Sapphic September: A Collection

Snapshot (McFoster)

Fandom: Hannibal

Pairing: McFoster (Reba/Molly)

Prompt: photography

Summary: Molly stumbles upon an old photo album and shares her find with Reba. Post-fall.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Molly leaned against the door frame to the bedroom and knocked lightly on it to announce her presence. Reba was sitting cross-legged on her side of the bed, working away quietly on a new knitting project. At the sound, Reba's head turned in her direction, but her hands didn't falter or drop the stitch. Molly secretly loved to watch her knit. She was slow and steady, assured in her ability, and could do it while holding a conversation or with her concentration firmly somewhere else. It was enthralling.

"I found an old photo album while I was cleaning up," Molly said. "Can I share it with you?"

"Of course."

Molly entered the room and turned on the bedside lamp by her side of the bed. It was late afternoon, with the sun low in the sky and glinting off the snow in a way that gave the light coming through the window an odd muted orange quality to it, and the room had darkened considerably from earlier in the day. Reba had the bedside lamp on her side turned on, too, though she didn't really need it. She could perceive light and dark but nothing beyond that.

Molly sat down near the end of the bed and set the photo album on the quilt. "I forgot I had this album. It was in an old box that I hadn't unpacked in years. I took it from my parents' house to my marriages to here without doing more than glancing inside to check if I needed to keep it."

Reba ran her finger along the top row of her knitting, counting silently, before starting up again. "Describe it to me."

Molly touched the cover and then opened it. "The outside is brown. It's very plain; no design, no writing, no logo. It might be made of leather, I'm not sure. And it's old, old enough that the pages are yellowing around the edges."

Reba hummed. "What's in it?"

"Mostly childhood photos. My parents started it for me when I was born and gave it to me on my eighteenth birthday."

"Then it's very old indeed," Reba teased, and Molly groaned.

"I set myself up for that one, huh?"

"You did."

Molly smiled even though Reba couldn't see it, knowing that she had caught the wryness in her voice and would hear her smile, as well. "Keep teasing this old lady and she might decide not to share her old photos with you."

"Well, we can't have that, now can we?" said Reba.

She was smiling, too. It lit up her face and eyes, and affectionate warmth unspooled within Molly's chest at the sight. "No, we can't."

Molly flipped to the first page of the photo album and, once she was sure that Reba was settled in her knitting, began to describe its contents. The photos were chronological. They started with her birth: photos of her being held by her ecstatic parents and grandmother, of her coming home for the first time, of her in a frilly pale yellow dress that nearly swallowed her whole. Then came the baby pictures: being fed cream of rice, sitting in her father's lap, tugging on the family cat's tail, crawling for the first time. They slowly melded into photos of her as a toddler, where she was grinning widely next to a block tower she'd built, wearing her mom's high heels with red lipstick smeared across her face, or blowing out the candles on a Care Bears-themed cake.

"You know, I had a bowl cut as a toddler," Molly said, laughing, as she turned the page. "An honest-to-god bowl cut. I looked like a walking blonde mushroom."