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r_scribblesSo over the last few weeks, I've really got in to Cabin Pressure. Loads of people had recommended it to me and - you know - old Cumberface and his Magic Voice is in it so I gave it a whirl & I LOVE IT. It is, to me, the Martin Crieff Show. Not just because that's Ye Benny Character, but because he's so very earnest and such a massive loser and I do so love an Underdog. It's also brilliant hearing Benny playing a character so manic & put upon & unglamorous after getting so used to him as Mister Suave.
So anyway, what with Martin being an Adorable Loser, my Fictional Yente mode has kicked in and I have decided that he and Molly Hooper off of Sherlock would make the cutest, most awkward, stumbling, mumbling couple ever. Alas, they are in different universes. But hooray for me, I've embarked on a crossover for them! Strike up the band! there's quite a few very good Sherlock/Cabin Pressure crossovers that I've seen already, but no Martin/Molly as yet. So, let's go!
Luton
-x-
One
-x-
What a horrible three months.
What an altogether absolute arse, if you’d pardon her French, of a horrible three months.
To be brusquely informed that your new boyfriend had just slipped the man you’d had the most soul-destroying crush on for the last year his number was one thing. To try to discreetly break up with said boyfriend only to discover that you weren’t able to find him and he wasn’t even answering your calls was another.
To discover that said ‘boyfriend’ was actually a criminal mastermind who had only dated you to get closer to the aforementioned crushee before blowing up a nice old lady and then putting said crushee’s flatmate into an explosive parka jacket and pointing a sniper rifle into the faces of both crushee and flatmate was beginning to rather take the biscuit.
And what does one do when life is trying to remove the biscuit from your grasp? You try to get away from it all, all the hurt and humiliation and guilt – try to relieve some of the stress, book a nice holiday in Malaga where you hope to catch some sun and swim with dolphins… only then, because life is still apparently still hell-bent on this biscuit stealing thing, you come down with the flu the day you get there, fail miserably to enjoy a tiny second of it and don’t even get to swim with the dolphins. And then – and then, life doesn’t only take the biscuit, but the cup of tea and 60p you had saved for a packet of crisps from the vending machine for later, by making the airline you were supposed to go back home on go bust the very day you were going to use them.
48 hours of wrangling with insurance companies, the British Embassy & Malaga airport’s horrid, lumpy seats later, and a charter flight had finally been arranged to take Dr Molly Hooper, Mortuary Technician and all-round frustrated person home… actually, not even home, just to Luton. She still had to make her way back to London after that.
So what she really, really, REALLY didn’t want to hear as she rose above the clouds in the rickety charter plane was Sherlock BLOODY Holmes, the crushee of certain doom, the one who had kicked off this whole litany of woe in the first place, inconceivably making the cabin announcement.
‘Good morn…fternoon, this is your Captain speaking’, came the announcement – smooth and smug and unmistakably Him. ‘I’d like to welcome our passengers who were so cruelly deserted by Sunshine Airways – sadly now bankrupt because they paid no income tax, no VAT. And sadly, you’ll likely get no money back, there’s no guarantee.’
Three months. Thirteen weeks of a catalogue of disaster after disaster. And now here he was, mocking her. Without so much as a reason. Christ – was he going to try to fly the plane? Just so he could make fun of her? As far as she was aware, he couldn’t so much as drive. Molly saw red.
‘However,’ continued Sherlock’s voice, ever so pleased with itself, ‘black or white, rich or poor, we’ll fly you back to your door… well, to Luton airport, anyway, but I’m told the trains running from there are very good.’
She unbuckled, got to her feet and strode up the aisle. The sole flight attendant seemed not to notice her doing so, even though she pushed right past him. Still not quite sure what she was doing, but too full of pent-up rage now to stop, she opened the door to the cockpit and stormed through.
Sherlock (and despite a stupid wig and make up making him look redder of face and hair, it was Sherlock – absolutely had to be) stood up and positioned himself between her and the flight instruments, as if in an automatic, defensive gesture. Oh, Sherlock was good at subterfuge. Very good.
‘You,’ she seethed.
‘Erm…’ Sherlock blurted, ‘you’re not supposed to be in here…’
She wasn’t supposed to be there?!? She was just trying to get back from bloody Spain! What the Hell was he doing swanning around dressed as a pilot? His put-on expression of flustered innocence was the absolute last straw for her. The weeks on weeks on weeks of worry and distress and deception and disappointment that she’d bitten down all came up to the surface in one massive bubble of fury.
She knew slapping him hard in the face was a bad idea. It seemed like an even worse idea once she’d done it, leaving him gasping wordlessly like a freshly reeled-in fish. She still couldn’t stop, though.
‘You heartless bastard!’
From his seat, the Co Pilot… the real Pilot, that was, chuckled knowingly. ‘Martin, you dark horse. Never thought you had it in you.’
‘I knew you were a cruel man,’ she continued to fume, ‘but I never knew you were capable of going to quite such an extreme just to have a good laugh at my expense.’
Sherlock, or “Martin”, as he’d evidently told this poor cabin crew his name was, had apparently found the ability to speak again, although it seemed that the only word he was at that point able to form was ‘what’.
‘What?’ he spluttered. ‘Wh… what?’
‘Don’t you dare play innocent with me. You know what you’re doing!’
‘Told you the uniform would start pulling them in sooner or later,’ added the real Pilot. ‘You just have to learn to manage them a little better, now…’
‘Douglas, I’ve never seen this woman before in my life,’ protested Sherlock. ‘Press the panic button, for God’s sake!’
Molly narrowed her eyes. ‘Oh, don’t you dare. You know what I’ve been through. You didn’t have to make fun of me, no matter how bored you decided you were.’
‘Ah,’ sighed the older man – clearly named Douglas – in understanding. ‘I see.’
‘Well, I don’t!’
‘What could she be upset about, Martin?’ Douglas drawled. ‘It really is a mystery. It’s like the changing of the seasons and the tides of the sea.’
‘Oh? Oh! Oh, God. The announcement.’ Sherlock cringed, an expression that suited him so little that it made Molly cringe slightly in turn. ‘It’s just a little word game that we play, sometimes. I didn’t mean to offend you, I know you’ve been through a lot trying to get home…’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, just stop it!’
‘Stop what?’
‘The bewildered fawn-in-the-headlights act! Why are you carrying on with this stupid game?’ Molly could feel tears of anger and frustration, now. ‘You want another apology? Fine! I’m sorry! You know I’m sorry that I got it all wrong about Jim, that stupid, stupid Molly was such an easy pawn, and couldn’t tell what he was or what he was really after, and that really yes, I should have known, because stupid, plain, boring Molly actually getting a boyfriend that easily – well, there must have been something wrong with him, right? Some hidden agenda - well, I’m so sorry that I didn’t twig that that agenda included pushing a gun in your face and blowing people up…’
‘Woah. OK. Stop.’ Sherlock had his hands up in a gesture that wasn’t surrender, and wasn’t quite defensive blocking. ‘Nobody’s going to get blown up. For pity’s sake, Douglas, help me out, here!’
‘I would cheerfully help you out in your heroic task of subduing the small, clearly hysterical and unarmed woman, Martin, but since you’re otherwise engaged, one of us has to keep the big metal thing full of people in the sky from turning into a big scrap metal thing full of mince meat on the ground.’
Sherlock turned to the real Pilot and hissed at him, still loudly enough for her to hear. ‘You talk to her; you’re better at this than me. I’ll just take the…’
‘No!’ Molly shrieked, launching herself at Sherlock. ‘No, you maniac, you’ll kill us all!’
‘Security!’ Sherlock’s voice managed to hit a pitch close to Molly’s as she tugged him away from the pilot’s seat. ‘The Panic button, Douglas, now!’
‘I have been pressing the panic button since the intruder marched in to the cockpit and slapped our Captain around the face,’ replied Douglas, calmly. ‘I imagine what has happened is that our Security Officer has forgotten that he is, in fact, the Security Officer and is currently making somebody a nice cup of tea.’
‘Stop it!’ Molly couldn’t stop the tears, now. ‘Call me stupid, call me anything, look down your nose at me the way you always do, just stop doing this. Stop pretending to be a pilot!’
Now it was Sherlock who looked close to tears. ‘I am a pilot! I’m the Captain!’
‘No you are NOT! Take that wig off!’ She made a grab at the ginger wig.
‘Ow!’ Sherlock cried. ‘Security! Somebody! Arthur!’
The door to the cockpit opened again and the flight attendant hurried through, with a bottle of pop.
‘Somebody call security?’
‘Yes,’ Douglas replied. ‘Several times. As you can see, we are currently dealing with the terribly serious situation of a girl pulling Captain Crieff’s hair.’
‘He’s not a Captain,’ Molly protested. ‘He’s not even a pilot!’
‘Aren’t you, Skip?’ The flight attendant looked genuinely surprised. ‘Blimey, you think you know someone.’
‘I am!’ Sherlock wailed. ‘I’ve got the hat.’
‘He’s got a point there,’ the flight attendant told her, with an air of cheerful enthusiasm. ‘So – what’s your counter-claim?’
‘The uniform is a disguise. He loves sneaking around in disguise. He’s even gone with a ridiculous ginger wig, this time.’
‘Interesting accusations, Miss,’ Douglas replied, ‘one minor detail, though… if that’s not his real hair, why are the hairs on his arms exactly the same delightful shade of Fanta Orange as the ones you’re currently trying to rip out of his head?’
Molly froze. Sherlock (at least, she was still pretty sure it was Sherlock) had both hands up to his head to try to prize his wig (at least, she was still pretty sure it was a wig) out of her grasp. His sleeves had ridden away from his wrists, leaving… leaving very obviously red hairs visible at the tops of his arms.
‘You…’ she stuttered. ‘You dyed your arms…’
‘Also,’ Douglas continued, ‘further to your claims the Captain Crieff is not a Captain and cannot fly a plane, I must assure you as somebody who’s been working with the man for three years now that, in spite of his faults, and he does have very many faults, he is, in fact, a Captain and he can, in fact, fly an aeroplane.’
Molly blinked. She released the Not-Sherlock and took a step away from him, mortified.
Still shaken, the Not-Sherlock (what had they called him? Martin?) composed himself as best he could. ‘Thank you, Douglas.’
‘And he really is really, really ginger.’
Martin gritted his teeth. ‘yesthankyoudouglas’
‘So, it’s all settled, then?’ the flight attendant asked. ‘Skip really is the Skipper? He’s safe to fly the plane again?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Molly breathed, so quietly that she was probably the only one who could hear it.
‘Yes,’ hissed Martin, still shaking slightly, ‘I always was.’
The flight attendant pointed at Molly. ‘Do… do I need to arrest her?’
Molly panicked. ‘Oh no. Please? Please, I’m so sorry, it was a mistake…’
‘I don’t think that will really be necessary,’ replied Douglas, ‘do you, Captain?’
Martin made a ‘hmm?nuhnuhnuh’ noise that was generally accepted by everyone as an agreement that Molly should be allowed to go free.
‘Oh, great,’ beamed the flight attendant, relieved. ‘I had nothing to arrest you with. Took me long enough just to find the Tizer.’
‘”Tizer”?’
‘Yeah, for the security breach.’
‘You mean a Taser?’
The flight attendant laughed. ‘Ooh no, we haven’t got a Taser. Heavens, no. But I thought…’ he waved the bottle of pop. ‘This is only one letter off, so it’s almost the same.’
The Captain… Martin… squeezed his eyes in dismay as Molly backed away from the cockpit.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘It’s just that you look like… I’m sorry. So sorry.’
She let herself out and scurried back towards her seat. It seemed that life had not stopped its campaign of biscuit-taking yet.
‘Miss!’ the flight attendant shouted after her. Well, it wasn’t as if all eyes on the plane weren’t on her already.
The flight attendant waved the bottle of pop at her. ‘Did you want the Tizer then, or not?’
Part 2
So anyway, what with Martin being an Adorable Loser, my Fictional Yente mode has kicked in and I have decided that he and Molly Hooper off of Sherlock would make the cutest, most awkward, stumbling, mumbling couple ever. Alas, they are in different universes. But hooray for me, I've embarked on a crossover for them! Strike up the band! there's quite a few very good Sherlock/Cabin Pressure crossovers that I've seen already, but no Martin/Molly as yet. So, let's go!
Luton
-x-
One
-x-
What a horrible three months.
What an altogether absolute arse, if you’d pardon her French, of a horrible three months.
To be brusquely informed that your new boyfriend had just slipped the man you’d had the most soul-destroying crush on for the last year his number was one thing. To try to discreetly break up with said boyfriend only to discover that you weren’t able to find him and he wasn’t even answering your calls was another.
To discover that said ‘boyfriend’ was actually a criminal mastermind who had only dated you to get closer to the aforementioned crushee before blowing up a nice old lady and then putting said crushee’s flatmate into an explosive parka jacket and pointing a sniper rifle into the faces of both crushee and flatmate was beginning to rather take the biscuit.
And what does one do when life is trying to remove the biscuit from your grasp? You try to get away from it all, all the hurt and humiliation and guilt – try to relieve some of the stress, book a nice holiday in Malaga where you hope to catch some sun and swim with dolphins… only then, because life is still apparently still hell-bent on this biscuit stealing thing, you come down with the flu the day you get there, fail miserably to enjoy a tiny second of it and don’t even get to swim with the dolphins. And then – and then, life doesn’t only take the biscuit, but the cup of tea and 60p you had saved for a packet of crisps from the vending machine for later, by making the airline you were supposed to go back home on go bust the very day you were going to use them.
48 hours of wrangling with insurance companies, the British Embassy & Malaga airport’s horrid, lumpy seats later, and a charter flight had finally been arranged to take Dr Molly Hooper, Mortuary Technician and all-round frustrated person home… actually, not even home, just to Luton. She still had to make her way back to London after that.
So what she really, really, REALLY didn’t want to hear as she rose above the clouds in the rickety charter plane was Sherlock BLOODY Holmes, the crushee of certain doom, the one who had kicked off this whole litany of woe in the first place, inconceivably making the cabin announcement.
‘Good morn…fternoon, this is your Captain speaking’, came the announcement – smooth and smug and unmistakably Him. ‘I’d like to welcome our passengers who were so cruelly deserted by Sunshine Airways – sadly now bankrupt because they paid no income tax, no VAT. And sadly, you’ll likely get no money back, there’s no guarantee.’
Three months. Thirteen weeks of a catalogue of disaster after disaster. And now here he was, mocking her. Without so much as a reason. Christ – was he going to try to fly the plane? Just so he could make fun of her? As far as she was aware, he couldn’t so much as drive. Molly saw red.
‘However,’ continued Sherlock’s voice, ever so pleased with itself, ‘black or white, rich or poor, we’ll fly you back to your door… well, to Luton airport, anyway, but I’m told the trains running from there are very good.’
She unbuckled, got to her feet and strode up the aisle. The sole flight attendant seemed not to notice her doing so, even though she pushed right past him. Still not quite sure what she was doing, but too full of pent-up rage now to stop, she opened the door to the cockpit and stormed through.
Sherlock (and despite a stupid wig and make up making him look redder of face and hair, it was Sherlock – absolutely had to be) stood up and positioned himself between her and the flight instruments, as if in an automatic, defensive gesture. Oh, Sherlock was good at subterfuge. Very good.
‘You,’ she seethed.
‘Erm…’ Sherlock blurted, ‘you’re not supposed to be in here…’
She wasn’t supposed to be there?!? She was just trying to get back from bloody Spain! What the Hell was he doing swanning around dressed as a pilot? His put-on expression of flustered innocence was the absolute last straw for her. The weeks on weeks on weeks of worry and distress and deception and disappointment that she’d bitten down all came up to the surface in one massive bubble of fury.
She knew slapping him hard in the face was a bad idea. It seemed like an even worse idea once she’d done it, leaving him gasping wordlessly like a freshly reeled-in fish. She still couldn’t stop, though.
‘You heartless bastard!’
From his seat, the Co Pilot… the real Pilot, that was, chuckled knowingly. ‘Martin, you dark horse. Never thought you had it in you.’
‘I knew you were a cruel man,’ she continued to fume, ‘but I never knew you were capable of going to quite such an extreme just to have a good laugh at my expense.’
Sherlock, or “Martin”, as he’d evidently told this poor cabin crew his name was, had apparently found the ability to speak again, although it seemed that the only word he was at that point able to form was ‘what’.
‘What?’ he spluttered. ‘Wh… what?’
‘Don’t you dare play innocent with me. You know what you’re doing!’
‘Told you the uniform would start pulling them in sooner or later,’ added the real Pilot. ‘You just have to learn to manage them a little better, now…’
‘Douglas, I’ve never seen this woman before in my life,’ protested Sherlock. ‘Press the panic button, for God’s sake!’
Molly narrowed her eyes. ‘Oh, don’t you dare. You know what I’ve been through. You didn’t have to make fun of me, no matter how bored you decided you were.’
‘Ah,’ sighed the older man – clearly named Douglas – in understanding. ‘I see.’
‘Well, I don’t!’
‘What could she be upset about, Martin?’ Douglas drawled. ‘It really is a mystery. It’s like the changing of the seasons and the tides of the sea.’
‘Oh? Oh! Oh, God. The announcement.’ Sherlock cringed, an expression that suited him so little that it made Molly cringe slightly in turn. ‘It’s just a little word game that we play, sometimes. I didn’t mean to offend you, I know you’ve been through a lot trying to get home…’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, just stop it!’
‘Stop what?’
‘The bewildered fawn-in-the-headlights act! Why are you carrying on with this stupid game?’ Molly could feel tears of anger and frustration, now. ‘You want another apology? Fine! I’m sorry! You know I’m sorry that I got it all wrong about Jim, that stupid, stupid Molly was such an easy pawn, and couldn’t tell what he was or what he was really after, and that really yes, I should have known, because stupid, plain, boring Molly actually getting a boyfriend that easily – well, there must have been something wrong with him, right? Some hidden agenda - well, I’m so sorry that I didn’t twig that that agenda included pushing a gun in your face and blowing people up…’
‘Woah. OK. Stop.’ Sherlock had his hands up in a gesture that wasn’t surrender, and wasn’t quite defensive blocking. ‘Nobody’s going to get blown up. For pity’s sake, Douglas, help me out, here!’
‘I would cheerfully help you out in your heroic task of subduing the small, clearly hysterical and unarmed woman, Martin, but since you’re otherwise engaged, one of us has to keep the big metal thing full of people in the sky from turning into a big scrap metal thing full of mince meat on the ground.’
Sherlock turned to the real Pilot and hissed at him, still loudly enough for her to hear. ‘You talk to her; you’re better at this than me. I’ll just take the…’
‘No!’ Molly shrieked, launching herself at Sherlock. ‘No, you maniac, you’ll kill us all!’
‘Security!’ Sherlock’s voice managed to hit a pitch close to Molly’s as she tugged him away from the pilot’s seat. ‘The Panic button, Douglas, now!’
‘I have been pressing the panic button since the intruder marched in to the cockpit and slapped our Captain around the face,’ replied Douglas, calmly. ‘I imagine what has happened is that our Security Officer has forgotten that he is, in fact, the Security Officer and is currently making somebody a nice cup of tea.’
‘Stop it!’ Molly couldn’t stop the tears, now. ‘Call me stupid, call me anything, look down your nose at me the way you always do, just stop doing this. Stop pretending to be a pilot!’
Now it was Sherlock who looked close to tears. ‘I am a pilot! I’m the Captain!’
‘No you are NOT! Take that wig off!’ She made a grab at the ginger wig.
‘Ow!’ Sherlock cried. ‘Security! Somebody! Arthur!’
The door to the cockpit opened again and the flight attendant hurried through, with a bottle of pop.
‘Somebody call security?’
‘Yes,’ Douglas replied. ‘Several times. As you can see, we are currently dealing with the terribly serious situation of a girl pulling Captain Crieff’s hair.’
‘He’s not a Captain,’ Molly protested. ‘He’s not even a pilot!’
‘Aren’t you, Skip?’ The flight attendant looked genuinely surprised. ‘Blimey, you think you know someone.’
‘I am!’ Sherlock wailed. ‘I’ve got the hat.’
‘He’s got a point there,’ the flight attendant told her, with an air of cheerful enthusiasm. ‘So – what’s your counter-claim?’
‘The uniform is a disguise. He loves sneaking around in disguise. He’s even gone with a ridiculous ginger wig, this time.’
‘Interesting accusations, Miss,’ Douglas replied, ‘one minor detail, though… if that’s not his real hair, why are the hairs on his arms exactly the same delightful shade of Fanta Orange as the ones you’re currently trying to rip out of his head?’
Molly froze. Sherlock (at least, she was still pretty sure it was Sherlock) had both hands up to his head to try to prize his wig (at least, she was still pretty sure it was a wig) out of her grasp. His sleeves had ridden away from his wrists, leaving… leaving very obviously red hairs visible at the tops of his arms.
‘You…’ she stuttered. ‘You dyed your arms…’
‘Also,’ Douglas continued, ‘further to your claims the Captain Crieff is not a Captain and cannot fly a plane, I must assure you as somebody who’s been working with the man for three years now that, in spite of his faults, and he does have very many faults, he is, in fact, a Captain and he can, in fact, fly an aeroplane.’
Molly blinked. She released the Not-Sherlock and took a step away from him, mortified.
Still shaken, the Not-Sherlock (what had they called him? Martin?) composed himself as best he could. ‘Thank you, Douglas.’
‘And he really is really, really ginger.’
Martin gritted his teeth. ‘yesthankyoudouglas’
‘So, it’s all settled, then?’ the flight attendant asked. ‘Skip really is the Skipper? He’s safe to fly the plane again?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Molly breathed, so quietly that she was probably the only one who could hear it.
‘Yes,’ hissed Martin, still shaking slightly, ‘I always was.’
The flight attendant pointed at Molly. ‘Do… do I need to arrest her?’
Molly panicked. ‘Oh no. Please? Please, I’m so sorry, it was a mistake…’
‘I don’t think that will really be necessary,’ replied Douglas, ‘do you, Captain?’
Martin made a ‘hmm?nuhnuhnuh’ noise that was generally accepted by everyone as an agreement that Molly should be allowed to go free.
‘Oh, great,’ beamed the flight attendant, relieved. ‘I had nothing to arrest you with. Took me long enough just to find the Tizer.’
‘”Tizer”?’
‘Yeah, for the security breach.’
‘You mean a Taser?’
The flight attendant laughed. ‘Ooh no, we haven’t got a Taser. Heavens, no. But I thought…’ he waved the bottle of pop. ‘This is only one letter off, so it’s almost the same.’
The Captain… Martin… squeezed his eyes in dismay as Molly backed away from the cockpit.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘It’s just that you look like… I’m sorry. So sorry.’
She let herself out and scurried back towards her seat. It seemed that life had not stopped its campaign of biscuit-taking yet.
‘Miss!’ the flight attendant shouted after her. Well, it wasn’t as if all eyes on the plane weren’t on her already.
The flight attendant waved the bottle of pop at her. ‘Did you want the Tizer then, or not?’
Part 2
