He's silent for a moment, and when he speaks again his voice is slow as he pulls up the memory.
"You had your hair back in a low bun, but not braided. Light blue buttondown blouse. You were weighing a liver."
When they'd first met he'd been a far colder and harsher person than he is now, his defenses raised against everyone and everything. And his first memories of her are factual, neutral, as if she were merely any other staff member at Bart's. But she's there. From the start, he's noticed and remembered her, even if it took him years and dozens of mistakes to start noticing her in anything close to the way he does now.
Not for the first time, his memory surprises her. She remembers meeting him that first day but the details are fuzzy, eroded with the years and all the things that have happened with them since.
"You didn't delete me," she jokes with a fond smile. She knows that he didn't think much of her then. Didn't have need for her beyond what she could do for him by way of body parts and lab time. But instead of feeling bad about it, it actually makes her feel incredibly proud. Look how far they've both come. What's happening between them right now feels like some sort of miracle in relation to how they started out. Who would have though?
He shifts towards her on the mattress, as if drawn closer by her smile. Which he is, in a way--in general, as well as at this specific moment.
And though going through all his memories of her would take far too much time and distract him from the far more important (and enjoyable) moment he's living right now, there is something that bubbles to the forefront of his mind and up onto his tongue.
"When I got shot. I sort of... had this hallucination. And I saw you at the start of it, before anyone else I know. You told me which way to fall so I wouldn't bleed out."
Him moving closer makes her smile widen and soon her legs are tangled with his, the arm around his waist tightening.
But what he says takes her by surprise. It wasn't what she was expecting him to say so it takes her a moment to respond. She remembers that day, when she found out he'd been shot and had come so close to dying. By the time the news made its way to her, he had been stabilized, but it still knocked the wind out of her.
"I guess you listened to me," she says in return with a smaller smile. She knows it was his own subconscious that provided him with that important information, but the fact that his subconscious manifested as her is not lost on her.
It's so much easier to say than I love you was, even if they've meant more or less the same thing for at least a year before now. But it still means letting his guard down, and he can't help but be at least a little self-conscious of that, even in an afterglow this heady. So he punctuates that statement by leaning down to kiss her lips, warm and slow.
Molly doesn't have time to respond to that before his lips are against hers. She kisses him back, her eyes slipping shut into the lazy kiss. His words from the lab that day play in her head. They used to play over and over in the years he'd been gone. It had become her mantra: "You count. You count. You count." It was what had gotten her through his funeral and the aftermath. It was a reminder that if she was capable and strong enough to help Sherlock take down Moriarty, then there wasn't anything she couldn't do. (At the time she thought that included getting over Sherlock and making a life for herself, which didn't really work out as planned but she can't really feel bad about that now.)
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"You had your hair back in a low bun, but not braided. Light blue buttondown blouse. You were weighing a liver."
When they'd first met he'd been a far colder and harsher person than he is now, his defenses raised against everyone and everything. And his first memories of her are factual, neutral, as if she were merely any other staff member at Bart's. But she's there. From the start, he's noticed and remembered her, even if it took him years and dozens of mistakes to start noticing her in anything close to the way he does now.
no subject
"You didn't delete me," she jokes with a fond smile. She knows that he didn't think much of her then. Didn't have need for her beyond what she could do for him by way of body parts and lab time. But instead of feeling bad about it, it actually makes her feel incredibly proud. Look how far they've both come. What's happening between them right now feels like some sort of miracle in relation to how they started out. Who would have though?
no subject
And though going through all his memories of her would take far too much time and distract him from the far more important (and enjoyable) moment he's living right now, there is something that bubbles to the forefront of his mind and up onto his tongue.
"When I got shot. I sort of... had this hallucination. And I saw you at the start of it, before anyone else I know. You told me which way to fall so I wouldn't bleed out."
no subject
But what he says takes her by surprise. It wasn't what she was expecting him to say so it takes her a moment to respond. She remembers that day, when she found out he'd been shot and had come so close to dying. By the time the news made its way to her, he had been stabilized, but it still knocked the wind out of her.
"I guess you listened to me," she says in return with a smaller smile. She knows it was his own subconscious that provided him with that important information, but the fact that his subconscious manifested as her is not lost on her.
no subject
It's so much easier to say than I love you was, even if they've meant more or less the same thing for at least a year before now. But it still means letting his guard down, and he can't help but be at least a little self-conscious of that, even in an afterglow this heady. So he punctuates that statement by leaning down to kiss her lips, warm and slow.
no subject