Snow Fluff

It was just a normal Sunday in January, and like most other Sundays, I lay in bed cosied up under a heavy duvet in a position which would normally be awkwardly uncomfortable with my face stuffed into my pillow, willing myself to fall asleep again to ignore my old army tendancies of getting up at the crack of dawn. I heave a comfortable sigh and adjust my position so I'm cuddling the pillow, and with a smile begin to doze off to...

"JOHN. JOHN, COME LOOK. LOOK, JOHN." the unmistakable bellow from Sherlock shocks me so much I actually fall off and find myself staring at the dust bunnies underneath my bed. "JOHN. YOU'RE NOT BEING QUICK ENOUGH." I groan and heave myself off the floor, wondering what he could possibly want-most probably, he has discovered what happens when you mix milk with some poisonous liquid (which I will probably accidentally drink later, mistakenly thinking it to be milk...why am I not dead yet?) and doggedly stagger into the living room where I see him crouched on the window sill, window wide open with half of his body leaning out and my alarm bells ring as I seize him and drag him back in the house "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" I yell, honest to God, it's like living with a child! Sherlock doesn't seem to be very perturbed by my explosion and still has a little curl of a smile on his face, with twinkling eyes like I don't think I've seen before. "John..." he whispers with glee "Look outside." I sigh, shaking my head, before indulging him by peering out.

Oh bugger. It's snowed overnight. I can't bloody tell you how much I hate snow, it screws everything up for everybody. Everybody in Britain acts like it's some toxic substance that should be avoided at all costs and God forbid you try to get to work in it as the entire country just stops... "Yes.. Sherlock, it's snow. Surely you have seen it before" I raise an eyebrow. He frowns "Well.. yes but.. I never got a chance to play in it when I was a child." I raise the other eyebrow, looking forward to his explanation. "I tried once, you know. With Mycroft, but mummy caught us and told us to get back inside before we catch a chill!" he finished, looking a little sad.

For a moment, the image of a little curly haired child Sherlock staring forlornly out of the window at the snow makes me chuckle, and then I actually feel kind of bad for him. What kid never gets to play in the snow for crying out loud? My brothers and I-all four of us- always used to go outside and make the most of it. Although to be fair, mum was probably glad to get us out of the house so she could clean up after our mess! I look at him now, and notice how his head has drooped and know I can't just leave him like that, miserable Sherlock isn't natural, he always has a spring in his step and some annoying comment to make. I crouch to bring myself closer to where he sits, crosslegged, on the floor and gently ruffle his curls and he looks up at me, pouting and I can't help but smile at him. "Well, get some warm clothes on, layer up, mind! And meet me at the bottom of the stairs in five minutes and we'll go, okay?" I say gently. He picks his head up and lets out a huge grin, like his birthday and Christmas (not that he cares about such things) has come at once and leaps up, dashing around the flat, trying to find various articles.

"Sherlock, are you done? Come on, I'm waiting!" I call up from the bottom of the stairs. After a few seconds, he emerges from the flat door and slowly descends the stairs. I look up and catch a glimpse and try, and fail, to contain my laughter. Sherlock, bless him, looks like he's layered on a bit too much as he waddles down "What" he puffs "is so funny?" I see his indignant face and it just makes it more hilarious as I snigger "I think you've put more on than necessary" he indignantly huffs at me before stomping back up the stairs to shed some of them, five minutes later he returns, looking much thinner and actually able to hold his arms down by his side. "Better?" I enquire, he nods frostily, not looking at me.

I open the door to Baker Street and step out into the biting air that nips at my nose, I hear Sherlock suck in a surprised breath. "Sherlock.. have you ever been out in the snow? Not even as an adult?" I look at him, curiously. He looks at me, nervously (bloody hell! I've never seen him nervous!) before shaking his head slowly. I'm stunned, I can't actually believe that a man of thirty odd years has never been out in the snow! "You've been missing out on a lot then!" I laugh good naturedly at him and he blushes a little, though there's no way of telling if this is because he's embarrassed, or because he's cold. We walk down the street, side by side and I smile nostalgically as the kids go tearing down the street, listening to them shrieking at each other and their tinkling laughs, such untainted souls. It brings back good memories, on snow days my brothers and cousins and I would get together and have an enormous snowfight in the field near us, we had many cousins, so it was easy to have some good fun. My brothers and I were fiercely protective of our one and only sister, the youngest of the Watson batch and if anyone made her cry, all four of us would chase after the culprit with a snowball in each hand, swearing after them and daring them to "DO THAT AGAIN AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS".

Glancing up at Sherlock I see his eyes narrowed in curiosity and his lip curling, trying to take this all in as he snuffles his head into his scarf so that you can only see his nose and eyes above it. If I was a woman, I wouldn't hesitate to smother him into my chest whilst squealing, but being a man, I have no such desires. I casually duck down to avoid a snowball that hurtles through the air at me, unfortunately, Sherlock, being new to this behaviour, did not see it in time and gets it full force into the side of his head. I splutter as I see his shocked expression, likened perhaps, to a cat who has had water sprayed at it and my shoulders shake as I'm overcome with laughter as he huffily shakes his head so that the snowflakes that have settled on his curls fly off, spraying me in snow. I hear a loud tsk and a snapping of fingers, I look in the direction from which the snowball came, and see Lestrade standing there looking disappointed that he missed me, then he realises that he has hit Sherlock which is far better than what he had originally intended and grins sardonically before sidling up to us, hands in his pockets "Well hello bo.." but before he can finish, he takes an ice cold ball of snow to the face, I turn in shock to discover Sherlock poised in the throwing position, two messy snowballs in each hand and a cheeky glint in his eyes. Why did I suggest this again? "Oh! I see" Lestrade stands, having recovered himself, with his hands on hips "Well, Sherly! Two can play at that game" he caterwauls whilst hastily making himself an entire artillery of snowballs and setting them at his feet, tossing one up and down, waiting for "Sherly" to make the first move. I can practically see Sherlock mapping out in his head the strategies he will use, the swift movements he will make, and how best to utilise his skills in order to take the enemy by surprise. He hesitates, and looks at me, "John?" he says, questioning. I look at him, and see a younger version of my youngest brother and smile, he always looked to me for advice too "Yes. Go on." I nod and stand back to allow the two men to go back to their boyish roots. I watch as Lestrade, understandably the expert on such things, hurtles snowballs and dodges them as Sherlock clumsily throws them over arm and watch as they painfully hit the floor, nowhere near his intended target. He turns to look at me with a wounded expression, I can't imagine it is easy for him to admit that this is something he has never done, I see Greg lifting his arm to throw his next barrage and raise my own arm in a ceasefire, this is hardly fair! I exhale loudly and walk over to where Sherlock is standing with his lumpy attempts at snowballs in order to tutor him in standard childhood practises.

"Right. First things first, your snowballs are really lumpy, you can't expect these to travel as well through the air as something like this, for example" I scoop up some snow, and use my hands to craft a sphere, and hold it up for him to examine. He nods in understanding, "Next, your throwing technique needs some addressing, Sherlock. How you throw has everything to do with where it goes, and how fast and hard it goes. If you give it a weedy underarm throw, it won't hit your target, will it?" I look at him and he shakes his head, and I notice his furrowed brow and realise that all of this is genuinely new information to him. I drag him so that he is standing directly next to me, so he can see things from my angle. "Now, I'm going to aim for that sign, okay? Obviously, you want to be accurate, but if you're having snowballs pelted at you, you're going to want to be quick about it! So you select your target" I face the sign across the road from us "line up with it, and raise your arm, as this target isn't too far away I don't want to use too much force as if that was a person, too much force could hurt them" I look pointedly at Sherlock then, knowing that if I don't teach him the art of common sense he will never utilise it in situations like this "and then I THROW it overarm, aiming to give it distance, now power." he watches in awe as the snow hits the centre of the sign and crumples into a million pieces once more. I can tell that, for once, this is an area where he clearly admires my skill at arms and I grin, knowing that for once I have impressed him.

"Erm.. John?" he shyly looks at me, blinking in the white light. "Yes...?" "Will.. you join in? You look lonely stood there, I know you want to as well." unsurprisingly, his detective brain does not take a break and has realised that I don't want to stand here like an idiot, just watching my best friend and his enemy (who he loves really) engage each other in mortal combat. I beam, glad of the invitation to relive my glory days. Within minutes, we are running around the street, laughing heartily with apple red cheeks and frosty noses, bombarding each other with snowballs. You wont be surprised to hear that, like most other things, Sherlock is rather good at snowballing, and is soon hurling them about like he's been doing it his entire life. After a while, we collapse on a bench which we've cleared of snow laughing together like a bunch of rowdy schoolboys, and I don't think I've ever seen Sherlock so brighteyed and happy as he was in that moment. I look down the street as we idly chatted about our plans for the week and notice Donovan is walking down, striding through the snow in welly boots and call out to her.

In hindsight, this was a big mistake. I should have realised that Sherlock, being the way he is, is not content to make peace with her for even just a day and before I grasped what was happening, and before I could stop him, he had jumped up, siezed snow, packed it into a snowball and hurled it full force right into Sally's face. I freeze, and see Lestrade has done the same as we observe Donovan angrily smashing the snow off of her face, snatching some snow from the top of a nearby sign and screaming out what can only be described as a battlecry, and in that moment, I have never seen Sherlock so terrified of any woman as she sprinted torwards him, with her arm raised high above her head as her eyes radiated insanity. Fortunately, Sherlock has a brain on him, and ran for the hills with the frightened look of a startled hare residing in his eyes as Sally pursued him. Greg and I were laughing hysterically, not sure which was funnier, watching Donovan hunt him down like prey whilst swearing enough to make a nun blush or listening to Sherlock squeal like a girl and slipping and sliding all the way through Baker Street...

"Should we help him?" Greg elbowed me. I crossed my arms and observed the scene once more, seeing Sherlock more panicked by the second. "Nah, mate. He'll hate me when we get in, but it's worth it for more blogging material!"