Disclaimer: Everything and everyone you recognize belongs to Charlaine Harris and whomever else is legally titled to say "mine."
Note: This is a little insert to "On Physics and Fat Tuesday." I suppose it's like chapter 9.5. It's written in dedication to my wonderful audience for that story with apologies in advance because I'm not great at broad sweeping 'happily ever afters' but since you're all so great I decided to try my hand at a little happily ever now. Plus, I think some folks wanted to see that haircut.
Note 2: I can't impose any requirements but you will lack a lot of helpful context if you don't read 'On Physics… " first so I recommend doing that.
Hairstyles of the Dead and Ancient
My bathroom was a little cramped for me, Eric, a chair, and all the usual bathroom amenities. But when you've got plans to permanently alter someone's look, someone who has looked the same for eleven centuries, you want him to be able to keep an eye on what you're doing. And a bad haircut's just exactly the stupid kind of thing that could unmake this easy comfort between us.
Since our bonding, I'd gotten used to feeling content around Eric. It was an odd sort of content. If I were measuring it out I'd guess at two fingers of happiness, two of safety, and one of friendship, topped off with a splash of peace that brought out all the right notes. It tended to go as quick as a shot too, leaving behind a long after burn of lust and making me feel a little more fogged than I liked when the next danger invariably arose.
Feeling peaceful around Eric was inevitable but always so short-lived. Eventually something happened to remind me that the world was a scary place and he was a very scary vampire.
Except for now. When he wasn't.
"So, a hunting knife?" I said with a smile in my voice.
Eric's return smile in the mirror over the sink was just the same balance of innocent and teasing. "This room has fond memories of us."
He caught my eye in the mirror and I felt my blush intensify in direct proportion to the amount of time we looked at one another. I turned my eyes down and took a damp comb to the Viking's long hair. I had the feeling he was still watching me intently as I took a first experimental snip at the lovely, if rather bedraggled, locks. Well I did want him to be able to keep an eye on what I was doing but I didn't necessarily want him to be undressing me with those eyes. At least, not at the moment.
"Do you ever think on it, my lover?" He asked, not quite lightly. Persistent, that one. "I do."
I had half a mind to smack him upside his head and remind him that we were kind of past the point of him needing to seduce me so if he could just shut up, and for goodness sake stop looking at me, I'd appreciate it. Instead I said, "No," with a healthy does of sass and maybe cut off just a little more hair than was necessary. It wouldn't hurt him, he had plenty.
"Liar," He said casually and I colored. But it hadn't been a lie. Or, at least, not entirely. I didn't think on memories of the time Eric had lived in my house so much as occasionally get ambushed by them. "If red were not such a becoming color on you, I think I would find your inexplicable modesty vexing. What part of you have I not known, my lover? What side of you have I not seen? And yet, you blush." He shook his head and I hissed peevishly and held it still.
"The annoyed woman with the scissors," I replied, brandishing them like a weapon. "You haven't seen that side."
Eric's answering smirk said he didn't think I had the heart to take vengeance on his hair. He was right, though, on close inspection, his hair really was kind of a mess at the ends. It was almost as if it had been ripped or chewed.
My stomach sank.
"Eric," I said, pausing to let him know we were changing the subject. "It was a knife that did this to your hair, right?"
"Yes."
I sighed as quietly as possible with relief. I really didn't need to see any lingering physical evidence of the fairy twins. "What, did you do it yourself?"
"Yes," He said again. "Cutting one's hair was a sign of mourning among my people."
I stopped and half a lock of hair fell to the floor, the rest hanging raggedly, waiting for its fate as I thought about Eric's answer. He'd been turned shortly after his wife died. His wife and his youngest child.
I nodded once to myself, though I'm sure he saw it in the mirror, and continued cutting. He'd lost his family a thousand years ago and he was Eric, if he'd wanted to keep his hair as a memorial to them, he would simply have told me not to cut it. "I think about it… sometimes," I said and glanced up at the mirror to see that Eric had followed me back to our earlier conversation.
"Oh?" He'd expected nothing less.
I brushed at some hair that was trying to work its way into his collar. "I do," I said, more boldly. "And then I get distracted and can't remember if I've already washed my hair."
He chuckled and one of his hands sneaked around me to rest on the back of my knee. "That sounds quite problematic."
"It is," I said, conveying much more annoyance than I felt. It turned back of my knee was one of those places that sent my coochie to def-con one, who knew? Eric, apparently. "Shampoo's expensive."
Eric laughed again and I did actually give him a little swat on the back on his head this time. "You'll get a much better hair cut if you let me concentrate," I said. "And stop laughing."
"Ah, yes," he said, with a seriousness in his voice and features that in no way reached his eyes. "The task at hand."
He sat, his hands folded in his lap, while I finished cutting. I'd done enough amateur hair cutting in my time between Jason, Arlene's kids, Arlene herself, and even giving my own hair a touch up now and then, that I was reasonably confident in my ability to at least cut his hair straight. I didn't think Eric would care to have any kind of style, though with his rather flamboyant nature, I could be wrong.
Maybe Emma and I should go into business. We could have a booth at vampire conventions with a banner that read, "Shake off the grave dust and update your look." We'd make a killing. Har-dee-har.
"Okay," I said when the line of his hair was neat.
Eric turned his head, surveying my work. His hair, which had been about as long as mine, now fell somewhere a little below his shoulder blades. I'd had to cut off quite a few damaged inches. He'd really done a number with that knife. "Thank you," he said, and I got the impression that he was practicing his interacting-with-humans courtesies.
He gave his head a little shake (a motion I'd witnessed inspire nearly as many oohs and ahhs as fireworks on the Fourth). Maybe I should have saved time for some deep conditioner. "I will change soon," he reminded me and bent to gather up the clippings of his hair from the floor. It was almost comically domestic until he dumped the hair into my toilet and flushed.
"It may ignite in the sunlight when I turn," he explained. I paled, wondering how I would have explained to Amelia how I burnt my bathroom down.
"You'll stay here until night?" I asked. I certainly didn't want him to revert to his vampire state on the highway and combust inside his car. Plus, I maybe wanted him to stay a little longer. I'd hated fighting with him.
"In the space under your closet," he confirmed just to remind he that he remembered it.
We moved the shoes and other things I kept in the bottom of the closet so Eric could get at the trap door. The space underneath was light-proof and Bill had fitted it with something like a lawn chair cushion. It wasn't luxurious but it was functional.
Eric folded himself down into the hidey-hole, bending his knees up a little because he was taller than Bill. "You're sure it'll be soon?" I'd had the dreadful realization that he'd been still be human in there until he changed and fell into a vampire daytime trance. For some reason the thought of him alone in that little dark space made me very anxious. Maybe it was the memory of Lochlan and Neave and that hot, cramped room they'd kept him in.
"I'm sure," Eric said.
For a moment, I really thought about climbing down into the hole with him and waiting out the change. But that would leave me stuck in a small space with a zonked out vampire for the hours of remaining daylight. Not a pleasant prospect. He'll be fine, I reminded myself. He's a big, scary, Viking vampire.
Eric sat up and I lowered my head for a final kiss. "I'll see you at dark, my lover."
I gave him a small smile and let the trap door close over him. I replaced the shoe-camouflage and headed to the kitchen feeling a little dazed at the surreal quality of the past few hours. Upon entering the kitchen, I realized I was hungry, probably because I hadn't eaten since breakfast.
As I was fixing myself a sandwich, Amelia came home from work. "Want one?" I asked, holding up roast beef and mustard.
"Sure," Amelia said brightly.
She excused herself to the bathroom in the hallway and then I kind of yelped. I hadn't offered Eric anything to eat all day. Gran turned in her grave, I just knew it. There's was nothing to be done about it now. I couldn't very well break into the hidey-hole to offer a maybe-vampire peanut butter and jelly.
Amelia returned to the kitchen and poured us each a glass of tea. She'd finished off the pitcher so she went to the sink to wash it out. "Hey," she said, looking out the window above sheet to the back yard. "I think one of your sheets fell off the line."
I had a very thorough OSM. That sheet was ruined in a way my roommate didn't really need to see. "Oh, yeah. I'll get it after we eat."
"But it's on the ground," Amelia protested. "You just washed it." She moved as if to make for the back door.
"Don't worry about it," I said a little too sharply. "It's really old. I'm thinking I'm probably just going to throw it out anyway."
"Okay," Amelia said like she thought I might have a screw loose. It was an expression I'd seen before, and like before, it vanished quickly. "So what'd you do today?"
###
I knew the moment Eric woke up. I'd never been so close to him before at sundown since we'd been bonded. It was like something stretched and flexed with pleasure in my head. I'd pulled out a book and some coffee and taken up residence on my couch in the living room. Amelia was occupying the love seat with a glass of red wine and a book that looked suspiciously more like one of my romance novels than like any book of magic I'd ever seen her read. "Oh," I tried to say casually and popped a bookmark (the scrap of paper Eric had delivered for Emma) into the novel. "Eric's here."
"Yes, he is," Eric said, emerging from Octavia's former bedroom on cue.
"Oh, hi Eric!' Amelia said, sitting up a little too quickly.
Eric didn't stick around to exchange pleasantries with the witch. Instead he headed straight for my room. I gave Amelia what I hoped (with the thoughts she was having) was an 'I'll explain later' look and followed Eric.
I found him looking at his reflection in my bathroom mirror, seeming much more interested in his new haircut than he'd been when I'd done it. He inspected the line of his part and ran a big hand through the newly shorn locks. "You have changed me," he said finally, in a tone I thought was very carefully selected to belie just how loaded the statement was. As if I could read his mind, I knew he had something to tell me but he didn't want to spook me.
I was too tired for any more revelations today. Or, I was happy right now and didn't want him to drop a bomb and change that. That might be more like it. "I think it looks good," I said and hoped he'd drop whatever subject he was thinking of bringing up. I might not be able to handle anymore of Eric in sharing mood for a while.
He nodded. "I must return to Shreveport. I have not been as attentive to my businesses as I should lately because of you."
I started to get good and offended but then cut myself off. It was true even if he could have said it more nicely. "And there's Felicia."
"Pam told you?" He expression of surprise was minute compared even to his conservative human expressions.
"Yes."
"I'd rather she hadn't done that."
I rolled my eyes. "I won't be mounting a one woman search or anything."
"We'll see."
When we returned to the living room Eric gave me a long kiss scant feet from Amelia, his way of showing her just how not-fighting we were. "Goodnight, my lover," he said and let himself out.
"So," Amelia began. "When did that happen?" Her thoughts were quite clear on the fact that she knew I'd still been upset with Eric when I'd gone to bed last night and that I had a lot of explaining to do if he's was waking up in my house and we were back on tonsil hockey terms.
I paused for a long moment, not sure that Eric's spell as a living, breathing human was something I should (or wanted) to share with anyone, even Amelia. But the day had been chock full of shocks and it was Amelia. "Oh, about noon."
###
The next day, my second day off, was kind of annoying dull in comparison to the first. Well, except when the Fed Ex delivery guy showed up with a package of new sheets (Egyptian cotton, absurdly high thread count) and a bottle of my favorite shampoo. The fact that I kind of expected it didn't make my smile any less wide.
End