This takes place during the Great Hiatus, but don't expect a lot of plot...
The Seventh Day
Irene Adler had been absent for a period of three days before Sherlock Holmes realised that he found the situation disagreeable.
On the first day he'd felt quite to the contrary.
That morning he had awoken from a brief but deep sleep to find her gone, and a note that she had obviously scrawled in a hurry left on the scratched wooden table which served as their shared desk.
Dotting some is and crossing (out) a few ts, it had said, but nothing more. And although he scrutinised her penmanship, the ink she used, and the paper, he couldn't discern anything about where she had gone, or why, or when she might return.
His very initial reaction had been annoyance, not due to the absence itself but because she had made a decision unilaterally rather than consult with him. They had been working as partners, and he had made certain concessions for the sake of that arrangement, but now it seemed that she wasn't willing to reciprocate that courtesy.
Soon however, any annoyance he felt was outweighed by his intrigue over the situation, and he looked forward to learning about the progress she had made, which she obviously felt would be better accomplished by her acting alone. That notion wasn't unfounded, he acknowledged with somewhat reluctant admiration. She possessed certain skills that had proven essential in the course of their work—skills which he lacked to some degree.
With that in mind, he had allowed himself to savour his sudden solitude. It was such a novelty to be alone with his thoughts, and he felt so free to delve into his mind palace without constraints, that even the grim Eastern Bloc-era sub-sublet that currently housed them began to feel more expansive and luxurious.
From late adolescence to his early-mid 30s he had been responsible only for himself, and in essence answerable to no one, since any actual control his brother or DCI Lestrade had over him was negligible. Yet in recent years he had slowly let go of his need for that wilful detachment, and in the previous several weeks had ceded it almost entirely—first out of necessity and efficiency, and then something less rational.
But now he was reminded of the way he had felt as a child when it had been his nanny's day off, and Mother had forgotten once again. Those days had given him a fleeting taste of autonomy, and had shown him a preview of the total independence from others (and their approval) he would gain a decade later. In those hours he'd been free to slip into his brother's bedroom to use the chemistry equipment that Nanny deemed too dangerous for a boy of his age, or to observe the colony of Bombus terrestris near the stream on the eastern border of their estate without anyone fussing that he might fall in.
He felt that same rush of possibility and determination to make the most of his time alone on the first day The Woman was away.
On the second day he felt less exultant over the now-rare commodities of solitude and privacy, but he was somewhat grateful for her absence for another reason: it represented a reprieve from a certain type of distraction, and he would be able to properly think.
Granted, she was an asset to the work. She made connections and framed scenarios rather differently than he did, and her alternative approaches often lead him to arrive at conclusions he mightn't have otherwise (not that he would admit this to her, at least not in so many words).
And yet as valuable as her contributions had been, there was an ever-present undercurrent of sexual attraction between them, which made it difficult for him to keep the entirety of his focus on their work. He didn't begrudge her this—she had done nothing significant to tease or encourage the attraction in their five weeks together—but it was always present, despite how he suppressed it.
On the third day he woke up with the fully-formed realisation that he missed her presence—that what she contributed to their work far outweighed any minor distractions she might inadvertently (albeit with full awareness) cause. Besides, it was his own fault if he allowed anything to interfere with his thought processes, not hers.
His present feelings about her absence were a logical progression from his previous day's opinion, he rationalised. Then, he had managed to retreat into his mind to consider future strategy and the viability of plans they'd already formulated, but he was better at picking up on any inconsistencies of thought or action when recounting them aloud to someone else. Moreover, he valued her input on some of the finer details of his ideas. She was far more helpful in both those respects than the skull he'd placed on the mantels at both Baker and Montague Streets, and marginally better than John Watson in the former (though undeniably better at the latter).
But John Watson wasn't there, and Sherlock did not wish to dwell on that thought further. His friend was another point on his list of topics he attempted, often unsuccessfully, to avoid. Much of his motivation for his current work was rooted in the baser desires for vengeance and to prove once and for all his supremacy over Moriarty—motives which he knew The Woman shared—but the main reason he was so determined to destroy Moriarty's legacy was so that John (and Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson) would be free of crosshairs. As Sherlock did the work, he could never really forget why he was doing it, and therefore he could never really forget about John. Sherlock was certain that Irene also had her own additional reasons for joining and aiding him, but she had not shared them, and he had not asked.
On that third day, he found himself longing for his violin for the first time since he had left England. It sat in his bedroom in his and Mycroft's ancestral home, its case gathering dust, and the strings would be in dreadful condition by the time he got back. His hands felt an almost visceral desire to heft the weight of the instrument, to brandish the bow, to finger the strings. He told himself that it was physical restlessness that resulted from remaining so locked away in his mind for the past several days, and that it would pass.
By the fourth day he began to feel pangs of anxiety worm into his thoughts about where The Woman might be, and what she might be doing. In contrast with the first two days, her absence undermined his focus rather than facilitated it. He started to question whether her 'misbehaviour' had gotten her killed or recaptured, and in his mind he saw scenario after scenario play out in ruthless clarity, in which she was being tortured, or worse. His powerlessness to do anything was almost intolerable, but he knew that he could not go in search of her, despite how desperate for answers he might become. Not only did they have next to no reliable contacts, but he didn't want to inadvertently sabotage whatever operation she had in play. As evening closed in on the fourth day, he grew angry that she had not shared even the scantest details of her plans, and resented the fact that her lack of communication essentially coerced him into fretting over her. Still, fret he did.
On the fifth day, his concern for her safety began to give way to anxiety of a rather different nature. Old but familiar feelings of suspicion and doubt resurfaced, and cold dread over her potential betrayal started to overshadow any thoughts of concern. He became convinced that she had become too savvy in their time together to be captured, and that if she were staying away, it was because she had forsaken the danger and uncertainty of their mission in favour of security and position within the very network they were seeking to destroy. Instead of execution scenes, he was tormented by paranoid scenarios in which she had betrayed him to the remaining underbosses in Moriarty's criminal empire.
Between the third and fifth days, he tried and retried her disposable mobile with no success, but by nightfall of Day 5 he thought that if he listened once more to the interminable drone of an unanswered ringtone, he might go mad. He was already all too aware of how strong an affect her absence was having on him; he wasn't going to let a generic computer-generated sound have such sway on his emotions on top of that. He stopped trying.
On the sixth day Sherlock began to revise all of their previous contingencies, in reaction to his increasingly alarmed thoughts of possible treachery. By mid-morning, he had pulled out every document they had on the individuals they were tracking and had scattered everything in a single layer across the thin, industrial carpet of the bedsit. As he stared at the financial, electronic, travel, phone, and other miscellaneous records before him, he willed himself to rethink his entire strategy so that any moves he made were feasible for a lone actor, and did not in any way relate to or rely on tactics and information she already knew and might have shared.
And yet he could sense the influence on his thinking that The Woman had already had; every new plan he devised had clear traces of her signature deviousness and ambition. His mind had apparently accepted her as a sort of external component, and had become so familiar with and dependent upon her input that it felt impossible to separate his own style of thought from hers.
A part of him felt darkly fascinated by the merging of their intellects. Apparently she had become a part of the most essential function of himself—not only complementary, the way their intellects had operated for so long, but intrinsic. And in most cases, developing a richer perspective and methodology would be dead useful, particularly since she had especial brilliance in ways he lacked.
But in this particular case, he was wary. Her influence on him made him vulnerable to her, and if she had turned her back on him, on their work, that influence would become a liability... If he conceived of any plan that was similar to something she might have created herself, she would be able to anticipate his actions, especially since she was aware of the ultimate objective. That was the one thing he could not change. There were various means by which he could go about it, but tearing down the empire that Jim Moriarty had spent his life building was always going to be his end.
In the sense that it's my final goal, but perhaps also in the ironic, prescient sense, Sherlock thought at that, feeling fatalistically wry in his anxiety.
On the seventh day, just as he was rubbing down surfaces with a flannel soaked in white vinegar to remove traces of his fingerprints, his packed keepall by the stained and dented metal door and a single, open-ended rail ticket in his coat pocket, he heard a key slot into the lock of the entry door.
He would've reached for the gun at once, a black-market TT pistol, but he had learned to recognise the sound of her gait within the first day of meeting her, and now he had known her for two years and been reunited with her for over a month. He knew that he would be able to identify her if every sense but one were suppressed in turn, and even if the lone remaining sense were impaired by ninety percent, he would still be able to locate her out of a crowd of dozens, if not scores. He suspected that some might interpret that as extreme, but he had become highly attuned to her in the time that they had spent together, and it had a practical benefit: it had done wonders for their efficacy as a team. Especially since she was just as attuned to him, he knew.
Despite that, he was tempted to reach for the gun anyway, the images that had been plaguing him in the past few days displaying in rapid-fire fashion in his mind. In response his body flooded with adrenaline as if it were in fact a host of Moriarty's assassins on the other side of the door, and he wheeled around, rising from a crouch into a rigid, upright stance in one fluid motion, his eyes blazing.
The door creaked open, and with one look into her face he saw that she hadn't done anything to betray or jeopardise him or their work, but that knowledge barely mitigated his flare of anger.
"Where have you been?" he asked, his words slow and over-annunciated and his voice low, though he was certain she would be able to detect the subtle tremor of fury in his tone.
"Sherlock," she said, stopping short and adopting a disapproving and 'let's be rational' tone, though she was clearly taken aback by the intensity of his greeting. Her voice had wavered just the slightest amount on the first phoneme—Shh—but probably no one else in the world would have detected it.
He bristled at her attempt to downplay his (very valid) reaction when she was the one who was at fault for his current state, and then he felt the full weight of the past seven days crash down on him: all the anxiety, the uncertainty, the thoughts of betrayal, and worst of all—the lack of data, with which she had forced him to contend.
Now she stood before him, clearly impenitent over what she had done, and he felt both rage and relief, in equal measures. Without thinking, he strode over to her where she stood in the entry, looked into her too-composed face, and slammed the door shut behind her.
Then, taking another glance at her now-raised brows and startled eyes (and feeling a fleeting sensation of satisfaction that he could surprise her), he backed her into the shut door, and pressed his lips against hers in a hard, impulsive kiss.
It was the first time they'd had any remotely intimate contact since they had reunited, and to resume contact in such a passionate way after such a long period of restraint was almost too much for him. The moment their lips touched, he couldn't help but pour the weeks of suppressed desires and denied gratification into the increasingly demanding kiss.
He had been tempted to act on his attraction to her on an alarmingly regular basis, particularly since they occasionally shared a bed, but he always managed to quell his urges—if not the thoughts that fuelled them. He had been of the mind that the stakes were too high to introduce such an unstable and unpredictable element as personal and intimate involvement into their relationship. He already felt so connected to and protective of her, and their present relationship wasn't even physical. He could only imagine how much more attached he would become if they became involved in such a way again, while facing such ongoing danger. Moreover, their safety was so tenuous and their mission so critical that it would be excessively foolish to introduce any potentially divisive factors.
She had been as inscrutable as ever regarding her thoughts on the platonic nature of their partnership, although he had sometimes felt as though she was looking at him when his back was turned from her. He'd never caught her at it though, and his uncertainty about how she felt about him made it easier to resist his urges and focus on their work.
But now that the feeling of her lips seared into his, all thoughts of consequence and risk fled his mind, and he let the almost desperate press of his mouth on hers communicate the blend of relief, fury, and lust that pounded through his veins.
At first she didn't move, and didn't respond to the way his lips crushed against hers, but then she shoved her hands up between them and pushed against his chest.
For the briefest of moments he continued to lean into her, aching for contact with her after a week of her absence and a year of abstinence, but then with a jerk he pulled back, and attempted to moderate his breathing.
She searched his face with her brows drawn together in an expression that looked like concern—and something else (wary anticipation?), and he stared back at her, grim-faced but flushed. Then, in a reversal of the moment before, she surprised him by suddenly breaking into a radiant and predatory smile, which seemed to have a direct causal affect on his level of arousal.
"If I'd known that this is what it would take to divest you of that ironclad control of yours again, I'd have taken off for a week ages ago," she said with a throaty chuckle.
Before he could respond in any way (Shut up, had risen to his lips in the form of a lustful growl), she had slid her fingernails into his hair, grasped his short, dark blond curls by the roots, and pulled her back to him again. So instead of a retort a husky groan emerged, and he let the blissful feeling begin to wash away the unwelcome anxieties of the past week. After so many days on edge and with his mind vacillating between their task at hand and trying to imagine every potential meaning and possible consequence of her absence, it was cathartic to let go.
He slid a hand down her side as they tilted their faces to deepen their kiss, but when he grasped her waist his fingers grazed against a tacky substance. He felt his eyes widen and his stomach tighten as he identified the familiar texture at once, and when he withdrew his hand and lifted it up to his face, he saw that his suspicions were correct. It was alarming how quickly he sensed he could lose composure when it came to the idea of her coming to harm.
He flicked his eyes from his fingertips to her face to shoot her a piercing stare, in a nonverbal demand for answers.
"It isn't my blood," she stated in a would-be calm voice that was somewhat undermined by her breathlessness, and when he saw that she was telling the truth, something inside him unclenched.
He dropped his gaze back to her waist and hip to see if he could determine anything from the spatter stain but it had smeared (obviously from their contact, he thought in self-directed annoyance), and the pattern was difficult to determine. His eyes moved from her hip up to her face again.
"Where have you been?" he asked, this time in a much more composed voice, but she shook her head slightly and pulled him back to her. He met her lips, wondering if that shake of the head had meant don't ask now, or simply, don't ask.
Her kiss was much more ardent and domineering this time, as she arched off the door into him and overlapped her hands behind his neck to pull his face flusher against hers. As her tongue pushed beyond his teeth and he easily met her escalating passion with his own, he wondered if she were venting the weeks of ever-present sexual tension between them, or if she were burning off adrenaline from the violent encounter she had experienced—and very recently, judging by the viscosity of the blood. Likely both, he concluded, before he lost himself in texture and sensation again.
For several more minutes they writhed mindlessly against the doorway together, lost in the slide of tongues, clasping, stroking hands, and the exhilaration of finally giving into long-resisted, illicit temptation.
In the previous week he had spent rather a lot of time analysing and reanalysing every word she had said or every gesture or expression she had made in the weeks since they had allied, seeking clues into where she might have gone, or traces of duplicity. Now there was no need to scrutinise her in order to understand her state of mind—her desire for him was palpable; every sigh and twist of her hips against his front broadcasted that.
Through a brief clearing of the prurient fog that was infusing his every thought, he realised that she had held back for the same, logical, reasons, but that for equally shared reasons, she had reached the extent her self-control, and now neither of them could deny the fierce physical, intellectual, and emotional attraction that pulsed between them. It had surpassed attraction, really, and had become need.
He pulled back abruptly and his eyes raked up and down her body in one rapid assessment of what she was wearing, so that he could determine the most expedient method of removing her clothing. Then with an almost feral sneer, he stuck his index and middle fingers in the slit of material between the buttons at her breasts, and gave an impatient twist so that they popped open, revealing a glimpse of her black satin bra. He stared into her eyes as he began to unfasten the rest of the buttons on her semi-sheer black silk blouse, and she met his gaze with a smirk that belied the seriousness of her expression, and the tender subtext of her touches. Meanwhile, her bright eyes held promises of their own.
Now his breathing was coming out in short, heavy bursts, and his mind was becoming more and more glazed in a confection of lust and infatuation. It was a familiar but unexpectedly affirming feeling. Even in the grim bedsit that was so far from both of their past worlds in most literal and metaphorical ways he could imagine, he felt almost like he was coming home... arriving at a place where he was known, and he was seen. He understood that it was The Woman herself, and he wondered if he represented the same for her.
He pressed her wrist for a moment, in shorthand reference to the multiple times they had now exchanged that touch. But he didn't say anything, or linger to actually take her pulse. It was only a brief squeeze of his thumb on the anterior and of her wrist his fingertips on the interior—just long enough to convey the sentiment.
She understood, of course, and she turned her hand in his and caught his fingers, then entwined them and pulled him towards her. He kissed her once, deeply, then drew back to pull at the waist of the riding-style trousers she wore.
She laughed, pushed away his hands, and bent over to pull off the high-heeled over-the-knee leather boots she was wearing. Normally he would feel angry and embarrassed at making such an error in logic, but now he barely registered it. He was too distracted by the way her ebony hair had started to fall out of its pins when she had leaned over, and was partially tumbling down her shoulders in shining rivulets.
She noticed the way it had come loose, and with a knowing smile, she pulled the rest of the pins out as well and threw them to the floor where they scattered, then shrugged off the unbuttoned blouse, leaving on only her form-fitting black trousers and her bra.
He hadn't seen her this exposed since they'd last had sex, and the correlation was not at all lost on his body. He felt his mouth go dry and the steady pounding in his ears became an indistinct roar, but mostly his ill-fitting jeans were becoming painfully restrictive.
The bedsit was small and compact, and yet the double bed seemed impossibly distant in Sherlock's state. Irene's eyes darted from Sherlock's body over to the bed as well and then flicked back into him, and a determined, quite wicked looked crinkled the corners of her eyes and mouth. Sherlock understood that it was unlikely that they would make it that far.
She dug her fingers into the waist of his second-hand stonewashed jeans, almost missing the buckle in her haste to unfasten his belt, then yanked the worn denim down his legs. He stepped out of them and kicked them away with impatience, then stepped towards her again, the hairs on his legs standing on end.
She pressed up against him again, and in her eyes he could read all the confidence and dynamic intelligence that fuelled his lust for her mind and body, and he knew that this couldn't be a mistake. And if it did eventually prove to be one, somehow, he didn't give a damn about that now.
Because for the first time in many weeks he felt alive, and she felt vital and alive beneath him as well. And since they were both ostensibly dead, the hard pounding of blood through his veins and the heady rush of hormones and endorphins into his brain were deeply gratifying. Neither of them could take their lives for granted, and so Sherlock would prefer to live rather than exist in a sort of ongoing, partially self-imposed purgatory. Though complex and crucially important, the dismantling of Moriarty's criminal franchise had ceased being interesting or invigorating weeks ago.
Irene seemed to echo his thoughts in her actions—she grasped his hands and pulled them both to the floor, then pushed firmly against his shoulders. He went back on his elbows willingly, his chest rising and falling rapidly, and she knelt over him. With unwavering eye contact, she reached behind her back and unclasped her bra, then pulled slowly it over her arms and dropped it by her side.
For a moment afterwards she cupped her own breasts, not in some act of demureness, but out of a sensuality he suspected he brought out in her. Despite the fact that Irene used her sexuality and the sexualities of others as tools by which she could secure what she really desired (power, position, security), Sherlock got the impression that she was just as uninvested in a personal sex life as Sherlock was. And yet here she was, touching herself as she looked down at him, and it was tremendously erotic. But he had learned very early on in their acquaintance that they each made allowances for the other, and in the time since then they had only proven how comprehensive and far-reaching those allowances were. With each other, they more than made up for the lack of interest they had everyone else.
Sherlock reached for her and hauled her against him, then rolled them over so that he could pin her against the floor. She made a mock indignant sound at the subversion of her usual role, but it soon turned into a soft moan. His hand had gone between her legs to knead hard against the centre seam in her trousers, and he pressed erratic, open-mouth kisses across her breasts, his brain a white hot blank of desire. But he didn't want any barrier between the two of them, and judging by the way she was rocking against his hand, neither did she. With a grunt, he pulled away from her and began to peel the tight trousers and her scrap of underwear down her legs, revealing her flawless, creamy skin inch by inch, until she was fully nude before him.
He could admit it himself – he found her gorgeous.
She made a low, husky hum and he realised that for the second time in her presence, he had unwittingly spoken the words he thought he'd only been thinking. He hadn't minded explaining to her what he had meant by Coventry on the first occasion, but in this case he felt actively gratified that he'd spoken the thought aloud.
He tossed the ball of fabric off to the side and then without hesitating he shifted forward again so that the front of his head brushed just below her naval. At first he placed a soft kiss on the inside of her upper thigh, but then he sucked on the unblemished skin until he knew it would leave a mark, and he repeated the action one inch upwards and inwards, smirking slightly to himself. Then he straightened his head and bent forward, nuzzling his nose and lips against the sensitive flesh before him.
She immediately sighed and seemed to relax into the carpet, losing any tension she might have been holding in her body. Then, with both of her legs tossed over his shoulders, he began to work over her with his tongue and lips, his eyes firmly closed. He could vividly recall the taste and smell of this extremely intimate act, and the affected senses set off an avalanche of charged memories. They were potent, but he was done with memories—this was far better.
To Sherlock it didn't seem as if it took any time at all before the muscles in her legs and belly began to tremble with nothing but tension (though it was possible he had lost track of time), and he took a firmer hold of her thighs as she shifted restlessly from one side to another under his mouth. He glanced up and saw her with her head tipped back against the floor, her hair strewn back, and her face and throat tense with concentration and need. He pulled away for a moment, teasing, and she growled low in her throat and tilted her head up to shoot an accusing glare at him. But when she saw his expression, he noticed her pupils dilate further and the flush in her face darken, and without breaking eye contact he resumed pressure on her. She could only watch for several seconds before she dropped her head back to the floor with a moan, and in another few seconds she was climaxing around him.
He decreased the intensity of his contact but didn't pull away entirely until the spasms in her body had subsided, then he pushed to his hands and crawled towards her. He felt just as self-satisfied as he had the first time he had managed to bring her to orgasm this way, but mostly he was more turned on than he could remember ever being before. He wanted her as soon as possible.
Much sooner than Sherlock would have expected her capable of it, she turned on him with a smile sharp of definite intent, and tugged his thin vest and jumper over his head. He was still wearing his pants, and she glanced down at them, then looked back at him with a raised eyebrow. Even though there was nothing Sherlock could imagine desiring more than her stripping him of the last remaining barrier between them, he instinctively swallowed and her smile sharpened even further.
Maintaining eye contact, she dragged her hand down the planes of his chest and abdomen, and he stared back at her with wide, dark eyes, every muscle in his body painfully taut with anticipation. She leaned down and kissed him, and when he felt her palm slide against his erection, he reached up to thread his hands through her hair and deepened the kiss further, sucking hard on her tongue.
The tantalising touch receded for a moment and he broke away from her mouth to glance down, and he watched as she pulled his boxer-briefs down his legs and tossed them in the same direction as her clothes. Before he could grab her hands and pull her back for another kiss, she straddled him just above his knees, a triumphant look on her face.
He watched her face in openly base fascination as she lightly grazed her fingertips from his collarbone down to the top of his thighs and back, raking her nails across his nipples and teasing him with the barest whisper of a touch. Just when he reached a point when he didn't think he could take any more gentle stimulation, and was ready to flip her over and take over, she rose onto her knees while reaching between the two of them. His heart started to pound even harder and his face flushed as he felt his erection brush against her. Then in a series of downward rocking motions she seated herself back on his lap, forcing out a choked exhale from him at the sudden warmth and slick pressure.
At the beginning she had closed her eyes lightly, presumably to focus on the feeling of accommodating him, but when they were fully joined her eyes opened and snapped to his, and that alone ratcheted up his heart rate even further.
All the sensations felt even more raw and immediate after so long a period of sexual inactivity, or perhaps he had just forgotten how potent this sort of pleasure was. In a desperate attempt to maintain control over his body he grasped her hips to fix her in place and breathed hard through his nose, while he tried to focus on the dark pools of her watchful, bright eyes.
She took the opportunity to lean down and press a kiss to his mouth, and he squeezed his eyes shut and pushed his hands into her hair again, clinging to her and returning the kiss with desperate force.
She finally straightened again, and when his eyes hungrily swept over her body he saw that she was still every bit as aroused and lost in sensation as he was.
Beads of sweat began to form at his hairline from the effort it was taking not to mindlessly thrust as his body was demanding he should, but after several moments he cautiously relaxed against the floor. Still, his breath continued to gust out in heavy bursts and his heart sustained its uneven gallop.
Leaning over him, she braced one hand almost directly over the labouring muscle and intertwined her other hand with his, then rocked forward whilst seeming to monitor his expression.
His abdominal muscles tensed at once and his head lifted off the carpeting again, and he felt himself staring at her almost accusingly. In answer, she let out a low laugh that sounded more like an amused huff of air, and repeated the motion, this time with a teasing glint in her eye.
After a few moments in which he still felt like a prisoner to the throbs of pleasure washing over his body, he managed to ease his grip in her hair, and he slid his hands down the sides of her neck and over her shoulders. Then he cupped one hand over her left breast, and smoothed the other around the curve of her ribcage, so that his wrist nestled into the hollow of her waist. With a spike in his BPM he noted that if he held her that way, he could feel her heart contracting and relaxing beneath his fingertips of one hand, and feel the way her abdominal muscles bunched and shifted under her skin as she rolled her hips, whilst also feeling the expansion of her lungs under her ribs as she breathed in deeply, with the other hand.
How had he denied himself this for so long, he thought both with wonder and chagrin. How had he forgotten the unique and singular exhilaration of this connection with her? The intellectual intercourse had been thrilling, and had been stimulating enough to sustain them thus far in their recent alliance, but he had found that with others, if few.
This part of him was only for her, ever.
The cheap fibres of the flat's wall-to-wall carpeting began to dig sharply into his back, and he felt his skin start to burn from friction as she repeatedly ground down on him, but the heat of an altogether type that flared and grew out of the friction where they came together was far more compelling to him.
As he hefted the supple roundness of her breast in his palm and teased at the firm peak of her nipple with his fingertips, they developed a sinuous, flowing rhythm. She pressed forward and down as he tensed his thighs and pushed off his heels to thrust up, and resuming this with her felt completely natural and effortless to him.
He dragged his hand downwards from her waist until it rested flat against her lower belly, and through a haze of lust he stared at the way his hand spanned from her pelvic bone all the way to her hip. He realised that if he moved his thumb downward to press into her clitoris, he could still grip onto the place where her hip met thigh with his fingers. Pursing his lips he followed thought with action, and pulled her down and forward as he exerted pressure with his thumb in a firm anti-clockwise motion. Immediately her entire body shivered around him, and her fluid rocking motion faltered for a moment.
"There, yes, there," she said in a breathless moan, putting her arms behind her to brace against his thighs, and tossing her head back so that the ends of her dark hair brushed against the tops of his knees. "God, you haven't forgotten at all, have you?"
No, he most certainly had not, he thought with dark satisfaction, and he continued to press the pad of his thumb into her as they moved together, faster now. All the sensations and tastes and textures that he hadn't experienced in over a year were still available to him in characteristic encyclopaedic precision. Things like how she preferred anti-clockwise stimulation to clockwise, or she was particularly sensitive where her throat met her jaw, or when he did this—he canted his hips in an upwards swivel motion as he thrust—it could make her gasp. It did.
In the few days they had spent together after he had come her aid in Karachi, he had begun to learn her just as he had learned the violin all those years ago. The comparison wasn't without merit, he thought judiciously. Success with both required complex interplay between technical understanding of cause and effect, an unselfconscious willingness to learn and move on from error, the development of specific fine motor skills, and most importantly – passion and commitment. All those factors were necessary in making music, as well as making her body come alive under his hands and lips. And just as his knowledge of and passion for music and musical theory was deep and of advanced complexity, it was also incredibly narrowly focused—it was through the scope of one instrument alone—the violin. He was beginning to suspect that she shared that same singularity, and that many of his life experiences would only be viewed through the lens of The Woman—that she would be the very impetus for those life experiences.
He wasn't arrogant enough to believe that he didn't still have much to learn until he understood The Woman as intimately he did his violin (that is if he ever could, which he doubted), but he certainly did not intend to allow so much time to pass again between one tryst and the next, unless exogenous condition demanded it.
He noticed deep red carpet burns spreading out across Irene's knees in angry looking criss-cross patterns, and he stilled his movements, then pulled her down into his arms for a long, deep kiss before they rose and stumbled towards the bed.
They had spent just over a fortnight in this location, and when he had been forced to get sleep he had usually managed to time it so that he could avoid sharing the bed with her. He had been all too aware of the magnetic pull between them, and he wanted to remove as much problematic stimuli as possible. Though he would have preferred to believe that he'd have been able to resist fantasising about her as they shared the narrow, nonstandard double bed, he'd had his doubts that he'd always succeed with such repression.
But now she was sprawled on her back before him, her thighs straddled over his, and he knew he couldn't have imagined a more debauched yet arousing sight. But despite her overt sexual pose, his arousal chiefly stemmed from her expression, which was at once inviting and foreboding; it seemed to promise both his salvation and his damnation. Very specifically his—Sherlock Holmes's.
He faced his fate readily. When he settled into position on his knees, she reached out and took him in hand, using the traces of her own body's natural lubricant that were still on him to slide her hand up and down his length in a fluid, almost careless motion.
Swallowing a deep groan, he reached down and began to caress her in turn, and he was once more awed at how aroused she was—by him. It was bizarre to think of himself as a sexual person and yet there was no denying that she brought it out of him—they brought it out in one another.
She didn't make any sound when his fingers made contact with her and began to press and glide against her flesh, but she bit her lip hard and her eyes narrowed into slits. Still, he could see the intensity of her gaze as she watched him, before his own eyelids fluttered shut from the pleasure.
He felt the long-avoided but familiar build-up of exquisite urgency as her loose grip sped up and tightened, and fearing that he might finish without her, he grasped her wrist to still her movement, then brought it to his lips and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her pulse point. After a moment she curled that hand into the hair at the nape of his neck, and he shifted on his knees, then pushed his hips slowly forward and guided himself inside her again. He felt as if he were right on the threshold of climaxing again, and so he stilled, gripping her tightly around the waist with both hands and stroking arcs against her belly with his sides of his thumbs.
After a moment the powerful sensation abated, and still holding her around the waist, he began to pull her towards him over and over again.
She stretched both arms out below her thighs to grasp onto the tops of his knees so that a circuit of physical connection was completed, and he saw that the expression on her face had changed. Her featured were set and serious, but her eyes were warm, open, and looked impossibly deep.
Sherlock felt as if their steadfast eye contact elevated them to an altogether different plane of existence—a plane in which they were simply intellect, and talent, and skill, just two minds joining. And while the bond itself was all about their minds, and about much more than sex, it also deepened the meaning of their physical connection, making it all the more powerful and alluring.
Starting to breathe so hard that every exhale was almost a moan, he fell forward, transferring his weight to his elbows, so that he could drop his face to hers and look into her face from only inches away.
He noted the deep rose flush of her pale skin, the sheen of sweat, her tense jaw, and the hot pants of breath gusting from her parted lips, but what seemed to matter most in the moment was their physical and mental closeness.
Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, holding him tightly to her, and she entwined one leg with his, and planted her other foot into the mattress so that she could meet his downward stroke with an upward lift of her hips—the reversal of their position on the carpet. Turnabout was always fair play with them.
As he looked into her fierce, determined face, for the second time in his life he thought the words he'd never believed it possible for him to express. Rather, the words that he'd never even spent time considering that he might express, because the very idea of him experiencing the sentiment itself was absurd... prior to Her.
But now he did think them, and he nearly said them. He felt more vulnerable and yet more willing to share of himself than he ever had before. Surely, he hadn't felt this raw and affected when they had last been intimate? It seemed impossible, and yet when he cast his mind back to that time, he recalled in an instant that yes, it had been just like this.
He said, exhaled, her name, and there must have been enough sentiment in those barely vocalised syllables for The Woman to understand what he was feeling. The last strain in her face softened, and an instant later she broke eye contact to pull him into a searing, ardent kiss. It was uncoordinated and their teeth briefly clacked together at the start, but it left him feeling light-headed and breathless from not just physical passion, but also emotion.
Only moments later she pulled her head back with a breathless and hoarse moan and arched up into him, digging her fingers into his shoulder blade and tightening her interior muscles around him in excruciatingly pleasurable pulses. With the last shred of his presence of mind, he tried to maintain the pace and angles of his strokes as she rode out what seemed like a very powerful orgasm.
Seeing her lose herself when she was at most times almost pathologically composed and in-control set off a primal reaction within him, and the moment after she climaxed he pressed his lips against the exposed underside of her jaw, nipping and then sucking at the sternoclydomastoid muscle that was standing out from her throat. Then he leaned back slightly and turned his focus on her breasts, whilst picking up his pace.
He felt his own physical release building, and the physical overtook him again with a vengeance. He lost his mind to the way their lips fit back together and how her tongue stroked his, and any semblance of precision or strategy vanished. All he registered was her warmth that wrapped all around him, the slide of sweat-slicked skin, and the pounding of both their hearts. Still, there was a deep, poignant ache that underpinned every frisson of pleasure he felt.
He forced his eyes open to see her blue ones staring intently up at him, an unguarded expression of lust, awe, and what looked almost like possessiveness on her face. He stared into that gaze for the length of a heartbeat, which felt both like an instant and an age, before he succumbed to the biological imperative to squeeze his eyes shut and press his face into her hair.
He let out a single groan deep from his diaphragm, his entire body tensing over hers as he thrust artlessly into her a few final times, chasing completion.
Then he felt his lips pull away from his teeth in a grimace of extreme pleasure and his fingers dig into the heated flesh of her shoulders, but those sensations were nothing compared with the sweet, pounding ecstasy that was rushing through him in a series of ever more powerful waves.
When the sensation finally receded, it left him feeling as exhausted and limp as if he had been swept up by actual waves and then spat out on shore, except that the most prevalent feelings were bliss and contentment.
He blinked, and the barest sliver of cognitive function returned—just enough for him to realise that his dead weight was probably beginning to feel too heavy for the woman pinned beneath him. With effort he half-rolled off of her, pushing his sweat-dampened hair away from his forehead. He tossed his arm across Irene's thigh and curled his hand around her knee, and as he regained his senses he watched his fingers stroking the skin there.
She rested her hand over his forearm, and for a moment they laid together, both breathing hard, and judging by the way the posterior tibial pulses in their ankles were visible beats even from the head of the bed, their heart-rates were equally raised.
He had a brief worry that as their temperatures cooled and the cocktail of sexual hormones diminished he would regret this loss of control. After all, he had once told this very woman that love was a dangerous disadvantage, and as he had known before, they were in such a tenuous position that the minutest misstep could get them both killed. Any and all disadvantages were to be avoided, at the cost of everything and anything else.
And yet neither the sentiment nor his physical and intellectual attraction towards her dissipated; it only mellowed and deepened, and he felt strangely unafraid about what the future held for them.
On the first day he had awoken to find her gone, and had thought he was finally alone.
On the seventh day, he had realised how truly alone he had been until they reconsummated their relationship. Sleeping together hadn't just been the culmination of spending a week apart; it was the true reunion after more than a year apart that they hadn't experienced until now.
Ten minutes later, he hadn't yet tired of the press of skin on skin, or become claustrophobic or annoyed in any way. It felt simultaneously luxurious and comforting, and he sensed the exhaustion that had been eluding him for over a week begin to steal over him. He relaxed into it, and into her, anticipating a deep, hard-earned sleep.
"Sherlock," she said, and he could feel as well as hear her speak, since she was sprawled against his shoulder.
"Mm," he grunted, pressing his knee into her to tell her he was listening.
"As I came into the flat, you were leaving."
"Mmm," he hummed in affirmation, on the very edge of slumber.
"Going where?" she asked.
For a moment he didn't know if he wanted to answer, for more reasons than his tiredness, but then he cracked open his eyes and admitted, "To find you. I'd waited as long as I could, but I needed to know whether you had been killed or captured, or—"
"Or had betrayed you," she finished for him, her voice subdued.
He knew that she was thinking that no matter how long they knew one another, or how much they accomplished whilst allied together, that first hurt she had caused him would probably always remain a ghost of conflict between them. He also knew that she was probably right, and he wondered if she regretted it, or if she only regretted that he had guessed her password. Then again, they would almost certainly not be lying in bed together if he had not understood the motivation behind the code and then the code himself, and he would rather take what they had with all its scars, than have nothing with her at all. He was undoubtedly a better detective and a better man because of her, and he wasn't sure whether he would have actually been strong enough or clever enough to manage this work without her.
She slid her arm across his chest and settled on her side so that he could take in the entire curvaceous line of her body in profile, and he was immediately reminded of his earlier thoughts likening her to his violin. Her hip resembled the wider flare of the lower bout, her waist was the C bout, the curve of her ribs and shoulder were the upper bouts, and her neck and wavy, curling hair were the neck and scroll of the instrument. But he had to admit that she was more exquisite, and more important to him, that any violin.
"You miss it?" she asked, lifting her head to rest her chin on his shoulder.
Her lazy murmur penetrated his train of thought, and he realised he might have murmured the word 'violin' aloud as well, or else she was even more observant than he realised, which was also very possible. If it were the former, he was growing rather indiscreet with her, and yet he couldn't be bothered to be bothered. He had certainly never intended to discuss his earlier thoughts which linked the Strad with The Woman, but now something compelled him to share, despite the 'out' she had unintentionally handed him. Was this what people meant by pillow talk?
"Yes. But... That's not what I meant." His voice sounded hoarse, he thought, hardly like himself. None of this seemed like himself, and yet, like his voice, it was. "It's what you're like—a violin. My violin."
She looked at him for another moment, and then her mouth curved into a pleased smile.
She didn't ask for him to elaborate or explain, and seemed to accept the statement on its own. Perhaps she could sense that he would not feel comfortable articulating the metaphor any further, and yet for some reason that actually made him want to explain it to her.
"I don't care for most music. Popular music, I mean. It doesn't matter much to me, it's mostly just noise. But when I play the violin I see endless permutations of complexity, and possibility, and I'm never bored. It helps me think, and when I give myself over to the music I find that I make connections I might not have otherwise."
He trusted that she would understand all the implications of his statements and how his words related to her and their dynamic, and it was clear that she did. As he spoke, she studied their entwined hands, her face grave and motionless in a way that told him that what he was saying was actually having some affect on her. They were mirrors in many ways, and he recognised the expression he made himself on the rare occasions he felt strong emotion.
A moment later, still looking at their hands, she asked, "Why the violin?"
He went silent for a moment as well, considering how to answer. It felt as if his violin had always been there for him as his constant companion and consolation, and yet at the same time he could clearly remember how it had entered his life in the first place.
"At first it wasn't violin, it was piano," he told her. "It was decided that Mycroft, who had already proven himself to be 'tremendously gifted,' should take up the more challenging instrument." Sherlock sneered, then said, "We all grew bit disillusioned with him in general after having to listen to him saw away over the course of several years on the del Gesu our grandfather gave him."
"Ah, is that how you got so dedicated—you knew you could outshine big brother?" she asked, amusement and interest brightening her voice.
"I knew I could make it sound... beautiful," he replied. It wasn't quite a denial. But it wasn't quite accurate either, so he amended: "I knew I could understand it in a way that he never would." And given that his brother had seemed to outshine him in every other way at that point in their lives, at first that had meant everything. Then the music had stood for itself.
He felt a slightly self-conscious in the ensuing silence, and cleared his throat.
At the sound she blinked, then rolled up onto her elbow and looked at him. "I am flattered, but I'd much prefer to be the bow."
"The bow?" He thought for a moment, mindlessly running his fingertips along the edge of her shoulder blade, then said, "I see: The bow is independent of the instrument, and yet frequently controls it. It creates music with the violin of a complexity and sophistication that the violin could never make on its own. It's also not exclusive to the violin; it's compatible with violas, cellos, double basses... There's also the fact that it bears a striking resemblance to a riding crop, which I imagine you find appealing," he added teasingly.
"'Striking resemblance to a riding crop,'" she quoted with a smirk and one raised brow, "Pun intended?"
He rolled his eyes but without any actual rancor, then pulled her closer against him.
"Mm, yes to all that you said," she agreed, returning to his question. "But also for the fact that unlike violin strings which are too short, the horsehair in a bow is quite effective in strangling someone."
She turned to him and after a moment a dry, sardonic smile touched her lips, though her eyes sparkled with humour.
He laughed a low, amused chuckle, but then he became serious again when he remembered the drops of blood splattered across her waist and hips. She may have been joking about the efficacy of horsehair in strangling—may have been—but that blood had been all too real.
He sat up and looked down at her intently, and for the third time since she had returned after a week-long absence he asked her, "Where have you been?"
This time she answered him, and as he listened to her he didn't feel at all tired anymore. Rather the opposite, in fact...