John did not like Irene Adler. John did not like Irene Adler one little bit. Just thinking about her made John's mind fill with words. The kind of terrible words that people used against women. And that just made him feel like a terribly poor excuse for a man. In fact everything about Irene Adler made John feel like a poor excuse for a man. And that is why Irene Adler made John seethe.

In all their encounters she never quite acknowledged John's animosity not out loud. But John just knew that she knew, and that it somehow amused her, and that made a low terrible feeling roll through John's gut and into his fingertips, his muscles, his fists.

Irene was drawn to Sherlock; she doted on him, her body practically purring as she wound her way around him. Attracted to his cleverness in a way that rubbed John the wrong way. She called him clever and John heard different. She called him handsome and John only heard personal insults. Irene cooed over Sherlock's deductions, in the way that love-sick teenagers do: idolising the famous, imprinting attributes that they barely understand themselves, onto people they do not know and did not understand.

Irene Adler slunk into their lives on a day that started with John in a field, sent out because of some stupid system of rating cases that John had suggested as a joke but that Sherlock had apparently taken to heart. And because this case was only a 6 John was in a field, without Sherlock with a laptop balanced in one hand, whilst an increasingly confused police detective hovered around him, demanding to know why the great Sherlock Holmes himself was not there. And John offered vague reassurances and steadily rotated the laptop around the scene as a sheet-clad Sherlock peered into a webcam from the warmth of 221b Baker Street. John had no idea what Sherlock was seeing, and found himself more interested in how a field in the middle of nowhere had a better wi-fi connection than their flat.

That was until the connection to Sherlock's laptop suddenly went blank and John was being picked up by helicopter. Helicopter.

Sat in Buckingham Palace next to a Sherlock Holmes that was only wearing a bed sheet was not quite the strangest thing John had ever done but it was vying for at least third place. Apparently wearing pyjamas around the flat was actually Sherlock dressing up.

They had been summoned to Buckingham Palace because a royal person had gotten himself or herself mixed up with a sex worker. Quite why Mycroft needed Sherlock to solve this puzzle for him was rather beyond John's capabilities, especially whilst sat in Buckingham Palace, next to a 6-ft naked detective.

John had found himself caught between fond amusement and quiet alarm when Sherlock had dropped his hold on his sheet as he flung his frustration at his brother. John really had seen enough of Sherlock Holmes for this lifetime, as Sherlock continued to refuse to engage with John regarding appropriate flat attire. Gathering the sheet back up around him Sherlock had stalked out the room, and made it as far as the doorway when Mycroft had stopped him by thumping the tip of his umbrella against the marble floor. Once, twice, three times. The sound reverberated across the high-ceiling room and Sherlock had stopped. Hearing aid in today. Hearing aid in but pants off. That was John's life now.

Later they had sat on solidly stuffed ornate sofas whilst Sherlock nonchalantly added sugar lumps to his tea as if he visited the Royal Household every week. Sherlock didn't take sugar, but John watched incredulously as he added three lumps with pedantically precise movements to the ridicoulsly tiny tea cup. Christ the teaspoon should have been standing upright.

'You can stop being miffed that Emily isn't here.' Mycroft told Sherlock.

Sherlock pursed his lips, and made a lazy motion with one hand, raising his tea cup to his mouth with the other.

'Helicopter?' Queried Mycroft. Sherlock tipped his head to one side.

'I presume you're wondering why I flew John here, but not Emily?'

'Yes, I was wondering that.' Interrupted John. 'Why you did. That.'

'Someone needed to handle you.' Mycroft addressed to Sherlock. 'And besides Miss Kiln is unavailable.'

Mycroft seemed to place special emphasis on these words and something passed between the two brothers. Sherlock's face took on a mulish expression, but he did not mention Emily again.

Although Mycroft was fluent in BSL (read adequate signer if you asked Sherlock), John was beginning to appreciate the role of an interpreter who was not also required to be in the conversation. He signed as he spoke or rather spoke as he signed, but sometimes leapt on ahead with the signing and had to back track in English slightly or vice versa, and Sherlock had his frowning face on, which always looked slightly like he was gearing up for a headache, or so John thought.

Eventually Sherlock flapped a hand at Mycroft, and made a quick abortive motion with both hands, crossed and uncrossed. Stop. The crooked fingers of his left hand circled around his lips, and he flung a hand at himself. Me. Lipread.

Mycroft frowned but stopped signing, though his hands came up occasionally almost out of habit. Sherlock almost smiled, John fancied.

Sherlock looked over the print outs from Miss Irene Adler's website with his usual intense disinterest. Mycroft jabbed at him about sex and Sherlock answered too quickly. John's eyes flickered back and forth, speculatively. Apart from that odd one-sided conversation they had had at the start of their relationship when Sherlock seemed to think that John was coming onto him, John had not given much thought to Sherlock and that. That being sex. There had been bodies, dead bodies that was, and evil taxi drivers, art thefts and running and laughing. And ridiculousness. And John had been preoccupied by Sarah, a Doctor from his surgery, and then a small string of slightly disappointing dates and short lived romances, and maybe a tiny bit of an obsession with Emily. So it was an odd thought for John, thinking about Sherlock being intimately involved with anyone, and it was odder that John hadn't considered this before. Back in the army he was well aware, perhaps too aware of the exact comings (ahem) and goings of the sex lives of all his friends and colleagues. And outside of the army he always knew if someone was dating, or married, or between relationships or just over a bad break up or just looking. But with Sherlock he didn't know any of these things. And it hadn't occurred to him to ask, not since the restaurant.

A cab took them home and John's thoughts were interrupted by a burst of laughter when Sherlock brandished a crystal ashtray, stolen from underneath the Queen's nose.

Things went strange for a while, after that. Visiting a Dominatrix's, posh but surprisingly normal house was not so strange. Watching Sherlock avoid looking at a very naked woman was not that strange. Not by the standards that John's life had currently reached. It could be considered sweet Sherlock's attempts to avoid looking. Under the right circumstances. What was strange, was that she knew sign language. Not much but enough, more than John in fact. Sherlock narrowed his eyes at her but then just shook his head and then looked over to John as if for reassurance. Irene ended up wearing Sherlock's wool coat wrapped around her as she sat in an armchair in her very clean and white and very normal house. Sherlock stared blankly at her signs, she spoke too.

'Deaf family member is it?' Asked Sherlock. Out loud. 'Or maybe a Deaf lover? Or a Deaf client?' And that is the only moment that John ever saw Irene falter, just for a moment. She frowned at the sound of his voice, almost, somehow. But it was gone in a moment, just like the smiles Sherlock thinks he hides from his brother.

There are Americans, a safe, John got to head-butt someone and Irene showed competent use of elbows, and Sherlock's eyes roamed over Irene in the search for the code to the safe. Cold, calculating and John wondered, once again how he did it. Does the time tick by in your head?

Things definitely go strange after Irene Adler injected Sherlock with some unknown sedative. A fucking unknown sedative. You can't even give someone bloody cough sweets with absolute certainty that you're not going to kill them.

John found Sherlock gasping on the floor and Irene Adler escaping out a window. And he spent that evening in and out of Sherlock's bedroom, fingers pressed against pulse point, eyes watching pupil reactions and skin colour. Sherlock stirred awake at points, his eyes sliding off John's face and into the dark corners of the room and over to the window. He mumbled and his hands fidgeted against the bed covers, curling into shapes John can't interpret.

Around 9pm in the evening John started as he heard a thump coming from Sherlock's bedroom, he'd pushed open the door expecting to find Sherlock sprawled across the floor like he had several hours earlier, before Sherlock had finally conceded that he needed to sleep it off.

Instead he was astonished to find Irene Adler leaning over Sherlock's bed. Sherlock's face was mashed into the pillow and his eyes were narrow slits, staring past John and Irene both.

Irene grimaced when she saw John but her lips quickly quirked up into a smile.

'John.'

'Miss Adler.'

'Oh I do believe we're beyond such formalities, don't you think?'

John didn't answer, and Irene allowed the silence to stretch out between them for a while. Then she cast her eyes back down at Sherlock, who had started to drool a little.

'I had hope that he'd tell me how it was done.'

'Done?'

'That little case you were working on. The man who dropped dead next to the river in Somerset.'

'What?' John was indignant. 'You broke into our flat, to ask a man you drugged the answer to a puzzle?'

'It was intriguing.'

'I should call the police.'

'But you won't. Not until this one wakes up and tells you what to do.'

John lips tightened into a thin line but he didn't say anything.

Irene regarded him carefully, amusement dancing over her features. She is stunningly attractive, in an odd, cruel kind of way. Just like Sherlock in his colder moments.

'Did he tell you how it was done?'

John stared back

'I have tried asking but he just mumbled at me and his hands….'

She gestured towards Sherlock and then leant down to stroke the fingertips of one hand down Sherlock's arm to his fingers. Her hands looked small and delicate against the tight knots of Sherlock's knuckles. She rested her hand against Sherlock's, her palm pressed to the back of his for a moment. Sherlock moved, legs shifting under the sheets and his eyes opened wide, but they still stared past Irene to the gloom of the room, that gloom that always hovers between the ceiling and bed, where the lamplight doesn't reach. John watched as Irene's hand reached up towards Sherlock's face, and gently tipped it towards her own. Sherlock's eyes roved upwards, eyeballs tipped upwards, whites revealed before they slid back to Irene for a moment. He grunted, a half aborted sound from his throat, a familiar sound to John, and his left hand slithered across the bedspread. His right, his dominant arm curled up almost as if palsied, fingers curled against his shoulder, fist resting under his chin. And for a moment they both, Irene and John watched as Sherlock's eyes reached back to Irene and rested there for a moment, and a familiar tightening of his eyes, made him seem lucid.

One crooked finger reached out and brushed sloppily against his cheek. His lips moved silently as he made the sign for woman.

Irene frowned and she started to speak.

'No. No. Stop. Out now. ' John stated, moving towards her. Suprisingly she moved willingly towards the door.

'And whilst you're leaving you can tell me what random drug you chose to stick into him.'

The drug that she rattled off, had John seething, 'He is a fucking recovering drug addict. Are you mental? And you gave him a high dosage of a drug he might already be taking. Were you planning to kill him or just cause irreparable brain damage?'

'Recovering drug addict?' Is all Irene asked sharply and she glanced back over her shoulder at Sherlock who was all sharp angles, and bryonic hair in the darkness of the room. Despite the fact that from the side his face is quite squidgy, John has observed. Maybe.

'Yeah. I know.' John huffed in concession. 'He does'n't quite look the type.'

'No.' Said Irene absently, 'He looks precisely the type.'

It was only after she'd left that John noticed Sherlock's coat hanging up on the back of his door. He frowned.