Four Ways of Looking...

by ~Mad-Eyes

Four Ways of Looking at a Snowstorm

    It's snowing in London.  It's snowing and the people outside on the streets are completely clueless as to how to handle the stuff.  John Watson can't remember the last time he saw snow like this.  It's obvious in the absent, longing way he stares out the window, the slight tug of teeth on his bottom lip, the dilation of stark black pupils against light brown irises.  His body, however, remembers and shivers imperceptibly beneath the heavy wool of his jumper, drawing his knees up into his chest, socked feet sliding over the fabric of the armchair in a desperate bid for warmth that leaves him in a posture that seems distinctly un-John-like.  Sand-calloused fingers cling to heated ceramic as he peers out the window at the steel-and-powder landscape outside 221B Baker Street.  He doesn't envy the poor sods circling in the Eye today, and his body manages another shiver before it occurs to him that he hasn't seen Sherlock for some time.  His mind preoccupies itself with this for several minutes before a snowball, heavy with ice, hits a parked car somewhere below and the shrieking of car alarms jolts him out of any ability to think properly, drawing a soft curse from his lips.

    Ah, bugger.  Removing his forehead from the cold of the window's frame, Lestrade runs a hand through his hair and glances over his shoulder at the battered cardboard box containing the skeletal remains of a dismantled tree.  Every year he drags it out of its closet, and every year it sits in its box until January, silently judging him as if it knows that he's doing everything in his power to avoid actually putting it together.  Sometimes he wonders if it's not that blasted tree's fault that every year he notices a bit more grey in his hair.  The corners of his mouth twitch vaguely downwards in a half-hearted grimace as his restless legs shift anxiously, sandwiched between cardboard-shrouded guilt and the sounds of trashy talk shows on the telly indoors and the biting cold looming just outside.  Reflexively, his wrist twitches, revealing the face of his wristwatch, the tell-tale hands warning him of how much time he has left to his own devices.  Taking matters into his own hands, Lestrade pulls on a light jacket--too light for the weather outside, and makes a break for the door.

    The car door slams shut with a heavy thud as the sleek, black car peels off into the whitened streets, expensively fortified tires seemingly unaware of the thick clumps of moisture and ice building up around them as it passes under the watchful eyes of buildings and traffic lights without so much as a by-your-leave.  Inside, Mycroft Holmes gazes out the window with something hovering between boredom and rapture.  His thoughts, usually easily controlled, flick back and forth between times--hovering now and then on a time when it snowed somewhere out of town, when two teenage boys glared at each other over a jaggedly broken icicle and a dead animal, their gazes accusing and half-admiring--then snapping back with the elasticity of a finely honed rubber band, the white piercing his vision even through tinted glass.  He shakes his head and shoots a glance across the seat before resuming his gaze to the world outside.  To snow covering the tops of buildings in heavy, icy clumps, or blowing in the wind in a fine white powder not unlike certain other things.  Mycroft's eyelids droop slightly, a slight tic forming and turning one side of his mouth into a smirk as his thoughts drift with the car towards their destination.

    Sherlock Holmes is on the roof, his pale eyes feverish and dull all at once, seemingly completely oblivious to the clumps of snow gathering on his shoulders and in his hair.  He is keenly aware of the idea that he should, by all rights, be terribly cold, and something inside him tries dimly to force his body into a shiver beneath his coat, but instead, he shifts his posture slightly, a breeze ruffling the pale blue of his scarf about his throat and sending more tiny flakes to settle in the dark curls about his ears.  Long, slender fingers gripping one of the wrought-iron spikes that dot the arched spinal column of the building, the detective's eyes find themselves tracing the path of a black bullet rocketing through the streets until it vanishes behind the watchful, frostbitten eyes of an office building, its destination clear only to passenger and observer.  Memories float to the surface, only to be jolted away from like poisoned quills, then ignored out of distraction as the eyes trail over a lone figure jogging down the sidewalk, watching it pause briefly beside the cigarette machine, then veer off in a queer sort of resoluteness that sends the underside of his left arm prickling and itching.  Teeth press into the inside of his bottom lip, filling his mouth with warmth as his head leans back against the cold, wet hollow formed by his body heat, eyes lured closed by bristling cold air filled with half-uttered threats drifting from the drivers below.  An ear-splitting screech flies through the air with the speed of a bullet train; a quick glance downward reveals flashing lights and a small figure racing down the street.  The corners of Sherlock's mouth twitch slightly at the sounds of muffled cursing below, his thoughts drifting downwards to the flat beneath him as he slides down the slant of the roof to the fire escape clinging resolutely to the back of the building beneath a coating of ice and snow.

    It's snowing in London, and John Watson very nearly has a heart attack when a crash vibrates through the flat from the direction of his room.  His eyes dart about the room in a frantic measurement of the distance between tea cup and handgun, and making the lunge, manoeuvres snugly between his own door-frame and the corridor wall.  Cautiously, he peers around the edge of the door and finds his vision filled with a pale, grey-blue that sends him reeling backwards from the eyes of Sherlock Holmes, who grimaces as he drifts snow from his hair and shoulders onto the carpet in the dark.  John's mouth opens.  Closes.  Opens again.
    "Sherlock."
    "John."
    "I...the window, Sherlock."
    "I'll put a tarp up, John."
    An overabundance of flippancy in six simple syllables.  John Watson bites his tongue to keep from screaming.

    It's snowing in London.