I want your midnights
but I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day.
-New Year's Day by Taylor Swift
Molly collapsed on the sofa beside Sherlock, kicking off her heels. She immediately curled up beside him still in her sparkling party dress. His arm cradled her, holding her in place. There was glitter on the floor, leftover from the New Year's Eve party they had just held at 221B. All of their friends were there—John, Mary, Rosie, Greg, Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft, Anthea and even Anderson, much to Sherlock's dismay, but Molly convinced him to invite him along. It was a quiet moment of reflection for the two of them. Memories from earlier in the evening resurfaced in their minds.
Everyone was gathered in the sitting room, mingling with one another whilst music played off of Molly's phone connected to the stereo. It took about a month after that heart-wrenching phone call for Sherlock and Molly to feel good enough to start their relationship. They had taken it slow, treading carefully amongst the aftermath of the rough waters they nearly drowned in. Fast-forward to Christmas and Sherlock had asked for her hand in marriage, not wanting to wait another moment to take that step.
"Thank you all for coming," Sherlock had told everyone. "Though Mycroft and Anthea are already aware of this, Molly and I would like to announce it to all of you." He had let her take the reins on the actual announcement.
"We're engaged!" She exclaimed excitedly, showing off her ring—a Holmes family heirloom from his paternal great-grandmother. The white gold band encrusted with diamonds held a round-cut aquamarine in the center. It was gorgeous and the gem almost resembled Sherlock's ever-changing cerulean eyes. Everyone congratulated them, happy that their friends were finding marital bliss together.
The past year had been terribly hard on all of them; Mary nearly dying from the bullet she took for her husband's best friend, Sherlock's relapse after John shut him out for nearly killing his wife along with the whole Culverton Smith debacle, and of course, the events that transpired at Sherrinford. All in all, it was a nightmare of a year for the most part, but everyone had found their happiness again by the end of it.
So, they had celebrated the end of a rough year and the new beginning that was upon them. Sherlock and Molly had some rows and difficulties in the first three months of their relationship. Both made mistakes, both learned from said mistakes. They took it one step at a time, soon finding their footing and getting to a really good place. Their honeymoon period happened after those first few months of difficulties, but one thing they had been known for was staying together no matter how hard things were.
Even throughout the years of friendship, Molly never gave up on him. She stuck with him through the not-so-pretty times and Sherlock had been there for her when she needed him. Molly wasn't the kind of person to seek comfort from friends when she was having a hard time. Very much like Sherlock, she bottled things up often, putting other before herself as she always had done. It was he who encouraged her to open up to him more often, promising that he would always be there if she needed him. It was a promise he kept to this day.
The next morning, when Sherlock and Molly woke up together in bed, Molly couldn't figure out how they had gotten there. She supposed he carried her to their room when she dozed off in his arms on the sofa. There were good morning kisses, gentle caresses and touches; just playing around with each other until the sound of her stomach rumbling interrupted them, eliciting a chuckle from her lover. He had insisted on making her a proper English breakfast.
They exited the bedroom in their dressing gowns—well, Molly claimed his blue one as her own—and inspected the bottles and glitter that still littered the flat. Once he started their breakfast, they cleaned up the mess together, just as they had picked up the pieces of each other's hearts after that fateful night.
Molly had gotten the midnight kiss and the loving affection from the man she had loved for nearly a decade, but she didn't just want the good moments with him. She wanted the hard times too; to spend time apologizing and making up as well as arguing and making love. Molly wanted everything he had to offer—the good, the bad, and everything in between.
And Sherlock wanted the same. Sometimes, they infuriated one another, but nothing could ever tear them apart. Their love was so strong, nobody or anything could break them. Their faith in one another was unwavering. Even their friends and his family had said they'd never seen a love as true as theirs.
Another year passed, and another party was over. Molly Holmes took in the state of the flat and only shook her head, deciding to leave cleaning up until the morning. Sherlock had just come back upstairs from bidding their friends goodbye as they left and found his wife looking at the photos that now decorated the fireplace mantel. His skull was still there on the end, but most of his unsolved cases were now stabbed through the wood of the desk instead.
The photos consisted of ones from John and Mary's wedding, Christmas at his parents' with her, their wedding day and one of their newborn baby girl, Charlotte Mary-Margaret Holmes. The babe slept in the lounger that sat in the sitting room. Molly didn't hear her husband approach, but felt him put his arms around her waist from behind, his lips caressing the spot below her ear that made her toes curl.
"Are you alright, darling?" he asked in a low voice.
"Perfectly fine," she replied. "Just looking back on how far we've come together." And they had come a long way from where they began. They would always have such wonderful (and some not-so-wonderful) memories to look back on. The trials they endured together and would still endure together were all worth it. With Molly's eidetic memory and his mind palace, no moment would be left behind and forgotten.
They were quietly cleaning up, careful not to wake their daughter, laughing every so often at some of the Polaroid photos they came across from the party. Molly would soon get a photo album to display them in. Funny how the snap of a camera could capture a moment forever. Even if one temporarily forgot one of them, one glance at a photo could remind them of times gone by.
There was something magical about photographs. Mary and Greg had both snapped photos of her and Sherlock when they weren't aware from before Sherrinford happened. When they had gifted them those candid photos for their wedding day, they understood the phrase 'a picture says a thousand words.' In every photo, the way they looked at each other was telling of what they would one day become. It was then that Molly had realized that even before Sherlock knew himself, he had loved her all these years.
After they made love later that night, lying in the afterglow, Molly laced her left hand with his and admired the way their rings sparkled in the sliver of moonlight that shown through the curtains. They would celebrate every New Year's with a resolution they made together. Last year's where they had announced their engagement, their resolution was to marry and start their family. This year, they planned to make more lovely memories with their loved ones and to make another baby sometime soon. She had once feared that their relationship would never work, that Sherlock would just become a stranger whose laugh she would recognize anywhere, but he pushed all her fears away, proving that it was the two of them always and forevermore.
Author's Note: You will understand a lot of these glimpses if you look up the full lyrics to the song. Since I can only post a couple of lines on this site, the full picture is not painted for y'all. But the original version of this is on ao3. I don't know if Molly has an eidetic memory, obviously, but I do lol!