Hi my friends I am off of my self-imposed hiatus. Hope you don't hate me! Let me know if you still care about Dead Silence and want me to finish. Otherwise, it is off to the races with this new one. Trying something new in this fic: a story in a story. I hope you enjoy… fingers crossed! Oh, and yes, there will be a Viking playing a major role in this. Vamp or Human, I haven't decided. And this Sookie curses… a lot. Heart!

I don't own them.

Chapter 1: Man, I am One Hot Toddy!

Sookie was jumping from one foot to the other with her hands squeezed between her thighs, glaring at the man primping in the mirror, intensely focused on his reflection. "John Anthony Quinn, I have got to pee, if you don't get away from that mirror and out of this bathroom in five seconds, so help me God!"

Quinn lifted one side of his mouth into a perfect crooked grin, but never met her eyes in the mirror. "Sook, you know if I don't shave I start to look like Teen Wolf on a full moon," he stated and continued plucking his eyebrows to an almost alien perfection.

"First of all, you aren't even shaving, love," she growled hopping madly about in the door frame. "And second of all my eyes are turning yellow from all of that pathetic excuse for sweet tea they serve here." She lunged into the room wildly and grabbed handfuls of Quinn's shirt, pulling him out of the only bathroom in their small cottage house. He yielded to her demands, plucking one last stray hair as she dragged him out of the room and deposited him in the hallway, slamming the door behind her. As she struggled with her zipper and yanked her pants down to the immense relief of her bladder she wondered how she got here.

Here being Colorado. Estes freaking Park, Colorado. She looked out the small picture window as she flushed and rinsed her hands, sighing at the delicate flakes that danced down from the sky. The thick tree line was probably only thirty feet away and the aspens and evergreens were dazzling as they sparkled in their snowy finery. The cottony powder touched everything here, and she really did love the feel of this place. It was so isolated it was almost as though she was in some strange fairy tale, and this really wasn't her life at all. Why? Because it just didn't feel like home. It was so foreign from the moist heat of New Orleans, her home of so many years- her first real love.

Sookie wiped her hands on the tattered but well-loved hand towel that hung from the rack on the wall. It seemed that almost everything in this house was tattered and well-loved. Not that there was anything wrong with that. In fact, she had never really had that much to begin with, so in that way this house reminded her deeply of her Gran's home, her childhood home, back in Bon Temps. Her stomach began to clench when she thought of her grandmother and Bon Temps, which always seemed to be the case lately, but Sookie just glared at her weakness in the mirror, tucking a strand of pale hair behind her ear and wandered out to tell Quinn he could get back to his grooming.

Sookie found Quinn tapping his fingers on the small desk that served as their office space as he looked at his listings online. He was half-dressed and she stared at the expanse of olive skin and strength and muscle that composed Quinn's body and sighed at his beauty. He was a complete juxtaposition of heat and warmth to the soft and dismal day.

Life with Quinn was good… it worked. Even if he did spend more time in the mirror than she did, even if she and he were so very different in nature… he was a good man. And that counted for a lot with Sookie. He cared for her. Great… everything was great. And things were relatively easy with him. It had seemed that nothing came easy in Sookie's life until she let him into her heart. Everything was great…

Quinn whipped his head around from where he was perusing the internet and grinned. Sookie realized that he knew she was there all along, and he was allowing her to eye-fuck him at her leisure. He narrowed his purple eyes at her and was at her side with an almost inhuman grace. Her heart lurched a little as he collected her into him, making her feel like a doll in his arms. He inhaled deeply in her hair then kissed her nose and strutted off to the bathroom, his high firm ass making Sookie lightheaded in his wake.

"Fucking Quinn," Sookie mouthed as she made her way to the garage. Her emotions were like this more often than not when it came to her new life. She was up and then down, pissed and then horny, elated and depressed. She wondered how one person could contain all of those feelings and not spontaneously combust.

She had been in Estes Park for a good six months, and now that it was officially winter there was something she was dying to try. She rifled through the still packed boxes and half-finished projects in the garage and grinned victoriously when she found what she was looking for. Hell, yes! She was one part excited to two parts nervous as she extricated the pair of cross country skis and set them on a bare patch of concrete. Biting her lip she located the matching boots they had picked up at a second-hand store in town and set them beside the skis. Can I do this without killing myself? She wondered. Sookie thanked God that Quinn was heading out soon for a showing, because he would surely give her shit until the end of time if she sucked at this. He certainly still remembered the Alpine Slide incident of 2008 with perfect total recall, much to her chagrin. No, it was better if he didn't know she was about to try this, and she figured she should attempt to do this without his knowledge, so she left the equipment and wandered back in the house to wait for his departure.

Twenty minutes later Sookie was on her second Hot Toddy (heavy on the Toddy) when Quinn emerged from the bathroom, looking shiny as a new toy.

"I just feel this commission coming on," he grinned as he sauntered to her side. She gasped as he took a breast in his enormous hand, though it was really more like a paw, and kissed her roughly. "I'll be back in a few hours. Be ready, I have plans for us tonight."

Sookie gulped as she watched him load his enormous form into his Dodge Ram and out of sight.

Quinn was quickly making his mark on the high-end real estate market in the area. Sookie wasn't surprised though. It seemed that he could make himself fit in with any situation that presented itself. Rich divorcees all vied for his attention, asking to visit far more listings than Sookie deemed reasonable. The Porsche driving men (though whomever in their right mind would drive a Porsche in the frigging Rocky Mountains seemed like an idiot) who were searching for winter homes treated Quinn like a long lost frat brother, hoping he would introduce them to the gold-digging sugar baby set. Sookie despised that set. They like Quinn too. Bitches, Sookie thought as she poured some straight Toddy, fuck the Hot, and tossed back it back, pushing faces and memories out of her mind.

***

After satisfying her nerves with two additional Toddies for the road, Sookie threw on her winter gear and shoved her feet in the books and skis, attempting to stand up. The drinks had apparently affected her more than she realized, because as she pushed her weight up vertically she immediately fell back down onto the crunchy snow. "Fucking Poles!" she shouted to no one in particular and scooted on her side to where she had left the poles leaning against their mailbox. She grabbed the poles and stabilized herself feeling independent and free, sans the giant sticks stuck to the soles of her feet. Despite the gentle caress of the falling snow, the sun was bright on her back and Sookie flicked the sunglasses out of her pocket so she wouldn't get snow blind. She didn't actually know anyone who had actually gone snow blind, but damn if that didn't sound like a shitty way to go blind.

Okay, so what? I just walk around? How is this fun?

Sookie and Quinn lived on a nice two acres of land, a perk to taking care of his mother's home while she sat in jail. To be honest, it wasn't like they were taking care of the home anymore; his mother had been in jail for so long. It was basically Quinn's house, and Sookie had made it a home when he convinced her to move to Colorado with him. But wouldn't you know it; Mama Quinn was up for parole in a month. Oh, that had led to some interesting dinner discussions. Sookie's breeding begged her to keep her mouth shut on the subject, but if she were to speak freely she would tell you she wished they would just let the bitch rot.

Sookie fell on her ass just as she was starting to find her rhythm. "Son of a mother trucker," she growled as she sat, the world swirling above her in yellows and whites and grays. Sookie drunkenly attempted to right herself again and stood up, wobbling a little and waiting for the world to stop spinning before pushing off again over the snow. It was actually very relaxing, and Sookie could feel her head clearing with each movement. All she could hear was the sound of her skis and the noisy silence of a world at peace around her.

"Gaahhh!" Sookie garbled as she tripped herself on a rock that jutted out of the snow and tumbled back over. "That shit is gonna leave a mark," she said to herself as she grabbed the place on her shin that had probably already bruised and swelled. Sookie allowed the ridiculousness of the situation to take root and she lay back on her downy, cold pillow and giggled as she peered up at the sun. She let the day cocoon her and her mind lazily traversed the plane of her memory.

Before Quinn there was Bill. They had met their first day at college.

Sookie worked so hard in high school, and was damn lucky it paid off with a scholarship because her loon of a mom left her with her with nothing on the doorstep of her Grandmother Adele's home when she was all of three years old. Oh, yeah. And she never came back. Sookie never had the pleasure of making her father's acquaintance. Not that she gave a shit; her pops was probably just one in a long line of the losers her 'mother' had screwed. So she didn't miss what she never had, and in a way she was luckier to have been with her Gran than she ever would have been with her genetic mother.

Adele pushed Sookie to do well, and just about had a stroke when Sookie came in with her acceptance letter to Tulane that last semester of high school. Two months later, mid summer vacation, Adele had the actual stroke that killed her, and Sookie lost the only mother she had ever known.

Desperate for a respite from the physical reminder of the fact that she had nothing, she fled to New Orleans. She arrived three weeks early and had nowhere to go, so she showed up on the doorstep of the resident life building carrying two suitcases and a photo of her Gran. She knocked timidly, and when she heard nothing she dropped her bags on the step and let herself in.

She ran a hand through her windblown hair and cursed at herself for thinking she could just show up and expect them to take her in like the stray she was. "Idiot!" she muttered, trying to decide if she could afford one night at a hotel or if she would just have to drive all the way back tonight…. Back to the home that she hated, that was filled with memories and dreams, and that was emptier than her pocketbook. She felt the burning of tears threatening her lids as she tried to hold herself together long enough to make it back to her car.

"It is a little early to be calling me an idiot, I would have to presume. Perhaps once you get to know me…" The voice of a southern gentleman, ripped from the movie screens interrupted her musings. She blinked furiously and located the source of the voice.

Bill was working as a Resident Assistant in one of the summer dorms, and became her hero that night as he managed to sneak her into his building and into one of the empty dorm rooms for the remainder of the summer, even procuring her a meal card so he knew she was eating.

When the semester started, she and her new roommate Pam found themselves on Bill's floor, and Sookie knew it was no coincidence. She quickly found a friendship in Pam and a lover in Bill, and she clung to these things as anchors in the tidal wave of her life.

A/N So I actually went to a Goddess night where we all got drunk and attempted to x-country ski at midnight. I swear I have several bones that will never heal. LOL! What's the most ridiculous thing you've ever attempted while drinking (and don't say driving!)?

Please review so I can know if you like the story in a story concept. Thanks!