School Yard Games

17

My Girl

A/N: Sorry for the delay in posting, hope you had a great Valentines...

Enjoy JoxX...

I smiled at Sookie, "will you be my buddy?" if all else fails humour, it what had gotten through two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, more shit than I cared to remember-personal and bureau.

"It's okay to freak out, just don't do it in front of the pupils," she squeezed my hand.

"That came in loud and clear did it?" my cheeks flushed.

"Yeah," she gave me a crooked smile, before her face turned serious. "Eric?" she began but then seemed to falter. She began again, "Eric, what is this...you know between...um.. us?" she winced. I looked down at our entwined fingers. It felt good.

"I don't know Sookie is the honest answer, I am swinging between feeling like a cradle robbing douche bag and feeling the happiest I have in a long time, just because I got to hold you as you slept last night," there it was -all out there. I felt like I should get a prize for being so forth coming with my feelings. Every woman I'd ever dated after Sophie Ann had always bitched at how emotionally unavailable I apparently was. The clear answer was to that you had to be emotionally invested to be emotionally available in the first place. There was something so different about Sookie. I was different when I thought of her.

"So what does that mean?" she asked her big baby blues holding me in her gaze.

"I want to be with you, but I don't want you to come to regret anything, I won't push you. I want to do right by you," I push some of her blonde hair of her face, rubbing the pad of my thumb over her blushing cheek. "If you'd have me, I'd like to be yours, no pressure," I gently kissed her, she returned it hungrily.

When we were both breathless, we leaned our foreheads to each others, "Eric, I know I am only eighteen, but my Gran says age is just a number that indicates how much you have lived. Well I have lived more than most eighteen year olds, I've seen more. I know my own mind. In my own mind I want to be with you, but only if you can be with me without the guilt. I am eighteen surely part of being an adult is learning from your mistakes and accepting responsibility for making them in the first place, don't take that away from me. My eyes are wide open. And this. . .us it feels a million miles from a mistake, it feels sooo right. . . from the moment I saw you."

I blew out a big breath of air letting go of tension I didn't know I'd been holding, she was right. If I wanted her as my girlfriend then I would have to treat her like an adult not some kid. Besides having her in my arms felt so right, "it feels very right. It scares me, but we are going to need ground rules," I kissed her again, praying she'd understand.

"It scares me too. . .I agree, rules," she nodded.

"School is school, once you graduate we go public if you still want me." I hoped she didn't think I was ashamed of her, as that couldn't be further from the truth.

"Okay, I was gonna say the same thing but was wondering how to put it without offending you, next?" I felt relief at her statement.

"I don't want to sneak around on your Gran, if we do this we do it properly and hopefully with her blessing," I had meant it, I wanted to do right by her, even if it meant being chase out of town.

"Whoa. . .Um- Okay. . .Erm...your right, of course your right! I'd only feel bad lying to her anyway. It's not like we are doing anything wrong, if we act like we are, well that just speaks volumes right there doesn't it? We tell Gran." She spoke almost as if she was having a conversation with herself only out loud. "Right what's next?"

I sighed squeezing her tighter, was I really gonna tell? I cleared my throat, "your boy toys," I grimaced. Deep down I knew they meant nothing but, I wanted her all to myself, I didn't share-ever.

"Done. Totally understandable. But you need to understand they are my friends too, I care about them. That being said no flirting. No more nooners with lesbians for you, yeah?"

I laughed, "okay cool, you have no worries."

Sookie swallowed looking nervous, shifting her weight from foot to foot. "Umm...I want to sleep with you, I am just not ready yet, I hope that is enough for you? I don't want to ever find out from some girls head that I wasn't enough so if you don't think at some point in the future it is, be a man and just tell me," her face was scrunched in a serious scowl.

"I meant what I said, I don't want to push you, as long as I get to hold you, maybe kiss you a little, I am good," I rocked her as I spoke to her, loving the feeling of her warmth against her.

"Promise me, you'd tell me, pleease" she urged. I couldn't stand the look in eye, that told me if I couldn't agree this was some sort of deal breaker.

"I promise, you don't have to worry. Um...Sookie?"

She was nodding looking relived, "Yes?"

"Who hurt you?" I asked, I could feel there was something more to this.

"Eric, it's not important. It was ages ago."

"Tell me, we have to be honest with each other."

"Okay, but after it's never mentioned again kay? Really it's ancient history." The douche bag in me wanted to huff; ' how much ancient history could you have at eighteen?' but I didn't

"If you insist."

"It was Bill," my grip tightened on her. Never liked that little prick.

"What happened?"

"We were fifteen, I thought I was in love. Bill and I had been dating for six months, he cheated on me with Lorena. They got drunk on moonshine and she was willing to do what I wasn't. That was the end of that. I read it right out of her mind, she gave me a very explicit play by play the next day- of course not meaning to."

I wanted to kill that fucker, "Oh Sookie."

"Don't pity me. It doesn't suit you."

"How can you. . ." kiss him? touch him? press yourself against him? Each one just made me want to growl louder and louder and protect my woman by stomping on Compton's spineless body. ". . .still be his friend?" lame!

"I am a Telepath. It isn't only good for finding cheating boyfriends. He still loves me, you know. There isn't a day that goes by that he doesn't regret what he did. It's all very teenage angst, I guess I still had for a long time strong feelings for him you can't just switch that off because he cheated; but I couldn't be with him after he slept with her, it would feel like I would be selling myself short. Constantly looking over my shoulder waiting for it to happen again- you know?"

"Do you still love him?" I asked, shifting us to the couch so she was sat in my lap. Trying to distract myself with movement in case she told me something I couldn't bear to hear.

"As a friend, but that's it. We have been through a lot together, too much to throw away over one mistake but not enough to give him a do over. Besides our town kinda needed us, so that made a lot of decisions for us," she shrugged it off. There she was proving her point again, that in some aspects she was more mature than me. Sophie- Ann and I had only spoken once since the divorce, that was only so we could hurl insults at each other. Really good ones like; more people have been up you than the Effile tower-slut. I had been particularly proud of that one, seeing as Sophie Ann had been from Paris originally

"You really haven't had a chance to be a normal teenager have you?" I sighed against her hair, trying to keep my guilt away from her, here I was taking the last of her teenage years- like a fucking selfish douche.

"No not really. Pfft normal is so over rated, what is normal anyway?" she cast a dramatic arm into the air.

"Hell if I know," I chuckled, then a thought struck me. We could be kids together, wasn't Pam always going on about some psycho babble that we should nurture our inner child and just play some times and all that dippy chick shit. I vowed then and there that I would make sure Sookie would have fun, a day off even if it meant taking her away for the day. Once this current crisis was over of course.

It felt like the calm before the storm, we watched DVD's, made out, ate and just sat attached to each other. Around nine, Pam arrived with black swat vest, bennie hat and black skinny jeans and top for Sookie.

"Victors in custody. Yes I am that good. Actually Compton really is that good. He really ran with your idea Northman, he had his HAL," Pam grimaced using the famous computers name in air quotes. Compton was such a geek. "Searching using Victors Bio metrics all the security camera's in the area we picked him up in a flea bag Shreveport motel under an assumed name, didn't know what hit him. I am having him moved to a secret location after questioning, we wouldn't want him or should I say his buddies to spring him now." Pam was stalling.

"Telepath huh?" Pam began her not so subtle line.

"No, way!" I informed her, jumping to my feet. I didn't need to be a telepath to see where Pam was taking this conversation.

"Eric. I have to do this. If Hunter is still alive and there's a chance something I could do, could help him. I have to, I couldn't live with myself otherwise, I'd always wonder." She implored. Aw shit why did she have to make such sense?

"Okay, but I am doing the questioning, you'll be behind glass, with Pam. It will still work like that right?" I made sure my voice let them know I was not messing round, this man stabbed Sookie four times in the stomach, there was no way I was letting him get within six feet of her. Sookie nodded.

"Excellent, here," Pam gave the black SWAT suit for Sookie. I snorted a laugh, Pam was such a damn girl scout. Always prepared.

I lead Sookie into a small room when we arrived at the Munroe police station, giving her a com, so she could talk to me. We had stopped by Compton's house, for a nanite detector. It looked like an airport wand, I was to swipe Victor with it to make sure he didn't have any, to make sure he wasn't something more than regular human.

From what we could tell he was just the regular sort after I scanned him, shortly after we had arrived in Shreveport.

Even though Sookie wasn't in the room she led the interview, no doubt about it. Pam and I, got to see firsthand what a telepath with a degree and soon doctorate in psychology could do. It was scary and impressive all at once. Bank accounts numbers, to millions of dollars of secret cash, that would have our fraud dept busy for the next five years. The down low on every person in De Castro's organisation. They had indeed weaponized spontaneous human combustion, it was complicated process involving multiple exposure to radiation, which meant it posed no immediate danger us at present or so Sookie assured me.

We even endured Victors mini break down at how his prostitute mother never loved him, he didn't know his father, like that excused mass murder, running drug cartels and human trafficking.

Finally we found a location for Hunter; Columbia two months ago De Castro had sold him to a drug cartel, boasting he had his own telepath. Sixty five million dollars was the going rate for a telepath. I could hear Sookie retching over the com, before I had even made it out the door of the interview room. Sixty five million dollars. The sum Sookie had asked De Castro for, to create a super solider- she couldn't have known he would sell her cousins baby to fund it.

Pam looked totally lost as she stroked Sookie's back, holding her hair back. "I don't understand? It was going so well, then she started hurling she barely made it to the basket in time," Pam began, her face caught somewhere between disgust and alarm.

"It's okay Pam, I got this. Can you get her some water?" I took over from at the waste paper bin.

"Sookie, it's not your fault," I tried to soothe her, rubbing her back, fuck what did I say? What could I say?

"I know that," her voice hoarse with emotion and the yakking, "still doesn't help though, as I can't kill De Castro all over again. Rat bastard!" Again she had surprised me. "Urgh, I am so angry right now." she growled.

Pam thrust a plastic cup of water in my direction to give to Sookie, "Here," I handed her the cup, wiping her streaming eyes, trying to focus on something positive. "Good news; Hunter most probably is still alive and most possibly in good health. You don't spend sixty five million dollars on something and then mistreat it. Better news Columbia is basically third world, which means no real infrastructure in national security we can be in and out before we blip in someone's radar, we can do this black ops." I rubbed soothing circles on Sookie's back. I'd do it with or without the bureaus help.

"Like a snatch and grab?"

"Yes, quick, clean, fast." I spoke with determination.

"Okay." Sookie sat nodding , a determined look began to occupy her face. "Now get your ass back in there, Northman. I want Dermot found too, I am not leaving till I know where that fucking bastard is, he's fucked over my family for the last time."

I couldn't help but grin as I saluted her fighting talk, "Yes ma'am." My eyes briefly locked with Pam's as I left the room she had the smug impressed look she sometimes got, when something had really impressed her.

It was past four am when I drove up to Sookies house with her, she had fallen asleep on the drive over. I just hoped Sookie's Gran was as understanding as Sookie had made her out to be.

Oh there you have it! Are we liking Sookie & Eric together in this? Is age just a number? Give me your thoughts. . .