A/N: Okay, I miscalculated with this one, it ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated. (When it comes to the subject of music, particularly classical music, I can't help myself.) Hence, I'm splitting this oneshot into a twoshot. Have fun!

P.S I intend to drag out a lot of references from both the series and their blogs. Google John Watsons blog and The Science of Deduction, if you haven't yet.

3 weeks after A Study in Pink
Dvorak and Disputation (I)

If 221B Baker Street ever burned down around Sherlock's ears and there was no hope of putting it out, Watson was sure the first thing he'd rescue is his violin. Everything else he owned, threw every which way when he was on to something. He once saw Sherlock stomp on his phone as he walked across the coffee table. And this was the one item Sherlock usually carried around diligently, hoping for new puzzles.

But in his third week here, Watson noticed that there was one item in the house that he never abused. The Violin. It was always laid down with care inside its case, or if he was in a hurry, it would be placed gently, almost lovingly, in the seat by the window, then returned to it's case the moment he could spare the time. It was polished and dusted with disturbing regularity, (every monday after dinner), tuned to careful precision with his eyes closed and a half smile on his lips whenever he got it right. And the almost meditative way he tightens the frog, rubs the little cake of rosin onto the hair of his bow, dusts the powdery residue off his pants before positioning the bow and played. If Watson didn't know better, he would claim that Sherlock worships his violin.

Today was one of those strange days when Sherlock decides to do the grocery, out of utter boredom. He'll be back in an hour or so with the milk, and about twenty other things that caught his eye which would be promptly dissected and discarded. But for this rare moment, Watson could lounge anywhere he liked in complete peace and quiet. So he made a cup of tea, no sugar of course, some biscuits Mrs Hudson baked this morning, grabbed the day's paper and was about to settle himself in the armchair by the window when he stopped short. The seat was taken. Sherlock's violin, artfully leaning against the arm rest, aged varnish subtly gleaming in the mid-afternoon light.

Watson pondered for a moment, staring at the violin, tea in one hand, a plate of Mrs Hudson's fantastic gingersnaps in the other and the paper clipped between his arm and torso. He has never touched Sherlock's violin, ever. Sherlock had not explicitly forbidden Watson from handling his instrument but Watson simply assumed it was a holy relic, and he while he knew to play a simple tune on a violin, his musical forte (if it can be called one) was the clarinet that he learnt in school. He cast a quick once over in the room for another chair. The mannequin has taken up the sofa, distorted in a grotesque shape because Sherlock was trying to emulate a situation to see if it was possible to strange someone while they were in a yoga position. The kitchen table was, as always, a biohazard, so that was out of the question. And the table that they usually ate breakfast on was buried under an avalanche of books. His laptop is beneath that somewhere, he really ought to keep it in his bedroom.

Watson stared at the violin again. He had no choice. He stacked the plate of gingersnaps on top of his tea, and gently, as if it would spontaneously combust, picked up the violin and with the care of a bomb technician removing a warhead, placed it in the case. He promptly proceeded to enjoy his tea and biscuits. Before he did the dishes, Watson put the violin back in its original spot. Sherlock had many minefields and he didn't want to learn if the violin was one of them.

In two hours, Watson had managed to stack most of the books in a corner of the room. The back of his head was still throbbing from where a hardcover had made contact while trying to unearth his laptop. It was then he decided to put the room in some semblance of order. As he placed the last of the books on top of a somewhat secure tower, he heard Sherlock thumping up the stairs, two at a time. His flatmate was excited about something.

"John, I caught myself a drug smuggler in the supermarket! It was absolutely brilliant! He had all the typical signs of-"

Watson cut in. "Where's the milk?"

"What?" Sherlock had frozen with his hands in the air, displeasure in his eyes that Watson had interrupted him.

"The milk, Sherlock, the reason you went out of the house in the first place?"

"I caught myself a smuggler in the supermarket John, I had to gather the evidence and send him to Lestrade." Sherlock replied.

"And it didn't occur to you to get the milk on the way back?"

"Of course not, why should I?" Sherlock strode to his violin. "You can get it after your date tonight."

"And how did you know I'm going out on date? Were you following me again?" Watson frowned. He once saw his flatmate trailing after him when he went out for some errands. It's hard to miss that coat.

"Oh, while you jump at every opportunity to ask a woman out, nobody really needs to follow you to notice that little detail. You are wearing your date shoes." Sherlock scoffed as he picked up the violin, probably to continue the Prokofiev sonata that he stopped learning halfway earlier in the day, before he announced his boredom and stormed off for the milk that was never bought.

"Date shoes? I don't always wear these to my dates!" Watson exclaimed indignantly.

"4 dates, always the same shoes." Sherlock stared intently at the violin he now held in his hands. "And you touched the violin."

Watson knew better than to lie in front of Sherlock. "Yes, I did, because I had nowhere else to sit."

Sherlock threw Watson a mildly annoyed glance. "Wipe your fingerprints off the neck next time. Do I have to clean up after you?"

That was the last straw. Sherlock, cleaning up after Watson! As if that day would come! Watson left the room in a huff, he needed to be out of the house in half an hour anyway, the Tube was always insane at this time. Behind his closed door he could hear Sherlock picking at the sonata. Prokofiev's Violin Sonata in F, Opus 80. The First Movement. He had peeked at the score out of curiosity. He was never a fan of twentieth century music, too much dissonance. But this one he liked, rather dark, a little melancholic, constantly changing, mildly schizophrenic. Very Sherlock. Watson felt the stab of annoyance that he had come to associate with Sherlock. There was only one person on this planet who could play Prokofiev absentmindedly while his brain drifted to work on some problem. Watson checked himself in the mirror, to made sure he looked presentable when his gaze fell onto his shoes.

Bloody mind reader!

To be continued