Stage I : It is impossible to `catch` feelings

He was high.

John Watson caught sight of his friend's flushed countenance, breathless laughter and dangerously glittering eyes as he pulled the key from the lock, allowing entry into the familiarly dim and musty hallway of 221B. Sherlock was virtually vibrating with a barely suppressed current of dark energy, which ran from the edges of his muddied boots to the tips of his wildly dishevelled hair - static, crackling, sparking and spitting with life.

Up the seventeen stairs, through the door and then circling the familiar space, touching, adjusting, but never resting. Hectic, bright spots above those sharp cheekbones and a slight sheen of sweat across his pale forehead as long, restless fingers clattered through slides and scattered learned men`s treatises across counter tops. Water was offered (and rejected), tea proffered (and huffed at) and even whisky, sloshed hastily into two tooth mugs (an appalling conglomeration inhabited the sink) was snubbed in favour of furious, frenetic (and frankly, irritating) fiddling about.

"Sherlock, for God's sake - "

John had elected to sit and attempt to peruse a takeaway menu in vain attempt to `lead by example`.

"I would have thought that sixteen solid hours in pursuit of Mr Gottileb and his arsonistic intentions would have resulted in a certain degree of… "

He searched for the term -

"Fatigue."

"Frustration."

Their simultaneous utterances momentarily resulted in the cessation of Sherlock Holmes, his hand fingers deep into an unspeakably atrocious looking pickle jar of blackened pig`s tongues. John almost took in a sigh of relief; it was as if someone had pressed `pause' on a tornado montage, allowing cars, fences, chimneys and cows to be frozen mid-air.

A mercurial gleam from his friend`s translucent eyes gave John Watson the very definite notion that the night, although more than complete for himself, was in its infancy for his flat-mate. This very notion managed to simultaneously ignite and exhaust him and he elected to sigh, most audibly.

"Sherlock, tonight you have, through astonishing deductive processes and considerable physical effort, pursued and apprehended a man who has been vexing the Met for the last eighteen months."

Pale eyes narrowed, but heat remained.

"Mate - do you think you could sit down? Give the tongues a night off? I'm pretty hungry, and I'm almost positive you've eaten nothing but a packet of Quavers during the last twenty four hours, and that was only because Molly Hooper stuffed them into your coat pocket as you tore through the lab this afternoon. Let me order some - "

"No."

The word resonated between them as the hurricane-on-pause removed his hand from the jar, holding dripping fingers above the tea caddy and the full attention of his friend.

"Thank you? That's OK Sherlock, you can perhaps get a sandwich the day after tomorrow. Or a week on Thursday. No point in gluttony, especially in light of the contents of that jar."

Adroit and impressive sarcasm should always be acknowledged, but Sherlock Holmes was already lifting his discarded Belstaff from the sofa and looking expectantly around the flat for his phone, as if it should leap into his readied hand, in the manner of a faithful sidekick.

"I cannot believe you are going back out."

"And yet, I must bid you goodnight John. Enjoy your dim sum."

"You are unbelievable. Tonight was outstanding; Lestrade and all the lads gave you a round of applause when Gottileb confessed. He was the toughest nut they've ever had to crack, but you brought him to tears, Sherlock. Even Donovan shook your hand."

Sherlock had located the phone from beneath Dr Gauser's paper on rigour mortis in arctic temperatures with a satisfied glint as he faced his flatmate at the door.

"A moment I shall treasure until I am compelled to inform her that Anderson is back with his wife, but now John, I must leave you. The very idea of food, even Mr Lau`s seaweed pork dumplings, fills me with repugnance and I need to be… moving, thinking, talking, evolving…"

"Like the Terminator?"

Their lock eyes again, but John recognises the miasma of incalcitrant decisiveness that Sherlock has silently proffered and decides to accept it. He`s seen it all before and knows that Sherlock will most likely walk until dawn through his beloved London, see the sun rise, drink french coffee and eat cinnamon toast at Cafe Oblige on Marylebone Avenue, and be back before ten to sleep for at least twenty hours. It was both comforting and completely familiar, but he always felt Sherlock enjoyed it more if a tussle was had before he left; it added a certain dramatic appeal that his friend was more that partial towards.

A nanosecond has passed and Sherlock has turned on his heel, exiting the room with a suitably theatrical swish of coat and subsequent thunderous tumult down the stairs.

John presses his speed dial for Mr Lau`s with an unshakable fondness burgeoning from deep within, which even transcends his focus upon the best Chinese buffet in the Marylebone district.

That`s my friend, he thinks. He`s bloody brilliant, unstoppable, unshakeable and eternally exhausting. Each day he sifts through the recurrent dregs and detritus of this great city and manages to make sense of so many of those pieces of flotsam and jetsam that wash up on its river banks. Certainly, he brings sanity and reason to the confusion and devastation of the specks of humanity who turn up on his doorstep on a daily basis, and wheedles out the solutions that are almost always out of reach for us lesser mortals. He'll be back here come morning, and we'll share a coffee pot and relive the previous day`s events, most likely laughing at the ineptitude of the yard and making merry with their errors.

Yeah, bloody brilliant, and utterly predictable. Sherlock Holmes, the friend I never knew I needed, until I did.

~x~

He is falling.

Head spun on an indeterminable axis, tilting with little regard or respect for any of Newton`s laws and little knowledge of a reference point, a horizon to halt the tail spin into the abyss.

Backwards into darkness, pinpricks of light igniting his peripheral vision as the vertigo both pushes and pulls and draws him down -

Down

Until he crashes with a most abrupt and impolite slam and everything suddenly -

Stops.

Textures beneath his open palms, crumpled, soft, warm. A trickle of moisture pooling and cooling as it edges across hot skin that tingles and hums as does an electrical storm, mere moments before the first drops of rain reach the parched ground. Sounds are returning and he hears harsh, laboured breaths, gasping greedily for air from the pitch black suffocating recesses of a fathomless, bottomless pit, and he is less than surprised to realise that those breaths, like the hands, the hot bright skin and the dissipating adrenalin are all his own.

Abruptly, his eyes flash open, letting in the light, the air and the soft sibilance of a whisper cutting across the ragged pounding of his heart.

"My goodness!" comes the whisper, as a skein of auburn hair catches the glow of a nearby lamp and Sherlock finds his focal point in the deepest of dark brown eyes as they look down tentatively into his own, and he smiles a lazy and replete smile, as the tension and the high octane buzz from the chases of the day finally float away, like thistledown on the edges of a breeze.

He feels the heat of her, twining long, pale fingers into her cool, cascading, endlessly silken hair and pulls her down… down to join him in a tangle of crumpled sheets and slippery skin.

"Your goodness had very little to do with it, my dear Miss Hooper," he breathes into her ear, and his eyes close again as his heartbeat gradually levels into its steady, even rhythm.

~x~

The hum of the centrifuge stops abruptly the very moment Sherlock walks into the lab, coat swishing about him as if in imperious disdain for the other lab monkeys, all decked out in white coats or blue medical scrubs.

"Perfect timing," mutters John Watson from the lab stool he perches atop, arranging slide results to aid Molly Hooper, who once again seemed to have been sequestered by his friend.

"Obviously," returns Sherlock, casting aside said coat, scarf and resentful glances, and flipping open the machine`s stainless steel lid. "Precision and timing is a most elementary requirement in the pursuit of science John."

"Even for you, that's pompous."

"Mmm. Disappointing." He has retrieved a small vial and is holding it up to the light. "I need the Leitz, Molly. It has the best long aperture for a distillation of this viscosity."

Molly doesn't even raise her head from her own slides as she waves a vague hand towards the bank of morgue assistants and APT`s seated in serried ranks across the other side of the large, airy room.

"Mmm… Need this one, Sherlock. Ask someone else."

A faint crease appears between his brows as John watches an exposition of distaste play out across his features; Sherlock prefers not to interact with the whims and foibles of others, particularly if they are liable to refuse him. John smiles.

"You'll have to play nice, Sherlock. Maybe now you`ve finished with their centrifuge, they'll let you have a go on their microscopes."

"Molly?" His tone is plainly wheedling, and Molly Hooper is plainly not the girl she used to be as she turns around, her smirk mirroring that of John`s in eerie facsimile.

"Hey, Phantom Menace, everyone has a job to do in here. Go, have a cup of coffee in Mike's office and I`ll give you a call in fifteen minutes when I`ve finished with these soil samples."

Wow, Molly Hooper.

Sherlock's eyes narrow into ice-blue slits, tilting his head as if to retort in pithy comeback, but he miraculously thinks better of it, sighs deeply and pulls out his phone as he steps towards the office. John is, in fact, astonished by such (albeit, resentful) acquiescence, but cannot fail to hear the muttered words as his friend huffs passed them both.

"Soil samples? I wrote the book on soil samples."

And Sherlock is a hairsbreadth away from slamming that door.

~x~

"I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade

And apple-blossoms fill the air— "

John pauses outside the door of the the main lab, his hand actually on the handle as he recognises the sonorous, low tones of a voice he knows quite well (made a little more husky by a slight inflammation of the larynx).

"It may be he shall take my hand

And lead me into his dark land - "

A choice both singularly appropriate and inappropriate for the current surroundings.

"And close my eyes and quench my breath—

It may be I shall pass him still."

A fleeting memory of four years ago and the Moriarty thing flashes across his countenance before being shoved firmly back down to those murky depths. Not now - he wasn't quite ready for those thoughts now. Mentally shaking it loose, John took a breath and pushed his way inside.

It has been two days since Sherlock's distillation of an oil found in the massage kit of a murdered holistic healer, combined with Molly`s effective soil analysis (from the slightly alkaline subsoil of West Hampstead heath) resulted in the arrests of a Reiki expert by the name of Gloria Scott, and Victor Trevor, the husband of her victim. Sherlock`s subsequent slump into lethargy, a head cold and increasingly depressing violin recitals had driven John to the lab to have lunch with Molly. It appeared that someone had beaten him to it.

Sherlock sat on top of a workbench, Dolce and Prada sprawled elegantly across the brushed steel and antiseptic gleam, and held forth a sheet of foolscap from which he appeared to be reading to Molly. Sitting beneath him on a chair, feet up and arms folded, her face was an elegant construction of concentration and irritation.

"Mmm."

Sherlock cocked a brow.

"The poem?"

"The poem is fine. He chose it himself, before he died… obviously."

"Then, you are finding my cadence inappropriate for the reading?"

She appeared to shift slightly in her arrangement, arms still folded tight across her white coat.

"Maybe it`s your cold… Mr Hepplewhite was a cleaner here for thirty two years. He came over from Poland during the last war and has raised five children and seventeen grandchildren. He was a respected church-goer and member of the local Polish community, many of whom will be attending his funeral on Thursday."

Sherlock's eyes say buffering, thus she continues.

"He expressly asked that you read the poem at his funeral. He loved reading about your cases on John's blog (hi John!)."

Still buffering…

"Sherlock, how did you get over here before me? I got a taxi immediately. You were still in the flat…(hi Molly)."

"Sherlock, I don't think it's going to be suitable… your voice…"

Sherlock slowly puts down the paper and a familiar expression of supercilious knowledge-having is gradually awakening. It is his turn to fold his arms as he takes in the slightly discomforted form of Molly Hooper seated beneath him.

"Mr Hepplewhite liked my voice."

"Seriously, you were still playing your violin."

"Yeah, everyone likes your voice, Sherlock, it's just - at the moment, well, it's just a bit too - "

Sherlock smirks, tapping an immaculate loafer atop the immaculate bench.

"Un-funereal?" He offers, all innocence.

Molly jumps to her feet, snatching the poem from the bench in a flurry that suggests there is work to do and that conversation is over.

"I`ll just read it myself. He won't mind, being dead and all. Got heaps to do, bye Sherlock." And she is gone. Sherlock himself jumps down from the counter, still smirking, and takes the other door into the public areas, letting it swing erratically behind his retreating back.

John stands alone in the Morgue. A clock ticks weightily through the gathering silence. Seconds pass.

"Am I actually invisible?" he asks, with only the dead as his silent witnesses.

~x~

Almost six minutes. A new record.

Long, warm, elegant fingers cup the small shoulders of Molly Hooper, releasing her robe in one, deft flick and doing absolutely nothing to halt its descent. She considers speaking up for its loss, but her mouth is so very full of his mouth; hot, soft, malleable, yet firm and demanding. He breaks away, face inches from hers and eyes so close, they are one, bright, shimmering flash of blue.

Tobacco, Polos, rosin and the faintest tang of lemon verbena, and him - just him. It was narcotic, it was dark, it was -

"Sherlock - "

"Mmm. Words? Molly Hooper, we agreed. No words until - much later."

"Statistics, Sherlock. For science."

His dark head lifts, to fix her gaze again - that quizzical crease.

"Just less than six minutes from your stepping across my threshold until my nakedness. In a world of shoddy and politically correct foreplay, you are quite the progressivist in cutting to the chase."

Within seconds, Molly Hooper finds herself recumbent and enclosed by the two strong forearms that two hours previously she had witnessed splintering an ox skull with a sledgehammer in lab number four (tucked away from the curious eyes of Sanderson and the lab monkeys). Sherlock contemplates her momentarily, but his eyes can only keep returning to her mouth. Distraction is more than adorable on him, she decides.

"My neoteric and groundbreaking analysis allows for nought but an efficiently swift liaison, Molly. Your desire for me was palpable today."

She rakes a hand through ragged curls, threading her fingers, pulling a little more.

"Indeed? Palpable?"

"Entirely. Pupils dilated, pulse elevated, cheeks flushed - "

"Modesty sits well on you, I see."

He presses his wonderful mouth against her throat and she can feel him smile. Ah, gorgeous.

"My deeper voice - it excited you."

"What? Not a chance - "

He huffs an amused, warm breath across her levator scapulae, inducing a rather implicatory shiver.

"Ye-ess," whispers Sherlock Holmes, as deep, as rich and as shameless as a barrel of molasses.

~x~

The slap.

Nothing had been the same after that.

If either of the two parties involved were forced to account for the moment that the molecules around them had fizzled, diverged and collided irrevocably altering the course of their relationship to one another, they would have to have agreed its origins lay there.

How dare you?!

She'd said it, and she'd meant it.

Molly held her hand clenched at her side, resonating with a stinging pulse; the memory of his cheekbone and jaw, roughened by stubble and doss house grime, still tangible on her fingertips. A blueprint of her frustrations (and anger) remained there - at his disregard for the frailty of what comes with being human; how fragile and exposed we really all are, including him.

Later that day, he had called on his way to do some `shopping`, and he'd looked beautiful and new again, but it was too late. She had felt his humanity in that slap, and he knew it too. A line, some unspoken boundary that had held them so far apart - expert and ingenue - had been crossed, and the darkened lab illuminated only by small bench lights and the glow of Apple Mac screens now held them, dark and silent.

He entered, not knowing why he was there. To apologise? No. To make things right? No, things had been right, but now Sherlock wanted them to be different - to be wrong.

She looked up, deepest brown to brightest blue, and took him in (all of him) and he actually laughed. Most unexpected, and Sherlock did so love the unexpected.

"Funny, Sherlock?"

He shook his head, approaching slowly, as if she were a rare beast that may startle at the slightest miscue. He shook his head, taking in her neckline, crumbs on the counter and the crease across her cheek matching that of her sleeve.

"You haven't been home."

"No."

"You`ve started drinking soya milk again; it won't help." He was at the corner of the mortuary table, close enough to see the tremor at the corner of her eye. Fatigue. Agitation.

"I`m not afraid of you anymore, Sherlock. I am un-awed of you. Disenchanted."

"I know," whispered Sherlock Holmes, as she too, took a step, then raised her arms and held his face between her two ungloved hands (neither slap nor caress, but something in between) -

and she kissed him; brazen, open-mouthed, fearless.

There were no barriers any more, and they both took what they wanted.

~x~

Shootings, near death experiences and a very temporary exile were only slight disturbances which delayed, but could not halt, the relentless inevitability of their physical need. The breech of all the floodgates ever made had appeared - unpredicted, insatiable, and necessary. And no-one knew, since no-one thought to ask.

Sherlock and Molly are such good friends these days.

Friendships are so much more possible without sexuality muddying the waters.

Sex always gets in the way of a close friendship.

Sometimes, perhaps.

But not always.

~x~

Fifty-eight minutes. A new record.

"Molly Hooper, are you calling me a taxi?"

Sheepish. Faint flush. Manga eyes. Most pleasing.

"We-ell, I do need to be in the office at 6.30 tomorrow morning. Suspected carbon monoxide poisoning at Grafton`s Bank. Huge lawsuit in the offing. Mike is sweating a bit - "

Sherlock is laughing. He adores how she sugarcoats the pill - a true physician. Grabbing his jacket, scarf, coat (and shoes) from her outstretched hand, he taps at his phone, making for the door, but not before dropping a chaste kiss atop her auburn head.

"You were astonishing."

And because this is Sherlock, and there is nothing to be gained for him by a sugar-coating, she glows from the compliment, since she understands that he means it.

"I know," she says, smiling as she closes the door behind him.

Such a perfectly symbiotic arrangement. If only everyone could manage to conduct their dealings in such an efficient and gratifying manner, how peaceful the world would be.

~x~