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"No, Sherlock," John said firmly. "No. I'm knackered, today was hell. Another day, maybe, but not now."
"I didn't even say what it was yet," Sherlock said in a plaintive voice, like it was a great injustice not to cater to his every whim.
John shook his head. "Nothing good ever comes of assisting you in any of your experiments."
"That's not true, you liked the one I did with Anderson and the helium."
John couldn't help the grin. "That wasn't strictly speaking an experiment."
"It was of great value to me," Sherlock said very drily. "As will be this one. It's important! And you don't have to do anything, just sit and watch television-"
"Nothing else?" John asked suspiciously.
"No." For a moment they stared into each other's eyes in a battle of two equally obstinate minds. John found himself wondering once again, if it was possible that his flatmate possessed hypnotic powers.
"Fine," he sighed. "But no holding things, no fetching things, no running, no counting. And I choose the programme."
Sherlock just smiled. Never a terribly good sign.
While Sherlock went out to get whatever supplies he needed for this new foray into insanity (John didn't really need to know anything about the experiment to know that it would fit that description), John turned the telly on. He zapped around for a bit before he settled on a documentary about sea life. Slightly boring, but he didn't feel like following a plot and the topic wouldn't lend itself to Sherlock challenging everything that was said.
Sherlock came back and perched on the arm rest of John's chair, looming over him and dangling a pair of handcuffs in front of him. Not the police kind, these were made of soft padded textile and sturdy looking straps, held together not by a chain, but with a single locking carabiner.
"Front or back," he said.
"What?"
"I want to tie your hands together with these," Sherlock said in the tone that implied that this much should be obvious to anyone with one functioning brain cell. "It doesn't particularly matter to me whether I tie them in front of you or on your back, but maybe you have a preference."
"To having my hands tied? No, I haven't."
Sherlock made a contemplative noise. "Front then, it should be more comfortable."
He reached for on of John's hands, John pulled it away. "Wait a minute! Explain to me, what kind of experiment is this?"
"A psychological one."
"We agreed you wouldn't do those with me any more."
"We agreed I wouldn't do them to you without your consent any more. But I told you and you said fine."
"I can still say no."
"You can," Sherlock said lightly, like it didn't matter to him, "but you won't."
John turned his attention to the telly and watched a small shark swim over a coral reef. Sherlock just waited. John managed to ignore him for all of thirty seconds. "Okay, tell me," he ground out at last.
"Nothing much left to tell. I will tie your hands, you will kneel on the floor-"
"Kneel?" John sputtered.
"Yes. And we will watch television."
"Why should I kneel on the floor?"
"You're right, you can kneel on a pillow, the floor would be too hard after a while."
"A while? How long will this take?"
"Until I have results."
John hated to sound like a parrot, repeating whatever new insane thing Sherlock said, but he had to ask: "What kind of results?"
"We'll see," Sherlock said, already busy screwing the carabiner loose to separate the cuffs.
He reached for John's hand a second time and John gave it to him with an internal sigh. The cuff felt cool around his wrist, but warmed quickly. He watched as Sherlock tightened and buckled the strap carefully. "Good?" he asked.
John hadn't been aware he was holding his breath, but now it came out in a rush. It was a soft insistent pressure around his wrist, not constricting the blood flow to his hand, but impossible to ignore. He nodded.
Sherlock took his other hand and wrapped the second cuff around it just as tightly, just as distractingly. He joined them together with the carabiner in the end. When he let go, John couldn't help but testing the give. Not much. the cuffs were joined at the inside of the wrists, only a few inches apart. But he could rotate his hands against each other and even touch the buckles with the fingers of the opposing hand.
"I think I could get out of those," he said. It would be difficult, he'd probably need some minutes and a lot of concentration, but it wasn't impossible. The thought quenched a flicker of panic in his stomach he hadn't been fully aware of.
"Of course you could," Sherlock said, clasping John's hands between his. "But don't. That's not the point."
John looked up at him. "What is the point?"
Instead of an answer, Sherlock stood and went over to the couch. He sat, then waved John over. "What are you waiting for?" He indicated a spot on the floor next to his right leg. "You can bring your pillow."
"You want me to kneel at your feet," John said. His voice sounded hollow to his own ears. Shame, he'd been happy to take any hint of how he felt about that prospect.
"Yes."
"But you- I thought-" He stopped and stared down at his cuffed hands in confusion. "You said you weren't interested in... anything."
He looked up. Sherlock watched him intently, which was far from a reassuring reaction. "You think this is about sex," he stated at length, the same faint distaste in his voice that he employed when John insisted on six hours sleep at night or having three meals a day.
"Well, you want me to- You have-" John stopped and re-evaluated his assumptions. He came to the conclusion that he was right and Sherlock was... well, Sherlock. "Okay. I see I keep bringing up pedestrian things. But these cuffs. You bought them. What was their intended purpose?"
Sherlock smiled. "You have a point. But I'd let you know if it was about sex." He was still staring unflinchingly at John. It was unnerving, but - and here was one of the signs of how weird his life had become - nothing out of the ordinary.
John sighed. So reassuring to know that his friend would warn him if he ever branched out into sexual experiments. Well, he'd let Sherlock tie his hands, he could just as well get this over with.
He took the pillow with him and kneeled on it at the indicated spot. He pointedly didn't look at Sherlock for approval, but concentrated on the dolphins that were mating on their television screen.
"Does that 'turn you on'?" Sherlock asked and John could practically hear the quotation marks. For a crazy moment John thought he was talking about the dolphins.
"No," he said. And then, because his dignity was shot to hell this evening anyway: "I've had some handcuff sex over the years and it was good, but just sitting around with them, no. Doesn't turn me on."
Sherlock made a contemplative sound, but didn't answer.
John settled down on his heels, bound hands on his thighs. It wasn't so bad. The low voice and soothing music and pictures of the documentary helped him relax, the nervous confusion and the agitation with Sherlock fell from him slowly.
It was nice, sitting here and knowing that nothing was expected of him. He didn't have to anticipate any demands for tea or to fetch things for Sherlock, and he could be sure that Sherlock wouldn't rush off any moment to start a new catastrophe in the kitchen. John was the experiment and for once he had Sherlock's full attention.
He shifted uncomfortably after a while and felt Sherlock's leg solid and warm against his shoulder. Leaning against it took some of the strain out of the position. Surely Sherlock would tell him, if it would interfere with the experiment.
His friend didn't say anything, but John felt his hand on his shoulder, no teasing, just a slow firm caress, long fingers brushing tension off him like dust. Soothing, reassuring, not arousing. John hadn't realised he was tense.
Clever fingers travelled up his neck and into his hair, massaging his head in slow circling motions. It send shivers down his spine and for a few moments he was overwhelmed by feelings he couldn't identify. He pressed his forehead to Sherlock's bony knee and grasped his ankle with his bound hands to steady himself. Sherlock stopped moving his hand, just let it rest on the top of John's head.
"You're safe, John," Sherlock said in a low voice. It was a ridiculous thing to say. He was in a nice flat in central London, of course he was safe. He felt Sherlock shift, his hand resting in the nape of his neck, a faint trace of warm breath in his hair with every word he spoke.
"You're always in danger, aren't you, John? Always on edge, searching for something, anything, that you can fight, and it makes you crazy when there's nothing there." A brush of lips to his temple. "But not now. You don't have to fight me. You're safe here. You know you're safe with me."
Am I?, the rational part of his mind asked hysterically, but it was hard to pay it any mind. Sherlock was here, solid and warm and undemanding for once and John trusted him with his life. He realised that the feeling that had frightened him had been the absence of fear, something he hadn't felt for so long, he couldn't remember it, and he didn't want it to stop.
John let out a shaky breath and loosened his grip on Sherlock's ankle. He lowered his hands to the floor until just his fingers rested against Sherlock's bare foot, and turned his head so that his cheek rested against Sherlock's thigh just above his knee.
"Good," Sherlock said, his voice so pleased and soothing. "You're doing so well."
John was pleased, too.
The telly showed turtles floating through endless blue, blood was rushing in the ear John had pressed to Sherlock's leg, a slow and steady pulse like the idle strokes of Sherlock's hand in his hair.
They sat like that for a long time, so peaceful, time seemed to have become something that only mattered outside of this comfortable little bubble, something that only existed because Sherlock wouldn't shield everything the way he shielded John.
"Come on up," Sherlock said softly and helped John stand. His legs wouldn't hold him, bent too long in an awkward position, but Sherlock made him lie with him on the couch, tucked him carefully against his side, half on top of him, head in the crook of Sherlock's neck.
John just let it happen, sensations seemed far away, the tingling ache of his legs as much as the warm comfort of Sherlock's hand drawing circles on his back. It didn't fully register, John felt half asleep.
"Do you feel that?" Sherlock asked and it took John a moment to concentrate on his bound hands where Sherlock's fingers brushed delicate patterns across his fingertips. "They don't feel cold, but maybe I should-"
"No, leave them," John murmured, clasping Sherlock's hand in his.
Sherlock hummed low in his chest and extracted his hand gently to pull John's hands against his lips. He brushed a kiss over each knuckle of John's left hand. Index finger, middle finger, ring finger...
John was sure, Sherlock must have gone on after that to the next finger and the next hand, methodically, diligently. But he couldn't remember, he drifted off to sleep.