When John arrived downstairs the next morning he went to check Sherlock's bedroom. He had a vague memory of his flatmate coming home last night, but he'd been so out of it he wasn't sure if it had been a dream. He'd spoken to him, hadn't he? Maybe not. He couldn't remember.
Mycroft was right when he said Sherlock would never knowingly close his bedroom door without the direct orders of his mother. John didn't think he'd ever seen Sherlock's door closed except the time Janine had been in his bedroom. He mentally shook away that bizarre image.
Taking advantage of this open-door policy, John quietly peered into the room. Sherlock was there, asleep, sprawled on his stomach with the duvet hitting just the middle of his bare back, strikingly pale against the green sheets.
Information acquired John retreated to the living room. Sherlock would probably sleep for a while. When Sherlock did sleep, and on the rare occasions he slept in his bed (as opposed to kipping on the couch), he slept late. Sherlock was simultaneously the fastest, most energetic man he'd ever met and the laziest: His endlessly enigmatic flatmate.
So John busied himself with his first opportunity to re-establish his old Baker Street Sunday routine: laundry, tea, and newspaper, Tesco (Sherlock's favourite biscuits, not Mary's), and a stroll through Regent's Park which concluded at the dry cleaner's. Picking up Sherlock's dry cleaning was not something he'd ever intended to do, but he'd found, to his horror, that Sherlock had a habit of dropping off his clothes, forgetting to go back, and simply buying new ones. That kind of waste (especially of really nice clothes, not to mention the exorbitant cost of such a practice) had been enough to make John grit his teeth and go himself.
The people at the dry cleaning service considered him the world's best boyfriend and he'd given up trying to correct them. The clothes were clearly not his size and he had no other way to explain regularly picking up another man's laundry. No one would understand the 'my flatmate is a spoilt prat who, while being the world's most genius detective, is actually incapable of managing basic adult tasks' explanation.
As he'd expected, there was a considerable backlog of Sherlock's clothes to be picked up. They were delighted to see him when he walked in.
"We thought something terrible might have happened," the woman smiled.
Well he died and I got married but we're both better now, thanks.
"No, nothing terrible"—John returned the smile—"You'll be seeing more of me." He took the armful of bags and was glad the place was just around the corner from 221B. Sherlock and his damned fancy, dry-clean-only clothes. In John's opinion it was totally unnecessary for a person who works primarily in his living room to wear such formal outfits, but then Sherlock had always been a public school toff so what else could he expect?
When he arrived home, it was close to five o'clock and Sherlock was up. Or not 'up,' but awake at least. He was lying on the couch, wearing his wine-coloured dressing gown over pyjama trousers and t-shirt, reading an article from a medical journal he was holding above his head.
"I don't know what the hell you've been wearing when all of your bloody clothes have been at the dry cleaners," John said by way of greeting.
Sherlock didn't look away from the article. "Clothes. Boring."
"No, not boring. Heavy," John corrected, heaving the bags up and dropping them down on top of his flatmate.
Sherlock groaned as the weight hit him and glared up at John. "Was that necessary?"
"Actually, yes. If I put them anywhere else they'll stay there for weeks."
Sherlock sighed dramatically. He tossed the journal onto the coffee table and sat up. He took the bags with a scowl and went off to put them in his closet. John smirked. He looked over at the article Sherlock had been reading; it was about circulatory shock.
"Considering Scotland Yard is determined to bungle their own investigation by throwing a wrench in my process—slowing everything to a grinding halt by making me wait until Monday for an autopsy that could just as easily be done at the weekend if it weren't for some arbitrary social constructs about 'days of rest' designed to indulge laziness and curtail productivity—I thought I'd do some background reading in the meantime."
Sherlock had reappeared at John's shoulder, and noticing his gaze had petulantly crossed his arms to deliver his anti-weekend tirade.
"Find anything interesting?" John asked evenly, careful not to further aggravate the world's moodiest detective.
"No. There's nothing further to be found without the autopsy results."
"What about the movers? The guys who put the body in the armoire? Did Lestrade find them?"
"He says he's working on it. God knows what that means."
"You didn't want to find them yourself?"
"Busywork. They're just going to say they were hired to do it—pawns in the game. I'll be interested again when they have a lead on who hired them. I can't do the job of every single officer at Scotland Yard." He sneered, "Well I could, but it would be insufferably boring."
"And lying on the couch is working out much better for you."
Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "If one is going to go mad with boredom it's preferable to do it in one's own living room."
"Right," John said, backing out into the open space of the room from where Sherlock had him trapped between the couch and the coffee table, "if you do go mad, any chance it could not involve duct tape this time?"
John was referring to Sherlock's last serious bout of boredom when they'd lived together. It had resulted in an experiment involving the effectiveness of duct tape to gather particles (hair, fibres, dirt, dust, etc.) for forensic evidence. John had come home to find many things wrapped up in the tape, not the least of which being his laptop, all of his socks, and the couch.
Sherlock gave John a look that suggested he was being unsympathetic. John avoided it by ducking into the kitchen to make tea.
Sherlock followed him. "The point of a mad person is that he's lost the use of his logical faculties. I can't very well remember not to use duct tape if I've gone mad."
"I have full faith in your logical faculties," John said, turning on the tap.
There was a silence as John filled the kettle with water and then switched it on to boil.
"So what are we doing tonight?" Sherlock asked in a more casual tone, apparently willing to leave off the drama of his impending psychotic break for a bit. "If I have to wait until tomorrow to continue my work I'd rather take my mind off it tonight."
"Oh," John said a little awkwardly, half turning from where he'd been watching the kettle. "I was going to meet Mike and the Barts group at the pub tonight."
Sherlock leaned against the kitchen doorjamb. "I fail to see how chatting with a bunch of unattractive, half-braindead people who don't really like you can be considered an enjoyable night out."
John shook his head. He didn't need the reminder of how Sherlock felt about his friends, and how, allegedly, his friends felt about him. For his birthday one year the detective had given him a study he'd written called "An Examination of Hatred in Close Proximity," based, he was assured, entirely on John's friends' body language. Instead of getting upset about a birthday present that boiled down to 'Scientific Proof All of Your Friends Hate You,' John had found it funny, and even laughed out loud while reading it. It was accurate, of course it was; it was based on Sherlock's observations. But somehow he hardly minded. His friends were fun for a lark—a few beers once a month, sure, but he wasn't particularly crazy about any of them either.
While John might seem like Mr. Sociable next to Sherlock (Ivan the Terrible would seem like Mr. Sociable next to Sherlock), the truth was he'd always been a bit of a loner. He accepted the people he was thrown together with, but never made the effort to gain new friendships or found the motivation to maintain established ones. This was partly the reason he'd come back from Afghanistan with no one to call.
Sherlock was the first friend he'd ever had that he not only cared about keeping, but had found himself utterly destroyed at his loss. It had taken him two years to not even remotely get over losing Sherlock.
He looked at his friend now, in his dressing gown and bare feet, not nearly as tall or intimidating as he seemed when prowling the streets of London in that coat. But still, he was Sherlock Holmes. A unique kind of potential energy radiated around him. John would feel it if he were blindfolded. And even slouched against the kitchen doorframe in his pyjamas, no one could mistake those sinewy muscles, that aristocratic delicacy of bone structure and air of entitled superiority, those bright eyes flecked with such an unlikely array of colours, reflecting a mind as dazzling as the universe.
They were fixed on him now and John realised he was waiting for a response. Only Sherlock would genuinely inquire why he'd made a plan to see his friends. John sighed and turned to pull two mugs down from the cupboard. "Because, Sherlock, that's what goldfish do."
Sherlock's eyes widened and John grinned. "That's right, I know all about your and Mycroft's term for ordinary people. And I can tell you it's a very popular pastime for goldfish to meet together in pubs every once in a while."
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "If you insist on being average there's nothing I can do to help you."
"I don't insist on being average. I am average." He dropped the tea bags into the mugs as if to punctuate this point. "I don't know what you were expecting having me back here, but I'm still a goldfish, and I won't be any less boring than I was the last time."
Sherlock's eyes darkened slightly. "Suit yourself then," he said, turning away from the kitchen and flopping back down on the couch.
John looked down at the mugs and suddenly did not feel like making tea for Sherlock. But on the other hand he'd already prepared everything and to not give Sherlock a cup now would appear to be a passive-aggressive move, which could add hostility to what had been a very mild (for Sherlock) exchange of words. So John settled for simply giving the contentious scientist one sugar rather than the two he preferred.
Sherlock didn't deserve two sugars with that attitude anyway.
John had gone upstairs to change his shirt or whatever goldfish do in preparation for a 'pub night,' and Sherlock grabbed his violin. The frustration of being kept from his work by bureaucratic nonsense was compounded by the discovery that he wouldn't even have John to distract him from it. He needed an outlet. Since John and Mrs. Hudson had been very clear that target practice (involving John's gun and the living room wall) was not a viable option, he figured the violin would have to do.
As he tuned the instrument and prepared the bow he ran over the brief exchange he'd had with John in the kitchen a moment ago. He'd been less than amused when John called himself 'average' and 'boring.' John may be a goldfish, but he was his goldfish. And though their meeting had been coincidental, he hadn't agreed to live with the army doctor arbitrarily. Sherlock would never have chosen to live with an 'average' and 'boring' person. He would never have chosen to live anyone at all (regardless of any amount of umbrella-waving on Mycroft's part). But John had walked through the door and Sherlock understood immediately that John wasn't 'anyone.' Of course he was ordinary in the standard non-genius sense of the word, but he was different. Better. The most superior of any goldfish Sherlock had ever encountered. And suddenly, inexplicably, there was space and time in Sherlock's life where there had been none before. Space for another person walking at his side or moving around his kitchen. Time to slow down a bit and wait for John to catch up; time to explain, and even time to laugh when John's responses surprised him—something his skull had never been able to do.
But if John was determined to be self-deprecating this evening Sherlock wasn't going to indulge it by arguing with him. He supposed he could have asked John to stay in tonight, but he didn't want to deprive John of his required goldfish time. Perhaps if John didn't get enough goldfish time he might want to leave. Sherlock didn't want John to leave.
He put the violin to his shoulder and paused, deciding what to play.
In the first month after they had moved into 221B together John admitted he knew next to nothing about orchestra music. He knew the major composers by name, but not much else. Even as he heard it Sherlock's mind was putting together an experiment. By playing a variety of songs from different composers and observing John's body language he could discover John's subconscious taste in music.
John was mostly passive when he played Sarasate and Paganini, hardly looking up from what he was doing. He shifted and sighed or even got up to make tea when he played Vivaldi. He mentioned the songs sounded familiar when he played Tchaikovsky (of course anyone would recognise the songs from The Nutcracker or Swan Lake). He smiled when Sherlock played Mozart, and closed his eyes listening to Brahms and Schumann. He put his reading down completely for Bach.
Sherlock was thrilled the results of the experiment suggested John's preference mirrored his own. He was a little concerned that his love for the German composers might influence the quality with which he played their songs, but he'd been careful from the start to play each piece with as much devotion as possible in order to maintain the integrity of the experiment.
Although he was glad to have revealed a hidden penchant for German classical music in John, he had flatly refused to play Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries when he discovered the only reason John was excitedly asking for it was because it had been in some war film he liked. But John finally wore him down, using the sort of puppy-eyes that shouldn't be allowed to hold any influence over the great classical pieces of music history. He played the required "Ride" section of the opera and John clapped and shouted, "Yeah that was brilliant!"
"Genius," Sherlock had corrected him with a rather stern look. Music should be evaluated on its own terms, not whether it had been hijacked for some action film.
However, it wasn't until the first time he played Mendelssohn that Sherlock got a truly significant result. John had been sitting in his chair, working on his laptop when Sherlock began to play. In only a minute John had closed his laptop, propped his elbow on the arm of the chair and rested his chin on his fist. He watched Sherlock without seeing him, spellbound by the notes. When Sherlock finished the awareness seemed to come back into his eyes and he asked, "What was that?"
Sherlock blinked in surprise. It was the first time John had ever inquired about the title or composer of a piece. "It's from Lieder ohne Worte—Songs Without Words. By Felix Mendelssohn."
"It's nice," he said. "Really nice."
And Sherlock found that whenever he revisited Mendelssohn John was similarly affected. He asked who it was each time and laughed when Sherlock gave the same response. "So I guess he must be my favourite then."
Sherlock had played many pieces for John from the Songs Without Words volumes. However, he hadn't played what was arguably Mendelssohn's most famous piece, and one that was specifically written for the violin: his Concerto in E Minor. It was powerful. Arresting. Beautiful. And he hadn't played it for John yet. He didn't know why. He knew it well enough; it had just never felt like the right time.
As Sherlock hesitated, violin on his shoulder, looking out the window, deciding what to play, Mendelssohn came back to his mind. Well, why not? John was leaving; he could at least practice it for some better time. He heard John's footsteps on the stairs behind him and John saying, "Off out."
Sherlock waved his bow once over his shoulder in acknowledgment. And he began to play.
Often when Sherlock played he focused on the precision of a piece rather than the emotion of it: perfect bowing, complete accuracy of dynamics, flawless vibrato, etc. But today he needed to work through frustration. He needed sound to crowd out the infinite tangents of thoughts his mind could tear through—all futile and utterly maddening without the possibility of action.
He closed his eyes and narrowed his focus to the feel of the strings under his fingers, the weight of the bow, and the clear ringing of the notes as they flowed and ebbed together, allowing himself to be at once grounded in the sensations of his instrument and lost in the force of its music.
Throwing on his jacket, John stopped on the landing as achingly beautiful notes floated through the door and wrapped themselves around him. He stayed for a minute, listening, and then he quietly pushed the door back open. He could see Sherlock still facing away toward the window—graceful movement of sharp shoulder blades.
He meant to turn and walk away; he was late already. But something about the song… He hadn't heard this one before. And the way Sherlock was playing… There was a weight to it, an insistence, as though it were crying out to be heard. Was it possible to play a song so that it demanded attention more than another song? John didn't know anything about the violin, but he felt himself pulled forward and he stepped back into the doorway soundlessly, not wanting to interrupt, not wanting Sherlock to stop playing.
The notes rang out with such clear passion John wondered that anyone, even himself, could ever have thought this man unfeeling. Raw emotion poured from the violin now and John could feel it washing over him.
Sherlock turned from the window as he played and John tensed, feeling as though he were intruding on something private. But Sherlock's eyes were closed. He almost never played with his eyes closed. It occurred to John that Sherlock was feeling the music this time instead of seeing it, and the result was incredible. He couldn't help thinking that such a performance was being wasted on him, who was hopelessly ignorant about such things—that Sherlock should be on a stage being judged by international experts, who would no doubt be impressed. But just because John couldn't evaluate his technique didn't mean he couldn't appreciate the intensity of the sound enveloping him. The drama of the melody captivated him: its urgency and its insistence and its melancholy.
It took a while and some effort for John to tear his eyes away from Sherlock long enough to take out his phone to send a text.
Sorry, can't make it tonight. Sherlock. J.
John knew the guys would understand. This was only the latest of many similar texts he'd sent over the years. When apologising for breaking off plans John only had to type the word 'Sherlock' to be excused.
'Sherlock' held various meanings for his friends: anything from 'we're on a case,' to 'a lab rat escaped in the flat' (the recapture of Seven had required their combined effort and ended in a probationary period regarding Sherlock's permission to bring home laboratory animals). One of the more memorable times it had meant, 'he's melted the lock and we're actually stuck in here.' ("I hope you didn't have plans to go out this evening," Sherlock had said coolly from his chair after John had bounded down the stairs from his bedroom and grabbed his jacket.)
John slid his phone back into his pocket and returned his attention to Sherlock. He marvelled at the dexterity with which his fingers flew across the strings, never hesitating, never faltering, even when at times the notes came in flurries at seemingly impossible speeds. Sherlock had the hands of an artist—pale, slender fingers with a delicacy that was entirely missing from John's own hands, which were thick and rough and sturdy. John supposed it wasn't surprising that Sherlock controlled the violin with the same agility he used to pick locks or handle fragile vials of dangerous chemicals.
The depth of Sherlock's skill and the extent of his genius—whether it was deduction or chemistry or code breaking or acting or fighting or speaking foreign languages or playing the violin—never ceased to amaze John. Sherlock had talent woven through him like a silver lining and so often it shone brighter than anything else around him.
It wasn't seldom John wondered how it was possible that this man, who was so wholly extraordinary, had chosen him, of all people. It's true he could put up with Sherlock's moods better than most, but he certainly hadn't been Sherlock's only option. Molly, for example, had always been an option. And now that Sherlock was internet-famous he had fan clubs worth of options. But he'd never shown the slightest inclination toward anyone else.
Why me? It was the biggest mystery in John's life, and the only one he knew he couldn't ask Sherlock to solve.
John leaned against the doorframe and watched the world's only consulting detective fill the room with heart-rending music that sang of love: the longing and passion of desire, the devastation of loss, and the elation and euphoria of fulfilment. He couldn't believe that someone who had never been in love—someone who self-purportedly didn't have the time or interest for love—could so adeptly reach the heart of a piece of music and bear it so openly.
Sherlock was standing in profile now: eyes still shut, only the occasional flutter of eyelashes or twitch of the mouth when the emotion of the piece shifted.
In his life John had learned that some moments were worth experiencing more than others. He could drink beer in a pub with people who didn't really like him another time.
The finale of the song was a furious whirlwind of ecstatic notes and Sherlock tore through it as though he could tear it apart. When he hit the final note of the concerto he let it ring through the stillness of the room before opening his eyes and lowering his bow.
"Beautiful," came an amazed voice from the door.
Sherlock started, almost dropping the bow, when he saw John in the doorway.
"I thought you'd left." He turned to busy himself with putting away the instrument.
"I changed my mind," John said, walking further into the room, only stopping a few feet short of where Sherlock was standing.
"Sherlock, that was—that was truly amazing. I've never seen—what was that?"
Sherlock looked up from where he was loosening his bow. John's face was full of wonder—the same expression Sherlock had seen for the first time on their first case, and the one he continued to see even after years of working together. He had wondered when John would get bored, when he'd cease to be impressed. It hadn't happened. And now after more than five years of knowing each other John was still standing in front of him looking at him like—like that. Sherlock hastily redirected his attention back down to the violin case.
"Mendelssohn, Concerto in E Minor," he said, sliding the bow in place and closing the lid.
"It was beautiful," John said.
Sherlock shrugged. "It's a well-written piece."
"Yeah, but, I mean, you played it…" John trailed off, apparently looking for the words. "You were…" Sherlock waited, but John just ducked his head and smiled ruefully. "Look, what do you think about a stir fry tonight?" he asked, shrugging off his coat and walking toward the door to hang it up.
"You're—you're staying then?"
"Yeah, I'll see those guys some other time."
"John—"
John turned from where he was walking into the kitchen and Sherlock realised there was no concrete formation of words present in his mind to produce a following sentence. He regrouped quickly.
"Is it, erm, is it the one with that rice…?"
John grinned. "Jasmine rice, yeah I bought it today."
"Ok." Pause. "Good." Pause. Sherlock felt like he should say more. "I like that one."
"I know," John called back from the kitchen. "I remember."