A Universe of Possibilities - Teenlock/Johnlock/Mystrade

Chapter 1- Wrong Place, Wrong Time

It was one of those unbearable August evenings, when the air is so thick with heat that it seems to be sitting on top of your shoulders, weighing you down. John Watson could feel it as he trudged along the dimly lit streets of London, the strap of his duffle bag digging into his shoulder.

I shouldn't be out here. He thought to himself, wiping drops of sweat from his brow. Everything, from the awful humidity to the ominous lighting, was telling him to go home. The city was dangerous at night. But he couldn't. He could never go home again.

Just thinking about what he was leaving behind made John shiver, despite the heat. That final image of his shitty excuse of a father beating up his drunken mother on the kitchen floor, while his sister lay drugged up in her room, was enough to traumatize any fourteen-year-old boy. But John had seen it all before, and worse. That was his life.

Not anymore, though. He reminded himself, as he continued walking to god knows where. Not ever again.

John wasn't really sure what had made him finally decide he'd had enough. There had been plenty of nights much worse than this one, yet John had stayed. Sure, he'd thought about running away millions of times over the years, but he somehow always managed to talk himself out of it.

"My mother needs me," he would tell himself after watching his dad mistreat her, even though she was just as psychotic as her husband when she was drunk. The truth was, they both hit each other, but his father always did the most damage.

"Harry needs me," he would convince himself whenever she came stumbling home after hours of partying, with no one but John to put her to bed and make sure she didn't choke on her own vomit.

In fact, that was exactly what he'd been doing just a few hours ago: watching over his sister as she slept off whatever drugs she had taken, while listening to his parents bitching at each other downstairs, and trying to read a book at the same time.

It was then that John had felt a rush of....something. Testosterone, adrenaline, or just pure anger, he didn't know. But whatever it was made him say to himself "I'm too young for this bullshit.", throw some clothes in a duffle bag, and walk out the front door.

Nobody noticed him leave.

And now here he was, wandering the streets of London past midnight, sweating buckets under one of the hottest nights in the history of England.

John groaned in frustration wondering, not for the first time, why he had such horrid luck. Some teens might have no problem running away; they'd just go straight to a friend's house.

If only John had any friends

Suddenly, he felt tears pooling behind his eyelids. He shook his head and drew them back in before a single one had a chance to fall, as he had long ago learned to do. No use crying about something he couldn't control. He would just have to make do.

At this point, John had no idea where he was going, and he didn't care. That is, until he turned a corner and found himself in an alleyway with a dead end.

"Shit," he muttered under his breath, turning around to go a different direction. It was then that he noticed that he didn't recognize a single landmark or street sign. Where the hell was he?

"Shit!" He repeated, much louder. It was a bad sign that he didn't know where he was, since he knew his side of town like the back of his hand. This meant that he had been wandering aimlessly for so long that he was completely out of his territory.

He looked around frantically for something familiar, feeling like a little boy who lost his mum in a supermarket.

"Get a grip, Watson," he told himself. Talking to himself always calmed him down. "It's just dark. You've lived in London all your life, there's got to be something you can go off of."