This chapter is a bit more serious in tone, and covers a point that's part of BBC Sherlock canon. I felt that it needed to be addressed in some way, rather than being brushed under the rug as if it never happened. I hope I integrated it into the story in a way that doesn't offend anyone, that it still seems true to the characters, and that it actually creates an even more complex dynamic between them (eep.)

Also, it's another M rated one. Well the first half is, at least. Look for the page break if you want to skip!

Confessions

This time was so different, Sherlock noted fleetingly. Perhaps because he'd resolved that this weekend was a one-time exemption, or because now he knew what to anticipate physically and wasn't quite as unprepared, or because he had been able to label how he felt in reference to her, and these actions made a strange sort of logical (if foreign) sense. In any case, he wasn't hesitant or conflicted at all; in fact, it was quite the reverse.

Draped on top of her languorously, he tilted his head and deepened the kiss, and with a small sigh she slightly arched her back up to him and buried her fingers in his hair, drawing his face even tighter against hers. He felt his heart-rate accelerate, but there was no attendant feeling of urgency or the need to rush. This time the passion smouldered rather than immediately ignited and exploded.

His touch lingered thoughtfully on her—fingertips caressing slowly rather than groping and grasping blindly—and she cradled his head between her hands. Their lips whispered and melted against each other's in the growing but still dim blue light of the room, the only sound their breathing and the creak of the bed as they shifted their weight into a new angle. It was slow and unhurried, and yet he felt no less dizzy and overwhelmed; he was astonished that the previously unappealing act of—he put sarcastic mental quotation marks around the word—snogging could, in fact, be so engrossing and exhilarating.

Meanwhile, Irene was permitting him to set the tone; she hadn't taken control or pushed the action forward herself at all, unlike the previous night. She seemed equally satisfied with the languid early morning pace, and responded to his gradually intensifying kisses by leisurely dragging an ankle up and down his lower leg, bunching up the fabric of the pyjama bottoms he still wore so that her instep ran along his calf muscles. The touch felt surprisingly tender, but even more interesting to Sherlock was that he didn't feel any urge to flinch away from the intimacy.

It was rare to the point of nonexistence for him to lose track of time, but after what could have easily been twenty minutes or an hour of pressing her into the bed, thoroughly exploring her mouth with his lips and tongue and occasionally, almost lazily, grinding his hips into her, he finally pulled away, breathing heavily, and looked down into her face.

With her swollen and parted lips, dark, half-closed eyes, and loose, tousled hair fanned out across the pillow he had the fleeting and frivolous thought that she looked like a Modigliani nude. Instantly he was incredulous at his own triteness, and a brief but intense look of consternation flitted across his face, though it was quickly discarded when she intentionally arched into him again, pushing her chest flush against his. She pressed her lips against his cheekbone then murmured sultrily into his ear, "Whatever it is, stop."

He obeyed with a low, short exhale, lifting his chin to catch her lips briefly. Then, bracing his elbows against the mattress and ducking, he nuzzled his face lightly along her sternum before turning his head to take the tip of one breast into his mouth.

He felt her shudder and with a smug expression he rolled his tongue across the taut flesh experimentally, and increased the suction. In response she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and grasped fists of his curls, pinning him to her, and he switched sides, fascinated by the breathy quality of the sounds she was making and still a bit bemusedly awed that he should be not onto witness to, but responsible for such a thing.

There was a quality in those sounds he had never registered during any other situations in which adrenaline was present, such as fighting, exercising, escape, operating in disguise, or vigorous and challenging debate; it was unique to sexual excitement, he understood. And though he had only recently become acquainted with it, it elicited a somehow supremely familiar, instinctual response—from somewhere deep and secret within him. He couldn't claim that it was solely a physiological response, either.

His transient, passing thoughts seemed to have translated physically into increased fervor, because she tightened her grip on his hair, pulling the roots, and threw her head back on the pillow to expose a long column of pale throat. He immediately rose to latch his lips at the hollow there, and she answered by slipping her hands down his back and under his pyjamas to grasp the lean but firm musculature there. Then, with a sound of impatience, she pushed at the waistband, and he found himself perfectly in tune with her objectives.

He lifted his hips to help her push the fabric down to his thighs, and when she couldn't extend her arms any further he kicked impatiently, and the loose bottoms slid to his ankles, where she pulled them free with her feet.

"Teamwork," she whispered with a soft grin and dancing blue eyes, and he felt a slight mirroring of her expression on his own face.

"Yes. . ." he said, and it emerged as a deep growl more than a word. "I noticed that we made a fairly adequate team last night." For a fraction of a second her mouth slackened in surprise, before it turned up slyly. He chuckled briefly and leaned in to seal his lips to hers and then coax them open with his tongue. He was a fast learner.

She immediately responded but with a sensual thoroughness rather than fevered lust, and after a moment she pulled away to place a softer closed-mouth kiss on his lips, and looked up into his face with clear intent. He may have been inexperienced, but he understood the implication of that look implicitly. She didn't need to verbalise it; her eyes were more than eloquent enough.

They dispensed with any further foreplay, and while she watched him with bright, absorbed eyes, he spread his hands across the tops of her thighs and slid into her with one long stroke. Yet as he pulled back and then thrust again she grimaced slightly in evident discomfort, breaking their previously unwavering eye contact.

"Not good?" he asked, freezing at once but at a loss as where he had gone wrong when nothing in his cumulative and rather varied life experience had ever felt so natural or intangibly 'right.' "Should I—"

"No, don't stop," she murmured, digging her heels into the backs of his thighs like a jockey urging its thoroughbred forward. "Just a bit sore from last night, don't stop." She fixed him with a stern commanding look, then slid her hands from his pectoral muscles to his shoulder and pulled him down so that he framed her between his arms.

"I'm... sorry," he said against her cheek, though something in her pronouncement perversely pleased him, for mysterious reasons he couldn't comprehend. Yet once again, she managed to react in a manner he couldn't have anticipated.

"Well I'm not," she smirked, tightening her legs around his lower back as he resumed his rocking movements. "There's good pain and bad pain and wicked pain, and I well know the difference between them."

He smirked back unseen into her hair, though it coloured his tone. "Yes, I should expect you do," he said. "So which is it?" he couldn't help but asking shortly later, now deadpan.

"Oh the wickedest," she purred into his ear, before he silenced her by turning his head and capturing her lips with hers.

As the light in the room grew steadily brighter, they slid silently together on top of the sheets, moving as smoothly as if they'd learned this choreography and each other's bodies over years rather than hours. And while Sherlock understood that on one level they were both skilled at reading others and responding accordingly, he suspected that their profound sexual compatibility was more than simply the ability to manipulate, since his movements were smoothly instinctual rather than calculating and mechanical.

In the intimate and microscopic world of their embrace, when all he could sense was the heat radiating between them, the texture of her skin and lips, and the gusts of her breathing on his fevered flesh, he had to admit that there was something 'more' at play. 'More' was, of course, a grossly inadequate term, but he was unable to elucidate the concept further. All that he could discern was that it was intangible, and it made him feel powerful rather than inexperienced, confident despite his undermined mental processes (his single source of confidence, heretofore), altruistic rather than self-centered, and even, sometimes, willing to cede control rather than possess it. To further complicate the matters for him, the sensation seemed to resonate with the emotion he had seen flicker on The Woman's face since their reunion the previous day. It was familiar now, albeit no better known.

And while he knew that he had been correct that this overwhelming sentiment could have no place in his life when he returned to England, he felt disillusioned with his previous complacency, and almost bitter that he couldn't be another man—a man who could have a satisfying career and a fulfilling private life as well; a simple man. Someone more like John, in other words.

And yet, he reasoned inanely as he focused on her blue eyes and began to increase his pace, if he were a different man he'd have never caught her attention, nor perhaps even wanted it, and all this would be rendered inconsequential. It was a riddle with no solution, he realised. Remove one problematic variable and the entire principle collapses.

Irene reached up and clutched the side of his neck, her hair plastered against her flaming cheeks and her eyes burning sapphires. "Are you with me?" she asked breathlessly, and he knew that she referred to his climax, but it could also easily apply to everything he was considering, and he hesitated.

"Yes," he finally answered, and he kissed her deeply, and almost desperately.

Five minutes later she lay collapsed against him, and though they were both gasping for breath and glazed with sweat, the mood was significantly different than the previous night, though he couldn't detect how, precisely. Actually it was rather astonishing how different the entire experience had been. He knew cognitively that there were various categories of sex—based simply on the wide array of reference vocabulary available: making love, sleeping with, shagging, screwing, et cetera. But to experience it firsthand was another, far less cerebral matter entirely.

Silence stretched out between them, but this morning it felt weightless and comfortable, and Sherlock felt no need to fill it with rash commentary—nor did he feel any significant desire to smoke an entire pack of cigarettes, as he had the previous night. Instead, he contemplated the complex thoughts that had just surged through his mind with the incoherent logic of a dream, and while they were almost as ephemeral and nonsensical as actual dreams, he could still recall their very real power.

Finally she stretched against him, breaking his concentration, and he looked down to see her staring outward, her face equally thoughtful and pensive. Sensing his gaze, she looked up to meet it, and he raised one brow in question.

"How much time do we have before we need to leave?" she asked after a moment.

He knew with full certainty that she hadn't just been thinking about their time of departure, but he decided to accommodate her and answer the question she'd asked. In any case, he couldn't immediately determine her actual thoughts; once again she was a series of question marks.

He wasn't inclined to retrieve his watch from where he had left it on the bathroom counter, so instead he lifted his head to glance at the line of growing light stretching across the carpet from under the hotel's drawn curtains, then quickly calculated the date, the latitude and longitude of the city, and the direction the hotel room faced. "It should be around six twenty," he figured. "We have a small measure of flexibility in our schedule because I had intended to use today to locate you; nonetheless, some new intelligence has prompted me to revise the plan slightly—though it depends heavily on crucial information I don't yet have." After a beat he added, "And the sooner you leave the region, the better."

She nodded. "Does the new intelligence pertain to the cameraman who was covert military? Or did you already know about him?" she asked casually, and he regarded her with something akin to admiration. It was exceptionally rare that someone could keep pace with his own observations, but in the past half-day he had become more accustomed to it.

"I only learned it yesterday at the compound," he confirmed. "What gave it away for you?"

"I can usually tell the nature of a man," she said, a very slight smile on her lips, and her eyes glassy and introspective. "And in that case, 'one of those things was not like the other'. Also, stationing him, a clearly-trained fighter, with the video camera and no weapon was even more incongruous. I'd thought. . ." she paused, then frowned at herself and continued. "I thought he was perhaps an envoy of yours, but when the executioner—that's to say, you—took position behind me to test the sword's swing, and he did nothing but let the tape roll, I believed I must've been wrong."

Sherlock didn't mention that he had been imprecise in his own initial judgment, or that his suspicions were only confirmed when the SSG agent had shot a man holding Sherlock at gunpoint; he simply nodded.

"Yes, I thought the same thing—about the obvious background in formal training and his poorly-cast role of cameraman," he agreed, once again experiencing an unpleasant flicker of guilt at the anguish his plan had apparently caused her. He hadn't considered that aspect at all when he was making it; he had been too focused on the tactical and strategic details. Still, he knew without a doubt that even if he had taken it into account, he would have dismissed it as irrelevant if it meant sacrificing any cogency of the arrangement. She was alive and safe, and that had been the essential objective—both then and now.

"I expect that your execution was to be his first rite or test as a newer enlistee, like a gang initiation," he surmised to her. "And by that token, he wasn't yet trusted with any of their arms. . ." He sat up straighter, the siren call of work pervading as ever, and his hand clenched into a fist on his thigh. "It's imperative that I find out if he's been able to remain embedded," he declared, his voice raising. "That should greatly simplify things. . ."

In Sherlock's peripheral vision he saw her only nod in a distracted way, and he darted another glance down at her. Her eyes still held that faraway expression, and he was both captivated and frustrated that he couldn't discern her thoughts. But then, her enigmatic nature was one quality that so drew him to her.

Temporarily diverted from his plans, he seized the opportunity to study her in greater depth, and he challenged himself to devise a theory for her strange, pensive mood. He could put the other plans on hold for the moment. . .

He did a cursory sweep from her forehead to her fingertips and back, taking in the tension in her hands, the stiff carriage of her shoulders, the creased dent in her forehead above one brow, the teeth worrying the left side of her lower lip, the slight darting movements of her eyes to the upper right, and then the lower right, the shallow, tight rise and fall of her chest rather than her diaphragm, and the twisting of the mouth to one side.

Stress, recalling specific memories, conducting an internal dialogue, struggling a with specific dilemma, indecision, anxiety, uncertainty, he ticked off, although he couldn't begin to ascertain the source. Put it all together, and. . .

"You have something you're contemplating telling me," Sherlock announced, and she blinked and her eyes cleared. She didn't look startled though; she gazed up at him evenly and expectantly, her blue eyes now focused and bright.

He took that as an indication both that he was on the right track, and that he had her tacit consent to continue. "But you have reservations," he elaborated, "and you're not sure how to broach it. It's a divulgence of some sort—and a personal one at that. But it's not something I would deduce on my own, so it's not about your sentiment for me, at least not directly. . ." He tilted his head and gave her one final scrutinising look. "And it's something no one knows," he finished.

Her face had remained neutral throughout his observations, but when he finished she smiled gently, though remained silent. She was focusing instead on the interior of his forearm, tracing and retracing over the line of his median vein with the back of her index fingertip.

"Am I close," he pressed, and it came out as amIclose in his impatience.

She finally stilled her movement and looked into his eyes. "You're very close," she said. "In fact, you're spot on."

"Only because you were allowing yourself to be vulnerable in front of me," he noted, not for empathy's sake, but for accuracy (well, not just for empathy's sake, at least. . .). "Either it's because you're that comfortable with me, or because you're particularly distracted by your thoughts."

"It's both," she said simply, and he felt her slightly relax against him again, either resigned or relieved he had raised the matter himself.

He just nodded once, absorbing her words, then waited, sensing she wasn't finished speaking.

"You asked me why I found it gratifying to hear you say you'd never slept with anyone," she murmured, and he felt the rumble of her voice against his chest more than heard her.

He reached back in his memory and instantly recalled the exchange.

"I wasn't saying that only to embarrass you." A small wry smile touched her lips. "Although I'd be lying if I said that wasn't part of it."

Sherlock smirked in acknowledgment, and he absent-mindedly began brushing his hand along her spine.

"Sherlock." The tone of her voice was suddenly so different that he looked immediately into her face, which was grave.

"I've never slept with a man before. I've never wanted to. I've just never been terribly interested."

Sherlock remained silent, his mind curiously blank and his hand suspending its movement, and she watched him evenly, her face arranged back into a neutral position. But after just a moment's pause, his hand resumed stroking her back absented-mindedly.

"Are you surprised?" she finally prompted after a length of silence. The careful detachment dropped from her eyes and she watched him sharply.

He considered. "I don't really have any opinion on it," he replied frankly.

She blinked, and raised one eyebrow in silent question.

He hesitated, then elaborated, "I classified you as sexually experienced, which you clearly are, and I stand by that assessment. But that doesn't necessarily mean hetero-normative experience, and given that you identified yourself as gay, I can't say that I am entirely surprised, no. . . .Nor does it matter to me."

"Ah, so you did hear me," she said, almost to herself, and he knew she was referring to the time he'd followed John to the Battersea Power Station and bore covert witness to her resurrection.

"Yes I heard, although I was a tad bit more focused on the fact that you were still alive. And moreover, that you'd managed to deceive me. Besides, I had zero interest in you in that way, so it wasn't relevant to me."

"Or so you thought," she retorted, and he tilted his head in concession.

"So it would seem."

"Then don't you find it curious that I've slept with you?" she asked, flipping the question. "Because. . . I do," she admitted bluntly a moment later, before he had the chance to respond. "When I initially heard about you I was intrigued, yes, but I never could have predicted this. You were simply a particularly fascinating challenge."

"So when you repeatedly sent texts asking me to 'dinner', which we both know was meant as an allusion to something else, it was just—"

"Did you know?" she interrupted, and he slightly pouted his lower lip.

"Eventually," he admitted, and her serious expression broke into a small grin.

"Yes, it was just part of the game—at first. It was a bit of fun, and was calculated to throw you off, puzzle you. It was a safe gambit because I knew that you would never actually take me up on it."

They simultaneously made eye contact and smirked, given the contrast between her statement and their extremely intimate positions.

"I can't conclusively pinpoint when it became more than that," she said a short time later, and he privately agreed.

Although he had only last night identified the exact nature of his regard for her, he now understood that he was merely acknowledging what already existed, though he could not begin to fathom when it had taken a hold of him. It had been a gradual evolution, rather than a revolution, he concluded—almost too subtle to be perceptible until it was too late. Which it was; that had become more than painfully obvious in the past hour.

"So?" she prompted to remind him that he had not answered her earlier question.

He contemplated for a moment, and concluded that he didn't find the fact that she'd slept with him all too surprising either. "In my experience—cases, mind, not personal—sexual orientation doesn't necessarily fit into neat and separate categories. My anecdotal observations corroborate with a study researched by Alfred Kinsey, who determined that it's much more of a linear—"

"I'm well aware of Kinsey's findings," she interrupted, curtailing his tangent. "Still. I've never wanted. . ." She took a small breath and restarted, "I've never been attracted. . ."

She was being abnormally inarticulate, Sherlock thought, and stepped in again.

"Klein elaborated on the Kinsey Scale and wrote that orientation can change throughout a person's lifetime," he continued, addressing her last comment.

"Have you ever realised that the more uncomfortable you are, the more pompous you become?" she said with a sudden laugh, and this time his pout was more pronounced. She reached up to kiss his cheek, a subtle sparkle in her eye, and at once the sting of her words began to fade.

"Anyway, I don't think that's what this is," she dissented, becoming serious and pensive again. "I don't think I've changed, per sé."

She switched gears: "I've accepted men as clients, of course, but the gratification I get from figuring out what they like, and then manipulating and controlling them through those things, isn't at all sexual. That particular job perk transcends gender. And I have done. . . everything else. When I was younger or to further my own agenda in extreme cases, when I was 'misbehaving'. But it was just mechanical or the means to an end. There's never been. . . there's been nothing like this."

Sherlock nodded slowly, and a moment later he said, "I've always considered myself above this type of thing. I've been branded 'asexual' for most of my life—in school, at university, and since—and while it was always meant as a slur, I saw no problem with it. The definition wasn't necessarily a perfect fit but it was close enough to suffice, and I wasn't interested in digging any further. . ." He paused, then added slightly sardonically to compensate for his atypical and unexpected candor, "And yet, look at us both." He ran his hand down the length of her side to settle on her hip, and a small smile touched her lips, presumably from hearing her own words to John from that memorable conversation.

"Yes, look at us," she repeated albeit contemplatively, then added softly a moment later, "Each the other's exception."

He considered her statement, repeating it and weighing it in his mind: Each the other's exception. . . He actually found it quite elegant and rather accurate, and huffed a small sound of approval. "Quite. . ." he finally said in a deep, appreciative voice, stroking his thumb across her hip in a sweeping motion. But she didn't move or respond to his touch, and he glanced down at her face to check her expression. She had none; she had fallen back asleep, one hand curled against his shoulder under her smooth flushed cheek.

Lara Pulver (the actress who plays Irene Adler) gave an interview on this topic, and I loved what she had to say:

"It's so weird because I didn't like to label her. Yes, she says, 'I'm gay.' But what is she actually saying? 'I meet people and I fall in love with them and they happen to be of the same sex?' I don't know. I've literally just seen the interview with Barack Obama backing gay marriage and I'm thinking, we're in 2012, what's the big deal? People fall in love and I think more harm is done from suppressing your true identity than being given the freedom to just be. So I never felt like I was hugely flying the flag for gay rights or trying to be this iconic gay figure in any way because what's being gay? It's just a label, isn't it? Because, at the end of the day, I think she had feelings for Sherlock. So then people say, 'Well, so she's obviously not gay. She must be bisexual.' But actually, let's not label this. Let's just know that human beings fall for other human beings. I think I'm a bit of an anti-labellist, if there's such a phrase."

And more recently:

Interviewer: How was the sexuality element when you did Sherlock?

Lara: I never wanted to label or give her the identity. Yes, she admits in the scene with Watson that she's gay, but she fell in love with another gender. I think she just fell in love with a mind. She fell in love with Sherlock. It kind of turns it on to "Look, this is possible." I know so many people who they fall in love with a soul.