A/N: Great big cheer for KCS! #standing ovation# #balloons drop from ceiling# #bubbles fly# #music plays# Thank you so much for all your fantastic help and encouragement! It's really, really great of you to take the time to read/comment on everything, and everything you say is positive and encouraging, and you deserve a large medal of solid gold, but I'm a bit low on solid gold medals, so this story is the best I could do :)
Now, just a warning, this is REALLY REALLY FLUFFY. It's hopefully not so fluffy as to be insubstantial, but... it is... VERY fluffy.
A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself. --James Boswell
Imagine breaking a bone, or falling from a great height, or even just stubbing your toe against a hard, unforgiving corner. There's that moment of sharp, excruciating pain, and in that moment that feeling is the most painful in the world. The pain may continue later, but by this time it is less painful. Dulled by time and memory and proper context, it is not as bad as all that. But for that one moment, it is as bad as all that. It's worse.
The only good part about that sort of pain is that it lasts only a moment.
Now imagine if that pain were stretched out, over a longer period of time, constantly there, constantly present, gnawing at you until--
"Holmes!"
Holmes lowered the violin. "Yes, Watson?"
"You've been scraping on that blasted thing for two hours now, and not once has it resembled anything approaching real music! Is it really necessary?"
Holmes fixed Watson with an irritated stare. "I need to clear my head, Watson. I need to think."
Watson sighed. He did not like to interrupt his friend's though process, for he knew well that Holmes channeled his thoughts in strange ways, and the horrendous scraping really did help him clear his head. But it could only be taken so far. "And you can clear your head in no other way? I'd be surprised if the rest of the city hasn't fled by now."
"My thoughts are stimulated. And they need stimulation, Watson. That woman is lying to us, she has been from the very beginning, and if she is unwilling to tell the truth--Even though it was she who hired us!--then I shall just have to think, if I am to make anything of this."
"Can you really think through that endless din?"
"Certainly. As I said, it clears my head, and a clear head is exactly what I need." With that, Holmes raised the violin again, and the scraping resumed.
Watson sat and endured for as long as he could, but finally decided that he was likely to go mad if he heard it for much longer. He rose abruptly and grabbed his coat. "I'm going out," he called over his shoulder, a trifle accusingly, perhaps. Holmes gave no indication that he had heard.
Once outside (and a sufficient distance from 221b, as the din could still be heard from the sidewalk--was it just his imagination, or was the street abnormally devoid of life?), Watson realized that he had left without any idea where he was going.
For want of a destination he went to his club, where he found Thurston looking for an opponent. Thurston played billiards, and it was widely thought that that was all he did. Every man has his hobby, of course, but in Thurston it bordered on obsession. In all other aspects he was a perfectly pleasant gentleman, but it was rare to see him without a cue in his hand. He was also an extremely good player, which often made it difficult for him to find anyone to play with. Watson himself was an excellent player, however, and Thurston was delighted to see him walk in.
"What brings you down here, Watson?" he asked, as they proceeded to the table. "Haven't seen you here for a while."
"Oh, Holmes was thinking," Watson answered, shrugging. "He was scraping relentlessly on his violin--I just came down here to give myself a break, really."
"I thought he was a brilliant violin player," said Jacob Ward, who had been leaning against the table.
"Ward!" said Thurston cheerfully. "Come join us!"
"Er, why don't I just watch your game instead, Thurston," said Ward hurriedly. He tended to shoot the cue ball into the pockets on his good days. On his average days he tended to miss the ball altogether.
"Holmes is an excellent violin player," Watson answered as they began their game. "It's just when he's thinking about something, he scrapes at it tunelessly for hours on end--it's enough to drive a person to the edge of insanity."
"Is it true that he does his target practice indoors?" asked Thurston.
Watson rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes he does."
Ward snickered. "Sounds like a handful."
"If you ask me, he sounds dashed intolerable," said Eugene Prosser from the corner.
Watson and Thurston exchanged a barely preceptible look. Eugene Prosser was one of those men with no chin, a slightly nasal laugh, and far too many opinions for his own good. There's always one.
"Really, Watson," Prosser continued, oblivious. "Don't you think you should write him off as a lost cause? Indoor target practice, endless violin torment--doesn't sound like a friend to me, sounds like a bloody nuisance."
"Well, they're all just a part of who he is, Mr. Prosser," said Watson, shrugging. He was used to putting up with Prosser, who had been a patient of his when he had his practice. It was a strange coincidence that Watson would often hand the practice off to his neighbour on the days that Prosser needed to consult a physician.
"Well, I certainly don't see why you put up with him," Prosser declared.
"Holmes is my closest friend, Mr. Prosser," Watson pointed out patiently. "We all put up with unfortunate eccentricities present in our friends, do we not?"
"I certainly don't," Prosser snorted.
"You don't have many friends, do you, Prosser?" Ward asked blandly. Watson and Thurston winced in mutual embarrassment by association.
The comment made a slight whistling noise as it flew over Prosser's head. "If anyone I knew went around shooting up the walls, I'd get away as far as possible."
"I'm sure you would, Mr. Prosser," said Thurston, sinking a ball perfectly without even looking.
"Some eccentricities are just a bit too eccentric for my tastes."
"Perhaps so," said Watson, staring thoughtfully at the table. "But if he didn't do those things, well, he wouldn't really be Holmes, would he?"
"He'd be a good deal easier to put up with, sounds like," Prosser said, laughing his especially nasal laugh.
"Oh, I don't think Holmes would enjoy that at all." Watson winced as Thurston sank the winning shot.
"Well, you choose your own friends I suppose, Watson," Prosser declared, getting up to leave. "You put up with them as you will."
They watched him walk away.
"What a truly unpleasant person," Ward remarked. The other two nodded.
"How about another, Watson?" Thurston asked eagerly, gesturing once more to the table.
"Sorry, Thurston," Watson said, replacing his cue. "I should be getting back. Holmes will probably have an answer by now, and he may have some work for me tonight."
"Will we be reading about it, then?"
Watson smiled. "Quite possibly," he answered. "Goodbye, Thurston, Ward."
He was about halfway to Baker Street when it began to rain. Of course, this meant that there were no unoccupied cabs passing, and Watson was thoroughly drenched by the time he reached 221B. He could see a light and the sihllouette of his friend in the window; a comforting vision in the chill of the rain.
Holmes was waiting for him when he reached the door. "Really, Watson," he declared, taking the rather soggy coat. "Why on earth did you not take a cab?"
"There were none," Watson answered, wiping his feet thoroughly on the mat. "There never are, when it's raining. Did you solve it?"
"Oh, I have some ideas. Come upstairs, man, you're still quite damp."
"So what have you figured out?" Watson asked, once he was seated in his armchair with a blanket and a cup of tea.
"She is shielding her brother," said Holmes, with a trace of smugness.
"Good Lord--you mean he's the one that--"
"Yes, Watson. You would not think it to hear her story, for she implied quite ingeniously that her father was the one, without implicating him directly in any way whatsoever. But there now remains no doubt in my mind that it is her brother we are after."
He continued to explain, detailing elaborate deductions, and pointing out inconsistencies in the case which, when put together, did indeed point to the young lady's brother. Watson listened with a mixture of amazement and amusement--Holmes' careful reasoning was, as always, astonishing, yet he continued to treat it as a most commonplace matter--which, of course, it was by now. "Well, my dear Holmes, you have me convinced that your abominable scraping upon that violin does have its merits after all," he declared, when the explanation ended.
Holmes smiled ruefully. "I am sorry, Watson. You really are a most long-suffering soul. But as you can see, it has not all been for nothing!" Holmes rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Tomorrow we shall have our man, my dear fellow. Are you up for a journey back to that abysmally gloomy country house tomorrow?"
"Of course I am, Holmes."
"Excellent! Now, let me see if I can play you something to make up for the less harmonious strains I was imposing upon you earlier." Holmes picked up his violin with a twinkle in his eye and began to play.
Watson sat back and closed his eyes as the soothing strains washed over him. The rest of the world saw Holmes the detective, but when he saw Holmes, he saw his friend. And he would rather have his friend--with all his infuriating eccentricities--than have the detective alone. Watson smiled. He was lucky indeed.
Holmes was thinking the same thing as he stood by the window, drawing his bow across the strings.
A/N: Like I said--fluffy. But when I came across that quote it just reminded me so much of them... so... I wrote this...