The Broken Tango
Chapter 12
Irene collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table four hours later, tired but exhilarated as John and Sherlock settled into chairs in the living room. They had just got back from the case, successfully wrapped up.
Irene could never have imagined how good it felt to be doing it, to be solving cases like this alongside Sherlock and John. Sure, that day she met them she had felt a huge surge of satisfaction to have proved the case was a murder, not a suicide, first but it wasn't the same as seeing it through to the end, working as a team.
She flicked a glance at Sherlock, and shared an exhilarated smile, John too busy closing his eyes and playing dead to see.
Suddenly the sound of a phone buzzing interrupted the companionable silence between the trio, as John sighed and flicked his phone open.
A second later he rolled his eyes and grinned.
"I'm going to Sarah's. See you two later," he called over his shoulder, disappearing into his bedroom. Irene watched him go through narrowed eyes, as he and Sherlock exchanged a meaningful glance.
The two men seemed to have a kind of telepathic ability to communicate through their eyes alone, and this masculine communication was indecipherable to Irene.
Men.
Shrugging it off, she leant her head on her arms, closing her eyes.
Her senses stretched and unfurled, like a cat napping in the sun, as she felt Sherlock stand up and walk up behind her, his hands positioned exactly ten centimetres from her arms, leaning over her so his breath washed over the nape of her neck.
"Mmmm," Irene breathed, feeling Sherlock's lips brush aside her hair, softly caressing her skin. She shifted, opening her eyes with a sigh, to indeed find Sherlock's cufflinks by her nose.
"Come on, woman. We're going for dinner," Sherlock whispered in her ear. Smirking, secretly loving that domineering tone, she sat up just enough to stare Sherlock defiantly in the eye over her shoulder.
"Oh, are we? Rather arrogant of you, Sherlock," she replied sarcastically.
"You must be tired if that's the best you can manage, Irene. It is exhilarating isn't it?" he tugged on her earlobe playfully with his teeth, making her inhale sharply. "How did you manage to resist for so long?"
"Can't you deduce that yourself?" Irene retorted teasingly, sitting up into his arms. Sherlock tilted her head back and up to meet his lips, kissing her deeply.
They'd been careful for the entire day since the labs not to touch too often, trying not to heighten the tension lying between them. Now it returned tenfold, testing Sherlock's control, his resolve.
Inwardly shaking, he drew back, panting, mollified to see Irene in no better state.
"Go and get changed," he whispered, letting her up as she glared at him. Regaining his composure, he smiled charmingly, catching hold of her hand and pressing a kiss to her inner wrist.
"Fine, I'm going, I'm going," she muttered, tearing herself away and disappearing to her room. Just as her door closed, John's opened and he cast Sherlock a disapproving glance as he grabbed his leather jacket.
"What?" Sherlock demanded, frowning.
"Sherlock, you're meant to ask her on a date, not tell her you're going on a date," John explained, slowly like he was talking to a small child.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Sherlock grumbled, good-naturedly. "It worked, didn't it?"
John laughed, shaking his head in fond exasperation.
John was long gone by the time Irene emerged from her room, carrying her overcoat on her arm. Sherlock sprang up from his seat on the sofa, trying not to let his mouth drop open in a spectacularly embarrassing fashion.
He'd seen Irene at her sexiest, at her most dangerous-looking but the woman walking towards him now was alluring and vulnerably pretty, looking her age for once.
Her lithe figure was shown to its best advantage in black jeans, and a blue satin top, slightly off the shoulder so her milky skin gleamed in the gentle lighting of the living room. Her long hair was loose down her back, framing her face in soft waves, the only jewellery she wore a small silver bracelet.
"Where are we going?" Irene asked, slipping her jacket on and flicking her hair from beneath the collar. Regaining his equilibrium, Sherlock gestured for her to precede him down the stairs, calling to Mrs Hudson that they were going out.
"To a place I know just around the corner, run by an old friend of mine," he told her shortly, closing the front door of 221B Baker Street behind them. The cold winter air hit them like a physical hit to the face. "But first…" Sherlock trailed off, reaching for Irene. She went willingly into his arms, letting him kiss her passionately before drawing back, blinking.
"That was unexpected. Thought you weren't into the whole public-displays-of-affection thing," she breathed, before deciding she really didn't care and kissing him again anyway.
"Come on," Sherlock eventually managed to get out between kisses, a strong urge to just skip dinner and drag her back upstairs becoming steadily stronger if he didn't stop this now.
"Are you sure we can do this without descending into an argument?" Irene asked, jokingly, not quite daring to verbalise what else they might descend into. Sherlock's brow quirked, as he smiled humourlessly.
"We can but try," he replied, offering his arm gallantly if a little mockingly. She glared at him, and he sighed as he took her arm in his, and they walked, still trying to stave off the rising hunger between them.
Northumberland Road was still crowded and busy at seven o clock, people scurrying to and from the shops and restaurants, black taxis rushing past. Sherlock still had to suppress a reflexive shiver whenever he saw one.
Irene looked up with curiosity as they stopped outside of Angelo's place, the warm lights beckoning. As she stepped through, the heat of the interior washed over her like a bath, after the frigid air of the street.
Immediately, a slightly rotund old man with a grey ponytail bustled across to them, gripping Sherlock's gloved hand warmly.
"Sherlock, good to see you again. Another date?" he asked, now looking at Irene, who stared steadily back. Before Sherlock could answer, he laughed and clapped her shoulder. "Of course it is. Better looking than the last one too."
Glancing between Sherlock and this mad stranger, she couldn't help smirking at the look on Sherlock's face, half exasperated, half aggravated.
"Angelo, you're looking well," he murmured, before ushering Irene forward. "I got Angelo off a murder charge by proving he was halfway across the other side of London at the time," he explained to Irene, who nodded.
"Gave me a new start, this man did. Anything you want, anything at all is on the house, Sherlock," Angelo wrung Sherlock's hand one last time, before gesturing towards a table by the lit window, cosy and private.
Sliding in, Irene thanked Angelo with a smile before turning teasingly to Sherlock.
"'Better looking than your last date,' huh? Do you bring all your dates here?" she asked, loving the slightly ruffled expression on her date's face.
"That was a misunderstanding. I brought John here on a stakeout when we first met and Angelo assumed we were together," he explained, frowning at her repressively while she tried to suppress a laugh.
The mental image of John and Sherlock on a date was just too much.
"Sure it was," Irene rolled her eyes, before picking up her menu.
An hour later and Irene pushed her plate away, sighing in contentment.
"I could not eat another goddamn thing," she muttered, at which Sherlock just cocked an eyebrow and promptly nicked her half-eaten chocolate soufflé with a shrug. Irene eyed his skinny frame and grunted, "Pig."
"Waste not, want not," Sherlock replied primly, winking at Irene as she rolled her eyes. She sipped her wine delicately, feeling utterly at peace.
"How can men get away with eating like half-starved elephants but women can't? You're all abnormal," she replied quickly.
"No, we just possess a greater metabolism than women. Comes from evolution of the male role of a hunter, while the woman is, evolutionarily speaking, a-" Sherlock explained, before Irene cut him off with a raised eyebrow.
"Oh don't even start with all that evolutionary sexism rubbish," she retorted, her smile teasing. On an impulse, she sat up and grasped his hand over the table. "I utterly enjoyed the case today, Sherlock. I knew how good it felt to-"
"Beat me in deducing that that suicide was, in fact, a murder when we first met?" Sherlock finished for her with a lopsided grin. Irene glared at him.
"I was going to say, how good it felt to do that, but to investigate it, to work out every detail and solve it was just…exhilarating," she sighed, breathlessly. Sherlock gazed at her beauty, at her earnestness and couldn't quite hold back his smile.
He knew how it felt too.
"Well, then you're just going to have to join us for more," he replied, "It's an addiction."
"Yes, it is. But a good one," Irene replied. "Better than rotting my brain away in some boring office job."
"True, very true. Mind you, I can't picture you as a PA or an office girl. Too mouthy for a start," Sherlock commented, with a wicked edge to his smile now. Irene glared at him, before her face transformed, a sensual grin spreading over her lips.
"Well, maybe you can find a use for my mouth, Sherlock," she murmured, leaning back in her seat and shifting under his gaze. He froze when he felt her foot very gently flick his leg, before the pressure increased, tracing a path up his trouser leg with her toes. The contact was fleeting, barely there but it was enough for Sherlock to grit his teeth and glare at Irene.
"Let's play a game. What can you tell about that man over there?" Irene suddenly asked, with a laugh when she saw Sherlock's jaw tense even more as her foot slid over his thigh.
Concentrating through the physical sensations of Irene teasing his leg with her foot beneath the table, trying to fight off his inevitable reaction, Sherlock glanced over at the man Irene was looking at.
He was about forty, well-dressed with a slight paunch and sitting opposite an attractive young woman, blonde and raunchily dressed, in her twenties.
"Got it," Sherlock muttered. "High end City executive, married but in an adulterous relationship with his much younger PA, sitting opposite. Has a penchant for alcohol, but not for exercise hence the excess weigh-"
He shut up abruptly, as Irene had to restrain a laugh.
"Something wrong, Sherlock?" she asked, digging her foot in just a little again, Sherlock's pained breath almost making her fall to the floor, sides splitting with laughter.
Sherlock Holmes, this susceptible, who would have thought it?
"You're treading on very thin ice, Irene," Sherlock growled, his icy eyes now completely focussed on her, dispelling her amusement, as she shivered.
She felt like she was under the gaze of a predator, prowling around his prey before he pounced. Her skin tingled, and her breathing accelerated, eying him warily now.
"Then maybe its time we fall through it," she murmured, withdrawing her foot and slipping it back into its shoe. Sherlock nodded once, brusquely, slipping into his coat and buttoning it up before helping Irene with hers.
She was supremely conscious of his hands lingering on her shoulders for a second too long, possessively.
Sherlock and Irene walked quickly through the streets of London, not stopping, never faltering. Their gloved hands clung to each other, the only contact they dared to allow themselves, until they reached the blessedly dark hallway of 221B, Baker Street.
Irene barely registered the door closing behind her, before she had been shoved against the wall and Sherlock's lips had descended on her own. His leather gloves cupped her face, holding her still as he pressed against her. She gasped into his mouth, hands looped around his waist as they hungrily kissed.
Sherlock released her face to manhandle her coat from her, before shrugging his own off impatiently, reaching for her. He forcefully pulled her against him, needing to feel her body against his own, as she came willingly, more than ready to pay the price of her teasing.
For the collected, composed Sherlock it was the closest he had ever come to losing control.
They stumbled upstairs, still absorbed in each other, hands touching, caressing, claiming without thought or conscious direction, the quiet, still air of the flat disturbed by their gasps and moans.
Sherlock released her long enough to shut his bedroom door, turning around to find her already on the bed, lying back with an expectant smile and lust-filled eyes.
He ripped off his shirt, uncaring that he heard buttons fly off in some unknown direction, just needing her hands on his skin, and to feel hers in turn. Her hands glided over him, passionately possessive as he kissed her deeply, urgently taking all she would give and demanding more.
Irene gave it, arching beneath him as she clawed at his remaining clothes, doing absolutely nothing to help him do the same to hers, as she greedily explored and caressed all she wished was hers.
On the thought, she rolled them over, straddling his hips as she sank onto him, before lowering her lips back to his. His hands spasmed in her hair, clutching her to him as they gasped and moaned in concert, their bodies intent on driving what little sanity remained to them from their minds.
Where the words came from, Sherlock would never know, mentally cursing his vulnerability. "Never leave me," he growled out, against her lips as they began that now familiar giddy ride to heaven.
Surprised, adrift on a storm-tossed sea of emotion and building need, Irene could only reply, "As long as I never have to, I never will."
Sherlock dragged her lips back to his, unsure if he wanted to rip those words back so they never existed, or to let them remain. The vulnerability he felt was cold and unwelcome, and for the first time in his life, as he felt Irene cry out in ecstasy above him, he didn't know what to do.
Faced with the depth of his need, he was lost and afraid, for the first time.
And that thought echoed in his head as he gave in to his own release, letting Irene's body pleasure him into oblivion before they collapsed into each other's arms.
All he knew, for certain, was that he could never lose her. He supposed there was always a first time for everything.