Chapter Text
There was a knock on the door. As knocks go, it wasn’t an odd one. Just a quiet rap on the door. It terrified Mycroft. No one ever knocked on his door. No one should even know his address. He slunk to the door and opened it a crack. It was pushed all the way open and Molly fell into him. He backed away and she fell onto the floor.
The terror on his face only grew and Molly smiled a bit. Idiot.
“What are you doing here?” Mycroft said, trying to remain calm. “How did you even find me?”
“You’re in the phone book. You know that, right?”
Mycroft noted that he should fix that lapse in security immediately. Apparently people still used phone books.
“So…” Molly said, feeling a little awkward. Plan: Find John Mycroft And Go To His House had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now this felt really weird. Confrontation wasn’t really her thing. Her self-esteem had rocketed after Sherlock left, but it still wasn’t the highest it could be.
“I assume you are here to rip my throat out?” Mycroft said, reverting back to the most formal speech he could as a way of calming himself.
“Maybe just a little bit.”
They ended up in the sitting room, Molly comfortable on a couch, Mycroft perched nervously on the edge of a chair.
“Would you like tea? I’ll be Mother.” Mycroft said out of habit, instantly cursing himself. Tea was a terrible idea. Last time tea was involved, he had sworn and she had run away.
“Have you been drinking?”
“”What? N-no, of course not!” How could she tell? Vodka was odorless, wasn’t it? Did his breath smell?
“There’s an empty bottle of vodka on your sidetable. You should probably clean that up.”
“Oh. In that case, yes. A little.”
“A bottle.”
“Yes. But it’s a small bottle.”
Molly frowned. “That’s a pretty big small bottle, Mycroft.”
“Are you going to scold me now? I get quite enough of that from my parents.” he said, dimly aware that he was slurring slightly.
“You have parents? I had no idea.”
“Yes. Two. And Sherlock.”
“Sherlock. Yes. What exactly was the point of giving me a fake name? This would have been over long before this if you had just told me ‘I’m Mycroft Holmes!’ and gone skipping back on your way.” Molly said, remembering that she was here to be annoyed.
“Er. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I wasn’t sure if you were still...attached to Sherlock. Or if you knew who I was.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point, pray tell?”
“That you stole someone’s identity. That’s a crime, you know. You could be arrested.”
Mycroft chuckled “Me? Arrested? Ha. That’s a laugh.”
“It’s not funny. You could get in serious trouble and go to jail or something!”
Silence fell. After a pause in which Mycroft determined that the silence had lasted too long to be socially acceptable and was now classified as awkward, he spoke.
“Molly, do you know what I do for a living?”
“Kill people?”
“I occupy a minor government position.”
“Yeah, but in your spare time you kill people.”
“I prefer to have them killed.”
Molly gave a smile at that. He really did have a sense of humor after all.