All your dreams are still as new
The first time John told Mary he loved her, she laughed. Tossed her long curls at him and slipped out of the door of the motel room, leaving the echo of her laugh hanging in the air behind her.
He was stunned, and a bit hurt. What sort of girl laughs when the guy she's been… seeing… for months tells her he loves her?
True, the first time they'd had sex, two days after escaping Cold Oak, had been more a desperate comfort, an affirmation of life, rather than the beginning of a love affair. Neither of them had really expected it to happen again. And yet, somehow, a real relationship had grown out of it over the last few months at Dan's place. So…
"You heard me earlier, right?" he said over breakfast, an hour or so later.
"About calling Dan before we go check out those killings?" she asked, looking deep into her coffee cup as if all the mysteries of the universe were contained therein.
"No, you silly goose. The part where I said I loved you."
"Oh, that."
"Oh, that?"
"Johnny, I-"
"Would you like more coffee?" the waitress interrupted, and that was that.
He tried again, a week later, when they were in bed, so tightly curled round each other he was having a hard time telling where he left off and she started.
"Mary, I love you."
She twisted against him, raising her head up off his chest and giving him a smile and a kiss, which quickly turned passionate, and it wasn't till the next morning he realised she hadn't actually answered him.
It was as if she couldn't even hear it. As if the words meant nothing to her.
When he woke up in the hospital after the poltergeist hunt had gone rather gorily wrong, she was sitting next to his bed, an arm in a sling, covered in scratches, and he realised he'd been right. Words didn't mean a thing to her. Never had, never would.
"You almost died," she sobbed out, fingers twisting into his. "Because of me, because I slipped up, you almost died."
"Good cause," he said hoarsely. "Did you think I was just going to lie there while it killed you?"
She leaned over him, so close their noses were almost touching, staring into his eyes. He blinked a couple times, and she smiled slowly, a smile filled with wonderment and understanding and the joy you feel when the sun comes out after the rain.
"You do love me," she said softly.
"I've been telling you that for weeks," John said, understandably a bit testy.
She shrugged, and her loose shirt slipped off one shoulder, revealing the straps of her black tank top. Almost in spite of himself, he reached up and pressed a kiss against that smooth rounded shoulder.
"People have been telling me things for years," she said softly. "Things like don't worry and it's OK and Dad and I will be back any day now, Mary, we're almost done here. Only any day later, Mom and Dad were both dead, and Uncle Ben wouldn't even tell me what had killed them."
John stilled. She'd never spoken of her parent's deaths, when she'd been fourteen, before. Then he relaxed, ever so slightly. "I don't make promises I can't keep," he told her. "And I'm not 'people' either."
She kissed him softly, ignoring the scandalised nurse who'd just walked in. "I love you too, Johnny."