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John knew what Displacement meant. His teachers were sure to go over it at least once a month, his parents talked about it at least once a week, and all you ever heard on the radio was how close scientists were to the Origin Year. John personally didn’t believe that last load of poo, because as far as his ten-year-old understanding went, to have Displacement you need time travel. And while the government was completely ridiculous, he knew they couldn’t be hiding something that big. He was pretty sure it’d be illegal, if they were hiding it and being all secret-y, which would defeat the whole purpose of everything. So he didn’t worry about that too much.
But John wasn’t stupid; he knew not to laugh at Displacement itself. The media had done its job in scaring the world’s population into getting so stirred-up over the phenomenon. Displacement had been around for ages, from what John’s been told, and will continue to be until the exact moment time travel is actually possible. Which is ironic, seeing as that was the event that caused the mess. Without it, cities—towns—villages wouldn’t need past-present-future zones for the Displaced, because there wouldn’t be any.
John’s mum liked to point out that he tended to get worked up about Displacement. John thought she spent too much time sleeping or in the bottle to be allowed to say anything. But maybe that was just him.
- - -
In any case, John was mature enough to realize Displacement could happen to anyone. At any age, because whatever forces-that-be didn’t care if you were forty and world-wise or two and world-dumb—the Displacement took you, dumped you whenever and wherever it pleased, and carried on jolly-be-good to its next victim. John’s never seen a Displacement (away or coming), and he also didn’t know anyone personally that had been Displaced (and while that would be the most interesting friendship to ever have, he believed he didn’t really want to, either), but he thought he quite understood how displacing the whole ordeal must be.
He remembered a few years ago a couple of officers from the Displacement branch of the Met had come to his school to explain the process of a Displacement. For either way, the victim’s name, height, weight, etc. were logged into a database, and if a match was found, then at least the family knew when they were or the Displaced knew how far forward they’d been dropped. If there was no match, well…John remembered one of his year mates had asked why they saved the records if it didn’t make a pair. The taller of the officers had replied, “How do you think we get matches in the first place?”, causing the other one to smack them, and add that the record would be useful in the future, seeing as that was where the Displaced went or came from.
But John’s favourite part had been the personal experiences they shared. The most memorable of the tales was one of a Coming Displaced that landed right in the middle of an active crime scene. The man had had not a stitch on, screamed endlessly in a language that took nearly an entire day for the police to realize was ancient Greek, and absolutely refused to move from the spot he’d appeared. In the end, several diplomats from Greece convinced him to leave with them, and last anyone had heard the man was doing perfectly fine as a historical editor.
So John understood that, hypothetically, it could happen to him. But there was no way to prepare for it, other than try not to panic at the thought of being whisked away from everything he knew. And the best way to do that was just not thinking about it, and John had gotten very good at not thinking about things that bothered him.
- - -
1989
It was summer. More importantly, it was a sunny summer day, leaving all the more room of the garden for John to escape to without looking foolish. It was easier to hide (physically and mentally) with the sun out. There’d be no rain to drip into his collar and make him shudder or soak into his shoes and make them squelch. John could be happy, and it’s the easy happy that didn’t make people look twice. The kind that even spread to Harry.
“Slow down, Johnny!”
He grinned madly over his shoulder, pumping his legs faster. “Speed up, Harriet!”
She bared her teeth in return, panting harshly through them as she leaned forward more, a bull preparing to charge and a lion waiting to eat promising hell in her eyes. John’s smile didn’t falter, stretched more, blatantly taunting the devil because the chase was exhilarating, which is almost as good a word as freeing, and John couldn’t help the laugh bursting from him. Harry released an animalistic screech, lunging for his legs. Her hands tangled with his ankles, and they both crashed to the dirt.
Harry recovered first, propping herself on all fours and hissing, “Now you’re it,” before scrambling to her feet and away, John still giggling breathlessly on the ground. He closed his eyes, giving Harry a head start, he reasoned. They might be the same height, but her legs weren’t as strong as his. He’d catch her in moments if he chased after her now…
“John?” He heard her call.
He smiled, rolling onto his belly and springing to his feet. “You ready!?”
She squealed, already halfway across the garden and he bolted after her, the distance between them vaporizing. John thought this was probably their last game, and briefly he wondered about letting her win. He dismissed it quickly with a shake, because Harry, winning? He’d never hear the end of it. Maybe he’d let her have the higher tree branch to make up for it.
Harry was just out of reach, her shirt millimetres beyond his fingertips. He had her; he had her, just stretch a little more—
Until he didn’t.
The ground beneath his feet was suddenly firmer, jarring his knees and ankles and everything, throwing him nearly on his face. His outstretched hand caught on the thick, heavy fabric of a woman’s dress except that can’t be right, this is Harry’s shirt? But it wasn’t anymore, and John could feel the press of bodies all around him, could see their shoes as they drifted by him. Many had stopped, shifting away, leaving him in an open pocket. Above his pounding heart he heard them murmur, above that the overwhelming static of a busy street.
John had to look up, he needed to, he needed to confirm what his gut already knew so he did, he looked up, and the sky was grey and sick and he thought it’d never be blue again, and that made him want to scream, because how were he and Harry supposed to play tag without the blue sky?
And then he had to look away, because that sky was horrid. He hated that sky.
A hand brushed his shoulder, and John cringed away from it, backing away from the man that had broken from the masses. John eyed him warily, prepared to take any measures in defending himself. The man seemed to sense this, non-threatening palms held forward as he crouched slowly to John’s level.
“Easy there,” he said, his voice slow and confident. John’s throat relaxed minutely at his words, thankful the Displacement had dropped him somewhere with at least one English speaker. “Is it all right if I ask your name?”
“John.” He released a shuddering breath, willing his shaking to stop. “John Watson.”
The man smiled, surprised. “Ah, I knew I recognized you somehow—I am a Watson as well; Heimish Watson though, not John. Do you mind telling me when you came from?”
“1989,” John replied, a murmur swinging through the crowd. John’s shoulders curled up towards his ears, but Heimish laughed, distracting them into relaxing again.
“1989, eh? You’ve come a bit of a way then, all the way here to 1863.” His smile was reassuring, John finding his lungs taking in more, his ears less deafened by the cacophony of his heart. “You come from London, I presume?”
John nodded, glancing over the crowd’s heads at the towering buildings. It was all so much dirtier, the stench a physical hand smearing fingerprints on the inside of his throat. It must have been the foul sky’s fault, pressing and holding and drowning them, as if it were saying I am not clean, so neither are you. John almost wished it were as solid as it felt, if only to have something give when he hit it.
“Then it appears all you have done is drop back in time a bit,” Heimish answered John’s unspoken question, standing and taking a half-step towards John as their circle is breached by a handful of men in black. “Evening, constables.”
“We received word of a Displaced,” one replied, gaze snagging on John. Heimish rested a hand on his shoulder, tilting his head in agreement.
“This would be the boy. His name is John Watson.”
Another officer chuckled. “Seems every man’s heir is coming down to visit.”
“Oh? I take it this is not the first incident of the day?”
“We had not yet sat down before being sent out again,” the first sighed. “If you wouldn’t mind coming back with us to register him…?”
“Of course.” Heimish’s hand on his shoulder lightly urged John forward. John froze, an irrational terror screaming in him at the thought of leaving the place of his landing. He knew staying there would not send him back, that he would remain in this now for the rest of his life, but none of that made it any easier to move. Heimish’s hand grew insistent as he stepped forward, and John stumbled after him, the fear dissipating as the crowd utilized the new space, the land’s importance falling to lacklustre.
“Constable,” Heimish called as they rounded a corner. “The boy is too young to be placed in his time’s section, correct?”
“I would say so,” he replied. “You will be taking him, I gather, if that was the answer you were looking for.”
“Mother will be delighted.” Heimish smiled down at John. John wanted to smile back, but his head was still spinning. Heimish seemed to understand, carrying on smoothly, “Mother has been growing restless without a little one to watch. She finds the house unsettlingly quiet, and I overheard from the maids the other evening…”
- - -
1881
“Dr Watson, this is Mr Sherlock—”
John was startled when the man whirled around, at first struck by his almost manic eyes, but that was soon pushed from his mind by Sherlock-something’s clean-shaven face. He saw those eyes settle on his own unadorned lips, and John had to stifle the urge to smirk. And hope. Stamford himself was bare-faced as well (though he was married, so perhaps he didn’t count quite as much), and for all he knew, this Sherlock fellow could have an engagement to explain his nonconformity.
And even if he were that way, in no universe would a man like that lower himself to a damaged man like John. No, he had someone, John was sure.
“Ah, a former captain. I hope noise doesn’t bother you too terribly—sometimes the clients are not always happy with my solutions, and my violin is essential for thinking. Do strong scents put you off?”
John blinked. This man was as mad as he was stunning. “It…it would depend, I suppose?”
His grin stretched painfully further. “Excellent. I shall see you at 2-2-1-B Baker Street at three tomorrow evening. My apologies for rushing; lives are at stake, I'm sure you understand, Doctor,” he said, gone with a little pat to John’s shoulder.
The silence had scarcely lived before John killed it. “What…was that?”
Stamford chuckled, preening. “That was Mr Sherlock Holmes. He is a bit odd, but then all geniuses are, are they not? Though I think he liked you.”
John huffed, his body warm. This was either going to be very very good, or very very bad.
Whichever it was, it would also be extraordinary.
- - -
“Shh Holmes, we must be quiet!”
“Watson please, I can’t—John—”
“I know; I have you, Sherlock, my dear, my love; let go, let—”
“John!”
“Sherlock, my beautiful; you brilliant, gorgeous ma—ah—!”
“John…John…”
“Sherlock…Oh, my Sherlock…”
- - -
1894
Mary was sweet.
Mary was sweet and gentle, understanding and female. After Sherlock, it was what he needed. What he thought he needed.
He should have known from his time with Sherlock that he often misjudged what was best for himself.
The clouds blanketed the sky darkly, promising a pure crystalline one to fall to earth later in the day. John stood alone in front of Sherlock’s grave, bare in both words and ornaments. Mary had thought it odd, that he never brought flowers to his only and closest…friend’s grave. She tried, once, to bring a bouquet. Sherlock would have hated them, the sentiment with them more, and John had been more than mulish in his demand that they come nowhere near his late lover’s final resting place. Mary had been flabbergasted, but had complied, leaving them on some other barren headstone.
That had been the last time she’d accompanied him.
John was not shocked to find he preferred it that way.
The first of the snowflakes drifted from the sky, marring the black marble of the grave marker. John’s leg ached, yet he stepped forward anyway, hand outstretched to brush the dustings off—
“Fucking hell!”
Ice pelted the side of his face, and John would have fallen if not for the body he stumbled into. Wiping his eyes clear, he first glanced to the boy that had caught him, then across the field at the one that’d hit him. They stared at him back, slack-jawed.
“Mum!” the latter screeched, and John sighed.
- - -
It was much easier, the second time. Whether that was because he was nearing forty and they were less thorough, or if it was all due to actually having answered their questions before, John didn’t know.
He did know that whoever was behind the Displacements was a right bastard, though.
“Pardon me,” he’d asked a passing nurse, “but when is now?”
“It’s 2014, sir,” she’d replied. John had never felt the need to scream as badly as he had then. 2014. When he would naturally be, if he hadn’t been Displaced the first time.
In a way, he was thankful. This London was vastly different than Sherlock’s. He could walk down the street without being assaulted by his memories.
Which was also what he despised most. If nothing reminded him, what was to stop him from forgetting?
- - -
2014: Week One
The officials didn’t quite know what to do with him. On the one hand, John was technically from present-London. In the strictest of legal sense, they could not force him to settle in the Victorian London’s area. Yet on the other, the majority of his life had been spent there—to the point where he was socially considered a past-London citizen.
In the end, they left the choice up to John. And after a surprise call to Harry, his living arrangements were taken care of.
- - -
Harry hadn’t changed much.
“You should shave that worm off your face,” she slurred a week after helping him move in. “Makes you look fuckin’ old as balls.”
John cocked a brow at her, but refrained from pointing out that her drinking did the same.
- - -
She started guiltily at his clean face the following evening. “John, I—I didn’t really—I mean—”
“It’s fine,” he interrupted. He kept his eyes on the telly. “I had grown it for one purpose, which seems a bit moot now. After all,” he traced the engraving on the back of his phone. To Harry, from Clara xxx. “It is the twenty-first century.”
- - -
2014: Week Four
It took another three weeks for John to lose his will and ask Harry for a favour.
“You want me to what?”
John sighed. He had tried all morning to work with the computer with no success. Asking for help was his last option (it was not possible to abandon the idea now that John had fallen prey to it). “Please. Could you search for Sherlock Holmes? He was—”
“Sherlock Holmes? You knew Sherlock Holmes?”
John’s blood itched at the casual use of his heart’s Christian name, but he would have to learn to live with it, he supposed. “Yes, I lived with him for—”
“Are you serious? Are you fucking—my brother, my brother, is the Dr Watson?”
“That is the name I was born with, yes,” he snapped. All he wanted was to find Sherlock’s grave, if it were still even standing. Now that the London they had shared was only a fragment of the whole, it was all he had left. He needed to see it, he needed to touch it whether it was broken or ill-maintained, he—
He needed it, he just needed it.
“We learned about you in school you know,” Harry said as she took the computer. “Forced to read a couple of your books and everything, and not fucking once did I ever think ‘oh, there’s my brother, guess he is alright’. Not that we were ever told the great companion of Sherlock Holmes had been Displaced too.” She shoved the laptop into his arms, the page full of little blue links. Those, at least, he could handle.
“So all that was real?”
He sighed. He remembered she had always been the bluntly curious one. He silently mourned the fact that she hadn’t grown out of it. His research would be done more comfortably in peace, but until her questions were answered… He clicked the first link, answering her absently,
“Of course it was, and I have the scars to prove it.” He frowned at the screen, scrolling back to the top of the page. The Science of Deduction. And then down again, back to the bottom right corner: 221b Baker Street. SH.
It took all John’s effort to set aside the laptop and climb to his feet, Harry following him to his room. Her questions were distant as he methodically undressed and turned down the duvet. He slept fitfully, his nightmares enhanced with the steady chant of descendant descendant descendant.
- - -
2014: Week Five
John hated himself. He despised every fibre of his being; he cursed his own soul to deeper pits of hell than he had even wished upon the devil’s own bastard Moriarty. Yet not a milligram of his self-loathing had kept him in Harry’s house, none of his strongest curses had untangled his tongue enough to demand the cab driver turn around, and not one of his prayers for sudden death had been answered as he rang the bell on the door he once had a key for.
He nearly both sobbed in agony and sighed in relief when the minutes stacked higher without answer. It was for the best that no one was home, and this failed adventure would (hopefully) prevent him from trying again. He was halfway through convincing his legs to carry him away when the door opened, an older woman beaming at the sight of him.
“Oh thank goodness, I was hoping you hadn’t wandered away! I did tell him, just the other day too, that he really should fix that bell, or he might miss something indecent, and then he’d have no one to sulk at but himself.” She held the door open wider, ushering him in and up the stairs. The interior had changed drastically, but John was terrified to find that didn’t seem to bother him at all. If he weren’t panicking so much, he’d say that the building remembered him, was welcoming him home with more warmth than chastising.
The woman (housekeeper? Were they still acceptable to have?) followed him up, gently nudging him along and continuing in her monologue, unperturbed by the silence. “And you look like just the thing to stir him up. He’s been an absolute menace these past few days—oh, that boy is lucky I’m not like my great-grandmother, or he’d have been out of my house as soon as I saw what he did to my wall. But you’ll fix him right up, I can tell.” She smiled at him as she guided him away from the door, jiggling the handle. “Live with him long enough and you get to know these things,” she stage-whispered before huffing, raising her fist to beat on the door.
“Sherlock, dear, you’ve got one!”
Over the frantic drum of his heart, John heard a muffled curse, growing clear as it stomped nearer. The lock clicked, and the door was flung open with a growled, “Oh, for the love of—”
John didn’t hear the rest of it. Many years later he will find out that there was nothing else, but in that moment he was too busy attempting to keep from fainting to pay his surroundings much attention. For he was going to die, he accepted that he would leave as soon as he was able, find the nearest bridge and throw himself from it, because he could not live in a world that was so cruel as to have his dearest’s descendant share not just his name and home, but his face and his voice and his mind as well. It was too much, too tempting to take this century’s Sherlock and throw away both that man’s uniqueness and destroy John’s beloved’s memory by replacing him. John was just a man, a weak and broken one at that, and he knew he would not be able to stay away from that perfect siren.
To protect them all, he would have to leave.
“Ah, excuse me.” Sherlock—not Sherlock—Holmes fidgeted, holding the door open. “Please, come in.”
The woman patted John’s arm as he passed her, trying to share a pointed look with Holmes, but he avoided her gaze, shutting the door almost on John’s heels. John tried to keep his thoughts off his face, as futile as he knew it likely was, as he examined his former sitting room. He felt Holmes’s eyes on his back as he drifted to the desk, and he did his best not to relax like a sunbathing cat under its intensity. It would only make things more difficult.
As if they weren’t already.
“So,” Holmes cleared his throat. “What—”
“I found you,” John blurted, steeling himself and turning to face him. “Through your site.”
“Oh?” Holmes’s tone fell flat, as if that somehow disappointed him. “Then you have a case—?”
John shook his head. He was staring, but he couldn’t stop. He figured he could be forgiven for this, for memorizing as much as he could before he left. It was the perfect opening, a simple ‘no, apologies for wasting your time’, and John would leave. He would go, and Holmes would forget the strange man and carry on with his life while John ensured he would not be able to interrupt Holmes again.
“No, I don’t…I—” Holmes stepped forward and John jumped back. The distance between them had to remain, it had to, because if John could reach for him, if he could touch him—Holmes moved forward again, and John scrambled to distract him. “I’m terribly sorry, it’s just—you look so much like him.”
Hell.
But Holmes stilled. “‘Him’?”
John backpedalled frantically. “Ah, someone I knew. An—an ancestor of yours, I’d imagine.” A nervous laugh escaped him, and he finally dragged his eyes away from Holmes’s. “Funny though, Mycroft never struck me as the fathering type…”
“How do you know that name?”
John’s eyes flicked startled over to him, confusion sparking at the sharpness of his question. “…I knew him. He was the elder sibling to a…a very dear friend.”
Holmes seemed to freeze, yet at the same time his face became more animated than ever, the emotional war clear even to John as he fought to suppress something John would’ve called hope. But hope for what, John had no inkling, tried painfully not to, impossible impossible impossible, even as Holmes’s hand lurched toward him.
“John…?” his voice was pleading, and John knew he was gone, didn’t care one wit how impossible it was, already stumbling closer as the man finished, “My dear John?”
“Sherlock,” John gasped, those curls twining desperately familiar around his fingers as his palms cradled the skull he’d thought broken and smashed to his own, pressing his lips firmly against his temple. Sherlock’s—and it was undeniably him, John’s lungs and skin and heart could only sing and be with one person—arms wound tight around his shoulders, chests pressed together with his face settled in John’s neck. His body shook in his efforts to cease his ragged hiccups, prompting John to press nearer, nuzzling firmly as one hand drifted down and back up his spine in attempts to soothe.
John admitted to himself with not a trace of shame that he needed a moment to collect himself as well. Sherlock, his Sherlock, not some diluted descendant but Sherlock, was alive, breathing living whole, his sharp smoke scent clouding John’s lungs, the chemical after bite thick on his tongue, his skin warm his muscles shifting his bones solid all pressed to John, and he couldn’t stop touching him, his heart, wouldn’t stop even to save the stars.
He had them already, shining right there in Sherlock’s eyes.
His caress soon completed its job, Sherlock calming against him, pulling back to run his eyes over John’s face, his fingers almost shy as they danced over the skin of his cheekbones and jaw once John settled his arms around his waist to keep them anchored together. John would happily leave them there eternally, if that’s what kept them from separating.
“How?” Sherlock breathed in awe. John’s lips fluttered in a wavering smile, then pursed to brush a kiss to Sherlock’s fingertips as they wandered near.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” John replied without malice. He couldn’t care less for the semantics of it, but then he was always the one more comfortable in accepting things as they came.
“It’s not very elaborate,” Sherlock admitted, as if would make John want to hear it less. “Before I hit the water, a Displacement took me. It would have been long after you’d been able to see.” His eyes stopped roaming, fixing on John’s. “It feels as if it’s been ages since I last looked at you.”
“Has it been so long for you?” John ached at the thought; wished it weren’t possible that Sherlock may have been bereaved of him longer than he had been lost to John. He took comfort though, in how young Sherlock still appeared. John knew Sherlock would age gracefully, had seen it start before the mess with Moriarty, but he could not believe too long had passed.
“It has been two years, since Reichenbach,” Sherlock said, and John sighed. It must have given something of his thoughts away, for Sherlock frowned, shuffling closer. “How long for you?”
“Three, for me,” John admitted, and Sherlock’s face crumpled, John’s heart temporarily with it.
“John, forgive me…” Sherlock began, but John cut in before he got far.
“Don’t; it doesn’t matter now,” he said decisively. “You’re alive, and I am with you. I couldn’t be happier, Sherlock, really. Imagine if I’d never convinced myself to visit you!” John shuddered. Would they have ever crossed paths again, otherwise?
But instead of vanishing, Sherlock’s frown deepened. “…you convinced yourself—” He pulled back further, finally observing the rest of John, gaze clearing as he caught on. “How long have you been now?”
John ducked his head. Of course it wouldn’t take long for him to wind up playing the fool in Sherlock’s presence. “Nearly five weeks.” He winced at Sherlock’s sharp inhale, hurrying to explain, “I didn’t know of you that first month! I only searched online to see—” his voice broke, forcing him to clear it roughly to continue. “I wanted to see if your grave was still standing. It would have been calming, to know that I could still visit you. But your site was the first thing that came up, and I figured you were Mycroft’s descendant…” he trailed off, remembering how Sherlock’s death had bit into him with renewed vigour that morning. Even Harry had eventually sensed something amiss. “It sounded so much like you, but I knew that if I introduced myself I wouldn’t be able to stop from coming back, from trying to make you into you.” John glanced up, smile self-deprecating. “And I would never have let myself live had I done that to your memory.”
“John,” Sherlock sighed, tugging him back into his arms. “You shouldn’t be so critical of yourself,” he murmured, face buried in the short blond strands. “I admit, when I first arrived, I had to exercise immense control to avoid ‘accidentally’ arriving at your descendant’s door.” He released a quiet chuckle. “Amusingly, I had the urge to pass by her residence not three weeks ago. I wonder how things would have gone had I given in to it.”
John chuckled, pressing a kiss to Sherlock’s pulse point. Not a day would pass without every molecule of him being worshipped, John vowed as Sherlock’s hands dropped to his arse, pulling them into alignment as he ducked his head, seeking. John rested a steadying hand against his waist, the other rising to his jaw, guiding them closer—
John stiffened as feet pounded up the stairs, instinctively startling backwards, Sherlock scrabbling to keep him near with a murmured, “It’s fine now; we’re safe!” as their door burst open.
“Sherlock, have you heard—” a silvered man choked, gaping at their embrace in the sitting room. “Ah, know what, never mind, I’ll just—”
“Oh, you may as well come in now,” Sherlock snapped, freeing John enough for him to face their sudden guest, though keeping an arm settled low on his back. He gestured to the fidgeting man, a wicked smirk curling his lips as he said, “John, allow me to introduce you to Detective Inspector Lestrade.”
Both men started, John lifting his eyes to Sherlock’s as he asked, “Is he--?”
His lips twitched wider. “Obviously.”
“Huh.” John turned back to their interrupter. “So some things do stay in the family genetics.”
Lestrade coughed, rubbing the blush from the back of his neck. “So you are Doctor John H. Watson.” He grinned charmingly, stepping forward to shake John’s proffered hand. “Swear there hasn’t been a day yet he’s not mentioned you a time or ten. S’nice to actually meet you.”
John chuckled, glancing sideways as Sherlock grumbled, his own arm slipping around Sherlock’s waist. “I’m glad to hear the Yard hasn’t forbid him cases. I imagine they’re much more convoluted than we’re used to.”
Sherlock snorted. “Hardly. If anything, criminals have dulled with the advancement of technology.”
“My apologies for not having sadists and psychopaths for you to chase every day,” Lestrade deadpanned, and John threw his head back in laughter. He could see himself getting along with this man just as easily as he had Lestrade’s forefather.
“What did you come for anyway, Lestrade?” Sherlock growled, pinching John’s side. John stomped on his foot in retaliation.
Lestrade beamed, waving his hand. “Ah, doesn’t matter now. I was just coming to ask if you knew Dr Watson had come back.”
Sherlock narrowed his eyes, stopping Lestrade from leaving once again as he snapped, “'Back?' What do you mean back--John has only Displaced the once.”
John frowned, glancing up at him confused. “No I haven’t.”
Sherlock’s arm loosened from around John. “…You haven’t?”
John shook his head slowly. He was astounded that Sherlock seemed not to know it—hadn’t he commented on it their first meeting? John must have said something in their time together; it wasn’t feasible that he’d managed living with the world’s most observant man for ten years with this secret! “No, this would be my second Displacing—surely you knew that, my dear. Hadn’t you deduced it from my resistance to the common diseases?”
Sherlock blinked, and gaped, and floundered, and John thought his reaction would be more suited for news of higher calibre than this. “What year?” Sherlock managed as John began reconsidering the magnitude of his apparent-secret.
“I was Displaced from 1989 to 1863,” John replied, and of all the possible reactions, he had not been expecting Sherlock to giggle. His knees giving way, yes, but high-pitched snorting had not made the cut. He shared one marginally terrified glance with Lestrade and began sending desperate prayers that whatever he’d managed to break was repairable.
“You’re not wrong!” Sherlock gasped, and John despaired, stumbling to the couch and dropping Sherlock onto it as upright as he could manage.
“Of course I am not wrong, I was there,” John huffed, grabbing hold of Sherlock’s skull, tilting his face towards the light spilling from the windows. He hadn’t noticed signs of fatigue or hunger when he’d arrived, but then he hadn’t been looking for them specifically, either…
“No no no.” Sherlock wrapped his fingers around John’s wrists, jolting forward as he blurted, “I am Mycroft’s descendant.”
“I thought he was your brother?” Lestrade asked, and John nodded, seconding it.
Sherlock rolled his eyes. “The one you know is, but the Mycroft John has met is mummy’s grandfather.”
John froze. Sherlock could not be suggesting something that astronomical, it was already unheard of to Displace twice, nonetheless— “Sherlock, you… Have you been Displaced…before Reichenbach…?”
“Yes!” Sherlock was beaming, his hands reaching, pulling John’s forehead to his own. “Summer of 1989, there was a boy, Carl Powers, murdered, but no one would listen and I—I was so angry, John, I had wished to be anywhere else rather than face such idiocy—”
“And you Displaced,” John finished, his lips twitching because of course. If anyone could command a Displacement, it would be his man.
“And you followed me.” Sherlock’s eyes were all but glowing, watching John as if he were the brilliant one.
“But of course,” John quipped, warmth and something stronger beating in his veins. He couldn’t help but press his lips against Sherlock’s, and Sherlock seemed disinclined to stop, and neither man noticed Lestrade slip the door closed behind him on his way to persuade Mrs Hudson to up her telly volume. Or perhaps invest in sound proofing.
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