It was one of life's great ironies that the day that Molly Hooper decided to finally get over Sherlock Holmes and on with her life was the very day that Sherlock decided that he did, in fact, have tender feelings for the pathologist and it was high time he did something about them.

It was perhaps more heartbreakingly ironic that it was the same event which caused both parties to come to their respective realisations.

Having spent hours on her feet, at the morgue working, Molly had been bone tired and ready to collapse. Of course this was when our consulting detective made an appearance demanding that she help him with his experiment.

Molly, for the first time ever, said no. Sherlock, not for the first time ever, told her that she had never looked lovelier, assuming that the tiny piece of artful flattery would get him what he wanted.

In that moment Molly, her body sore and aching, had taken one look at him and was certain that he hadn't even seen her. He simply didn't care that her hair was greasy and that she had bags under her eyes. He had probably seen the soup stains on her cardigan and the scars on her hands and ignored them- her- as unimportant. She was not a person to him, merely a body that fetched him coffee and catered to his every whim. He didn't see her, didn't care about her and would certainly never love her.

The Great Realisation that she was wasting her time, energy and life loving a man who would never return those feelings crushed what remained of her self-esteem and, after getting him his blasted coffee, she took herself off home vowing that she would never be his fool again. It was time to get over him and that was exactly what she planned to do.

Of course, for Sherlock, things had happened rather differently.

Having spent hours walking and running around London working on a case for Lestrade, Sherlock was highly buzzed, full of adrenaline, and ready to take on the world. He had several ideas of new directions he could go and there was only one person he trusted to help him. He hastened to St. Barts and to the morgue where he knew his favourite lab partner would still be working.

Molly had been packing up for the day when he had walked in. Sherlock had offered her the chance to help him solve a case and, for the first time that he could recall, she had turned him down, citing the fact she was tired and grimy and needed to go home and shower.

He had recalled what she'd looked like when he had walked in. She had been deep in paperwork, her eyes shining in thought, fingers tapping out a steady rhythm on the computer. She had been biting her lower lip constructing sentences that explained her findings and solved the mystery of why her patient died. She was thorough and intelligent and methodical and he had told her that she had never looked lovelier to him.

She had stared at him then. Just stood and stared, without blushing and stammering or saying thank you. Her expression had been quite unreadable and Sherlock had been struck with just how pretty his pathologist was when she wasn't a nervous wreck. It wasn't something that he usually noted and, as she went to get him coffee, he set his mind to work out why it was that the unfamiliar thought had crossed his mind.

He weighed up their acquaintance, their meetings and conversations. He thought about her appearance and his deductions regarding her and realised that she had featured in his thoughts more and more in the previous months. She had been someone who he trusted, someone on whom he could rely and someone who he viewed with affection. It wasn't the sort of bemused affection that he held for John or even the protective affection he felt for Mrs. Hudson.

It was softer. More visceral and certainly more physical.

As she had placed his coffee in front of him and wandered off, he had come to the Great Realisation that he actually had feelings for Molly Hooper. Real, grown-up, manly feelings. He wanted to do things with her. More than experiments. He'd quite like to kiss her at some point and maybe even sit with her on the sofa at Baker Street.

Extraordinary though it was, he wanted Molly in his life more permanently and with a greater degree of proximity.

He had turned to tell her of this Great Realisation only to find that she had gone home.

After several moments of pouting he had decided that this was for the best. He needed time to plan how he would go from single to being in a relationship. He needed to research and prepare.

And so the two of them set about their mission; one to quell and the other to capture.

Sherlock began his quest by remarking, quite idly to John Watson, that last year's Christmas party had gone quite well and maybe John should consider another.

Molly began her own journey by opening a bottle of wine, curling up with her cat and watching He's Just Not That Into You.

Both were quite satisfied with their initial steps towards their end goal. Their flatmates were equally pleased; John Watson because it showed that Sherlock was finally growing as a person, and Toby because he really liked having his tummy rubbed.

Molly planned and Sherlock plotted and both were determined to succeed. With the holidays rapidly approaching one of them was bound to disappointment.

But which one?