A/N: This chapter was originally published in my "Flash Fics" collection. However, despair not! For chapter 2 will be uploaded by the time you've read this comment.

"Look, Molly, I know we've just met..."

"Sherlock, we met six months ago," Molly interrupted him, her mouth set in a flat line even he recognized as Not Good. "Nice to know I'm so memorable."

He raked agitated fingers through his hair. "No, that's not - to me, that is 'just met'," he tried to explain, his words coming in a rush. "I've known Gavin for close to ten years and I just started calling him my friend," he added, hoping that would help.

Judging by the twitching of her lips and the brief appearance of a dimple, it did. "If you mean Greg Lestrade, then okay, by your standards we've just met. By my standards, a man starting off a sentence like that is about to ask me out, but since I have known you for six months - and you blew me off the one time I tried to ask you out for coffee - I know that's not actually the case. So." She took a breath. "What do you need me to do? Sneak you out unauthorized body parts? Let you use the lab unsupervised? Just get it over with and I'll tell you yes or no."

"You'd tell me yes no matter what," he contradicted her, the words popping out, much to his horror, before he could stop them. "Sorry!" he yelped as she glowered at him. He held his hands up in a beseeching manner. "That was...that just sort of...happened."

"And it's true," she agreed resignedly. "So just...spit it out, Sherlock. What do you need?"

"You." That time he was absolutely certain he'd said the right thing, even if Molly's eyes just sort of got huge and round and her lips opened as if to emphasize her startlement. Feeling a bit more on solid ground, he took a step forward, focusing entirely on her. "Molly, I think I'm going to die." When he expression turned to alarm, he backtracked. "If I don't show up at my parent's house this Christmas with my forensic sex addicted, petite, intelligent, very forgiving paragon of virtue of a wife - which, I might add, my brother and sister managed to dream up, those are their descriptions not mine - it's very possible my mother will actually murder me. And get her former MI6 friends to help her get away with it," he added in a mutter.

Clearly Molly was going to need some time to process what he'd just said; any fool could read it in her body language and he might not be the most socially graceful man but Sherlock Holmes was certainly not a fool. Carefully he took her elbow and guided her toward the nearest stool, not releasing her until she was securely seated.

Almost a full minute passed before she spoke, and her voice was so calm he felt a very false sense of reassurance. (He'd learn to interpret that deadly calm in years to come but not until well after they were actually married.)

"Let me get this straight. Your sister and brother - nice to know you have siblings, by the way, not to mention parents since you've never mentioned family ever - made up a fake wife for you and told your parents about her - and, what? You just went along with it?"

He nodded eagerly. "Yup, essentially. But I've avoided a full year of family gatherings and, well, now Mummy's put her foot down. She wants to meet this time-consuming wife of mine, and, well, you fill the bill. Except perhaps the sex addicted bit," he added somewhat doubtfully. "I've deduced that you enjoy sex and have had quite a bit of it in your past but recently you seem to have been in a bit of a dry spe- hang on," he interrupted himself as something she'd said finally percolated back to his frontal lobe. "You asked me out for coffee? When?"

"The day you were beating that corpse," she replied. "I asked you if you'd like some coffee and you gave me your order and left."

"Oh. Right. That was you asking me out." He shook his head. "Molly, you really have to be more clear when you're asking someone out

"SHERLOCK HOLMES!" Molly didn't quite shout, but she certainly raised her voice to a forceful level as she hopped to her feet and glared up at him. "My sex life is none of your business! And besides, if I am in a dry spell - which I'm not saying I am! - it's all your fault!"

He stared at her in outrage. "My fault? How can it possibly have been my fault?"

"Because every single time someone nice chats me up you manage to spoil it with your stupid deductions!" she hissed, poking him in the chest. Hard.

He narrowed his eyes and refused to take the step back his instincts kept trying to urge him to do. Instead, he moved closer. Take that, instincts! Intellect wins every time, he told himself smugly, even as he opened his mouth and managed to shove both size 11s into it at the same time. "My deductions are NOT stupid," he said in his most obnoxious tones. "Unlike the men you seem attracted to," he added with a sneer. "Is it my fault they're all idiots or petty criminals?"

Her face reddened. "So which are you, then?" she retorted. "An idiot or a petty criminal?"

That shut him up, although he felt his mouth gaping open as he struggled for a retort. Something to put her completely in her place. Which place being 'work colleague who I am absolutely not attracted to at all and whose attempts at dating positively do NOT make me jealous'.

The triumphant little smirk on her lips was what did it, he realized later, although at the time he was in no mental condition to reason anything else. All he could think about was how much he wanted to wipe that smirk from her lips - and that the best way of doing so, his instincts and his intellect both insisted, was to do what he did.

He kissed her.

When the kiss ended - with her very effectively taking over and kissing him back in ways that made him feel rather…funny…she stepped back and slapped him. "Never kiss without asking first," she snapped. "At least when we're not play-acting for your family at Christmas. And I expect a really lovely wedding set, not something you buy on the cheap. Something classy, and no blood diamonds, I like…"

"Other gems such as rubies and emeralds, better, yes, I know," Sherlock snapped back, still rubbing at his cheek. "Something that you'll wear rather than it wearing you, got it. I'll pick you up after your shift ends and take you to Tiffany's although I suspect we'll find something more to your taste at Alex Monroe Jewellery in Bermondsey. But best to start at Tiffany's and work our way backwards, yes, all right. I'll see you at four."

"Ten after, I'll need to clean up a bit, I'm not walking into a high end jewellery store smelling of the morgue," she called after him. He gave a brief nod but continued through the swinging doors, stopping once he was in the corridor and staring back the way he'd just come, feeling as if he'd been stomped on by an elephant.

What the hell had just happened?

And why was he…smiling?

"One of life's little mysteries," he muttered to himself, very unconvincingly. Then he shook himself a little, got himself back into his usual aloof headspace, and strode down the corridor as if he owned the place.

Christmas was going to be much more interesting - and fun! - than he'd expected. And, he thought with a definite sense of glee, he couldn't WAIT to see Euri and Mykie's faces when he showed up with Molly on his arm!