AN: This is a sequel to my other story "Bernard and Ben". I strongly recommend you read that first. Thanks! I'd love to hear from you about what you think.
All through my life, I have kept only a few habits whose origins are in my youth. A few of those are known to my acquaintances and friends. They are simple things: the way I prefer my tea (Darjeeling with milk), the way I read the paper every morning with breakfast (usually tea in the aforementioned fashion and toast), and the way I take care to keep my appearance as neat as possible (hair and mustache trimmed and combed, though they do not always remain so on cases).
One habit unknown to all persons save for three—Mrs. Hudson, my dear Holmes, and myself—is the fact that I must hold something as I sleep. Specifically, that something is a stuffed toy, a bear named Ben. This bear was given to me shortly after my arrival at the flat I share with Holmes, 221B Baker Street, by Mrs. Hudson, the housekeeper. After some time of my keeping my one secret, Holmes came to know of Ben, and that same night marked the beginning of our intimate relationship.
Do not mistake my words; before that time, Holmes was and always would be my most intimate friend. During that night, however, Holmes became the possessor of my body in the way that he had been the possessor of my heart for quite some time. I clasped him to me as a wife would her husband, and he reciprocated later by clutching me close in the same manner. Because of this change to our relationship, I shared his bed almost nightly. He became accustomed to holding Ben and me close as he slept, so much so that he suffered from horribly sleepless nights when we could not share his bed. My worry grew each time we slept apart, for I knew the next day how little sleep he had gotten by how little food he ate. After almost a week of our sleeping in our own beds, Holmes ate nothing for breakfast, and I knew that I had to do something to help him.
While on the way home after a stroll one day, we passed a cart selling stuffed toys, and the solution for which I had searched in vain became apparent. Upon seeing a turtle there, I was reminded of a conversation Holmes and I had had after yet another time of my fishing him out of the Thames when the main suspect in our current case had pushed Holmes in while he tried to run.
"Honestly, Holmes!" I cried, exasperated, "I should just start calling you a catfish what with all the times you wind up near the bottom of this muck!"
Holmes shot me a scathing look before replying, "My dear Watson, I would not be a catfish. I would not be a cat anything, let alone a catfish. If I were to be anything to do with cats, however, I would be the greatest of the cats, the lion. As it is, this argument is illogical and most dissatisfying." He crossed his arms over his chest as if to say that that was the end of that.
I, of course, was not one to quiet so easily, as he knew well, so I queried peevishly, "Oh? What would you be, then, Holmes? An owl to go with that intelligence you possess or a chameleon to go with your unique ways of hiding in plain sight?"
Holmes quietly preened for a moment or two under my backwards praise before answering. "A turtle," he stated emphatically. I fixed him with an incredulous stare brimming that I knew was brimming with curiosity until he continued somewhat defensively, "A turtle always has its home with it, a place to keep it warm and make it feel safe, just as I have you." Holmes looked faintly embarrassed to have said the last, but it could not be unsaid or –heard. The words ignited within me a gentle warmth that chased away my anger at him and bade me wrap him in my arms. I shared my warmth with him until he could move to the comfort of the cab back to Baker Street. That night, as I caressed his skin and spoke of my worry for him, I felt his body shuddering against mine for an entirely different reason.
On that trip out when we walked by the cart with the stuffed toys, I could not contain my tiny mirthful smile as I pointed to the stuffed turtle when the boy selling them asked which one I intended to purchase. Holmes had moved ahead without stopping to see what had caught my fancy, as per usual, and I was thankful instead of annoyed this time because it meant I was able to get the package into Baker Street with Holmes none the wiser. I placed the turtle on Holmes' bed and left the room, waiting to see if he would seek me out to tell me what he made of it. There came no rejoinder that night save for the lack of pacing footsteps that usually kept me from my own restful slumber.
The next morning Holmes shot me a small quirk of the lips as he asked blandly, "If you were to name a turtle, Watson, what would its name be?"
"Leo," I answered promptly, flashing him a grin that he returned with one of his own.
That night, I found Leo on the couch as I passed it on my way to retire to my room. I picked up the turtle, confusion etching its presence into lines across my brow as I gently stroked the fabric and stitches from which the stuffed toy had been created. I turned to seek out Holmes and question Leo's presence in the sitting room, but Holmes himself was behind me, making the effort unnecessary. My lips opened to pose the question, but it never escaped them.
Holmes' mouth pressed to mine, and my practically conditioned response was the one I gave; Leo dropped from my hands to the floor, landing squarely on his back, as my arms moved to embrace Holmes and my tongue moved out to slide along his bottom lip. His long, fine fingers wound their way through my hair as his tongue dueled lazily with mine. As our time to breathe came and almost went, I forced myself to break our kiss, pressing my forehead to Holmes' as we panted.
Holmes' breath regained its former position within his lungs faster than mine, so he was able to push my body onto our new couch. The settee had caught fire the last time one of Holmes' experiments exploded in a shower of sparks. The couch, larger and more cushioned than the settee, pleased my senses for its aforementioned attributes. Mrs. Hudson stated that he pattern was "much more pleasing than the last", and, having ascertained that I had not chosen it, remarked that Holmes' tastes no longer resembled those of a blind man's. The striped pattern matched nothing else in the room, but the couch itself was a welcome addition nonetheless.
It was especially welcome to me when Holmes settled his naked form atop mine after divesting us both of our garments and, I hoped fervently, locking the sitting room door while my mind was otherwise occupied. Our mouths were once more engaged in a lazy duel that slowly grew in intensity as our hips began to rock, the evidence of our respective levels of arousal brushing. I shifted my thighs under him with every intention of opening them so he could settle easily in the cradle of my hips, but he appeared to have other plans.
Holmes ended the kiss at my shifting, peering down at me intently and pinning me where I lay under the searching weight of his stare. He shifted his hands over to my arms, drawing them up and over my head. I quirked an eyebrow at him but did not comment, content to let him lead for the moment as my hands gripped the arm of the couch. Holmes bit his lip slightly as his hands shifted once more, sliding their way down my chest, pausing to pluck at a nipple here, caress a plane of skin there, his sharp eyes watching his own fingers' movements over my skin.
Gooseflesh rose on my body from the soft touches, but I knew better than to try and get Holmes to move faster or press harder than he was when he was in a mood such as the one he was conveying to me. My patience was soon rewarded when those gentle hands dipped even lower as Holmes' body shifted so that his legs were spread over my hips. My blood felt as if it were pulsing in my body at twice its usual rhythm as I felt Holmes take hold of my cock and shift to take the head inside.
A noise of protest left me before I could stop it. I had not seen him prepare himself, and I certainly had not done it, so I assumed that he was trying to join us without any sort of preparation or lubrication. As Holmes began to sink down, his impossibly tight heat enveloping my arousal, I realized that I should have learned by then to assume anything where Holmes is concerned. My length slid inside him with ease, and it struck me dimly that he must have prepared himself before coming to me.
That last was the final coherent thought I had that evening. The thought itself was enough to make the heat pooling low in my stomach burn even hotter, and I disobeyed Holmes silent request to keep my hands where they had been placed when they moved to clench on his hips. He made a low sound in his throat at the press of my hands on him, and I tightened my grip in a way I knew would leave bruises beneath but not above the skin. A soft whine escaped his lips as I bucked my hips up into his next rolling thrust and caught him at just the write angle to press directly onto his prostate. We kept that angle while speeding our rhythm steadily until I felt his thighs begin to tremble and heard a soft keening come from his lax mouth.
Holmes threw his head back on a moan that sounded as if it were wrenched from the very depths of him, and I moved my right hand from his hip to clench it around the back of his neck and pull him to me, pressing our mouths together. My left hand moved to take him in hand, stroking harshly in time to our movements against each other until he released an almost wounded sound into my mouth. I felt wetness spread between our rocking bodies, and my own release was triggered a few thrusts later when he gave a small, helpless whimper when I thrust into his over-sensitive prostate.
A guttural groan left me as I released inside of him before holding him to me. I met his lips in a brief kiss before he sat up enough to grab a blanket from the back of the couch to absorb the wetness between us as he lay atop me, panting as he tried and failed to catch his breath for long moments. Sitting up momentarily, I shifted so we could lay in a more comfortable position; my head moved to rest on the arm of the couch while Holmes made a small smile quirk the corners of my mouth when he wound his arms around me in the short time it took me to sit up.
I enfolded him in my arms in return, my left hand coming to cradle the back of his head where it was nestled in my neck and my right hand reallocated itself to the left of Holmes' spine, the thumb of that hand stroking lazy circles as his breath and mine evened out.
Over the next few weeks, I found Leo the Turtle in different places around the house, sometimes on Holmes' bed, sometimes on mine. On one memorable occasion, I found Leo in the pantry. That memory can still bring a flush to my face, one of mixed pleasure and embarrassment. Just finding the toy in those places was odd enough, but every time I would discover Leo in each of those places, Holmes was always behind me when I turned to find him and ask why his nighttime companion was found where he was. To make those occasions even stranger, Holmes always made his affection for me known physically, to put it delicately.
That time in the pantry was the most memorable, simply because Holmes has yet to cease teasing me about it. He had whipped my passion so into a frenzy that I could hardly pause to open the bottle of olive oil we used to ease my way inside of him. I took him against the door, delighting in the low grunts he gave as his lower back banged rhythmically against the wood with each thrust. Moments after our completion, I heard footsteps just outside the door. Holmes' head had snapped up at the sound, surprise making his eyes wide as we both frantically tried to right our clothes and get the pantry back in some semblance of order.
Mrs. Hudson opened the pantry door just as Holmes put back the barrel he had been using to brace himself during our exertions. She said nothing of our flushed faces as she reached past us to grasp the bottle of olive oil she was to use that night to aid in her cooking of a lamb roast she had bought. She peered at the bottle's considerably smaller contents, and then her gaze whipped from one of us to the other before she stepped out of the doorway and pointed her finger in a gesture we both understood as "Get out!". I looked over to Holmes as we did, and I saw that his shoulders were up around his ears and a flush stained his face in a mirror to my own reaction. The looks on our faces were no doubt those of recalcitrant children being caught out by their nanny.
Before I left the kitchen, I risked a glance over my shoulder at Mrs. Hudson, and she gave me a faint smile after shaking her wooden spoon at us. I stifled the laugh that threatened to bubble out of me lest her unspoken threat of a good walloping with the spoon be made good.
I am ashamed to admit that it took some time for me to figure out just why Holmes was leaving my present to him about Baker Street. The insufferably lovable man was using his toy as a code. I finally put the pieces together, as it were, after our incident in the pantry. Every single time Holmes left Leo somewhere, Holmes and I would make love in that area. Every single time we made love there, Holmes would be the one taken.
The night I figured it out was the night we had solved a particularly grueling case. One of Holmes' Irregulars had been caught in the crossfire of the case's solution and had had to be stitched up because of a nasty gash he had received from a blow to the head. I treated the boy with no complications arising, but Holmes still took the boy's pain to heart, far more than any of us had expected. That night, after a few preparations to make things a little easier, I took Ben and placed him on Holmes' bed, taking Leo and putting him in some place out of sight.
I waited in the passage from the bay window in the sitting room to Holmes' bedroom as the man himself entered. Peering through the crack I had left between the door and the frame, I watched the expressions flitting over Holmes' face as he took in the sight of my Ben on his bed. A small smile lifted the corners of his mouth as he turned around, eyes darting about and instantly seeing that the only thing out of place was the door's being slightly ajar. I waited for him to cross the distance from his bed to the door before opening it myself and reentering his room, shutting the door with a resounding click behind me.
Holmes' hands came up to cradle my face, thumbs stroking over the high arches of my cheekbones as his smile widened. He spoke quietly, his hands never leaving my face, "So you have figured out my game at last, Watson?"
It was a rhetorical question, I knew, but I answered anyway with a wordless nod and leaned in to press our lips tenderly together. His hands moved from my face to cradle the back of my skull as our kiss deepened, tongues entwining slowly and exploring areas already familiar. I steered him to the bed without looking before turning us so I could sit on the bed, looking up at him as my hands settled at his waist. Holmes looked down at me, a slow fire burning behind his eyes as he took in the sight of me on his bed.
My shirt was already undone, my trousers were hanging onto my hips only by dint of the one button I had left fastened, and my feet were bare of all coverings. Holmes moved his hands to slide the shirt off my shoulders, fingers lingering briefly at the hollow of my throat and at each of my wrists, caressing my skin with light touches that caused shivers to run throughout my entire body. He pushed gently on my chest until I lay back on the bed, arching my hips up so he could pull my trousers and undergarments down in one smooth motion.
I opened my legs and arms in a blatant invitation, and he settled his body on mine, a fine trembling taking over my body as I felt his clothed form rub against mine. There was a quietness to our movements, a familiarity of spirit that drove us to be gentle instead of as frantic as we had been in our last few encounters. He made a movement as if he were going to remove his clothes, but I stopped him before he could, pleading quietly, "No, Holmes. I have an emptiness inside of me that only you can fill. Please do not make me wait any longer."
Holmes looked down at me from where he was propped on his elbows above me, searching my gaze even as his hips and mine began to move restlessly against one another. His pants created in me a nearly mind numbing pleasure from the ache of rubbing my naked body against his clothed one, and I arched my head back on a low moan. I felt rather than heard the sound he made as he lowered his head to mouth kisses and nibbles along the exposed skin of my throat. I brought my hands up to clench in his hair, holding his head where it was as I undulated my hips against his.
Groaning against the skin of my throat at my hips' movements, Holmes let his hand run down my side, caressing my skin as he went before traveling farther down. He gave a cursory rub to my cock, eliciting a sharp whine from me, before venturing to give my perineum a slow massage. My hips bucked helplessly under his ministrations, and I tugged his head up to crash our lips together as my body began to writhe. I dimly heard a steady stream of whimpering pleas leaving my lips, but I was too wound up at that point to care.
"Please, Holmes, please," I begged fervently, and I felt Holmes finally slip two fingers inside of me. He made a small noise of surprise as he encountered no resistance with those two, and soon after, three fingers in my oiled hole.
A wicked smirk curled his lips as he gazed down at me and said in mock outrage, "Watson! Does your depravity know no bounds?"
I returned his smirk with one of my own and answered simply, "No," before bucking hard into his probing fingers and making a sharp noise as he crooked his fingers in time for me have my sensitive gland pressed onto most forcefully. I opened my mouth once more to ask him to get on with it when he pulled his fingers out abruptly. A noise of complaint left me before I could stop it, and Holmes shot me that smirk again before he sat up and his fingers deftly opened the fastenings of his trousers, pushing first them and then his undergarments down until they were bunched at his knees.
I wound my legs around his waist as he settled atop me once more, bracing one arm next to my head on the pillow as he used his right hand to guide himself inside of my unresisting body. Holmes slipped in easily, and I arched my hips into him, letting out a soft groan at the feeling of abrupt fullness that always came on his first thrust.
The room filled then with my cries and whimpers as I tried and failed to be quiet. We had never done this before when I was the only one naked, and it caused an unexpected thrill to sing through my blood as I felt the fabric of his shirt rub against my cock as he thrust evenly inside me. He refused to speed up even when I arched into every thrust, writhing and bucking to get him deeper, harder. Finally, I snapped as I tightened my legs about him, "Damnit, Holmes! Move faster!"
"You only had to ask, Watson," Holmes replied with a smile, and proceeded to put more power behind his thrusts, pushing into me deeper and harder until my hands had to fling themselves above my head to grip the headboard. He used his right hand to tip my hips a little, and he had the perfect angle then, slamming into my prostate at every try. The most undignified noises were issuing from my lips, and my head was arched back. Holmes once more took advantage of this, biting and kissing the flesh until livid marks were left behind.
I felt his hips make a sort of circling motion as he plunged in once more, grinding himself hard into me, and that was the final stimulation I needed. My lungs expanded with the indrawn air I needed to cry out his name loudly, the sound thankfully muffled by his mouth covering mine in that instant. As my internal muscles squeezed him tightly, I felt Holmes' rhythm falter as he reached his climax after mine was still causing a minute trembling after each new wave of pleasure crashed over me.
Holmes collapsed on my chest, burying his flushed face into the crook of my neck as he tried to regain his senses. I uncurled my fingers from the headboard, flexing them absently to regain feeling in them before moving my right hand to card still trembling fingers through Holmes' damp hair. He pressed a damp kiss to the hollow of my throat before he raised his head and kissed me, a slightly sloppy but completely loving kiss that threatened to steal what little breath I had regained because of its simplistic intensity.
Reluctantly disengaging himself from my embrace, Holmes sat up to divest himself of his clothing, fingers needing my help in some places where his trembling digits fumbled. He used his already stained shirt to wipe my spilled seed from my abdomen before tossing it wherever he had tossed his other clothes before gently turning me onto my right side and pulling up the covers before curling up around me. A small smile curved my lips as he buried his face into the back of my neck and placed his right hand over my heart, feeling the steady beat of my heart beneath the palm of his hand. I felt his mouth move against the back of my neck, but it took my thoughts circling quietly inside my head until the morning for me to realize that he was mouthing three words into the soft flesh of my neck.
After that time, the use of the code has been made plenty of times. Even now, as I finish writing this on the couch in the sitting room, I can see Holmes trying to sneak past me with Leo in his arms. I wonder when he will notice... Ah. There it is. I can tell by the small gasp he has made that Holmes has noticed that I have cleaned off my desk save for a single stuffed bear named Ben.
Fin