Art Imitates Life

Chapter 1: Angel

It was a little after seven when I heard a resounding knock on the front door of the Stackhouse family farmhouse. I walked genially over to the door, and stuck my hand on the knob. I didn't peek through the peephole because hey, I was expecting Pam. Pam works at Fangtasia, and she's probably the closest thing I have to a vampire gal pal. I mean, sure, Tara Thornton (though not so much lately), Arlene (really not so much now that she'd started dating that guy from the FotS), and Amelia (my witchy bisexual roommate) are my gal pals, but they aren't vampires and I can't really talk to them about my vampire uh…boyfriends. I mean, I can, and I do, but it isn't the same perspective. Anyway, I had invited Pam over to spend the evening watching my favorite program on DVD, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I figured we could munch and talk and watch tv and paint our toenails. It'd be fun to just relax and be girls for the night.

I should have looked through the peephole though. I mean, it was installed for a reason. People were always coming by unannounced. It'd been quiet for a month and I hadn't gotten into any scrapes or accidents or bad encounters with supernatural types. But your luck always runs out. Eric Northman was standing on my doorstep.

He smiled at me, an Eric sort of smile that makes my knees knock together and my heart pound a little faster. I hadn't seen Eric for a few weeks, and I almost wanted to admit that I'd missed him. Half of me missed the way I felt when I was around him. We'd shared our blood enough that we had this kind of mysterious and magical bond that, frankly, I didn't understand. When he was around me, I felt like I was being held and caressed not by a lover but by a very close friend or protector. That didn't make a lot of sense to me, Sookie, independent woman of the 21st century. When he was happy, I was happy. When he was angry, I was fuming. I felt like one of those clingy, ditzy girls who wait around for their man to come home, hoping for some drop of attention. Gross. I was so not that girl. The other half of me just missed his quirky, confident, jovial personality. Eric is the sort of guy you just want to be around. He laughs a lot. He smiles. He teases you, but not in a frustrating way. A vampire with a sense of humor seems weird, especially if you ever watch old episodes of Buffy, or if you met my ex-lover, Bill Compton.

"Sookie," Eric said, tilting his head slightly toward me. Vampires don't shake hands. "Pam had a date, so she sent me along in her place."

"Uh…" I said, trying to wiggle out of my thoughts and address him. Gran would have rolled over in her grave if I didn't invite him in. Of course, he already had that kind of mystical permission to enter. He was being polite. I was raised to be polite too. "Come on in!"

"Thank you." Eric walked over the threshold and I shut the door behind him. We stood awkwardly in the hall while I tried to think of another sentence.

"I hope you didn't have anything too feminine planned. I admit that I know very little about feminine rituals."

"Oh, well, I was going to braid Pam's hair and paint her toenails." I said jokingly, even though that was exactly what I'd planned. Eric's hair was loose around his shoulders. I knew he had a preference for off-beat attire, but I thought toe nail paint would be a little too quirky, even for him.

"Ah," Eric breathed, or would have breathed if he did that sort of thing.

"Can I…get you a drink?" I blinked. Wow, Gran would have been beating me over the head right now. I was the worst Southern hostess in the history of time.

"Ah, yes, thank you."

I puttered into the kitchen. Eric and I had once made love on that table. Well, not that table because it burned to the ground, but a table that looked very much like it. I stuck a bottle of O Negative in the microwave. The last time Eric had visited me, we'd been hiding out from the Nevada vampires in my living room. It hadn't been a very romantic time, but I'd still been in a good state of mind. I was always in a good state of mind when Eric was around. The microwave beeped for several seconds before I came back to earth.

Eric was sitting on the couch when I came back into the living room. He was turning a DVD case over in his hands and reading the plot descriptions on the back. I'd picked out my favorite Buffy episodes for Pam, and I'd arranged them in chronological order on the coffee table in front of the television set. I set the bottle down on a coaster in front of Eric, and, after some mental deliberation, sat in the opposite armchair. He looked at me, perhaps surprised that I didn't sit next to him.

"What is this?" He held up the plastic case so that I could see Sarah Michelle Gellar holding a stake on the cover.

"It's a program about a girl that kills vampires, and kinda falls in love with one." I said, trying to break down seven seasons of complicated and dramatic plot into one brief and uncomplicated sentence.

"She kills vampires?" Eric asked, raising an eyebrow. "Interesting."

"They're not really like you…" I said thoughtfully. "Well, mostly."

"You were going to view this with Pam?"

"Yeah. I thought she'd get a kick out of it."

"Will you watch it with me?"

"Uh, sure."

I got out of my seat and took the box from his outstretched hand. He briefly touched my fingers, and I felt a shiver jump down my spine. I had picked my favorite episode of all the seasons first, and it just happened to be one of the most romantic episodes of the whole series. I bent down on the floor to put the disc in, then grabbed the remote off the TV stand and carried it back to my chair. Eric tilted his head slightly and patted the couch cushion. I didn't have an excuse not to sit beside him. Sure, we weren't dating (though that was often the focal point of my fantasies), but Eric wasn't a stranger. I sat carefully on the cushion and leaned against the armrest, tucking a pillow behind my shoulder. With the remote, I flicked through the menu to the episode.

"Okay, so a little back story first," I said before I pushed play. Eric turned to me, listening with the kind of curiosity reserved for those that are actually engaged in a topic. I wondered if Eric got this interested in books and movies too. "This girl, Buffy, is in high school and she fights vampires with her friends at night. She's got these special powers that make her stronger and faster than a human, and she's a good fighter. Anyway, she goes on these missions to stop this head honcho vampire in the town she lives in, and she keeps running into this guy, Angel. She doesn't know anything about Angel except that he's cute and a bit cryptic."

"Head honcho vampire?" Eric asked with a sly smirk. "Like me?"

"Well, I think he's supposed to be like super head honcho, like the King of Louisiana or something. It's not really the same though. He's really evil and ugly and old."

"How old?"

"Probably older than you," I said after thinking a bit. They never said how old the Master was, but since he looked so awful, I figured it was pretty darn old.

"Hm,"

"I think that's all you need to know really. Oh wait, the Master guy…the head-honcho vampire, he's trapped in this underground church by some kind of magic spell."

"I see…" Eric was chuckling a little.

"Anyway, are you ready? Would you like another drink?" He shook his head. With a click of the button, I started the episode.

There was a blip of an opening sequence before the episode even began, and I remembered that this was the first season, before they took that little blip out. Eric looked at me and raised one eyebrow. Even when he looked at me like that, like I was some kind of a kook, I thought he was sexy.

"Sorry, but uh, the forces of darkness?" Eric sniggered.

"It doesn't take itself that seriously, I promise!" I squeaked defensively.

"Right. Right." Eric smirked. The picture changed and the Master was sitting with his boy baddie, the anointed one. Eric made a face.

"He really has no fashion sense," I said thoughtfully.

"Is that blue pleather?"

"I doubt it…" But I wasn't so sure. I tried not to picture Eric in pink tights. Talk about bad fashion sense.

"What's going on with his face?" Eric had tilted his head slightly. He was trying to make out the Master guy through the bad lighting.

"Well, I think it's because he's so old."

"Pardon me, Sookie, but even the oldest vampires do not look like that."

"What about the Ancient Pythoness?" I balked, trying to blot that memory out of my brain.

"Okay, fine, but that's one. One vampire. And she was very old as a human. Are you telling me this vampire was already at death's door when he was turned?"

"He's fictional!"

"He needs night cream."

I sighed and pressed play. I hadn't even realized I'd paused the video. Darla waltzed into the frame and Eric turned his attention back to the screen. "Who's that?"

"That's Darla."

"Nice." Eric took a sip of blood. I rolled my eyes. The credits rolled. This was going to be interesting.

"Ah, that must be the Angel guy?" Eric asked with a mildly impressed air. "Wait, wait, was that it?"

"He's not Superman! I've seen you get beaten up before!"

"That was barely a punch!"

Buffy and Angel were already in the house before Eric stopped yammering. I couldn't help but gaze like a stunned puppy at Angel's naked torso. He really was very pretty. I was certain Eric was watching me out of the corner of his eye. I felt one of those weird blood bond feelings, a sensation of lust that had diddly to do with Angel's nakedness. I adjusted myself on the sofa and tried to concentrate.

"So, she let's the vampire into her house and her bedroom? I like this human."

"She doesn't know he's a vampire yet,"

"Still,"

"At least she doesn't want him to see her naked."

"Oh sure she does. She just doesn't know it yet."

"Pay attention! There's flirting and uh…it's very innocent. She's only sixteen."

"Who are those people? Where does he spend the day?"

The scene had switched to the good old high school library. Eric was staring intently at the screen. He seemed unusually absorbed in the material. At some parts, he laughed, especially when the vampires came back onto the screen.

"They're killing their own kind? Over a human?"

"Doesn't seem so unusual. You killed Longshadow."

"There were other reasons."

"Okay, so you didn't answer my question," Eric said after a few minutes. "What did he do during the day?"

"Well, Angel doesn't have a coffin. He said he was in the closet."

"Comfortable…"

"You slept in my closet once."

"Under it technically."

"Ssh, they're kissing!" I was squeaking like a love-struck teenager. They were kissing. And of course then there was the screaming.

"What the hell was that?" Eric barked at the screen.

"He went all vampy. Think of like when you show your fangs. Except, uh, scarier."

"Sorry, you said 'vampy'? What is this 'vampy'?"

"Okay, so in this show, vampires look exactly like people, like you do. But when they get all excited, they get vampy. Their faces go all scary and they have fangs."

"That, my dear Sookie, is ridiculous."

"I didn't write it."

"It is still ridiculous."

We were paying attention again and Darla was talking to Angel. I couldn't help but sneer a little. Darla was Angel's maker, like the vampire Loreena that I'd killed had been Bill's maker. I felt a little sick watching them. I wondered if Loreena was as bitchy and cruel as Darla. Eric slid a hand across the sofa and touched my arm.

"Is that his maker?" Eric asked, as though he was reading my thoughts.

"Yeah. Darla. I kinda hate her."

"Does she die?"

"Yep." I said, perhaps with a bit too much seething enthusiasm.

"You said this was fictional, Sookie." He was still touching my hand.

"Art imitates life," I said thoughtfully.

"Hm, yes." His hand fell away. I instantly missed it.

I moved closer to him as the plot became a little more intense. Darla was about to do something bad, and even though I knew it, I wanted to be near him. He didn't say a word, but I felt him go a little rigid when Joyce's body was pushed into Angel's arms. Eric slid an arm around my shoulders and pulled me against him.

"He didn't feed from her mother," Eric said more matter-of-factly than sympathetically.

"No, he didn't." I confirmed. I expected him to say more, but he didn't. While the episode played, I wondered when Eric had last fed from a human. He was quite old, and I knew he didn't need to eat often for sustenance. I knew he fed from me sometimes for arousal, but I wasn't sure if he fed from other humans. I tried to turn my attention back to the program.

"So this is like the concluding fight scene part?" Eric asked when Buffy walked into the Bronze. I nodded. I was curled against him now, watching. Eric was so focused that he didn't pull his eyes away from the screen.

"His soul?" he balked.

"Uh, yeah."

"He has a soul? And he doesn't eat?"

"Yeah. That's sort of Angel's…well he does eat."

"That bagged blood in his fridge?"

"Yeah. And rodents."

"Ugh,"

"So this soul thing, what is that about? I don't have a soul. Bill doesn't have a soul."

"It's fictional."

"It's ridiculous. Are they scared of crosses and mirrors too?"

"Well, yeah."

"And the scary faces?"

"They're only temporary."

"The action is nice, but the vampires are very unrealistic, Sookie."

"Vampires are pretty unrealistic no matter what they look like, Eric. Up until a few years ago, they were only story book monsters to people like me." Eric shrugged. I watched Angel stake Darla and I did a little air punch of triumph.

"They're kissing again," Eric said thoughtfully. He was stroking my hip. I watched them talking, all sexual tension and smooches. There was an equally beautiful and quite real vampire sitting on the sofa next to me. And yes siree, I totally wanted to kiss him. I wondered if the lusty feelings were mine or his. The end credits were rolling and I stabbed the stop button on the remote.

"That's a myth too," he said, indicating the cross-shaped burn on Angel's chest.

"It's still kinda neat though. He didn't even say anything."

"Well, I liked this program. Though I would like to call the writers and complain about inaccuracy."

"Do you want to watch another one?"

"Yes. I would like to know more about this vampire with the soul."