A/N: I was trying to work on Running but ended up writing Sherlock being stoned off his face instead. Whoops? Couple people had requested this, anyway, so here ya go I guess, haha.


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"Have you ever even smoked weed before?"

Eric smiled bemusedly as Sherlock, nose wrinkled in disgust, coughed and handed back the joint which he'd just taken a drag off of as if it were a cigarette. Way too much, of course, but Eric wasn't planning on saying anything. Honestly he was dead curious to see what Sherlock would be like whilst massively stoned. And an entire bleeding lungful of pot smoke would certainly do the job.

Sherlock covered his mouth with his sleeve and coughed hard, grimacing. "Yes," he spat defensively once he could speak again, voice a bit strangled. "Just... not that strong. How much tobacco did you use?"

Eric grinned mischievously. "None."

As he'd expected, Sherlock shot him a startled glare; they'd agreed to a 20/80 split, owing to Sherlock still technically being high on cocaine. Not wise to mix too many mind-altering chemicals in one go. Of course that had been the justification put forth by Sherlock - Eric was fairly sure the real reason behind this newfound sense of caution was because Sherlock knew full-well he had no tolerance for marijuana and would end up stoned out of his mind if the bud wasn't heavily cut with something.

Since that scenario was exactly what Eric wanted to happen he'd secretly foregone the addition of any tobacco at all and just rolled up the weed straight. Bit underhanded, maybe, but he figured it wasn't like Sherlock wouldn't be able to tell what he'd done with a glance. Had to have known before they lit up, right? Some impossible little clue giving the prank away. And, to be fair, he'd really not expected Sherlock to be stupid enough to treat the thing like a filter cig anyway. The moron.

Said moron was now blinking at him rather dazedly. Eric quirked a grin at him and took a short drag of his own. Not enough to do much, of course - wanted to keep mostly sober. Both because he needed to be able to supervise, make sure Sherlock didn't do anything too outright stupid or embarrassing, and because he knew he'd definitely want to be able to remember every detail of this little scene.

"You still with it, mate?" he asked after a short silence between them. He couldn't help but snicker a bit along with the question; Sherlock's normally-poised features were currently arranged in an uncharacteristic look of bewildered, innocent confusion.

"Er..." he replied slowly, then scrunched his face up as if thinking very hard about something. "I... yeah? Yes, I mean. Yes. Sort of." A quick shake of his head, looking like he was trying to hold on to a tiny last scrap of sobriety, and he glared Eric down somewhat unsteadily. "You did this on purpose, you arse. You wanted me incoherently high."

Eric just shrugged. "Yeah, I did. Sorry. Too good a chance t'pass up... you do know you're s'posed to just take a quick puff an' hold it, though, yeah? It's not a bleedin' cigarette."

"That would have been excellent information to have about five minutes ago," Sherlock replied, tone sounding like he'd gone for snippy but got lost somewhere and just ended up a bit bewildered. He frowned and looked around the room - they were both sat criss-cross on top of Eric's duvet, with the rays of a setting sun through the window casting odd patterns on the bedspread. Sherlock regarded those for a second but then quickly appeared to lose interest and glanced up to Eric instead. He opened his mouth, blinked once, and then closed it.

"I... completely forgot what else I was going to say," he remarked perplexedly. "That... hang on, that shouldn't happen. I'm s'posed to be able to..." He made some sort of strange hand gesture, apparently at a loss for the right words. Eric just grinned at him.

"You're stoned, mate," he helpfully reminded his befuddled companion. "You're not s'posed t'be able t'do much of anythin'." As if demonstrating his point he took a pull off the still-smouldering joint, careful not to draw too deep or hold the breath long enough to have any real effect, and blew the smoke playfully in Sherlock's direction. Sherlock scowled and waved his hand to try and clear it, making a noise like an indignant child. Then he promptly got distracted by the swirling eddies of smoke in the window light and spent a few seconds watching those disappear with a look as if he'd never seen something so fascinating in his life.

"That... theoretically you could write an equation to calculate precisely where every particle in that cloud of smoke is going to be at any arbitrary point in time, you know... can't find the velocity though, obviously, because if something's got a velocity then it's moving and if it's moving then by definition it's not at a fixed point. Never understood why that's got to be a principle with a name and everything. S'just common sense, really..."

Eric blinked and fixed Sherlock with an extremely bemused look. Was he... rambling about science? Was that seriously the sort of thing he thought about whilst high? Maths shit? Christ what a nutter.

"I dunno what th'hell you're even on about," Eric replied, mostly because Sherlock seemed to have gotten sidetracked again by some internal thought process, staring into the middle distance as if contemplating something, and Eric didn't want him to go all catatonic rather than talk. Thankfully this tactic worked; Sherlock abandoned whatever he'd been pondering to instead look to Eric with a disapproving frown.

"You should do, though. You're not stupid."

Eric snorted in disbelief. "Well that's a marked change of opinion, ain't it?"

"There, see!" Sherlock exclaimed, pointing at him like he'd just done something scandalous. "See? A marked change of opinion? That's a complex... erm, word... grammar... oh, you know what I mean. It's smart, is the thing. Like what I'd say. You talked like me." He paused, looking vaguely alarmed, then shook his head. "Spoke, rather... I meant spoke. Oh god now I'm talking like you. We've swapped."

"We ain't swapped, mate, you're fine," Eric assured him, laughing in response to Sherlock appearing genuinely distressed at the thought of his posh rich-boy accent being infected with cockney.

A second later though he seemed to forget all about it and instead began to wilt sideways until he'd flopped face-down on the bed. Exhausted, looked like. Probably the cocaine was wearing off, or he'd not had a cigarette within the last hour. Doubtless a bad sign, Eric supposed, that the guy needed to be on some sort of stimulant just to retain consciousness. Textbook definition of dependency.

Not that either of them could really do anything about it now. Quitting cold-turkey would just put Sherlock out of commission for a few weeks, during which he wouldn't be able to purify any drugs, which would likely get him kicked out of the house. And Eric in his current state wasn't exactly up to earning enough money to feed and shelter two fully-grown men. Especially not when one of them would be literally starving with a sudden loss of stimulant-induced appetite suppression, and probably not capable of doing anything but sleep for a good fortnight besides.

Trapped where they were, then, probably until one of them died. Sherlock, most likely... considering he seemed about half there already.

Eric frowned and, in an effort to drive such thoughts out of his mind, took another quick drag off the joint. He blew the smoke towards Sherlock's head as a sort of gentle reminder that he could have more if he liked. Wake himself up a bit.

"Y'gonna just fall asleep, then, or...?"

Sherlock shoved his face into the duvet for a second, doubtless unhappy about the smell, but held out his hand anyway. He propped himself up on his elbows once Eric had handed the smouldering bit of paper over, and, once again, seemed to completely forget it wasn't a cigarette. Eric rolled his eyes as he accepted the joint back (Sherlock having got himself into a massive coughing fit, predictably) and leant over to stub the thing out in the ashtray he kept by his bed. Right, then, no more of that. Not if Sherlock couldn't figure out how to not smoke it like a complete dumbarse.

The dumbarse in question had flopped back down on his face, groaning in response to what Eric presumed must be quite the impressive head rush. Served him right, god's sake.

"I told you it ain't a damned cig, y'moron." Eric's exasperated tone was mitigated somewhat by Sherlock having chose that moment to lift his head a bit and give him a pathetic, half-terrified look. It was hard to decide whether the expression was more worrying or hilarious. Accordingly Eric's response ended up caught about halfway between the two reactions.

"Y'alright?" he asked with an amused snort. After a pause he decided it probably wasn't nice to just start laughing over the poor bastards's self-inflicted predicament and did his best to straighten his face. Sort of a difficult proposition when Sherlock was blinking vacantly up at him like a child.

"I, er... dunno?" Sherlock responded very slowly. In a somewhat rare display of unprompted physical affection he suddenly shifted himself to be more or less hugging Eric round the midsection, upper body draped half over his lap. Eric smiled a bit and patted the miserable sod on the head.

"Yeah. Pretty sure y'just fucked yerself over there, love."

Immediately Eric snapped his mouth shut, cheeks going faintly red - shit, hadn't meant to use that word. He tended to call people 'love' rather frequently, just as a sort of friendly nickname, but he'd been determinedly avoiding doing so towards Sherlock. It just... didn't seem like something one should use to refer to a new boyfriend without it being meant seriously. Certainly not something one should say in reference to Sherlock Holmes without first thinking through every possible facet of what you could mean by it, because god knew he would.

Or... he would if he weren't currently stoned to high hell. Eric's burst of internal panic faded quickly as he looked down to the very muddled supergenius now occupying the majority of his lap. Sherlock had just had his face shoved into Eric's thigh the whole time, shoulders all hunched up like a hedgehog. Didn't seem to have even processed the words.

"Every minute's stretched to eons, good god," the man mumbled half-incoherently into the silence between them. "Shouldn't've... whatever you did to make me think this was a good idea... left out the tobacco... christ you can be such a manipulative bastard."

Eric, still trying to fight back the blush over his accidental slip, smiled with fond, if somewhat apologetic, amusement.

"Yeah, well... who's the one who keeps on lettin' me pull that shit, eh? Ain't like you're not clever enough to spot when I'm messin' with you."

"No, that's the thing. M'really not." Sherlock was actually stoned enough to be slurring, now, which Eric had to admit was just about the most hilarious thing he'd ever heard. Luckily the juvenile grin on his face was quite thoroughly wiped away by Sherlock's next words.

"I trust you too much."

Eric blinked, mouth gone slack in surprise. That... what?

"You're safe, is what I mean," Sherlock continued on, not even seeming to realise he'd just candidly admitted something he'd be absolutely mortified to say if he were sober. "Never going to be a threat. So there's no reason to bother sussing out if you're planning anything." He finally lifted his head a bit, frowning out at the room in what looked like utter confusion. "Which is... entirely stupid of me, f'course, because you bloody always are. But I s'pose even when you're being a deceitful arsehole there's no sense worrying over it because you're not going to... er..." He trailed off, obviously disgruntled. "Oh, no, I've forgotten the word. How did I forget a word? I don't forget words. Eric, I've become an idiot. You've made me stupid."

With that he seemed to give up on talking entirely and just let his head flop into Eric's lap, covering it with his arms as if blocking out the world might help him sober up faster. Eric, for his part, was a bit too stunned to really say anything.

He... had no idea how to react. Sherlock trusted him? The bloke who was suspicious of literally everyone he met, lest they turn out to be spies or assassins or just regular old arseholes waiting for an opening to attack... had been dropping that hyper-vigilant caution in regards to anything Eric did? That's why he'd been able to play his silly little pranks and tricks and convince Sherlock to go along with things so easily?

There was no immediate way he could think to respond to that, so he just let a few minutes drag by in silence. Sherlock didn't seem to mind, of course - he was still curled up half-draped over Eric's lap clinging to his abdomen in what might very well have been a desperate attempt to keep hold of some last piece of reality. Certainly he was hugging him hard enough to make the contact seem like it must be vitally important. Eric hesitantly shifted his weight - he'd been leaning back on his good arm - and had a complete loss for what to do with his now-free hand before he settled on just patting Sherlock's head like a puppy.

"I, er... trust you too, you know," he said after a long pause. Tried to force the words to sound sure and honest and not a hesitant stammer. Sherlock wasn't listening anyway, he reminded himself. Too busy with the terrible eon-minutes or whatever he'd been complaining about. He'd not even remember any of this. Still, Eric wrinkled his nose and glanced elsewhere before adding a quiet, "... a lot."

"Good, because there's about a dozen different ways I could murder you and get away with it."

Sherlock's flat tone was clearly meant to be a joke. Eric startled badly anyway (though that was more because he hadn't expected any sort of response, let alone a completely coherent one) and glared. He shoved Sherlock's head lightly, eliciting an indignant grumble and half-hearted swat at his hand.

"That ain't fuckin' funny."

"Sorry."

Despite the apology Sherlock's voice was absurdly cheerful, even giggling a bit. Clearly still out of it. Eric was a bit baffled, regardless - the idiot shouldn't have been anywhere near sober enough to carry on a coherent conversation, inappropriate giggling or no. Not with how much he'd inhaled. Had he just been...? No, no Sherlock wouldn't be able to fake being stoned that well. Not enough to fool Eric, at least, who was intimately familiar with the effects. He must be... but, no, christ. That was crazy.

"You're seriously soberin' up already?" he asked, incredulous. It had only been twenty bleeding minutes - there was no way someone with no tolerance could process that much THC in less than a half-hour. Being a supergenius couldn't change basic human biology.

"Oh god, no. Not at all," Sherlock half-mumbled, half-moaned. He'd gone back to burying his head under his arms, making his words slightly difficult to decipher. "I just put my speech centres on autopilot - stopped trying to assemble conscious responses. I don't actually know what we're talking about."

"You..." Eric trailed off, making an extremely confused, dubious face. "How can you not know what we're talking about, while we're talking about it?"

For some reason Sherlock started laughing. "I have no idea!"

Eric smiled, still incredulous. Not sceptical, though... no, he actually had no trouble whatsoever believing Sherlock could pull a trick like that. Talking like he was perfectly clear-headed yet having no idea what he was saying. And without the slightest clue as to how it worked, either, because of course he wouldn't.

More and more Eric was beginning to suspect his friend's brain might as well be functionally magic. Sometimes uncontrollable, frightening, destructive magic, yeah... but by all rights a thing of extraordinary power. Made one wonder just what Sherlock might have been capable of, had he ended up on a different path. Given the chance to actually be someone instead of beaten down at every turn.

After a long minute of listening to Sherlock try and fail to stop himself giggling over absolutely nothing, Eric smirked and reached down to ruffle his hair.

"Yeah, mate... we really gotta teach you how t'properly smoke a joint."

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