[FIC]This Is My Song For You 1/1
Since I just couldn't get the next STW finished for last weekend, I thought I'd at least give you this quickie I typed up after listening to the song listed as my music choice of the moment. Holmes playing for Watson has been done to death, here's my take on it. I am aware that you don't play songs on a violin, they're pieces unless you literally play a song, but "This Is My Piece For You" just didn't have the same ring (let's make "This Is My Peace For You the alternative title, OK?).
Beware that you are entering unbetaed territory. The pitfalls of run-on sentences, Americanisms, odd word choice, word repeats and strange spelling (spellcheck tends to do weird things to my writing) await. Enter at your own risk.
Title: This Is My Song For You
Author:
starlightshade
Beta: Unbetaed. This is your last warning.
Pairing: None. Holmes/Watson if you turn on your rose-tinted glasses and use Hubble.
Spoilers: Umm... you all DO know they're living together, right?
Rating: This one's so harmless I'd say everyone can read it. G! Or K, or whatever.
Warnings: Abuse of a violin. Hints of music theory and violin technique.
Disclaimer: No money made. No ownership claimed. Fair use applies.
This Is My Song For You
Woken at an ungodly hour past midnight by a sound that was a cross between a cat in mortal agony and the screeching of fingernails across a blackboard, a normal man would have instantly snapped awake and searched for the thing threatening his life. John Watson, on the other hand, turned around, grumbled, pulled his pillow over his ears and proceeded to try and sleep some more.
The morning after having been woken by such a sound, the average man would have been riding on a high describing the mystery intruder to the police. John Watson splashed his face with ice-cold water after having taken extra care shaving, since he didn't want to have any more mustache-related injuries (having cut off half of it once in his early acquaintance with Holmes and not realizing until one of his less tactful patients had pointed it out had been enough) to occur. He tried looking more awake through his morning repast, but couldn't manage more than a half-enthusiastic mumble that might have even passed as a word to Holmes pointing out the failures in the Times' news reports.
He dragged his feet over to his consultation room, clearing off some debris that appeared on the path there in spite of their agreement to at least keep that part of the flat papers-free, flopped bonelessly into his chair and proceeded to gently snore until Mrs. Hudson showed in his first patient of the day, a routine check-up that didn't task his faculties. The old woman, a proud grandmother of eight, was hard of hearing and therefore his ideal conversation partner after a Homes-in-a-violin-mood night. She nattered and chattered and tutted, and as long as he moved his lips in an approximation of speech she would assume he'd been giving the correct answers to any questions she might have asked.
"Everything looks to be right as rain, Mrs. Brown," he told her, showing her to the door of 221 Baker Street. "Keep up your daily constitutionals and you should easily live to see your great-grandchildren's weddings!" She giggled delightedly and waved from the carriage window.
Fortified by the easy start to his day, Watson continued to see to his patients and even the poor sod who'd been clipped by a spooked horse and had to have his right arm set and bound after breaking it on the curb couldn't disturb the peaceful calm that had settled around him.
"Oh, doctor, you always know how to set me at ease!" was what he heard more than once.
He went to bed with a smile that evening.
The caterwauling started earlier, and lasted longer, and the next day saw him nodding off at his desk more than once.
"You're always so calm, doctor- I wish I had that kind of nerve dealing with this man," Mrs. Hudson said that night as she brought dinner and dealt with Holmes in one of his stranger moods, this one entailing him eating everything in sight, including trying scraps of curtain (cut out the middle, of course) and slivers of wood peeled from the dresser (varnished) and the doorjamb (painted), citing an experiment on human digestion and nutrition as the reason.
"Oh, I am anything but," Watson answered with a self-deprecating smile. He stuffed cotton into his ears before going to sleep that night.
Holmes' violin got through that, and the two pillows he piled upon his head until he thought he'd suffocate.
He actually begged off seeing anything but emergency cases the afternoon of the next day and simply slept on his pallet for as long as he could- which turned out to be all but thirty minutes before the first emergency, a child with a raging fever, came in.
His face almost landed in his soup at dinner. Holmes caught him with his pipe (unlit, thankfully!) under his chin. He hoped he wouldn't have to explain that particular bruise to anyone.
"Dear boy, you are looking a bit peaky. Are you sure you are alright?" Holmes' concern finally broke Watson.
"I would be, if I could sleep for longer than half an hour- ever! I understand that inbetween cases you, Holmes, have all the time in the world, but for God's sake, man- have pity on those of us trying to keep a regular schedule of work and sleep and keep your playing to daylight hours! For a few days at least. Please, Holmes?" He wasn't above begging, knowing it would forestall the hurt look on Holmes' face.
"For you, my dearest, anything."
That night, Watson took out the cotton in his ears and pulled the pillows from his head to listen to the most peculiar melody he'd ever heard Holmes play. It was hard and soft, contrary, disharmonious but compelling. It was driven and soothing and breathily shrill and deep. How Holmes managed to sound as though he alone commanded the entire violin section of an orchestra, the mastery it took to play his instrument at such a level (especially after having heard him torturing the instrument only for most of their acquaintance), Watson couldn't fathom.
As silently as possible, foregoing his cane in favor of holding onto the banister, he tapped downstairs from his bedroom and into the sitting room. The fire was dying down, casting strange, swaying shadows on the walls, and among them Holmes danced with his violin cradled lovingly to his neck, his fingers caressing the fingerboard and the strings lying on there like they were the soft skin of a lover. His bow was flying over the strings, gliding, then making an odd jumping motion before returning to a more traditional full-length slide over the strings.
Glissando changing to quicksilver arpeggios up and down, fingers flying faster than the eye could see, faster than Watson could think Holmes wove a blanket of sound around the doctor's tired mind. The tune was strange but familiar, resonating deep within Watson's very own being, what he thought of as his essence, his soul.
Holmes never spared him a glance, almost maniacally sawing at his instrument now, the chords he was evoking across three strings harsh and discordant and painful, sudden and unexpected like gunshots in the brightest sunlight, like red blood on sand that was such a light shade of yellow it looked almost white, especially to eyes that were still getting accustomed to the desert. Tritones, he thought, the devil's chord, diabolus in musica, and no resolution.
Watson's hands clenched on the armrests, trying to pull into himself the comfort the fire's heat offered, the familiarity of 221b's sitting room.
Holmes' tune changed again. This time, there was a sweet, sweet melody, melancholic and longing, singing over wandering, restless pizzicato he somehow played at the same time. Close to tears, the doctor concentrated on that singing, simple, heart-rending melody, ignoring the restless pinging on the lower strings.
Slowly, the two started to merge, started to depend on each other, started to sing to each other as much as two melodies played on one violin by one man could.
Peaceful, calm, quietening. Watson's eyes slowly slid shut, lulled by Holmes' hypnotic weaving among the shadows and his music.
In the morning, he was covered by a quilt, a cup of tea pressed into his hands by Holmes who was looking at him both critically and apologetically as only Holmes could. No verbal apology would be forthcoming, Watson knew, but this was as close as Holmes could get after he broke an express promise to Watson.
"Your music, last night, it was... different," Watson offered tentatively, carefully stretching to avoid tense muscles developing into a crick. Holmes turned away quickly, making his way over to the windows overlooking the street.
"I don't know what you mean, dear friend," he said, a little too nonchalant to be believable, at least to Watson's ears. "I merely play what my mind sings to me."
"I wish it would sing like that a little more often, then," Watson said, and that was as close as he would ever get to a thank you for the impromptu concerto his impossible-to-live-with, yet even more impossible to live without greatest friend, London's foremost sleuth Sherlock Holmes, had gifted him with.
The End
Story end notes:
Violin techniques are real, and some of the most difficult out there (left-handed pizzicato alone is almost enough to cramp up almost anybody's hand. Add in flageolet, chord scales and arpeggios and the bowing and Holmes is playing on a master's level, like Paganini or Sarasate. Apparently he studied at least the latter's fingering (Granada series I believe) so it's not that far-fetched). I didn't have Watson know the technical terms as he doesn't play the violin so since it's written from his perspective you get what they sound like (to me, at least) instead of knowing what they are (well, now I wrote it out but I hope the story is readable without the exact terminology).
Tritones, and their effects, are real elements of music theory. Holmes is employing them Bartok-like in my mind, but harsher, taking longer to resolve (for those of you into improvising, moving from key to key without giving a dominant or tertiary as a respite instead hopping through scales of diminished fourths/augmented fifths with the occasional diminished and dominant sevenths. Makes for a rather Schoenberg-like sound sometimes but more... harmonious, no 12-tone rules. Lots of impact but provokes being yelled at to get back to playing "real music" by long-suffering relatives.) .
Holmes' piece to me culminates in a fugue, more Beethoven than Bach though ;)
OK, my notes were almost longer than the story. Forgive this music geek. Hope you enjoyed reading and read you soon with STW!
Beware that you are entering unbetaed territory. The pitfalls of run-on sentences, Americanisms, odd word choice, word repeats and strange spelling (spellcheck tends to do weird things to my writing) await. Enter at your own risk.
Title: This Is My Song For You
Author:
starlightshade
Beta: Unbetaed. This is your last warning.
Pairing: None. Holmes/Watson if you turn on your rose-tinted glasses and use Hubble.
Spoilers: Umm... you all DO know they're living together, right?
Rating: This one's so harmless I'd say everyone can read it. G! Or K, or whatever.
Warnings: Abuse of a violin. Hints of music theory and violin technique.
Disclaimer: No money made. No ownership claimed. Fair use applies.
This Is My Song For You
Woken at an ungodly hour past midnight by a sound that was a cross between a cat in mortal agony and the screeching of fingernails across a blackboard, a normal man would have instantly snapped awake and searched for the thing threatening his life. John Watson, on the other hand, turned around, grumbled, pulled his pillow over his ears and proceeded to try and sleep some more.
The morning after having been woken by such a sound, the average man would have been riding on a high describing the mystery intruder to the police. John Watson splashed his face with ice-cold water after having taken extra care shaving, since he didn't want to have any more mustache-related injuries (having cut off half of it once in his early acquaintance with Holmes and not realizing until one of his less tactful patients had pointed it out had been enough) to occur. He tried looking more awake through his morning repast, but couldn't manage more than a half-enthusiastic mumble that might have even passed as a word to Holmes pointing out the failures in the Times' news reports.
He dragged his feet over to his consultation room, clearing off some debris that appeared on the path there in spite of their agreement to at least keep that part of the flat papers-free, flopped bonelessly into his chair and proceeded to gently snore until Mrs. Hudson showed in his first patient of the day, a routine check-up that didn't task his faculties. The old woman, a proud grandmother of eight, was hard of hearing and therefore his ideal conversation partner after a Homes-in-a-violin-mood night. She nattered and chattered and tutted, and as long as he moved his lips in an approximation of speech she would assume he'd been giving the correct answers to any questions she might have asked.
"Everything looks to be right as rain, Mrs. Brown," he told her, showing her to the door of 221 Baker Street. "Keep up your daily constitutionals and you should easily live to see your great-grandchildren's weddings!" She giggled delightedly and waved from the carriage window.
Fortified by the easy start to his day, Watson continued to see to his patients and even the poor sod who'd been clipped by a spooked horse and had to have his right arm set and bound after breaking it on the curb couldn't disturb the peaceful calm that had settled around him.
"Oh, doctor, you always know how to set me at ease!" was what he heard more than once.
He went to bed with a smile that evening.
The caterwauling started earlier, and lasted longer, and the next day saw him nodding off at his desk more than once.
"You're always so calm, doctor- I wish I had that kind of nerve dealing with this man," Mrs. Hudson said that night as she brought dinner and dealt with Holmes in one of his stranger moods, this one entailing him eating everything in sight, including trying scraps of curtain (cut out the middle, of course) and slivers of wood peeled from the dresser (varnished) and the doorjamb (painted), citing an experiment on human digestion and nutrition as the reason.
"Oh, I am anything but," Watson answered with a self-deprecating smile. He stuffed cotton into his ears before going to sleep that night.
Holmes' violin got through that, and the two pillows he piled upon his head until he thought he'd suffocate.
He actually begged off seeing anything but emergency cases the afternoon of the next day and simply slept on his pallet for as long as he could- which turned out to be all but thirty minutes before the first emergency, a child with a raging fever, came in.
His face almost landed in his soup at dinner. Holmes caught him with his pipe (unlit, thankfully!) under his chin. He hoped he wouldn't have to explain that particular bruise to anyone.
"Dear boy, you are looking a bit peaky. Are you sure you are alright?" Holmes' concern finally broke Watson.
"I would be, if I could sleep for longer than half an hour- ever! I understand that inbetween cases you, Holmes, have all the time in the world, but for God's sake, man- have pity on those of us trying to keep a regular schedule of work and sleep and keep your playing to daylight hours! For a few days at least. Please, Holmes?" He wasn't above begging, knowing it would forestall the hurt look on Holmes' face.
"For you, my dearest, anything."
That night, Watson took out the cotton in his ears and pulled the pillows from his head to listen to the most peculiar melody he'd ever heard Holmes play. It was hard and soft, contrary, disharmonious but compelling. It was driven and soothing and breathily shrill and deep. How Holmes managed to sound as though he alone commanded the entire violin section of an orchestra, the mastery it took to play his instrument at such a level (especially after having heard him torturing the instrument only for most of their acquaintance), Watson couldn't fathom.
As silently as possible, foregoing his cane in favor of holding onto the banister, he tapped downstairs from his bedroom and into the sitting room. The fire was dying down, casting strange, swaying shadows on the walls, and among them Holmes danced with his violin cradled lovingly to his neck, his fingers caressing the fingerboard and the strings lying on there like they were the soft skin of a lover. His bow was flying over the strings, gliding, then making an odd jumping motion before returning to a more traditional full-length slide over the strings.
Glissando changing to quicksilver arpeggios up and down, fingers flying faster than the eye could see, faster than Watson could think Holmes wove a blanket of sound around the doctor's tired mind. The tune was strange but familiar, resonating deep within Watson's very own being, what he thought of as his essence, his soul.
Holmes never spared him a glance, almost maniacally sawing at his instrument now, the chords he was evoking across three strings harsh and discordant and painful, sudden and unexpected like gunshots in the brightest sunlight, like red blood on sand that was such a light shade of yellow it looked almost white, especially to eyes that were still getting accustomed to the desert. Tritones, he thought, the devil's chord, diabolus in musica, and no resolution.
Watson's hands clenched on the armrests, trying to pull into himself the comfort the fire's heat offered, the familiarity of 221b's sitting room.
Holmes' tune changed again. This time, there was a sweet, sweet melody, melancholic and longing, singing over wandering, restless pizzicato he somehow played at the same time. Close to tears, the doctor concentrated on that singing, simple, heart-rending melody, ignoring the restless pinging on the lower strings.
Slowly, the two started to merge, started to depend on each other, started to sing to each other as much as two melodies played on one violin by one man could.
Peaceful, calm, quietening. Watson's eyes slowly slid shut, lulled by Holmes' hypnotic weaving among the shadows and his music.
In the morning, he was covered by a quilt, a cup of tea pressed into his hands by Holmes who was looking at him both critically and apologetically as only Holmes could. No verbal apology would be forthcoming, Watson knew, but this was as close as Holmes could get after he broke an express promise to Watson.
"Your music, last night, it was... different," Watson offered tentatively, carefully stretching to avoid tense muscles developing into a crick. Holmes turned away quickly, making his way over to the windows overlooking the street.
"I don't know what you mean, dear friend," he said, a little too nonchalant to be believable, at least to Watson's ears. "I merely play what my mind sings to me."
"I wish it would sing like that a little more often, then," Watson said, and that was as close as he would ever get to a thank you for the impromptu concerto his impossible-to-live-with, yet even more impossible to live without greatest friend, London's foremost sleuth Sherlock Holmes, had gifted him with.
The End
Story end notes:
Violin techniques are real, and some of the most difficult out there (left-handed pizzicato alone is almost enough to cramp up almost anybody's hand. Add in flageolet, chord scales and arpeggios and the bowing and Holmes is playing on a master's level, like Paganini or Sarasate. Apparently he studied at least the latter's fingering (Granada series I believe) so it's not that far-fetched). I didn't have Watson know the technical terms as he doesn't play the violin so since it's written from his perspective you get what they sound like (to me, at least) instead of knowing what they are (well, now I wrote it out but I hope the story is readable without the exact terminology).
Tritones, and their effects, are real elements of music theory. Holmes is employing them Bartok-like in my mind, but harsher, taking longer to resolve (for those of you into improvising, moving from key to key without giving a dominant or tertiary as a respite instead hopping through scales of diminished fourths/augmented fifths with the occasional diminished and dominant sevenths. Makes for a rather Schoenberg-like sound sometimes but more... harmonious, no 12-tone rules. Lots of impact but provokes being yelled at to get back to playing "real music" by long-suffering relatives.) .
Holmes' piece to me culminates in a fugue, more Beethoven than Bach though ;)
OK, my notes were almost longer than the story. Forgive this music geek. Hope you enjoyed reading and read you soon with STW!