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"I could cut myself slapping that face," she'd thrummed. "Would you like me to try?"
And he, the one and only Sherlock Holmes, had felt a tremor of excitement run up and down his spine. Yes, he'd thought, please, Miss Adler. What he had felt was not carnal excitement, however. Not then, at least. It was thrill of being totally and completely undone. As she'd stood in the doorway, he'd thought: here is something altogether new.
Now she sat across from Mycroft, demure and triumphant and smug all at once. Still completely mind boggling to Sherlock.
"We have people who can get into this," Mycroft said of her mobile.
Sherlock fidgeted, because everything inside him was a riot of color and images, of disjointed fragments. How could I be so bloody stupid, he thought, not looking at her. Being so oblivious was for other people, pedestrian minds, not him, surely. He wanted to put his fist through a wall but that would be brutish and result only in battered knuckles. Though, he supposed, it might be "emotionally" satisfying.
"Explosive. It's more me," she sing-songed after Sherlock answered for her. What else should he do at this point? He'd been pinned like an insect to a card, and thoroughly. It was irritating. And satisfying.
Mycroft was onto something about passcodes for the mobile and Sherlock had to roll his eyes.
"Sherlock?" she asked and he obliged with further explanation, still fidgeting.
"Oh he's good, isn't he?" Irene said and Sherlock told himself not to look at her, not to imagine the way she must be looking at him. Was it similar or dissimilar to the look she'd given him when he solved the email's code?
"I should have him on a leash. In fact I might."
It took every ounce self discipline that Sherlock had not to lean towards her. As if she already had the collar round his pale throat, felt the pull of her tether.
I hate you, Sherlock thought to himself. Then: No. I hate myself. But only a small bit. The rest of him felt as if someone had put an electrical current through him. Searing pain, his nerve endings crackling. He had felt this the first time he looked up at her. It had taken him a moment to realize that while Irene may not have had clothes on, she was not the one who was naked.
Dammit.
"I'm not playing anymore," she said and Sherlock hid a smile behind his hand. And when she told Mycroft, "Too bad," Sherlock had to make a little noise at that. Of course she would say that. She was brilliant and sharp as glass and it was a little endearing, he had to admit.
And he did want her, despite what his brother or John alluded to. He had probably wanted her after she'd jabbed him in the shoulder and left him somersaulting through his own mental landscape, dis-lucidly dreaming about boomerangs and her sporting his coat. She had solved that case as if it were nothing, as if it were simple and easy. As if she were him.
He had refused to take his coat to the dry cleaners because he fancied that her scent yet lingered in its dark woolen folds. Sentimental, perhaps.
He didn't want her because she was beautiful, physically, though he appreciated her taste in clothing when she wore her own. The heels she'd worn when they first met had been scintillating, but in a "how does she not snap her ankles to pieces?" way. He had admired her for wearing them.
But then, this was Irene, he thought. Irene, who had worn his blue bathrobe and leaned towards him earlier that evening, asking him if he wanted dinner. How her pulse had quickened beneath his fingers and her pupils dilated, black and inviting. Her hand had been so soft against his. He didn't understand why this pleased him.
"Why would I want to have dinner if I wasn't hungry," he'd lied.
Because he had been hungry -- hungry all his life -- for her. Oh, John was a marvel, a bright light in a dark landscape. He was warmth and comfort and horrendous jumpers and tea and nagging and the shopping and the washing up. He was there on easy Saturday mornings while Sherlock's mind whirled with a new case. He was there on cold afternoons when only the wail of the violin could comfort Sherlock. He was there on lavender evenings when Sherlock sprawled on the couch, trying to ignore the horrible telly. He was there when things were dull and boring and when things were good and he and John were being shot at or chased or beaten and the ground was littered with corpses and clues. John was ever there and ever would be.
But Irene was something -- new -- and ever would be. Sherlock could see himself in those jutting cheekbones, the pale lines of her face, the silver blue eyes. The mocking purse of her lips. The way she swaggered into a room, already knowing the layout and what would happen. Yes. Even the way her mind acrobatically lunged and jumped through problems and equations.
"I wish our lot were half as good as you," Mycroft said.
"I can take all the credit," she preened.
Sherlock adored her for it, even as he felt humiliated. But the sense of humiliation dimmed as realization sizzled along the ends of his synapses.
She could have solved the email's code on her own.
Now, Sherlock rose. "Nicely played," he said. As he shook her hand, he guided her fingers to his wrist, his pulse.
She smiled, a predator who has felled her prey. He supposed she had and watched her walk away.
"What are you smiling about?" Mycroft asked, annoyed.
Sherlock felt like an idiot. He felt like playing his violin. He felt like shooting Irene's name into the wall of his flat, except Mrs. Hudson would certainly object, much less John. He felt like skipping stupidly down the Embankment as the cold night air scratched his cheeks and the lights of London softened the darkness. He felt like being had on his table until he begged for mercy, twice.
Because she'd already had him, with her brain. That brilliant, gorgeous, stunning thing. Revealing that he'd figured out her mobile's passcode -- for what? To assuage his wounded pride? His ego? -- would only have ruined it. He preferred her victory to his pettiness. At least, just this once.
He would later wonder if that could be deemed a "loving" gesture on his part. No more, though, than her allowing him to crack the email's code.
"Nothing," he told Mycroft and because Mycroft was far too irritated with recent events, he didn't notice Sherlock was lying.
Later, Sherlock texted Irene.
I am 'Sherlocked'? Really? SH
She replied: Let's have dinner.
When and where. SH