Fic: Our Hearts Are Wrong Part I (Sherlock/Irene, Sherlock [BBC])
Title: Our Hearts Are Wrong Part I: She couldn't help thinking that there was a little more to life somewhere else
Author: mad_teagirl
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Character/Pairing: Sherlock/Irene
Rating: PG-13
Summary:This is set roughly four years before the start of the series. I had been writing a Sherlock/Irene that took place during the current series time-line, but then I got completely sidetracked with their back story and so this happened. The title comes from the Jessica Lea Mayfield song of the same name
Beta(s): This is apparently the fic that is taking a village to raise, as it is currently being beta-ed by sabrinaphynn, read again for general flow by martinius, and then in a last minute crisis of "DEAR GOD THIS IS AWFUL" looked over one last time by my dearest suchaprince, I owe you ladies like whoa, and feel free to collect on that whenever you see fit.
Disclaimer: Pretty much everything belongs to either ACD, Gatiss, Moffat, or the BBC with the exception of my casting choice for Miss Adler, and my choice to take her character in the direction of psychology and criminal profiling as opposed to opera singing.
Our Hearts Are Wrong
Part I:
She Couldn't Help Thinking That There Was A Little More To Life Somewhere Else
Irene Adler was born with the unremarkable name of Katherine Amelia Murphy, to a used car salesmen and a waitress in Bayonne, New Jersey, a family barely above the state poverty line. She was the middle of five children, a position that afforded her neither the prestige of being the oldest, nor the novelty of the youngest. Irene spent most of her childhood trying to get her parents’ attention - but the only time she ever managed to was when she was in trouble.
The first time she could clearly remember her mother directly addressing her, without accidentally calling her by her sister’s name, was as they left the Principal's office. Irene was eight years old, and her skinned knee and split lip were trophies of the fight she’d gotten into. Lunch money had been demanded, and she had chosen to jump, biting and kicking, at the two older, larger boys who had attempted to bully her.
She had clearly remembered sitting outside the Principal’s office, between the two boys who had also been involved in the altercation. She had sniffled at her bloody nose, lamenting her torn skirt and the already flowering bruises - but the boys who had been seated on either side of her sported enough scratches and scrapes that she had felt an odd sort of pride. She had known that the appropriate response to this situation should have been shame, and the two boys clearly had had guilt written on their faces. But for the first time in her life she had been noticed … the teacher supervising recess, the principal, and now her mother.
Her mother had stepped out of the office, twisting her fingers in the apron of her waitressing uniform, nodding and apologizing, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, eyes fixed on the floor. Until they had flickered up to Irene, and there had been a cold, calculated recognition there in that look that made Irene feel like it was the first time this almost stranger who had birthed her had actually looked at her.
“Katherine.” Her mother had said, making a hasty motion towards herself, and she had hopped down from the chair, relishing the sound of her own name despite the circumstances it was said under. Her mother had taken hold of her hand and all but dragged her out into the parking lot. One of Irene’s clearest memories of her mother was the rough feeling of the yellow fabric of her mother’s uniform against her elbow, and the way her mother had stared straight ahead. Even in the car she had stared at the road, it wasn’t until they pulled into the driveway that her mother had said under her breath.
“Your father can’t know about this. Go get cleaned up, and if he asks, you fell at recess.”
She had nodded, but the thrill of that attention had stuck with her.
A few weeks later both of her parents were called in to the Principal’s office. Irene hadn’t even known the child that the boy the grade above her had been pounding on, and it certainly hadn’t been for his benefit when she had hit the older boy over the back of the head with her geography textbook. She had better war wounds after that scrape, the ten year old boy who’d been on the receiving end of her book was much larger, and Irene had been a small child. She could hear her father bellowing in the Principal’s office, but the words were all indignation over his needing to take time off work for something as trivial as a child’s scrabble. Once more in the uncomfortable, scuffed, plastic chair outside the office, her feet swinging unconsciously and holding a bag of ice over her eye, and her arm still stinging where the school nurse had disinfected her cuts and covered them in bright, cartoon character bandages.
The receptionist had looked so sympathetically at the small brunette girl, who would have a disturbingly dark black eye in a matter of hours, and offered her a lollipop from the mug on her desk. Assuring Irene that “it sounds worse in there than it is; your Daddy is just concerned about his little girl because he loves you so much.”
She had accepted a blueberry flavored tootsie pop, and with a forced smile told the receptionist that “no, no he doesn’t” in the most serious voice the woman had ever heard out of a child in her professional history with the Bayonne School District.
But it was then that Irene, at eight years old, realized that the attention she needed was never going to come from her family, and that this route was going to get her broken bones at some point. And she knew that she would spend the rest of her life being ignored, and probably slowly turning into her mother, if she didn’t somehow get out of New Jersey.
**
The fights had stopped, and she’d opted for impressing her parents with her school work instead. And while even that met with little to no notice whatsoever, as long as there wasn’t complete silence she managed to function without too much of an incident. If not being noticed made her feel like she was fading into the background, silence made her feel like she was eroding into nothingness. Ever since she was seven she’d snuck the radio into her bed, even when all she could get was the news, it made her at least feel corporeal.
When she was fourteen there had been a rather unfortunate incident in the science lab during a Physics mid-term. And this time there was more than just Strawberry Shortcake bandages needed to patch her back together. After she got out of the hospital she found herself sitting outside the Principal’s office for the fourth time, listening through the door, only this time her father would not even come. And through the door she had heard the hush discussion of psychiatric care and medication.
And while initially her mother had batted away the school guidance counselor’s insistence that Irene see a psychiatrist before the state needed to get involved, because the child was obviously disturbed; her mother had eventually given up and given in. After that it had been Doctor Halestead twice a week, and three pills in the morning, and again before sleeping.
And each week the Doctor would ask again why the incident in the science lab had happened. And each week she would shrug, because even at fourteen she knew better than to tell him about the silence, and the way it affected her.
**
A little over a year later, Irene let the first boy who told her she was pretty kiss her. It was a sloppy, unpleasant experience; but he was attractive and popular, so she allowed there to be several more, equally unimpressive kisses. He was a few years older than her, and on the foot ball team, and Irene liked the way everyone looked past her cheap, second hand clothes when she walked down the halls of their high school on his arm. A few months later he told her that he thought he might be in love with her, while they sat in his car looking out at the Kill Van Kull. So she hadn’t stopped him when he had pressed her into the backseat of his car, fumbling with her skirt and the hooks of her bra. It was the first time she had ever had someone’s undivided attention, and much like her first kiss, losing her virginity was a messy, unpleasant affair.
There were a few more similar fumbles, before he “realized” that he wasn’t, in fact, in love with her after all. The next week he was dating one of the head cheerleaders, and Irene attempted a few more equally unremarkable forays into sex and dating, more to remind herself that she still existed, even if it was only through the reactions of a string of rather simple minded teenage boys. She maintained a perfect grade average, skipped ahead multiple grades, and graduated high school barely over the age of sixteen. Her academics had been impressive enough that she amassed enough scholarships to get her as far away from New Jersey as possible, across the Atlantic Ocean, even.
It was after getting accepted into Kingston University, that she left New Jersey without a backwards glance, and only a short note taped to the mirror of the bedroom she’d shared with her sister. She walked away from Bayonne, and her association with the Murphy family. When she reached England she stepped off the plane Miss Irene Elizabeth Adler, and never gave her old life in New Jersey another thought. Re-creating herself as Adler instead of Murphy; she wanted desperately to fit in with her classmates. Most of them were trust fund children from old money, Katherine Murphy may have come from a lower class household, but Irene Adler would be the kind of girl who fit in with her Kingston classmates. They didn’t need to know that her money came from student loans and scholarships, or that she would skip eating for days to afford to dress like the rest of them did.
She wasn’t sure what made her decide she wanted to pursue profiling, but she fell in love with abnormal psychology, and then criminology, and ultimately the idea of understanding the way the serial killer brain functioned. What she never told anyone was that the love came from the way that her serial killers made her feel like she was human, and almost normal - and not some strange creature, constantly braying for attention and approval.
**
Her senior year of university much pleading, and about twenty letters of recommendation, had gotten her an internship with Scotland Yard. It wasn’t MI-5, but they squeezed her into the homicide division; with the promise of getting to job shadow after a few months of more mundane office based tasks.
It was mostly coffee runs and organizing backlogged files, but Lestrade was kind and patient and never snapped at Irene’s thousands of questions. The rest of the yard generally ignored her, with the exception of Sally Donovon, who was the closest thing Irene had come to having a friend, or at least someone who seemed to like her and didn’t mind getting drinks and watching East Enders with her.
Sherlock Holmes waltzed into her life three months into her internship with London’s homicide division. It had been her first case she was allowed to shadow Inspector Lestrade, and he’d been hovering over the dead body by the time she had gotten to the crime scene; out of breath from running from the tube station and clutching her clipboard to her chest.
He was pale, and perfect, and brooding. And he barely even acknowledged her presence. If she were more sentimental she would have called it love at first sight.
For her at least; He didn’t even look at her until she “accidentally” bumped into him while examining the crime scene.
“Sorry.” She had whispered, and he had glanced at her briefly with a terse, utterly insincere little smile. His eyes were the exact color of the cloudy London sky outside, and she could already see the ridiculously long hours ahead of her obsessing over getting that cold stare directed at her again.
It wasn’t until there were three more bodies, and not a single lead on the serial killer that Lestrade turned to Irene with a sigh, and asked her opinion on who they might be looking for. Irene had shifted her weight in her ridiculously high stiletto heels, chewing uneasily on the cap of her pen.
“He’s an exhibitionist.” She’d said finally. “In most cases the profile points toward a lone wolf typology, the kill itself is the fulfillment, not the attention. But he displays his victims; he wants people to notice him. He’s well educated, and probably financially well off. Most likely he’s in a cultured profession - there’s an artwork to this. Also, I’m willing to bet, from the neatness of the work, that there have been many more. He’s just now escalating into letting us find them. So, affluent, middle aged, and probably employed in the arts - orchestra maybe? Or even a museum curator?”
Lestrade had nodded thoughtfully at that.
“Good, good, we may make a profiler of you yet, Adler.”
**
He had found her outside, sitting on the curb beyond the police tape. Huddled into her coat, cigarette clamped between her lips, he’d seated himself next to her, digging a packet of cigarettes out of his trench.
“Can I borrow your lighter?” He’d said, but it sounded more like a command then a question, and she had still been more than a little shocked about why he was out here with her. So she’d wordlessly turned it over to him; her pulse thumping loudly in her ears as she watched his long fingers flick open her lighter, the way his mouth closed on the cigarette made her imagine how those lips would feel pressed against her bare skin and she shivered involuntarily.
“That was good back there.” He said after a silence that seemed to span years. They had both been on this case for nearing two months and it was the most he’d ever said to her.
“I’m sorry?” Irene asked cautiously.
“That … the arts bit, I hadn’t put that together. And that’s a bit rare... it was, well...”
“Clever?” She offered, with a slightly arched eyebrow.
“Mmm.” He turned slightly, so he was facing towards her, inadvertently knocking his knees against hers. But he didn’t re-situate himself, he staid, knees pressed against her left thigh. “The name’s Sherlock Holmes.” He didn’t try to shake her hand, he just stared at her expectantly.
Irene bit at her bottom lip slightly to keep from grinning at him. It didn’t seem appropriate.
“I know who you are.” She told him, inwardly supposing she shouldn’t be surprised at his self involvement, she had been watching him like a hawk since the day she first saw him. But he still had that oddly expectant look on his face, and she couldn’t fight the smile back. “Irene.” She said quietly. “Irene Adler.”
“I know who you are.” Sherlock parroted back at her with a wry smile.
“Oh, you do not.” She said, without any real malice in it. Although she enjoyed the idea that he actually might. That Sherlock Holmes had taken more than a second to study her, to try and figure her out.
“Oh, I do.” The smile had morphed into a sort of Cheshire cat grin that Irene thought should maybe concern her. It was, after all, the popular opinion around the Homicide Division that Sherlock Holmes was quite mad. “You’re twenty four years old, a psychology student. You’re brilliant, that’s the only way you got into Kingston, your parents never could have afforded university, let alone overseas. But you wouldn’t have taken their money even if they could, you’ve gone out of your way to disassociate from them. You don’t have a cent to your name, but you like to play aristocrat, even though everything you’re wearing is an imitation and you can never let any of your friends come back to your flat because it’s a bit of a dive, isn’t it? Everything you do is inspired by your need to be noticed, up to and including, those absolutely ridiculous shoes you so love because they force people to look up at you when they speak to you… I could keep going.”
“Please don’t.” She said quickly. Oh, he was mad all right. Some frightening combination of lunatic, genius, and perhaps even psychic..? It was unnerving in any case.
“Aren’t you going to ask how I knew all that?”
“No.” Irene told him, dropping her cigarette and grinding it under the toe of her shoe. “I’d just as soon not know.” Then a thought occurred to her and she looked at him, practically beaming “But that all means that you’ve been watching me, if you know all that.”
“Yes.” Sherlock said flatly, like she had just pointed out that they were breathing oxygen. “It’s what I do. I watch. I deduce. It’s why the police call me in.”
“They didn’t call you in to study me though.” The way he looked at her was like he couldn’t even fathom that she was attempting to flirt with him. The way he looked at her was like she was a new strain of bacteria under a microscope, and he was trying to figure out how it worked. It didn’t make her particularly comfortable. She focused on the fading glow of the cigarette under her shoes, twisting her fingers in the hem of her coat. “So, would you maybe want to get a bite with me?”
“I don’t eat when I’m on a case, digestion slows me down.” He said automatically. She couldn’t really be surprised, it was feeble attempt on her part anyway. But then he had turned ever so slightly and fixed her with that cold stare “But a spot of tea might be nice”
Irene couldn’t be sure what had surprised her more, the response to her suggestion, that this strange, gorgeous man had accepted her weak attempt to ask him out, or that as he so gracefully got to his feet he absently offered her his hand to help her up. It was fluid, and natural, and God help her, she was smitten.
Author: mad_teagirl
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Character/Pairing: Sherlock/Irene
Rating: PG-13
Summary:This is set roughly four years before the start of the series. I had been writing a Sherlock/Irene that took place during the current series time-line, but then I got completely sidetracked with their back story and so this happened. The title comes from the Jessica Lea Mayfield song of the same name
Beta(s): This is apparently the fic that is taking a village to raise, as it is currently being beta-ed by sabrinaphynn, read again for general flow by martinius, and then in a last minute crisis of "DEAR GOD THIS IS AWFUL" looked over one last time by my dearest suchaprince, I owe you ladies like whoa, and feel free to collect on that whenever you see fit.
Disclaimer: Pretty much everything belongs to either ACD, Gatiss, Moffat, or the BBC with the exception of my casting choice for Miss Adler, and my choice to take her character in the direction of psychology and criminal profiling as opposed to opera singing.
Our Hearts Are Wrong
Part I:
She Couldn't Help Thinking That There Was A Little More To Life Somewhere Else
Irene Adler was born with the unremarkable name of Katherine Amelia Murphy, to a used car salesmen and a waitress in Bayonne, New Jersey, a family barely above the state poverty line. She was the middle of five children, a position that afforded her neither the prestige of being the oldest, nor the novelty of the youngest. Irene spent most of her childhood trying to get her parents’ attention - but the only time she ever managed to was when she was in trouble.
The first time she could clearly remember her mother directly addressing her, without accidentally calling her by her sister’s name, was as they left the Principal's office. Irene was eight years old, and her skinned knee and split lip were trophies of the fight she’d gotten into. Lunch money had been demanded, and she had chosen to jump, biting and kicking, at the two older, larger boys who had attempted to bully her.
She had clearly remembered sitting outside the Principal’s office, between the two boys who had also been involved in the altercation. She had sniffled at her bloody nose, lamenting her torn skirt and the already flowering bruises - but the boys who had been seated on either side of her sported enough scratches and scrapes that she had felt an odd sort of pride. She had known that the appropriate response to this situation should have been shame, and the two boys clearly had had guilt written on their faces. But for the first time in her life she had been noticed … the teacher supervising recess, the principal, and now her mother.
Her mother had stepped out of the office, twisting her fingers in the apron of her waitressing uniform, nodding and apologizing, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, eyes fixed on the floor. Until they had flickered up to Irene, and there had been a cold, calculated recognition there in that look that made Irene feel like it was the first time this almost stranger who had birthed her had actually looked at her.
“Katherine.” Her mother had said, making a hasty motion towards herself, and she had hopped down from the chair, relishing the sound of her own name despite the circumstances it was said under. Her mother had taken hold of her hand and all but dragged her out into the parking lot. One of Irene’s clearest memories of her mother was the rough feeling of the yellow fabric of her mother’s uniform against her elbow, and the way her mother had stared straight ahead. Even in the car she had stared at the road, it wasn’t until they pulled into the driveway that her mother had said under her breath.
“Your father can’t know about this. Go get cleaned up, and if he asks, you fell at recess.”
She had nodded, but the thrill of that attention had stuck with her.
A few weeks later both of her parents were called in to the Principal’s office. Irene hadn’t even known the child that the boy the grade above her had been pounding on, and it certainly hadn’t been for his benefit when she had hit the older boy over the back of the head with her geography textbook. She had better war wounds after that scrape, the ten year old boy who’d been on the receiving end of her book was much larger, and Irene had been a small child. She could hear her father bellowing in the Principal’s office, but the words were all indignation over his needing to take time off work for something as trivial as a child’s scrabble. Once more in the uncomfortable, scuffed, plastic chair outside the office, her feet swinging unconsciously and holding a bag of ice over her eye, and her arm still stinging where the school nurse had disinfected her cuts and covered them in bright, cartoon character bandages.
The receptionist had looked so sympathetically at the small brunette girl, who would have a disturbingly dark black eye in a matter of hours, and offered her a lollipop from the mug on her desk. Assuring Irene that “it sounds worse in there than it is; your Daddy is just concerned about his little girl because he loves you so much.”
She had accepted a blueberry flavored tootsie pop, and with a forced smile told the receptionist that “no, no he doesn’t” in the most serious voice the woman had ever heard out of a child in her professional history with the Bayonne School District.
But it was then that Irene, at eight years old, realized that the attention she needed was never going to come from her family, and that this route was going to get her broken bones at some point. And she knew that she would spend the rest of her life being ignored, and probably slowly turning into her mother, if she didn’t somehow get out of New Jersey.
**
The fights had stopped, and she’d opted for impressing her parents with her school work instead. And while even that met with little to no notice whatsoever, as long as there wasn’t complete silence she managed to function without too much of an incident. If not being noticed made her feel like she was fading into the background, silence made her feel like she was eroding into nothingness. Ever since she was seven she’d snuck the radio into her bed, even when all she could get was the news, it made her at least feel corporeal.
When she was fourteen there had been a rather unfortunate incident in the science lab during a Physics mid-term. And this time there was more than just Strawberry Shortcake bandages needed to patch her back together. After she got out of the hospital she found herself sitting outside the Principal’s office for the fourth time, listening through the door, only this time her father would not even come. And through the door she had heard the hush discussion of psychiatric care and medication.
And while initially her mother had batted away the school guidance counselor’s insistence that Irene see a psychiatrist before the state needed to get involved, because the child was obviously disturbed; her mother had eventually given up and given in. After that it had been Doctor Halestead twice a week, and three pills in the morning, and again before sleeping.
And each week the Doctor would ask again why the incident in the science lab had happened. And each week she would shrug, because even at fourteen she knew better than to tell him about the silence, and the way it affected her.
**
A little over a year later, Irene let the first boy who told her she was pretty kiss her. It was a sloppy, unpleasant experience; but he was attractive and popular, so she allowed there to be several more, equally unimpressive kisses. He was a few years older than her, and on the foot ball team, and Irene liked the way everyone looked past her cheap, second hand clothes when she walked down the halls of their high school on his arm. A few months later he told her that he thought he might be in love with her, while they sat in his car looking out at the Kill Van Kull. So she hadn’t stopped him when he had pressed her into the backseat of his car, fumbling with her skirt and the hooks of her bra. It was the first time she had ever had someone’s undivided attention, and much like her first kiss, losing her virginity was a messy, unpleasant affair.
There were a few more similar fumbles, before he “realized” that he wasn’t, in fact, in love with her after all. The next week he was dating one of the head cheerleaders, and Irene attempted a few more equally unremarkable forays into sex and dating, more to remind herself that she still existed, even if it was only through the reactions of a string of rather simple minded teenage boys. She maintained a perfect grade average, skipped ahead multiple grades, and graduated high school barely over the age of sixteen. Her academics had been impressive enough that she amassed enough scholarships to get her as far away from New Jersey as possible, across the Atlantic Ocean, even.
It was after getting accepted into Kingston University, that she left New Jersey without a backwards glance, and only a short note taped to the mirror of the bedroom she’d shared with her sister. She walked away from Bayonne, and her association with the Murphy family. When she reached England she stepped off the plane Miss Irene Elizabeth Adler, and never gave her old life in New Jersey another thought. Re-creating herself as Adler instead of Murphy; she wanted desperately to fit in with her classmates. Most of them were trust fund children from old money, Katherine Murphy may have come from a lower class household, but Irene Adler would be the kind of girl who fit in with her Kingston classmates. They didn’t need to know that her money came from student loans and scholarships, or that she would skip eating for days to afford to dress like the rest of them did.
She wasn’t sure what made her decide she wanted to pursue profiling, but she fell in love with abnormal psychology, and then criminology, and ultimately the idea of understanding the way the serial killer brain functioned. What she never told anyone was that the love came from the way that her serial killers made her feel like she was human, and almost normal - and not some strange creature, constantly braying for attention and approval.
**
Her senior year of university much pleading, and about twenty letters of recommendation, had gotten her an internship with Scotland Yard. It wasn’t MI-5, but they squeezed her into the homicide division; with the promise of getting to job shadow after a few months of more mundane office based tasks.
It was mostly coffee runs and organizing backlogged files, but Lestrade was kind and patient and never snapped at Irene’s thousands of questions. The rest of the yard generally ignored her, with the exception of Sally Donovon, who was the closest thing Irene had come to having a friend, or at least someone who seemed to like her and didn’t mind getting drinks and watching East Enders with her.
Sherlock Holmes waltzed into her life three months into her internship with London’s homicide division. It had been her first case she was allowed to shadow Inspector Lestrade, and he’d been hovering over the dead body by the time she had gotten to the crime scene; out of breath from running from the tube station and clutching her clipboard to her chest.
He was pale, and perfect, and brooding. And he barely even acknowledged her presence. If she were more sentimental she would have called it love at first sight.
For her at least; He didn’t even look at her until she “accidentally” bumped into him while examining the crime scene.
“Sorry.” She had whispered, and he had glanced at her briefly with a terse, utterly insincere little smile. His eyes were the exact color of the cloudy London sky outside, and she could already see the ridiculously long hours ahead of her obsessing over getting that cold stare directed at her again.
It wasn’t until there were three more bodies, and not a single lead on the serial killer that Lestrade turned to Irene with a sigh, and asked her opinion on who they might be looking for. Irene had shifted her weight in her ridiculously high stiletto heels, chewing uneasily on the cap of her pen.
“He’s an exhibitionist.” She’d said finally. “In most cases the profile points toward a lone wolf typology, the kill itself is the fulfillment, not the attention. But he displays his victims; he wants people to notice him. He’s well educated, and probably financially well off. Most likely he’s in a cultured profession - there’s an artwork to this. Also, I’m willing to bet, from the neatness of the work, that there have been many more. He’s just now escalating into letting us find them. So, affluent, middle aged, and probably employed in the arts - orchestra maybe? Or even a museum curator?”
Lestrade had nodded thoughtfully at that.
“Good, good, we may make a profiler of you yet, Adler.”
**
He had found her outside, sitting on the curb beyond the police tape. Huddled into her coat, cigarette clamped between her lips, he’d seated himself next to her, digging a packet of cigarettes out of his trench.
“Can I borrow your lighter?” He’d said, but it sounded more like a command then a question, and she had still been more than a little shocked about why he was out here with her. So she’d wordlessly turned it over to him; her pulse thumping loudly in her ears as she watched his long fingers flick open her lighter, the way his mouth closed on the cigarette made her imagine how those lips would feel pressed against her bare skin and she shivered involuntarily.
“That was good back there.” He said after a silence that seemed to span years. They had both been on this case for nearing two months and it was the most he’d ever said to her.
“I’m sorry?” Irene asked cautiously.
“That … the arts bit, I hadn’t put that together. And that’s a bit rare... it was, well...”
“Clever?” She offered, with a slightly arched eyebrow.
“Mmm.” He turned slightly, so he was facing towards her, inadvertently knocking his knees against hers. But he didn’t re-situate himself, he staid, knees pressed against her left thigh. “The name’s Sherlock Holmes.” He didn’t try to shake her hand, he just stared at her expectantly.
Irene bit at her bottom lip slightly to keep from grinning at him. It didn’t seem appropriate.
“I know who you are.” She told him, inwardly supposing she shouldn’t be surprised at his self involvement, she had been watching him like a hawk since the day she first saw him. But he still had that oddly expectant look on his face, and she couldn’t fight the smile back. “Irene.” She said quietly. “Irene Adler.”
“I know who you are.” Sherlock parroted back at her with a wry smile.
“Oh, you do not.” She said, without any real malice in it. Although she enjoyed the idea that he actually might. That Sherlock Holmes had taken more than a second to study her, to try and figure her out.
“Oh, I do.” The smile had morphed into a sort of Cheshire cat grin that Irene thought should maybe concern her. It was, after all, the popular opinion around the Homicide Division that Sherlock Holmes was quite mad. “You’re twenty four years old, a psychology student. You’re brilliant, that’s the only way you got into Kingston, your parents never could have afforded university, let alone overseas. But you wouldn’t have taken their money even if they could, you’ve gone out of your way to disassociate from them. You don’t have a cent to your name, but you like to play aristocrat, even though everything you’re wearing is an imitation and you can never let any of your friends come back to your flat because it’s a bit of a dive, isn’t it? Everything you do is inspired by your need to be noticed, up to and including, those absolutely ridiculous shoes you so love because they force people to look up at you when they speak to you… I could keep going.”
“Please don’t.” She said quickly. Oh, he was mad all right. Some frightening combination of lunatic, genius, and perhaps even psychic..? It was unnerving in any case.
“Aren’t you going to ask how I knew all that?”
“No.” Irene told him, dropping her cigarette and grinding it under the toe of her shoe. “I’d just as soon not know.” Then a thought occurred to her and she looked at him, practically beaming “But that all means that you’ve been watching me, if you know all that.”
“Yes.” Sherlock said flatly, like she had just pointed out that they were breathing oxygen. “It’s what I do. I watch. I deduce. It’s why the police call me in.”
“They didn’t call you in to study me though.” The way he looked at her was like he couldn’t even fathom that she was attempting to flirt with him. The way he looked at her was like she was a new strain of bacteria under a microscope, and he was trying to figure out how it worked. It didn’t make her particularly comfortable. She focused on the fading glow of the cigarette under her shoes, twisting her fingers in the hem of her coat. “So, would you maybe want to get a bite with me?”
“I don’t eat when I’m on a case, digestion slows me down.” He said automatically. She couldn’t really be surprised, it was feeble attempt on her part anyway. But then he had turned ever so slightly and fixed her with that cold stare “But a spot of tea might be nice”
Irene couldn’t be sure what had surprised her more, the response to her suggestion, that this strange, gorgeous man had accepted her weak attempt to ask him out, or that as he so gracefully got to his feet he absently offered her his hand to help her up. It was fluid, and natural, and God help her, she was smitten.