Disclaimer: Sherlock, as in the show, belongs to the BBC. As in the original idea, it's product of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's imagination.
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock/Irene.
Rating: T for vague mentions of sex.
A/N: Post ASiB.
The texts never followed any kind of pattern—at least not one that he could understand in his side of the Atlantic. They were always short, frequent yet unexpected—and precious nonetheless.
Often, the words he'd read were apt reminders of the now distant days in which both of them resided in London, the brief texts one or another variation of old invitations to dinner that never once meant such a thing. In other occasions, she'd just simply offer him an opportunity to take a glimpse into the life she led now, comments of how dull working in a hotel was, or even the more sporadic mention of things that had brought a memory of him to her mind's eye.
He actually had little problem dismissing what she sent to him, and going on with his life. The power The Woman held over him was undeniable—for himself at least—yet he found no gain in dwelling In unabashed nostalgia for a chapter of his life that had been thoroughly concluded, simply because Irene Adler wasn't supposed to exist anymore.
Or so he liked to think.
After all, there was a text that she'd sent to him more than once, three simple words that every time managed to leave him breathless, a longing in them he supposed matched his own.
Come with me.
He would close his eyes at the pixelated characters, and then he would be on that sandy beach, his pliant mouth colliding with hers in an ancient symphony, eyes open and wide marvelling at the sight of dark brown curls and freckles and sun, salty breeze caressing his skin in the places her deft fingers were not.
Under the warm light of a Mexican sun, her pale eyes had gleamed in a fashion that was merely a reminiscent of the explosion of life and passion he'd only come to know with her, on top of sheets that were coarse by contrast with the delicacy of the curves of a body that he had precisely memorised months ago, within the elegant walls of a flat in Belgravia.
And in that moment, though now only a lone, bittersweet memory, there was no one else in the world but him and The Woman, the one who'd beaten him—and the one who had made him win.
But those days were nothing but a fleeting illusion, an exception that couldn't be made twice. He'd had to return to his life, to retrace painful steps back to England and ensure her safety, and she—Irene Adler, dominatrix, The Woman—had had to stay there, to rebirth into another woman. And every time those words lit up the screen of his mobile, he had to swallow down the powerful urge that ate at him, the need to book the first flight available to Mexico, to get into her bed and sear himself into her beautiful flesh and impossible mind, and never leave.
Which was why, in the seemingly infinite miles that dry land and ocean put between them, all he had were those short texts that he never answered nor saved for posterity. He took them forever with himself in his mind, the only place in the world where the sun casted its light and he could look at a replica of her wicked smile, where her blue eyes stared in ample delight back at him.
The only place where he could be with her.
On a second A/N: There's a photoset for this little story. You can check it out in my profile page.