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“It’s snowing outside,” Sherlock said nonchalantly one morning.
John, in the kitchen making breakfast, narrowed his eyes in confusion before saying, “Yes that tends to happen sometimes. In the winter especially.”
“I know that,” Sherlock’s tone was a bit more offended now. “I was just making an observation.”
John frowned and stopped scrambling the eggs to peek into the living room where Sherlock was looking out the window with an expressionless face. John assumed he was okay so he went back to scrambling eggs but said casually, “Do you want to go with me to the store later? I was going to get a cab but I think I might walk there.”
There was a pause and then, “Yes, I think I’d like that.”
John dropped the spatula and checked again but Sherlock’s expression hadn’t changed and he hadn’t seemed to have moved.
John was surprised when Sherlock agreed to go to the store in the first place, but when Sherlock actually decided to go with him he was dumbfounded. Confused by Sherlock’s strange mood, though, John elected to stay quiet about it.
As they walked down the streets, John noticed the way Sherlock looking around. It wasn’t necessarily that he was looking around—Sherlock was making deductions constantly, either to store for later or to tell John about the affair a woman was having with a tax accountant and didn’t he notice?—it was the way he was looking around. Particularly the fact that he wasn’t looking at people. He only turned his head to look at the piles of snow building up on the steps of people’s homes or to look up at the falling flakes. What was even stranger was the way he looked…happy. Like he was showing every sign of smiling without actually smiling. He just looked so much brighter.
“Like snow, do you?” John asked and immediately regretted it. The smiley, happy Sherlock was gone, only to be replaced by the expressionless one from earlier that morning.
“It’s just crystallized, frozen rain drops. Typical London weather. Why on earth should anyone be interested in it?”
“Because you can have fun when it settles, right? That’s why children are interested in it at least,” John pointed out.
“Children, John,” Sherlock emphasized. “To grown adults, it is merely an inconvenience.”
John decided not to say anything after that.
They didn’t actually end up buying anything at the store because Sherlock had stared at one of the employees and when the employee confronted him about it, he made some passing remark about how perhaps he should spend his adulthood focusing on something besides computer games because his eyes were really not going to improve from all that strain. The man hadn’t reacted in a very unpleasant manner and John decided it was best to just leave before things got out of hand.
On the way back, Sherlock was looking at the snow again. It had started piling up quite a bit and looked like it was going to turn into a snowstorm. John had been with Sherlock for a few winters, but he’d never noticed Sherlock’s attention to snow before. Then again, it really was hard to figure out Sherlock’s inner thoughts without being around him for a while. After a second’s hesitation, John finally said, “Let’s take the long way back.”
Sherlock didn’t say anything but that smiley-without-a-smile expression was back.
The long way back included a trip through the park. Just as they entered it, John discreetly shoveled a wad of snow in his gloved hand and patted it into a ball shape. While Sherlock had continued walking, he left his back exposed, perfect for John to throw his snowball at. The newly-fallen snow exploded in a puff and hardly made an impact but Sherlock turned around quickly anyway.
“John, what—?” Sherlock was hit with another snowball before he could finish his sentence.
“It’s called having fun, Sherlock,” John said. “Ever heard of it?”
“Of course I—would you stop throwing that bloody snow? You’re being childish—“ John laughed when the next snowball hit Sherlock square in the face. He stopped laughing when Sherlock whipped around and started stalking away.
“Oh come on,” John said, starting after his friend, “I didn’t mean—what are you doing?”
Sherlock had knelt down on the ground, but before John could investigate further, there was a snowball flying in his direction. It hit him with more impact and less powder.
“You have to dig for the snow at the bottom. It’s melted together a bit so it’s more compact.” Sherlock said the words clinically, but the corners of his mouth were starting to curl up into a smile.
“This,” John said, kneeling down like Sherlock had, “means war.”
He threw the—much more compact, thank you Sherlock—snowball again, but this time Sherlock avoided it and began working on one for retaliation.
And so began the first snowball fight John had been a part of since he was twelve. John might have had good aim, but Sherlock was just as good at dodging, so it seemed to be a fair fight. They had a temporary truce so they could build snow forts and better attack. That turned out to be a bad idea on John’s part because Sherlock’s knowledge of physics made it so that he could launch snowballs without actually having to look over the top of his fort.
In the end, they had to stop when John accidentally hit a woman walking with her date through the crossfire. They’d had to run away when her date—a very muscular man—chased them. He stopped eventually but they kept running all the way to 221B. Out of breath, soaked, and pink-faced, they collapsed on the sofa together.
“Thank you, John,” Sherlock said when he’d finally caught his breath.
John looked up at Sherlock, took in the genuine smile and his gleeful eyes, and realized he’d never actually seen Sherlock that happy before. It was a good look on him.
“Anytime.”