The first time the rhythm is wrong and the lubricant is wrong and Molly is so nervous that her teeth actually chatter throughout the whole thing, making their sexual soundtrack much less '70s funk and much more an earthquake in a castanets factory, and it doesn't matter a goddamn because Irene still has to curl into a tight ivory ball and bite her lip lumpen to keep from licking "I love you," into every shy inch of the glorious Mary Elizabeth Hooper.

The second time Irene picks the strap-on. She stands like a titan in the tired sun fighting through the bulletproof windows while Molly pokes and prods and squeezes and generally works herself into a tizzy at the thought of Irene slipping that silken monstrosity into her.

"I should have let you choose last time," Molly murmurs, hefting the creamy latex in her left hand and scratching light lines into Irene's buttocks with her right. "I just liked the look of the other one so much."

(Molly had chosen a slim dildo in pink rubber, swirled throughout with glitter and topped with a ridiculous nub that had been engineered by someone who had only the faintest notion that women even possessed clitorises, and, once possessed of the knowledge, had not bothered to ascertain the location of said clitorises. Despite its failure as a sexual aid, it was currently performing admirably as a paperweight.)

Irene has decided that the best course of action during sex is to speak as little as possible. If she restricts herself to instructions, she's much less likely to say something... well, something like—

"I love it when you touch me like that."

Damn.

Molly looks up through her mousy lashes, and Irene sways a bit on her mental pedestal. "Do you really?" Molly says, delight giving the most prettily pathetic cast to her features that Irene has seen outside of Japanese cartoons. "Would you..." Molly hesitates. "Would you like me to do it again?"

Wouldn't this be a sight for—well, for just about any eyes? The magnificent Irene Adler, brought low by a little thing who spends her days wanting and waiting and poking the dead. "No," Irene says before she makes an utter fool of herself with eagerness. Molly's face falls a bit, and Irene feels the most ridiculous kick in her stomach, a sick lurching that feels a lot like guilt. If Irene ever felt guilt, which, of course, she does not.

"Rather," Irene says, crouching down to Molly's height, "I think we should start talking about what I'm going to do to you."

The tip of her cock touches Molly's leg. Molly freezes, and Irene's cunt clenches.

Irene, when penetrated, is a thing of abandon. She writhes and thrashes like any wild creature. Whatever pleasure she gives in this position, pinned and pinioned and pierced, she takes back threefold.

Molly, when penetrated, is a thing of languor. Irene traps the dildo between their stomachs, warming it as she dips to taste the shrinking, secret parts of Molly that are always hidden beneath flowered blouses and cheap velvet. She strokes Molly to slippery with one hand, watching narrowly as Molly's mouth bunches and lengthens, as Molly's nostrils flare, as Molly's ears go red as the tips of her thick nipples after Irene lifts her mouth from them.

When Irene presses the dull head of her cock into Molly's little, livid cunt, it isn't Molly who moans first.

Molly undulates in a way that Irene's been trying to mimic for years. Molly doesn't throw her head back as much as roll her long, unblemished neck, swaying her hair with ecstatic abandon against the satin coverlet. Where Irene's fingers grasp and clench and scratch, Molly's flutter and tremble and drum, playing the lightest of trills and tremolos into the long white keys of Irene's ribs. Molly Hooper comes as gently as a wave on a distant shore, and Irene wants to press the wet shell of Molly's cunt against her again and again to hear that roiling ocean groan.

Irene stops at three.

Molly lies in lazy ruin in the midst of Irene's bed. Irene walks to the master bath and watches her hands pull a clean flannel from the closet and soak it with water so hot that her fingers twitch in pain as they squeeze the flannel empty. She watches herself walk back to the bed and spread Molly's red and white thighs. She watches herself sponging Molly clean.

Molly watches Irene, a tiny smile on her thin lips. Irene cannot remember the last time someone smiled at her without triumph. She lays a chaste kiss atop Molly's still-swollen clit, feels her own mouth thinning and stretching in simple delight as Molly giggles, twitches, and then holds still. Irene thinks of what life could be like, waking to this every afternoon. She could do it, too; she could sweep Molly from the refrigerated hollows of Bart's underworld, bask in the happy, golden glow of Molly's smiles and giggles and lush little cunt. They would be happy, the two of them.

Irene lets herself dream of it for five perfect minutes. Then—

"I can't see you anymore."

"What?" Molly surges off the bed. Irene likes anger, confusion, and storm; she's annoyed to discover that she likes the look of them on Molly's face much less than she liked seeing satiation there, and knowing that she was the one who placed it.

"I'm..." Sorry, her mind whispers. "Busy," her mouth supplies. "I can't stop working."

"But," says Molly, "I don't mind you working. I want you to work. You're so good at what you do, and you help so many people, and I'm not asking you stop working, why would I ask that? What kind of person would I be if I asked that?"

Irene turns away and begins rummaging through her vanity for something she knows isn't there.

Molly touches her shoulder. "I just want to see you sometimes. It doesn't have to be a lot. It doesn't have to be this all the time." She throws an arm out to encompass the bed, the sex, and the last two days of letting the whole word go on without them. "I thought..." and her voice isn't accusatory as much as just sad, "I thought you—liked—this."

Not "me," Irene notes. Molly never thinks that someone could like her, merely what she can provide. Oh, Molly.

"But if you don't." Molly straightens her shoulders, the whole of her standing tall and proud for a moment before her head dips and her face crumples. "If you don't, then... I understand. And thank you. For your time. I... enjoyed our time together, Ms. Adler."

Irene keeps her eyes on her own face in the mirror. She doesn't see Molly gather her clothes and flee for the door, or the wedges of light lengthen and thin as afternoon melts into evening. She doesn't even see her own features grow haggard under the perfect satin mask of her makeup. All she sees is the sweet, sunlit fantasy of greeting each day in Molly Hooper's arms, of saving every gasp and stretch for her, of giving up the sight of the high and mighty submitting to her ministrations and imprecations—all for the endless holiday of Molly Hooper's simple springtime joys.

And the cost, she reminds herself fiercely, falsely, is too high.