A/N: A few hours after the events depicted in "The Marriage of Mary Russell"
My wedding night was carefully planned.
In any other marriage, this might seem cold, or even sinister, especially when one considers the differences in age and experience between groom and bride.
Sherlock Holmes, however, is incapable of not planning. Failing to plan is as alien to him as failing to think. As soon as he becomes aware of something, his mind naturally imagines every path and permutation, every possibility of that something, and charts itself the best possible course through that something to the next thing.
This isn't a story about logical deduction, however. This is a story about sex.
We arrived at a cottage, which I later learned was a safe-house often used by certain government agencies and, therefore, at the disposal of Mycroft Holmes.
No sooner had the bride carried herself and her own packed case over the threshold than the groom disappeared down a short hall, and I was left standing on that threshold with nothing but my case for company.
You will understand that the location and description of this cottage must not be divulged. It is sufficient to know that it was stocked with all the comforts. It was clean and warm and private. I blushed at the thought of my new brother-in-law directing all the activities necessary to make it so.
Presently, Holmes popped back into the entry hall and said, with some impatience, "Russell, are you coming?"
This bit of ordinary vexation relaxed me, and my white-knuckled grip on the packed case eased. I followed Holmes down the passage and into the first room, which turned out to be a bedroom, and lay my case beside his. He had gone into yet another adjoining room, and I soon heard water running as if for a bath. Holmes emerged, scowled at my inert self (as I was still dressed for traveling and for cold weather) and, through gesture, indicated that I should do something. The gesture did not specify what I might do.
Holmes's shirtsleeves, I noted, were rolled up to expose his forearms, one of which was wet.
Like many naturally thin men, Holmes has strongly defined muscles in his long arms. Nature designed this bit of masculine beauty to be complemented by the rolled-up cuff of a white linen shirt. Or so it seemed to me.
"You're shivering," he told me, as he ducked back into the brightly lit bath. "There's ample hot water here. You can warm yourself while I look around."
Of course. The first thing my new husband would do in his honeymoon cottage is secure the perimeter.
I had never been self-conscious about disrobing in front of Holmes, and I wasn't about to get miss-ish about it now that I was, legally, a missus. I soon shed my outermost garments. The bathtub steamed. Holmes nodded at me, satisfied that I was functioning, and left the room.
Foaming bath salts in a glass jar had been placed at the side of the tub. This left up to me the amount of bubbling concealment I might choose. I shed my remaining clothing and sank into the hot water, instantly grateful for it, and was cheered by this bit of solicitousness. My shoulders lost their tension.
I ignored the bath foam.
In the quiet, I tracked Holmes's progress through the cottage by the sounds of doors opening and closing, windows being rattled, locks being tested, and, finally, cupboards being rummaged.
When he returned, he wore a dressing gown, slippers, and very little else. One glance at my own lack of sudsy camouflage, and the corners of his mouth ghosted up. It was an ephemeral thing. He hid it well.
I warmed, even as the water around me cooled.
He perched himself next to the bathtub, drew a pipe and tobacco from the pocket of his gown, and filled the bowl. His long finger poked about the tobacco, settling it into some pattern only he could discern.
Then he asked, "Have you experienced orgasm?"
I managed, through great concentration, to neither flush nor flinch.
"Yes," I answered.
He nodded in that way he has when someone has given him a satisfactory answer. He busied himself once again with the arrangement of tobacco in pipe as he asked, "Through your own efforts, or those of another?"
It was my turn to flicker a brief smile, because he contrived to be facing away from me until – and somewhat after – I answered.
"Yes," I said.
Tamp. Tamp.
The match was struck, touched to the bowl, and an experimental draw almost completed when I added, "And before you ask, I have been penetrated. Fingers only. I found neither pain nor any particular pleasure in the experience, but I have no reason to believe that my active habits have left me with any physical barriers to - how did you put it?"
"Put what?"
"Ah. Yes. 'The pleasures of the marriage bed', I think, was the phrase. Be assured that I am eager to test the pleasures of both the marriage, and-"
I paused in the effort to heave myself out of the now-tepid bath. He quickly retrieved a towel and handed it to me as I stepped from the tub.
"—and a real bed."
His eyebrow shot up as I wrapped the towel around me.
"It will have to be an improvement over the back seat of a motor," I concluded.
"I see," he said. And he did. I heard it in his voice and saw it in the set of his shoulders.
He handed me my spectacles. I let go the towel as I put them on my face. He took the opportunity to unwrap me, just a little, and allow me to see up close the pleasure he took in a long, proprietary examination of my small breasts, with their somewhat underdeveloped nipples now pebbling in the cool air. So swiftly did his head dip down, his tongue sample the texture of first one, then the other, that I rocked a little back on my heels in surprise. He steadied me with the towel and wrapped me back up, tucking one corner under in a crisp, efficient fashion.
"Good?" He asked, with deliberate ambiguity.
"Very promising," I told him, whispering at this close range. He allowed his arms to wrap around me and pressed us together so that I became aware of the maleness beneath his dressing gown. It moved about, perhaps taking an interest in its surroundings.
"Now, Russell, I believe I owe you some insight." He gently propelled us toward the turned-down bed, lit by a small fire in the bedroom hearth. He helped me out of the towel and moved the linens about me as I climbed under them, then continued this curious foreplay while un-belting his gown and sliding in beside me. "There are those who believe that I am interested in sex with men, and there are those who believe that I am not interested in sex at all. Neither is accurate, of course. I am," and here, he appeared to reach the end of the prepared speech and plunged into spontaneous exposition, "Motivated not by parts, but by my partner. Do you understand?"
"Have you ever been motivated by a male partner?"
"Never," he answered promptly and without rancor, "And I find your parts particularly appealing, if that needs saying. But you haven't answered my question."
It was important to him. I gave my answer due consideration. "Art in the blood," I said at last. "A painter has a vision. An author has a voice. These are unique, or should be. And so should this," I posited, aware not of his nearness but of the suddenly unbearable distance between our bodies.
It was his turn to think. I could tell he was thinking. I could tell, even when he drew me into those beautiful arms, and when he pinned me to the pillow with a kiss as impatient and demanding as any enthusiastic undergraduate had ever delivered. And yet, somehow, this kiss made my legs wrap around his, and the warm-honey sensations in my belly spread up and down my spine. It made me impatient, not to take an instructive control of the kiss, but to open up and be surprised by what came next.
"Unique," he said. "Exactly."
He rested his forehead against mine. My spectacles were askew, and I removed them, tossing them to the bedside table behind Holmes and not fussing much when I heard them slide across that table to land with a soft thud on the rag-woven rug beyond. His male member was quite satisfactorily tucked between us, now, and pulsing to life warm and real against my own sex.
"By god, Russell," he husked, "You are a grand girl."
The sweet silliness of his declaration astonished me almost as much as the sharp clarity of my own desire. My body had not reacted to passion by getting lost within it, but by creating, at speed, a quite specific map of the way ahead.
"Holmes," I managed, "Enter me. Soon. Now."
He did. Atop me, he spread me wide and entered me slowly, and with deliberation.
It was – words fail. I think they are supposed to. These things are older than words.
It seemed the most obvious thing in the world that I should reach between us and touch myself at our momentarily raw and infinitely sweet joining, to use my fingers to bring about my release, to grip at him and give him those moments of surrender. It seemed entirely logical that his own pleasure was palpable to me as a hot and molten salve for my breached flesh. And, yes, in spite of my optimism, there was some blood on the bridal sheets in the morning.
Those few brown dots were a thing far removed from the reality of what I had purposefully, irrevocably given him.
Of course, there was, and has been, so much more. It is ours alone.
Go you out, two-by-two, and make your own.