Why ship Sherlolly?

 (Sherlock meta by drinkingcocoa)

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Most importantly to me: Molly is strange. This is the priceless thing about her. She is smart, too; from her winces and eye-rolls during the best man’s speech in TSOT, we see that she’s far closer to Sherlock’s league than Lestrade’s and Tom’s. But it’s her strangeness that makes her such a blessing to Sherlock’s life. He’s patronizing to her, but he’s patronizing to everybody. She perceives things so differently from most people that even though he hurts her feelings, that’s not the only thing that’s important to her.

Their relationship turned in the lab scenes of The Reichenbach Fall when it transpired that she was the only one who could see him for his true self, at a time when even John was fooled. Sherlock pushed her away and tried to dismiss her or shut her out, but she persevered and got through to him. He turned and looked at her with completely new perceptions after that, trusted her with his life, and understood retroactively that he’d always trusted her. Besides, pushing people away is part of how Sherlock involuntarily tests people, so her ability to withstand that defense mechanism of his, dislike it but not give it more power than it deserves, and still be steadfast for him makes her just the kind of thing he needs in his life.

When Sherlock asks if Molly would still want to help him if he wasn’t everything she thought him to be, and everything he thought himself to be – and she said, “What do you need?” – that boils down, essentially, to “Do you love me or my genius?” and “I love you and believe in you whether or not you’re a genius.”

Meanwhile, ships can only benefit from character growth, so when Molly shows rising confidence in her interactions with him, like her deliberate teasing when she puts him on the spot by saying she and Tom have been having “quite a lot of sex,” that’s a good example of the kind of dynamic that makes for delicious fic.

Anyone who is the person who appears to Sherlock when he’s about to die and talks him through everything has got to have some great significance in his life.