Title: You are So (un)Dead to Me
Genre: Romance / Angst
Rating: M
Pairing: Eric x Sookie
Spoilers: N/A
Summary: Desire is poison.
Word Count: 940
Warnings: Weird, inconsistent timeline.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Title is a book.
A/N: Ah, amnesia Eric was my favorite.
She doesn't want to feel this. She doesn't want to want this. But it is hard, so hard (was this really the time to be making puns, Stackhouse?), when Eric has had a thousand years to perfect what he did. And what he did, he did very, very well. Talented fingers, talented tongue, talented everything. His skin icy, undead cold, then searing heat as they moved together. First frost, then fire.
When the vamps had first come out of their coffins into the real world, Sookie was one of those who had been intrigued, not terrified or appalled. If there were vampires, there might be other supernatural creatures. There might be others like her. She might not be alone. Then, when Bill had walked into the bar, and she realized they were blissful pools of stone cold silence in her mind, it was like sinking into a hot bath. Instant, soothing relief.
But where Bill was frigid, icy calmness, hidden behind a frowning, petulant face, Eric was a roiling, tsunami hidden behind a face as smooth and clear as glass. It had frightened Sookie, when she first learned what he hid behind that façade. She had thought, assumed, that all vampires might be like Bill. That the long, endless cycle of years upon years simply turned them into these un-rippled ponds of people. But Eric now, Eric was different.
Those endless years of life, those centuries of life had simple made him more of what he was – a Viking. And he did nothing by halves. He did not run his bar or rule his kingdom by halves. He did not go into battle by halves. And he did not love by halves.
"I can stay with you always. We can know each other's bodies in every way, night after night. I could love you. I could work. You would not be poor. I would help you."
The words were seared across her mind, the earnestness in his expression – so open and bright, nothing by halves, not even here. Even as he arched into her, big, calloused hands sliding lines of electricity down her thighs, fangs nipping at breast, and shoulder, and neck. Even still he met her eyes, as blue as lanterns in the pale halo of his hair, lashes as long as wings. Even now he was all for her. His mind was not elsewhere, not betraying her, not studying her. He was for her.
But she was not for him.
Sookie could not be a Viking handmaiden, could not be what Eric needed from a queen and consort and wife. A warrior, a weapon, an icon. He needed to go home, back to rule his little kingdom. He needed to protect his people, his land, his title. She could not be one who would do that for him. For all her gifts, she was still only a human. Taking life was abhorrent to her. It would never come easy for her. It would never not cause her to wake confused and sweat-soaked in the middle of the night, hands reaching out blindly to turn on the light, to make sure there was no blood on her hands. Eric did not understand this. Life, to him, was nothing. He cherished his. But people, vampires, shifters, they all died eventually. Whether you were two or two hundred or two thousand. It came to everyone in the end. So he saw nothing wrong with cutting the thread of other's lives. Vikings.
But how to leave this – this heat, this closeness – she didn't know. She didn't know if she was strong enough to push him away, back to his life. His love was like a drug and she was an addict. She craved her fingertips dancing across her limbs, his hair brushing across her stomach, the solid, muscled line of him pressed shoulder to calf against her back. She craved the gentle nips of teeth, the laving of a hot tongue against her throat – teasing and playful, nails scraping down her spine. How to give up this expanse of endless pale skin, smooth and scarred and all hers to touch and kiss and mark? How to never see those eyes glitter with mischief when he crammed into her tiny shower with her? How to never see them darken with want, pupils blown eclipse-wide when he looked her, nostrils flared, fangs out? How to never hear that soliloquy of her name on his lips as he reached his peaks. All for her, only for her…
But no, no, no again. Not hers. A Sheriff. He belonged to others. She wanted, yearned, craved him, but she did not need him, not like the others did. They needed him to protect them, to fight for them, to pay them, to shelter them. She could imagine a life with him only so far, and then the guilt that she was taking him away from those, the terror of growing old, the worry she would give in, become one of them, simply to stay with him forever.
No, she couldn't, could never. She had to let him go. She had to let those lips go. She had to let the gentle curve of his ears go. She had to let the hard ridges of his stomach, the curve of his ass, the long line of his thighs, go. The brightness of his eyes. Had to forget what his face looked like when it was open.
What it looked like when he was in love.
No more, no more, no more.
