself and our friends. Please keep looking after John. Again, thank you for your selflessness and generosity; in spite of my actions towards you in the past. Until we meet again Doctor Hooper, believe me to be,

Very Sincerely Yours,

Sherlock Holmes."

Molly put down the note that she had found wedged under the fruit bowl and gazed around her quiet flat, still untidy as always, but suddenly bereft of his presence; his experiments, his clothing, his scarf and shoes by the door, his ridiculously expensive shampoos and conditioners in the shower; everything. It was as if he had never been here; which, Molly supposed was a good thing, if anyone ever came looking.

She brushed away a few tears with the heel of her hand; because even if he hadn't been everything she had thought him to be, she still loved him. And whether or not he ever felt the same way didn't really matter, because now, without a shadow of a doubt, Molly Hooper could say that Sherlock Holmes was indeed her friend; and a good one at that.

Over the next months, she occasionally received mysterious parcels in the post from all sorts of different countries. They always were without a return address, and they were always books. In February she received The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent, in its original German, from a package with Munich postmarks. In March she found a cookbook of traditional Thai dishes in her post box. In May, she received a book of Peruvian folktales. In June, a book on nanotechnology postmarked from Tokyo, written entirely in Japanese. She had chuckled at that last one as she gently and lovingly placed it with its predecessors in a special place on the bookcase she referred to as "Sherlock's shelf."

Soon he would come back, and though things most likely wouldn't return to the way they were before, for her, and for John, and for Sherlock; nevertheless it would be a new chapter, one that Molly was more than eager to start reading.

END