A character study on Eric Northman, Viking, vampire, sheriff, and cold-hearted bastard. And how despite all those things he fell in love with a freakin' human.
It's not like he ever planned for something like this. (Which is important because Eric spends a lot of his free time planning for things that might or might not happen.) Or even like it ever crossed his mind. Because it didn't. And it didn't because it wasn't supposed to be possible. Who could ever have thought that he, Eric Northman, could fall in love? Like a common vampire, like some just-turned lovestruck newborn.
Then again, he has to take into account the outside forces. Pretty much everyone supernatural falls in love with Sookie. It's hard not to - she's got all the good parts of being human (including truly delicious blood) and she's useful, being a mind-reader.
(None of this is why he loves her.
He loves the way she won't back down, the way she reacts to everything, that smile that gets bigger the worse she feels. She's stubborn about a few things, and from them she won't step down for anyone. But she's sensible and she doesn't crave death like the other fang-bangers Eric's known. She shuts up when her life depends on it and lets him save her when she needs it. Sensible. It reminds Eric of his long-lost Viking life.
Also, she's the only one who's ever asked him if he could do it over, would he still be a vampire?
Eric hasn't answered her yet.)
Standing near Sookie feels like standing in the sunlight, and that's another thing any vampire could love. Because Eric had a few minutes there, before he felt the burning, when all he felt was sunlight on his face for the first time in a thousand years. And it felt like rebirth, like living and dying.
(If she ever asks again he'll say no, and then who knows what'll happen.)