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It is well past midnight, and Sherlock has stopped being Sherlock for the time being, in favour of being a conduit. The light through the sitting room windows is charcoal-stained and warmly metallic. Cold city air with a thousand smells imbedded in every molecule seeps past the cracks. But Sherlock doesn't notice the details, for once. Can't notice any of it. He is standing, slim and pale and draped in blue, on the low table before their sofa, and his hand has gone missing. He doesn't recall when he lost the appendage, but it must be close to an hour now. Currently, it's merely a mechanism with which to hold a violin bow.
No, not a mechanism. Sherlock's eyes flutter open and then shut again. Or if a mechanism, his wires are veins and his gears are sinews and his casing is cream-coloured skin.
There are times, Sherlock knows, when he is amazing. When he is a supercomputer, when he is a bloodhound, when he is a marauder and the prize in his sights is an Army doctor with a sweet, gentle face and a deadly trigger finger. And there are other times when Sherlock is a torment, to himself as much as to anyone else. But just now, as happens every few months when he is lucky and the world around him allows it, he isn't Sherlock Holmes at all.
As for the Strad in his hands, it is throbbing and humming and pulsing like a living thing. The violin shys away from him, all a-tremble, and then presses back into his touch as if doubly ashamed of itself. Its patina is flushed and its strings quiver delicately. He strokes the bow over them with tremendous care, they're so sensitive by this time, oversentitive, it's been five hours since he started playing, they're far too sensitive for Chopin by now and Mendelssohn would arch his fiddle's back in a gasp and break its spine, and so he croons tender phrases over the heated strands. Ancient English songs. Lullabies. Songs about cold winters and about lost loves.
Moon River, wider than a mile...
Sherlock's eyes flick open again.
John is standing there now, and Sherlock hadn't noticed him enter. He's in front of the table, which means his head is roughly at the level of Sherlock's hips. The doctor's dishwater hair is sleep-mussed on one side and his arms are crossed over his striped jumper, which he's thrown on top of the undershirt and flannels. Sherlock deduces that it's freezing in here but can't be bothered to docket any more facts other than that John is smiling with one side of his mouth. John's eyes are so dark in the glancing electric glow from the window that Sherlock can't see the blue, but he knows it's there.
The detective isn't a detective anymore, and that happens so very rarely, so he keeps playing. He plays for all the times he's too much, and for the times he's not enough. He plays for London. He plays for the things he can't remember are beautiful, and the things he's forgotten are ugly.
He plays for the person who lets Sherlock under his skin despite all medical good sense, and John watches. Unmoving. Sherlock can see the lines in his face better in the near-dark. That doesn't make sense, but nothing about John Watson makes the slightest bit of sense at all. He plays for the delighted furrows John's smiles make and the haggard semicircles Afghanistan and Sherlock dig under his eyes. They're all the same to him. They're all John, so he plays for them.
He plays for a long time.
The notes slide to a stop.
"Hello, Huckleberry Friend," says Sherlock.
"And hello, Heartbreaker," says John.
Sherlock lets gravity pull the bow towards the floor, but keeps the Strad perched on his shoulder. It's emitting lovely soft little pants of blissful exhaustion. It would be cruel to put it down.
"It's mad to be jealous of a violin," John whispers. Fondly. Sadly, Sherlock thinks.
"I don't mind," he says truthfully.
John just watches him.
"You're right," Sherlock adds, by way of being helpful. "I'm not coming down."
John hesitates for one more moment and then steps up onto the narrow table. Sherlock swept all the papers and books onto the ground, so there's room, if not much.
"Why do you look so sad?" Sherlock questions. "I thought you liked when I play."
"I do." John runs his fingers over Sherlock's lapel as if he really wants to touch the violin but would get an outburst of claws and teeth if he tried. He's right about that, Sherlock thinks. John can touch it under normal circumstances, but not just now. Not when Sherlock's hand is gone. "I only...you won't understand."
Sherlock cocks his head.
"You're already beautiful," John says. "You can't know what it's like to wonder what...what that's like. To be beautiful."
Considering whether he thinks of himself as beautiful, abstractly, Sherlock comes to find that he does. Most of the time. At the moment, he's not even himself, and so the question is much more objective. Who is Sherlock Holmes, and is he beautiful? Well, yes. He's the sort of person people will still reference long after his death, beyond the grave, decades and decades in the future, because he's one of a kind.
"I wonder what it's like to be good," he offers instead.
A breath escapes John's lungs just before Sherlock kisses him. His friend's lips are pliant with sleep and affection and melancholy and all the gracefulness written on every strand of his DNA. Sherlock still has a fiddle on his shoulder, but his right hand tugs John's hips closer, closed fingers with a bow in them pressing into the doctor's lower back.
There his hand is again. It's on John.
Sherlock isn't a conduit anymore.
He doesn't care.
The kiss changes. Sherlock has come back to earth like the gentle fall of a weightless comet, and of course John notices. John pulls away and looks up at him, his fingers brushing over Sherlock's jaw once, twice, three times.
"I ruined it, didn't I? I'm sorry."
"It's always ruined sooner or later."
"How often has it happened?"
"Dozens of times. Forty-three. It'll be back."
John nods. Sherlock shivers, and discovers that the only reason he knows it's cold in the room is that John is warm. And then he realizes that John loves him, and John was kissing him just now, and nevertheless John is looking sadder by far than he has in weeks. He's blinking hard at Sherlock's collarbone, trying miserably not to show it and failing.
"I wish I knew why you look like that," Sherlock says. "Don't look like that. I haven't done anything terrible, and there's such a lot of world to see. We'll see it tomorrow."
"Right," John whispers. "And you love me."
"And you love me."
"Off to see the world, then. We'll see it tomorrow."
"Of course we will."
"You aren't coming to bed, are you?"
"No."
"Right. Goodnight, in that case. Tell your violin I'm sorry for interrupting."
John goes back into the bedroom.
Sherlock goes to the window. Letting the violin slide from his shoulder, he looks out at London. There are stars, he knows, but they're snuffed out by light and pollution. He wishes they were visible tonight even if he can't understand them. Tomorrow he'll see too much of the world, more than likely, but just now is so quiet. It's better than quiet, in fact, for it's somewhere in between all the rest of it. Like a dream state or a vision. He is drifting through the silence on a little raft of half-remembered sound.