I believe I owe you dinner.
There's no telling how she got his number. She's The Woman, after all. It would be a waste of his time, dwelling.
So he meets her. The pub is dark and crowded, filled with steaming humid bodies escaping the unbearable heat of South Africa in August. The air conditioning is dodgy. The bartender is a British spy Sherlock notes without any real interest.
Irene looks unchanged, familiar. She makes the hole where his heart should be, might be, ache. Her eyes, startling and deep as ever, promise nothing. They are blue ice.
He wonders uselessly about other eyes, familiar and brown that say tea and toast and home. He wishes he hadn't, wishes for some control over the racing thoughts tearing through his head.
She taps impatient fingers on the table, shifts slightly in her seat.
"Thank you." He says and he means for the text. For meeting him. For leaving out a possibly compromising "Mr. Holmes" at the end of it. For coming without Moriarty, even if she still is working with him. She smiles but it's meaningless.
"I'm not hungry." She tells him, as if it matters.
Later, in her room, she's touching his body, the broken vessel. He's letting her slide slim fingers up and down his chest. She traces his ribs and spine, his scars.
It doesn't matter. At least for a moment he isn't quite alone.
It's all wrong, but he thinks he might deserve it.
Sex as punishment. Novel.
At least it isn't boring.
She doesn't complain that he doesn't touch her.
He silently shudders as her long legs wrap up around his back. He's covered in sweet-smelling sweaty woman and he's nauseated.
Neither of them begs for mercy in the end.
"I know." She whispers into the stale air beneath the mosquito-netting after she, at least, had come. He doesn't answer. She knows a lot of things, this Woman. They aren't touching and all of him wants to flinch away from her. "I know what you desire, my dear. Even if you don't." Her tone is teasing and confident and awful. He rolls away and parts the gossamer curtain. Stands.
"Now, now. No need to be like that." She taunts.
He's pulling pants on, wishing he never saved her.
"Were you thinking of him? Is that how you did it?"
If she's trying to wound him she's succeeded but not for the right reasons. She is nothing. He's back where he started, though. Thinking of John. Has he ever stopped? Even for one second?
"Tell him you're alive." Are the last words Irene Adler ever says to Sherlock Holmes. They sound like a tired echo.
Hope is a mostly foreign concept to the Consulting Detective because it stems from uncertainty. He isn't certain about much. Will John believe him? Will John answer? He is sure of this: John Hamish Watson knows flirting when he sees it.
I'm not dead. Dinner? SH
He waits.
His phone beeps.
I know a great Chinese place, open 'til 2.