To say John was devastated about Sherlock would have been an understatement. It had been months, at least 3 (he'd stopped counting) since Reichenbach Fall and he still hadn't gotten around to packing up Sherlock's stuff. All of it remained in the same spot that it had been left.
John just sat in his chair staring at Sherlock's violin and bow, which were leaning up against Sherlock's own comfy chair. After a long period of remembering the various ways in which the too-tall man had draped himself over that chair, John pushed himself up and tenderly picked up the wooden instrument. He looked it over carefully, as if trying to simultaneously commit it to memory and summon the mental images of Sherlock playing it. He sighed wistfully, held it to his shoulder, and adjusted his stance to straighten his back and purse his lips into a resolved tight line. He gingerly lied the bow across the strings and hesitated. After a moment of complete silence John dragged the bow along the poor instrument, summoning a screeching sound straight from Hell itself. John winced and tries a few more times. A few tears ran down his face from his now reddened eyes. Once the echoing ring in his hears died out, he let out a shuddering breath and held the bow up to the strings again. But before he can extract that wretched sound again...
"Stop torturing my violin."
Whipping around and staring at the glaringly closed door to the flat, John felt his heart drop. Impossible. He was loosing it. Going mad. Off his rocker. Gone round the bend. But a pale, cool, long hand over his caused his breath to stop. He didn't dare move. If this was a dream he didn't want to wake up, wide eyed and heart galloping as had become the norm since Reichenbach. Wide eyed, he stared straight ahead out the window, ridged like a soldier.
The impossibly long hand readjusts its fingers to press certain strings down. John still refused to breathe. But when a second hand wrapped around him, swallowing up his own bow-hand, John inhaled sharply, though still not daring to move. The hands' new position had John's back pressed up against something solid and warm, something that he was hoping and praying wasn't his wicked mind tormenting him.
Then the smell hit him. Sherlock's smell. John inhaled again, this time slowly and with purpose. And as he held the scented breath, the well-practiced hand guided his own to pull the bow across the strings, which now properly sung the tune their master commanded.
