So, after giving it some thought, I decided to go for something that I don't think has been done in the Sookieverse before. This is an AH fic, well, the main characters are AH. Most of them. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and if you have questions as we go, feel free to shoot!

Thanks to Missus T for betaing and Ethehunter for giving fab feedback!

Sookie

I squealed as Eric threw me over his broad shoulder and carried me up the stairs. "Put me down."

He patted my ass. "New house, Lover. It's my duty to carry you over the threshold."

"Not like a caveman." I tried to reach for his ass, but ended up falling short, smacking his lower back instead. "What are we going to have for dinner tonight?"

"I'll have a waitress bring up a menu." He fumbled in his jeans for the key, and we made our way inside. "I hope you're okay with an air mattress until our bed arrives."

Our bed. I liked the sound of that.

Six months earlier...

"Go to your computer and check your email, Lover."

I cradled the phone against my ear, and opened up my email. "What is it?"

"Just look."

Even hearing his voice on the phone made my toes curl. I opened my email to find a link to a real estate listing in Maine. Bar Harbor to be exact. "What's this?"

"A fresh start. Look at the pictures."

I clicked through, and one by one, the smile on my face grew a little larger. "A restaurant?" It was totally his style, dark, rich colours, beautiful hardwood bar, and great natural light. "I don't know anything about running a restaurant."

"Already fully operational and turning a profit annually. Keep going."

I kept clicking. It had a three bedroom house on top. The building had to be about a hundred years old, and the two stories above the restaurant were beautiful. Three bedrooms, high ceilings, crown mouldings, and an amazing kitchen with new stainless appliances. "It's stunning, Eric. I don't know though, it's a lot of money."

"I have enough for the down payment, and once I sell my house in New Orleans, I can pay off a large chunk of the mortgage. There's a open storefront next door too that I could work out of. You'd have the money from your house as well. Check the next email."

I opened it to find an email confirmation for a trip to Nassau in two weeks. "What's this?"

"See that ring on your finger? I thought I'd get you another." He sounded like a kid at Christmas.

"We've only been engaged for a month." Things had moved quite quickly with us, but I wasn't really scared. Not with him. "We don't have to do things so quickly." He was the one that should have been scared. Once bitten, twice shy, as the saying went.

"I don't want to miss this house, and I don't need to wait."

"I, well, I just don't want you to feel like I'm pressuring you." I fiddled with my ring. It was really stunning. Far bigger than I ever thought I'd want, but gorgeous all the same. Perfect. Kind of like Eric.

He laughed. "Sookie, I'm the one that bought the tickets. I want to be with you. No more of this phone bullshit, no more emails. You and me, every day, cooking breakfast in our underwear in that kitchen. There's room behind the restaurant kitchen for my shop as well. I checked and there are three elementary schools within driving distance. You could start teaching again."

I thought about what that would be like, to be back in the one place I'd ever felt comfortable surrounded with people. "Wow, it's just so fast."

"Do you need to slow down?" He asked, his voice considerate. "I'm not trying to rush you. I just got really excited when I found this place."

I took a deep breath. "No. Let's do this."

We sat on the floor cross-legged, devouring the best homemade mac and cheese I'd ever had, both of us making noises that could have been mistaken for sex by anyone that didn't see what we were up to.

"This is amazing," Eric moaned, his eyes closed.

"We're going to have to cook for ourselves, or I'm going to be as big as a house. I was a chubby kid, you know?" I winked, taking another bite. I looked around at the empty room. "We won't know what to do with ourselves, once our furniture gets here."

He gave me a smirk. "I think we'll just do what we've been doing, but with furniture. I got an order for a dining room table today. I also bought a barn."

I cocked my head at him. "You bought a barn?"

He nodded. "To tear down, for the reclaimed wood. It's gorgeous stuff, and I already have some ideas about things I want to make with it. I'm going to start tearing it down this weekend. Want to come?"

I shrugged. The weekends had been nice here, perfect sweater weather. We'd spent a lot of time walking around, bored in the bed and breakfast. "As long as it doesn't snow."

"Scared of a little snow, Lover?" I loved it when he called me that. "I'll warm you up properly afterwards." He waggled his eyebrows. "And tomorrow is your first day of work."

I nodded. I'd gotten a sub job, one day a week for a few months. Kindergarten, which was just my speed for getting back into things. "I'm kind of nervous. I need to pick out an outfit."

"You should wear those black pants that make your ass look fantastic. Or maybe that sweater dress that I like." He smiled, collecting the remains of our dinner. "Do you want some dessert?"

I shook my head. "Maybe later."

"Have you been downstairs? Everyone is very nice."

"No. I just need a bit of time. I might go down during lunch when it's not so busy and introduce myself to Amelia." I'd corresponded with her via email before we'd moved, but I knew I needed to take things slow. Not everyone was going to be Eric, so naturally calm and willing to give me my space, no questions asked.

When I'd randomly started emailing back and forth with Wood-Man01 on the Grief Recovery Online message board, I had no idea that a year and a bit later, t I'd be married and absolutely head over heels in love with him. He'd been nice, sure, and understanding, as a board moderator, but it was three months before we exchanged email addresses, and started getting beyond our original reasons for signing up for a mourning website.

My friend Tara, the one person that I still saw regularly in Bon Temps, was terrified when I decided to go and visit Eric in New Orleans. We had a horrible fight about it, her telling me I had a death wish.

That may have been true at one time, but it certainly wasn't anymore. I'd gone anyway, even though I was terrified of having a panic attack, armed with an email printout with his home address and a picture of him in sunglasses in the French Quarter sometime in the summer.

I'd thought he'd be shorter, and not nearly so attractive. In fact, I had to force myself to not just turn around and run the other way when I recognized him, worried about his response to me. He looked up from a coffee at Cafe Du Monde, meeting my eyes, all of a sudden, it was like someone turned the light on. It was strange at first, realizing that I'd been completely and utterly in love with someone that I'd never met face to face, but after spending two weeks talking, seeing his smile, and the deeply hidden pain between his eyes that mirrored my own, there was no mistaking the feelings I had. It was a sense of peace that I'd never known before, when he and I were together.

Since I wasn't working at the time, I didn't have any reason to hurry back to Bon Temps, and when he invited me to stay for a few extra days at his place, it had quickly turned into a month.

I knew I'd have to go home eventually. We'd had a heartbreaking goodbye, and I'd sobbed the entire drive back to Bon Temps. He'd shown up on my doorstep a week later, with a suitcase and a huge bouquet of wild roses. Two weeks after that, we'd made some decisions, most of which involved doing whatever we had to do to avoid these anguishing goodbyes.

And then Project Fresh Start had been launched. My engagement ring followed a few weeks after that.

I was glad that I didn't have many people in my life to tell me that I was making a horrible mistake. It made it easier to stay positive about everything, because everything felt so painfully right that my heart ached to think about my life working out any other way.

Bit by bit, things started getting better for me. I started doing little things at first, like going to the library and the grocery store, smiling at people I knew. The way they all looked at me though confirmed that PFS, as we'd started calling it, was the right thing to do.

Later that night, we curled up together on the lumpy air mattress, and I grinned as Eric took my cheeks in his hands and kissed me with a passion that was a part of everything he did. "I'll make you breakfast in the morning. It'll have to be just eggs, because we don't have a toaster yet," he whispered. "Maybe an omelette. I'm so proud of you."

My first day of school went off without a hitch. I left the school parking lot, an ear to ear grin on my face. When I pulled into the parking lot behind Salty's, our restaurant, I closed my eyes and took a minute to relax. I didn't even notice the huge black man that was standing next to the car wrapping on my window until he was right up in my face. I screamed, and he backed off slightly. I rolled down the window an inch.

"What do you want?"

He looked at me, his eyes wide. "Damn, Northman said the wife was a bit touchy, but shit girl, you need to take a Valium."

I curiously eyed the flamboyant man that looked better suited to the Meatpacking District than Maine. Little did he know, he was probably right. "I didn't see you there. Who are you?"

"I'm your cook, Lafayette. And you're Shy Sookie."

"I'm not shy." I was wary. Extremely wary. Not shy. "It's nice to meet you."

"Everyone inside is wondering about you. We've all seen your big hunk of man wandering around, barking orders about more smoked salmon on the menu, and picking up dinner for two, but you're a bit of a mystery. Anyway, the reason I came back here was to find your man, but you'll do. You need to sign for your furniture. The truck's been idling out front for a half hour."

I smiled. Eric certainly liked his smoked salmon. "Where's Eric?"

"He said he was going out shopping a couple of hours ago. I thought he might have been back here putting those muscles to work in his shop. Now that's a sight I'd like to see."

Though I didn't disagree with him, I rolled my eyes before getting out of my car and following him through the quiet restaurant. It would be a couple of hours until the dinner rush, so I figured it was safe to walk through. I'd done a good job of using the back door. We'd checked it out after close one night before we'd moved in. "Is anyone else here?"

He shook his head. "Just me and a waitress until 4:30 p.m. You afraid of people or something?"

"Something like that." I smiled. "I don't like crowds."

The girl that was working, a chubby redhead with a huge breasts, nodded as we walked by. I breathed a sigh of relief that she didn't rush up for a hug or anything. She must not have been Amelia, who I figured was overwhelming just from her emails. I was the queen of baby steps. Going back to work was a big deal. It had been two years since I'd stepped foot in a classroom.

I liked kids. Their emotions were simple usually and a result of what was going on around them. They were happy when they were praised, upset when someone took something from them. More often than not, it was obvious what caused their mood. Adults were not so easy to read, and I'd always found myself exhausted trying to figure out their motivations.

When we landed outside, I looked at the giant moving truck. I'd only seen Eric's things in a storage locker a few weeks before we moved. Before that, he'd lived in a tiny minimalist bachelor apartment down the street from the storefront he rented. After his wife, he'd had no interest in living in the rambling townhouse they'd once shared in the Garden District, and he had rented it out to a family. We'd driven by once. It was really lovely.

I'd been awed when we'd gone through the locker. Most of the furniture, which he'd made himself, was stunning, the design reflecting his Scandinavian upbringing with a very Eric spin on it. We'd picked and tagged pieces to bring, and he'd sold the rest of it to a dealer.

I quickly signed for the shipment, and directed them to the back, so they could take everything up. I smiled a minute later, as Eric pulled up in his truck and parked in front of the restaurant. He got out, his arms full of grocery bags. "I didn't think it would be here until after six." He examined my face. "Everything good?"

I nodded. "Yep. I met Lafayette, and they're on their way up with everything."

A smile spread across his face. "And work was good?"

"Yep." I moved beside him, and grabbed a couple of bags. "PFS is going well."

He fumbled for his keys as we went in through the front door. "You look happy."

"I wasn't always a wreck. Just as long as you've known me." I bumped him with my hip.

He grinned at me. "You're far from a wreck Sookie. Just a bit damaged."

I grinned back. "You're allowed to say that, because you are too. I hope you're not telling your staff that."

"Our staff. And no. I just said you were..."

I cut him off. "Shy. I know. Lafayette told me. You don't have to tell them anything. I'm okay."

He gave a little shrug. "Okay. I just, well, things have been going so well. I don't want to mess that up."

I smiled as we walked into the kitchen and set the bags down. "You won't," I stood on my tiptoes, still not at eye level with him. "Because I won't let you."

"And I won't let you either." He leaned down and kissed my nose. "I almost forgot what it was like to have a real bed."

I shook my head at him, smiling to myself as I pulled a giant hunk of fish out of the grocery bag. Eric liked his seafood. I was pretty sure it was a deciding factor in his decision to look for a house in Maine. That and he'd grown up on the Atlantic. "We've only been on the air mattress for four nights. Before that we were at the bed and breakfast."

"But that was a queen. This bed is a king." He looked at me, a twinkle in his eye.

We'd brought my bed, because it was newer. "My bed is a queen too."

I heard the workers stomping up the back stairs, and Eric shuffled me into our bedroom, which looked out over the harbour. "Close your eyes for a minute."

I obliged him, and when he told me to open them, I gasped, as the movers unwrapped a gorgeous headboard, made of wood and quilted leather. Somehow, it was him, but me at the same time. "Oh wow."

A smile came over his face, as I ran my hands along the grooves, and onto the butter soft leather. "Consider it part of PFS."

Since the bed was really the most important thing, because it meant we'd get some sleep, he and I spent most of the evening assembling it, while the movers unloaded everything else. He'd purchased a new mattress as well, and given me carte blanche to order bedding, which I was quite excited about. I curled up with my laptop and spent some time on the Pottery Barn website, picking out things that I hoped reflected both our tastes.

Eric vanished for a bit, and I found him in the bathroom, the door half closed, a bit of steam escaping from the shower he'd presumably just taken.

I moved in behind him as he shaved, using a brush, a straight razor and a bar of soap. It reminded me of my grandfather. My arms went around his waist and my head on his back. "I love my present."

"It's been hard hiding a headboard, Lover. I'm glad you like it." I saw the black tattoo band that the ring I'd given him in the Bahamas now covered up. He took my ring off a lot, when he was working, shaving, doing most things involving his hands, but that black band was always there. The topic of removing it was one I'd thought about bringing up, but talked myself out of. It wasn't up to me to decide how he mourned, or what he kept from the ten years he'd spent with her. Pam. I knew her name, although I opted not to say it much. He didn't mention her at all anymore.

We'd talked about her a lot in the beginning, before we progressed from mourners to friends. I knew she'd been killed, and that he'd initially been a suspect but had been cleared quite quickly. I knew that he'd spent six months on probation for assaulting a police officer that had the gall to suggest that he had the tools that had been the cause of her death. She'd died of blunt force trauma to the head when he'd been packing up after a furniture show with lots of witnesses on hand. I knew they'd had problems before her death. Real, serious problems. I could relate to that. We'd both had the life sucked out of us, under slightly different circumstances, but the results were the same. We were careful with one another, considerate of one another's feelings, and our somewhat complicated pasts. That was why we worked.

I pulled away and grabbed my toothbrush as he finished up, sliding his wedding band back on. "It's going to be so much work, getting everything set up."

He patted his cheeks, before turning to face me, leaning against the sink. "I'm going to work in the morning, but we can pick away at unpacking tomorrow afternoon. I still need to make the side tables to match the headboard."

"I think I'll go introduce myself at lunch time. Take down Gran's cookbook and see if they want to try some of her recipes out."

He grinned. "I'd kill for some of your gumbo. It might be a nice variation on the fish chowder everyone seems so fond of around here."

We crawled into bed a few minutes later, and I moaned as I sunk into the mattress. "Yep, this is amazing."

He rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow. "I figured that we spend a lot of time in bed, and we should have a really great one."

I wrapped an arm around his side, pulling myself a little closer to him. "It was weird, being with all those people at school today, but in a good way. I ate lunch in the staff room, and even talked a bit about us, and moving here."

He ran a hand through my hair. "It takes a lot to push yourself the way you are. I found a Tuesday night AA meeting to go to. I think I'll start next week."

I traced my fingers over the four stars that lined the inside of his arm. One for every year of sobriety. It was hard to imagine Eric any less than in complete control of his life. "Is it going to be hard, being above a bar?"

He shook his head, a silly grin on his face. "Nah. I have to pay for that stuff down there. Honestly, since Pam, I've had really no desire to drink at all. I'm due for a new star."

You weren't allowed to say that your murdered ex drove you to drink, before she was, well murdered. Not to most people, anyway. With me, it was okay. "I think I might let my Zanex prescription run out for a little while, and see how I do." I'd been on some form of anti-anxiety medication for a number of years. I hardly remembered what it felt like to just let myself deal with the feelings of tension that would rise up in my stomach, which were now quickly pushed down by the effects of a pill.

"If you think you're ready for that, then maybe you should." His hand traced along my arm. "Maybe keep a little stash for special occasions."

"Like when Jason calls?" I grinned, mussing up his short blond hair. "Or when you decide to get get neurotic about the grout in the bathroom?" He'd gotten twitchy at my shower in Bon Temps until I'd finally relented and let him repair all the old grout. It was nice having someone handy around, even though he was crazy about home repair. I'd turned a blind eye to a lot of things for years, and it was his improvements that had helped me get top dollar for the house a couple of months earlier.

"Exactly." He winked, before rolling onto his back, and pulling me on top of him. I sat up, straddling his lap as he tossed my tank top to the side.

Sex with Eric, although I had very little to compare it to, was amazing. We'd waited quite a while before our relationship had progressed to that point, but when it did, I'd almost had a bit of an epiphany. Sex was enjoyable, when you shared it with someone who cared if you enjoyed it as well. His hand went to my hair, pulling it out of its ponytail, before he pulled himself up against the wall, so we were face to face. His mouth moved to my neck, and I shivered as he kissed me, pulling our chests together. His thumbs hooked around my underwear, and I lifted my hips as he slid them off.

When we made love, we were just two normal people, unaffected by our various issues and mental ailments. Just he and I, writhing flesh, quiet, together. The ghosts of our past a distant memory.