A/N: Only 5 days left in the Dead Pan Contest! Pleeeeze go read & review!

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CHAPTER 16:DEPTH OF FIELD

When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.

~Annie Leibovitz

I hung up the last batch of prints I had just finished developing and then sat down at my desk, looking over the set of photos that I was planning on showing Eric tonight.

It had been almost a week since the photo shoot. When I left that night, I'd told Eric that I would need a few days to work on the photos I'd taken, and he had been incredibly patient with me. I finally called him yesterday, asking him if he wanted to come over today to look them over, and we agreed that he would come over in the evening.

I was quite relieved that he seemed to be in a good mood, and even excited to see the pictures. It was certainly a change from the very somber mood I'd left him in, so I was glad I hadn't caused any permanent damage.

I had to admit though, I'd been more than a little scared to challenge him. I mean, he was Eric freaking Northman, after all. But I had never shied away from telling someone exactly what was on my mind—and I wasn't about to start now. Not even for EN. Especially not for EN. As much as I may have swooned over him like any other self-respecting fangirl, it was that other side of him—it was Eric—who had really made my heart go a-pitter-patter. And he was the reason why, that night, I'd taken a deep breath and continued, no matter how hurtful my words might have been.

Hey, it's like they say, 'no pain, no gain'.

I knew it could—and probably would—come off as totally bitchy, but I had to try; had to see if I was right, had to see if I could make him really see. But after I'd uttered those words, what I saw made me all but shatter into a million pieces. I wanted so much to just reach out to him, cradle him in my arms, comfort him, tell him everything would be fine—hell, even take it back, if it would take away the pain I saw flash across his beautiful face.

Instead, I did what I always do. I let my camera do the talking, and snapped away.

Of course, I never expected him to give me a taste of my own bitter medicine. But, on the other hand, it made me care for him all that much more, after having a few days to cool off, of course.

It was what I loved and hated most about photography; being in the darkroom, with nothing to keep me company but negatives of time, slowly seeping into me as the images revealed themselves on the developing paper—well, it definitely gave me plenty of alone time with my thoughts. I relished the luxury of being able to digest it all at my own pace, even as I loathed the fact that in here, there was really nothing else to keep my mind occupied.

Now, as I stared at that last photograph I'd taken, I hoped desperately that when I shared it with Eric, he would be able to see it as the gift it was meant to be.

^V^

The ringing of the doorbell snapped me out of my reverie. I quickly stuck the picture at the bottom of the pile before rushing down the stairs to get the door.

Of course, he took my breath away, as always. The man seriously made inanimate objects like goddamn fabric fall in love with him—even casual denim and cotton seemed to favor him more than any other man I'd ever seen. I mean, really, he was just wearing dark-wash jeans and a charcoal gray t-shirt, and I had to fight to keep my breath steady and my pulse to a normal resting rate.

"Hey," he said, leaning his forearm against the door and resting his head on it.

"Hey," I answered, opening the door wider and motioning for him to come in.

I called over my shoulder as I headed toward the kitchen, "Can I get you something to drink?"

"I'll just have whatever you're having," his voice was close behind me, making me way happier than it really should.

I opened the fridge and took out the pitcher of lemonade I'd made earlier, setting it on the counter. After pouring a glass for each of us, I turned around and handed him one, forcing my hand not to linger an inappropriate length of time as it brushed his when he took the glass from me. "Well, shall we get right down to business then?"

He arched a brow, his lips turning up into a lopsided grin. "As you wish."

I giggled and nodded. "C'mon."

I led him upstairs, motioning for him to sit at the desk, but he ignored me and walked over to the laundry line of hanging prints.

I watched the broad slope of his shoulders and back as he walked along the line of photos, shaking occasionally when he chuckled softly with amusement. After giving him a few minutes, I cleared my throat.

He spun around, his blue eyes somehow impossibly bluer as they positively sparkled with amusement. He fixed me with one of those thousand watt smiles that surely must have the ability to cause a power outage—wasn't that a problem here in southern California? I had to wonder if he had been responsible for any of those outages. Shaking my head to clear it of this ridiculous line of thinking, I tried to refocus his attention on the task at hand. "C'mon, don't you want to see how your pictures came out?"

He relented and motioned for me to lead the way.

When we were seated next to each other at the L-shaped workspace, I picked up the pile of photos and straightened them. I stood the pile up between us so he could only see the back of it, while I tried to gather my thoughts, glancing between the top most photograph and Eric several times before getting up the guts to thrust the first photo in front of him.

I studied him closely, watching for the slightest hint of a reaction as I fought hard against the urge to chew on my lip. For once, this actually had nothing to do with who was sitting in front of me, but rather, what we were doing; this was technically my first real photography gig—I'd never been this invested in my subject actually liking my work. In theory, I didn't much like the idea of changing my work to make someone else happy, but I found that, with Eric, I really did want him to like it, more than just approve it.

When his mouth broke into a pleased grin and he picked up the photo to examine it more closely, I let out the breath that I hadn't realized I was holding. I was being silly, I told myself, and continued to pass more photos to him.

He laughed quite loudly at several of the photos, and I was happy to see that he realized how over the top some his playboy poses had been.

I held on to that last photograph, though, stalling for as long as I could. I finally made myself do it when I heard him set down the last print he had in his pile, sliding it off to the side as his gaze bore into me. Letting out a heavy sigh, I raised my eyes to meet his and handed him the print. "This one is definitely my pick."

His lips turned up into that trademark smug and sex-drenched EN smirk—that is, until he saw the image. Any trace of amusement disappeared from his face as his eyes widened and went from sparkling with excitement to shining with emotion. Every visible muscle in him tightened—his eyebrows knit together, his jaw and neck muscles pinched, and even the hand that was holding on to the print tightened its grip.

He jumped up before I even had a chance to open my mouth and utter another word, pushing his chair back with a horrible screeching sound that made the silence that followed seem all the more louder. When I finally worked up the courage to look up again, he had his back turned to me, his shoulders were hunched over and his free hand was clenched into a fist at his side as he wrestled with whatever demons were taunting him from the shadows of that photograph.

Of course, I knew what he was seeing … those familiar perfect features—high cheekbones, square jaw, strong brows—the geometry of beauty, stripped bare in a moment when he was forced to look, really look, in the mirror; not at it, but into it. That mirror that he had learned to look past, only focusing on its surface to primp those smooth features of his into Hollywood gold, now reflected that truth back at him.

But what I didn't expect was to suddenly know so clearly what he was feeling … and to feel it myself.

In fact, I was almost knocked back by the pain that flooded into me. His pain.

I was on my feet and at his side in an instant. I wanted to make sure he was alright, but there were no words that my mouth—or heart—were capable of committing to, so I just placed a hand on his shoulder, hoping he would understand what I wasn't able to say out loud.

But that one touch seemed to all but break him. I felt him fall apart under my touch—his whole body releasing and jerking violently before tensing up again as he tried to hold himself together.

I swallowed down the sob that threatened to tear out of my own throat and grasped his shoulder, tugging at it so that he would turn around. He did, but kept his face down, hidden.

"Eric," I whispered, cupping his face with my hands and gasping when I felt the wetness there—not because it surprised me, but because it cut me. Deep.

I turned his face toward mine and raised up on my tiptoes, grazing my lips against each cheek with the lightest of touches. He closed his eyes and let out a soft sigh and my heart ached all over again, but this time in a good way.

I pulled back, brushing the remainder of his tears away with my thumbs. I stared up at his beautiful face, mesmerized by his perfectly sculpted lips, when his eyes fluttered open. We stared at each other for a breathless moment—just like we had that night in the alley behind the Chateau Marmont—but now there was so much more there, so much that I could see, that he let me see, in them.

I pulled him to me, pressing my lips to his with hard and unapologetic force, sucking and rubbing and begging for him to open up to me. He groaned into my mouth as his lips parted for me, the sensation making me tremble and press even closer to him.

He felt and tasted so good—I just wanted to fall right into him and be swallowed whole. Instead, I settled for doing the oral tango, twirling and dipping and teasing with my tongue.

I felt his hands wrap around my shoulder right before he pushed me back, pulling us apart. His eyes were dark with the need that he was trying to shake off as he held me at a distance; asking and demanding all at once. "Sookie—"

I shushed him, putting my finger to his lips and shaking my head, overriding whatever worries or obstacles he was thinking of voicing.

His eyes grew perceptibly darker right before he crashed his lips to mine, eliciting a moan from me at his fast and rough response, one that he eagerly swallowed up into his greedy, sucking lips. And then his hands were at my hips and he was pushing us back, pressing his mouth and body into me as he none-so-gently slammed us into the wall.

I didn't really care. Yeah, somewhere deep down my brain registered it as pain that would probably leave a bruise, but I was far too focused on the advantages of our new surroundings, namely that every part of his very demanding body was pressed so closely against me that it was sure to leave an imprint.

He lowered his face to my neck as he cupped my breasts, his thumbs teasing my nipples, making them instantly hard. I arched into his hands, gasping for breath and for more of him, tangling my fingers in his hair and shoving his head down to my chest.

He obliged, and I could feel his hot breath getting lower and lower, closer and closer, until he closed his mouth around my nipple and bit on it roughly. The sensation of his teeth through the soft, thin fabric of my worn cotton t-shirt was just too much—I cried out, digging my hands even further into his hair and bucking up against him.

When he answered me with a groan of his own I totally lost it. I hitched a leg around his waist, desperate for more of that delicious yet unbearable friction, clutching and rubbing and pressing into him.

But it still wasn't enough. I wanted more, the most, all of it and then some—and he certainly wasn't objecting, judging by the sounds coming out of him.

I reached down between us and undid his pants, while he returned the favor. Slipping my hands underneath the waistband of his boxer briefs, I grabbed that infamous much-ogled-over ass and pulled him to me. He let out a growl as he rested his palm flat against the wall right beside my head.

And then he had to go and find that spot. My spot. He captured the very bottom of my earlobe in his mouth, nudging it gently between his lips before nipping at it and flicking his tongue behind it. I closed my mouth around the certain patch of his shoulder that happened to be within easy reach, the pleasure ripping through me as I ground into him, guiding his ass against me to match my movements.

And holy mother of … UNNNNF. The sheer size of his hardness, pressing into me, made me rethink that whole theory of proportionality. He obviously broke that equation by leaps and bounds. I pulled him closer, craving the feel of every exquisite inch of him as we swayed against each other.

He let out a rapid string of what could have been either curses or sweet nothings in his native tongue—I really didn't know and didn't care, as long as that tongue was on me. A moment later, I felt him at my entrance, and I gave his ass another none-too subtle shove, showing him exactly how ready I was for him, for this. He buried himself deep into me in one extremely long, Viking-sized thrust.

We both stayed perfectly still, our panting breaths loud against the silence of the room and hot against each other's skin. Our eyes met once again, and what I saw there shook me to my very core. He lay bare in front of me, underneath me, and all I wanted was to fill my arms, myself with him.

He remained frozen where he was, waiting.

My hands flew to his face, caressing him softly as my thumbs smoothed the furrow that had formed between his brows.

"Eric, I've got you," I whispered, our mouths a mere inches apart but still entirely too far away for my liking. I lowered his face to mine, but left the last bit of distance between us for him to close. "I've got you."

He pressed his lips to mine, crushing me between the hard wall and his even harder body, grabbing my hands and intertwining our fingers before raising them together, stretching my arms high above my head. I was splayed out, the position of my arms forcing me to arch against him in the most delicious way, as he thrust into me with hard, determined strokes, gripping my hands more tightly as he pounded into me. He rested his forehead against mine, and I was trapped in the impossible blue of his eyes, my gasps matching every one of his groans as he moved deeper and deeper into me.

But still I needed more.

So I raised my leg up a little, tilting my pelvis as I adjusted the grip of my thigh around him. We both felt it at the same time, shuddering with the increased contact the new angle provided, allowing him to move even deeper within me while rubbing up against all the right spots on the way there. He buried his face in my neck as he began to slam into me with renewed urgency. Lowering our arms so that we were stretched out together like an x-rated Vitruvianman, we were a tangle of writhing, trembling, twisting bodies, stretched out on the verge of our intimate precipice, only one breath, one moan, one stroke away from tumbling over.

I just grabbed onto dear life, clutching and digging into his massive hands as the waves of pure, blinding hotness rocked through me, indistinguishable sounds spilling out from both our mouths as we spilled into and onto each other.

His body went limp all around me as we both rode out the aftershocks. After what seemed like an eternity of pure bliss, yet not nearly long enough, he raised his head and rested his forehead on mine as he pressed my palm over his heart. He stared into my eyes, and the intensity of his gaze, at such proximity—well, I would have melted, if I hadn't already been reduced to an (extremely sticky and ridiculously happy) puddle of goo.

"Thank you," he murmured, his breath hot on my lips.

I didn't have to ask him what he was thanking me for—it shone in his eyes.

So I just cupped his cheeks and smiled at him, before raising my mouth to his.

As our lips met, soft and unhurried, he untangled my legs from around his waist and eased himself out of me. I whimpered at the loss of him, but his talented tongue soon made it up to me. He turned us around, so that his back was now against the wall, and slowly slid us down to sit on the floor as he cradled me in his arms.

When we broke apart, I wrapped my arms around his neck and laid my head on his shoulder. Looking up at him from underneath heavy-lidded eyes, my mouth twisted into a smirk. "Oh, trust me, the pleasure was all mine."

A/N:Awww… they finally deedz it! *giggles* So, yes, it's true. This is the last chapter of FStop, aside from an epilogue. I had originally planned to have this be the halfway point actually, but I figured, these kids deserved a little time to enjoy their HEA, no? So, I decided to split it into a sequel. The sequel is all outlined, and I might even include a teaser with the epilogue? If you want me to do that, you could leave me one of those reviews I lurrrve so much, and tell me so. Just sayin' ;D

Oh, and btw, I did start a new story you might want to check out. It's set 6 months after D&G, but is kind of a flip of book4. Sookie is just about to start her life with Sam and get away from all the crazy vampire shit, when she finds herself running down a dark country road. .dun … check it out on my profile.

A/N A gazillon Nutella-flavored kissies to nycsnowbird who beta'd this for me, as well as spent countless hours throughout this story holding my hand when I needed it and kicking my ass into shape too, when called for, lol.

I did make quite a few tweeks though after she got it back to me, so any mistakes remaining are purely my own.

Disclaimer: As always, I do not own any rights to the characters in SVM or the HBO series True Blood. However, the original content and ideas are mine all mine.