Cirrocumulus.
Lying on his back in the middle of the school field, a nine-year-old John Watson peered up at the sky. The clouds were racing each other along the length of his vision, much like he and his friends had raced earlier on in the lunch break. Breathless and filled with pride at his undefeated time of one minute and three seconds for completing a lap of the field, he grinned up at the cotton wool clouds making their merry way.
"John?" He turned his head to see two of his friends standing to one side. They hesitated, "Up for another race?"
John turned back to his clouds, noting with surprise that the wind had already blown them far, far away. A football bounced wildly before his eyes and he winced slightly as it cast a shadow across him, convinced it was going to hit him square in the face. Danger soon passed and he picked himself up, dusted himself off and turned to his friends.
"Only if you can stand being beat again."
Nimbostratus.
"Mooooom!"
"Shut up John-!"
"What now?"
It was a typical autumn day in the Watson household. Harriet Watson had yet again pushed a yet again unsuspecting John Watson out of his swing. He had yet again landed with a painful thud on the grass. Harry gave her brother a deadly look.
"Nothing, Mom." He said, punching his older sister in his arm as he did so. Harry pushed him over and he lay still on the ground, looking up at the sky. The clouds were dark and brooding and the air seemed to crackle with a tension that could only be broken by the inevitable rain.
"Jay? Are you okay? I didn't mean to hurt you..." Harry crept closer to her twelve-year-old brother and blinked as a raindrop landed on her nose.
"What do you think it's like? Up there I mean. Don't you think it would be fantastic?"
Harry groaned, "I think it would be cold and rainy right now. Come on, up you get. Unless you want to get cold and rainy too."
Cirrus.
As he walked out of the school gates for the final time the sky was clear.
His friends all laughed at a joke one of them had made but John's mind was in a whirl. The complete opposite to the sky he loved to watch, thoughts flew around and clashed together. His head was beginning to ache.
It was only when someone bumped into his shoulder and sent his folders flying that he realised he had slowed to a halt.
"Watch it, tosser!" He shouted, picking his finished and graded Chemistry coursework up before catching up with his friends.
It seemed only five minutes since he was lying on the grass at his primary school watching the pretty cotton candy clouds.
And three since he got soaked in the back garden every autumn day.
Quite frankly it scared him. He'd soon be moving away to university and leaving all of this behind.
Noctilucent.
He was sat on a low bunk in a tent-like structure in the middle of the desert. What would Harry think if she saw him now? Sweaty, grimy and covered in splatters of blood?
The air was thick and hung heavy around him like a shroud. The minor wounds he had dealt with today were a relief compared to what he had seen in his relatively short time in Afghanistan.
And then there was an alarm sounding. He jumped up, grabbing the first-aid pack and his smaller firearm and ran. His brain was registering small black dots crowding up the side of a sand dune as soldiers, his companions in this dust-bowl. He saw one of them go down with a muffled thud and spurred himself onwards, skidding to a halt on his knees next to the fallen man. He took one look at the soldier before slinging off his pack and creating a temporary dressing to apply to the smallish, dark hole burned into his skin.
A hard thump took his breath away and his actions stuttered a little before restarting with a jolt. He was unaware of the blood soaking his back until the soldier was stretchered off and a fellow medic punched his shoulder. As he hissed in a gasp through his teeth his eyes closed on a eerie, near cloudless sky.
They didn't open again until he was back in London.
Stratus.
There was a low cloud and mist covering the entirety of London. John, back from visiting his family in another part of the city, was soaked through from his walk "home" to the pokey studio flat the army had put him up in. He stripped down to his underwear and stood undecisively before planning to take a shower.
After his long soaking under the hot water he jumped out as the now cold water hit his shoulders, making him shudder violently. He redressed and opened the blinds to his window onto a suddenly clear day. For some reason, he felt he missed the cloud coverage and resented the bitter wind now left in its place. He felt exposed.
As he sat contemplatively on a deserted park's bench he watched the higher level clouds sluggishly meander around, never letting the sun shine through he had the vague sensation of being watched. His paranoia was soon proven correct as a slightly overweight man sat next to him, nearly knocking his cane to the ground. His unexpected companion stared at him familiarly, as if he knew him, or should do at any rate. And then something in John's mind clicked.
"Mike Stamford?" He asked.
The events following completely effected his grasp on reality and social norms.
Altocumulus Castellanus.
John Watson wondered what had ever happened to that little boy who lost himself in the clouds at lunchtime when he was nine. He wondered what had happened to him to allow his older self to stand so comfortably near a brutal murder, to have actually fired a gun, to be giggling at a crime scene.
Then he looked over to the man who was the cause of the laughter. Sherlock Holmes was tall, surprisingly handsome and an insufferable genius withe a self-diagnosis of sociopathic tendencies. His laugh was contagious and even as John protested the immoral side of their childish chuckling he felt himself giving in to the inevitable wheezing, near painful laughter bubbling in his throat.
Later, as they were sitting in the cafe down the road from the crime scene he noted the intense azure blue hue of the sky peeking out from between the clouds. The idea of something so dense, so damn near impenetrable by light being out-smarted by the intense colour of the clear sky beyond struck home and he began living in hope of the day that he would finally surprise Sherlock.
It happened five weeks later and his happiness lasted for almost a whole twenty-four hours before Sherlock's ability to set John's teeth grinding set in again. And yet he didn't care what had happened to bring him there. All he cared about was the present and at present he was trying to figure out another way to surprise his flatmate.
After all, his birthday was only three days away.