Eric and His Great Pumpkin One-shot Contest
Title: Sookie's Fangtastic Costume Surprise
Your Pen name: whatsthefracas
Characters: Sookie/Eric, with a side of Pam
Disclaimer: technically not my characters, but you all know that.
A/N: Being laid up with swine flu (no joke) means I'm missing out on all Halloween related activities. Except for this. I might not have entered otherwise. Hope all you lovely SVM readers like it. The timeline is post Dead to the World-ish. Feel free to check out my forays into True Blood fandom as well. Thanks to the hosts of the contests. Lots and lots of thanks to Nyah.
"Oh this is disgusting."
I picked the package of fake wrist wounds off the rack. I grimaced and put them back, wondering what kind of factory somewhere was manufacturing crap like that. A store clerk came over to see if I needed help.
"Just trying to find a costume," I muttered. "I've got a last minute party to go to."
"Lots of people are going as vampires," he suggested.
I glared at him and he walked away blushing. Poor kid. It wasn't his fault that I hated the idea of disguising myself as the now fashionable and very romantic segment of the undead population. A couple of years ago, it would have been nothing. Now, it was just ironic and I didn't do irony very well.
Something caught my eye in the gothic section the clerk had pointed to, though. They were very real looking fangs.
I scanned the back quickly to figure out how they worked. Some form of putty. And they were only five bucks. I decided to buy them.
It wasn't so much a costume as a practical joke. If I could get a laugh out of Pam, it would be worth it. If I could get a rise out of Eric, even better. Never underestimate the power of a good sense of humor. If I amused them, and not just with my natural human clumsiness, well then they had to pay me some respect. At least I hoped.
Plus, it was a preemptive measure. A Halloween party at Fangtasia was not my comfort zone. A Halloween party that I was only invited to 24 hours before was even less so. I needed to build up some confidence. So I went home and set about applying the fangs in my bathroom. Standing in my bra and boy shorts, I marveled at how much the pearly enamel seemed to glint like real teeth. The putty mixed quickly and I snapped them over my canines. I had to keep my mouth open for a few minutes so they would stick and my reflection in the mirror made me laugh.
How many fangs had I seen in my lifetime?
A whole hell of a lot more than little Sookie Stackhouse, trick-or-treating in the fifth grade, too scared to watch Friday the Thirteenth with her cooler friends, would have been happy about.
Too late to cry over it now. They're not so scary once you get used to them anyway.
I stepped back into the bedroom to pull on my all black ensemble and something seemed to shift. When I pulled my arms through the sleeves I noticed my skin seemed lighter. In fact, it looked downright ashen and my fingernails were blue. Wiggling the dress into place, I hurried back to get a good look in the bathroom mirror.
I gasped.
The rims of my eyelids were red, the kind of red that belonged to exactly a certain group of almost-humans I knew.
I was the spitting image of a full-blown vampire.
My stomach growled and I remembered that I had thrown a frozen dinner in the microwave. I thought maybe I just needed to eat something to get my color and vigor back, but the minute the fork touched my lips, I felt like retching.
I scanned my cupboard for food that wouldn't make the nausea worse. My mind could only come up with one thing, which I struggled to ignore—blood. A nice, juicy vein of blood.
I spit my tongue out at the idea and yet, it did sound sort of appetizing, in a carnal way.
By the time I jammed my feet in my heels and got my purse ready, I was starving, but I ran to my car, afraid that, if I paused, I might kill that squirrel on my porch who liked to nibble my jack-o-lantern.
I turned the radio up loud to distract me and before I knew it I was in the parking lot of Fangtasia. When I looked at the clock, I noticed that I had made it in twenty minutes. I glanced over my shoulder instinctively to see if there were any cops in sight, but it seemed my supersonic driving had escaped their radar.
Pam was standing at her usual post at the door.
"Sookie, I believe I specifically stated in my phone message that costumes were required. Dressing for a funeral is not a costume."
"Yes, well, when you call someone the night before an event, you don't always get what you want."
She noticed the fangs.
"Or perhaps you did put something together," she drawled. "They look fantastically real. Any chance they are and Eric can stop whining about you?"
I snapped my jaw, biting the air.
"Oh fine, go inside," she said, unclicking the velvet rope.
A sudden wave of scent wafted from the gyrating human bodies and hit me like it never had before.
Blood! Lots of blood hidden under unnecessary skin.
It was a veritable buffet to quench my senses. I felt rabid. Without thinking, I started lacing my fingers around an unsuspecting dancer's neck, holding it till I could get a good bite.
"Sookie!"
I snapped my head up at the familiar voice.
"What—what exactly are you doing?" Eric asked, but I could barely hear him over the pounding music. Fangtasia's idea of a Halloween party was a 90s style rave. I had never been close enough to one to know if their version was authentic, but I figured, like in all things, they had gone a little overboard.
He took me by the wrist and led me to his office.
"Nice incisors," he commented. "Are they new?"
"I got them at the party store today," I replied truthfully.
He took hold of my chin in his hand and scrutinized my face.
"And your thirst for blood? I suppose that came in the same box, right?"
I shook my head, a little confused.
"Who did it? Who turned you?"
"Turned me? Eric, it's a freaking Halloween costume."
"Like hell it is. A nurse outfit that reveals too much cleavage for hospital regulation is a costume. Real fangs are not."
"Please tell me someone has addled your brain again."
He gave me a humorless look and swiftly plunked a bottle of synthetic blood in the microwave he kept for that special purpose.
"Drink up," he said when it had been properly zapped.
"Ew."
He thrust it at my mouth more forcefully and to my horror, I gulped it down like it was cherry kool-aid at summer camp.
"Oh my effing god," I gasped as trickles of sloppily spilled blood substitute ran onto my cheek.
"That's what I thought."
Eric crossed his arms and glared at me as if all the fun had been sucked out of our innuendo-laced game of cat and mouse. Sucked right out by some other vamp.
"This is all a big prank," I started to say over and over. "A trick, it's just a trick. I'm mean I'm still Sookie. Not exactly human, but still human!"
"You seem to be quite the vampire to me."
"What am I supposed to do now?" I asked frantically.
He grinned as though he finally figured out how to turn the strange situation in his favor.
"Well," he began, "when I find myself in confusing reality-bending scenarios, I find the best way to level my head and put everything back into place—"
"Eric Northman, if the next words out of your mouth involve you, me, and our bodies joining, I'll smack you."
"Spoilsport."
"Just keep quiet and let me think of a real solution! Maybe if I take the fangs off?"
I scrabbled at those two tiny dentures, but they wouldn't budge.
Eric began to chuckle.
"Maybe if I bit into something….do you have an apple?" I asked.
"What do you think?"
"Damn it. Maybe the leather chair?" I thought aloud.
"You are not biting my furniture, Sookie."
"Fine. Why don't you come up with something useful!"
He stepped closer to me. Like a swan, he ducked his head and arched his neck.
"Please no," I said immediately, but wavered.
He inched even closer.
I closed my eyes, swallowed, and pressed my lips to his neck. He marked the touch of it with the faintest of sounds.
I made sure to set the fangs as perpendicular as possible to his flesh and clamped down hard.
Eric growled.
My tongue caught only a drop of blood before I jerked away swiftly. When I saw the two pearly daggers lodged in his skin, I jumped for joy.
He plucked them out with his hand and rubbed the spot. He pulled out a plastic bag from a drawer and put the teeth in it.
"Evidence?" I asked.
"Of something," he agreed.
"Some kind of magic?"
"Isn't everything?"
"I guess so."
It was then that I only just noticed his costume.
"Wait a minute…white nightgown, sandals, are you—"
"It's not a nightgown," he interrupted.
"Fine, white dress."
"It is a tunic."
"Whatever. Please tell me you're not going as something sacrilegious."
He held up a shaggy brown beard that had been sitting on his desk.
"Son of God. Of course you would," I said.
"It's just a little Halloween fun."
"Like my turn-you-into-a-real-vampire fangs," I replied.
"Trick-or-treat!" he answered wryly.
"Well, on that note, I'm heading home. I've had enough tricks."
"But you haven't had a treat yet," Eric argued.
"Some other time," I teased.
"And you didn't even ask why I had Pam add you to the guest list."
"Do I need to ask?"
I figured we both knew the answer well enough by now.
"You probably just wanted to see my ass in some hoochie fairy costume, right?"
He winked at me.
"Good night then, Sookie."
I went back out to my car. The events of the past few hours were so bizarre even by my standards that I had to close my eyes for a minute or two just to gather my wits.
Unfortunately, closing them meant that I saw Eric, shirtless, approaching the driver's side door like he was going to pull me out and ravage me on the hood.
When I opened my eyes, it was obvious that he was nowhere near me and it was only the tiny drop of blood talking. Even so, I just couldn't find the will to turn the car on and drive away.
Grumbling, I snatched up my purse again and went to make my second grand entrance. This time Pam only smirked.
I barged into Eric's office.
He had his mouth on a frail girl's wrist. He set it down and pushed her away slightly.
"Knock much?" he asked.
I wasn't sure what to say next. He spoke for me.
"You see, your little biting moment earlier aroused a bit of a thirst in me. You don't mind, do you?"
I knew he was just trying to push my buttons again. I could have kicked myself for going back in Fangtasia at all. I turned my back on him and walked out, but before I could shove my way through enough people to reach the door, he caught me.
"Sookie," he breathed in my ear. I heard him despite the throbbing woofer.
He spun me around and pressed my body against his, moving us together with to the primal beat of the music.
Without thinking, I threw my arms around his neck. I knew why I had come back. He pulled me closer.
His lips were on mine and I let him kiss me. I let him kiss his way down to my chest as I knotted my fingers in his hair. I pulled his head up to kiss my mouth again, this time more deeply.
He grabbed my hips and just as I whimpered slightly at the feel of him hard through his nightgown-dress-tunic and he slid his hands lower down my backside, the music cut out and the strobe light shut off.
Stark, unpleasant overhead lights flashed on like at the end of a middle school dance. Everyone was shouting.
Pam stood at the DJ table and said into the microphone, "Sorry. Someone must have bumped a cord. We'll get the party back underway. Happy Halloween everyone!"
She was looking right at me when she said the last words. I glanced sheepishly up at Eric and dashed out, too embarrassed to face him. The night was over. Like a weird, scary, sweet dream, it was all over. November arrived the next day as if nothing had happened.