Hi peps! How are you?

I'm finally done with med school for the semester so I do have a considerable amount of time in my hands which is great since I decided to re watch the last seasons of The Doctor :)

I am truly sorry that I took so long to update but anatomy and chemistry are always bound to be a pain...

Thank you so much to everyone that takes the time to review the story, because your support has been vital (I actually never thought that I would still be writing this at this time of the year).

Hope you enjoy this chapter! And also enjoy the summer!

Arctic Monkeys - 505 (music)

Oxford, 1994

It was the same musky smell that reached his nostrils when he walked through Calthorpe Street to reach the same lousy pub over and over again.

His path was a programmed reflex consequent of one too many nights in which he was in the desperate need of a fix.

It was not how he had planned the beginning of his twenties, wandering around Oxford, completely driven by something that, at this point, he found quite impossible to control. And yet between his tangible life or a life without his carefully produced 9 percent solution of cocaine, he would always choose the life that he had been living until now, the one with the numbness and darkness of his especial preparation.

Until this day, he wondered how his family had been fooled by his poor acting skills through his early years of addiction. He remembered the conditions to which he had been able to enrol into Oxford University, his self-destructive tendencies had to remain in Eton. Fortunately, until this day, his parents lived in the pure illusion that he had kept his part of the bargain.

However his elder siblings were the true obstacle. Mycroft still assigned to him numberless agents of his favourite ranks at his disposal, who usually were easy to manipulate. And of course, even with his up most worry, Mycroft Holmes was not the type to actually come and see the evidences trough his own eyes. And Sherrinford was most likely aware of the situation but then again, his eldest brother had come long ago to the conclusion that his younger sibling was nothing more than a lost case. Besides, to Sherrinford, the public wellbeing and appearances of his family were his biggest concern, as long as the world was unaware of Sherlock's condition, he would not intervene.

In the end it was just him, him and his dependency.

The cold airstream against his face was the first indication that he had changed the direction of his desperate march, and after the street corner, his ultimate destination became visible.

In the precise middle of the South Bar Street, the murky white walls of the building reflected a sick glow originated from the artificial street lights, The Jolly Weavers. A disgusting place where anyone and everything was allowed, the perfect broken paradise, a paradise that now a days he dared to consider as home.

And Victor was nowhere near his usual corner.

He had always hated the unforeseeable personality of that particular man. Raised in the north, probably near Leeds, yet his accent had been constantly supressed by others in his youth. A fake charming smile that gave him whatever he wanted from others, with a decent upbringing and yet, he had succumbed to the point trading drugs for any kind of favour.

In a way, Victor had always shown him how low he could reach, that he was in the perfect path to self-destruction. However, the immediate needs of his body were more significant than his possible future.

"Yeah… fuck…" the grave mumbles came from the degraded back alley behind the filthy pub.

That was the first time that he saw the cold, controlled and somewhat bored gaze in her dark cobalt eyes. Her pressed against a eroded wall by his favourite dealer in the dead of night.

Forbidden Red.

Out of all shades of red she always preferred Forbidden Red to colour her lips.

It was the tone that he would always associate to her.

Since the first time that he laid eyes on her, the shade of her favourite lipstick had been imprinted in his mind. In the years that they shared with one another he could count the number of times that she had used a different combination of pigments to paint her thin lips.

And, even at that precise moment, imprisoned in the dark room between the Woman and the table, he only could focus on the damn particular shade of red that was making a trail in his light skin.

In her account, he was more than informed regarding lipstick. Blood Red was when she seeked for complete control, even when the situation itself wasn't that much in her favour. This particular colour was aggressive or even violent in his mind, it was part of a beautifully constructed facade, but a faced none of the less. Then there was the Snow White Red, a tone a few shades darker than her particular favourite. That one only transmitted detachment from her human nature, her pale complexion acquiring a sick glow and in consequence, the surfacing of an obscurer part of her personality.

Both Victoria and Irene had very similar choices when it came to lipstick, choices that had always driven him made.

And Forbidden Red was always his down fall…

Her darkened eyes were analysing his every reaction while her hands moved in a slow regular rhythm. Her only objective was to watch him crumble, he was so lovely when he did that. Her movements were calculated to the smallest detail, or at least as detailed as she could at the moment. Experience told her that the probability of ending this night in her full mental capacity was very slim, her only remaining path would be to drive him to the edge as soon as possible, not overestimating the little control that remained within her.

In the moment that her lips touched his tender skin, he knew that there wasn't a way back.

His favourite drug, long had passed the time for regrets when it came to her. In this moments he feared her more than anything, their history told him that she could have a solid pull on him.

Her sent, her touch, the feeling of her around his skin, everything was too much to bear… And yet, he would always want more.

"Irene…" his soft moan filled the cramped room. It reached her ears like a supplicant pray, at that moment she craved for him more than ever. For as much as she would like to prolong his seductive torture, her own control had slipped from her fingers. With an uncertainty in her gaze, she strongly pulled him in a descendent direction, in order to for him to join her at the floor.

"Promise that you will behave?" both were more than aware that he was not going to comply and yet, she always asked. Dark would be the day in which he would fallow everything exactly as she requested.

With a small nod, he stated her victory for the night that would come.

In an unspoken moment, she released him of his restraining leather belt that left a red mark as its trail.

That was the last observation that he was able to do for the night, before he could drown himself in her sent, desperately trying to regain as much control as possible by burying his face in her loose hair.

It was so interesting how quickly he could lose himself in her. In the beginning, he wondered if that fact wasn't deeply related with the immense danger and treat that she represented. And yet, the same trilling feeling never quite reached the bottom of what they felt for one another. It was so difficult to define the 'Sentiment' between them.

Nothing could be compared to it, not even a long ago written definition could put him at ease, because, by his point of view the world had never witnessed something as intoxicating and at the same time as deadly as the two of them shared.

Without hesitating, his hands desperately seeked for the feeling of her skin against his own, hastily trying to take her out of her confining clothes, his lips tasting the perfection of her, smiling beneath him, completely within his reach, like it always was supposed to be.

Their relationship had never been about flying kisses and soft gestures, no, it was and always would be about burning passion, about dark alleys, about tears and blood, about maddening need. And yet he sometimes let himself wonder how it could be, the order side of this so called 'sentiment', but then she was never there, it was a pale and weak copy but never her and as consequence, it was never him… But then again, they were never common so it seemed like a rather sizable mistake to imagine them as such.

This was the closest way that he had to show her the magnitude of his feelings, to idolise her just for this time and deny as much as he could in the next morning. Sherlock Holmes could be many things but, even if hypocritical of him, sentimental he was not, or at least he did not consider himself as such, even if John or Mary repeatedly hinted otherwise.

Her lips were begging to be touched, her body submitted to his will and yet something rather dangerous was still present in her gaze, it always was...

With a lenient breath, he buried himself in her heat.

How much he longed for these moments where she was entirely at his mercy…

And that was the reason why they couldn't ever fit the standard of a semi-normal relationship, he yearned for her in an intensity that he could very well risk everything that he regarded as true in his whole life.

But it was the woman, that same woman, like any other, that had been able to make him question everything that he held for granted, that same woman that drove him to despair over and over. That woman…

The Woman…

His Woman…

"Sherlock dear, yo-" Considering everything that Martha Hudson had seen in her life, she shouldn't be so surprised upon the view of her apartment. In other hand, it was not every day that she came across a naked Sherlock in the living room with women's underwear in a closed fist, with his garments discarded along the room. With a trail of lipstick in his chest, forming simple words that someone had written.

Thank you for the dinner

Hope you enjoyed it!

And review! :D