Please see the note in my profile if you'd like an explanation for why I've suddenly emerged from a dark cocoon of inactivity after nearly a decade.
Cliff notes version: Recently re-read my old stories for the first time in years, found them surprisingly decent to the point of wishing there was more, realized I kept the hard drive from the laptop I used back then and could just go look for cut content in my writing folder.
Found a nearly-completed extra chapter of Separate Ways and finished it (will be posted along with this), then thought I should also do a chapter of Rabbit Song because, while I had always written Sherlock having dissociative episodes, they were mostly from his point of view and therefore not very clear that's what was happening. So here is Eric's perspective on that, and also hopefully a more satisfying final chapter for this story.
Will anyone still be following these stories after a decade? Haha, wow, probably not! Don't super care though, this is more of a personal fulfillment thing.
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Sherlock dissociated with alarming frequency.
Of course he'd never admit that's what was happening. Or, perhaps more likely, didn't know. Eric did, though, because Mum had lived her entire life on the razor's edge between lucidity and madness and he'd learnt to break her out of staring spells by the age of four.
He wasn't sure quite how to feel about having to do the same for a romantic partner. On the one hand it was lucky he had the skillset, else Sherlock would've been dead ten times over by now with how often he'd space out in the middle of the road or whilst handling some dangerous chemical. On the other hand, it was hard not to get nervous over needing to mind someone similarly to how he'd done for Mum. Scared of what might happen if he fucked it up again.
Eric sat in a pub booth now across from Sherlock as they waited for their housemates to finish up after a show. Sherlock was sat sideways on the seat with his back pressed up as far as possible against the wall and was making a tremendous effort to pretend it was for some reason other than trying to avoid being spotted and recognised as the guitarist by folks who liked their music. Not an unrealistic concern, to be fair - their little trash pub band may not have earned itself a name yet, but Charley's compositions were catchy and unique enough to have developed a small local following. So, while the crowd tended to be made up primarily of folks attending for drugs-related reasons, there were always at least a few genuine fans of underground punk rock milling about. And many of them were admittedly very interested in chatting with Sherlock, as his symphony experience leant his guitar an unusual sense of precision which meshed remarkably well with Ami's more chaotic bass.
Eric had always found chatting music theory with random strangers to be the least stressful bit of this whole pub band experience - dreaded being up on stage with the vast sea of eyes watching him, but mingling with fans afterwards was usually a bit of fun. Sherlock, of course, felt exactly the opposite. Performing to a raucous crowd in an unfamiliar genre on an instrument he'd picked up less than a fortnight ago somehow didn't bother him in the least; a couple friendly punk scene blokes asking him about chord progressions may as well have been literal torture. Yet another instance of an amusing pattern Eric had started to notice where Sherlock turned out to be confident in all the areas Eric wasn't, and vice-versa. Perhaps if they could somehow merge they might form a single functioning adult.
Had this been a typical show night Sherlock would've retreated to the back room ages ago and likely fell asleep on the sofa until it was time to go, as had become his habit. (Eric had no quarrel with this - much more convenient knowing exactly where the prat would be, with the added benefit of keeping him well away from Racer.) Tonight, though, Corey had claimed the space for a private meeting, so Sherlock was stuck out here with the commoners. And Eric was, for the moment, stuck sitting here with him, because he could tell the prat was coming perilously close to exceeding his stress limit and wanted to be nearby to snap him out of the dissociated trance he'd fall into when that happened.
"We should come up with a disguise or sommat, steer folks off tryna chat with ya," Eric mused, idly working his jaw to flip the end of the joint between his lips up and down. He'd have offered a puff to Sherlock, of course, but every time they'd got stoned together the silly bastard had worked himself into a panic attack over the flow of time having broken, whatever that meant, so he wasn't allowed to have weed anymore.
"There's no good way to disguise an emaciated giraffe," Sherlock grumbled back. His hands were folded between his knees in that odd prayer-like gesture he adopted sometimes, gaze directed past the end of the booth as if scanning for threats in the dwindling crowd.
Eric snickered, then quickly collected himself to deliver his rebuttal in a comically serious tone. "C'mon now, a giraffe? Wit' hair like that? Yer clearly more of a starved llama."
That elicited an amused snort, which sounded enough like an actual llama to set them both giggling. One of the things Eric liked best about Sherlock was his willingness to laugh together over incredibly stupid jokes.
"I'm fine on my own if you'd rather hang about with Ben. You don't have to sit here with me," Sherlock eventually offered, once they'd quieted down. His attention seemed to have been caught by something off across the room, and his voice came out a bit distracted as he watched whatever it was.
Eric shrugged. "Eh, nah. He's been after some girl all night, I'm no help for that. No harm bein' antisocial with you for a bit."
That was a lie, but only partly. Ben had indeed been after a girl most of the night but had got himself rejected nearly an hour ago. In truth Eric had only come over here because Sherlock hadn't yet taken to trailing around after him like an aloof second shadow, which had seemed to imply he'd already got overwhelmed enough to go hide somewhere.
"Victor used to drag me out to clubs all the time and I'd just put on the extrovert act and be fine. I don't know why it's so difficult now," Sherlock muttered glumly. Eric flicked a bit of ash from his joint and frowned over at him - wasn't like him to get so down about stuff like that, was he starting to check out?
Quickest way to tell was to tease him a bit - if he got angry or annoyed instead of flustered he was either crashing or about to dissociate. Or both. Probably usually both, actually.
"Bah, ain't no need for social skills with an arse that cute."
Didn't get flustered. Nor angry or annoyed, either. In fact he'd not seemed to register Eric's words at all. He was still looking out into the pub, but his gaze had shifted into a fixed, unfocused stare. Eric's stomach flipped unpleasantly - the too-still posture and vacant expression Sherlock got during these absent spells always brought to mind that sick sense of dread he'd felt as a kid when Mum would do something similar. Never sure if it meant she'd gone off her meds, if they'd stopped working again, if she'd still be herself when she came back.
Following Sherlock's gaze was a good excuse to look away from his face, avoid the terrible emptiness there, but Eric almost immediately regretted doing so. Near the brick wall directly across the room from them Racer was stood smoking a cigarette. A dark smirk played on the man's lips as he eyed them with predatory interest. Eric replied with a hateful glare, but dropped it quickly in favour of swinging himself round to the other side of the table so as to block Sherlock's line of sight with his body. Should've sat there from the beginning, probably, but he'd not thought to as he'd assumed Racer would be at Corey's meeting.
Experimentally Eric reached out and jostled Sherlock's leg a bit, checking if he'd actually dissociated or just got caught up thinking about something - it could be hard to tell. No reaction. Checked out, then.
Eric had seen this happen quite some few times by now, starting from that first night just before they'd got jumped. Benny mentioning Racer had put Sherlock into some sort of dead-eyed trance as they walked, not seeming to register anything Eric said. After a few minutes of awkward, then vaguely concerning silence he'd brought the both of them to a stop and forced Sherlock round to face him. That had driven a bit of the vacantness out at least, got him to briefly glance up, though he'd still not seemed all there. Eric had instinctively gone with a tactic he'd used often on Mum and ordered the idiot to look at him. That had done the trick.
It had been tempting, once the spark of consciousness returned, to demand Sherlock explain what the fuck that had been - try to quell the coiling worry of whether this new bloke was just like Mum. But as he'd studied Sherlock's confused (and vaguely annoyed) face he'd realised the poor bastard didn't actually seem to be aware anything had happened. Not worth the argument to try to convince him right then, if that were the case, and besides which they'd both still been quite drunk. Snogging seemed a better option.
Over the course of the next few days Eric had witnessed a half-dozen or so more of the vacant spells, of varying length and with varying degrees of automatic behaviour. He also determined that, for the most part, Sherlock had no awareness of them whatsoever. Eric had worried that might mean he'd get offended when Eric finally figured out how to broach the subject, ask if he knew how often he spaced out, but he'd done nothing of the sort. Instead he'd got all anxious and bloody apologised. Like he'd thought Eric would be cross with him. Plainly then he'd had this issue for some time and been scolded harshly for it in the past. Yet another clue as to how fucked up his home life had been.
Thankfully the tactic Eric had used that first night turned out to be an extremely reliable method of breaking Sherlock out of trances. With repetition it turned into a bit of a silly little ritual: say his name to get his attention, make some sort of skin contact, gentle order to look at Eric. Probably didn't matter where he looked, to be honest, but it was nice to feel like the sight of one's face was helpful.
Turning his back on Racer, Eric grabbed light hold of Sherlock's nearest wrist with his good hand.
"Sherlock," he said, enunciating as clearly as possible, aiming for that particular firm yet calm tone. "Look at me."
As with every other time, the trance broke immediately. Sherlock's eyes snapped back into focus and he blinked, frowned, then shifted his gaze to Eric.
"Weren't you on the other side of the table?" he asked, suddenly confused. Yep. Zero awareness.
Despite the dour circumstances Eric quirked an exasperated smile.
"Yeah, mate. Turns out I could teleport this whole time."
Sherlock frowned for the sarcasm but seemed to deem it not worth acknowledging. Instead he huffed a frustrated sigh and drew his knees up to bury his face against them.
"Fuck's sake, why does this keep happening?" he mumbled into the little ball he'd created. Eric took the opportunity to glance over his shoulder - Benny had moved in, engaged Racer in conversation, seemed to have convinced him to go off somewhere. As he drew the vile man away Eric's friend glanced back at him with a little wink and a smile. Eric smiled back. Good ol' Benny.
Back to the more pressing matter, though. Eric had a fairly good guess as to why this kept happening, especially why it kept happening whenever Racer turned up, but telling Sherlock his problems were the result of failing to process trauma seemed unlikely to help. Bit hypocritical, too.
"I dunno, mate," Eric answered instead. Sherlock was on the wrong side of him to be able to hug, on account of the cast, so he did the next best thing and just scooted close enough to share body heat. "Could be worse, I guess? Least you snap out of it easy enough."
"Only if you're around to do it. Eventually it's going to happen while you're off somewhere and I'll be stuck staring like a fucking idiot and get murdered or something. Miracle I've not been already, considering there's no bloody way to predict it."
Eric gave an amused snort, causing Sherlock to lift his head and shoot him a perplexed glare through his fringe. This just made Eric laugh properly instead, both because Sherlock now looked like a sulking toddler and because he couldn't believe the idiot seriously hadn't noticed how Eric always managed to be around for these spells.
"Sherly, why th' fuck do you think I came over here to sit with you instead of stickin' with Benny?"
"Because he was… after some girl?" Sherlock hedged, his glare dropping into a look of vaguely annoyed confusion. Eric just laughed again.
"Jesus christ, you daft ponce."
Finally Sherlock seemed to catch on. "Wait… can you tell when I'm about to freeze up?"
"Nah, mate, I just conveniently happen t'be right next t'you every single time."
Eric's bland sarcasm earned him a childish pout, made even funnier by Sherlock still being sat curled up in a sad little ball, and then funnier still when his response to Eric snickering was to go to all the bother of extricating an arm just to swat at his shoulder like a petulant cat.
"Stop laughing! Tell me how you know when it's going to happen!"
"I just can! It ain't somethin' explainable!"
Sherlock huffed, but had thankfully by this point learnt that sort of answer meant there'd be no use trying to argue. Instead he rested his chin on his knees with a thoughtful sort of frown.
"Could you… say something ahead of time, maybe? When you notice? There might be a pattern I can spot."
Eric was still smiling from his laughing fit, but it drifted a bit towards melancholy. Well, there was definitely a pattern, but likely not one he'd be able to spot. Not until his defences lowered enough to let him see how badly he'd been hurt, at any rate. Still, though, no harm letting him try.
"Sure. I'll warn ya."
That earned him a smile - one of those rare, genuine ones that smoothed over all the cracks and hard edges and let Eric pretend for an instant they were just regular blokes having a laugh.
In a fit of silly fantasy he allowed himself to imagine them being like that for real, someday. Far in the future, perhaps, having somehow skipped the bitter end to all this. How might they both look, fully grown into their awkward height? Would they have proper jobs? Families? Bills to pay and businesses to manage? Would Sherlock ever take full stock of the horrors he'd buried? Could Eric face the part of him still stood frozen over lifeless bodies, screaming?
He shook his head to clear it and huffed a rueful laugh. Fuck's sake, how absurd. Burnouts like them living actual lives.
Sherlock shot him a curious look but didn't bother asking what was funny. Instead he shifted around until he'd got himself sat in a more proper direction, then flopped sideways to rest his head on Eric's shoulder. Eric turned and pressed a kiss to tangled curls.
Nah, they'd never be adults. Growing up was something real people did, not walking collections of trauma.
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