aftercare

[riding_crop]

She texts him at half past noon, so that he's had time to sleep in if he needs it, but will probably be awake.

What channel are we watching, Sherlock?

Because he'd laughed, so she considers it a promise.

Comments

[riding_crop]

"Not as far as I'm aware! A little disheartening, isn't it? How easy it is to abduct someone in this city. If the police were called on us at all we never heard from them."

Not that either of them have a particularly high opinion of law enforcement or the general public at the best of times, but that incident certainly hadn't added to Irene's good impression of them.

"We also ran into a next door neighbour, while we were piling her out of the van and up the steps to our flat, but that was a little easier. We were on relatively good terms, and I went over to ask her about her begonias and explain that it was a practical joke for a hen night. Offer people a remotely plausible alternative to a truth that makes them uncomfortable, and I've found they'll leap upon it. My abduction planning skills have much improved in the interim, I'll have you know."

[seesobserves]

"Oh, I should hope so." He's going for cool and conversational, but after a short pause, he breaks into another smile. It isn't so much the stories themselves as it is the situation, but she wasn't wrong.

He looks up from the floor to her, and even though the smile has to close itself while he's meeting her eyes, it's still there.

"Location and timing would be vital. The take-down on a public sidewalk was perhaps a bit too obvious."

[riding_crop]

"Oh, but I've done it since, and perfectly successfully. The key is an accomplice with a professional enough looking camera."

She promises, with a wry smile.

"Film anything and you can get away with it. People apologize outright for stepping into the shot."

[seesobserves]

Ah-ha. Well, that would work.

"Charge extra for copies of the footage?"

[riding_crop]

"Paid for my first flat off one of those films."

She admits, with a smug little stretch. Because there had been more to cut her teeth on than kink alone.

[seesobserves]

"Enterprising business, sex work."

Not that he ever had much doubt in that.

[riding_crop]

"I could snatch you off a street one day, perhaps out of your bed one night, let you truly fight for all you're worth, then take you somewhere and try to get information out of you."

A musing little smile.

"Something prearranged, written in a closed envelope so I can double check afterward and see if you outsmarted me, or if I actually managed to break that iron will of yours."

[seesobserves]

She ought to enjoy the way his expression changes at that suggestion. It's subtle in the extreme, more a sudden stillness than anything else - the same way he'd looked when she'd first promised to make him beg for mercy (twice). He's utterly focused, taking in the moment in its entirety.

"That," he admits, "Does sound more like the type of scenario I was expecting last night." Although he hadn't anticipated just how the pain would affect him.

[riding_crop]

"No one ever explained to you that pain needn't be a competition."

She hadn't, either. Irene spares another moment to curse the over-hasty negotiation.

"I think that idea will wait, in that case. Explore what kinds of pain you enjoy before going into a scene where anyone is hurting you more than is immediately physically satisfying."

The language she chooses is deliberate, putting the control of the stimulation squarely in his hands.

[seesobserves]

It makes sense. Chemistry first. Work out the periodic table before they go handling volatile chemicals.

"Suppose so." His eyes skirt away from her toward the carpet, and then the wall. No sense pretending he isn't interested in continuing, but he's still going to have to adjust to her seeing him like this. "Then I think we will be approaching it again, at some point."

[riding_crop]

"Good."

She agrees, with a tiny bit of a glint in her eye. She won't pretend not to want to have him under her lash.

"I had hoped so."