**A/N: This is my first published attempt at fan fiction, so reviews are welcomed and encouraged. I wanted to see what would happen if the personalities went in the polar opposite directions. Please review!
Chapter 1
Eric watched as Sookie alternately grimaced and flashed him her blinding smile. He'd known for years that she had guts and attitude, but he never thought she'd get a tattoo. Even though she usually didn't give a damn about what anyone else thought, her gran (God rest her soul) would have ripped her a new one. Now that Jason had gotten married and was expecting his fist baby with Michele, he didn't pay attention to Sookie the way he used to. In response to lack of responsible supervision, her wild tendencies went from being given a long leash to running free with abandon.
She'd tried bright purple streaks in her light blonde hair. Aside from a few raised eyebrows at the bar when she hung out, there was no reaction. So she upped the ante. She had tried piercing her tongue, but hadn't been able to stand the clicking the barbell made against her teeth when she talked, so she had taken it out before the swelling had gone down. She'd gone back to the piercing studio and gotten a ring through her eyebrow. Still, she got no more reaction then a few sideways looks.
At the sound of sprays from a squirt bottle, Eric came out of his reverie. The heavily decorated tattoo artist sprayed water over his work, a wreath of twisted and detailed flower stems and tiny blood-red rose buds that now wrapped around her ankle, and patted it dry with a paper towel. Sookie looked intensely at her new body art. "Well, Eric, what do you think?" she asked, holder her foot out to him so he could see.
He held her foot and looked at the intricate design. "Very pretty. Feminine and delicate, like..." his voice trailed off. He had about to say "like you", but he know that she wouldn't have liked that at all. He's known her for 10 years and he could only think of a handful of times that she had allowed anyone, even him, to see her as delicate and fragile.
He still remembered meeting her. He had been a senior at Bon Temps High School and had been heading to his locker after morning football practice in October. He came across his teammate Jason being reamed out by a tiny little thing, with wavy blonde hair almost down to her waist. His appreciative eye noticed that she had developed well. She was standing on her tiptoes, railing and screaming at the taller boy. Jason's exploits with the girls of Bon Temps High were locker room legend and Eric had thought that one of Jason's conquests had come back to bite him... possibly literally. As his comrade on the field, Eric felt me might need to come to Jason's defense. As he headed closer, the little spitfire stopped yelling and started swinging.
"You shit! You fucked Miss Lewis? And now she's getting fired!" She punctuated each word with a slap or a punch. Eric froze a few feet away. Jason had screwed a teacher? That was an all-new level for the infamous horn dog. But still, he felt he should try to defend his best wide receiver from this tiny, violent creature.
"Sook, damn it! Stop hitting me! I'm 18. It was perfectly legal. I told her it was just for fun. How was I supposed to know one of her so-called friends would go to the school board?"
"Jase, what part of 'She is a teacher' do you not understand? You couldn't keep it in your pants for a few months until you graduated? For fuck's sake, Jason! You should know better! have you screwed so many of the students that you had to fish for new ass in the Administration pool?" She smacked his arm hard and he winced. "Now who am I going to get to tutor me in trig? She was free and you know Gran won't want to pay for a tutor. By God, I am going to graduate early and get the fuck out of this one-horse, shithole town as soon as possible!" Eric figured out the little hottie was Jason's sister. He was surprised. She looked like a teeny bopper or a mall rat, but she swore like a sailor. But luck was on his side. Along with being a quarterback with an arm like a cannon, he was also a closet math whiz. Thinking quickly, he come up with a cover for his approach.
"Stackhouse, get your playbook. I want to go over a switch with you on Number 12 before practice this afternoon."
"Yeah man, let me get it from my locker. Wait here. Have you met my my little sister Sookie?" Jason said, looking grateful, and took off at a slow jog down the hall.
Eric looked down. She was a good foot shorter than his 6'4", but she still had some growing to do. Her blue eyes were crackling with anger at her brother. As soon as Jason turned the corner and was out of sight, Sookie sighed and slid to the floor, her back against a wall of lockers.
"That fucker shouldn't surprise me anymore, but he still manages to do it. Is it really that hard to keep your dick where it belongs, or at least out of where it ruins lives?" Sookie looked up at Eric like he would have the answer. He may be a star football player, an All American basketball star, and a baseball pitcher that had college scouts salivating, but experience with the so-called fairer sex had taken a back seat to making sure that college was paid for by some sort of scholarship.
He knew the Stackhouse family was far more well-off then most. Sookie and Jason's grandmother had married into oil money that was well invested. When their parents had died in a flash flood years ago, their father's mother had taken over their care. Sookie's and Jason's appearances showed the evidence of that care. All the clothes were name brand and Sookie's hair was professionally treated and styled.
Eric hadn't had the same financial benefits. His dad had split before his baby boy had said his first word and had no more relationship with him then signing a check each month when he managed to keep a job. Eric and his mom lived in a tiny 2 bedroom duplex. She worked two jobs to make ends meet and looked a good deal older then her 34 years. Sophie Ann Northman had gotten pregnant in high school and swore, that come hell or high water, her son, her pride and joy, would go to college like she had never been able to. Between saving the tiny money she was able to and paying the day-to-day bills of living and raising a growing (and growing and growing) son, there wasn't anything to spare of designer labels. Eric was well acquainted with the men's departments in Walmart and K-Mart.
Eric shrugged off his own backpack and sat next to Sookie on the floor, watching other students arrive and make their way to their lockers. "Your brother is amazing on the field, but he has the brains of a dung beetle. Did he really have sex with Miss Lewis?" Pretty Amy Lewis had just started teaching math this year after getting her degree and had only lasted 3 months. Because of Jason.
"He did, the shit-for-brains. Get it? Dung beetle? Shit-for-brains?" She cracked a bitter smile at her own joke, "I'm taking some advanced placement classes so I can graduate early and the fucker screws my tutor! No one else around here tutors for AP classes and I can't drive to the community college to use their math lab. So in screwing the teacher, Jason screwed me too, in an entirely different sense, of course." Sookie sighed again.
Eric said, "I did really well in Trig. If you want, I can tutor you on the weekends. With double practices during the week, I'm usually exhausted during the week. But I can give you a few hours on Saturdays or Sundays. Both if you want. I don't have much of a life outside school and sports." He gave her a sheepish grin.
"Fuck yeah! When can we start?" Sookie clapped and jumped to her feet. Eric continued having trouble connecting the sweet face and hot body with the salty language he usually only heard on the field.
They started the next weekend. The worked for 2-3 hours each day, then relaxed and got to know each other better. Sookie's grandmother had turned one of the unused bedrooms into a study for her grandchildren, but Sookie was the only one who ever used it and had made it her own. The wall of built-in bookshelves had everything from classics like Dickens and Thoreau to more modern selections from Anne Rice and James Patterson. She had a dorm-sized refrigerator near the desk and kept it stocked with cans of Coke and bottles of Frappuccino. The room also doubled as her personal day-room, with a comfy couch, a flat screen TV, and a stereo system stocked with her favorite CD. During their down time after studying, she'd flip to a random disc in the 300-disc changer and have it playing as background noise as they talked.
Eric had no idea that a girl of 14 could be as deep and well read as Sookie was. Most girls he had known at that age (and honestly, most of the ones he knew that were his own age) were silly, giggly, and boy-crazy. Sookie was as comfortable talking about Whitman's poetry, the mythology behind the movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, and Civil War history she was as singing along with Lady Marmalade (although someone with her voice would do others a favor by not singing) or dancing to J-Lo (and the girl could really dance). She talked about books she wanted to read, things she wanted to be, places she wanted to go, and people she wanted to meet. They changed from week to week, but one thing always stayed the same: she wanted out of Bon Temps.
Eric, too, had a sounding board for his dreams and goals too. He saw the sports that he played as a means to an end: a free ride through college. He worked on his own homework while Sookie did her tutoring assignments plucked from his old trigonometry notebooks. He told her about his dream of becoming an attorney who specialized in protecting abused and neglected children. All his teammates had unlikely dreams of the NFL, NBA, or MLB. He just wanted a law degree.
One thing was certain. Sookie had a sense of adventure that tiny Bon Temps couldn't satisfy. Eric had a calming influence on her wanderlust for the moment and helped her focus on the present rather then harp on the future.
Eric watched Sookie as she read the aftercare instructions for her new tattoo. She felt pleased with herself and kept glancing down at her ankle, as if to assure herself that the ink was staying put. She was glad that something was finally permanent in her life.
