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Dance me to your beauty like a burning violin,
Dance me through the panic til I’m gathered safely in.
“Groceries!” a greatly irritated voice bellowed from the open doorway. As wind and stray drizzle swept through it into the little flat on Baker Street, at last Yujin Mikotoba bestirred.
He sat up straighter in his armchair, watching as his flatmate’s gangly figure strode into the suite, dropping a large bag carelessly onto the dining table. “How I despise those confusing stores,” he declared, “bless the landlady showing me the ropes.”
Rising from his station, Yujin inspected the contents of the bag quietly, checking them off against a list in his head. “I’m sorry, Sholmes.” Tea bags, cartons of milk, sugar, bread… “I would’ve accompanied you like always, but, well,” he muttered, “I’d put off packing far too long.” Eggs, biscuits, flour, paper towels, and various brands of baby formula. Everything was in order.
Entirely ignoring the apology, Sholmes drew the curtains closed and lit the gas lamps as the sun embarked to the other side of the world. Yujin tried not to think of how soon he’d be following suit.
“Need a hand with anything else?” he offered.
“Not particularly. Rest, Mikotoba, I know you were interrupted.” said Sholmes, returning to his work, and so Yujin resigned once more to the armchair.
Seeing Sholmes do mundane things around the house was no less unsettling a sight. The man looked unnatural, shelving the groceries and depositing used utensils in the basin. Yujin couldn’t help but watch, transfixed at his awkward movements.
There was credit to be given; after twenty-four years of the least put-together life one could lead, Sholmes had learned remarkably fast. Domesticity had always ill-suited the restless genius, and it had taken mammoth efforts from Yujin upon moving in, to bring 221-B to a livable state. And yet, in just over a month, they had made a turnaround.
Every time the doctor had let it be known he was impressed, Sholmes had very simply said “Duty calls!” in lieu of an explanation.
Which made sense, of course. He did have– some approximation of, anyway– a daughter now, and there was no higher duty than the tending of a child. Only that he hadn’t expected Sholmes to take to it so swiftly. He’d be remiss if it didn’t worry him sometimes, not that fatherhood was anything Yujin could preach about himself.
Before those thoughts could proliferate, however, he was drawn out of his mind by the distinct rumble of thunder. Loud and piercing, it alerted both occupants of the room.
“Blast, the weather’s worsened while we weren’t looking. What gave it the right?” exclaimed Sholmes, voice interred with frustration. Yujin raised a brow at him, upon witnessing perhaps the first instance of his friend speaking on such trifles as weather.
“You would invite some godly wrath, my friend.” Joking still came naturally despite it all. Another resounding clap emanated from the heavens. “If the unusually sour skies aren’t already a sign of that…”
This elicited a low chuckle in response, but Sholmes said nothing otherwise, instead moving rather fast-footedly toward the adjoining room, where their fellow flatmate, as the eccentric fellow liked to put it, lay in her crib.
This roused Yujin back out of the chair. “What is it, Sholmes?” he asked, following him there. The other man hesitantly turned the doorknob, peering into the nursery-of-sorts they’d fashioned for the infant who’d entered their lives so suddenly. It had once been their joint study, but now it stood as a passably adorable child’s room, cleared of all their belongings and messily repainted.
“I’m, er,” Sholmes struggled, “checking in. On the little one.”
Little one. That was new, too. Unsure of what to say, Yujin simply nodded, and the two of them approached the cradle. And there she was, baby Iris. Small and beautiful and, most importantly, asleep. “You worried the thunder might’ve woken her, didn’t you?” he asked.
Sholmes looked up from Iris, and at Yujin, becoming visibly flustered. “Yes? It was entirely likely, and she doesn’t sleep well in troubled weathers, and– all those things.” he raced through his words.
“Quite.” Yujin offered his partner a smile he hadn’t been able to conjure in weeks. He, in turn, levelled a scrutinising glance down at him, but didn’t question it.
Yujin felt a weight lift off his chest, right then in that moment.
Getting a read on Herlock Sholmes was beyond the capacity or willingness of most, evident in the way folks spoke of him. Policemen who had the ‘pleasure’ of running into him at crime scenes, his old laboratory coworkers, their landlady, even his own brother– they all regarded him with varying levels of respect, but a common lack of sincere understanding.
And this was no surprise, given how difficult Sholmes made himself. It wasn’t entirely by choice, Yujin had come to appreciate, but the truth was, even he struggled a lot of the time to know what his partner truly thought of some things. Taking in Iris as his own was one of those things.
He should’ve known it, really, that June morning in the small hours, when he’d agreed to father her on the spot after taking one look into Yujin’s desperate, panicked eyes. But it was clear as crystal to him now, watching the faintest smile creep onto his friend’s otherwise still face as he observed his slumbering ‘little one’. That despite their deep-running, shared anxieties about her future, she was going to be in good hands.
“Mikotoba, if I may be so bold,” Sholmes spoke up, lowering his head, “does she remind you of Susato?” He was direct, as ever. If only Yujin could’ve answered as directly, but saying yes when he remembered so little of Susato herself would’ve been a disservice to her.
A mirthless laugh escaped him as the memories from six years gone collided with the present. “Who was it that wrote, ‘history repeats itself’? Something about the first instance being a tragedy, the second a farce?”
“A farce? You would laugh at a time like this, my dear fellow?”
“What else is a man bereft of control to do?”
When leaving Susato in the care of her grandmother, he’d had a choice. When considering all that was gained and lost from it, Yujin never could tell if he’d chosen correctly– but it felt insurmountably cruel that he was to relive it now, only without a say in the matter.
“There is much else.” said Sholmes, with an urgency that was impossible to place. He made to leave Iris’ room. “Much else to do!” Then, sensing that his friend, absent in thought, hadn’t followed, dashed back in and took hold of Yujin’s forearm, ushering him through the door.
Once back outside, the fog in his mind dissipated with the shift in atmosphere. Sholmes knelt by the fireplace, kindling flames– an uncommon practice in July, even for rainier days.
“In for a long night, are we?” Yujin prompted, deciphering the action. The scent of embers joined that of parchment from their sizable collection of books, and old metal from the many trinkets one of them hoarded, swearing they’d be of relevance some day. The smell of home. Undeniably comforting despite… ah, his impending departure. “Sholmes, you know that early tomorrow morning, I–”
“Ah, ah, ah, Mikotoba, not now.” With a dismissive wave of his digit, Sholmes had his way. “Honestly, fretting over losing a night of sleep when you could be brewing us both some of your excessively bitter tea to welcome the challenge!” He gestured less than subtly towards their tea set, surrounded by loose papers atop the trunk in the middle of the room, that they used as a low table.
Shaking his head, Yujin began his preparations. “Seems somebody has plans.”
“Plans?” Sholmes scoffed. “Sometimes I wonder if you know me at all.”
It was absurdly endearing when he got like this, cryptic yet insistent, and for whatever reason, Yujin trusted his moods and whims. As the water he’d set to boil steamed pleasantly, he watched as his friend gathered the strewn-about sheets on the table and started looking through them. He hadn’t even bothered to take a proper seat, having settled right there on the floor by the trunk.
After casting his eyes over the writings, he looked up. “Uncharacteristically scant notes you’ve compiled, Mikotoba,” he stated as Yujin silently stirred the pot of tea, “though I suppose I cannot fault you for it.”
“You’ll find the notes from before May to be more detailed. As the case became more personal, well… my commitment of it to paper didn’t hold up.” He explained. That, and there was a gag order on the entire case, meaning he could not so much as mention names in writing, in the event that it reached unwanted eyes.
Sholmes hummed flatly. “It’s a good thing my memory serves me well, then. Regardless… It's safe to say the sun has set on the Professor’s reign.”
“But how can we be certain? Over the seven months of killings, there were only five victims. Merely a month has lapsed since the trial. Hardly sufficient to declare it done with, wouldn’t you say?”
“I wouldn’t say so, Mikotoba.” They shared a glance, and their unspoken agreement that the court’s findings on the matter could not be taken as gospel was reaffirmed. “Were the Professor still capable of striking, would this period not have been perfect for it?”
Yujin brought a hand to his chin. “Ah. You are correct. The aristocracy were most vulnerable in the trial’s aftermath, it’s true.”
A cup of tea in each hand, he walked around the trunk to join Sholmes on the floor. “Everybody believed the killer had been put away. Prospective victims lowered their guards. Until the press circulated those wretched rumours, anyway.” He picked up a newspaper clipping. It told of somebody claiming to have seen the Professor rise from his grave.
“Wretched? So you believe them to be baseless.”
“But of course! Do you not, Sholmes?”
“Never mind. That lead is best explored another day; there is nothing concrete yet.”
“Hmm.” Yujin took a sip of his tea, sorting his thoughts. “Wait, Sholmes. So… if you believe the Professor killings truly ended with Asogi’s trial, are you saying that he did–”
The detective raised a brow in his direction. “Dangerous conclusions, Mikotoba. These skips in logic are quite unlike you!”
Yujin sighed, finding nothing to say to that. It was a fair assessment, he was getting wound up to the extreme. They knew close to nothing of the reality behind the godforsaken case, and there was equally as little they could do even if they solved it.
A close friend of his had been put to death on foreign soil. A boy he knew was never going to see his father again. And yet…
“I want nothing more than to solve this, that is all.”
Sholmes cast him a curious gaze. “Then, focus. I do, too.”
In the early days of his acquaintance with Sholmes, he’d been perplexed by the lad’s fascination with wringing answers out of the most hopeless situations: Murder victims with nobody to avenge them, cases long since gone cold. What was the point? Simply an intellectual exercise? Morbid curiosity?
Now, though he didn’t quite understand it, Yujin found he shared the sentiment. It was too late to save Genshin, nor any of the mass murderer’s victims. It was crass and unyielding, digging for leads given the situation, like a scavenger’s meal. Still, he could not imagine letting the case simply rest. If working in the autopsy lab had taught him anything, it was that there was, in fact, merit in studying the dead.
The tea rather suddenly developed an awful taste in his mouth. He set the cup down. “There is also the autopsy, Sholmes,” he said grimly, pointing to a certain page of his notes, “and the moment Genshin’s ring emerged.”
“Yes, the strange lack of internal injury. If indeed something nefarious was afoot in the lab that day, I’m afraid it will be near impossible to ascertain.” Sholmes mused as he joined his hands and fiddled with his thumbs.
Yujin let out another of his sighs, they really seemed to be getting longer as he aged. “I could not get a hold of Dr Wilson after the trial. His mentorship of me presumably ended the moment the deportation was announced, but… it’s unfortunate. I shall have to connect with him from overseas, now.”
They fell into a bout of silence, after that. It had become more obvious as the day progressed, that Sholmes was remaining completely tight-lipped about the matter of Yujin having to leave the next morning. He was surely hurting beneath his stubborn silence, and it hurt Yujin more to fathom it. How long could they pretend there was no tomorrow?
In the absence of conversation, the sound of rain lashing against their windows pounded in his ears.
“The younger van Zieks is similarly unreachable,” Sholmes then commented, “nobody I know has heard from him since the funerals.”
“You’ve been… keeping tabs on him.” Yujin smiled a little when his remark was met with a scoff.
“Mikotoba, I’m merely making sure we don’t lose another key player in all this.” His voice was small, paranoid. His eyes flitted– a furtive glance, to the door behind which Iris lay.
After six years of working with the great detective, it was inevitable that Yujin had absorbed a few of his methods. Though, he hadn’t expected to utilise them on the man himself.
“I believe you,” he said, eyes softening, “but there’s more to it, isn’t there? Barok van Zieks is the only family the girl has left… not that either of them are to ever know.”
This seemed to clam the man up once more. Sholmes stood up stiffly, letting the papers that had been on his lap fall to the floor.
“Sholmes?”
Not deigning a response, his tall flatmate strode over to the desk across the way, picking up his violin. His trusty stradivarius, which often had Yujin wondering whether it was the instrument, or the player, that always produced the most dulcet performances. He’d never understood why Sholmes afforded him the privilege of being his only audience, but he cherished it.
When the first chords rang out from between the strings and the bow, Yujin instinctively closed his eyes. It had been a long, exhausting day, and the sweetness of the music against the harsh backdrop of thunder and rain was an immense repose. But it seemed Sholmes was not having it, for within a few seconds, he began playing very harshly indeed. Incoherent noise filled the room as his expression contorted.
“What– my friend, kindly cease this!” the troubled listener protested. “Why are you abusing your violin so?”
“Playing helps me to think. Usually.” Sholmes responded through gritted teeth. “Today, however, it has chosen to deny me assistance! That ‘abuse’ was its pay-back.” With that, he returned to the couch and sat back down with his usual dramatic flair. In another time, Yujin would’ve found it amusing, but he knew they were past the point of merriment and banter, now.
Joining him on the couch, Yujin placed a hand on his knee. “Perhaps you’ve… been thinking too much, hm?” he tried. “Your good instrument wants you to slow down. You’ve been tearing yourself up over this case for months.”
“Slow down?” Sholmes snapped back out of his head. “Slow down? When have I ever slowed down while a case remained unsolved in my hands?”
The bitterness in his dear friend’s voice tugged at the doctor’s heartstrings. He knew Sholmes, and his restless habits. He’d witnessed, and been roped into far too many of his fever-pitch solves, to even consider trying to halt the man’s pace. However…
“This case isn’t in your hands.” he asserted, tentatively taking Sholmes’s hands in his own. “You’ve dealt with more perplexing mysteries, but never one so personal. And it is personal–” he added quickly, seeing Sholmes open his mouth to protest, “Even if not before through my involvement, it is now, because of Iris.”
He felt Sholmes’s hands tremble as he held them. It felt surreal on many fronts, being this way with him. The rain poured relentlessly yet, making Yujin more keenly aware of the warmth in both of their palms.
“I suppose you’re right. Right as ever, Mikotoba.” It was hard not to take the concession as a small victory.
Gently he squeezed those slender fingers, smiling in earnest. “As ever, you say? Why, that might be the most credit you’ve ever given me.”
“Hmm, right again. How remiss of me, Mikotoba, for I’m often lost without you.” Sholmes returned the smile.
The simple admittance sent a wave of chills down his body. He knew they were close, of course, and that he’d made himself quite valuable to his partner over the years, but hearing it from the man’s own lips was thrilling and painful at once. Just what state was Yujin about to leave him in?
Well, the least he could do now was to leave him with a good thing to remember. If they were fated to part and never find each other again, if he wouldn’t ever watch Sholmes wield the violin and his wit together in the most breathtaking of ways…
“You could make it up to me.” he said, and his smile turned into a little smirk. “Play me a song, won’t you? Though, this time, don’t think about the case.”
“You want me to play without thinking?” Sholmes sounded almost affronted.
“I didn’t say that.”
Letting out a breathless little laugh, the musician stood up and retrieved his instrument. He held it, preparing to play, and despite his stance appearing more strained, and his hands still shaking, Yujin knew they were in for something to remember for all their days.
The song was unusual to Sholmes’s tastes, instead being closer to Yujin’s. It wasn’t quite sad, but not quite happy either. It was familiar, but not enough to place it. Those expert hands created a soft and strong sound that compelled the listener’s eyes to stay open, to admire with more than just the ears. In time, Sholmes began to sway slightly with the tune, his lips curving into the most graceful of smiles.
Once the piece finished, they remained in blessed silence for a moment. “Whatever you chose to think of must be rather dear to your heart.” Yujin finally spoke, taking in the rare image of his partner looking wholly at peace, trying to etch it into his memory. “A few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought it possible!”
“You wound me, Mikotoba.” said Sholmes, not sounding wounded in the least. He put down the violin, but held on to the bow, fiddling with the tip. “And after I just chose to think of you.”
Blood rose rapidly into Yujin’s face. “...Me?”
“Yes, did you not recognize the piece? Honestly, your age must be catching up with you if you fail to remember a song you liked just some years prior!” he continued, as if he hadn’t just knocked the wind out of Yujin with a simple statement.
Shaking his head to draw himself out of the shock, he said, “The song did ring a few bells, but… no, I did not recognize it.”
Sholmes rolled his eyes. “You used to be just as bad a hoarder of trinkets as me, when you were still new to England. Bought every strange commodity you laid eyes on that you could afford.”
“Yes…” a grimace crept onto the former collector’s face. “Sometimes even those I couldn’t afford.”
Laughing, he nudged, “Remember when you bought that gramophone?” and gestured using his bow to the device that sat upon a small table by the fireplace.
And then it rose from the vestiges of Yujin’s mind, a song from a sample disc that had come with his purchase of the gramophone. It was the first piece of western music he’d heard, and much to his flatmate’s chagrin, he’d played it for days on end.
“That’s what you–” he grew embarrassed at the thought. “Oh, goodness. You thought of me while performing, and played that one song from years ago perfectly from memory?”
“Don’t look so dumbstruck, partner, you certainly played it enough around the house for me to have learnt it. Besides, a waltz suits you.”
“It’s a waltz?” he blinked.
“Three beats every measure, the root of the chord played on the downbeat with the others following the next two beats… do keep up.” Sholmes rambled as though it were common knowledge, a habit Yujin had come to find endearing.
“I’ll make note of it, surely.” He agreed. “Though, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you play a waltz before this.”
“They’re slow dance songs, Mikotoba! Performed at weddings. I’ve no business with such… romantic things.” He waved the bow around somewhat hazardously.
Sensing some awkwardness to the declaration, he teased, “Something tells me you do know the steps to a waltz, don’t you?”
Sholmes stilled, and then: “Why? Would you like to learn it?”
This caught Yujin entirely off-guard. His heart leapt, realising his friend had had the same idea, of filling the hours before their impending goodbye with something good to remember.
He watched the other man’s thin smile grow into a sly, indulgent grin as he brought up the prospect of dancing– one more time, one last time– and knew he couldn’t say no.
Sholmes went on, “It’s a far cry from our dances of deduction, what with the defined footwork, the tempo, the complete and utter lack of anything to solve–”
“Yes.” Yujin cut him off, “Yes, if you’ll teach me.”
“Ah.” said Sholmes, stopping in his tracks, looking as though he hadn’t really anticipated his offer being accepted. His eyes mirrored the storm outside– blue and misty, yet not without the occasional flash of light. “Then we’ll have to make room for that.”
Wordlessly, the pair got to work, clearing the cluttered space of their living room. They moved aside each of their seats, hauled the trunk away from the middle together, the case papers lying discarded. When they got to Yujin’s packed luggage, neither of them acknowledged it, and that was carted away, too.
And then, they were there. Right there, in the middle of their home, with nothing weighing them down. The air between them seemed to shimmer in the light of the fireplace.
Tearing his eyes away from the sight, Yujin murmured, “We’ll need music, won’t we?”
“Indeed, dear fellow.” Sholmes said simply, before walking over to Yujin’s gramophone and slotting into it a disc pulled from the drawer underneath. He didn’t need to read the label to know which it was. The needle was set down, and the waltz’s opening notes sounded. The track was a little muffled, and more orchestral than the solitary violin rendition from earlier, but it was the very same song.
“Would you like to lead, or follow?” Sholmes asked.
“Erm, I don’t–”
“Usually the lead is the taller of the two, but,” he cocked his head, “in our case, perhaps…”
Yujin found he was no longer paying attention to what his partner was saying, because Sholmes had taken hold of his hand, and was placing it on his waist without a warning, while intertwining their other hands’ fingers.
“Mm, not quite,” mumbled Sholmes, ever the pedant, adjusting Yujin’s form with his free hand until he was satisfied. Then, he placed his palm on the shorter man’s back, nudging it to make him stand straighter and closer to himself.
Yujin felt a strange trepidation course through him upon realising their proximity, but knew that if he looked beyond what he allowed himself, it wasn’t quite that.
“Take your left foot forward. Step towards me.” Sholmes instructed. “Don’t worry about colliding– trust that I will move to accommodate.”
Trusting the unpredictable, eccentric, intense man he was talking to, was the easy part. Yujin nodded and stepped, with Sholmes making his move as promised.
“Now, your right foot goes up and towards the right in a single motion; diagonally, that’s correct…”
And so, step by step, they set to motion. Sholmes was serious in his instruction, and diligent in his accommodative movements. His voice was low and devoid of exaggeration or humour, though Yujin could still see those flashes of light in his eyes that assured him this was comfortable, that he wanted this, that they were doing well.
But Sholmes had been correct; this was nothing like their dances at crime scenes. Neither was anyone around to watch, nor were the two of them brimming with energy. And there certainly wasn’t anything on either of their minds but each other as they repeated the patterns, with Sholmes occasionally whispering "One, two, three, one, two, three…” until the rhythm felt natural.
As the track rose in intensity, they began really gliding around the small space they’d carved out in their living room. They made turns, imperfect from inexperience, but their familiarity with the song guided them along. Eventually, the inches of space they had started with between them whittled down, and Sholmes stopped counting time under his breath. Their socked feet made no noise upon the carpet, leaving only their rhythmic breathing to be heard.
This is the closest we have ever been, Yujin’s mind raced to register, and the trepidation from earlier swelled just as the song did.
So he concentrated furiously on the music, not letting himself dwell on the newfound sensations that this waltz had given rise to; the way Sholmes held onto his shoulder, his long fingers grazing the back of his neck, the delicate slotting of their hands, or his waist under Yujin’s hand.
As the song drew out and they grew tired, the circles they traced became smaller and smaller, till they were barely moving, simply stepping in place as they had begun. The closing notes had passed them by, and yet the two men hadn’t stopped, unwilling to let go of the waltz, of the moment, of each other.
They continued swaying, guided by the harmonies of the still-falling rain, the threat of tomorrow lost on them both.
A bolt of lightning suddenly streaked the skies outside, and white light flashed through their windows, momentarily illuminating the flat as bright as day. Owing to their close quarters, the two were able to see every detail in each other’s faces. Every beautiful angle, crevice, and colour was a sight to commit to memory.
“Sholmes?” the doctor began simply, with no real sense of what he wanted to say, just that he wanted to say it.
The detective, at the same time, opened his mouth. “Mikotoba, I–”
A deafening noise emanated from the heavens just then, making them jolt: the thunder to follow the lightning. It was hard not to see the overpowering sound as some sort of sign, a warning to not let those words tumble out of their mouths.
Just as it subsided, another sound came to fill their ears: the sharp cry of an infant, piercing through the air. The storm had disturbed their slumbering ‘little one’, after all, and as she wailed into the night, the men detached from the intimate hold of their dance.
They hesitated, knowing that parting now would mean forgoing the pretence of the moment they’d shared lasting forever. Desperation painted Sholmes’s face, as devastation did Yujin’s. But they both knew what they had to do, what mattered most.
“Iris. We should–”
“Yes, I know, my dear fellow. Duty calls.”
We’re both of us beneath our love,
We’re both of us above–
Dance me to the end of love.