"Like this?" Molly Hooper asked, the scalpel cutting deep into the dead man's flesh. Jim Moriarty's tongue ran up the back of her neck, by her ear.
"Exactly like that," he whispered. Her eyes rolled back with pleasure at the feel of his whisper on her skin. She reached for the latex gloves, but Jim put his hand between Molly's hands and their goal. "No," he said. "It's much better if you feel the blood with your bare hands."
For an instant, she thought about insisting—while it was true that the man hadn't died of disease or old age (thanks to Jim) and his blood was unlikely to be contaminated with anything, she'd never touched a stranger's blood before. But she couldn't say no to Jim, her soulmate. Everything they did together, they did as one. Her mind and his, intertwined in deviousness, as if two halves of the single mind. The male psyche and the female, both twisted, both scarred, both distorted beyond the recognition of those who'd known them as children.
Instead, she rolled up her sleeves and put her hand inside the body. Jim placed his hand on hers and together, they stroked the sternum. They were beautiful, the parts of the human body one never sees. The texture of the bone was smooth and firm, yet somehow fallible. She enjoyed this. Oh, yes, she'd always loved seeing the bodies beaten by Sherlock and his riding crop, or dissected by autopsy, but she'd never felt before what she was feeling now.
They removed the ribcage as one did during autopsy, and then, without provocation from Jim, she lifted the man's heart from his chest and caressed it. This was that which propelled life through the body. This one mass of flesh which was so important to life called to Molly. And she licked it.
Jim smiled. "Well, well, well, I wasn't expecting that."
Molly giggled slightly. "It's salty," she noted. Jim took her hands in his and wrapped them around the heart. They were both holding it now, and he gently maneuvered her fingers down the aorta. She sighed. She knew she had an almost sexual fascination with the morbid, but she didn't know it could be like this! She'd never felt so good in her life as when Jim was so close to her and they both had their hands in a dead man's heart.
He put it down, an act which she resisted. "Now, now, Molly," he crooned, "Plenty of other organs to go around."
She removed the head in her own method. It wasn't as subtle as Jim's careful cutting around the neck from ear to ear, but it still felt good. She split the head down the front so as to access the brain, and peeled the skin away delicately, almost surgically. Jim smiled. He was learning things from her.
The removal of the bones from the spinal cord took time and effort that neither of them minded. The white and gooey portion of the central nervous system reminded Molly of a slightly overcooked string of spaghetti, both in appearance and texture. Fascinating. And delightful.
They had to be a bit indelicate to reach the brain, as the skull was doing its job very well, the eyeballs staring out of the skinless face, blank and emotionless. They cracked the skull as one might crack a coconut, and each of them held a hemisphere of the brain in their hands.
"This is what we are, Molly," said Jim in his singsong voice. "We're the brain. You and I, two halves."
Molly moved closer to him as they snuggled on an autopsy table. She put her half of the brain touching his, restoring its original shape. She bit his ear gently and fell asleep, the best day of her life over and the man she loved more than anything beneath her.