Chapter Text
The office is aflutter with gossip and new blood and Molly, having somehow developed a sense for it in her over the years at Baker Street Publishing House, stands from her desk to peek out the door.
“I hear he’s some sort of spy,” Belinda, one of the assistants, whispers behind a colored folder. “Mycroft Holmes, MI6.”
Molly starts. Crime fiction was her domain.
The Holmeses were famous enough, in London society, but the eldest brother had always been sort of a mystery.
“No, he was, but he’s some politician’s aide now,” says Mina, the editor whose office was right next to Molly’s. She smiles, seeing Molly poke her head out her office like a turtle, and waves her in.
Belinda wrinkles her nose. “You don’t think he’s angling for a career in politics, do you? With a position so low a rung on the ladder…”
Molly cocks her head, watching the man in question wait politely for a meeting in a room on the other side of the second floor entirely. She was glad for the all-glass walls up here, some days. They all were.
“So, what’s he here for?” Molly asks.
“He’s Greg’s new author,” Mina says. Sure enough, Greg Lestrade’s assistant steps into view, ushering the tall man into Greg’s office, where the pair are partially obscured by the quarter-drawn blinds.
“Evidently,” Mina continues, pausing as she snorts to reign in her laughter. “He writes these nursery story books on the side now.”
“What!” Molly blurts it out without thinking. In his dark charcoal pinstripe, perfectly tailored no less, with his little shiny pocketwatch chain and the antiquated waistcoat, he cut a severe if slightly eccentric figure that she couldn’t quite picture in a nursery.
They see Greg and Mycroft Holmes share a laugh, the editor showing him a photo of his family he keeps on his desk. Then the ex-spy turns, just enough so he catches the trio of women watching. Belinda covers her face with the folder in hand immediately, in effect waving a big orange flag to signal their busybodyness.
And he catches Molly’s eye.
He smiles, just a small one, and in an instant the stony figure morphs into another portrait entirely; his facade melts away to reveal a mischievous glint in the eye and the satisfied humor in a quirk of the lips.
And, okay, she does want to see him in a nursery now. Holding a newborn, a newlywed glow about him-
Molly shakes her head violently, clearing it of the absurdity.
Get a grip!, she wants to say. How unprofessional!
She ducks back into her office to prepare for a meeting with one of her own authors.
.
James Moriarty is a bit of a peculiar character.
He is an incredibly prolific writer, for which Molly is thankful, but this somehow doesn’t preclude him from the club of authors from whom it is decidedly difficult to wrangle out chapters.
To date, James, Jim to most of his readers, has published over 30 books. He’s really only known for a dozen of them.
Molly has known him since she was a junior editor a decade ago, getting her start in publishing, and had taken him on despite his work being so far out of her genre wheelhouse.
It’d been a surreal novel with a bit of a Grimm fairy tale quality set in the deep dark woods, but it didn’t quite hit that “horror” note, being instead interspersed with poetry at seemingly random points, and it had swiftly been passed over by everyone else.
On a whim, she had called him for a meeting and wondered if they could discuss the book sans poetry, and he promptly hung up on her.
But less than a week later, she found a manuscript from JM in her inbox. A first person account of an old man disappearing into the woods, beginning as a very human portrait of grief, and descending into a tale of terror and loss of self. It was strange but - gripping, in a way. And it did alright for a niche audience.
She’d expected more like that from him for his next book, now that they had discussed and legalized their partnership, or perhaps maybe they would pursue the vein of poetry. But no. The next draft he’d sent her was a space opera.
The next one was about pirates, and then a period piece of lust and intrigue set during Carnival. Then unrelated five books, back to back, about time travel. The first of which was a teen fiction novel where a young boy somehow travels back in time to meet Shakespeare .
There were enough hits in the mix, thankfully, that they far offset the experiments that didn’t quite find their audience. And so it went.
James, having come to trust Molly and her incisive insight, with her surgically precise notes, would willingly discuss whichever book they were working on. But he never once answered questions about the mad genre hopping.
So Molly was admittedly skeptical when he sent her a crime thriller manuscript - finally, something in her genre - and said it was meant to be part of a series. Truth be told, she didn’t quite think he had the capacity to commit to a series.
They signed the contracts anyway, and Spider’s Web turned out to be a tremendous hit. Jim Brook was an overnight sensation. There were films and TV series in the works, with really quite an impressive roster of A-list talent lined up.
But now - this afternoon, in fact - they were supposed to discuss the thirteenth and final installation of the Web series and what might become of it going forward.
Her bosses, in light of the lucrative film optioning, were gunning for a spin-off series to be announced before the series’ end. And that didn’t seem likely what with James’s history of interests.
Sure, it was possible that James had finally hit his stride with this series of crime thrillers - and truly, Molly thought they were some of his best work, equally full of intrigue with the carefully painted underworld of crime and psychologically chilling in the depiction of the human mind.
But it was also just as likely that this was only because James, Molly knew, had tremendous follow-through ability. He could have simply meant to write 13 books, as he had intended to at the beginning, and then turn in a- a nursery story book, for all Molly knew.
She bites her lip as she waits in the cafe.
Molly checks her phone again - no message and no reply. Not unusual; James rarely texted, rarely corresponded at all unless he was the one reaching out, and even then only when he had a specific question or request. It wasn’t that they weren’t friendly, it was just - he was busy. Or at least, he had peculiar habits when he worked.
She spots him at the entrance of the restaurant, stuck in the doorway as a crowd of uni students push past him into the establishment and then floundering as another couple exits past him.
Her eyes go wide.
Molly always forgets what a disconnect there is between who James Moriarty is, and who he appears to be. At first glance he is soft and timid and doe-eyed and looks like he wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less speak out of turn. Molly knows James is sharp as anything with a mind that can plan anything six ways to Sunday and quickly loses interest in anything that doesn’t require his military-grade laser focus.
She winces, then, remembering a clip still floating somewhere on the internet where, during a book signing at a convention, a particularly catty reader asked a question that sent him into a rage, James standing and nearly flipping the table (he might’ve thrown a pen), bellowing something ridiculous and then possibly calling the man a doofus.
It was so unexpected that viewers came down on either side equally, and eventually the incident was left alone completely and more or less forgotten. Molly shudders. She’d learned to try to parade him out at public events too often or for too long, after that.
It takes James another two tries before he finally makes it past the doors and into the restaurant. He looks a bit harried by the time he gets to her table, and then blurts out, “I can’t stay.”
Molly raises an eyebrow. He looks down and sees she’s already ordered him tea, in a steaming pot, with the sugar cubes and milk and everything. He ignores it, refusing to let himself be played.
Then he rummages through his messenger bag and pulls out a big, crinkled envelope. From the width, Molly can tell there’s got to be at least 300 pages in there.
“Did you-?” He’d already written it? Her heart soars.
James nods, frantically, and then sets it down on his plate instead of her open hands, readying himself for a quick getaway.
“I have to go,” he says in a rush, before he turns on his heel to do just that.
“Wait! James, it’s not just the book, we have other things to talk about!” Molly calls after him, standing.
It’s too late. He crashes into another two or three people, but he crowds his way out the door much quicker than the way he got in.
Molly exhales, loudly, as she deflates back into her seat. She might as well have the lunch she’d already ordered, and get started on this lovely book.
Editing Web has been the highlight of her career, truly, and she will honestly be sad to see that end. She fires off a text, and email, and then leaves a voicemail for good measure, demanding they set another meeting to discuss everything they didn’t today.
Then she pulls the heavy stack of papers over, and slides it out of the envelope. Titleless. She feels a tingle of anticipation, and gets ready to read.
Margaret Heartly was, by every measure, a good woman.
What?
Molly skims the rest of the page - line upon line of description about this Margaret character, in this light, tongue-in-cheek tone. There are ribbons, and lace , and Margaret is, is some sort of society girl-
Molly flips, and flips again. Page after page of this idyllic setting, this society life - where was her good detective? Where was the notorious criminal Spider they’d come to love and hate in equal measure, who would finally face justice in this last book?
Molly thumbs through the 300-some pages in a panic, but gets distracted momentarily as the waiter sets down her dish. And in that moment she catches a line-
Margaret watched as, with that single announcement, she lost everything. Her betrothed, her family name, her place in society.
Just the day before, she had thought herself the happiest person in the world. Funny, that.
Molly frowns, and finds herself flipping back to the beginning, settling in to read.
“Oh,” she says, stopping the waiter. “I think I’ll have that glass of wine after all.”
.
It’s not until the maître d' clears her throat and politely informs Molly the restaurant is closing for dinner prep that she finally breaks her reverie, the two of them glancing at her now cold, but still fairly untouched meal.
It’s an awkward departure, but Molly’s a regular and she tips well. She gets a cab and heads straight home, bypassing the office now that it’s late, and doesn’t put the manuscript down once, not even as she shoves some food into the microwave and draws a bath.
She’s bathed and toasty warm and Margaret has pined for her beloved Michael for 296 pages when Molly is finally settling into bed, eager to see the moment when Michael, after all this time, acknowledges her feelings.
And so entranced is Molly that she doesn’t realize how close she is to the end of the manuscript until she’s grasping that last page and-
No, that can’t be right.
He’s stopped in the middle of a sentence.
All that James has written, is that Margaret is standing under that spot, their spot , waiting to see if she can catch a glimpse of Michael and -
“What the hell happens next?!” Molly exclaims, startling so fully that her cat leaps up and off the bed.
She has just suffered through an agonizingly long not-quite-courtship where Margaret Heartly, a sweet-yet-clever society girl, is about to have it all: a reunion with her beloved, the inheritance her cousin squandered, and her family’s name rightfully restored.
The heroine had just gotten engaged, at the beginning of the book, when news came that the evil cousin had squandered the family’s savings in illegal dealings and gambling alike, and everything they had was seized. The poor girl was practically thrown out on the streets, and thus began a long and fraughtful fight to get word to her beloved while the two of them were estranged and torn apart by the circumstances. The betrothal was null, of course, seeing as her family was now a black mark in society.
And Margaret had had to claw her way back brick by brick, building herself a network from those very men who had repossessed her family’s everything, until her very own name became notorious. And then, at the height of it all, finding herself having become the opposite of everything she was ever meant to be, she sees him again - Michael.
Michael, beautiful, perfect Michael, who seemed a quiet bore at first but quickly revealed himself to be complicated and duty-bound and, ruthless, even when pushed. Not the tortured Romantic hero, per se, but someone who held far more interesting secrets.
Oh, if only they could have spoken that moment!
But no, Molly had suffered yet a hundred more pages of them noticing each other but never getting the chance to reveal anything and, hell, Margaret’s plight has been harrowing and she deserved closure. Molly deserves closure.
What a terrible thing it was, to lose love simply because of status. To feel you can’t even speak to the person you love most because you aren’t right - because you don’t have the right name, or the right trust fund.
Molly feels around blindly on her nightstand for her phone, flipping the pages to make sure she hasn’t missed anything, when she realizes it’s not there because she’s been so distracted that she hasn’t even taken her phone out of her coat pocket.
Molly sighs, hopping out of bed and jogging back into the foyer while hoping the battery isn’t dead. It isn’t, thankfully, and she calls James immediately, realizing belatedly that it’s nearly three in the morning.
And perhaps that’s why he picks up.
“Where is the rest of it, James?” Molly asks. There’s no response. “Hello? James, are you there?”
She bites her lip.
“Are you awake?” she asks, a little less demanding. More silence.
“Did you like it?” he asks, hesitantly.
“ Like it?” Molly laughs. “James, I couldn’t put it down from the moment you gave it to me at lunch.”
“Hmm,” is James’s only response, and non-committal at that. Then he huffs, and hangs up on her.
Molly stares at her phone in shock.
That utter bastard.
.
Molly goes in to the office the next day, and makes all the necessary preparations for the publication of this particular novel, once she can wrangle the rest of it out of her genius writer.
She’s making a list of questions when, across the open chasm between her office and Greg’s, she sees Mycroft Holmes.
Molly immediately turns red.
She ducks her head down, scribbling furiously as she tries to convince herself he did not see her looking. And not least because she might have, completely unintentionally , cast Mycroft Holmes as Michael in her head, as she was reading, completely by accident.
It meant nothing at all. She hardly knew the man. It must have been simply because his long lines, beautiful as they were, left an impression. A single glance could not have told her that he wore his perfectly tailored three-piece suits like armor, that he appeared genteel and perhaps a bit cutting but harbored a casket of secrets and a secretly romantic side.
Oh God, she was projecting . She was making up this Mycroft Holmes character into the fictional one she’d just read. Dammit, James.
Molly finds her fingers moving toward her keyboard anyway, the notes forgotten, she starts to type…
Ah, yes. Google, old friend.
As expected from a former intelligence agent, there isn’t much to find about him. Not even social media, except what appears a newly made Twitter account to promote his book series. Oh dear, they were dedicated to his niece, Rosie. It was so sweet.
Huh.
She squints at a university newspaper scan, trying to make out a young Mycroft Holmes in the picture. He’s probably not there. Oh but this maths club? It sounds like something James was in. Molly snorts.
But still, they went to the same school, and Mycroft Holmes must have been finishing out graduate studies while James was just a year or two in.
She finishes her list of questions, and compiles her notes, and then prepares to do what she has only twice in her decade as James’s editor done, no matter how hard he has been to reach.
She goes to his house.
.
Except, the more she considers it, the more she thinks it might not be so far-fetched.
She has a decent theory going by the time she reaches James’s front door, fishing through her purse for the copy of the key she was given for use under only the most dire circumstances. She agreed, knowing that should she abuse the method or appear once too often, James would remember she had it and in one of his paranoid fits change the locks. Or worse, his address. He’d disappeared to Iceland once, for six months, convinced the government had some interest in his whereabouts.
She closes the door behind her gingerly and then quietly dials James’s number. The phone is still ringing when she steps into the living room to find him already pacing and gearing up to be defensive. He’s been expecting her.
She puts away the phone and holds up the manuscript.
“Is this about Mycroft Holmes?” she asks without preamble.
He stops in his tracks and his face goes slack.
It’s another moment before he finds his voice.
“What?”
She sets the manuscript down on his immaculate coffee table. God, his house was pristine. For someone who gave off such frenetic energy and the impression of such a scattered mind, his home and office were the most beautifully organized Molly had ever seen . Interior design magazines couldn’t compare; their artistic directors would cry, tears of joy of course, seeing how James lived. Minimalist heaven. Every sheet of paper its own place. Not a single pen in the wrong style to break the aesthetic.
He sinks down into his leather sofa, staring up at her as if she’d given him a death sentence.
“How-” he mouths the word more than he voices it. “What?”
He’d mentioned someone once, who he’d gone to university with, briefly, and had a terrible crush on. Nothing came of it, and it sounded like the other party had gone somewhere far away. Special operations, Molly now suspects.
And then the same week this supposed spy returns to civilian life and is on the radio with that (utterly sinful, let’s be honest) voice of his, doing an interview about this little story book series that was going to be published, because for whatever reason they’d written about it in the local news when some schools in the area started printing their own - it was very popular with toddlers, if that really a thing -
Well, the timeline worked out. In that week, James must have caught wind of his return, had all the feelings of The One That Got Away dredged up again, and worked through the hours nonstop, writing his sad, unfinished love letter rather than working on the 13th Web installment.
(Though why he’d chosen to make the heroine a spirited-yet-underestimated young woman with a spine of steel, rather than a tortured young man who was a writer, was beyond her.)
She tells him as much, and he winces.
“Was it that obvious?” he asks, voice strained.
Molly thinks it over.
“Well. No. To be fair I do know a lot about you,” Molly says, hesitant. “So if you’re worried about him reading this book and figuring it out, well, that’s really a stretch, isn’t it?”
“More importantly,” she continues, on a roll now, “it’s not likely the kind of book he reads, is it? Or is it? I don’t know. But! If he did pick it up, and have suspicions, it wouldn’t be bad at all, would it? He might call. Oh! He might call! And wouldn’t that be wonderful, James? To meet up with him again, after all these years!”
Molly clasps her hands together, the beginnings of a plan weaving together in her mind, as she looks at James expectantly.
James, for his part, looks downright horrified , sinking so far back into the sofa it looks like it’s swallowed him.
“No!” he says. “No, I don’t want- that’s terrible- I-”
“James,” Molly says very sternly, holding his gaze. He flounders, mouth opening and closing fruitlessly.
“I am going to help you,” Molly says slowly.
He stares at her for a very long moment, then stands abruptly, walking briskly out of the room.
Molly blinks, wondering how he still manages to put her off beat when she knows so to expect such mercurial behavior from him. It’s not until she hears the clicking of the stove that she realizes she was probably gearing up to be afraid he’d run out, and is relieved he hasn’t.
She gives him a few moments to himself to sort out his thoughts and get a grip on what must have been an avalanche of emotions. Then she follows him into the kitchen.
“To be clear,” he says in clear tones, pouring the hot water through the tea strainer, “you mean to help me finish the story, correct?”
“Yes, James,” Molly says earnestly. “ Your story.”
He glares at her venomously, but passes her a cup and a cut lemon (though he takes milk himself) anyway.
“You mean the book. With Margaret ,” he amends, an edge of steel in his soft voice.
“Yes, that; Margaret and Michael deserve a beautiful ending. But also you! You and Mycroft Holmes,” Molly says, ignoring the way James chokes on his tea at Mycroft ’s name. “He’s Greg’s newest author, did you know? I saw him today, and yesterday, at the office! Just before we had lunch. There really is something elegant, yet dangerous, about him, isn’t there?”
James’s hands are on the granite counter, his gaze fixed on his cup of tea.
“He doesn’t even remember me,” he bites out. Ah, progress! Not a ‘no’ outright, but feeling out the situation with random, various excuses. Molly mentally scores it a victory.
There’s so much they have to discuss - Margaret’s happy ending, the end of the Spider’s Web series, the potential spin-off and all that entails. But given the fragile state James seems to be in, one which Molly has never seen him in, she has to make a decision.
“How about, let’s start with a meeting?”
.
Molly marches right up to her colleague and new author as Greg shows him out of his office the next day. It’s just before noon. Perfect.
She flips her hair over her shoulder as she reaches out to shake her hand, gratified when she sees his eyes widen just minutely at the move.
“Molly Hooper, nice to meet you, Mr. Holmes,” Molly says.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Hooper,” he says without missing a beat.
Greg grins, albeit just a tad confused.
“Hey, Molly,” he says in good humor. “Not trying to poach my writers now, are you?”
Molly gives Mycroft her most charming smile.
“Oh? And what is it that you do, Ms. Hooper?” Mycroft asks. Molly takes in the sight and does a sort of happy sigh internally - he really was just like Michael, and oh how she wanted to reunite him with Marg- er, James.
“Crime fiction,” Greg says conspiratorially. “She’s the editor of Spider’s Web , don’t know if you’ve read it, but even you must have heard of it.”
“Ah, yes, in 12 different languages, no less,” Mycroft says, playing up his alleged international reputation no doubt for their amusement. Molly is impressed; he is correct.
Molly laughs. “Yes, if you ever want to turn your spy days into inspiration for a thriller, I’m your gal. But no, I’m here as a fan.”
“I told you you were going to be a hit,” Greg says, at Mycroft’s surprise. “Oh excuse me, I have to take this…”
To Molly’s delight, Greg nods his goodbyes to the both of them, reminding Mycroft of their next appointment, and bows out.
“Do you have children, Ms. Hooper?” Mycroft asks.
“Oh, no, but a goddaughter - she’s two, and the most adorable little girl, really, I’m smitten, though I have no idea how to handle children!” she lies, walking with him to the elevator. “Actually it’s that that I wondered if I could seek your advice - your niece, which you wrote the Rosamund series for, what is she like? Oh sorry, it’s a huge imposition, isn’t it? Could I buy you lunch, Mr. Holmes?”
His hand nearly slips getting the elevator button, and Molly thinks she’s a bit smooth, if she does say so herself. Mycroft turns to her, startled into a little laugh, and agrees to lunch.
.
James stares out from behind the giant potted plant, eyes wide, unable to move. Oh, God, it’s like watching a car wreck. He can’t pull himself away.
There she is, Molly Hooper - no, Margaret Heartly - charming the pants off Mycroft Holmes. James winces at the insinuation.
They’re sitting at a cozy little table near the front of the restaurant, with a good view of the window, and an empty table beside them from which he knows Molly plans to repurpose one of those empty chairs.
She’d called, asking him to meet her here a quarter past noon,
He’d gotten suspicious, and came an hour early to hide out where she wouldn’t see him. And he had been right to do so: the terrible woman had walked in, at noon, with Mycroft Holmes.
So this was what she meant to do, lure him in thinking it was a nice lunch with his editor, but instead spring his university crush on him in a spot where he couldn’t get away. He sees what she had set up now - from outside the restaurant, through the window, passersby could only see Molly.
But once you’re in through the doors, you were in full view of both parties at that table and unable to hide. Damn her and her intimate knowledge of every eatery within five blocks of her office!
And then, undoubtedly, once she saw him, she’d feign surprise. Oh yes, what a delightful coincidence, blah, blah. She’d invite him to sit, and James would do so, mortified to be caught unawares in the presence of the love of his li- no.
But oh, once he had sat down she would fake some silly excuse, a scheduled phone call perhaps, and duck out, leaving the two of them to “get reacquainted.” As if this were couple’s counseling!
James grits his teeth, half angry at the fact that his narrative-oriented mind is already mentalling penning a novel about a couple who decide to repair their marriage at via a guided resort package, only to end up falling in love with completely different people during the trip.
Well. There’s no way he can go there now. And he doesn’t want to, not in the least! He is not prepared to face Mycroft Holmes now, and he doesn’t think he will ever be. Let lost loves lie.
He most certainly does not want Mycroft Holmes to know that twelve years after he kissed him, James still can’t stop thinking about it. How mortifying.
And how misleading! He certainly has no plans to pursue a relationship with this man, this firstborn Holmes, who is for certain meant to marry a cultured woman of good standing and have little Holmes babies and perhaps a career in politics where he appears in the tabloids once every 16 months.
No, James had buried any thought of being anything to Mycroft Holmes a very long time ago. And now he intends to sneak out through the kitchens.
And, well, watching Mycroft and Molly laughing over swordfish or whatever it was they were discussing (he’s valiantly refrained from reading lips, for fear of picking up his own name) - it’s better than he ever hoped for.
They look like they’re genuinely enjoying each other’s company.
If he doesn’t show up, it’s a date!
It’s - as wonderful as he could have possibly planned it, really. James finds himself smiling just the tiniest bit, before he bites down on his lip so as to not get carried away. He’s never been the type who thought of his writing as something to influence the real world with, but this, this was magic spilling off the pages.
He buries his face in his hands. The Holmes-Hooper children would be adorable! Whip smart and noses cute as anything no matter whose they inherited. James needs to go home now, and scream at a wall. He hopes they invite him to their wedding. Yes, yes, he would be ready to see Mycroft Holmes again, if it was at his and Molly Hooper’s wedding. Molly could roll with the punches. She could handle being a politician’s wife, if that’s what he turned out to be.
James nearly knocks the sous chef over, sprinting for the doors.