There is a room in Sherlock's mind palace with an eternal ceiling that stretches up into blackness. In the room, there are no windows or chairs or tables. The only thing to be found there is a music box.
The box is small, pearly white with a gold latch, and contains every significant song Sherlock's life has played for him so far.
Significant is the key word here, for Sherlock has an abundant collection of music and melodies stored in the walls of the palace. Some days, they seep out of the wallpaper and molding while on others they remain dormant, spiraling together until Sherlock decides one of them needs to be recollected. But the music locked tight within the white music box is never pushed away to wait in the walls—never left to spiral.
This music is always playing, non-stop, sometimes at a volume so high that Sherlock has to clap his hands over his ears and sew his eyes shut. Sometimes it feels like bugs crawling at the back of his skull, quiet and wisp-like. And however many times he topples the box to the floor, or throws it as hard as he can into the void above it, or boards up the room itself, the music remains.
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Consolation No.3 (Franz Liszt)
This is the first piece of music that Sherlock can remember, to his disgust. It is a light and flittering composition that was designed for solo piano (an instrument Sherlock never regarded as highly as everyone else seemed to) and makes him picture fairies or stars or some other kind of rubbish fantastical thing.
If it wasn't for the fact that his dear brother Mycroft had played this piece repetitively in his youth, Sherlock doubts it would have ever even registered in his mind.
"It calmed you, as I recall," Mycroft had told him once. "You used to carry on even more so than you do today. The sound put you to sleep, thank God."
Sherlock had sneered at this and called Mycroft some derogatory name and they never talked about it again. They also never talked about that, from time to time, Sherlock still finds himself drifting off to the sound of gentle piano keys.
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Air on the G String (Johann Sebastian Bach—August Wilhelmj's arrangement)
This is the first song Sherlock masters on the violin. At the age of eight, the classic only took him five months of practice to get nailed down (although, Sherlock would spend years boasting that it only took him five days to perfect the movement.)
After completing it in its entirety behind the privacy of his bedroom door, Sherlock had wandered the house looking for an audience. He hadn't wanted to perform for Mycroft—Mycroft was stupid and a prick to talk to since he was cramming for his semester finals—and mummy was off in her office, writing about numbers and maths and "Much too busy working, love."
So, with violin and bow in hand, he made his way to the kitchen where his father sat reading the paper.
"Come to play us a song?" his father had said with a smile (he was always smiling.)
Sherlock nodded and stood in front of the stove, facing his father. He played, practice making his fingers glide easily over the strings. His father watched him with a smile that soon turned into a slight gawking look. Afterwards, when the music faded from the kitchen and Sherlock stiffly bowed, his father stood up from his chair.
He knelt in front of Sherlock and threw his arms around him, "Truly excellent. My masterful boy. Truly, truly, excellent."
Sherlock had bit his lip and dropped his head onto his father's shoulder. He cannot remember if he had hugged his father back, but he will never forget how proud and loved he felt that day.
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Ernest Bloch and Camille Saint-Saëns
These were the main composers Sherlock listened to during his university days. They became his muses and his solace. The epic build of Bloch's orchestras and the beautiful, drawn out violin of the Saint-Saëns pieces were a constant in his small boarding room. They helped him think and work and prevent the absolute idiocy that suffocated his campus form getting to him.
"It's lovely." These songs come with a distant, dusty voice. "The music, I mean."
Sherlock remembers Victor Trevor poking at every item on his desk (the skull, the books, the fresh dirt samples in tight plastic bags, the detention slips, the stereo from where the music (Saint-Saëns' La Lyre et la Harpe, Op.57) plays softly from.) He had said "Yes, it is." and had allowed Victor to push aside his textbooks so he can sit on his bed.
"You're always listening to classic music, huh?" Victor had said. And Sherlock would spend weeks on weeks replaying what happened next: his fist kiss.
Victor felt warm and tasted like mint with an undertone of cafeteria food. The kiss lasted 9 seconds and Victor's face was flushed when he pulled away. They kissed again, and again, and by the fourth time, Sherlock moved his lips to match Victor's.
Sherlock ended up on his back with Victor on top of him. There was an intense heat around them and then he was pushing Victor away. "Wha…You, um…" (This was also the first time his tongue had tripped up so mortifyingly.)
Sherlock had sat up and pushed Victor's hand out from under his shirt. He watched Victor's flushed cheeks reddened even more and his eyes take on a sharp glint. "Come on, then." He'd pressed up against Sherlock more forcefully, rubbing his peeking erection on his thigh. This time, Sherlock hurried off his bed and opened his bedroom door (an invitation to leave.)
And Victor did. He left with his fists clenched tight and his eyes sharper still and "Like you'd even be that good." on his tongue.
He and Victor never spoke again and his beloved composers were listened to less and less. Even though these songs are significant, doesn't mean that Sherlock wanted to remember all of them.
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Just Dance (Lady Gaga ft. Colby O'Donis)
Although Sherlock has never actually sat down and listened, beginning to end, to this song—nor would he ever do so—it is still the soundtrack to one of the most…life changing chapters in his life.
This song played, pounding through the terribly thin walls of his horrid flat on Montague Street, the day he ODs on heroin.
Downstairs (flat…B5? Yes, the one down and to the left of his.) there was a party with flashing lights and red plastic cups full of cheap vodka unfolding. In the dark and (somewhat) silence of his flat, Sherlock lied on his bed with a rubber cord tied to his upper arm and a syringe full of heroin in his hand. He is already high from the cocaine he snorted that morning; that was his go-to drug. Only a year back had he first injected heroin into his system. Over time he had upped his intake to around 8mg, then all the way to 1g.
In his syringe, however, was a heaping 4g of it. Sherlock had read that many heroin users could take up to 5-10g a day. His mind didn't even drift to the thought of overdosing (in his defense, his mind wasn't doing much back then. He was either wired and twitchy or depressed and dazed. "You know, you've been looking a little worse for wear," a fresher faced Lestrade had told him then.) And what was the risk?
Dry mouth, warm flushing of the skin, heaviness in the extremities, sluggish exchange between drowsiness and wakefulness, nausea, vomiting, ragged breathing—Sherlock knew the side effects. Of course he did.
And that day, he didn't care about any of them.
He stuck the needle into his arm, felt the muscles there suck up the drug, and stretched out in his bed with a sigh. He waited for the warmth and when it came, Sherlock melted.
Only after an eternity did Sherlock feel his skin heat to an irritating state. His stomach rocked along with the music flooding in from downstairs and his head ached. What happened after that was nothing short of humiliating: he vomited all over himself and his bed, bile and stench running down the sides of his chin. Enough sense was still there in his unfathomable yet cloudy mind that he rolled his head to the side, letting the blockage pour out of his mouth and onto his pillow. He had a moment of panic, yet it soon diminished as a seizure took him.
Mycroft found him (shortly after, presumably, as here he is. Not dead.) and rushed him to a hospital. There, he shamed him, yelled at him, and told him that if he did not enter into rehabilitation that he would cut him off from any source of money and make sure the Scotland Yard never allowed him access to a crime scene again.
"90 days," Mycroft had told him. And Sherlock did the 90 days (bitter and bitching all the way) and another seven months under his brother's all seeing eye shacked up in his posh flat. After that, Mycroft granted him his freedom and he searched for a flat. Searched for a flatmate.
And then…
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Dil Cheez Kya Hai (Asha Bhosle)
This song is playing the first time he and John eat dinner together. In Sherlock's mind, Angelo's didn't count, as neither of them really had time to order anything (in regards to himself) or eat actual food (in regards to John.) They hadn't had time then, but after the case—after the cabbie, after a gunshot and an orange blanket, after You're looking for a man probably with a history of military service…, after Because you're an idiot.— they have all the time in the world.
They manage to find a ratty Indian restaurant, chosen because it was open, for one thing, and it wasn't that much of a walk from where they came from.
"Decent enough," John had said. (This song also comes with a voice…) He goes on to order the chicken tikka masala, and Sherlock can still taste the samosa chaat on his tongue.
And he could hear it, underneath all of the clatter from other tables and the click of plates and glasses and the jingle from the charms on the colorful table cloth that John kept brushing with his knee, the music. It played from four small wall stereos at a low volume, just high enough for the customer to pick up a melodic sitar and a solo sarangi and a female voice that made the hair on the back of Sherlock's neck stand up.
John didn't hear it. Sherlock knows because he remembers how transfixed he was on the food in front of him and the rice beer in his cup. "Bloody wonderful," he had muttered in between bite of chicken. "I feel like I haven't eaten in days."
And this is also when Sherlock realized that this was what he had been waiting for (and in all honesty, Sherlock still doesn't know what this is.)
By the time they arrived back at 221B, they were both stumbling and giggly and all smiles. They slogged up the steps and there was a brief, so brief, passing in the landing there. John had stared at him with a peculiar look and laughed. His hand had touched his arm, gave it a squeeze, and then he was "Off to bed with me, I think."
Sherlock had stood on the landing until John had closed his bedroom door. After that, he fell asleep himself, on the couch, with a smile still on his lips.
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Hey Jude (The Beatles)
This song, though from a band that Sherlock has never really payed attention to ("How is that possible? You're British?" John had stated in disbelief once,) is only in his music box because of John.
During that same conversation, on a rare day when John was letting his army days creep out of him in bits and pieces, he told Sherlock that there was a lad on his squad (Karas) that had a guitar. They would all gather around and listen to an acoustic session of different songs, and the guitar would be passed off to whoever knew how to play (well or not.)
"It was after a rotten day," John told him, "and the lads were down and here came Karas with his guitar. He sat down in the middle of us and started playing Hey Jude." (Here, Sherlock had pronounced that he had no idea what that was, causing John to nearly topple out of his chair.) "But, soon enough, we were all singing and having a time. It was great."
John had been self-conscience after that and shrugged his shoulders, face turned down. "I don't know, it became the song we sang when everyone was having a rough day." And then John closed up again, and his army days weren't mentioned for quite some time after. (It's because he thought Sherlock didn't listen, still doesn't listen, to sentimental stories, but he does…)
A week or so after the whole talk, Sherlock had come back to the flat from the morgue, tired and smelling of formaldehyde. He walked into the living room and stopped. John had been in the shower, and he could hear the water running. It meant nothing to him at first, but as Sherlock past the door on his way to his room, he stopped.
Past the pitter patter of the running water, he could hear a soft (mostly on key) humming. Sherlock had pressed his ear against the door then and listened.
John was singing Hey Jude in the shower. He knew that only because the night after John had talked to him, he looked the song up and played it on repeat for hours. He remembered thinking, as he stood there crowding the door, if John was having "a rough day." And why? Sherlock knew that John suffered from depression the first day he met him, but he had thought that time at 221B, with him, had driven that out of him. The thought that it hadn't had made his stomach roll.
When the water was turned off and John's voice disappeared, Sherlock slipped away to his room.
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Stayin' Alive (Bee Gees)
This song saved his and John's lives. After the day at the pool, Sherlock never heard it again, but it remained in his head, along with a crooked smile and I'll burn the heart out of you... And then it was playing for his fall, which seemed fitting. It had kept him alive, in the game, and then it was there to escort him out.
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The Woman's Theme (Sherlock Holmes)
This song was one of Sherlock's own creation. He would neither say it was good or bad (he never spent type critiquing his own work) but John had told him it was "Sad." At the time he didn't know what that meant.
It plays whenever he catches a glimpse of her, walking slowly through his mind palace. Sherlock never knows when or where she will pop up. Sometimes she surprises him when he is digging for a fact about insecticides or when he is simply browsing. And sometimes he goes looking for her.
"Why do you keep me hear, Mr. Holmes?" her voice echoed in his head once. "You don't use me, like other men would. But…" her voice hung and she was there, battle armor and all, in front of him, "you're not like other men."
"You made me understand something, and you continue to do so," he'd replied, and with a smile, she vanished, like always.
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The Blue Danube Waltz (Johann Strauss II)
This song is what he and John practiced to when John confessed he didn't' know how to waltz, which is a must (apparently) when one is getting married. Sherlock had asked how John was so uncivil, which was met with a lighthearted "Fuck you."
For the rest of the morning, while Mary was out deciding what type of alcohol would be served at the reception, the furniture in 221B was shoved aside and the rug was rolled up. Sherlock had browsed the waltzes he had handy on his phone before John piped up, "Oh, I've heard that one before." and they settled for the classic, however overused Blue Danube.
"It's simple, John. One-two-three. One-two-three. Have you forgotten how to count?" he had said after the 23rd time John had tripped up on his own feet.
John had gotten flustered, stance still stiff, and tried once more to walk forward, to the right, and then close. "I can't. I can't do this." He had thrown his hands into the air then folded them over his chest, face red.
Sherlock matched his sigh and stood from his chair. He grappled with John's arms and pushed his legs apart slightly his foot. "Posture is important, crucial even. If you do not have it you will look like a fool on your wedding day."
John had muttered but let Sherlock instruct him. "Waltzing is physical," he said. "Back must be straight, shoulders not drooping. Arms will be out, parallel to the ground. There."
He had taken a step back and studied John's stance. He was spot on, but Sherlock hadn't told him so, and now cannot think of why not. And then he moved in close, because "Better to practice with a partner, right?"
John had looked alarmed at first, but then seemed at ease as Sherlock placed his on his shoulder and touched his left hand. "She will hold your left hand with her right and your will steady her under the left shoulder blade." He move John's hand down his back (he'd shivered) to right under his armpit then paused. "Or lower." He moves John's hand to the middle of his back (his heart had skipped.) "And your bodies will touch like so."
And they were closer than they had ever been. And the Blue Danube looped back to the start and they waltzed, perfectly. Sherlock watched the surprise and delight flitter in John's eyes when their rhythm matched up with the song. They went, one-two-three, for the duration of the song and again and again.
Flawless, Sherlock had thought. Flawless and perfect and beautiful (whether that applied to the dancing or to John, he couldn't tell.)
"Not all bad, I suppose," John had whispered, almost dreamily. And soon his head bent and rested on Sherlock's shoulder. The position was awkward, but Sherlock hadn't cared. They kept dancing and at some point, he had brushed his hand down the back of John's hair.
This song, though lively, sweet, and graceful, is one of the darker songs locked in Sherlock's music box. Because this song always ends with John leaving Baker Street, and him, and not even looking back.
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Waltz, for John & Mary (Sherlock Holmes)
This piece was the only love song Sherlock will ever write (and even then, he wouldn't dare call it that.) This was a composition that he had spent hours and days and nights mauling over. He had spent a whole week wading through crumpled up staff paper that littered his bedroom floor, some with almost half the page filled, some with only a single note on them. Music had never been a feat for him. Again, music was a constant in his head. But this piece of music was like pulling a knife out of his chest, inch by inch.
And with every pull, the music would gush out onto the ground and the blank papers in front of him and covered his hands like blood.
"This is everything you've kept, isn't it?" the voice in his head (John's) said. "All the things you've wanted to say and do. All the things that you've figured out along the way."
Sherlock, alone in his room had replied out loud. "I believe so, yes."
John's voice hummed. "Do you think I'll hear any of it?"
At John and Mary's reception—after the "I do." that sounded strange in Sherlock's buzzing ears, after the hug (no, that was the closest they had ever been,) after the attempted murder and You should have driven faster—Sherlock played his piece and watched John waltz the waltz he taught him with Mary. John's posture is stiff again, but he looked sublime and radiant in his suit.
And when John dipped his bride and kissed her soundly and the room applauded, Sherlock knew that he didn't hear it. Any of it.
Soon after, he scurried away from the reception building, his song still ringing in his head as he wrapped himself up in his coat. Funny enough, it played for him again, not only a month later, when a bullet ripped through him.