Disclaimer: I have a cat and a room full of books. Almost everything else belongs to someone else. Recognisable characters, TV shows, movies, etc belong to their creators (in some cases otherwise known as god), producers, directors, etc.
.
.
.
.
.
Encounters With the Woman.
.
.
.
Zero...
.
.
.
.
The first time Sherlock Holmes sees Irene Adler she's standing, on a London street.
She sings with a slight accent, but by the time he can finally identify it, she'll no longer have one.
The song isn't what he'd expect.
.
"Fly the ocean on a silver plane.
See the jungle when it's wet with rain.
Just remember till you're home again.
You belong to me."
.
He wasn't expecting her eyes either.
She has eyes like his, wide and all seeing, that give away nothing.
Watching him, watching her.
She disappears while he's talking to an informant.
.
The next morning, the jewellers across from her corner is missing half of its merchandise.
.
...
.
It's been nearly 13 months since he saw her on the street corner.
She's still singing, this time in an odd, out of the way nightclub.
.
"Can't make up my mind about this guy.
Sometimes he makes me smile, sometimes he makes me cry.
Other guys have tried, but he's the one I like.
I'm so mad about this guy."
.
Sherlock ignores his dealer and the drunken woman trying to catch his interest and watches the woman instead.
.
...
.
Sherlock's eyes open, spying the other person in the room immediately, a person who shouldn't have been there.
"Irene Adler," The woman supplied, glancing at him over the top of the book she was skim reading.
It's one of his, a collection of Victorian essays on the 'Hysterical Condition of the London Lower Classes'.
"It's not too bad if you forget that one half of the authors are misogynistic and the other half wouldn't know what a woman looked like even if she presented herself naked at the dining table with an illustrated instruction booklet."
"How did you get in?" She, Irene, has long fingers, the nails painted peacock blue. Her shoes are the same colour. The rest of her outfit is grey.
"Keys." She held up copies of his own.
"What do you want?"
"How utterly dull." She reached into her coat pocket, handing him a business card, "I don't want anything, but I thought you might be able to use this."
Stephen L. Yates
5/10 Ellison Avenue
"Your missing witness. His grandfather got caught in a scam and ended up with rather a lot of debt. Mr. Yates is growing cannabis under the back stairs to help pay all the bills and doesn't want the police or his grandfather to find out." She closed the book with a snap, putting it down as she picked up a scarf from where he'd dropped it, looping it around her neck and heading toward the front door before he can stop her, voice muffled by the bookcases in the hallway, "Maybe I did want something after all, darling."
.
...
.
He has to stitch her up the next time they meet. 14 stitches in total.
A knife wound that traces the angle of her ribs.
Irene is slumped against the fridge, smoking one of his emergency cigarettes and holding one of his shirts- Mycroft gave it to him last Christmas, he's never even worn it- pressed against her side.
He's moved since she last made an appearance and for less than a second Sherlock wonders how Irene knew where to find him and how she got in. But that's not important right now.
Considering the unfocused look in her eyes and the paleness of her skin she's attempting to self medicate.
Nicotine is a vasoconstrictor.
Judging by the amount of blood soaking his shirt and the rest of her clothes, she should have headed straight for a hospital instead.
"Darling." Irene flashes a bright, fake smile at him, "Sorry to be such a bother."
Sherlock kneels down beside her, calmly undoing her shirt to inspect the damage. Her skin is covered in bruises and he contemplates calling an ambulance or watching her bleed out.
But then he'd never know why she calls him darling or steals his scarves.
"O positive." She says before fainting.
He calls in a favour instead of an ambulance.
Sherlock is A negative.
She slips out the door; leaving £500 for the blood donor, while he's in another room texting a highly annoyed Lestrade.
.
...
.
Sherlock almost finds her in Paris, having just run an insurance scam worth nearly £2 million. Half went to an orphanage on the city's outer edge. The woman in charge is happy to talk until Sherlock mentions Irene.
.
The embassy job in Moscow is deliciously complicated. Irene pulled three different cons, seduced a general, and managed to convince a museum full of experts that her badly faked painting is the real deal.
The fake gets hung in the general's living room and the original; stolen by the Nazi's in 1941, is returned to the daughter of the previous owner.
.
She plays the mistress of an A list actor in Los Angeles, a back-up singer in Houston and a bartender in New York.
.
He loses her in Western Australia and just misses her leaving Singapore.
.
...
.
Seven months later Irene lets Sherlock conduct a survey of her skin.
She's younger than he'd thought, younger than him, by five or six years.
Her hair is soft and smells like pomegranates. Her fingers, when he licks then one by one, taste like raspberry tarts, and her appendectomy scar, like peppermints, orange sherbet and moisturiser.
Irene twitches and swallows a giggle when he uses his tongue to trace the line of it.
There's a pair of parallel scars, the width of a belt apart, on the right side of her back, a circular scar on the bottom of her left foot, directly below the one on the top of the foot. She stepped on something; probably a nail, which went straight through her foot.
Irene's ears are pierced. The right has had an earring snatched from it.
Sherlock is investigating Irene's breasts when she falls asleep, letting him continue this living autopsy at his leisure. He doesn't understand how she can be so relaxed, how she can feel safe enough to even close her eyes.
The others: three women and two men, had stayed tense and hyper alert and had taken his inspections as a prelude to a sexual encounter. A kink they'd been willing to over look in return for going to bed with him.
Irene sees it as a chance to multi task. Steal another scarf, drop off some nicotine patches, have an actual address for food to be delivered to, to shower and change.
Even Mycroft's people have trouble identifying the woman who entered the building through a third floor window, as the one who left by the front door.
.
A week later Irene strips Sherlock down, searching for his ticklish spots, and quizzing him on the timing of London traffic lights.
Lestrade brings Sherlock footage of a get-away car; reportedly driven by a young woman, that hits every green light possible. It's the first time Sherlock tells anyone the name Irene Adler.
.
...
.
She leaves one of his scarves and a dozen raspberry tarts in a flat, as a reward for almost finding her. The raspberry tarts had given her away. They're from a bakery in South Bank.
Light flaky, slightly vanilla flavoured pastry and handmade raspberry filling, with a light dusting of icing sugar to give it just enough sweetness.
Sherlock estimates that he's missed her by 12minutes and 17 seconds.
.
...
.
Irene is sitting in front of the TV, eating cereal and wearing his dressing gown, when Sherlock returns from insulting several police officers.
He flopped, loose limbed, over the lounge. "Why are people obsessed with sex?"
"Why are you obsessed with sex?"
Sherlock gave her, her first 'are you really that stupid' look. "I'm not."
"If you say so, darling." Irene put her bowl in the kitchen sink, asking, "Bad case?"
"Hmmph" He's already made himself forget half of it.
She handed him a cup of tea. "Any preferences for dinner? Savoury, spicy, sweet?"
"You're being domestic."
"Sometimes," Irene sank to the floor, sitting cross-legged in front of him, "Domestic is nice."
Sherlock sipped his tea. "I could kill you. And no one would ever know."
She shrugged, his dressing gown slipping off one slim shoulder. "And I could have drugged your drink. Lestrade's seen you high enough times to think that you might have accidentally poisoned yourself."
True.
"Are you obsessed with sex?"
"I like sex," Irene shrugged again, letting the other side of the dressing gown slide from her other shoulder. There's a hand shaped bruise where her neck and right shoulder meet, "But I wouldn't say that I was obsessed with it."
"Would you like to have sex with me? Most women do."
"You find most women boring. And you've never indicated that you've wanted to have sex with me," Irene scowled, like she'd found his comment distasteful, "So I don't consider it as a part of our relationship." She reached for the take out menus hidden under a cushion, "Can you order in?"
"What do you like about sex?" Sherlock wasn't going to let her change the subject.
Irene sighed, accepting her fate. She switched the TV off and turned so she could lean against the lounge. Sherlock lifted her hair to study the bruising.
"Orgasms are nice. So are the looks on people's faces when they realise they've heard or they think they've heard you having sex. And there's something about trusting a person enough to fall asleep afterwards."
He paused after hearing that. "You have sex with people you don't trust?"
"Sometimes."
"Do you trust me?" It seems important, but he's not sure why.
"I will trust you, until I bore you." Irene smirked, "Which won't be until you can find where I've hidden your scarves, darling."
Or figure out why she calls him darling.
Sherlock stood suddenly, toeing his shoes off.
"Sherlock?"
"I need to see those things."
"What things?"
"...Irene..."
"Oh." Irene got to her feet, taking his hand to lead him toward the bedroom, "You want to conduct an experiment."
.
...
.
She's in the shower when he comes back to reality.
And it takes him a few minutes to realise what's out of place.
Irene isn't singing.
She always sings in the shower.
The bathroom's cold, indicating that the hot water ran out at least 15 minutes ago.
Sherlock slips on the wet tiles. Irene makes sure he continues to the floor, pressing a stiletto against his chest.
She's naked and wet, with a bruise matching his hand wrapped around her right arm.
And there's a short cut she's had to stitch herself, running in a straight line down the centre of her chest.
Sherlock recognises his own work.
"I tried to kill you."
"No." Irene pushes the knife through his clothes, the blade teasing his skin, "You wanted to open me up and rummage around my insides, while I watched."
Oh...
"If you ever feel the need to relieve your boredom like that, while I'm here, ever again," Her voice shook, "I'll kill you."
.
...
.
"I love the wallpaper." Irene managed to startle him, "And your landlady's a dear."
Sherlock leaned against the doorway, studying the woman. He hasn't seen her since the...incident, before he'd moved to 221b Baker Street.
"You pretended to be interested in 221c, to gain access to the building."
She rolled her eyes.
"I picked her pockets at the shops. Did you know there's a bakery, round the corner and down a bit, that makes those raspberry tarts I like?"
He hadn't.
"Are you staying long?'
"My taxi will be here any minute," Irene picked up an overnight bag.
"A social engagement?"
"I have to make someone nervous at a wedding." She let her coat fall open, "What do you think?"
"Blue is an appropriate colour for the event, red might be more effective though."
The doorbell ringing cut off her immediate response.
"I have to go."
Sherlock stopped her on the landing.
"It won't wait for-"
And kissed her.
Irene pulled away as the doorbell rang again.
"Well?"
"Their recipe uses more sugar."
.
.
.
.
Almost done…
.
.
Happy Festive Season
.
.
.
Thank you to Verity Grey and Kaazie
.
.