It happened when they were on a case. Not one of the hunt-down, oh-god-we're-going-to-be-shot ones, but a case that was mostly rapid fire deductions and too many interviews. It had been a last-ditch attempt to keep Sherlock from spiraling into that scary black hole ofboredom, and it had worked fairly well.
It was a drug ring, one that had somehow managed to avoid being caught by Scotland Yard, and Sherlock had figured who the weakest link was and where he worked. John found himself being dragged into a music and instrument shop and being told to 'act like you know something about what you're looking at' while Sherlock slipped up the stairs to dig around the man's office.
John looked around, peering at the walls where record covers were hanging and poking into filing cabinets filled with books of sheet music. The shop obviously catered to the younger consumers, but he noticed a few classic composer's books on prominent display in more than one spot. Figuring he might as well see if he could find anyone else in the store, John wandered farther back, towards the instruments themselves. There were shelves of guitars, and he almost hit the floor when his foot caught on one of the feet for a snare drum. John glanced around, hoping no one had seen, and then continued past the offending drum set, where he found himself surrounded by keyboards.
John's nose wrinkled in distaste before he could stop himself. He jumped in surprise when someone spoke.
"I agree. No matter how hard they try, the keyboard companies'll never measure up to the sound of a real piano." A young man wandered over to him, offering a hand. "I'm Russel. Are you looking for something?"
John blinked, taking the proffered hand automatically.
"A piano, perhaps?" Russel continued.
"Ah," John said. "No, actually, I was just-"
"Just wandering around a music shop towards the only instrument you haven't passed yet?"
John's lips tightened. Then he decided that if this was the bloke they were investigating, he may as well go along with it. He shrugged. "Lead the way."
Russel gave him a half-smile and led him towards the back. John found himself being presented with several pianos, most of them new and black and shiny. There was one monstrous grand, a couple of baby grands, and then a line of uprights along the back wall. Russel kept talking about ivory keys and finest-grade wood and real brass pedals. John nodded and tried to look like he was listening, but his eyes were drawn to the back corner, where a sign on the wall declared "Used Pianos." There was a brown upright underneath the sign, and something about it made him look twice.
"What about that one?" he asked, gesturing to it. Russel followed his movement, and when his eyes fell upon the old piano, an eyebrow lifted.
"That one? We've had it for a while now. No one wants the old thing, it's practically falling apart. We try to keep it in tune, but..." Russel ran a hand through his short black hair. "Want to take a look at it?"
John debated for a moment. He hadn't been so close to a piano since before Afghanistan. The temptation was strong. He glanced over his shoulder. Sherlock wasn't in sight, and if Russel was the only one in the shop, he may as well eat up as much time as possible. "Sure," John said, following Russel over to the upright. He ran a hand over the top. The wood looked old, like it had once been polished and proud but had fallen to neglect. He lowered a hand to the cover on the keys and carefully pushed it up. The ivories underneath were yellow with age and oil from fingers, but the lowest and highest notes were still relatively white. John pressed down on middle C, impressed with the weight of the key, surprisingly strong for its appearance. Under his finger, it felt like the one that had stood in his living room when he was young.
"Go on," Russel said. "Sit down and play something."
John hesitated. He hadn't played in years, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. "Nah," he said, stepping back. The effort it took to pull his hand away was surprising. "I'm not that great. It's been a while."
Russel arched an eyebrow at him. "Just play the piano, mate. I can tell you want to."
John met the young man's dark eyes and studied the look on his face. A few moments later he heaved a sigh and gingerly sat on the bench that matched the upright. He placed his hands on top of the keys, fingers automatically seeking out C chords. John rooted around in his mind for a few minutes, trying to recall one of the pieces he had played. The first thing that came to mind was one of the first etudes he had learned, simple scales that his first teacher had made him play over and over until he could do it in his sleep.
The movement flooded up and down his arms, muscle memory over-riding his first clumsy journeys up and down the octaves. When he finished John felt rather proud of himself and his ability, which apparently hadn't faded despite the fact that he hadn't played in well over a decade.
"Very impressive," a familiar voice said. John jumped up, nearly knocking the bench over in his haste.
"Sherlock," he said, desperately trying to come up with an explanation and failing miserably. Really, though, what could he have said? 'It's not what it looks like?' John couldn't even understand why he felt like he had been caught with his hand in the biscuits, let alone why he had the urge to justify his actions.
The detective's gaze rested on him for a moment longer before turning to Russel. He held up two packages of violin strings and a small plastic circle. "I'll just be getting these, thank you. I'll have to recommend you invest in higher quality rosin in the future, the brands you currently carry are despicable."
Russel looked as startled by Sherlock's appearance as John felt. "How long have you been in here?" he asked, ignoring Sherlock's comment about the rosin.
Sherlock made an impatient noise in the back of his throat. "Long enough to watch you stare at my boyfriend with an unguarded predatory look on your face. You've written your number on the back of that business card, you were going to present it with an offer for piano lessons, though John is quite obviously not interested in them, as you barely persuaded him over to the piano. You date older men, failure or disappointment in the father figure then, more likely the latter, so you turn to older men to assure yourself that being gay is acceptable and to try to fill a paternal role. I recommend you refrain from doing this, you will be manipulated as soon as you come across someone who realizes that you look for reassurance underneath your thin and, quite frankly, poor visage of confidence and wit." Sherlock paused and glanced at the violin strings in his hand. "I do believe I'm just going to leave these here. Come along, John." With a swirl of his great coat, Sherlock swept out of the shop.
John glanced at Russel, who looked as if he had been struck. John mumbled an apology before rushing out after Sherlock. The detective was already standing at the kerb, a hand raised to flag down a taxi. John jogged over and clambered in behind him. "Find what you needed?" he asked. He deliberately avoided mention of either the piano or Russel. A twinge ran down John's spine as he wondered how many of Sherlock's deductions were correct. Probably all of them.
Sherlock was already tapping away at his phone, no doubt texting Lestrade the details. "Enough for Lestrade to be at the next meeting with enough of his force to arrest them. The man had it marked on his desk calender. With dots." Sherlock's voice held contempt on the last word, as if marking meeting days with nondescript dots was a more damning crime than being in a drug ring.
John huffed a laugh to himself, digging his notebook out of his jacket pocket and jotting down the facts down for his blog.
Several weeks passed without any noticeable change at 221b. Sherlock experimented in the kitchen and flounced around in his pyjamas and dressing gown. John typed up cases for his blog and shouted when he found body parts next to the milk in the refrigerator. Sherlock kissed the anger out of his mind and they fell into bed. It wasn't until nearly two months after the fact, when the event was almost well and out of John's mind, that Sherlock decided to bring it up.
John was sitting on the couch, the paper spread across his lap when Sherlock flung himself down on the other end and stared at John until he was drawn out of his reading. He frowned. "Do you mind?" he asked. "Trying to keep up to date with things outside of crime."
Sherlock's gaze didn't waver. John huffed and ruffled the paper, trying to ignoring the detective. He managed it eventually, and it was just a few minutes after losing himself in an article that Sherlock decided to speak.
"You play the piano," he announced.
John started, surprised by both Sherlock speaking and the topic on which he choose to talk. "Um, kind of," John said, going back to the paper as if he hadn't jumped. He felt the back of his neck flush as he saw Sherlock frown out of the corner of his eye. He had hoped Sherlock had deleted the events that transpired in the music shop and he wouldn't have to have this discussion.
"You played the piano," Sherlock clarified. "Quite well." There was a pause before his next sentence. "Why wasn't I aware?"
John sighed, then folded the newspaper up. He certainly wasn't going to be able to finish it, not at the moment. He shrugged and said, "I don't know, Sherlock."
Sherlock folded his hands together and pressed them to his lips. "You have an aversion to Beethoven. I had assumed it was a mere dislike, but Beethoven would have been a constant in your lessons if you had a teacher that insisted upon classical music, as yours obviously did."
John shrugged again. "Beethoven competitions. Kind of lost my taste for him after the third year."
Sherlock nodded, dismissing the fact. "You haven't played since before the army, they don't bring pianos with them to the front lines. The interest would have been lost at some point in uni, probably when medical school took over your focus as it tends to do with those who train to be doctors."
"Brilliant as usual," John said.
Sherlock hummed, but didn't look satisfied. "Why haven't you played since returning to London?"
John sighed. "Do you see a piano in the flat, Sherlock?" he asked, rising from the couch and stretching, intending to go to the kitchen and start the kettle for a cup of tea. "Besides, I like listening to you play the violin. Even when it is at four in the morning."
Sherlock frowned. "Your opinion differs on that at four in the morning," he said.
John laughed, pressed a kiss to his head and then headed to the kitchen, conversation already being filed away with all the others that involved Sherlock's curiosity and his personal life.
"He's been composing."
John sighed. "Just because your brother is composing does not mean tragedy has struck. Believe me, I've been watching." He glared at the elder Holmes, who sat at a massive desk in front of him. "I thought you said you were taking the surveillance off the flat," he said.
Mycroft waved a hand, dismissing the topic as irrelevant. "He has not composed since the case with the Woman, Doctor Watson. Nearly four years ago. It is only at times of great emotional trouble that he tends to compose." Mycroft leveled an accusatory-but-not look at him, one that let you read his mistrust underneath a thin veil of politeness.
John sighed again. "I can assure you that emotional trouble is not a problem at the moment. I could give you quite a few examples, if you care to hear them." John raised an eyebrow at Mycroft, who seemed to understand what he was saying.
"That will not be necessary," the older Holmes said, a slight paling the only sign of discomfort at hearing about his brother's sexual escapades .
John smirked.
A few days after his discussion with Mycroft, John found himself in the flat while Sherlock was running about doing who-knew-what in London. Out of curiosity, he picked up one of the pieces of sheet music Sherlock had been scribbling on for the past few weeks. It took a moment, but reading sheet music came back quickly, and John was able to make the notes out with ease.
He frowned and tried to imagine the music in his head. Much to his annoyance, while he could read the notes, he couldn't hear them. John frowned a little more and replaced the sheet music on the music stand, wishing not for the first time in recent months that he had been impulsive and bought the brown upright from that music shop.
Several more months pass in a whirl of Yard cases and clients. John gave Sherlock new violin strings and rosin for his birthday (from a much higher quality company than the ones they sold at the music shop). He included a large amount of staffed paper, as Sherlock's supply had been greatly diminished in his composing spell. Come John's birthday, Sherlock had presented him with a new iPod, already downloaded with a healthy amount of music on it, including the entirety of Beethoven's works. John threw a pillow at him. Sherlock smirked and kissed him in response.
John forgave him, and found that Beethoven wasn't quite as bad as he remembered.
It was a normal day. When John left for the clinic in the morning, Sherlock had been at his microscope and did not appear to be moving any time soon. When he walked back into 221b, John thought that perhaps it wasn't going to be such a normal day after all.
The flat had been rearranged, the couch shoved into the corner (underneath the bright yellow smiley face). Replacing it was the brown upright piano from the music shop, from almost six months ago.
John blinked. "Sherlock?" he called, shrugging off his coat without taking his eyes off the piano. "Sherlock, did you do this?"
There was no reply. Sighing, John hung his coat up and walked into the kitchen. Replaced was the detective with a neat pile of sheet music. Brow furrowing, John picked it up. There was a note on it, Sherlock's hand scrawling that he'd be back before too late. John snorted, wondering how late 'too late' meant. He discarded the note, then studied the sheet music. His eyebrows raised when he realised that it was the music Sherlock working on so painstakingly for several months. John looked over his shoulder at the piano.
"Bastard," he muttered, walking back into the living room and settling at the upright. He placed the sheets on the stand, studying them carefully. The first page was not what he had picked up all those months ago, but he found that he was able to read the notes just fine. John looked down at the keys, then played a few scales. Even if he was hesitant to play again, his fingers remembered exactly what they needed to do. Satisfied, he looked back up at the sheet music and carefully started plucking his way through it.
The piece was written beautifully, like everything else Sherlock wrote. It was more complicated in that it had two hands striking notes and chords instead of a single bow being pulled across a string, but it was simple enough that it wasn't difficult for John to grasp quickly. He had started with only his right hand, but found himself playing both hands with surprising ease before getting halfway through. He made it through the entire song, then found himself turning back the pages to play it again. The strength of how much he had missed the piano was hitting him like a tidal wave, and he wanted to play the song Sherlock had obviously written just for him again and again until it flowed from him as easily as air flowed in and out of his lungs.
He played the song several more times, losing track of time and becoming completely engrossed by the music. What might have been his ninth time playing through the song, he started at the beginning. By the time he hit halfway through the page, a violin joined his music.
John jumped, startled, and turned around. Sherlock materialised by his elbow, violin tucked under his chin. He raised an eyebrow, a silent challenge to continue playing as he dragged his bow across the strings, pulling a beautiful note with what looked like no effort. John turned back to his sheet music, finding his spot and continuing. As they played through the song, John realised that Sherlock hadn't written this song for him, but for the two of them. It was perfect, the violin hitting dissonant notes before being coaxed back into harmony by the sounds created with John's fingers, much like an analogy for the pair of them.
They reached the end of the song easily, Sherlock's violin fading out of the music with maybe a page left. John kept playing, the urge to finish song alive and thrumming in his heart. He played the final chord and held it there, letting the notes ring in his ears before turning to face Sherlock.
What he found surprised him even more than the piano.
Sherlock was balanced on one knee, shifting uncomfortably and trying desperately not to. He held a small box in his hand, open to reveal a thick band of silver metal. The detective cleared his throat. "John," he said. "I have come to realise that you are...important to me. Immensely so. And I have come to the conclusion that I will never feel differently, and would very much like to spend the rest of my life with you." He cleared his throat again, obviously struggling to articulate his emotions.
John could do nothing but stare. He swallowed thickly after a moment, then said, "Is this what all this was for? The composing and sulks?"
Sherlock looked offended. "John. I'm kneeling on the floor after playing a duet I composed specifically to embody our relationship and what it means to me. I just stumbled through the bloody sentimental speech that seems to be a package with the question. Yes, this is what it was all for." Sherlock sucked in a breath, trying to get back under control. "Yes. I am asking. Will you marry me?"
John grinned. "You bought a piano. You wrote a bloody song. Yes, you idiot. Come here." He grabbed Sherlock by the wrists and hauled him onto the bench with him, kissing him fiercely.
Sherlock was the one who pulled back, pale cheeks tinged pink. "Good," he said breathlessly. "Because that Russel man was still at the shop. Somehow wasn't part of the drug ring. I should have found something to include him in the arrest for looking at you like he did."
John should have been annoyed, but he just laughed and pulled Sherlock back for another kiss.