I awoke some short time after four in the morning, for shadowy reasons I couldn't put name to with an alert and rational mind. It may also have been the ungodly wail drifting across the hall, but I had also slept through worse. Nevertheless, it was unlikely sleep would return now that I was aware of the noise. I felt around fruitlessly for my dressing gown in the dark and resigned to a blanket instead. Crossing the hall was bitterly cold; I tried not to notice the snow piling on the windowsill. Holmes's door was open a crack, but I knocked anyway, lightly and a bit unsure, considering the early hour. The end of a violin bow appeared in the narrow opening, and the very tip caught just enough to start the door swinging open.
My roommate was sitting on the floor with his back propped against the bed. "Did I wake you?"
"No." He looked at me with a curious tilt to his eyebrows and used the bow to gesture to the empty space next to him, which I took after a moment's hesitation. Not a terribly comfortable place to rest, but it was, perhaps, better than lying awake staring at the dark ceiling until sunrise.
Holmes looked thoughtful, toying with the pegs on the violin in his lap. "The war, then?" he asked evenly, voice retaining an early morning softness I never expected from him.
I shrugged by way of reply. "Blessedly, I never remember my dreams." His half smile was barely visible. "Why are you awake at this hour? And…playing the violin horribly, I might add." The urge to laugh was almost unbearable—the entire situation seemed comically pathetic in the case of two young gentlemen in London.
Holmes appeared to share my ill-concealed amusement. "It could be worse," he answered to my unspoken thoughts rather than the question. "Better to have someone to share the time with, don't you think?"
Knowing the alternative, I couldn't disagree, but I think Holmes understood that without a direct answer. I did chuckle then, quietly, and offered a corner of my blanket to him. Holmes wrapped himself in it, close to me against the miserable draft leaking through his window. He started talking to me, about nothing in particular, but it might as well have been everything important in the world as we whiled away the sleepless hours.