Title: Ice
Author: razra_eizel
Pairing: gen
Warning: none

A/N: another drabble, but not exactly a 221B kind. I got carried away there, and it more than doubled in length. I did have fun writing this little piece though and hope you like it =)

I had written two more 221B drabbles, but they didn't make it here because I didn't think they were good enough, but you can be the judge of that if you want =) they're in my writing community over at LJ, named fiction-palace, if you want to check them out

Ice

Sherlock was a mystery—a contradiction. He was tall, lanky and bony, all sharp angles and no rounded edges, yet he had the air of grace and finesse in everything he did. His movements were measured, accurate, and precise. He exerted just enough force to do an action to make it seem effortless and he never had to do the same action twice in succession because he failed the first time. He probably even stumbled gracefully when he first learned to walk as an infant.

John decided that it was really, really unfair.

He first realised it as he watched Sherlock play the violin. Sherlock was standing by the window, playing a short, sweet tune with an unfamiliar sombre expression on his face. His fingers flew up and down the fingerboard while the other hand slid the bow up and down, and although John had watched more than a fair amount of violinists before, no one had come close to exhibiting the amount of finesse Sherlock was.

He started watching the taller man since then; when he was eating, experimenting, deducing, and even hailing a cab. John thought it was ridiculous how Sherlock managed to still look collected and graceful even when he was flailing an arm.

The imaginary camel that was John's mind finally broke its back during a winter day. They were chasing after a wanted criminal across a frozen lake, and despite their previous agreement of not giggling at crime scenes and during chases, John couldn't help himself but burst out laughing when the criminal slipped on the ice and fell hard on his arse.

He stopped laughing when he did the same the moment he stepped on the ice. At the rate he was going, his psychosomatic limp would become the real thing pretty soon.

Sherlock stepped onto the ice and glided across the surface towards the criminal. He kept the criminal in place with John's help after he managed to slide towards them (while successfully falling on his back another five times; not that he was counting) and waited for Lestrade to arrive so he could arrest the criminal and put him into custody.

It was Donovan who stepped onto the frozen lake to retrieve the criminal because she used to do a lot of ice skating when she was a teenage girl. Lestrade chose to just wait by the side, and John wished he had thought to do the same.

He made his way back to the bank with the help of a clearly amused Sherlock, only managing to fall once on the trip back, but that fall was enough to confirm John's theory of Sherlock stumbling gracefully even as an infant. No one should be able to practically fall flat on their face and still look graceful.

Where was the justice in that?

John was torn between getting angry and laughing hysterically at the unfairness of it all when Sherlock admitted that that was the first time he skated on ice. If Sherlock looked worried for his mental state as he went for the hysterical laughter, he pointedly ignored it.