I can't stop writing these, it's getting a little gross. Anyway, here's another Sherlock one-shot. I hope you enjoy. It is unbeta'd and not brit-picked so that mistakes I make are made and I'm sorry haha.
I do not own BBC Sherlock.
John knew, moving in, that Sherlock played the violin. What he did not know was that the man played it constantly. If he was not doing strange experiments in their kitchen (John had yet to decide whether or not he approved of the head in the fridge) or sulking on the couch in between cases, he was playing the violin. Sherlock did not often play the violin well. In fact, he seemed perfectly content with resting it in his lap while dragging the bow wretchedly across the strings to produce a loud screeching sound that made shivers travel up John's spine.
The violin was prized, however. Sherlock constantly kept it tuned and polished, so that when he withdrew it from its case it shone even in the dull light of the flat.
There were the rare occasions where Sherlock would actually play music. John remembered a time when he first began living with the strange man. He'd wake from a nightmare soaked with sweat and memories of pale grass and sand spotted with blood running through his head. There was silence for a long moment, where John wondered if it had been filled with something before. He was known to scream loudly, as mentioned before by his neighbors in the bedsit he rented before Baker Street.
The music began slowly at first. It was quiet coming from down the stairs, but it soothed its way through John's ears and made him sigh out onto his pillow. He'd rested his head comfortably enough so that he could listen with both ears, and the music from the violin filled Baker Street like a gently rolling in storm. The notes rained onto him and he had felt like the nightmare was already slipping away.
Their life was simple, for them. Simple being heads in the fridge on occasion and a few homicide cases springing up every once and a while. John knew that it was too good to last.
Eventually, Sherlock lost the game and John was left alone. With the mad detective went the heads in the freezer and the violin concerts in the early hours of the morning. He thought it a little ironic that he would lose everything that he had found after losing so much already.
Unfortunate, actually.
When John thought about the years he spent without Sherlock in the flat, thought dead and gone, he would think of sleepless nights and endless cups of tea that tasted like wet London air and strange feeling that his lungs no longer worked so why should he try breathing anyway.
When John thought about the day he walked back into Baker Street and saw Sherlock standing in the window with his violin tucked lovingly under his chin, bow raised as though ready to play, he thought of how he remembered the man's eyes being so much more blue where they now sat dull and grey and slightly lifeless as though he had seen too many things and was trying to forget.
When John walked up to the man, the silence of the flat made his footsteps echo on the floor. He reached up, and like the many times he did while the man was dead, he gently took the neck of the violin in his left hand and with the other, reached for the bow. He could not look away from the man's eyes because they were so different from the one's in his dreams so this had to be real didn't it?
He placed the violin back in its case and when his hands left it, he caressed it absentmindedly out of habit. Sherlock arched an eyebrow at the gesture and tried very hard not to look at his blogger, his Boswell, his doctor, his John.
There were no words when John silently-so silent now that it seemed as though time had stopped-reached up to feel the cold skin and hollowed out cheeks. Sherlock finally looked at him and tried to speak, but John silenced him with his own lips.
Later, after breaths that turned into desperate moans and sighs that ghosted over bare skin and touches that escalated into bruising grips, John would stare down at the exhausted man next to him and think of how he was too lucky and that second chances don't happen to normal people the way they happened to him.
Later, Sherlock would wake up to a sun barely overlooking his city and stare at the man asleep next to him in the blue morning light. He would get up and pull on a pair of John's trousers and a robe, looking too thin and tall in the shorter man's clothes. The violin would rest comfortably underneath his chin and he would let a note ring out underneath his bow, knowing that the entire flat would hear but not caring at all. He would play, and after a few very long moments, John would appear in the doorway. His eyes would be clouded and confused, still not believing.
But like the music was there for John when his nightmares were full of desert heat and the memory of blood on hands, John was there for Sherlock when the thoughts became too much and the world around him seemed to leak with a darkness that only wanted to consume him.
They needed each other and one day John would know that Sherlock would never leave again because it came down to the one simple fact: that he couldn't. Not again.
Together, they fended off each other's demons with the ways they knew how.
Thanks for reading!