I can resist angst and guilt thank you to @evil-masdane on this post for the inspo! Here's something I wrote at my work desk while we suffered the aircon not even slightly coping 🫠 #BunnyMandersTortureHour really got away from me 🔥
What If: Bunny Gets Permanent Hearing Damage in A Costume Piece 773 words - read on AO3
When Reuben pulls the trigger, I expect the shot to be louder. I listen for anything at all, and splinters of wood glance the shell of my ear, and pressure like my head is under running water.
A pain begins to pierce its way from my eardrum all the way through until my skull, and pain becomes an all encompassing thing that cradles me; the hot bruises blossoming on my face, my ribs, my wrists. It hurts so frightfully that he must have hit me, but I reach for my ears, and my fingers come away without a trace of blood - nothing. Rosenthall's living room spins sluggishly around me, and I spin too. I wish I were still tied up to that chair now, because I'm not sure where the floor is.
There's a policeman, finally, for I see imposing navy blue and helmet, but I make nothing much of anything of the calamity. There's the screech like the steel breaks of a train so loud in the room, can't he hear it too? I cannot make out the words he's saying. Strong arms put me in cuffs, a gentler hand still than has been on me for the past hour, and I stagger against him while my world is still tumbling over and over.
I did not know him at first.
I cannot hear that subtle curl of his words, and I can hardly stand to look at his face, but he squeezes my arm in comfort, just once firmly, and he smells of Sullivan's cigarettes.
It took three night to get any decent sleep with the whistle and the swelling, but then as people do with all things, I learned to make do.
Raffles did not apologise; I do not think he can, but do know he was sorry for it.
I never needed to tell him to always sit on my right-hand side to speak to me as we walked or sat in train carriages or at the theatre. He keeps his hands clear of his mouth as he gestures and ponders sat across from me at the table at the club, although I am sure it has been his habit in the past. When we go out for the means to keep ourselves, I do not need to ask for him to tug on my sleeve when at watch, save I miss some subtle sound that has alerted him. He never mentions any of it.
When, years later, he returns to England from Australia in need of spectacles and his eyesight poor, I try to afford him the same patience, and he begins to understand.
I do forgive him, I think. For the leaving, or for the shot, it is hard to say. It comes and goes sometimes enough for me to forget about it altogether. But when my left ear rings at night with a pitch that keeps me from my dreams, I remember the minutes in that terrible room on the hearth-rug when I wondered if I would ever see him again, or anybody, or anything. The miserable half an hour they spent at supper while I lay there, with only the blooming pain across my body to keep me company. Truth be told, if I could have been quick or quiet enough, perhaps I could have made it out, trussed and bound like that. But in my despair, if it were Raffles who'd left me here, then there I would lay all night. Then the pitch becomes part of the background of a room, like the Venetian blinds rattling in the wind, the hiss of the gas pipes, the clatter of the cabs to and fro in the night outside the window, and I can sleep with it.
Raffles remembers when he speaks lowly in the dim light of a fire over whisky and cigarettes and I look at him blankly, furrow my brow as I try to make out what it is from the movement of his lips, and it is because the ringing in my ears is louder than his voice, and he can see it. As our intimacy increased, so did his feeling badly for it. He annunciates beautifully, and usually it is no trouble, really. The staccato sounds he can make with his to tongue and his teeth can be softened out, but when I pen them down, I can imagine the devilish music in it. I did not know him so long before it, and much longer after. Sometimes it is bothersome, more so when I was a young man, these things; my youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down, now*. When it is maddening I utter words over it, and he lets me, offers me a patient smile although I know it wears on him. He knows that had he been any smarter, any faster, any braver, I would not bear the damage of what it cost to trust him, when he was yet to trust me. A foolish thing, to think of it now.
