How well I remember
The look was in his eyes
Stealing kisses from me on the sly
Taking time to make time
Telling me that he's all mine -

Silence.

Sherlock takes a sip of Ribena, then steals a look at Molly.

His eyes - she opens her mouth but there are no words. His eyes hold a quiver she has never seen in him. His face is uncertain, the face she has glimpsed between experiments, the face he shows nobody, his sad face, his hidden face, his vanished face which is left behind when he takes himself far away from the present, where nobody sees him.

"Sherlock?"

"I'm fine. Listen." He takes a large gulp of Ribena and swallows. "At university I had a girlfriend. Her name was Carol. She was my tutor."

"Biochemistry tutor," Molly says.

"Yes. I loved her."

"Yes," she says, although this is not required.

He flinches. "She made it very clear that she loved me too."

"Right."

"Molly." His dark voice, warning.

"Sorry." She presses the glass against her lips. He needs to talk. She needs to shut up. Billie Rae is sitting wide-eyed with her hands over her mouth.

Sherlock takes a breath. "We were together. She was a strong personality. I liked that." He pauses. More deep breaths.

"You don't have to tell me anything –"

"I know. I'm going to though." He ruffles his hair with his hands, shakes his head impatiently. "Carol did everything for me. She let me know every day that she thought I was brilliant, unique, unlike any man she'd ever met or was likely to meet." He grimaces.

Molly watches him. In between the narrative she sees a nineteen year old boy, defiant and ashamed.

"She –"He stops. "It is impossible to describe," he says. "I - lost her love."He shakes his head. "I disappointed her. Constantly."

Molly stays still. Sherlock. His kisses. His shy, dry humour. His ability to understand everything around him, at a glance, the sheer speed and agility of him. -His lithe body and certain technique. "No," she says.

He blinks. "She said I let her down. She withdrew from me. I tried to –" He stops. "It's stupid. Now. So obvious. But it isn't, at the time. I have spoken to many people, and they all say. You don't realise. You genuinely don't. Because no one signs up for this kind of treatment. Nobody. You sign up for love. And you do love them. And they love you. They tell you every day and you don't understand how you can keep getting it so wrong because she is always so angry –" He stops, clenches his jaw, swallows Ribena. He is trembling.

Molly thinks of seeing Sherlock with his tutor, in the street. The way she kissed him. The way he succumbed, blissful, breaking Molly's heart, and now she sees it anew, grateful. "Abuse..." She whispers.

"People don't believe it," he says. "If you're a man. How did she overpower you? Surely you could have just pushed her away. But it's not like that." He glances at her. "It's not like that, with women either. They don't let men abuse them because they are physically weaker. It happens because they love them. And if you love someone, you can't believe they would ever hurt you. And you would do anything to try to fix it when they tell you something is wrong. You believe it must be you. That it is somehow your fault. They tell you it is and why would they lie? They love you. They keep saying so."

Molly has told him she loves him. He did not respond. Not surprising. "Did she hurt you? Physically."

"Slightly." He does not offer details. He is frowning.

Molly grips the glass, focuses on its smooth chill, to stop herself reaching for him, blurting out platitudes, vowing revenge on this person who dared to hurt him. Her jaw is set. Keep schtum, chicken, whispers Dee. Let the man say what he's got to say.

Sherlock continues, "It takes a long time to realise the mismatch between the words and the actions. And then reality sets in. And you have to escape."

"Where did you go?" she asks. All she knows is that he vanished. Campus was bleak without him.

"France. A house in the country. Nobody there."

She thinks, counselling, support, friends, but he chose nobody. "Then what?"

He shrugs. "I came back. Made them give me my degree even though I didn't care about it. Started working on 'unsolvable' cold cases." He pauses. "That's all."

It is not all. She knows that as clearly as if she could see the years of recovery which followed his escape. But she doesn't say anything.

"I hated how stupid I'd been" he says. "I felt a complete fool. Swore I would never be stupid in any area of life ever again." He gives a small, wry smile. "The things you tell yourself when you are twenty."

"The cases." Of course. His brain, the part which betrayed him, brought firmly back into line. "Intellectual proof that you weren't stupid."

"That's it." He glances at her. "It didn't work all the time. I did seek out other escapes."

"I know." The drugs. She is glad she never saw this. And she knows, chemically, the pull which narcotics exercise on the brain. It is a permanent battle to deny them. Yet he (mostly) does not even smoke, these days.

They sit without speaking for a time. He does not offer any more revelations. The noise which is part of Molly's flat surrounds them: taunts and laughter from people rolling between clubs and bars; clattering, then shouts from the Chinese kitchen; the diesel rumble of taxis. The flat does not have double glazing and the street is, in effect, in the room with them. Molly has always liked this. Even if it means having to turn the telly right up.

She puts down her empty glass. Sherlock's is already pushed away to the far edge of the table. His feet (dark red socks, today) rest on the near edge. She did not notice him taking off his shoes but they are neatly aligned under the table. She reaches out and touches his ankle. "You haven't been single all this time," she says. She is fishing a little, which he will probably dislike, but there has yet to be a better moment.

"Basically," he says. He looks sideways at her. "There have been women," he says. "At one point I had a flatmate..." He shrugs. "You remember her."

"She stormed out. You said you'd never live with anyone again." God, did the red negligee belong to that stuck up woman? Hard to imagine. "She was really furious with you."

"She was expedient and didn't realise it." His tone is disparaging.

God. Expedient. "I don't want to be expedient, Sherlock. Whether I know it or not." Her hand on his ankle, the sharp bone softened by extremely fine-knit wool.

"No." He is watching her fingers. His lip twitches as if he is repressing words, actions.

"You came to see me after graduation," she says. "That was sweet."

He seems embarrassed by this. "Curiosity. I wondered if you were still there. I expected you'd be engaged, or something."

"I nearly was," she said. "But he was much too boring."

"A solitaire diamond engagement ring," Sherlock says with absolute conviction, and she knows, then, how far into her stuff he got that day.

She sighs. "No, that was later."

"The rocket scientist? Or the UN ambassador?" His tone is sardonic but his eyes are sharp-focused on her, monitoring her reaction.

"Don't laugh," she says. Is he - threatened? Surely he knows he trumps all of them. "I don't do boring men. I have plenty of offers. You probably don't believe me but I do."

"I got into a macho standoff with Phil," Sherlock says.

She splutters.

"He insinuated that you and he were an item," says Sherlock. "I let him know that was not the case."

"Oh god. I wish I'd seen it," Molly says weakly.

He grins suddenly, a flash of warmth. "I wish you had too. I surprised myself." He covers her hand with his. "Sorry. You were saying."

"Nothing. Just that I get bored very easily. I like a man to be surprising." His hand is strong, his touch warm, vibrating with certainty and permanence.

"Jim from IT," he says, raising his eyebrows.

"Not that surprising. Well. Maybe that surprising, but not in that way."

He laughs. "A romance with Moriarty?"

"No," she says, "with the man he could have been. Clever. Mercurial. Funny. Imagine all that, but working to help people instead of harm them."

"I don't have to," he says.

"I know," she said, "that was my point."

"Oh."

A little more silence, and continued hand holding, follows.

"It's bedtime," Molly says at last. She twines her fingers through his. "Are you coming in with me? Or staying out here?" She wondered, the other night, what would happen if she just asked. Now is the moment to find out.

"With you," he says. He gets up and pauses awkwardly beside the coffee table, but as Molly lifts her chin, his eyes gleam.

"I am injured," she reminds him firmly.

"I know." He helps her to stand.

She winds her arms around his waist. "Why did you tell me all that?" she asks, looking up at him.

"I was afraid. Statistics. About abusers." He waits for her to get it but this time she does not. "Most abusers were victims themselves in the past."

"You thought you would turn into - That you would become an abuser." Facts - the basis for his life - holding him back, preventing him moving on from this trauma. She presses her hands against his shoulder blades, keeping him close against her. "No."

"It is statistically likely. But now you know, you won't let me." He says it simply, as if he has fully solved the problem. He rotates his chin, relieving tension, revelling in her fingers on his back.

A horrifying responsibility. "I'm not sure your logic is right," she says carefully.

"Logic and love are not necessarily compatible," he concedes.

Did he just refer to love? As in, between them? She tries but cannot think about it now. "Let's -" she begins.

He picks her up, as easily as he did the first time, and carries her into her bedroom, elbowing the door open. "Do you need help getting undressed?"

Thank god the bed is made. And the dresses are mostly in the wardrobe, the occasional bit of netting or polka dot jutting from the sliding doors. "Maybe the zip -"

He sets her down and moves behind her. She smiles because they both know she can get in and out of any of her Billie Rae outfits without assistance. Still, it is nice to be helped. And her dress is classic Seventies manufacture, after the introduction of mass production but before any real quality testing: the zip sticks.

"How much pain are you in?" He asks with his breath on her neck and his hands, now, sliding the dress off her shoulders, down to her hips. He pulls her close to him, puts his lips to her shoulder.

She closes her eyes, steps gingerly out of the dress. "Not too much." His lips trail seductive fire on her skin and she is not going to ask him to stop.

"Excellent."

She laughs at his brisk tone and twists round in his arms. "You'll be needing help with those shirt buttons."

"If you say so." Relief is in his eyes as they resume familiarity.

"You might need to use a bit of ... technique," she says, her fingers on his collar. "To avoid putting weight on my legs." Standing is Ok. Lying flat in any configuration is going to hurt.

"Technique," he says. Bemused. Pleased, possibly. He runs his hands over her collarbone as she tugs his shirt off.

"You know what I mean. –I've never really known a man who had any. Technique." His belt buckle undoes in one easy motion. His trousers are Savile Row. No zip issues.

"When you say technique –" He is using it right now, unfastening her bra with one hand while the other whisks back her duvet.

"Men I've known. Things they did, it was all heat of the moment stuff. But you - everything you do is on purpose." She holds her arms up to him so that he can lift her onto the bed. She winces but pulls him down next to her anyway. What does she need calves for?

"Well, obviously." He pauses. "Almost always. The other night – " His voice is rough, shyness mixed with pride.

"Mmn yes..." When he totally lost the plot. She intends having that effect on him again, frequently. Billie Rae and Dee are whooping and she sends them on their way, nosy minxes. "Remind me how that goes again..."

"Happy to oblige..." He is beside her, pressing his bare skin against hers and stroking her hair tenderly. But his proximity is not encouraging to mere sweet romance.

She pulls him in, devours his mouth, lets him go. Molly does not need Billie Rae's assistance in this arena. She flicks her eyelids at him. "Have you started yet?"

She sees the light of challenge go on in his eyes. "Yes," he says, and his hand disappears under the duvet. She gasps. "Do try to keep up."

And that's it. Resolved. They are easy together again as if they have always known one another, as if sixteen years have simultaneously melted away and they are nineteen with no experience to start from... and they are thirty-five with all their histories and hang-ups but none of it matters.

"Sherlock," she says, as they try, in the aftermath, to establish a victor. (Probably Sherlock. She suspects this will become a pattern.) "Just so you know. So you know it was not just the heat of the moment, the other night. And just now. I love you. And what you told me doesn't change that. You're still the same person I saw on campus loafing around in black looking all meaningful and making me swoon with how gorgeous you were."

His eyes widen, and she adds, "You don't have to say it. If it's not your thing. But feel free to tell me how wonderful I am, any time." Billie Rae demands that much.

Sherlock sits up, casts about, his eyes searching. Dives over the side of the bed and comes up holding one of her flat brown boots. "These," he says. "The first time you walked into the lab in these I lost count of my pollen types." She stares - those old things? - but who is she to comment on attraction, when her lover's face is sweeter to her in slack, guileless sleep than in his waking taut good looks? Sherlock drops the boot again and wraps himself around her. "And - I never truly recovered from when you smiled at me."

Molly is nose to nose with him on the pillow. "Smiled. When?" She has spent a lot of the last two years not wanting to smile and then, after he came back, refusing to.

"In Anatomy of the Foot. First year undergraduate lecture." He whispers it.

She remembers, then. Did she smile? Probably. "You were so aloof. Clever. I couldn't believe you came and sat next to me."

"I'd never noticed you before," he admits. "Then you smiled. Things improved, after that."

"Still improving," she says. She shifts slightly and kisses him, just lips, and he sighs and holds her tight, his hair soft on her shoulder.

It will not always be like this, she knows. His phone will ring, he will race off without saying goodbye. Days will pass without contact. He will forget to call her, to see her, will forget that she exists, while he is inside the tunnel vision of his work. But he will come back. He came back, again and again through all those years, and never stopped wondering about her. She is, she is starting to understand, part of him, like the work is part of him. He will emerge, lift his head, see her and smile his secret smile. And even when he is on a case, he will appear at the hospital, doubtless expecting favours. And his research is endless. There will still be days in the lab, working side by side.

And apart from Sherlock, Molly has plenty to occupy her. Work, of course. That promotion, assuming she gets it. Music and song. And always, resplendent in a series of polka-dotted prom dresses, a reinvented Billie Rae, singing of longing, and hope, and unwavering love.

Author's note

This is the end, although there may be a totally self-indulgent epilogue later. Thanks for reading and I hope you liked it - please let me know!

The domestic violence thing, Tony in particular - It's a true story. I was sitting outside a pub in Slough one summer evening ten years ago when a distinctive Geordie accent caught my ear. I struck up a conversation with its owner, a fearsome looking bloke with tattoos and piercings. He was a Metro engineer, down in London to work on the Tube. 'A long way to move,' I commented. 'No family, girlfriend?'

As he hesitated over his response I noticed his hands. They were covered in sharp white scars. And something in his manner told me that he had not so much left his girlfriend but escaped. 'She hurt you,' I blurted out with that certainty you sometimes have. He nodded and actually cracked in front of my eyes, this big tough man. 'That's a Stanley knife,' he said, showing me the scars. 'I was lying in the bath and I yelled at her to get me another Stella. She came through and stuck the knife in me for disturbing her.' We talked some more and it was a story I knew well, but had never heard from a man. 'Did you tell anyone?' I asked. He shook his head. 'Not even your best friend?' 'I told my best mate,' he said. 'And he laughed. Yelled it out across the whole pub. How I let a woman beat us up.'

At that point he looked at me in a way that told me I needed to leave before he mistook my sympathy for interest. I gave him the number for Women's Aid and told him they would know what the men's equivalent was.

I knew domestic abuse existed against men as well as women. Controlling behaviour knows no gender boundaries. I didn't know then that men use their physical strength, looming over women, threatening or actually harming with fists, whereas women use weapons to threaten and control.

That year I met no fewer than eleven people, just in my ordinary course of life, who had experienced domestic abuse. A horrifying fact. I'm not so attuned to it now but every so often someone says something which doesn't make any sense, and my ears prick up.

Sherlock as victim might not ring true, but you genuinely cannot tell what 'kind' of person finds themselves in this situation. Educated, middle class people in good jobs are no less likely than others to experience it. But luckily not all victims become abusers, and I imagine that Sherlock, with his habits of strict self control and Molly at his side, can escape his past and be contented again.

All the songs for Vintage Heart are on the tube of you, under my username.

There will be more fics, here or on the Elementary board, plus, gradually, fictionpress for my original fics. More soon!

-Sef

Son of a preacher man - Dusty Springfield