Archive of Our Own

She comes to Irene Adler's door after the show, a slender thing with dark eyes glittering in the lamplight. She wears an oversized silken bow on her hat and fine kid gloves on her fingers--long fingers, Irene cannot help but notice; there is a smear of beeswax and rosin on one glove. It is as good as a dare.

Irene smiles, and bids the woman good evening.

She has just come off of a successful run as Rosalind; it's not opera, but in England the taste is for Italians and Frenchwomen and Poles, and she can scarcely compete with that. She finds herself surprisingly comfortable in a breeches role; a woman playing a man can say what she likes, as even a true man cannot. She muses on this as she hooks a thumb in her braces and taps her pipe, watching herself blow smoke rings in the mirror.

Her jaw is too soft, her cheek too smooth. She will need a beard for verisimilitude--and a mustache; she has not forgotten her quarry's tastes.

* * *

The young man at the door of 221 is short of stature, bearded, lips pressed firmly together; he is wearing a greatcoat (not tailored to fit) and boots with a slight heel (designed for hard riding, worn somewhat less practically out of a lingering affectation of gentility). He looks up again and again as he waits, which means that his object is 221B (for the best; he would find little sport in Mrs Hudson--and Holmes is quite sure that his object is sport).

He is wearing a familiar hat, with a distinctive hatband that Holmes recognizes from a recent production of As You Like It. It was Orlando's hat, of course, but Holmes recognizes the young man below as Ganymede.

He puts down his bow with a smirk, tucking a lock of false hair behind his ear.

* * *

"You're early," says Holmes; "You walk slowly," says the young man, "and I was already dressed." He could only be a countertenor, although there is a pleasant roughness to his voice (tobacco stains on his fingers and a distinctive aroma of pipesmoke, but no film of smoke on his coat; he must have finished a pipe, inexpertly, before coming). A faint, white line on the ring finger of his left hand suggests either a neglected marriage or a recent divorce.

"Already dressed? That's a queer way to say it," remarks Holmes, a corner of his lips drawing up nearly involuntarily. "Are you not usually dressed at this hour?--but I forget my manners; I must invite you in for tea. I believe I am right in supposing that you will have an Oolong blend?" He sweeps his skirts aside (also inexpert, he notes; the last time he had occasion to wear skirts, the fashion had dictated a greater circumference, and he is out of practice) and beckons the young man into what passes for the parlour.

It had been a great deal more homelike, when Watson had shared these rooms.

"Do you care if I smoke?" the man asks, then smiles. "I'm Aaron, by the way. Aaron Adler." He is leaning forward, just slightly, although his posture is otherwise impeccable (doubtless the product of years of wearing corsets, abruptly curtailed approximately age seventeen); with that rough beard and mustache concealing the lines of his face, his posture will be the most reliable tell.

Aaron Adler wants to be believed, and Holmes is generous enough to believe him.

"I had deduced as much," answers Holmes, "and, doubtless, you know my identity already. As to the smoking, prefer the cigar to the pipe. You will find it easier to manage."

"Thank you," says Aaron, with a toss of his head that in other circumstances might have thrown curls over his shoulder. "Tea?"

"I've taken the liberty of having Mrs. Hudson prepare a pot."

"For fear of poison?"

Holmes finds himself perilously close to laughing; he draws himself up to his full height, folding his arms over his false bosom with an expression of severity. "A woman," he intones, "has far worse to fear than poison from a young man of your character."

* * *

"Since I'm a man of bad character, let's cut to the chase," says Irene, dropping herself neatly into an overstuffed armchair and letting her legs fall open. She smirks, and knows that the mustache enhances the smirk; she has practiced the expression in the mirror a dozen times. "I'm not here on business."

Holmes--whatever he's calling himself in this gown, Carol or Charlotte or Matilda--is pouring the tea with an expression of unconcern. "You are in the residence of a consulting detective, Mr Adler," he answers, and to his credit, his painted lips don't betray even a hint of mirth. "Had your purpose not been evident from the very first, you should never have crossed the threshold." He offers her a cup of tea, which she takes and drains at a go--she is playing not only a man but a cad, and needn't remember her manners.

The bustle on his gown suits him well, actually. Draws attention to his trim waist--a tighter corset would improve the line of the gown, but now she's splitting hairs.

She likes what she sees.

"Well," she murmurs, licking her lips. "Are you ... amenable to my purpose?"

It's only barely perceptible--a slight bobbing of the knot of his Adam's apple. "I may very well be," says Holmes, that cultured false voice just a hair away from whimper. She knows what will make him cry out, scream, sing in that voice--

--and then her cup is cracking against the floor as she seizes his wrist and drags him onto her lap, and then her lips are tracing his jaw and his teeth are against her ear and he's whispering Mr Adler, you are the soul of--the very acme of--dear God--

--which would be her hand slipping up under that skirt, over stockings and past garters to the hard curve of his arse; he bites hard at her neck when she pinches. "Mr Adler," he breathes, readjusting himself so as to straddle her lap, "I fear we may cause the chair to disintegrate." He looks so fine with his lips smeared with red and his false breasts heaving that she has to kiss him again, tangling her fingers in that long, soft hair.

"So what if we do?" she laughs, when they break. "Now, are you going to give me a hand, or do I have to do all the work?" He raises his hand to undo his underthings, but she brushes him away and has them around his thighs in an instant. "A hand," she says, palming his cock and squeezing so that he gets the picture.

His hand slides into her trousers, and she has to bite her lip to keep from screaming like a girl.

* * *

Irene's fingers are sunk in him to the second knuckle; her free hand is braced at the back of his neck to hold him in a kiss, and he is doing his level best to bring her to orgasm before her clever hands undo him. She rocks up against him, her pelvic bone perfectly curved against his palm, her skin slick with sweat and arousal. (She lifts her hips to him in time with her own hand, and not his; he really must devise a suitable prosthesis for her.)

"Sherlock," she breathes, sliding her hand down his back until it catches at the waist of his corset. "Sherlock, or--oh, there--" She bites his neck to smother a cry, and clings until she has shuddered to completion.

He loves her best in these moments, he thinks; it is a victory that entails no loss on her part, nor any surrender of dignity on his own. They are performing for one another, of course (and her hand closes again on his cock, warm and smooth and perfect), but it is a performance designed to entertain rather than to deceive--there is a truth buried in their adoption of these roles, in their performances as man and woman and lover, and if he could only keep kissing her then it would come to him like a revelation--

--when he comes, he cries out sharply against her lips.

* * *

"Your lady caller hasn't come back," says Charles, who played a good Orlando but who makes only a tolerable Florizel. "Think she's tired of you, now that you're in a skirt?"

For a moment, Irene Adler doesn't answer; she is applying the last of her art. She finds that lip paint enhances her smirk nearly as well as a mustache, and it is considerably easier to remove besides. She turns to Charles, and something in her smile makes him swallow.

"She'll never tire of me," says Irene. "Until I've run out of parts to play, she'll always need the challenge of figuring out who I really am."