Iris

The work day at the clinic was boring, but easy. Sarah just had a rather rotten breakup, so chatting with her had made John feel like her friend again. Which was very nice to have after their failed girl's night circus outing.

When John came home, it was to Sherlock draped across the couch, her hands tucked under her chin, her eyes darting across the ceiling.

John sighed, "Sherlock."

"No."

John planted herself in front of the sofa and put her hands on her hips. "I haven't even said anything."

"It's all in your sigh."

John tucked her smile away. "Then you should listen to me and my sigh and go to bed."

"No. Dull. Thinking. Go away."

"You've been working nonstop for-" John checked the clock. "-fifty nine hours. Do you remember the last time you didn't sleep that long?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I was only narcoleptic for a few minutes."

"Yeah, in the middle of the street when we were chasing the bad guy!" John threw up her arms. "This is Moriarty. I can't have you at anything but your top game. As your doctor I am ordering you to go get some sleep."

Sherlock twitched but did not get up. "It is exactly because this is Moriarty that I must keep working. There must be a reason she is involved in all this."

"And after a nap, I'm sure you'll figure it out."

"I have napped."

John leaned over her, forcing Sherlock to look at her. "Closing your eyes and deep breathing does not count as sleeping." Sherlock opened her mouth but John cut her off. "And you are not a monk so meditating for five minutes will not replace anything."

Sherlock's jaw clenched and she snapped, "It's twenty minutes."

"I don't care unless you are unconscious." John tugged Sherlock's limp arm up, forcing her into an almost seated position where she mostly leaned away. "And don't try to tell me your transport sleeps when you're in your mind palace. Your mind needs a rest too. Go. To. Bed."

"I am getting somewhere, John." Sherlock complained and hunched herself as far into the couch as she could get, dislodging John's arm. "Gabby Miller." She pointed to the opposite wall where new information was taped up, pins poking into the corners, a pen knife stabbing through the center of one paper. "Yoga friend with Stephanie Pablo. Married name, Stephanie Cornette. Aunt by marriage to Kristina Smackle. Ex girlfriend to Ben Noles."

John turned back to her, forgetting the argument for the moment. "You found the connection between Noles and the Millers."

"I have no doubt that the lock box and its contents were kept in Gabby Miller's attic for safe keeping until Arnold Haywire could retrieve it."

John shook her head. "So, the Millers are innocent? They have nothing to do with it?"

"Unlikely," Sherlock hummed. "They have retreated abroad ever since they found Arny dead in their attic. No one has been able to make contact with them."

"They ran away?"

"Or they were killed." Sherlock stretched and brought her hands back together, ending in exactly the same position John found her. "Moriarty does not like loose ends."

John sank into her seat. "She had a kid, Sherlock."

"And Moriarty does not discriminate. You know this, John." Sherlock froze for a moment before jerking and leaping to a seated position. "Oh, that would be interesting. Kids usually play video games, do they not?"

"You're suggesting their kid bought illegal goods through a networking game?"

"Don't be an idiot. If the kid had other games he had the console and the mother had access to it. Ben Noles' computer is locked in evidence and Lestrade is being impossible. If I go to the Millers and hack into their-"

"No," John said simply and rose to her feet. "You are not going anywhere. It is six on a Friday, people will see you. You would remember that, if you weren't so tired."

"Please," she scoffed. "I know what time it is. Unlike your simple mind, mine is capable of keeping track subconsciously. In fact, I am capable of keeping track of all the time zones and that ridiculous notion of daylight savings time."

"I'm not about to start naming cities for you to tell me what time it is. Or argue about bloody daylight savings time. Again."

"Besides," Sherlock continued right on. "Shouldn't you be having a date with Muhammad-"

"Martin."

"-tonight? Go bother his plebeian brain while I sort through more important things."

John sighed. "No. Martin and I do not have a date tonight."

Sherlock perked up. "You-" Then she slumped. "Ah. I see. It's a sex night and you are about to start bleeding."

"Sherlock!"

"Oh, you are a grown woman, Doctor Watson! You menstruate. Don't be so dramatic about your biology."

"Seriously?" John snorted. "You're telling me not to be dramatic about my biology? You're literally refusing to sleep. And no, that's not why I don't have a date. He's was gone on his two week conferences for school, remember? We met last week even though he wasn't supposed to come back yet. You made me wear that gray- Oh why am I telling you. He's busy making up lesson plans."

"Week long conferences? That seems like a long time for a teacher. Are you sure he doesn't have a wife already? At least that would make him interesting."

John sighed through her nose and shook her head. "I'm going to ignore that because you're so tired. Now, for the last time, go to bed."

"For the last time, no!" Sherlock slumped further into the couch, tossed herself against the back, and curled into the fetal position.

John would have loved to believe she would fall asleep like that, but knew she would be too stubborn to do so. It was very tempting to just pick her up and plop her in bed. John was fully capable of doing so, but she would hear about it for months after or Sherlock would return the favor and drop her into a cold shower.

She looked around the mess and sighed. She was too tired to clean it herself. Doing chores would properly exhaust Sherlock. If she listened to John, she would have a little break from thinking, entertain the chance to complain about something else, and then fall right into bed.

John slipped up to her bedroom and quickly returned with the black lace choker dangling in her hand.

She held it up just above Sherlock's ear, tickling the tip of it with the chain. Sherlock bat it away and spun around, glaring, until she saw what had annoyed her. She froze, her face crumpling in unexpected confusion.

"You can't make me do the dishes or the wall," John said and held it out further. "The floor was alright though."

Sherlock was smart enough to know when she was being manipulated off the couch, but her eyes were wide and dark and she reached for the necklace, slipping it out of John's grasp.

John sank to her knees and moved her hair so Sherlock could reach the back of her neck. The necklace clasped, Sherlock tapped her shoulder, and she spun around again.

"Your safe word is-" Sherlock paused a moment and said, "-iris. Repeat it back to me."

"Iris, miss," John tried to say without smirking victoriously.

Sherlock sat up and rubbed at her eyes, dragging her fingers down her slender neck. "I've been very busy lately," she began and paused.

"Yes, miss." She never said John could not talk.

"I've run behind on some important things," Sherlock drawled, looking around the room.

"Would you like me to cook you something, miss?" John tried.

Sherlock waved her off. "I'm not hungry."

John squirmed. Sherlock had not eaten at all that day, as far as John knew. There was a very low probability she ate while John was at work.

"Come with me," Sherlock suddenly stood. "On your feet."

John snapped to attention and Sherlock led the way to her bedroom.

Being in her bedroom led John towards a momentary panic attack. She had done a brilliant job of purposefully not remembering what happened the last time they played -though she still dreamed of cool linoleum pressed against her writhing back, her hands grasping at Sherlock's ankles.

That was where she put an immediate stop to that thought.

The room was as precise and clean as ever, not even a sock out of place. John held in her comment about the rest of the flat looking like a bomb went off while Sherlock lived like a decent human being.

Sherlock rummaged through her closet and produced a large handful of shirts that she tossed onto the bed, a few pairs of trousers tumbling after them. From the same closet she took out an iron and board and set them up next to her bed.

"My clothes need to be ironed." She grabbed a crumpled shirt and held it up. "If you screw any of them up, you will be washing them by hand and redoing them. If you burn anything, I'll be burning some of your clothes as retribution. Understand?"

John eyed the pile. That would not be too hard. "Yes, miss."

"You have observed I am allowing you to talk," Sherlock said, jumped onto her bed and rested against the headboard.

"Yes, miss," John nodded, waiting as patiently as Beth for the go ahead.

"If this is to be the intended distraction from my very important work-" Sherlock sighed and looked to her closed door, seeming to question her sense in agreeing to this. "-you need to distract me."

"Distract you how, miss?" John asked, her brow pinching.

"Tell me a story. Something about you that I don't already know." She pushed back into the headboard and propped a pillow behind her back. She fell into it and threw her hands behind her head. "Make it a good one. Work while you do it. Go on."

John picked up one of the many shirts and contemplated what to share with Sherlock. The woman seemed to know her entire life story within five minutes of meeting and they had lived together for almost two years. It would have to be something from her childhood, she supposed.

As she laid the shirt on the board and started spraying it down with the iron, she was reminded of her mother. Back then, of course, the water wasn't available inside the iron. It was through a spray bottle that could all too easily be made into a weapon.

"My mum," she started, ironing as she talked. "Was always a bit old fashioned. She was a stay at home mum. She did all the chores, ironed my dad's clothes, that sort of thing. She would always make a game of chores with me and Harry. Who can clean their room faster and who can vacuum up a room with their eyes closed."

"That seems, ill advised," Sherlock said, a creeping smile shadowing her features.

John snorted out a laugh. "Oh, very. I once broke the telly doing that. I threw the handle down in victory and it smashed right through the screen. My father was not happy about that." John's smile fell at the memory of her dad's hand wrapped around her wrist, her eyes blurred with tears.

"What did you get if you won?" Sherlock interrupted.

John smiled gratefully and flipped the shirt. "My mum was always baking. It's amazing I wasn't fat growing up."

"Mycroft would have loved her."

"She did make the best chocolate studded biscuits. They were always underbaked and gooey. She entered them in this contest once. Harry and I really wanted our mum to win so we thought we would help. Being kids, we thought that there was one ingredient everyone loved. Sugar."

Sherlock snorted from the bed, probably already deducing the end of the story.

John continued anyway, "So we went down to the kitchen late at night and opened up her finished batch and sprinkled what we thought was sugar all over the top. As you may have guessed, it wasn't sugar. It was salt." John's smile burst and she shook her head. "One of the judges actually liked it. Asked her for the recipe and everything."

"Your mother find out?" Sherlock asked.

"After she tasted one she guessed." John laughed. "She made us both eat one. It was absolutely foul. I needed four glasses of milk just to wash the taste out."

The shirt was done so John held it up. Sherlock's eyes darted over it and she nodded once. John grabbed one of the hangers and placed it in the closet. She was probably messing up some color coordination scheme but Sherlock would just fix it later anyway.

John turned around and started on the next shirt. "Would you like to hear a story about one of my ex boyfriends, miss?"

"If you think I would like it."

John burst into a story about her alien enthusiast ex and their trip the the Egyptian pyramids, following it up with more stories about secondary school, her love triangle with the rugby team captain which resulted in a strange game of frisbee golf, her beach holiday in America, and the time Harry thought she could take care of a pet iguana.

When she was finishing up the last bit of clothes, she could not help thinking that it had been rather nice. They always seemed to be running around with new cases and talks like these were far and few between. Sherlock was not exactly opening up on her end but it was amazing that she stayed and listened to everything John had to say, her head lulled against the headboard in contentment, not once screaming about being bored.

When John finished her last story, she almost walked out of the room of her own accord, forgetting that the game was still in play. Lucky for her, Sherlock remembered exactly who was in charge.

"You've done a good job." Sherlock slipped off the bed and walked around her, surveying the clothes in the closet, hands locked behind her back. "Now it's your turn." She turned around and caught John's gaze. "You will strip off all outer layers, leaving yourself in your undergarments. You will lay face down on the bed and wait for my return."

"What a-"

"My apologies," Sherlock interrupted, though she did not seem very apologetic. "You are no longer aloud to speak unless it is your safeword. Say it aloud for me so I know you did not forget it."

John ripped her eyes away and looked at the bed, barely rumpled from where Sherlock had sat. "Iris."

"Good." Sherlock promptly exited the room, flipping off the light switch as she went.

John stared at the closed door. Her joy over their one sided, relaxing conversation seemed to flee, replaced by the curl of her stomach. A bed was meant for two things and Sherlock was not asking her to sleep.

No sex. They had not had sex. They were not going to have sex. It was sexual because that's what D/s was. Usually.

Sherlock was not asking John to lay naked and waiting for her return. She was not even asking for her to put the thong back on. She was just leaving John in her pants to wonder what she could have possibly meant by it being her turn.

She double checked. Her pants could not vibrate.

John tentatively pulled her shirt over her head and undid her trousers, folding and tucking everything in the corner of the room. She then shuffled her way onto the bed, cautiously resting her hands under her head. It took a bit of shifting before she was comfortable, but by then she had decided to put her hair up and had to go through the whole process over again.

Time was ticking by slow. Sherlock was taking her time, crashing around in the kitchen. There was a very good possibility that she had suddenly remembered something for the case and would leave John on the bed waiting as she returned to work. That would make this absolutely humiliating. She checked the clock and decided she would give it twenty minutes before she snuck away.

It only took five for Sherlock to return, her hands behind her back. "Close your eyes."

John did. It was only partially out of relief.

The bed sank as Sherlock sat on the edge. Her cool fingers made John jump as they stroked her bangs away from her face. Her palm pulled at John's forehead, lifting her from the pillow. A smooth silk fabric skimmed across her cheeks and landed over John's closed eyes. Sherlock tied it to the back of her head tightly, leaving the ends of it dangling around her ponytail.

John was tempted to poke at the fabric, to see what it was, but she was certain Sherlock did not want her to move. She blinked her eyes open and saw nothing. The fabric was too close to make out what it was and the slits of light peeking in from the bottom were only big enough to show the bed underneath her.

"This is an experiment," Sherlock teased. "Some people enjoy what I am about to do, some do not. You always have your safeword."

The image of a paddle flashed in John's mind and she twitched. There was no way Sherlock was talking about something like that… Right? They were not there yet. If they would ever get there. That was something non sexually sexual.

Well, she was blindfolded and half naked in Sherlock's bed, so perhaps they were there.

The bed creaked, jumped, and wiggled as Sherlock adjusted herself, straddling John and sitting on her arse. John shifted under her, easily able to hold her lanky body. Something cool and smooth slipped against her side along with something long and plastic.

Before John could determine what those things were from touch alone, Sherlock's hands started kneading into her flesh. Those delicate hands pet into John's skin, working up and down and out from her spine, relaxing John completely into the mattress.

John sighed aloud, barely wondering why she needed to wear a blindfold if she was getting a massage.

Then, Sherlock's hands disappeared and the smooth and plastic things were removed. There was a click and then nothing but the sound of the fabric rustling under John's cheek.

One of Sherlock's hands returned to her good shoulder, pressing and petting, side to side and back and forth. Until, suddenly, there was a small, sharp, hot shock in the center of the spot Sherlock had just been working. John jerked her head up and hissed in a breath as Sherlock's fingertip circled the tiny dot.

Sherlock hummed aloud, a sound John swore she could feel vibrate through the legs wrapped around her.

When John had her breath back under control, she lowered her head to her hands once again. Sherlock's hand returned to her back, this time petting near the top of her spine.

John expected the splash of heat this time and twitched into the mattress without lifting away. She sucked air through her nose and was suddenly hit with the smell of honey.

Candle. Sherlock was melting candle wax on her.

Sherlock's hand continued to pet down her spine, carefully dropping beads of wax between her shoulder blades, timing them out between John's breaths. The wax hardened along her skin and every time she moved she could feel it cracking. When Sherlock reached the dip in John spine, the heat suddenly intensified, the burn stronger and lasting longer.

John's gasp escaped in time with the pound of her heart and she had to burrow her head into her arms to keep from making any noise. None of it hurt but it was always startling. Her skin had always been sensitive and her spine was starting to tingle.

Sherlock's finger swept through the latest bubble of wax, not completely melted, pushing more heat down into the dip of her back. John moved with her, shifting back against Sherlock above her, pushing herself back down into the bed, her sex rubbing against the sheets.

A noise came from Sherlock but John could not identify the meaning behind it. Sherlock shifted on top of her and went back to dotting her vertebrae. There was never any warning about when the wax would drop or how close it would be to her skin. Every time it made John jump and her body quake until she felt as hot as the candle flame itself.

When Sherlock reached the end of her back, she dipped the candle close and splashed another large drop, swiping the heat from side to side over the top of John's arse. John tasted silk as she groaned into the pillows.

The twitching continued as Sherlock carefully removed herself and went down one leg and then the other, leaving John panting against the bedspread, her hands fisting the sheets and her blindfold catching on her fingernails.

"Look at you," Sherlock cooed when she was done. "I wish I could take a picture."

John squirmed, her legs shifting and cracking more of the wax.

"I would send it to your boyfriend. He'd finally see what a lovely whore you are." Sherlock's nails tapped at John's ankle and she scraped them up slow, wads of wax collecting under manicured nails, all the way up until she reached her arse.

John twitched some more, her body grinding into the bed, her knees tickling and her center heating. She gasped aloud as Sherlock did the other leg. A small whine escaped into the folds of the bedspread when it was over.

The bed dipped as Sherlock leaned over her, her hands petting and scraping, rubbing the wax across the stretch of her tacky skin.

"He's never heard you make these sounds," Sherlock whispered, scraping her nails against the sensitive rise of John's arse, effectively making her moan. "You're only a whore for me."

John bit the inside of her cheek and shuffled back against the bed. Martin really would not like this. And it was not as if they never had sex. She was attracted to him, on some levels. The ones that mattered. He heard her moan before.

"With your pink body and the marks from your blindfold, I would deduce you to be a slag."

John shifted back into the bed and took a deep breath. Would Martin notice those things if they Skyped later?

"He's never seen you like this because he can't do it for you. Not like I can."

John sucked in a breath and said, "Sherl-"

"Youhooooo," Mrs. Hudson's voice called from the living room. "Ladies? Are you in?"

Sherlock growled and pushed away from the bed, calling out, "Stay here."

John stayed in the room but not face down. She pushed herself up and abruptly started brushing away the wax she could reach, listening to the two talk in the next room. Sherlock had not even shut the door.

"Hello Mrs. Hudson," Sherlock greeted sharply. "Rather busy. No time for-"

"Oh but is John around?" Mrs. Hudson asked, never failing to combine the sounds of John and Joan to make a name that sounded more like Joanne. John snagged Sherlock's dressing gown and threw it on, tossed the blindfold -which turned out to be a tie- to the bed, and walked out into the room. "I need her to look at my plumbing. You see, my sink-"

"Hello, Mrs. H," John greeted warmly.

Sherlock snapped her head around. "John you can't-"

"I love your dress," John cut her off, gesturing at Mrs. Hudson. Her dress was a usual of hers, modest and purple, so it would be an odd compliment, but it had a purpose. "It's the color of an iris. I've always liked those."

Sherlock glared unhappily and John challenged back with a weak smile. If Sherlock was going to use their scenes to undermine her boyfriend, she would be severely disappointed.

"Oh am I interrupting something?" Mrs. Hudson asked, with a sly smile.

With John's bed rumpled hair and the lack of clothes and red marks, there was no doubt she was mistaking the level of their relationship. Again.

"I have a boyfr- Never mind. It's alright. I'll come down now." John gestured to the stairs. "Let me grab my kit."

"Thank you, dear."

John rushed up the stairs and changed into jeans and a t-shirt, quickly grabbed her tool kit, and moving down the stairs to flat A. Mrs. Hudson's sink was easy enough to fix, just a bit of a leak, but she wanted to feed her biscuits and tea and John was not about to say no to that.

By the time John trudged back up the stairs, it was past nine. Sherlock was sitting on the couch, biting her finger and staring at the turned off telly. She refused to turn towards John.

John sighed. She expected this. "Look, I'm sorry-"

"Don't apologize," Sherlock snapped, still not looking at her. "Never apologize for using your safeword. We'll just not do that again."

"It wasn't-" John puffed and shook her head. "It wasn't that. I didn't need you to stop that. I just needed you to… slow down." She walked to the couch and made her way in front of the blank telly, making sure Sherlock could see her arms crossing. "You can't say stuff like that about Martin."

"But it's true!" Sherlock exploded and jumped to her feet, her furious eyes channeling down at her.

"Sherlock-"

"You are blinded by your emotions. Observe yourself as I do-" She grit her teeth and hissed, "As any pedestrian off the street does. Look at your relationship." She scoffed at the word itself.

John pulled herself to attention and hissed back. "Why can't you just be happy for me? We have a good relationship! You are trying to drive a wedge between me and him because you are jealous. Because you don't know what that's like and you are too stupid to realize you won't lose me to him!"

Sherlock leaned back, her face falling into a mask of emotionlessness. "You certainly assume a lot, ma chérie. But I suppose that's what simpletons do." She sank back into the couch and returned to staring at nothing.

"What's that supposed to mean?" John bit out, but Sherlock would not respond. "So now you're not talking to me? Great. Really great, Sherlock. Just amazing." She dove for her necklace and ripped the chains apart, threw them and knocked Sherlock in the forehead.

Sherlock blindly reached out, dropped the necklace into her pocket, and slipped into her bedroom, slamming the door.

"Good!" John yelled after her. "I hope you get some fucking sleep!" She stomped up the stairs to her own bedroom, shaking her head. Sherlock was the only one that she could yell at about sleep the same way she would tell someone to shove it up their arse.