Author's Note: ...My excuse this time is AS coursework EATING ME ALIVE, but I'm really hoping I can be forgiven! I'm rather nervous about this chapter - heed the M-rating, mis amigos - here there be smut. Thanks soo much for all the reviews, PMs and support so far - a special yell to who has been a source of great encouragement these past few weeks, and to GhibliGirl91 who will hopefully soon be joining the party!
Despite his proclivity for a sense of personal hygiene and clothing rarely appreciated in civilised Victorian society -that is to say he dressed and smelt as though he'd just tumbled head first from a week-long stint in an opium den- Sherlock Holmes did nonetheless have an uncanny ability to make himself presentable in a matter of minutes if occasion should call for such drastic measures to be employed. Presenting himself well was, to Holmes' mind at least, a needless pursuit up until the very point where it becamenecessary; the main problem he encountered was that he was rarely able to judge accurately when that point was. Watson had lost count of the amount of time's he'd sent Holmes back to Baker Street to bathe and change before allowing him through the doors of Cavendish Place, and there was an elderly lady from Regent's Park who had had her husband shoot her beloved cocker spaniel on the grounds that the poor animal was becoming incontinent, blissfully unaware that their progress along the Strand that morning had been tracked every step of the way by a certain consulting detective in shirt-tails daubed with manure.
That said there was neither a tailor nor merchant in London who could deny that Holmes was able to scrub up rather well when he could be bothered to try. In such cases, the art of suitably dressing oneself became to Holmes much like any other area of human behaviour in which he dabbled, however unwillingly - if he really had to do something, he made sure he did it properly.
So it was in a freshly-laundered white shirt, cravat and braces that Holmes answered the door to Irene Adler the next morning, his hair hastily washed and slicked back, cheeks and chin clean-shaven.
"You might have given me a little more warning..."
"And miss the look of surprise on your face?" Irene hopped gracefully up the steps at the front of 221b and under Holmes' arm into the hallway. She was, Holmes thought as he watched her, so breathtaking that no matter how hard he tried, no mental picture he could form between her visits was anywhere close to the reality.
"I am never surprised," Holmes said haughtily. He took the hand she offered and kissed it gently. "How was Rome? You've been back for two...no, three weeks now, have you not? It was warmer than one would expect for the season - your suntan is just beginning to fade, but the freckles..." He raised a finger and tapped her gently on the nose. "...are still quite apparent."
The corners of Irene's mouth turned up - it was an unusually sentimental moment for the two of them, inbetween rounds of the usual repertoire: drinking, making love and Holmes taking hits below the belt whilst smartly skating around facing up to the fact that the attachment between them was developing further with each and every dalliance.
Both of Irene's hands had been shrouded inside the folds of a thick fur coat she was using to keep the chill out, but she withdrew them both and drew back the ermine flaps to reveal a bottle she had kept nestled in the crook of one arm.
"Do you want to take my coat?" She enquired with a barefaced smile. "Or should we skip straight to the wine..?"
Obligingly, Holmes stepped up and helped her out of her coat, feeling his stomach swoop involuntarily as his hand brushed her shoulder (which was of course bare) beneath the fur collar. He hung the garment over the banister and accepted the wine as she pushed it firmly into his hands.
"Is Mrs Hudson away for long?" Irene as usual appeared to have no qualms with making herself at home, for she turned away from Holmes and slinked tantalisingly along the corridor towards the downstairs drawing room before the detective had had the chance to formally invite her in.
"Two weeks," Holmes said as he followed her, hands clasped tightly around the bottle of wine as he mentally wrestled with himself to recall the location of the corkscrew. Mrs Hudson had rearranged the locations of all 221b's sharp or offensive items in the wake of the carnage left by his recent work-starved state, and the corkscrew was one of the few remaining articles he had yet to trace.
"I thought so." Irene had settled herself onto one of the two plump divans Mrs Hudson's drawing room had to offer, azure eyes alight with merriment as she ran both hands simultaneously over the fabric surface. "It's pretty unlikely you'd have bothered coming to the door yourself if she was around. Is this satin?"
Holmes did not answer. He had found the corkscrew in the second place he'd tried - in the second drawer of the dresser, hidden beneath a pile of neatly-folded white napkins. He glanced briefly downwards at the bottle he held in one hand, reading its label for the first time as he opened it: it was red, ten years aged and delightfully musky, Holmes noted, as the cork slipped from the bottle's neck with a satisfying 'pop'.
"Shall I be Mother..?" He began to divide the wine between the two glasses he'd set out earlier in preparation. It was, after all, not only for the vanquishing of the criminal classes that Holmes was prepared to utilise his staggering abilities of foresight; it came in handy also when one was expecting a visitor and the said visitor almost always brought wine.
As he settled on the divan beside Irene and handed one glass of wine to her, Holmes realized for the first time that he was still holding the corkscrew. He began to turn it over and over in his hands as he watched Irene take her first sip of wine, an expression of errant amusement playing across her countenance as she silently mocked him for his suspicions.
"To us?" She raised her glass and Holmes tapped his own dutifully against it.
"Indeed." He drank for the first time, relishing the rich flavour. It was a rare occurrence that Sherlock Holmes was able to taste a wine and not be able to predict with some accuracy the exact establishment from which it had been purchased, but when it came to Irene's most recent offering, he confessed himself to be at a loss...almost: Chianti, which was a particular favourite of Doctor Watson's and that Holmes himself had sampled many times, has a distinctive taste; and yet no two bottles will taste quite the same. Holmes had sampled a great many of the ages and varieties London's taverns had to offer, and yet this was a wholly unfamiliar taste; he was sure of it. She had brought it from overseas then, on her travels. She had, after all, been in Italy. But the evidence said otherwise: Holmes had observed a thin layer of dust over the bottle's surface as he'd handled it, and the outlines of Irene's fingers were clearly visible where she'd gripped it around the neck. If it had travelled too far, the dust would have been wiped clear. So where had the wine come from, if not directly from its country of origin? Holmes was unsure at present. It would never do to ask, so perhaps he would never know. He was learning (painfully slowly, mind, but learning nonetheless) that there were areas in which Irene Adler would never cease to amaze him.
So Holmes put the wine's mystery from his mind and focussed instead upon the woman who had brought it. She was looking particularly beautiful -'ravishing', some might have said- in a dress of deep purple ruffles which clinched around the waist, and hair piled high upon her head. It had occurred more than once to Holmes that he spent an inordinate amount of time studying the clothes she wore, perhaps because he was trying desperately to suppress the urge to tear them from her body and cover the skin below with his hands, and then his lips, and then his own body, lying flush against hers... But no - that would not do. Sherlock Holmes was a gentleman, and he would behave as such until directed otherwise. How lucky it was, then, for Holmes own sanity, that Irene Adler's ethics were not nearly so rigid...
They began almost every time in a similar, if not entirely the same fashion, and this occasion was no different: Holmes had scarcely set down his glass before Irene had slid neatly along the divan and laid a hand across his chest. She leaned in close and exhaled from the mouth, evoking a shiver as her breath caressed the sensitive skin behind Holmes' ear. She ran the hand up from the buttons on his shirt to slide teasingly over and beneath the collar and knot of the cravat.
"Such a dapper detective this morning," she whispered, her breath carrying just a hint of the wine they'd been drinking. "This is shaping up to be a good day so far..."
She kissed his neck first, smiling triumphantly to herself as she felt his pulse quicken slightly beneath her lips. Working her hands upward into his hairline, she pressed against him as well as the difficult angle would allow, which was more than enough for Holmes to work out how this round would be played.
He kissed her then, with enough passion to take her breath, though not so intensely that she was left entirely without her wits, for he sensed she was not in the mood to be dominated or led astray. Breaking their embrace, he slid both hands beneath her thighs and hoisted her from the surface of the settee onto his knees where she settled, one leg on either side of his hips.
They were kissing intently now - he was carding his hand through her hair, stroking and caressing her scalp with nimble fingers while she fought to press each of his shirt buttons through their loopholes in an effort to reach the chest beneath which was by now beginning to heave with anticipation and need.
When the shirt finally fell away, Irene smiled as she surveyed her prize. She and Holmes had been lovers (if that was indeed what you would call them) for more than a year, and it could never have been said that they made anything other than a picture-perfect couple. She was beautiful; he, rugged and handsome belying of his increasing years, and both had been blessed with the potential for impressive physiques. It was only when one took the opportunity to look closer at the precarious relationship they shared that the cracks began to show clearer, and it was these cracks -coupled with an acute conflict of personalities- which kept them from forming a more 'society-friendly' relationship. It hadn't taken them long to realise, however, that this was an arrangement which suited them perfectly. Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler were not conventional individuals; they would not, therefore, be a conventional couple.
Holmes had been making short of Irene's corset - no easy task for he had not yet mastered the art of unlacing it with one hand only, but he was bound and determined to get there in the end, lest face the unwelcome alternative of pausing his ministrations with Irene's lips, skin or hair in order to undress her.
The amount of time Holmes actually spent removing Irene's clothes and the amount of time envisaged it took him to remove them were worlds apart. To his mind, it was an area in desperate need of improvement, but Irene never complained; especially not when his lips were wandering with such tantalising fortitude over every inch of her skin he exposed.
"You're getting faster," Irene remarked teasingly into Holmes' hair as the final knot fell away and the sleuth was able to gently roll down the first layer of violet ruffles and expose the tops of her breasts. "I think..." But the rest of her comment never made it from her mouth, so taken aback was she by the sudden application of Holmes' lips to the warmth between her cleavage, and instead of forming into words, her breath expelled itself in a soft gasp of pleasure.
Holmes kissed lower and lower, pushing back the dress as he used his tongue to encircle first one taut nipple and then the second, feeling her tense and tremble beneath him. Each noise he brought forth from her with his touches seemed like an achievement of colossal proportion, and Holmes was eager for more.
"Mmmm..." Irene wrapped her arms around Holmes' neck and her eyes slid shut as she allowed herself to become lost in the sensation of their bodies melding together and the sudden heat of skin-to-skin contact between their two chests.
Holmes raised his head again and looked into her eyes - brown meeting blue above almost identical shared smiles. He ran a hand up into her hair once more and pulled her into another bruising kiss. With hands on her lower back, he slid out from underneath her and turned her gently onto her back, pulling the dress those final crucial inches down over her hips.
She was breathing heavily now and none-too-gently, every so often allowing a soft moan to slip out without realising the effect it was having upon her perpetrator. Holmes drank up every noise and every shiver: in fact he was struggling to suppress his own.
For want of a way to better occupy his lips and thus prevent the total loss of vocal control he feared was fast approaching (because God forbid that Sherlock Holmes lose his composure), Holmes placed his hands upon Irene's hips and began to tease the skin from just below her breasts with slow, teasing kisses, caressing slowly lower and lower until his lips rested parallel with his hands on either side of her waist. Only then did he pause and turn his eyes upwards towards her, waiting. Their continued correspondence had allowed an arrangement of sorts to develop between them before the indulgence of an as intimate as the one they were poised upon the brink of now: Holmes would not speak nor ask her permission to proceed, but paused nonetheless, thus providing Irene with the opportunity to stop him if she felt the need.
But Irene said nothing: if she had been capable of speech, she would have perhaps have articulated something, but they would only have been words of encouragement. She lay prone upon the cushions, trembling with anticipation as Holmes slid his arms around the tops of her bare thighs and pulled her closer to him. He lifted her legs up to rest over his shoulders, breathing out slowly through his mouth, for well he knew that the hot air blown between her thighs would have her simply contorted in desperation, and as usual he was proven right - Irene let out a beautiful keening groan and wrapped her hands in his hair, tugging none-too-gently as Holmes pressed his lips against the heat radiating straight from her centre and kissed deeply.
He felt her muscles contract -legs twitching and hands tightening in his curls- and the corner of his mouth twitched up into a smile. It was moments like this which he had come to appreciate with Irene - when she tugged on his hair whilst he was pleasuring her, refusing to submit to him entirely. It was the reminder he needed that Irene would never be subservient; that she was every inch his equal, and thus he respected her as such.
That said it certainly felt like he was in control of her for now; tongue dabbing teasingly, pressure varying, whilst his hands held her now stuttering hips to the chaise with a firm but apparently effortless touch. He chanced a look upwards and felt as he always did the thrill of seeing Irene entirely under his spell - head thrown backward, neck craned towards the ceiling, mouth opening and closing, opening and closing whilst small, astounded gasps of air escaped from her parched throat. This was how Holmes liked her to be -relaxed and riddled with pleasure- because it was during the throws of her release (or as she was now, just before it) that Holmes believed her to be at her most beautiful. Vulnerability did not suit Irene Adler; he had learned to enjoy it while it lasted.
It was with a flick of his tongue over one of her more sensitive areas that Holmes procured from Irene the first audible noise since he'd begun pleasuring her: a small, wanton groan which seemed to omit from somewhere deep inside her, and Holmes found himself wondering, not for the first time, whether he touched something more than that which was purely physical when they became intimate.
He repeated the same motion again, and then twice more in quick succession until he dragged a flurry of whispered prayers and barely-restrained moans from the poor woman beneath him as her hips began to move rhythmically up to meet his ministrations. She had given up her vow of silence now, it appeared, the steadily-mounting pleasure far outweighing the need to stay silent. And it was certainly a 'need' to stay silent: Holmes and Irene rarely grew tired of their games and this -the contest to see who could be the first to make the other lose control- was merely another variant. When they did lose interest; when one or other expressed the need to 'throw in the towel' as it were, they would make love softly instead with chaste kisses and gentle, arousing strokes of hands over taut skin and muscle.
Paying close attention to the movement and rhythm of her body, Holmes brought his mouth higher and -using an adept finger now as well- gently stroked her finally, mercifully over the precipice of her release. With a final shudder and a deep, almost lyrical moan, Irene let her head fall backwards onto Mrs Hudson's cushions.
Holmes ran his hands up and down her thighs a few times before helping her to lower her legs. She pivoted, kicking her ankles high in a brief pirouette and with a tinkling laugh, lay back down again with her head this time settled in Holmes' lap.
"That was quite a welcome!" Irene felt sated and content as she stared up at Holmes, partnered with the unfamiliar feeling of being totally at ease which seemed to crop up only when she was with him.
"Hmm." Holmes cast a hand over her forehead, sweeping back the strands of chocolate brown which had settled across her forehead, slightly dampened by perspiration.
Irene's grin widened. "Talkative, as always..." She leaned over the edge of the settee and retrieved her half-full wine glass. "Come on then, I want all the news - how is the Doctor?"
"Busy." Holmes answered with far more disdain than he'd necessarily intended, and Irene let out a burst of laughter.
"My God, you're like a kid who had his favourite toy confiscated. It's adorable - you pine more for him than you do for me!"
"That, my dear," Holmes said with feeling, "is both an exaggerated observation and a deplorably inaccurate one." He leaned in suddenly and kissed her, as if this proved his point. "I digress..."
Between the butterfly kisses Holmes was teasingly peppering across her cheeks and forehead, Irene giggled. "Digress further, please."
"With pleasure." Holmes pressed his lips once more to the very end of her nose, before taking the wine bottle from the floor and pouring them both a healthy measure more. "But first, of Rome: I hear the Piazza Navona is beautiful around this time..."
Watson's final appointment before his lunch had finished a quarter of an hour earlier than he'd expected. Waiting for the extra time to elapse before he could close officially might have allowed him to get stuck into a stack of heavily procrastinated paperwork, but Watson had a more worthy cause to attend to that afternoon, and so he skipped lunch altogether catching a hansom to the offices of Scotland Yard in Whitehall Place.
It would have been unreasonable for Watson to expect a warm welcome from Inspector Gregory Lestrade given his close association with Sherlock Holmes -the man whose expertise it pained Lestrade to admit was indispensible to him. Holmes himself had as scathing an opinion of the Inspector as Lestrade had of him, but for rather different reasons: Holmes had often declined unwilling invitations to Yard dinners "because the overwhelming stench of stupidity in the room, Watson, would quite put me off my food"; Lestrade, on the other hand, kept his distance deliberately, because it just wasn't done for a decorated Scotland Yard Inspector to strike a civilian repeatedly over the head with a walking cane.
And so it was with some surprise that, when Watson was shown by a young constable into the office of Inspector Lestrade himself, he found that he was not immediately ejected.
"Doctor John Watson for you, sir," the constable explained, ushering Watson inside in his wake.
"Alright, lad." Lestrade was sitting behind his desk, buried wrist-deep in official-looking papers. He was apparently midway through the process of applying his signature to each - there were two piles, one containing sheets marked at the bottom with a black 'GL', and one containing those without. The signatures had been marked with less and less care as he had progressed through the pile, and Watson guessed he had been at it for some time.
The constable backed out of the room, leaving Watson and Lestrade alone. An uncomfortable silence followed which both men endeavoured to break at the same moment
"Inspector Lestrade..." Watson began, but he was interrupted.
"I know why you're here, Doctor Watson, and the answer is still 'no'."
Watson blinked, slightly taken aback and also rather impressed. If Lestrade had indeed realised the intention of his visit before he'd even had a chance to explain it, then perhaps he wasn't quite as stupid as Holmes gave him credit for.
"I'm sorry?" Watson queried at last.
"You heard me." Lestrade hadn't bothered offering Watson a handshake, and his eyes now turned obstinately back to his papers. "He sent you down here, didn't he - Sherlock bloody Holmes?"
At this point, Watson felt it was pointless to deny it, and so instead he stepped over the question.
"Sir Francis Lowerly has been missing for over two months now - surely you must be buried beneath growing concerns for his safety given the -with all due respect- distinct lack of progress in his repatriation...?"
"We are in the process of sculpting our investigation," Lestrade said snippily. He sniffed. "We can't all be pulling people's bleedin' life stories out of the air - these things take time, you know."
"I do know," Watson said. He had not been offered a seat, but he pulled one out anyway. "And so I also know that time is the one thing you don't have. There are lives on the line, Lestrade - time is not in plentiful supply at present."
"We can handle this case on our own without him and his..." Lestrade seemed to struggle for the words. "...Quirks," he said at last, "making the force look like bloody imbeciles in front of Her Majesty's government."
This, Watson knew, was Lestrade's problem (and the problem of far too many people than the good doctor had the patience to count) with Holmes: they would put up with him as long as he was useful, but as soon as that use expired, they were to crawl back into a hole of denial and convince themselves that they could have managed perfectly well without him after all. Perhaps Lestrade was enjoying the shift in power too much to relent - reducing Sherlock Holmes to inadvertently begging to be allowed on a case, as opposed to the other way around, must have been quite the thrill.
"...Sticking his nose in where it's not wanted, muddying the waters..." Lestrade was the sort of man to continue speaking, regardless of whether or not anybody was listening. "...Too bloody clever for his own good..."
"Correct on all counts, I'm sure." Watson tried his best to remain amiable. "I've said worse things to him myself, believe me..." He lowered his voice. "Alright, if you won't accept Holmes' help for your own benefit, perhaps you would consider it on behalf of his landlady - Mrs Hudson..?"
Lestrade frowned. "What's the matter with her?"
"Sherlock Holmes," said Watson, "is the matter with her. When the fountain of employment runs dry, Holmes becomes swiftly parched with thirst and the results are far from pleasing." He entertained a sudden image of marble statues around an empty sun-baked fountain and wondered if he had waxed lyrical. Lestrade, however, was categorically unmoved.
"Isn't there something else he can be meddling with?" he demanded. "Any more speckled adders in the ventilation? Werewolves on the Dartmoor grasslands?"
Watson had a sneaking suspicion that Lestrade had been reading his publications, though clearly he had not been paying a great deal of attention.
"One week," Watson coaxed. "Just one week, Lestrade. That's all it will take him and you know it."
"Why has he sent you here anyway?" Lestrade brandished his pen with such vehemence that small flecks of ink flew from the nib. "If he wants in, why isn't he the one here begging on his knees?"
"Holmes is indisposed at present," Watson said delicately. "Besides, he's never been one for begging."
Lestrade snorted. "You don't say..." He set his pen down and shrugged indifferently. "Look, even if I did need him, there's nothing I can do. Lowerly is a matter of national importance - we can't just bring in a bloody amateur detective!"
Given how Lestrade owed most if not all of his commendations to the work of Sherlock Holmes (and indeed to that of Watson himself), to describe him in terms as demeaning as 'amateur detective' was both highly insulting and highly ironic, but Watson did not say so.
It was clear to him that Lestrade had already made his decision - it would be pointless to irk him further with careless words, no matter how accurate they may have been.
And so Watson rose to his feet, tipped his hat and wished the Inspector a good afternoon before going on his way. He felt the building frustration with every step he took: in light of the failure of his own aim to secure Holmes a position of access to the Lowerly case, and of the consequences of Lestrade's obstinacy - the cabinet minister had a wife and a young son waiting at home: waiting for news, any news, telling of either his discovery or his death, for there was no possible way of knowing which (if any) would come first. What must that feel like? Watson prayed then and there that he would never find out.
As he prepared to reopen his premises for the arrival of the first afternoon patient, Watson considered what the consequences would be when (and it was a case of 'when' rather than 'if') Holmes discovered that he had been to Lestrade on his behalf and beseeched that he be let onto the case, but quickly discovered quickly that it was best not to do so whilst working. After all, mentally listing the countless ways in which Sherlock Holmes was capable of killing him with his bare hands was not exactly conducive to the bedside manner of an esteemed London medic...