Author's Note: Mild slash, physical male/male affection, implied male/male sex. You know the drill.

I'm glad you're enjoying hating Miss Fairchild, although I'm not done with her by a long shot. After all, poor Mycroft still has no idea what's going on. And if you think that Holmes and Watson are in for an easy ride from here on out…you really don't know me at all, do you? ;) Enjoy,

Chapter Nine: Musician's Hands

Looking back on it, I find the way that my companion and I spent that night absolutely absurd. Neither of us stirred from our respective beds for hours, listening to the sounds of the other breathing through the thin walls, afraid to move too much or to make a sound that might disturb the other.

It is as impossible for me to describe to the reader how I felt about our situation as it is to describe Holmes' own feelings, as he lay quietly in the other room. I can speak only of two grand, conflicting emotions which warred endlessly in my stormy soul. So battered with surprise was I, shock upon shock coming one after the other, that I was unable to engage my mental faculties, and so I drifted from thought to restless thought without any control over my own emotions.

In one moment, I had nothing but trepidation for any confrontation which might take place between Holmes and myself. The confession had been clear on his face when he had seen me in possession of his little paper, and all of Miss Fairchild's words rang truer and truer in my ears at every moment. I could not fathom what this was, this companionship that had so smoothly and subtly turned into a deeper feeling of which I had felt Holmes incapable only weeks before. The word love could not make its way into my mind without being pushed out by fear and practicality. That Holmes could love me, that he could entertain the thought that our friendship had become an inseparable and binding rapport of a romantic nature was absolutely unfathomable to me. It was more than simply unwarranted, it was wrong, against God, against society, against everything that I had spent all of my time recovering to be a part of. The repercussions of such an emotion chilled me to the bones even as I lay comfortably in my bed, and a twinge of genuine fear shot through me as I thought of how long this must have been churning in Holmes' impenetrable soul.

The other emotion that took hold of me, even as I thought through all that I have just discussed, was a longing. I hope the reader will not turn from me in disgust when I say how much I found that I was suddenly taking great pains to stay in my own room. I listened with eager frustration to every breath, every sigh that Holmes emitted from just beyond me, and I could feel fear, his frustration, his concern, all of which culminated in a desperation that was almost palpable. Was it his, then, or was it mine? To this day, I cannot say. Perhaps the feeling belonged to both of us, and the more that we lay there, together but separated by the walls; the more I felt that we were breathing the same desperation.

Everything came back to me in those instants, and I recalled all of the trepidation and disquiet that I had felt when I first saw my friend showing interest in Miss Fairchild. What I had then put down to concern for his well being, and for the propriety of his actions I now realized had been a part of that same desperate feeling, that loss of something that I had never had, and yet did not want to lose. The thoughts struck me with horror, as I realized that I was as inexorably caught up in this web of sentiment and longing as Holmes was.

"My god," I murmured, "What is to become of us now?"

Holmes stopped his haggard breathing abruptly, and I realized that I must have spoken louder than I had intended. There was no doubt that he had heard me, and I listened to the sounds of his scraping around on his bed, edging closer to the wall, so as to be able to hear anything else that I might let go in my frustration.

We lay there silent, afraid now even to breathe, staring at the walls that lay as barriers between us. I do not know to this day how I did not asphyxiate in those moments, so careful was I not to be the first to be audible over the sounds of our own disquiet.

I heard Holmes get up, and I almost rose with him, but he did not enter my bedroom. Instead, he crossed to the stairs, closing the door quietly but audibly behind him, and descended towards the sitting room. I heard a gentle clunking and a murmured oath, and then, slowly at first, a familiar melody drifted up towards me through the floor. It was the same violin music that I had heard several days ago, on that night when Holmes and I had sat together all night in the front room, before any of this recent nightmare had taken place.

This time, however, I recognized only half of myself in the music. Holmes was playing my very longing, my very wistful knowledge of the possibilities that lay beyond that bedroom door. There was trepidation and anguish, too, but I realized, although I am not sure how, that it was not akin to my own. It was not a simple frustration or concern about society, or about the rights and wrongs of our world. Instead, it was a great feeling of loss and consternation, as if my gaining the knowledge of this sentiment which we shared had been almost as if Holmes himself had lost all trace or hope of it. And so this tune was a combination of our thoughts and fears, of our concerns and wonders, as any creation of two people must always be. There was compromise and sorrow in it, and it played at my very heartstrings even as Holmes ran his bow across those of the instrument. I listened to the music, and let the knowledge of fulfillment wash over me, fully aware that he shared every feeling that I entertained, and so did this heartfelt music.

I do not know how long I lay quiet and listened, but after a little while, the violin went silent, and I heard Holmes lay it down against the side of his chair. I stood up from my bed, put on my dressing gown, and slipped out of my room to start down the stairs towards where I knew my friend would meet me. He was standing quite still by the side table when I reached him, and he looked up at me when I stopped to stand beside him in front of the chemistry equipment.

"Did I wake you?" He asked quietly, almost reflexively, as if out of habit. I shook my head, and he smiled. "I know," he said, with a dark little laugh. "I heard you in your bedroom, and I thought that you must be awake enough for the violin."

We stood together for a long time in silence, enjoying the quiet company without any barrier to hold us apart. Then Sherlock Holmes turned to me, and his eyes were clouded and terrible in their grief, yet one more sentiment to which I was not accustomed in him. "Watson," he said, "I should never speak of it again. You will never have to hear so much from my lips as long as you live if only you will put it behind you and stay in these rooms where I have so long treasured your company. No, it shall never go between us or beyond us from this day forward if you will only put it from your mind." He stared at me beseechingly, with a little hopeful smile in his eyes.

I shook my head. "I cannot put it from my mind," I said. "I certainly cannot put it behind me."

He dropped his eyes to his nervously clasping and unclasping hands, and his voice was crestfallen and bleak. "I see," he said. "Well, well." He gave a little laugh, and wrung his wrists gently in his resigned helplessness. "I am sorry, I am sorry. I had never intended for this to happen. You ask what is to become of us, Watson, I ask you what now is to become of me?" He listlessly lifted a beaker off of the side table, and then put it down again in a useless, fidgeting gesture. I tried to smile.

"On the contrary," I insisted, taking him by the shoulder with a gentle hand, and turning him to face me head-on. "What is to become of us?"

Holmes' dry eyes were brimming with surprise and unparalleled pleasure as he raised his violinist's gentle hand to my face and kissed me. It was not right. It was never proper, and even as I write this I know that you may recoil from the passage in some shock and perturbation. No, it was not sound, but it was marvelous, and I shall never hope to be more overjoyed than I was when he pulled back from me and looked me in the eye again.

"My dear Watson," he said, with such warmth of sentiment and depth of feeling as I had never before experienced, "what have we done?"

His long, thin, muscular arms were around me, then, and our hearts, which had been so caught up together in the violin's strings beat in some sort of simultaneous rhythm, one that I could have listened to for hours on end without tiring in the least. Only now, for the first time did I know what Holmes meant when he spoke about being too caught up in the actions and the heart racing zest of the moment to be exhausted. The more I knew of the man, the more the depth of Sherlock Holmes made sense to me, and the more I loved.

I do not know what time it was when I woke up. I cannot say that it was the next morning, for I fear that it was far into the afternoon when I fluttered my eyes open and found Sherlock Holmes and I lying together on the sofa, seemingly never having made it back to our bedrooms. Holmes was curled into the bend of the couch, his shirt apparently having completely disappeared in the piles of clothes that had ended up below us on the floor.

At the sight of my quietly breathing, exhausted companion, I blanched, and everything of the night before came back in a sudden jolt to my mind. Every feeling, every touch, every fear, every single pang of terror and of joy that I had experienced one by one came back to me, and I was so overwhelmed that I stumbled back from the couch, and, grabbing up my own garments from the pile, I retreated to my room.

As I sat on my bed, tingling all over with confusion and the creeping doubt that I had been unwilling to allow myself to experience the night before, I listened. There was someone at the bell. I heard Holmes unfolding himself lazily, and making his slow way around to wherever he had abandoned his shirt. He would be trying to smooth down his hair, I thought, and looking around for me. Then I heard the door creak open, and a low, deep voice was speaking, one that I recognized as belonging to Mycroft Holmes.

There was a long silence after Mycroft spoke, and then Holmes made some unintelligible, curt response, and the door closed again. I heard his footsteps on the stairs, and I knew that he was coming up to find out where I had gone. I steeled myself for those same joyful, disbelieving eyes that I had seen the night before, but even as he came to my door, he stopped, and knocked.

"Watson," he said, "It's all right, there's no one here." He paused, waiting for a response.

I said nothing, and yet I did not try to disguise the fact that I was awake. He had heard me leave, and no doubt had heard me sitting and rustling around in my own covers only moments before. There was no hiding any of that. I sat, therefore, and looked away from the door, trying to formulate something to say to the man whom only hours before had been my most trusted confidant in the world.

"Watson," Holmes was saying again, a little concern creeping into his voice. "Are you awake?"

I lay down on my face on the bed, and buried my head into the pillow. After several more crawling minutes, Holmes retreated to his own room, and I drifted into another uneasy sleep.