"Sometimes I go days on end without saying a word..."
AN: Hello all. Last chapter I was like hahahha and this chapter I serious'd.
So yes. This is actually a request from a wonderful anon who wanted me to write something with Sherlock's violin. The original prompt wanted Sherlock to teach Jane how to play his violin, and it ended up being so much deeper than that in the sense I incorporated some of my Sherlock headcanon in here. I hope you like it dear nonnie! This was truly amazing for me to write and I hope all of you like it as well.
xxHoney
BONUS - The Words that Hurt to Speak
Sherlock stares out at the dark street, forehead pressed against the window. His dressing gown is falling off one shoulder dipping to the floor and exposing his bare skin to the draughty flat. He shivers lightly, but can't be bothered to fix it.
His whole body feels heavy as the oppressive ennui that had ensnared him as of late threatens to drag him down to the bottom of the sea of languor. It felt as if even breathing took too much effort. (Which didn't matter anyway because breathing was boring.)
He huffs out a long breath, watching it fog up the glass, his mind reeling out and out and out in search of something, anything to attach itself to in order to distract him from the tedium. He scratches at the back of his neck, his skin feeling tight.
"You'll catch a cold," Jane says from her armchair as she pecks away on her laptop. He starts, momentarily having forgotten she was in the room. (Well, not forgotten, never forgotten. She was always floating somewhere in the back of his consciousness.) He pulls the robe back up onto his shoulder, and turns away from the window. "Shall I make tea?"
Sherlock goes to answer her, but even that seems to take too much effort, his tongue feeling leaden, and his lungs filled with sand. He shakes his head instead, his eyes flickering away from hers.
"All right," she says softly, concern unfurling in just those two syllables. He turns away from her and brushes his hand over the violin case propped up against his chair. Playing it sounds good right about now, and in a burst of energy he sets it up on the desk, eagerly unlatching the clasps and flipping open the lid. He looks down at it, and like a sieve, the desire to play suddenly runs out of him. He traces the secret compartment that once held his drug of choice with his fingertips, unable to help his longing for that familiar chemical buzz he would turn to when the black moods hit him hard in the past. He doesn't have any cocaine anymore, and he doesn't regret it, he really doesn't, but he can't help but…
He sighs, moving his fingers so he is caressing the whorls of the polished scroll, touching the pegs as he moves steadily downwards towards the strings that look silver in the glow of the fire light. He feels Jane come up behind him, a warm presence at his back as she fixes his dressing gown that had slumped off his shoulder yet again. Her hands smooth across his shoulders and cascade down his arms, making his skin feel alive and the tension in his neck abate little by little. He turns to her, and she looks up at him with a question in her eyes.
"Are you not going to play?" she whispers, glancing at the violin behind him. He frowns, wanting to say something in return, but words hurt to speak. (It's ridiculous. He knows words can't hurt physically, but since he was young and the torpor seized him like it did, he didn't know any other way to describe the weight in his chest and how the energy needed to push sentences together drained him so.) He shakes his head again, and she sighs sadly, running her hands down his arms once more, clasping his cold fingers in her own. "What can I do to help?"
He looks at her, surprised. Help? No one had ever asked if there was anything they could help with. It was just the way he was. When he was in his youth, he would lock himself in his room, sometimes for days until the darkness hovering over him dissipated. His parents and Mycroft kept their breadth, and even told the staff to keep their distance from him when he was like this. It never even occurred to him that there was anything he needed help for.
His thoughts must have shown up on his face, because Jane sighs again and brings his hand up to her lips. She kisses his knuckles, leaving her mouth there for a moment longer than necessary in a move that is gravid with tenderness and causes the ice in his chest to slowly melt.
Her kindness never fails to render him down to the bone. It is that genuine, unconditional compassion he didn't think existed in the world. After all, kindness was just another tool in his own arsenal of manipulation, one he employed regularly to get what he needed. But Jane bestowed it without thinking. It was as natural to her as breathing, and he suddenly realises that her capacity for empathy was far greater than he ever could have anticipated.
Simply, she can't help but feel, in some capacity, what he does in these moments of painful apathy.
It makes sense, really. That's why she became a doctor, and a soldier. It's impossible for Jane to stand by when people around her are suffering. It's innate; a part of who she is as if written in her DNA.
So because of this, Sherlock's hold on her hand tightens when she goes to move away.
"Jane…" he says, his voice a mere husk of itself from going so long without speaking. She gazes at him, eyes burning low and soft like the coals at the bottom of the hearth. He can't bring himself to say anything more, and closes his eyes against the ache reverberating through out him.
"Tell me?" she implores, squeezing his hand.
He can't. He doesn't have the words.
Instead he guides her closer to the warmth of the fire, his fingers lingering in hers as he manoeuvres her to stand in front of him. He puts his palms on her back, and she gives him a curious glace over her shoulder. He draws her close, hands clasping hers as he folds her arms over her chest. He takes a moment to breathe, letting the scent of her wash over him, etching its unique signature into his neural pathways. He rocks gently from foot to foot with her cloistered in his arms. She breathes in deep, her head turning to the side and pressing her lips against his throat. His breath catches, and he nuzzles into her temple, returning the chaste kiss.
He walks them backwards to Jane's armchair, and guides them to sit, his legs bracketing her as he eases them back. He curls his longer body around her, chin hooking over her shoulder. His hands draw up her arms again, trailing lightly over the skin where her t-shirt ends. He continues upwards, palms pressing into her shoulder blades. He can feel the slight abrasion of scar tissue under the fingertips of his left hand, and brushes over it lightly. She tenses for a moment before relaxing again, and Sherlock guides his hands up like a potter at the wheel, running his thumbs up and down the sides of her neck.
She hums contentedly, and he smoothes his hands back down to circle around her wrists. He lifts her left arm and holds it, curling his long fingers around to rest on the underside of her forearm. He cups his other hand around hers, brushing his thumb against hers for a moment before bringing it up and angling it as if holding a bow in their shared grasp.
He takes a deep breath through his nose and positions his fingers against the middle of her wrist.
The note in his head, as he draws their linked hands reverently through the air, is as clear as if he had played it on his violin. It's crystalline cadence hanging sweetly before swelling in crescendo, his finger rocking back and forth against her skin to sustain the honeyed vibrato.
He exhales along the plane of her collar bone and continues to move his fingers back towards her palm, switching from third position back to first as the phrase dips back into the lower registers, fluttering lightly over grace notes, and adding more vibrato to the semibreve.
It grips him with such an intense melancholy that he has to stop for a moment, hiding his face in the curve of her neck.
"Sherlock?" Jane says, her right hand coming up to twine into his hair. His only response is to curl into her even more. She doesn't say anything else; she just keeps sifting her fingers through his curls. After a moment she whispers, "I'd like to hear it. What you were playing."
Sherlock swallows a few times before nodding briefly and lifting his head.
He raises their arms again, and this time, he hums the beginning note tentatively at first just to see how it feels. He finds that it doesn't hurt as much, so he continues, taking the notes an octave lower to account for his deep voice.
As his fingers dance across her skin, she begins to breathe with him in four-four time. They move together swaying through Bach's Air on G, the melody swelling around them as if they themselves are the music; existing only as a series of sounds painted on the canvas of silence.
By the time the tremolo fades in the last few bars, Sherlock feels a great deal lighter. He gathers Jane to him as he leans back, reclining some in the chair. They sit there in silence, and Sherlock plays with Jane's fingers, reveling in her warm weight against him. It's grounding somehow when a moment ago he felt fit to burst out of his skin.
"Is that what it's like?" Jane asks sometime later when the fire is all but down to an ambient glow. Sherlock licks his lips.
"What is?" he manages.
She shifts so she could look at him. Her eyes sear into his like a brand, seeing more than he ever could even if he had been looking into a mirror. Instead of answering, she presses her brow into his jaw, her breath unfurling against his skin like a scroll.
They sit there like that until only embers are left in the grate. Jane slowly drifts off in his arms, and he places a hand over her heart. It beats strong in four-four time, and Sherlock begins to hear the faintest strains of a composition weaving in and out of the air, thrumming its soft legato just under his palm.
Yes so a little about my Sherlock headcanon. I believe Sherlock is as volatile as ever and possibly suffers from bouts of melancholy from time to time. The stuff that Sherlock feels is stuff that I experience with my own run ins with depression, and so I only write from what I know. Needless to say this was actually very cathartic for me.
Also, the piece that Sherlock plays is Bach 'Air' on the G String. I used the Sarah Chang version for research. It is lovely and I recommend you give it a listen.