Work Text:
“I assure you, my previous statement was entirely in earnest,” Holmes mutters, but it is too late. The door is shut; Watson has gone. He isn’t as high as he wants to be, but there is no more cocaine in the flat. Holmes flicks at the syringe on the table, that source of so much contention, and watches as it shatters on the floor.
His brain begins to fog in a pleasant way. Holmes lets his arm fall to the armrest of the sofa. He’s glad that Watson was not five minutes faster in ascending the seventeen stairs to their flat; he doubts their domestic altercation would have stopped at mere words if Watson had actually caught him in the act of ingesting “that infernal substance”, as he was so fond of saying.
The haze in Holmes’ mind dissipates slowly. After sitting for several hours, his head in his hands, he straightens his still back and stands, then makes his way to the door.
--
A selection of notices placed in the Times’ personals section, over a particular winter week:
To a friend: you wound me. Let me explain. (Monday morning edition)
I’m sorry. (Monday evening edition)
To a friend: you know what you forgot and where you forgot it. I’ll keep it safe until you return (please come pick it up soon.) (Tuesday evening edition)
You ruin me with your indifference. --You know. (Also in the Tuesday evening edition)
A warning to a former room-mate: I intend to throw all of your belongings in the street if you do not return to claim them by Thursday evening. (Wednesday morning edition, repeated in the Wednesday evening edition)
To an acquaintance: I did not discard your possessions. Please come pick them up. (Thursday morning edition)
To an acquaintance: I still may discard your things. (Thursday evening edition)
To a dear friend, in earnest apology: I’m lost without you. —WSSH (Friday morning and evening editions.)
Holmes shuffles through the Friday evening edition of the Times, his eyes scanning the page for his latest attempt at an apology. He finds it in the upper right hand corner of the last personals page, his initials in smaller type than the rest of the message. The kitchen table in 221B Baker Street is covered with newspapers, all open to some page of the personals section; all bearing pleas from Holmes to Watson.
All bearing pleas that Holmes desperately hopes will not go unanswered. More drastic measures will be called for if Watson does not respond in some fashion by the Saturday morning edition. He figures there is little enough harm in putting his full initials in the last message; on the balance of probabilities there are multiple individuals in London of both genders with those same initials. That alone is not enough to incriminate him. There is little chance of Watson missing his messages: the man knows Holmes’ methods, and Holmes is confident he will apply them. All there remains to do is wait for the Saturday morning edition, and surely all will begin to be made well. The alternative is simply unthinkable.
Holmes lets the Friday evening paper fall on top of the others and he abruptly turns and walks to the window, where his violin is resting inside its open case. Something raw and sharp builds in his chest as he picks up the violin and lifts it to his shoulder. Holmes closes his eyes as his fingers find the first notes of a concerto by Mendelssohn. His other hand finds the bow left beside the case, and for a few minutes the ache is stilled.
Holmes pauses, takes a deep breath before beginning the second movement. This one was quieter, almost a lullaby. His throat is suddenly dry and he swallows. This movement-this almost lullaby-he has played it in the blue hours of the night several times in the past years. John sitting in his armchair with a glass of whiskey; Holmes at the window with his violin, playing the gentlest, quietest version of this movement he could. Sleep, John, he had thought. Forget the war. You’re in Baker Street, not Afghanistan. And astoundingly, it had worked: Watson inevitably drifted off to sleep in his armchair, sometimes dropping an empty whiskey glass to the floor, sometimes cradling it in the crook of his arm the way he did a gun. Holmes found himself quietly proud that he could drive off his friend’s demons.
The second movement ends and Holmes begins the third, vicious and sharp. He never plays this one as a lullaby; this movement is frustration, and anger, and desire. He is barely four measures in when he becomes aware that the window has blurred, as thought it were raining, but the street outside was silent...
Holmes puts his bow down, tucks the violin under his arm. Scrubs at his traitorous face with his sleeve, then freezes at a creak in the floorboards somewhere behind him.
“You saved me, you know,” John says quietly, modestly, as though he had not just become the first person in all of London to sneak up on Sherlock Holmes. "With that violin. Sherlock Holmes, you saved my life."
Holmes stands utterly still, veins icy with dread, refusing to allow himself to make any deductions about the other man in the room.
The floorboards creak again, and John shuffles a little closer to where Holmes stands at the window.
“What I asked of you...” John clears his throat, embarrassed. “I realize now that it was unfair. Impossible to ask you to become an accomplice in this...this illegal, er...” John trails off, and Holmes realizes that he is waiting for an answer.
That John H. Watson is giving him another chance.
Holmes’ hands shake as he practically drops his violin in his haste. He whirls around and clasps John’s hands, his vision again becoming traitorously cloudy.
“John,” he whispers. “John, yes.”