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There was an unspoken rule in the distribution ring: don't talk about pasts.
None of them were really there by choice. Each tenant had come to the organisation through a series of personal tragedies - lost loved ones, driven from their homes, abused or abandoned or any number of terrible situations. Asking about someone's family, their life before the distribution ring... it was just another cruel reminder of everything they'd lost.
But still, Eric wondered.
Ben, he knew the most about. They'd been friends for a couple years now, actually, having met just a few weeks after Eric finally gave up on everything. Marijuana had been just about the only thing keeping Eric from jumping off a bridge at that point - smoking let him forget, and forgetting made it stop hurting... even if only for a little bit. Those fleeting moments of empty-headed bliss became his sole purpose for living.
Of course then he'd quit his job, dropped out of anything even remotely resembling civil responsibility, and in doing so had rather abruptly found himself without the means to buy weed. A few days of unwilling sobriety, lacking even the medication he'd been forced into taking after the whole "incident" (which at the time hadn't seemed to help him one fucking bit, but then maybe that was just because illegal chemicals were so much stronger), and taking a dip in the Thames had started to seem like a pretty decent alternative.
Luckily he'd decided to at least make an attempt to get some quick cash before going for the more permanent solution. Ben had been a plucky young dealer back then, grinning like a loon as he flirted with any remotely female-shaped figure heading past his street corner. Pretty obviously straight, but Eric figured even if he wasn't interested he could at least point him in the direction of someone who might be.
Ben hadn't given him directions to any other dealers, though. No, he'd taken one look at the miserable kid huddled in front of him, palms pressing together fitfully in an attempt to keep from breaking down in hysterics, and promptly offered to buy him a stiff drink.
From there Eric had found himself shepherded into one crew after another, always dogging along in Ben's shadow. Apparently having grown up learning to maintain his sanity while trying to raise a couple of rowdy little girls and look after his frequently-deranged mum had given Eric something of a golden touch when dealing with drug addicts. Not much anyone could say to phase him, after all - not when the most frequent dinner conversation back home had been a spirited discussion between his seven year old sisters and his schizophrenic mother on the merits of clingfilm versus tinfoil in keeping the alien signals out of your brain.
He'd quickly found his niche as a sort of mediator. Dealer having trouble with a client? Call in that freckle-faced gay kid, he'll get it sorted. Someone threatening to shoot the place up if they don't get their shipment? Nobody can stay mad at the little faggot, throw him in there to peace-talk. Eric wasn't entirely convinced of his so-called 'skills' now being passed around as some sort of recruiting beacon, but Ben took care of the advertising for him. Got him a job with Flanagan's crew, smoothed things over with Luce even when the brief romance he'd shared with the half-mad speedfreak collapsed into a smoking ruin. Eric honestly owed his life to Ben several times over.
It had taken him awhile to figure out why someone like Ben would even do any of this - why take some neurotic little stoner under his wing, stick his neck out for him over and over, with no hope of repayment?
But he'd caught on eventually: Ben was just as alone as he was.
A few drunken conversations and late-night talks had pried the majority of the story out of him. Ben's dad had been in the military - overseas, deployed and returned a half dozen times. Whenever he was home, he'd teach his young son all about the importance of responsibility, kindness, generosity. Ben's mum had been your typical doting military wife, proud of her husband, supportive of her only son... really just the perfect little family unit.
But then came the last deployment... the one where Dad didn't come home. The one where a crisp letter and a phone call broke the news instead - shot through the heart, dead in seconds. Ben's mum held herself together for nearly a year afterwards, long enough for her son to take his GCSEs... then she'd succumbed to the depression with a fatal vodka-and-valium mixer.
Ben hadn't had any other family to turn to. He'd tried to continue his education, perhaps go on to uni, but for one reason or another it hadn't worked out. Dealing drugs had been a quicker, easier alternative. Especially when he discovered how much better he felt tweaked than sober. Sell a little weed, buy himself some Ecstasy - instant happiness.
He'd never forgotten the sense of belonging he'd had with his mum and dad alive, though. Nor the lessons his dad had taught him, the stories of bravery and compassion. So when a sad, trembling little wreck of a traumatised stoner came looking for help in the worst way possible, he'd taken him in as a friend. They became each other's family - brothers, sometimes annoying and always looking for a way to get under each other's skin, but bound in blood regardless.
Charley was a little bit more difficult, mostly because Eric didn't know him all that well.
Chuck and Ben had gone to the same school when they were younger, which was how they knew each other, but aside from that the muscular parkourist didn't seem to have much in common with any of them. Obsessed with personal health, to the point of refusing to eat or drink anything he hadn't prepared himself, and choosing to use his formidable maths abilities to help a distribution ring balance its finances instead of, say, getting a proper job. Ben said Chuck did it for the money - Eric really couldn't see what on earth would make this a more lucrative option than legal employment. Surely taxes weren't that much a drain?
One day he caught sight of a stack of outgoing post, though, and suddenly Charley's almost fanatical devotion to healthy living and saving every last scrap of his money made a lot more sense. An envelope, stuffed with cash by the looks of it, addressed to a hospital room. The name had been covered up by a handful of postcards piled on top of it (Ben liked to send unsolicited mail with dirty messages written on to his mates in other parts of the city, just to piss them off) but Eric didn't really need to know who it was. Family or friend, parent or sibling... hell maybe a child? Whatever the case it was obviously personal. Eric didn't pry.
Sherlock was the easiest to figure out. (Though granted, it was a bit of a cheat to puzzle out the history of someone who willingly let you see them naked. But hell it wasn't like Eric was trying to get some sort of high score with all this nonsense.)
Bullying in school was a given, just based on how Sherlock locked up around people. And the fighting skills, obviously... nobody learned how to throw a punch like that unless they needed to know how to defend themselves. So, fine, he'd got the shit kicked out of him a few (dozen) times. Judging by how utter crap he was with basic social graces and his general level of impossibly frustrating knowledge that wasn't too much of a surprise. Maybe even enough to lead to dropping out and developing a coke habit. But that wasn't all of it...
No, because then there was the whole mimicking people business.
As far as Eric could tell, Sherlock had three basic personas he used regularly: there was the 'normal' version, apparently reserved for conversations with Eric - the personality he used when he didn't have to worry about offending anyone with his strange, frequently off-putting rambles about whatever-the-hell and random jumps in topic as his brain out-paced his mouth. Eric liked that one the best, of course. Next up was the android aristocrat, which he used around people he either didn't know or didn't like. Eric wasn't too keen on that one but he could tolerate it well enough.
The last, however... his last persona was fucking terrifying.
Eric had only seen it in full force once now - when Sherlock had frightened off that thug on the night Eric's wrist got dislocated. There'd been hints here and there before then however. Used it on Ben when the enterprising thief had nicked his bank card (Eric was convinced Ben just did that to screw with the new guy, but it was always difficult to tell), and again toward Devin before he'd snapped and started yelling instead. On the surface it was nothing more than a sort of frigid calm; his robot act ramped up a notch, perhaps, or just a trick he'd learned to scare people.
Take a longer look, though, and there was obviously something much deeper - something dark, cold, and horrifying.
Because Sherlock was definitely imitating someone when he did that. Eric could see it in the way his whole demeanour shifted, speech patterns and diction changing... he even held his body differently. This wasn't a set of tricks he'd come up with himself, but a person - someone he'd been around long enough to learn how to mirror. And, judging by how he seemed to use it as a last-resort tactic... someone he was scared to death of.
Pinpointing who this mysterious person might be wasn't exactly difficult. In fact the 'disowned' comment over lunch that first day pretty much settled it. What kind of parent kicks out their kid over a drug addiction, after all, but a supremely awful one?
What confirmed it once and for all, though, were the scars.
Not many, and not very big - honestly just a few short rough patches of skin on his back. He'd waved them away as some sort of childhood tree-climbing accident. Eric pretended to accept that. Easier than pointing out how falling from a tree didn't generally leave perfectly horizontal marks in the exact diameter of a cane, or asking how crashing through a trunk full of branches only left a handful of faded cuts right in the middle of one's shoulder blades.
And anyway for all his social ineptitude Sherlock was actually something of a master at changing the subject (subtly or not), meaning that every time Eric so much as mentioned child abuse or scars or poor parenting he'd somehow suddenly find himself dragged into a conversation about bees, dirt samples, genetics, chemistry... all stuff Eric had absolutely no hope of keeping up with; which, he supposed, was probably the point. Sherlock was trying to confound him with facts, make him forget what they'd originally been talking about through sheer mental overload.
Embarrassingly enough that tactic worked brilliantly. Eric's eyes tended to glaze over at the merest hint of anything related to academics, especially anything resembling maths; Sherlock had of course picked up on that escape route almost immediately and had no qualms about using it to his advantage.
But still, when all was said and done, when Sherlock's nattering on about physics equations had finally forced Eric's brain into a full systems shutdown and he was forced to ignore his boyfriend or go mad... still, he wondered.
Wondered about families, about life, about the future. About how random fate and human cruelty could conspire to bring two lost souls together, and about whether the chance to find someone you truly cared for could ever be worth the heartbreak that forced your separate paths to cross.
Mostly, though... he wondered about pasts.
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