How we know Sherlock wasn't attracted to Irene

 (Sherlock Meta by Loudest Subtext In Television)

[...] Sherlock stares directly at Irene’s face, and only Irene’s face, from the moment she walks into the room, and is focused on trying to deduce her. He’s not rattled or turned on.

Sherlock only gets annoyed when John comes in, and because he thinks John will be into her. Sherlock directly tells Irene that if he wanted to look at naked women he would borrow John’s laptop, and that he confiscates John’s laptop apparently because that’s what John chooses to do with it.

Sherlock has no problem speaking to Irene when they’re alone, and even when John comes in, but he only stutters when Irene starts flirting with John and John tentatively smiles back at her. Sherlock hates that Irene is flirting with John because he has feelings for John, not Irene.

When Sherlock deduces naked Irene sitting down, the camera stylistically zooms right over her body very quickly and focuses on her face, and he doesn’t glance at her body again. We get the heartbeat sound in the soundtrack, but the heartbeat sound is used for ANYTHING significant, including epiphanies, anxiety, etc. Sherlock gets it at the safe, Irene gets it when Sherlock is going to open the safe, etc.

When Sherlock deduces John for comparison, he gives him the full-body once-over… and we get several heartbeat sounds. But there’s no obvious cause for it there: there shouldn’t be any anxiety or anything. Something about deducing John makes Sherlock’s heart pound, too.

The fact that Sherlock found it very easy to look over at John, and look at John longer than Irene, tells us a lot about just how weak a draw Irene’s naked body has on Sherlock.

When Irene says she’s flattered Sherlock noticed her measurements, Sherlock outright says, “Don’t be.”

Irene then nonconsensually drugs and beats Sherlock. It’s already fucked up and heteronormative to assume that Sherlock is into her. Watch the beating sequence and Sherlock is NOT turned on, he’s simply drugged and beaten. Watch the hiker deduction sequence and Sherlock is NOT attracted, he’s simply drugged. The fact that he wakes up in a panic CALLING OUT FOR JOHN and terrified that Irene is still in the flat not only tells us a lot, it’s a pretty normal reaction for anyone to have in that situation. Most straight men would not want to fuck Irene after that, much less be in love with her: that’s when you run far away and post Facebook messages about how psycho she is.

Sherlock does not respond to Irene’s texts. Like. I don’t know how much clearer he could be.

Sherlock was smoking over John and composing music for John [read this meta]

Sherlock flees Battersea in a daze because of what Irene suggested about John’s feelings for him, not because he can’t believe Irene is alive or something. mid0nz did a meta about this a long time ago: the camera transition lets us know that Sherlock’s eyes have been opened to John, not Irene.

When Irene turns up in Sherlock’s bed, he has no visible reaction.

Sherlock only helps Irene because she faked her death, and Sherlock is ALL about saving people’s lives and feels bad when he fails: we already saw it in The Blind Banker and The Great Game, and it’s how Moriarty manipulates Sherlock. When Irene turns up alive, Sherlock helps her because he can’t let her die.

Sherlock says, “You’re rather good,” when Irene doesn’t fall for his phone trick, but it’s a long shot to call that romantic: he’s simply impressed, it doesn’t mean it overrides her drugging and beating him and he suddenly wants to fuck her or is in love with her. That’s crazy and heteronormative.

Sherlock looks puzzled when John suggests he and Irene are looking for baby names. He can’t make sense of John’s comment because he’s not attracted to Irene.

Sherlock does the Bond Air deduction to impress John, not Irene: the camera makes this very clear. Irene says “Impress a girl” and kisses Sherlock’s cheek: Sherlock looks irritated at the distraction, and it doesn’t throw him off his game AT ALL. He stares at John during the deduction and when it’s finished, he looks first to see that John is impressed. He then LITERALLY TELLS IRENE that he does not want her praise because he has John’s praise.

Sherlock stares Irene down at the end of the deduction because she’s trying to be seductive, and the last time she did that, she jabbed a syringe in his neck and beat him. Sherlock TALKS TO JOHN while Irene threatens to make him beg for mercy, and then tells irene very clearly, “I’ve never begged for mercy in my life.” We have no reason to think Sherlock would be into that, and he’s telling her quite flatly it’s NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. He’s not flirting.

John leaves Sherlock alone with Irene for hours, and Sherlock doesn’t notice! If Sherlock were into Irene, he’d presumably notice this! And he sure as hell wouldn’t snap to and be disappointed John isn’t there if he wanted to fuck Irene.

Sherlock is visibly irritated when Irene interrupts his Coventry deduction to talk about sex.

Sherlock is faking it when he takes Irene’s pulse — and we KNOW this because he does it again in Mycroft’s office just as convincingly. There is absolutely no reason to think Sherlock is genuinely into Irene, and her offer of sex doesn’t phase him or interest him. He even makes a comment about how it’s not the end of the world, it’s just Mrs. Hudson; Irene’s “last day on earth” line was romanticized twaddle that Sherlock isn’t attracted to.

On the airplane, Sherlock resents Irene for taking advantage of his help, and for screwing him over despite being in love with him. That’s exactly why Sherlock thinks love is “destructive” and “a dangerous disadvantage:” it makes people be shitty to each other, and that’s why he says love is the cause of compromised morals and will end human life as we know it in his best man speech.

Sherlock utterly destroys Irene on the plane, to the extent that even Mycroft looks concerned at how much Sherlock hates her. He suggests Mycroft let her die without her protection. When Irene says, “Do you expect me to beg?” Sherlock coldly says, “Yes.” And when Irene DOES beg, and says she won’t last for six months, Sherlock coldly says, “Sorry about dinner,” and leaves. How anyone could read this as Sherlock being in love with Irene, and not exactly what Sherlock says, I don’t know. He tells her romance is bullshit, and people like her are why romance is bullshit, and lets her know he doesn’t care if she dies.

Sherlock ends up saving Irene’s life because he can’t stand to let people die, as evidenced by the first series but The Great Game in particular. His conscience got to him once he cooled down, and that’s basically it. Sherlock is also glad to have evidence that it’s possible for people to be in love with him, because his self-esteem in that regard is shit. And it was an excuse for an adventure.

Sherlock looks fondly upon the “Goodbye” text Irene sent him, then shoves her in a drawer to be forgotten. He needed closure, and that’s it. He did the right thing, and Irene didn’t beat him in the end, or make him compromise his morality. It was an unambiguous win for Sherlock.

Irene’s theme in the soundtrack resolves — her story is over and done — whereas John’s doesn’t.
We learn in The Sign of Three that Sherlock hasn’t kept up with Irene at all, which presumably he’d do if he were in love with her. When Irene tries to get fresh with him in his mind palace, he looks annoyed and tells her to GTFO. And again, even though she’s naked, Sherlock only looks at her face. Sherlock isn’t worried about being improper in his own mind, he’s just not interested in her body because he’s GAAAAY.

He’s remembering her naked because she represents sexuality and the question of what she said about John’s feelings for him at the power station. That’s why Sherlock says, “The woman… she knew.” The literal deduction is about John’s middle name — and even there, on the literal level, Sherlock is remembering John’s jealousy — and the subtextual deduction is that Irene knew John was bisexual because she SAID as much. And we get the bit about someone lying about being on two teams at once. I don’t know if your uncle would be receptive to the whole explanation of the hidden meaning of Sherlock’s best man speech, but here’s a C&P about it from my Meta Masterlist: TSoT and HLV:  John has long been consciously aware of his sexual attraction to Sherlock, Sherlock figured it out in TSoT, and John doesn’t know it and lets present that yet another way and a HLV-specific addendum and why Sherlock wouldn’t tell John he knows and no, really, in HLV Sherlock knows John is bisexual.

Janine lets us know that she and Sherlock didn’t sleep together, even though Sherlock had ample opportunity. Doesn’t seem very straight. idk, maybe your uncle thinks he couldn’t get it up because he’s pining for Irene, whom he hasn’t bothered to keep in touch with? I dunno.

Sherlock doesn’t bring himself back to life for Irene, he brings himself back for John.

Sherlock didn’t give up his work to go live on the run with Irene, but he gives up his work and his entire life for John when he shoots Magnussen. And his FUCKING FACE before he does it, like.

Okay.

If Sherlock is in love with Irene it apparently doesn’t mean anything to him. You don’t pine for someone for years yet not even bother to keep in contact — and we know Sherlock could track her down if he wanted to, because he tracked her to Pakistan to save her life. So.

And all this isn’t even getting into the other very obvious clues that Sherlock is gay.

Sherlock being in love with Irene is seriously one of the most heteronormative assumptions someone could make about the show. You have to disregard literally EVERYTHING Sherlock says or does to the point of absurdity.