The rain poured outside. It was like the heavens had opened just for me, drenching everything in the world with a cold, pure, clean wash of crystal water.

I watched it stream down the window, the droplets barely having time to make patterns on the glass before being bombarded with more droplets that pulled them down in vertical lines. The night was dark but the street lights outside shone into the living room of our flat, illuminating it a soft orange glow.

I was sat in his chair, feet drawn up underneath me as I stared out into the night. It was silent save from the distant sound of traffic that constantly littered the roads mere metres from Baker Street. But somehow even they weren't as loud as they were normally. Maybe they somehow knew how important this was.

Closing my eyes, I listened to the rain patter down on the roof above me, straining to hear as it dripped onto the drain below the edges of the tiles and slid back down onto the street.

The sounds entered, echoing off the walls and filling the space. Every so often soft thunder would sound across London, capturing the city in a fixed state of sombre.

I closed my eyes.

I knew what was missing. What was always missing. The silence was my solitude, but it was in no way my saviour.

The room was void of the quiet, almost background violin that was always played on nights such as this.

For a man who claimed not to experience emotion in the same ways as everyone else, I always found that he was never out when it rained at night. Whenever I came home he would be here, in the very spot I sat in, looking out at the rain in the night with the strangest look of contentment, his beautiful instrument resting on his shoulder, though he made no attempt to play it. Not until I came home.

I would enter silently, not wanting to shatter the illusion that was the man before me, but of course there was no fooling him. The minute I came back from putting whatever in the kitchen, he would lift the bow to the strings slowly, waiting until I was sat opposite him, before finally, after weeks of neglect and abandonment, he would pour his heart out through his violin, and everything would be okay. He spoke without words, letting the notes carry everything he wanted to say. They could have been apologies, they could have been thankyous or declarations of love, but they could also have been mere comfort, granting me the solace I so desperately needed. It didn't matter what they were intended to be, the only thing that mattered was what I heard when the music filled the air.

I would close my eyes sometimes, not having the energy to keep up any sort of dignity. It had happened too many times for it to be any different. He knew everything there was to know about me, about my mind, about my heart, and I gave it all to him. I let myself be lifted from reality and gently examined in his hands, like the most precious piece of evidence, allowing him access to every thought, every fear, every hope, until there was nothing left to see.

He would do this for hours. Playing without fault as the rain continued to drum on the walls of our flat, mixing with the sound of the strings to make the most beautiful symphony. And it would go on forever. There was not a moment when I considered it ending because it never did. It would continue on as I drifted into unconsciousness, lingering in my ears long after he had put the bow down, and draped his blanket across my shoulders. Long after he sat by my side and I felt the ghostly brushes of his fingertips against my forehead. The music would follow me into my dreams, where they were always the same as reality. Sitting with the rain, the music, the man that had begun to move around the room, his entire body seeming to sing as the sound flowed through him.

It wasn't just happiness that consumed me at these times. There was always something that I couldn't place, that always lingered but never allowed itself to be identified. It hung heavy in the air like crystallised fog, keeping us warm and secure in our own world, even if for a short time.

I opened my eyes once more to the silence.

There was always something missing now. Something that made nights like these so melancholy, where before they were always something I had treasured.

'It's raining, Sherlock.' I said softly, but it was met with silence, as it always was.

Pain rose up inside me and I felt myself begin to break again, the sound of my sobs filtering through the room, shattering the illusion of the man standing aloft with his beautiful violin, until I was alone again, the last note dying on the air.

Nothing was the same anymore, nothing.

Not even the sound of rain.

Bon Iver - Holocene +