Reality

Molly breaks Moriarty down into his essential parts and briefly lets go of a fantasy. A companion piece to Symmetry.

The show was over, the wine gone. Jim and Molly sat on her sofa making awkward small talk.

"I can't believe I never saw that show before," Jim laughed. "It was funny."

Molly smiled back, "Oh, yes. I like the musical parts, myself."

A pause as they both looked down and then up, catching the other's eye. More nervous laughter. What were they, Molly thought, fourteen-years-old? Were they not adult professionals at the end of a very pleasant second date? Would he stop with that silly giggle and do something? Jim looked at her closely. His eyes glittering with some emotion or thought she couldn't quite label, he politely asked, "May I kiss you?"

Biting her lip, Molly nodded tilting her head up. Jim pressed his warm lips to her small, sweet mouth, lightly resting his hands on her waist. It was a nice kiss. A gentle kiss, and with nothing of the intensity of the kiss he had given her in her office, the day she confessed to him how powerful doing a postmortem made her feel. Perhaps she had imagined the feeling that day? The power in him, the dangerous slide of his tongue? As his mouth moved tentatively over her own, she wondered briefly, very briefly what it would feel like if his lips were a little fuller, a little pinker with more of a pronounced cupid's bow. She caught her breath at the thought and her mouth opened as she began to kiss Jim back eagerly. She could sense it as Jim opened his eyes and looked down at her, feeling the change in her response. Her eyes were closed, not looking at him as she did mental battle with herself. She tried to slam the door on the thoughts of those other lips, but too late…It had been too long since she had been touched, since she had allowed herself to think about such things, and her closely kept fantasies took control.

Jim kissed her deeply, one hand moving to entwine itself in her hair, the other slipping under the hem of her blouse to stroke the soft skin of her lower back, just above the waistband of her trousers. She moved her hands over his warm, well muscled back and shoulders, slim but sturdy, wondering if the pale skin of another man's back were so warm, so muscled. She could feel Jim smiling against her lips—Oh, God, he couldn't read her mind. He couldn't. She forced herself to open her eyes, to look at him, but he ducked his head to nibble on her earlobe and place damp, nibbling kisses on her neck, her collar bone, the valley between her breasts, that part of her just exposed by her open collar to his seeking mouth. It had been too long, and with just these few kisses and the forbidden thoughts running through her head, she was close. He lifted his head and sought her lips again with his own. She sighed into his mouth, and he pressed against her, a solid thigh between her legs. The hand stroking her back moved to the front and slipped down.

"No, oh don't," she protested weakly, not wanting to embarrass herself, but it was too late. Too little touch in far too long and she was overcome, with just a few gentle kisses and a few strokes of his warm fingers. She quivered and breathed holding on to him tightly.

"Was that okay?" the Irish lilt breathed into her ear, not the deep baritone her mind had almost tricked her into thinking it would be. She buried her face in his neck, nodding. She burned with mortification. She was bad. Oh, she was one of the worst people to think those things about Sherlock while Jim, sweet, goofy Jim, held her. She forced herself to pull back and look up at him. He was studying her with a look that was almost frightened her. It was a knowing smile, a wicked smile. Was that a hint of sadness in those black eyes? Resignation? He knows. He knows. Molly's already thudding heart sped up. Her eyes ran over his face, staring into bottomless eyes. Suddenly, the Jim she sensed in the office that day was back. Power and masculinity and something a bit more dangerous and manic emanated from this man whose warm body pressed her into the sofa. Right, then.

She pushed him away so she could sit up, and when he was sitting upright next to her again, she grasped the hem of his t-shirt and tugged. Looking surprised, he obligingly lifted his arms and let her strip it off of him. She looked at him with a professional eye. She knew what his muscles looked like if she stripped them of that pale creamy skin. If she lifted off his ribcage, she would find a heart and other hot viscera, beating red and blue and silvery-white. Under that soft skin and firm muscle of his abdomen, with its light trail of black hair, his bowels were frilled loops, and here, she lifted her eyes to his face, she knew just what she would find if she popped off the top of his skull. The essential Jim. Yes. Here he was, present and real.

Jim's eyes were rather wild as he watched her scrutinize him. The desperate hands that reached out to her, pulled her to him again had a strange reverence in the way they touched her, finding her bare skin again beneath her blouse. She sat astride him, and as she felt his need press into her, she reveled in the solid reality of his desire. She knew how to take a man's body apart and put him back together again. She did it everyday.