A/N: A follow up to Never Again, references to TSOT, etc. I hope you all survive tonight, and I will undoubtedly be posting things for you next week. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to emotionally prepare myself for the finale by binge eating chocolate and sobbing uncontrollably.

One Too Many

by Flaignhan

He nearly scares the life out of her. She doesn't hear him come into the lab, which is growing ever darker as the sky outside starts to swirl into a mess of charcoal coloured clouds. When he says her name, she nearly breaks her slide with the lens of her microscope, her hand involuntarily twisting the zoom too far.

"Sorry," he says, giving her a brief, apologetic smile.

"It's all right," she says, readjusting her microscope as her heart rate slowly returns to normal. When he doesn't speak, she frowns and turns to look at him. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he says, slipping his coat off and laying it down on one of the benches. He sets his scarf on top of it and slides onto the stool next to Molly, tapping his fingers on the desk. "I wanted to ask a favour, actually. It's about John's stag night."

"D'you need more limitation guidelines?" she asks, peering down at her slide and adjusting the focus.

"Yes," he says, "Yours, actually."

Molly stops, frowns, then turns to him. "Why?"

"I want to do a dry run, well not a dry run per se, but just to make sure it's going to be all right before we go. You know I don't know much about what constitutes a good night out for normal people...I have no idea if any of the places I've chosen are actually any good."

"So you want me to road test the stag night with you?" Molly asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Yes," he says with a sharp nod.

Molly turns back to her microscope, running the idea through her mind. It's basically an invitation to go out, get drunk, and hang around in a variety of pubs and clubs with him. Were he not so worked up by the wedding preparations, she would have thought it was a thinly veiled attempt to getting her out. She wonders what Tom would say if she told him she was going out and getting drunk with Sherlock. She would hope that he would see it simply as her trying to ease his nerves about his responsibilities as best man, but she knows what he can be like. She has patiently answered more than enough seemingly casual questions about text messages, and even went so far one time as to show him the message in question, which was a request for any spare gall bladders she might have knocking around the morgue. Tom had settled down a little bit at that, deemed Sherlock a weirdo and had gone back to watching the telly.

"Yeah okay," Molly says. "When were you thinking?"

"Tonight," Sherlock replies. "I'm helping Mary with choosing flowers tomorrow night and on Friday I'm sorting out the car."

"Sounds like you've been a busy bee," Molly comments, mentally searching her wardrobe for an appropriate outfit. It needs to be dressy enough for her to get into a club but she can't be seen as dressing to impress. That wouldn't go down well.

"Well it's a wedding, Molly, it doesn't plan itself you know."

She smiles, changes her slide, and refocuses her microscope. He's panicking, she can tell, and a night out without any wedding pressures, and a bit of alcohol to loosen him up might not be such a bad idea. It's a good job that he's plainly never going to get married, because if this is what he's like for John's wedding, she dreads to think how he'd be behaving in the weeks leading up to his own.

"Where d'you want me to meet you?" she asks, pulling her paperwork towards her and jotting down a few notes.

Sherlock pulls his phone from his pocket and finds his itinerary. "Half past seven, The Bull."

"Right," Molly says. "And who died near there?"

"Jennifer Wilson of course," Sherlock says as though it's obvious.

"Who?"

He sighs dramatically, and Molly lowers her face to the microscope again to hide her smirk. She missed him terribly those two years he spent away. She's glad to have him back, even if he is a panicking mess over wedding plans and stag nights.

"A Study in Pink," he tells her, pursing his lips.

"Oh," Molly says in recognition, and Sherlock shakes his head in disbelief. "You er, gonna put your dancing shoes on tonight?" she asks, fighting to maintain a straight face.

He gives her a frosty look, stands up, loops his scarf around his neck, then swings his coat on. "Half past seven," he says firmly.

"Yeah yeah," Molly replies, turning back to her paperwork. "Half past seven…"

There is a glass of white wine waiting for her when she arrives. She checks the time on her phone just to be certain she won't receive any scathing looks for being late, and discovers that she has made it with two minutes to spare. She sits down opposite him and he looks up, slipping his phone into the inside pocket of his coat. He has a pint of beer sitting on a faded cardboard coaster, and Molly frowns.

"What happened to the measurements?" she asks. "You need to lose about a hundred mills from that."

"I asked for specifics but he just gave me a pint. Wouldn't measure it out," Sherlock says with a scowl. He casts a dark look in the barman's direction before returning his attention to his pint. "We'll just have to estimate and leave some behind."

Molly sniggers. "Yeah," she says, picking up her wine glass. "You know the last thing you do before you move on to the next pub is drink up. John will not be leaving any behind." She takes a sip of her wine and sets her glass down again, her fingers stroking the stem absentmindedly. "You can always take a couple of measuring cylinders. Get some nice glass ones, tell them it's a stag night and you're…scientists. They won't ask questions, they'll just play along."

"Really?" he asks sceptically, looking down at his pint, his nose scrunched in distaste.

"Yeah," Molly says. "If they think you're having a laugh they'll join in, if they think you're a weirdo they'll want you out."

"How is drinking responsibly classed as being a weirdo?"

Molly arches an eyebrow and he sighs, then picks up his glass and drinks, draining about a quarter of a pint before he puts it back down on his coaster. He pulls a face and Molly's willing to bet he hasn't touched beer since that one indiscretion all those years ago. She wonders if the taste is digging up some old, unpleasant memories. She wonders if he remembers it at all, or whether he's deleted it out of embarrassment.

"If you're not keen on the beer I can always do you calculations on something else."

Sherlock shakes his head. "John'll be drinking beer. It's John's night."

"Doesn't mean you have to drink the same thing as him."

"If we're going to get drunk at the same rate it does."

Molly smiles. She can't help but find it amusing, his attention to detail and his concern about things that have never even crossed the mind of any other best man in all the world. Most of them just want to see the groom pissed out of his skull one last time before the big day, consequences be damned. Sherlock, on the other hand, is so concerned about the stag night that he's dragged her out to do a test run. Not that she minds of, course. In fact she's rather curious as to whether Sherlock's learned to handle his drink at all in the last decade or so, or whether he's still the jelly-legged lightweight of the late nineties that she still laughs about every so often.

She had emailed Becky, telling her of the plan for the evening, and had in returned received a request for youtube videos and facebook pictures of an inebriated Sherlock. Molly had promised her nothing, knowing that were any such items to make it onto the internet, she would be in the doghouse for years to come and would have a terrible seat at the wedding, probably next to a hysterical aunt or morose ex-co-worker. Besides, if her calculations are correct (and they always are) there'll be no vomiting on dance floors or weeing into wardrobes tonight.

She's laughing, and she doesn't know why she's laughing. She knows that there is currently nothing funny occurring, and yet a constant stream of giggles flows from her as she stumbles along, her arm locked tightly with Sherlock's as they stagger forwards, their cheeks rosy in the warm spring evening.

"Stop it," he says, unable to keep from laughing himself. "People are looking at us."

"So?" Molly replies, trying to hold in her giggles. She manages about three seconds, during which she presses her lips together, wrestling with her insides, but before she can make it to four, she bursts into laughter again, not even looking where she's going and trusting Sherlock to guide her along to their next destination. He pulls her through a doorway, and Molly grins at the sour looking bouncer. The corridor inside is narrow and dark, the neon lights only increasing Molly's feelings of disorientation. Sherlock slaps thirty pounds onto the counter and Molly hops over to him cheerfully, pulling out her purse to pay for her own entry.

"No I've got it," he slurs, waving a hand at her. "I've got it, I've got it."

Molly puts her purse back into her bag and vows to pay for the next round of drinks. She sniggers as the girl behind the counter stamps her hand, and realises she hasn't done this since she was a hell of a lot younger. If this place is full of students, she and Sherlock are going to look embarrassingly old to them. She can't find it within herself to care too much, because Sherlock grabs her hand and pulls her into the club.

She can't see anything for all the dry ice. There are multicoloured lights flashing from every direction and she doesn't recognise any of the music. It's louder and harsher than the stuff from her own clubbing days, which was full of soft synths and melodic bass lines. She forgets all about it when she's at the bar however, standing on tip toes on the rail around the counter and leaning so far over the bar to speak to the bartender that Sherlock grabs the back of her dress to keep her from falling. She assumes the bartender hears her order, because he returns shortly with a pint of beer and a glass of white wine, and Molly hands over her money, nearly walking off without the few pitiful coins of change that Sherlock pulls her back to collect.

She drinks her wine too quickly, and the voice in her head tells her so, but she's bored of holding her glass. It's not like in the pubs earlier on in the night when they were sitting at a table sniggering and talking loudly about corpses, earning themselves several concerned looks from other patrons. The club is loud and packed and there's nowhere to sit and she just wants to get rid of her glass as soon as possible. Sherlock seems to have adopted the same school of thought, because he's downing his pint as fast as he can. When he looks at her, his eyes are glazed, his lips curved into an uncharacteristically dopey smile. She laughs, her forehead slipping forward and resting against his chest.

"I want to dance," he mumbles into her ear, his breath hot against her skin. Molly looks up at him, her head spinning, and squints in the glare of the flashing lights.

"I need…glass," Molly says vaguely, gesturing with her empty wine glass. Sherlock frowns, then after a moment, takes the glass from her and disappears into the crowd. He returns moments later, without the glasses, and grabs her hand, leading her down to the dance floor.

"You're not gonna throw up, are you?"

"What?" He leans close, so her lips are millimetres away from his ear.

"I said, you're not gonna throw up, are you?"

He laughs and shakes his head. "No, and I"m not going to piss in my wardrobe either!"

Molly bursts into another fit of uncontrollable giggles, and allows him to take both of her hands, making her dance while she laughs. He spins her and she shrieks, nearly falling against him, but he catches her, his hands maintaining a firm hold on her waist. She bites her lip as she looks up at him, her hair a mess, and he brushes a few loose tendrils out of her face. Her breath catches in her throat, but then the song changes to something with a far poppier sound, much more dance friendly, and Sherlock's face lights up.

Her brain switches off, and she finds herself mostly trying to maintain her balance Sherlock pulls her around the dance floor with him, spinning her this way and that, his hands never letting go of hers.

He can barely get his key in the lock. Molly sniggers, leaning against the wall as she watches him, and becomes frustrated when he tries to jam the key in upside down for the fourth time. She pushes herself away from the wall and grabs the key from him, flipping it over and clumsily forcing it into the lock and turning it. The door swings open and Sherlock huffs as Molly enters, and he slams the door behind him.

"Key," Molly says to him. He frowns and looks down at his hands, then spins around to look at the door. Molly sinks onto the stairs, her arms wrapped around her knees as he pulls the door open again and grabs his keys from the other side, where they are still dangling from the lock. He slams the door again, and Molly twists around, peering through the balusters to see if he has awoken Mrs Hudson. The lights are off, so she assumes not for now, but if he carries on the way he is, he might as well burst into her flat with a klaxon.

He grabs her by the arm and begins stumbling up the stairs, pulling her along behind him, and Molly follows, barely able to see in the dark. He knows this building like the back of his hand however, and, despite being completely drunk, guides her soundly over an uneven floorboard, and through the doorway to his flat.

"Another drink?" he asks, flipping on the lamp switch. Molly blinks in the sudden light and looks away. "I think there's drink somewhere. Maybe." Sherlock stumbles over to the cabinet and pulls the doors open, sticking his head inside and swiping at a bottle.

"I've already had one too many," Molly says, slumping into his armchair. "And I'm tired." She kicks off her shoes and tucks her feet under herself. She can feel her eyelids drooping, sleep already beginning to cloud her brain. A loud clunk causes her to flinch, and Sherlock slaps the cabinet doors shut.

"Fine," he says. "Bed then." He stumbles over and pulls Molly out of his chair. She keeps her eyes on her feet as she walks, focusing on putting one in front of the other, and not falling flat on her face as he guides her down the hallway to his bedroom. She smiles at the poster of the periodic table on his wall, and he flops down onto the mattress, looks up at her, then shifts over. He pats the space next to him and Molly sinks down onto it, resting her head on his plump feather pillow. The curtains are open, and the golden glow from the street lamp outside is pouring in through the window, the furniture casting long dark shadows that stretch across the floorboards. Her brain and her body feel very separate, and it's as though they're connected by a very weak telephone line, the signal cutting in and out. She turns her head to find that he is watching her, his cheekbones thrown into sharp relief by the street light. His face is inches from hers; she can feel his breath on her face, smell the alcohol on him as well as a faint hint of cigarette smoke from the crowd outside the club when they left.

His lips brush against hers and she freezes, her eyes closed, his forehead resting on her own. She wants him, more than anything in the world, she wants him, simple as that. She wants him and she has…Tom.

She turns onto her back before she can do anything else foolish and stares at the ceiling. The sound of Sherlock's gentle snoring soon fills the room, and Molly pushes all thoughts of him aside so she can try and get some sleep.

In the morning, she leaves before he wakes up, her heels clutched in her hand, and hails a taxi, wanting nothing more than to get home, get in the shower, and scrub away her indiscretion.

The End.