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In retrospect getting Sherlock to sit still long enough to watch a film should probably have struck Eric as a bit more impossible than he'd originally bargained for.
Still, sometimes he liked to believe his boyfriend was at least somewhat capable of behaving like a normal 20-something adult. So while the mysterious collection of beakers and tubes in the kitchen was busy doing whatever magic it did to get stuff out of other stuff and leave pure cocaine behind Eric thought it might be fun to watch a DVD together.
Sherlock, of course, was much less than enthused by the idea.
"I hate films," he groused as Eric muddled his way through the menu screen of his Xbox one-handed. "Sitting in one spot for hours just to observe some contrived, encapsulated little story play out. It's the very definition of a waste of time."
"Sherly, you spent like forty minutes this morning lookin' at a goddamn spiderweb," Eric pointed out half-irritably as he glared at his selection pointer skittering about the screen. Stupid bleeding controller was just so bulky, it was practically impossible to work the joystick and hit the right buttons all with one hand.
"It was an interesting spiderweb." Apparently catching on to Eric's issues with the controller he leant forward with a short huff of a sigh and grabbed the device himself. "What am I doing, then?"
"Select th' little DVD thing an then hit 'play'," Eric supplied. Sherlock obeyed, and soon enough they managed to get the disc up and running. Despite this minor success Sherlock still seemed extremely annoyed.
"I could be re-organising my beakers," he grumbled as Eric took the controller back and set it on the floor. As usual they'd ended up sprawled half-on, half-off each other on the undersized sofa.
"Just shut up an' watch th' film."
Half an hour later and Eric was beginning to realise that, just maybe, he should perhaps have chosen a different movie. Because introducing someone like Sherlock to modern cinema with a film like Donnie Darko was going exceedingly... well, not quite poorly, but at least very strangely.
"Does this ever start to make sense?" Sherlock asked, sounding almost indignant as on the screen Donnie started to dream again. "What's he got an axe for!?"
Eric elbowed him lightly in the stomach in a futile attempt to shut him up. "If ya quit askin' questions and watch maybe you'll find out."
"Or maybe I won't," Sherlock retorted hotly. Still, he stopped whingeing long enough to hear the next scene, which did in fact explain the axe. A further half hour managed to pass by in relative peace... punctuated, of course, by Sherlock's random outbursts in response to whatever he percieved to be plot holes and Eric intermittently elbowing him in the midsection.
"So the whole plot of the film is set in a tangent universe which split off from the moment where he wasn't crushed by the jet engine," Sherlock finally decided a little after the midpoint of the film.
"How th'fuck did you figure that out?" Eric replied, blinking. They weren't even to the last section yet and Sherlock had already pieced together the entire thing?
"It's said as much about four times now, hasn't it? And if you read the book pages between scenes it's practically spelled out for you," Sherlock pointed out in an unimpressed monotone. "Can I go back to my chemistry setup now?"
"No," Eric asserted, shoving the brunt of his bodyweight on top of Sherlock to make sure the lanky prat couldn't escape. "We're watchin' a bleedin' film together and we're gonna watch all of it."
Sherlock sighed heavily, but didn't try to get up. "Fine. He's only going to get flattened by the engine at the end though."
Sure enough, Donnie ended up dead. Sherlock seemed ridiculously smug about this, until Eric pointed out that he hadn't been able to figure out ahead of time exactly who Frank was nor that Gretchen would be killed, which seemed to put him in a bit of a sulk.
"I can't deduce things without sufficient data!" he'd snapped, shoving Eric off him. "And anyway who cares what happens to a load of fictional people in some American film? It's not important."
Eric grinned and let himself flop back onto the couch cushions as Sherlock made to storm off in a huff. "Yer just grumpy cause y'ain't quite as clever as you think y'are."
"I am every bit as clever as I think I am," Sherlock retorted. "Your choice of entertainment is simply moronic."
Yawning slightly - between half an oxy and perhaps one too many joints he was actually starting to feel a bit exhausted - Eric raised his good hand in a sarcastic salute. "Whatever y'say, mate."
Sherlock paused in his retreat to the kitchen. After a brief moment of apparent indecision he turned back around. "If you can find something less ridiculous to watch I'll be done with the next purification step in around fifteen minutes."
Eric grinned. "Oh aye? Gonna spend the whole time figuring out th'end before the story's halfway through again?"
"Probably." Sherlock shrugged and turned to amble off toward the other room. "You didn't actually mind me doing so the first time, however, so I expect you're fine with that."
And with a flippant little wave over his shoulder, he disappeared.
Eric huffed to himself, pretending to be irritated. "It were really bleedin' annoying, actually!"
Sherlock didn't acknowledge him. Eric frowned, then shifted his head toward the milk cartons they called shelves in their run-down little rat's nest of a house.
A grin split his face as he caught sight of the DVD furthest from the left. Hah!
Ignoring the faint twinge of protest from his wrist Eric clambered off the sofa and retrieved an old, battered copy of The Matrix. Let's see Sherlock deduce all the fun out of this one.
Forty minutes later they were both shouting at each other like idiots as Sherlock proceeded to pick apart every single possible plot hole in the story, no matter Eric's insistence that it was just a bleedin' movie, yer not supposed to think about it so much! And maybe that should have been completely annoying, infuriating, downright bloody stressful.
But somehow it wasn't. No, Sherlock had (as bleeding usual) been entirely correct in his assessment earlier - Eric didn't actually mind one bit.
Because no matter how much they irritated, confused, or pissed each other off... they were still together. Two halves of a pair, not just a couple of scattered lonely hearts.
And that, Eric decided, was enough to keep him content.
... even if Sherlock did ruin films.
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