The Trapeze Swinger

Rating: M(?)
Pairings: Sherlock/OC
Warnings: Heavy drug use (mainly weed), implied child abuse, Eric's usual dubious cockney accent

What up, I decided to crosspost this after all. (It was posted to AO3, like, a month ago.)

(For anyone who may have arrived through the 'new' queue: This is a missing scene from a series I wrote over a decade ago, abandoned for eight years, and recently started uploading missing bits I've found in a fit of nostalgia. Main story is a nebulously canon-compliant imagining of Sherlock's descent into cocaine addiction at the age of 20. Along the way I created a temporary love interest for him whom I appear to have described in my notes as "what if a rabbit were a person" but who thankfully grew more complex over time. Half this story is from his point of view.)

Wrote the first draft of this a decade ago in response to people wanting to see the scene Eric is referring to in chapter three of Internet Killed the Video Star ("... and if he don't do it then I'm gonna start repeatin' every dumbarse thing he said th'other night when I got 'im stoned t'hell and we-") but chickened out of posting it because I was in my early 20s or whatever and talking about boners made me excruciatingly uncomfortable.

I'm still pretty uncomfortable about that! But with age I have perhaps gained enough mental fortitude to get over it and share this anyway. Mainly because it's an overall nice bit of character work with some decent writing, and there's a whole chunk where I clearly wanted to try describing how I experience being way too stoned and got delightfully carried away.

I've censored the sexy bits (with PG-13 descriptions so as not to break narrative flow) cause I have no idea how strict FFnet is about that nonsense these days. If you're desperate for those three or four paragraphs in their original state you'll have to look up Basser on AO3 and find this fic over there instead.

Also, there are two songs referenced in the first half which you may enjoy listening to for a more immersive experience.

First off, a guitar rendition of Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso in A Minor, Op. 28: youtube/RQP4S01_Xck

Second, The Trapeze Swinger by Iron & Wine, 2006 acoustic version: youtube/Bywv_yjSgHc

««

Days of the week held very little meaning when one made a habit of remaining awake through several of them at a stretch, but Sherlock thought vaguely that it might be a Thursday. Impossible to be sure, and he certainly didn't care enough to check. But wondering vaguely about it still took up some amount of processing power as he allowed Eric to succeed in dragging him off towards the stairs to bed.

Wasn't tired in the least, of course, and ordinarily he'd have whinged on that theme until the other man gave up and left him to his own devices. But it seemed they'd spent enough time in each other's company now for Sherlock to have gained the ability to tell via some nebulous, illogical sixth sense that Eric wasn't actually trying to get him to sleep. He just wanted to spend a bit of time together without Rhys constantly butting in. And, fair enough, the boy had been more of a nuisance than usual today. Sherlock decided he could probably afford a few hours away from his purification setup, especially given it was his fault anyway they'd found themselves sheltering a shiftless 14 year-old.

Eric had lit a joint on his way up the stairs, and upon entering the bedroom propped it between his lips as he switched on the small guitar amp he'd connected to a beat-up mp3 player. A song he'd been inexplicably playing on repeat the past few days started up - some meandering lyrical folk piece Sherlock hadn't bothered to ask the name of. Despite Eric having only downloaded the file a few days ago he'd already played it enough times for Sherlock to have inadvertently memorised both melody and lyrics. No idea why he felt a need to keep playing a single song over and over like this - asking directly had elicited one of those vague non-answers Eric used when he wanted to signal that a topic was off-limits without having to explain any further, so Sherlock had let it drop. Took instead to conspiring to switch the music to that Irish punk group Eric hated whenever the repetition got to be too annoying, as a form of civil disobedience.

Meaning to follow Eric's lead on smoking, Sherlock went for his own pocket but found only an empty cardboard box. Oh, right. He'd smoked the last fag in this pack. Must have forgot to grab a new one. Carton was in the kitchen cupboard with all his lab glassware. Bit of a walk. Well, no matter, just improvise.

As Eric straightened back up Sherlock caught him round the waist from behind, leant around the man's shoulder and with the deft ease of a pickpocket lifted the joint from between his lips whilst distracting him with a kiss. Drew away towards the bed with the now-stolen joint hanging from his own lips instead, casual as if it had been there all along. This time of day Eric was usually smoking something more tobacco than weed, and petty theft was far less hassle than walking all the way back downstairs.

"Careful," Eric warned, sounding irritated by the brazen crime but not enough to actually do anything about it. "That ain't a spliff, it's one o' the joints Benny rolled up fer me wrist. Shit kicks like a horse."

"I'll be fine." Sherlock flipped a hand dismissively. Managed to take a drag without coughing, which felt like a grand accomplishment, and grabbed Eric's guitar from beside the bed where he'd last left it.

Eric rolled his eyes and fished another joint out of the flip case he kept in his pocket, apparently deciding to just let Sherlock keep that one. They both fell to their own activities sat on the bed together; Eric doing something on his laptop, Sherlock idly playing along to the looping folk song whilst doing his best to pretend his perception of reality wasn't beginning to warp out of coherence. Eric had been right, as usual - whatever Ben had added to this joint was ridiculously potent and Sherlock had nowhere near enough tolerance to handle it. Damned if he'd admit to that, though.

"When did you learn the words to this?" Eric suddenly asked. Sherlock blinked over at him.

"What?"

"Yer singin' along. Didn't think you even liked this song."

Sherlock hadn't been aware he'd been singing, but then he wasn't especially aware of anything at the moment. He wondered vaguely where the joint in his mouth had gone. Eric must have confiscated it. Obviously not before letting Sherlock's predictable pigheadedness drive him to smoke himself stupid, of course, the conniving arse.

"I don't. It's boring and repetitive."

"But y'learnt the whole thing." Eric's face had crept towards a fondly exasperated smile as he continued to focus on whatever he was doing.

Sherlock turned back to the guitar with a shrug. "Not on purpose."

Some indeterminate length of time (which felt like a horrifying stretch of endless eternity, but which Sherlock had by now learnt to remind himself was really only a few minutes) passed them by. Eric had switched the amp-turned-speaker off at some point in favour of listening to the guitar adaptation of Saint-Saëns Op. 28 Sherlock had shifted into playing. The complex virtuosic arrangement had once upon a time been his best audition piece, and was therefore so thoroughly seared into his brain he'd been able to transpose nearly the entire thing from memory over the past few weeks.

"You always make that song sound so normal at first and then it just goes right off the fuckin' rails," Eric said with a laugh after Sherlock managed to get through most of an entire rendition at-speed, only needing to slow down for a few of the longer runs.

"That's how it's supposed to be, the composer deliberately made it as infuriating as possible to piss off his violinist friend." No idea where he'd heard that, or honestly if it was even factually true, but his childhood self having found that scrap of trivia incredibly funny nevertheless comprised most of the reason he'd settled on Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso as his showpiece performance in the first place.

Eric laughed, apparently also finding that funny, which was a nice bit of vindication. With no real intent to do so Sherlock switched back to playing Eric's lyrical folk song. Became aware this time, dimly, when he started singing, but Eric's response to it was to go still and smile softly down at his laptop, so Sherlock made no effort to stop. Decided instead to see if he knew all the words.

"How th'hell do you remember every single line in order like that?" Eric asked with a note of faint awe in his voice. He shifted around to show his screen, where he'd apparently pulled up the lyrics and had been following along.

"Dunno, just do." Sherlock's voice came out a bit of a poorly-enunciated mumble. Cognition was growing unreasonably difficult, couldn't quite figure out how to talk and play guitar at the same time. "Probably I'll forget it all again when m'not so bloody stoned."

Navigating an instrument would doubtless become impossible soon, so he reluctantly set the guitar aside. Spent his last few relatively functional mental processing cycles regretting the rash decision to steal Eric's joint - hadn't thought it'd hit this hard, going off how little Eric seemed to be affected. Always managed to forget how vast the gap between their tolerance levels was.

Eric smirked at him. An undertone of smugness betrayed that he had, in fact, intentionally let Sherlock smoke way too much.

"Yeah well maybe that's what y'get for nicking other people's drugs, dumbarse," he admonished with a light shove to the side of Sherlock's head.

Sherlock was a bit beyond being able to respond to that in any capacity besides pushing Eric's laptop out of the way (eliciting an affronted "oi!") and replacing it with himself instead, slumped face-down in an inelegant heap across the man's legs like an uncomfortable blanket. Eric grumbled something about how he could've just asked, but rather than object to the new arrangement he simply set his computer on top of Sherlock's back, which was fine. Didn't mind being used as a table so long as it meant he could remain draped over Eric's legs. Needed the grounding effect of physical contact as a tether whilst he tried to get a handle on what in god's name his brain was doing.

It was as if the gossamer threads connecting his thoughts to one another in their usual intricate tapestry of tangential branching spiders' webs had all suddenly vanished. Ideas coalesced, were briefly acknowledged, and then... nothing. No triggered avalanche of related concepts, no rambling internal monologue. He just had a head full of orphaned bits of useless knowledge all rattling around in a bewildered jumble, bereft of their sprawling mental latticework.

Of course he couldn't very well put such realisations to words, organise the problem within a framework of language as he usually would, as no sooner did he grasp the root of the issue than he immediately forgot it once more - thoughts pushed aside for the next random kernel of an idea his brain queued up. Like an assembly line, almost. Thoughts coming along in an orderly procession one after another instead of each spawning a hundred simultaneous tangents racing off into eternity.

It... wasn't unpleasant, he supposed. Certainly a change from what he was used to. But... also not particularly enjoyable? He felt oddly as if he'd been hobbled in some way; like a rocket with a speed limiter. On some level he could still feel his brain functioning with the same multi-process hyperefficiency as it always had, but the information was being restricted to fleeting glimpses through a pinhole. He was naught but a passive observer to the bright coil of terrifying complexity lodged within his skull.

"Time get stuck again?" Eric's voice eventually cut in after some unknowable duration. Felt a hand brushing his fringe aside, trying to get a better look at his face. Checking for whatever signs Eric used to deduce whether the unstable mess he called a boyfriend was about to have a panic attack or freeze up or otherwise descend into madness, presumably. Sherlock didn't think he was, or at the very least not over the time distortion thing - he'd more or less figured out how to cope with the way every second seemed to hang motionless in the ether. No, his main problem at the moment had more to do with not being able to participate in his own cognition.

"I think my... brain is functioning independently of my conscious will," he explained in a bewildered mumble.

For some reason Eric laughed. "Your what is what?"

"My brain... conscious..." Sherlock trailed off, blinking, then screwed up his face as the thought he'd been trying to convey abruptly disappeared through the pinhole in his head. "... oh my god I have no idea what I'm even thinking about," he continued. Then, struck with a new idea (which had apparently usurped the old one), he shifted to properly look up at Eric. "Is this what it's like to be stupid?"

"Er... I dunno, maybe?" Eric quirked a smile at him. "What's yer brain usually doin', then?"

"Normally there's... I can..." Sherlock's right hand (the left was currently pinned under his chest) was making a strange gesture, which was probably meant to be aiding his point, but at the moment he hadn't the faintest clue what he was trying to convey by it. "I can only think of one thing at a time!" he finally managed to blurt out, voice gone faintly scandalised. "I mean now, that is, because of the... there's supposed to be... it's like a spiderweb."

"Are you tryin' to say you normally think of like a hundred different things at once?" Eric clarified for him, inexplicably snickering. "And now y'can't?"

"Yes!" Sherlock exclaimed. Then, because Eric was still grinning like a complete arse, "It isn't funny!"

Eric just sniggered harder. "It sort've is, though."

"No it's not!" Sherlock objected. "I can still feel all the... all the genius nonsense going on but I can't access any of it! What if something happens!? I'm completely useless like this!"

"You ain't useless, mate. Calm down."

Eric was plainly trying to be reassuring but Sherlock was having none of it. Quite suddenly he found himself filled with a pervasive sense of terror - a deep-seated conviction that he needed to be able to think multi-procedurally right now, that all those bits of data hovering just out of his reach could mean the difference between safety and yet another round of excruciating pain. Father could be anywhere and Sherlock wasn't able to hold enough simultaneous thoughts in his head to both keep track of the man's movements and predict what behaviour he'd be expecting next.

Sherlock's facial expression must have morphed into some sort of barely-constrained panic, because Eric's amused smile shifted towards vague (if somewhat exasperated) concern.

"Hey, really. It's fine. Shit'll wear off in a bit, you'll be alright. No harm done." Eric patted him on the head but Sherlock wasn't paying the slightest attention. Too important to keep on the alert for heavy footfalls round the corner.

"No, no no it's not fine it's- I have to be able to think so I can- what if he's angry, I won't be- have to figure out what he wants me to- whatever I did this time-" Sherlock muttered in a daze. His single channel of thought had become thoroughly overrun by a fragmented cascade of distorted memories.

««

Eric frowned and set his computer aside (already found the album he'd been looking for anyway- just waiting for the download to finish now) then shifted his legs to try to get Sherlock to roll over a bit so as to properly see his face. Grey eyes empty with a sort of blank fear - an expression Eric knew very well at this point. That familiar stab of unease shot through his gut, and he instinctively went to snap him out of the dissociative state. Wasn't actually sure if their silly little ritual would work while the moron was this stoned, but had to at least try.

But, then… as the guy kept mumbling, Eric realised this wasn't actually one of his disconnected spells. Or at least not quite. Seemed more like a panic attack… but also not quite that either? Benny's specialty strain must've scrambled the poor bastard's brain so badly it produced some bizarre combination of the two. Well, best take stock and figure out how to untie whatever mental knot the daft genius had got himself into this time.

He seemed to have lost track of when and where he was, like he'd often do just before spacing out. But was also keeping up a running stream of disjointed muttering around a central theme, which usually happened when he'd done too much coke and/or got himself into an anxiety loop about something. Wasn't stuck on any of the usual topics like time moving wrong or Mandy taking photos of him, though. Instead it all seemed to do with figuring out how to appease some all-powerful, vengeful man whose rules made no sense and whose wrath knew no bounds.

Well. No prizes for sussing out who that might be.

"Sherlock, hey," Eric said gently, cupping the other's face. Sherlock seemed to startle at the contact and blinked up at him, eyes wide and a bit lost. "Yer dad's not here, mate. It's just us."

They locked gazes for a long moment, and, mercifully, Sherlock seemed to centre himself a bit.

"He… he knows where I am, though," he countered, still looking disorientated but at least more aware of his surroundings. Getting better at breaking himself out of drug-induced feedback loops. "Always does."

Eric shrugged but didn't argue the point. Always best to just go along with paranoid fears rather than create more stress trying to disprove anything. Though one did have to admit that in this specific case the concern likely wasn't paranoid at all - Eric had pieced together enough offhand remarks by now to conclude that the Holmes patriarch was more or less a real-life James Bond, impossible spy gadgets and all. Bloke almost certainly did know exactly where his children were at all times. Even (perhaps especially) the one he'd disowned.

Whether that was an actual problem however seemed more a question of if the man wanted to do anything with the information. And if he could somehow show up here without alerting them well ahead of time. Both seemed dubious.

"So what if he knows?" Eric replied, scoffing. As he continued he intentionally leant into his accent a bit, aiming to sound like a brashly over-confident chav. "Ain't no proper gentleman like him gettin' within a mile of this fuckin' rat's nest without some tosser outside bein' all 'oi, what's this fella in the suit about!', and then we'd just run out the back afore he found ya."

Sherlock stared him down a beat longer. Then, just as Eric hoped might happen, he burst out laughing. He curled his body around further and hugged Eric round the midsection, trying to stifle a giggling fit by burying his face against Eric's stomach. Eric smiled and ruffled the idiot's hair.

Felt a bit bad now about letting him smoke so much of that joint, even if he had stolen the damned thing and therefore deserved to suffer the consequences. Just hadn't intended the consequences to be quite this severe - he'd figured Sherlock would've built up at least some tolerance to marijuana by now, with how often he nicked Eric's spliffs and just generally existed near a continuous cloud of pot smoke. At this point it seemed like it had to be a biology thing. Related to whatever strange quirk of his brain allowed cocaine to calm him down, perhaps? Wondered vaguely if he had odd reactions to any other drugs.

A few companionable moments passed, both of them occupied with their own thoughts.

Unbidden, Eric's mind went back to the song he'd been playing over and over the last few days. He'd stumbled across it in one of the batch files of random obscure music he liked to download off the internet, and found himself transfixed by the lyrics. Desperately wished he could grab his guitar and learn the whole thing, but given that playing music wasn't an option right now he'd instead made due with putting the file on repeat in an attempt to memorise the song. Wanted to be able to pick it up easily later, when his wrist healed and the cast finally came off.

Sherlock had asked why, of course, and Eric had very nearly told him; that the meandering lyrics made him think of the two of them, of how they'd inevitably be separated by some awful outcome soon, how he hoped they might still remember each other afterwards, even if the outcome turned out to be death, and how the trapeze swinger lines in particular brought to mind Sherlock with his constant precarious balancing act between high and crashing.

But, as he'd tried to think of how best to word all that, he'd realised Sherlock's response would doubtless be the blank confusion of someone who'd never in a million years waste brainpower reflecting on silly things like how song lyrics applied to his life. And that had seemed like it might take away a bit of the magic. So Eric had decided to keep his musings to himself instead. Replied with a non-answer and hoped Sherlock got the hint to drop the subject. Which he had, thankfully.

What he'd also done, somehow, was memorise the entire bloody song. And then, directly after calling it boring and repetitive, had seen fit to sing the damned thing to him.

Trapeze swinger, indeed - vacillating wildly between oblivious arse and incredibly sweet.

Eric huffed a small sigh to himself and considered the man curled up over his lap. Looked deceptively innocent, for now. Soon enough he'd be up to some manner of insane horseshit, and Eric would once again be left wondering what he'd ever been thinking agreeing to date a psychotic junkie. They'd bicker, Sherlock would calm down, they'd find a compromise that allowed Eric to convince himself their relationship wasn't quite as dysfunctional as it seemed. Things would swing back to fine for a while, then slowly come unhinged again. And on and on it would go like that, until they reached the inevitable end.

Because the trapeze act was wonderful, but never meant to last.

««

Peaceful coexistence, of course, could never last long where Sherlock was concerned. Even with his hyperactive brain hobbled by medical-grade THC. Barely five minutes of companionable silence had elapsed before his usual inability to tolerate prolonged inactivity manifested itself in abruptly lifting his head from Eric's stomach and peering up at him with a devious, calculating look.

"... what?" Eric asked after a frankly inappropriate amount of time being stared at.

In a sudden frenzy of motion, Sherlock attacked. Managed to tackle Eric against the mattress with an alarmingly coordinated display of strategy for someone stoned off their face - straddled Eric's hips first to limit available core strength, prevented effective use of the cast as leverage by pressing across the width of his shoulders with a forearm, then finally caught his good arm and held it down near the elbow to keep it from lifting. The overall effect was that Eric went from sitting upright to pinned flat on his back, totally unable to move, in a tad under three seconds. Barely enough time for the spike of panicked fear to finish shooting through his gut. He stared wide-eyed as Sherlock fixed him with a smirk which was deeply confusing for how it toed the line between seductive and dangerous.

Probably meant to be seductive, Eric guessed. After all, this was the same bloke who not twenty minutes ago had been singing a song he claimed not to like apparently solely because he'd noticed Eric smiling over it. Still, though, it was difficult not to acknowledge that despite Sherlock's current state of being utterly trashed on at least three different drugs the lunatic remained quite capable of killing a man.

"Alright, um… are ya tryin' to shag me or murder me?" Eric decided to try asking. Mainly in hopes of getting Sherlock to realise that had been a bit terrifying.

To his credit, he did seem to catch on, and with a smile halfway between apologetic and embarrassed shifted to rest his forearms on either side of Eric's head instead.

"Shag you," he clarified, ducking his head for a kiss. Eric let him do so, and reluctantly accepted that their current position was doing a fair job of making his jeans uncomfortable, but managed to remain somewhat on track. Felt like he had to at least attempt to make it clear that sudden physical aggression from a mentally unstable cocaine addict with a known capacity for extreme violence would not be appreciated.

"Rather y'just said as much, yeah? Instead of scarin' the piss outta me."

Sherlock drew back and pouted at him slightly. "You know I wouldn't hurt you."

"I know y'wouldn't mean to hurt me," Eric corrected in as stern a tone as he could muster given the increasingly difficult-to-ignore effects of a cute bloke straddling his hips.

Predictably, all this admonishment got him was a playful bite to the side of his neck, doubtless intended as a cheeky deflection of the point he'd been trying to make. Which would've struck him as unacceptably flippant had it not put him well past the point of being able to pretend he wasn't nineteen years old and incredibly hard.

Sherlock abruptly straightened up and stripped off his hoodie and shirt in one motion, which ratcheted the incredibly hard point a few ticks higher up the priority list. Tossing them aside he leant back over and kissed him again.

"It's not just shagging for shagging's sake, though," he said in a comically serious tone given the wording. "It's an experiment."

Eric could only manage a questioning noise as he tugged his own shirt off, having to be much less graceful about it owing to the cast.

Unfortunately Sherlock didn't seem to be in a mood to elaborate. Or, perhaps, had simply become distracted getting Eric's trousers undone, which admittedly was very distracting to Eric as well, and then became exponentially more distracting by means of slick heat and a probing tongue.

[REDACTED: It is established that Sherlock prefers receiving but is otherwise the more dominant partner (power bottom) and that they've slept together enough times by now to have developed a habitual default position with him on top, so they do that, but then Sherlock in his manic way-too-stoned state suddenly insists on being up against the wall with Eric behind him instead. Eric hesitates because he's aware that this is probably the position Racer used, but because he's a horny 19 year old and Sherlock is very bossy he's quickly convinced to ignore better judgement and keep going. Nothing bad happens and business concludes as expected.]

Immediately they collapsed in a boneless, panting heap. Hot flesh slid apart, making a mess of the sheets. Through the post-orgasm haze he found Sherlock's face, turned it towards him so as to steal another kiss, gazed into eyes now sparkling with giddy euphoria and an odd sort of triumph.

"What're you so bleedin' smug about?" he asked once he felt capable of drawing the breath required.

"I was right, my brain couldn't process anything else. Being fucked from behind didn't trigger any flashbacks."

"That's what yer experiment was?" Despite the lull of afterglow the revelation that he'd come this close to triggering a potentially violent flashback in the middle of sex launched a sudden stab of outraged alarm through his chest.

Sherlock at least had the good sense to look contrite about it.

"Sorry. I meant to explain but got distracted and forgot. You did go along with it even after it should've been obvious what I was doing, though, so..."

Eric huffed a resigned sigh and willed his heart to slow down a bit. Alright, true enough. Sherlock had been an irresponsible idiot, Eric had failed to overcome being a horny teenager. Perhaps they were both as bad as each other. Still. Unwelcome.

"Fine. But don't ever pull that shit again," he muttered grumpily.

"Wasn't planning to. Just wanted to overwrite the negative association with a positive one while we had the opportunity."

Being referred to as a 'positive association' went a long way towards quelling Eric's anger, but he still tried to keep a bit of pique going on principle. Sherlock, of course, simply carried on talking with cheerful indifference, brain presumably now thoroughly scattered by endorphins on top of all the other chemicals he'd already been high on.

"I had thought I preferred that position, but in retrospect I think I'd actually more just got used to it? Most of the blokes Victor and I picked up together just wanted a quick shag so it was more convenient, I guess."

"Most of them?" Eric asked faintly. Noted with faint irritation that, as usual, Sherlock had managed to derail Eric from being justifiably cross by the simple act of saying something strange or confusing. Debated on calling attention to the tactic. Ugh… no. Wouldn't be worth it. Better to just drop the issue. Not like continuing to be angry would have any chance of improving Sherlock's future behaviour anyway. "… wait, how many blokes have you been with?"

Sherlock blinked, shifted his gaze away as if trying to remember. Frowned. "Erm… I don't know? Victor and I went out most weekends for a couple months, usually got a few per night so I guess maybe call that twenty, and then he talked me into going to a gay sauna with him that one time and I wasn't really keeping count there but at least four. So about two dozen all told seems a reasonable estimate. Give or take."

Eric fixed him with a baffled stare and tried not to let the confusing mix of feeling both alarmed and utterly outdone show on his face. Christ, he'd thought his grand total of three quite decent at his age. How in god's name was anyone supposed to compete with about two dozen, give or take?

Luckily the idiot was still incredibly spaced out and didn't seem to be paying Eric's conflicted facial expression any mind.

"I don't know that I typically liked it all that much, mind you. Especially not the group stuff. But Vic said experimentation was the entire point of uni and to stop being so boring so I went with him and tried not to be boring. Which for the most part meant letting him and whoever we'd picked up that night fuck me."

"Sounds… sounds like he kinda took advantage of you?" Eric replied, still a bit wrong-footed but trying to stay with the conversation. Sherlock blinked at him again, quirked an exasperated smile.

"Well, yeah, obviously. I didn't mind too much though if it meant we could keep being friends."

Eric's face twisted into a light scowl and he opened his mouth to disapprove, but then realised there was hardly much point bringing up any trite notions of self-worth or whatever. Developing a crippling drug addiction and dropping out of one of the most prestigious universities in the world to do kitchen chemistry for a drugs distribution ring wasn't exactly something a person did if 'well-adjusted' had ever been part of their vocabulary. Plus it wasn't like Eric had much room to talk, what with how often he'd let Luce boss him around on similar motivations.

"Wait," he realised instead, his inadvertent thought of Luce having brought to mind one of the more unpleasant aspects of that relationship. "You always had to bottom, then? I'd be fine wit' swapping, if you-"

Sherlock cut him off with a light press of fingertips to Eric's lips.

"You're such a bloody moron," he muttered fondly. His fingers shifted to draw delicate patterns on his cheek as if tracing the freckles there, eyes idly following the movement. "I can barely tolerate being touched, what makes you think I'd ever want to try being inside someone?"

"I… dunno? I definitely like it better. Always hated when Luce wanted to top."

"Then why the fuck would you suggest I do it?" Under normal conditions Sherlock might have said this in an irritated tone, but at the moment it just came out sort of affectionately bemused. He remained quietly fascinated by Eric's freckles.

"Um, I… I s'pose it just seemed like I should? If you'd not had the choice?"

Sherlock's fingers stopped tracing patterns on his cheek and shifted to cup his jaw instead.

"How about no more stupid suggestions and just go along with whatever I say, since you've obviously no idea what you're doing," he said in a tone just a tad too silly to come off as arrogant, then drew their faces together for a kiss.

[REDACTED: They immediately go another round thanks to having the stamina of a pair of adolescent boys full of hormones and drugs, however the act is described in much less detail this time, because the main focus is that Eric risks doing something potentially overstimulating that would normally get his hand smacked away, but is instead allowed to continue as evidently he's now trusted not to be an idiot about it. They fall asleep cuddling.]

««