All Part of the Cover (A Sherlolly Fanfic)

Development

by tardisaddiction

As the days that went by slowly progressed into weeks, and eventually months, Sherlock was growing more and more nervous.

As much as he wanted to be home with his wife picking names for their daughter and other things that were apparently essential, he couldn't. He was home even less now.

He was secretly investigating, obviously. But what he had been investigating recently was making him grow nervous.

A string of murders, approaching their town, had been occurring. It started exactly two days after Molly announced her pregnancy, and the murders were only of mothers.

Mothers specifically, and they were all killed with a knife to the stomach.

He had been working endlessly to try and solve it, but he couldn't get any leads. There were no clues. The murderer was clean.

Sherlock couldn't let it go, though. Not with the murders getting progressively closer to him and his wife.

His frustration in his inability to get any leads was showing the small amount of time when he was home. He had brushed Molly off several times, rather cruelly, when she asked him to help choose a name, or a type of mobile for the nursery.

He wanted to help, but he wanted her safe, too. And he couldn't tell her about the investigating. Not without going right back to his old life.

~eight months in~

"Sherlock?" Molly asked quietly and cautiously as she stood a couple feet away from her husband, one hand on her enlarged stomach and the other fiddling with a string on her pocket.

He looked up from the space in front of his feet, looking at her blankly and not saying a word with his fingers steeped under his chin.

She took that as a yes and continued, shifting a bit on her feet.

"Are you alright?" She asked quietly, looking down at him a bit worriedly.

"I'm fine," he answered as a default, speaking flatly and his mind clearly elsewhere as he looked back down.

"You've barely been home and when you are home you don't speak at all, and you just seem... Distant," she questioned him softly.

He suddenly brought his mind up to the present.

"I am fine, Molly," he insisted, not looking up.

"Oh!" She suddenly exclaimed, moving her hand slightly on her stomach. She walked up and stood toe-to-toe with him.

Sherlock looked up from their touching feet to her questioningly.

"She kicked," she told him happily, beaming with pride.

He stood and put his hand on her stomach and felt the kicking, and his face softened.

Sherlock pulled her to him as best he could and kissed her briefly but deeply.

Molly reached up to hold his face but he pulled away before she could.

He pressed his forehead against hers and looked her in the eye.

"I am fine, Molly. Work is just worrying me is all. Please do not ask again," he said seriously.

She nodded and closed her eyes, feeling the last of the kicking.

Sherlock felt at peace there for the first time in a long while, his hand over hers on her stomach.