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Sherlock and John are sprinting down an unnamed back alley that overlooks an unnamed bay, at top speed with a delicious metallic bite in their throats as another man sprints too, just a couple yards away from them with a fat gem inside a little ceramic goose in his pocket. It’s a great cast for this one, the thief, the goose, Sherlock and John, and that outstanding character of the street on which they ran, which really did a lot for the scene. It sloped dramatically down to the sea in such a way that running as they all ran, ended up feeling a bit more like flying, and the walls that came up towering on the left or right and shimmered with long forgotten sleaze that’d surely crept out of a Dickens novel, and best of all, it’s a late day in December and the whole walk is powdered “white as an opium den,” by Sherlock’s words (to this, John had snorted that it “rather lost something” of snow as a concept. Sherlock has been calling him a winter puritan since then.).
It’s hard to place what exactly about the snow made it such a hit back at Baker Street. It was pretty, as were the foot prints and dusted windows and zing of cold air.
In any case, John has always loved the snow, since he was eight and sat up every night of November for first word of it, or nine and the menace of his street when given access to precipitative ammunition to launch, or when his mother made him heaps and heaps of hot things to drink at the first sign of its fall, and especially now as he watches Sherlock out of the corner of his eye, tinged pink and panting little clouds as they run through it together, and might as well be laughing as they do for how high he feels. And right now John is glowing which Sherlock feels is too lovely for words, maybe that’s it.
Their thief loses speed while gearing up to turn a corner, and that’s him undone completely. With a little bit of cry, John tackles him to the ground in a whirl of fluttering black coats, and there's a brief scuffle that Sherlock watches with the bald enthusiasm of a cat with two birds. “Well, this has been a nice one, no, John?”
“A little help to offer, maybe?”
“Mm, no, I couldn’t encroach when you just about have it, John, it’s too excellent!”
And, yes! A moment later there’s a silver click and matching flash as John hauls them both up to their feet, chest heaving a bit, face slightly redder than before. “Good show then?” He asks unabashedly, and Sherlock lifts his hand up level with his shoulders and shrugs.
“Don’t make me discuss it, John, it would almost certainly lose something in discussion.”
“You’re a genius, aren’t you? Can’t you figure it?”
“Get me a cab and maybe I’ll see.”
“So I will, so I will.” And he does.