Work Text:
One day, a piano appeared in the brownstone.
It made its residence in one of the less-used rooms, filled with detritus from Sherlock’s past experiments and solved cases, so Joan didn’t notice exactly when it arrived. It was just there, suddenly, nestled against an exterior wall between a tower of file boxes and a rusty exercise bike with highly suspicious stains on its base.
Joan ran a finger across the top, half expecting to be assaulted by the acrid citrus of furniture polish, but whoever tended the wood last had used something finer than their old can of Pledge – the scent was too mild to identify, and Joan’s finger came away clean instead of greasy.
She grabbed the Victorian pelvic massager that she had originally come into the room for, then headed back to the case they were working downstairs.
* * *
Joan had forgotten all about the piano until weeks later, when Ms. Hudson’s cry of dismay caused her to come running. She found Martha actually wringing her hands, staring fretfully between the piano and the open window to its left.
“Oh, this will never do, Joan, no, not at all. Such a beautiful instrument simply cannot be left exposed like this. The shifts in temperature and humidity from the window, not to mention the sunlight that will hit it in the winter, and it’s such a beautiful restoration job. . .”
“Restoration job?”
That broke Martha’s stasis, and she crossed the room to shut the window firmly. Then she turned back to Joan.
“Your piano! If I’m not mistaken, it’s a late 19th century Mason & Hamlin screwstringer, probably built in the 1880s based on the elaborate woodworking on the front cover. They are sturdy things, in addition to being beautiful, but all woods warp eventually if not properly cared for, and that will easily send the instrument out of tune. Really it should be on an interior wall, well away from drafts and direct sun.” She thought for a moment, one hand possessively caressing the scrolled cheek on the treble end. “Oh! I know just the place, far superior to this out-of-the-way room. . .”
It was but a matter of hours before Ms. Hudson was overseeing a trio of professional movers relocating the piano to the first floor dining room, simultaneously on the phone negotiating price and service time with a piano tuner experienced with antique instruments.
Joan watched the action bemusedly from well out of the way. The sound of Sherlock’s entrance was covered by the workmen, who had been chattering loudly to each other about the previous Sunday’s Jets game the entire time they had been in the brownstone; but Joan had long ago trained herself out of jumping when Sherlock came out of nowhere to speak directly into her ear.
“Ah, Watson! You’re finally doing something with your piano, I see.”
That did earn a double-take.
“My piano? I thought it was yours!”
Sherlock scoffed. “What use would I have for such an instrument?”
Joan scoffed right back. “And what use would I have for it?”
Sherlock pulled on his most condescending face. “Watson, you know that I play stringed instruments, not percussive ones, whereas you—“
Joan lifted her hands to her hips and raised an eyebrow, daring him to go where she thought he was going.
“—extrapolating from statistics on musical instruction for children in Chinese American immigrant families, and the familiarity you have demonstrated in the past with the rudiments of music theory. . .”
“I played the accordion, Sherlock! And I’ve told you before to stop ‘extrapolating from statistics on Chinese Americans’ when deducing me, you utter ass.”
Martha chose that moment to break into their little tableau, lips twitching in a suppressed smile.
“But if the piano belongs to neither of you, then where did it come from?”
* * *
After the bomb squad had cleared it of any booby traps, the piano took up residence and began collecting dust in the corner Martha had picked out for it. It became one of the things Martha chided them over if they left coffee mugs or half-finished bowls of cereal on the lid, and once Joan had researched prices on fully-restored century-old pianos she understood why; but other than that it quickly faded into the background of their lives.
Sherlock avowed no curiosity about the piano’s origin, proclaiming that it was only natural that someone had gifted it to them in thanks for their service; Joan suspected his true reluctance stemmed from whatever complicated memories weighed down his relationship with his violin. She had still only heard him play the violin once in all their time together. But as Joan had her own complicated memories tied up in musical instruments, she respected Sherlock’s reluctance and indulged her own.
She had nearly succeeded in forgetting it again when she and Sherlock somehow found themselves hosting a New Years Eve party. It was an odd affair, the guest list a mix of cops, (former) criminals, and academics; but Sherlock got roaring fires going in all the downstairs rooms and Joan made the nog extra-strong and soon enough the brownstone was filled with conversation.
Marcus was definitely a bit worse for wear when he spotted the piano and started calling for someone to accompany him. Martha had put together a shelf of sheet music on the wall next to the piano, and Marcus had pulled down a book of showtunes.
Eventually, Paige pushed Captain Gregson forward, still protesting, and forced him to sit down at the piano bench. She demanded first choice of song, and quicker than Joan could drain her glass the room had filled with Marcus’s strong baritone singing “Luck Be a Lady.”
More requests followed. There appeared to be a strong Andrew Lloyd Weber contingent in the house, far more requests from Cats than Joan would have predicted, but the showstopper of the night was of course Auld Lang Syne, which everyone joined in on as the ball dropped on the TV in the background.
Marcus was still softly singing the extra verses despite Captain Gregson’s defection to wrap Paige in a surprisingly heated kiss when Lin made her way to Joan’s side.
“You know, this is actually exactly what I was picturing when I sent you the piano.”
Joan spun to face Lin, sloshing her drink as she did so. She was perhaps a bit worse for wear too.
“The piano was from you?”
Lin blinked back at her. “Yes? Didn’t you get the note?”
At Joan’s undoubtedly fish-like gape, Lin rolled her eyes and stalked over to the piano bench, lifting the lid and pulling out a card.
“Call yourself a detective. Here. Read it. I’ve actually gotta go – feel free to thank me later, possibly with a date with your cop friend with the voice, he’s pretty hot.” They hugged, only momentarily awkward about whose arms would cover whose this time, and then she disappeared out the door.
That started a general exodus, lots of searching for coats and scarves in the pile in the hall, and struggling back into snow boots while simultaneously trying to exchange goodbyes. All told it was a little after 1:30 when Joan and Sherlock were finally alone again, and Joan could read the note Lin had left her.
Joan—
This was left behind in a house I sold and the new owner didn’t want it. Your dad used to play, sometimes, so I thought of you.
—Lin
Like everything with Lin, it raised more questions than it answered, and felt subtly barbed besides.
But Joan was eight years old again, wrists smarting from the ruler her martinet of a music teacher slapped her with whenever she failed to keep them properly below the level of the keys, throwing tantrum after tantrum that she hated the piano, she never wanted to play it again, baffled that her mother was so insistent she learn.
She was nine, and eleven, and thirteen, polishing the piano resentfully, wondering why they kept the thing when nobody played it – she had finally succeeded in getting her mother to pay for accordion lessons instead, because if she had to learn a musical instrument she wanted it to be the most ridiculous musical instrument out there, and Oren had just been so relentlessly bad at it that their mother finally threw up her hands in despair.
She was sixteen, and listening at doors as her father argued they had to sell it, his last two books had failed to make back their advances and his publisher was floating the idea of skipping a hardcover release altogether for the next one, and her mother kept repeating her flattest no enough times that eventually he just shut down and locked himself in his study with a bottle of whiskey.
If Joan had ever been tempted to analyze her mother’s behavior through the reductive lens Sherlock used, she would have assumed that the piano had a certain status in her mother’s head, of financial stability, of American-ness, of making it. But one dismissive line from Lin and now—
She found herself seated at the bench, still holding the note. She set it down on the bench beside her, then tucked it under her thigh.
“Send in the Clowns” was open in front of her. She pressed down the soft pedal with her toes, legs so much longer than the last time she had been in this position, and began picking out the melody with her right hand.
Her accordion had never made it out of her parents’ house; it had been well over two decades since she last played any instrument, and sight-reading was never her strongest suit. She faltered repeatedly, fingers used to spanning a much smaller keyboard, but finally hit her stride on the second refrain.
And on the last verse, from two floors away, Sherlock’s violin joined her.