John sighed and stared at his wine glass for a second before downing it all in one gulp.
He stuck his finger in his collar and tried loosening it. It wouldn't budge. He absolutely despised tuxedos, and whatever freakish laundry detergent that was used to make them stiff as wood.
The faint sound of violin music wafted through the air and bounced off of John. He was blocking it out. He was blocking everything out, all the voices and chatter and the clinking of plates and glasses. He could not believe Mycroft had coerced him into this ridiculousness. This was high society. Not only did John not belong here, he had realized that he did not want to be here, in this fancy ballroom with fancy drinks and fancy music and a fancy orchestra with fancy people behaving condescendingly towards anyone whose family doesn't have a crest.
John drummed impatiently on the table as he waited for the bartender to get him another drink.
He had supposed that the only reason he had let Mycroft convince him to come to the Duke of who-knows-what's birthday ball was mostly because of his extreme lack of life.
Life in nearly all of it's meanings. No social life. No love life. No life in his eyes. No life in his voice. Just dull, sad eyes and a dull, sad voice. A man who had given his life to someone else, and that someone else had fallen, fallen from grace and fallen from height, and his life had shattered on the concrete ground in bloody and blue eyed death.
And John cursed the day he met Sherlock Holmes. He loved him and every day he wished he didn't. Because pain is just the flip side of love, and without love there would be no pain…
He downed some more of his wine.
John closed his eyes and listened to the music for a minute. He had glanced at the musicians on his brisk walk to the bar counter. They were a string quartet, four nervous looking blokes in uncomfortable-looking suits, their faces obscured as they focused intently on their music, standing on their circular stage and serving the musical whims of hundreds of guests whose daily salary each probably doubled the musicians' yearly.
John sighed contentedly as he listened. The music sounded aesthetic, almost soothing. The violin, especially. For some reason, the violin stood out from the rest of the instruments in John's ears. The cello, the viola…nothing compared. He listened to it. It was…what was the word? Haunting? Beautiful? Lovely?
Familiar.
John's breath was whisked away from him, floating on the lovely sound of the violin as John remembered, so vaguely, a tiny wisp of a memory that he tried hard to grasp at, the memory slipping through his fingers as he saw it through closed eyelids…
"Composing?"
"It helps me to think."
His mouth fell open, and he spun around, his eyes searching until it passed the bartender, passed the snooty lady with the diamond necklace, passed Mycroft flashing a fake smile at the Duke, passed the people and the chatter and the lives that filled up the space of this empty, empty, shallow ballroom, that would never be able to fill up the empty space in John's heart where a certain detective used to occupy, until finally his eyes reached the other side of the room and fell on the violinist playing Irene Adler's tune.
And John could hear nothing but the haunting sound of the violin and he could see nothing but the depth of Sherlock's eyes tracing his and he could feel nothing but the beating of his heart that felt whole once more.