Chapter 34: Say What You Mean

The silence stretched itself through the room, settling in the space uncomfortably like an uninvited stranger. What the hell had just happened down there?

"I'm… Working?"

He lazily walked closer, with a twinkle in his eye she had never seen before. "Aren't you supposed to be laundering money?"

"Yeah-"

"There is no money." Eric nodded at the empty plastic bins sitting on the couch.

Her eyes followed, and her whole soul died a bit at the sight of it. "I'm painfully aware."

"Come on, let's go." He said again. Clearly, he had something else in mind.

He had a funny air about him, a certain joie de vivre she didn't know he was capable of. The Eric that came out of the basement was not the same one that went in. She knew he wouldn't let this go, but he also didn't have to twist her arm on the matter. Looking at these empty spreadsheets was starting to eat her inside. Olivia was glad Eric didn't point out the obvious: she had six days left to live. Maybe she could afford one night to actually live it.

Without another word, she shut her laptop and put it neatly inside the safe, then locked it. She followed Eric down the hall, still not following this impromptu… Whatever this was. When they walked out together into the club, the whole staff stopped and eyed them making their exit, wondering if they were in trouble for not actually be working. It wasn't their fault though, that there weren't any customers. Ginger glared at her from behind the bar, eyes full of hatred, thoughts so loud she could hear them over the music. Olivia then delicately cleaned the corners of her own mouth with the tip of her thumb and ring finger, then licked her lips not breaking eye contact. That's right: what's a blowjob to anyone who already thinks Eric and Liv are fucking? The waitress's mouth fell open and she turned beet red, her neck even broke out in instantaneous hives.

As much as she wanted to see if Ginger's head was going to explode, she noticed a certain lack of tall blonde in the club: Pam wasn't here.

"Who's going to watch the club?" Olivia asked while they stepped outside, through the leather-tufted front door.

Eric nodded to Chow, and she got her answer. The vampire was wearing his usual uniform: tailor-made slacks and a formal vest, leaving his tattoos and impeccable physique to show, and the world was a better place for it. Chow was one handsome motherfucker, the strong silent type; and obviously loyal enough for Eric to trust him with his Empire's crown jewel.

The two walked across the semi-empty parking lot towards a black Jaguar whose lights flashed at the click of Eric's car fob. He had replaced his beloved flashy red Corvette for a more demure, but equally elegant model. It barely made a sound when Eric turned the key on the ignition. They drove for a while, and from what she could tell, they were driving aimlessly around town. Shreveport was significantly prettier at night because you couldn't see half it. Driving around in this spacious, comfortable and decadently luxurious car felt soothing. The driver was a treat for the eyes too; Olivia came to the conclusion he just wanted to get out too, even if it was just for a little bit, from their depressingly vacant nightclub.

"Where's Pamela?" Olivia asked, curiously. She had never seen him leave the bar to someone other than his progeny in the six months she had worked for him.

"She likes to take some time off after raids," he said simply.

"I thought you didn't do PTOs?" Olivia teased.

She hadn't forgotten about the one time she asked for time off in order to go on a fake date with Alcide Hervaux. He gave her the side-eye. Eric hadn't forgotten it either.

"Raids really get under her skin, and trust me - no one wants to be around Pamela when she's in a bad mood. It's a win for everyone."

Now that she believed. "How long does she stay away?"

"It's usually just one night, but it depends how mad she is. When I was made Sheriff and assigned to Louisiana Area 5, I think she left for 10 months."

"She just up and left you for ten months? Why didn't you summon her back?"

He shook his head. "Not my style. I never make anyone stay, ever. Some Makers turn their progeny into slave shadows. Some Sheriffs pay, blackmail or bribe powerful and influential vampires into staying in the areas to strengthen their own political capital, but that kind of loyalty is fake. All the vampires in Area 5 stay out of their own free will, and my progeny is no different. Plus, it's Pamela. She may not like it, but she always comes back, no matter what cesspool I drag her into."

"Whatever do you mean? Shreveport is so charming," Olivia joked. "What about you?"

"Take time off?" He shook his head. "Not a luxury bestowed to me."

"What, like… Ever?"

They turned onto a darker and wider road. She figured they were leaving town now - to where she had no idea, but for whatever reason, poking around Eric's private life felt far more pressing than their destination.

"Being Sheriff has its perks, and it's not necessarily… Difficult - if you do it right, I mean. Vampires mostly govern themselves, it's just the idiots that need management. I have a lot of downtime to fuck around, but I'm always on the clock. I've been on the clock since '86, night in, night out."

That meant Eric had been working for the Crown and the Authority every single night since Olivia was five years old. The world had changed so much since, and he was locked in here, unable to witness it, or perhaps worse - watch it through the lens of the people who live here. Why the hell would anyone take this job?

"Being Sheriff is mostly alright," he shrugged. "There's a certain glamour to being big fish in a tiny pond. Plus, it could be worse, they could have sent me to fucking Wyoming."

In vampire terms, Olivia knew it was the least populous state, meaning it had the least amount of food - and vampires. In turn, Wyoming, along with Alaska, had the biggest population of werewolves. Overall, not the greatest place to be confined for eternity.

"Ever think of quitting?"

Eric let out a deep laugh, but there were no traces of joy in it. "There's only one way out of it."

True death.

It was pitch black outside, and the car smoothly ran up and down the soft hillsides of the northern Louisiana landscape. It was a clear night and the moon was beautifully crescent. Eric made a slow turn into a small dirt road where the trees hugged the path tightly, its tops making a canopy of hanging moss that brushed the top of the windshield. This wasn't merely a joy ride, Eric drove here, specifically.

"Where are we going?"

"Patience, my darling."

Olivia grew nervous and started to shift uneasily in the car seat. Then, they reached a clearing past the trees, a soft patch of tall grass that gleamed silver under the moonlight. Eric turned off the car, and the two exited taking in the fresh clean air.

You could hear the faint sound of crickets and frogs singing, and the gentle breeze ruffled the treetops around them, making all the hanging moss, and the drooping willow leaves sway. Further ahead, the grass transformed into a small sandy beach that gave entrance to a beautiful serene lake, as black as the night sky. Full-grown trees poked out of the water all along the shore, like a picture-perfect Louisiana postcard. The moon and the stars were smeared on the dark water, among flower lilies that floated like candles. She didn't know where this was, all she knew it's that it was truly beautiful.

Beside her, Eric was his usual quiet, but he looked like a completely different person. He was not scheming, not smirking at his own impure thoughts, not hiding in the shadows, not antagonizing her every move. He was at peace.

"This is technically Area 4. The boundary line set by the Authority was more or less 20 feet back."

He didn't have to explain it further. She knew Sheriffs were not allowed outside of their own designated fiefs without the express permission of their King or Queen, and most of the time when they did leave, it was to pay a visit to their monarch. For Curia Regis, or settle something in court, or for a Magister hearing. Olivia knew intimately the need to escape one's own reality once in a while; she often buried herself into work, or retirement planning, pole dancing, or as of late - cleaning. Eric did not have such rights. He was kind enough to give that luxury to his progeny, but he was cursed to be always on duty, to always be watching those under him, to serve the needs of the crown before his own. Coming to this little forgotten lake past his boundaries was all the defiance he could afford to do. This was as far as he could ever go. Eric had too much to lose.

They wandered through the grass, approaching the water. Once she reached the beach, she took her wedges off and dug her toes in the fine soft sand. She saw markings on the sand unlike anything she'd seen before, it looked like someone dragged a single stick from the grass into the water all over the beach, leaving crooked little trenches behind. She grew up going to world-famous Jersey beaches, and she knew waves or wind did not make these. "It's really beautiful out here, but what's this?"

"Oh, these are gator tracks," he said normally and interrupted Olivia's panic attack before she could bolt back to the car. "Relax, animals don't generally approach vampires. You're safe as long as you stay close."

It took several breaths to get her back to normal. And after her eyes adjusted to the dark and she could make out the claw mark on the sand along like the trenches, it took her several belly-deep inhales.

Eric picked up a small pebble and tossed it across the water, making it skip at least a dozen times more than she ever heard a stone skip. It went so far towards the center of the lake she couldn't even see it just faintly hear it touch the surface of the water before it stopped altogether.

The vampire then softly sat on the sand, and Olivia followed suit, tucking her dress under her butt. She considered scooching closer to him for safety but realized this place was dangerously romantic as it was. Okay, Eric may be scheming a little bit.

"So why did you become Sheriff?" Liv broke the silence. "You are good at it, your people really respect you, and it certainly is a privileged position to be in all things considered. But I don't understand why anyone would want it. To be stuck here? Forever?"

He leaned back, putting his weight on his elbows and extending his long legs, boots almost touching the water. His jacket fell open, and she could see the outline of his abs through this black shirt (damn). His eyes rested on the water lilies. "I fell in love with the wrong person," if it was hard to imagine why anyone would become Sheriff, it was a thousand times harder imagining Eric loving someone. "What about you? What made you decide to commit crimes to line the pockets of the most dangerous, manic and unstable French vampire woman in the country?"

Olivia looked out into the lake, hoping it would be a bit easier to have this conversation than to face his piercing blue eyes. "I also fell in love with the wrong person."

"No shit."

"I mean before her."

He nodded, raising his brows. "Ah."

Thinking about any of her exes never brought happy memories. "So are you gonna tell me why we're here?"

Eric looked directly at her, with the same bright intensity only his eyes could do. She would never get used to it. "I've been trying to figure you out before you know..."

Six days.

"Oh, have you? Well. Tell me what you got, Sherlock."

"Before I tell you, I have one question. What do you want?"

It was a puzzling inquiry coming from him. He had never seemed to care, worry or even be slightly interested in Olivia's thoughts, opinions, or even hopes - let alone wishes. "What?"

"What do you want?"

Liv felt inexplicably flustered at the point-blank question coming from the vampire Adonis next to her. What did she want? What did he mean, what did she want?

What did she want?

"I don't... Like, right now? I want customers back so I can go back to doing my job-"

"So you want to work? Why?"

What the hell?! She was growing very defensive, very fast. "Because my life quite literally depends on it!"

"So what you really want is to live?"

"Yes!" Her answer echoed in the trees.

Then, silence. The uninvited stranger again.

"See, that makes zero sense to me," Eric shook his head, displeased with her answer. "If what you want is to live, then why do any of this? Why work for Sophie-Anne LeClerq or any drug dealing vampire for that matter, if you don't have a death wish?"

Maybe the silence was better. "I've told you why men are-"

"Reckless because they think they are invincible, vampires know they are not, I remember, it's very poetic or whatever. But why do that either, if you want to live? Working for any sort of cartel or gang seems highly paradoxical to me if staying alive is what you want."

Having your entire existence laid out like that by someone like him was quite unsettling. But worse - he was right. For someone with so many rules, so many fail-safes and escape strategies, wouldn't it be better if she didn't put herself at risk, to begin with?

Olivia shook her head and stared off into the distance. Now would be a great time for an alligator to come out of the water so she could run away from this strangely raw conversation. She didn't have to justify her life choices to him or anyone for that matter. Olivia had her own reasons; taking care of her family and completing her Grand Plan for early retirement. It's all she had ever worked for since she was 21. He had been honest with her so far, maybe he could be trusted with this.

"Twenty-two million six-hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars."

"What's that?"

"That's what I want. I need 22.685 million dollars to retire at the age of 35 and live comfortably until the age of 100, assuming a 3% rate of inflation and a steady conservative 5% rate of return on all my investments."

A breeze flew past, washing over the grass field making gentle waves. The lilies twirled and danced like a ballet on the water. Olivia looked deeply into Eric's eyes. He was by far the most beautiful thing here.

His brows slowly pitched together. "So you want out?"

He sounded sad, almost disappointed. Surely he didn't think Olivia was going to stick around forever? "The original plan was 40, but to convince me to work for her, Sophie-Anne created a trust to accelerate my investments to let me out at 35. It was a reverse deal with the devil if you will. Once my time is up, I'll have what I need and I'll walk away."

She could see the gears turning in his head, adding all this new information to all his pre-dealings with the Queen. That was the true reason Sophie-Anne was pushing Olivia so hard to increase her revenue - their working relationship had an expiry date on it. But she didn't account for the Queen's greed, and she certainly didn't expect Sophie-Anne to push this far this fast.

Eric shook his head as if Olivia had let him down somehow. She had never shared this part of herself with anyone. She also had no expectations for his reaction, but his almost sorrowful demeanor caught her off guard.

But just as quick as it came, it was gone. With a smirk, he settled into his old self again. "No, you won't."

"Oh, yes I will."

Of course, he wouldn't take the truth well. Here was the guy who was obsessed with having and controlling her, and she had just told him her ironclad exit strategy. Seven years may be a long time for her, but it was a blink of an eye for someone as old as him.

"No, I don't think you will. Here's my theory-"

She hugged her knees when the next breeze hit. Summer was bidding its adieu, as the wind was cold enough to make her legs prickle with goosebumps. "Can't wait to hear it."

"I think you're bored," Eric said with a soft smile on his face, no malice behind it. "Common people bore you to death. You find 'the script' of college, marriage, kids, the whole white picket fence to be dull and tactless, and mind-numbing. A life of routine, stability and safety scares the shit out of you because you know you are not like everyone else. I don't think you'll be able to take it. Five minutes out there, and you'll be right back here."

Olivia could have had a normal life. She could have married Jaimie, moved to the suburbs, had some kids and become a housewife or work part-time; join little book clubs, play tennis with the neighbours. Learn to cook, spend her days cleaning and fundraising for the local animal shelter. Or best case scenario - no children, and just work another 9-5 at some accounting firm, or do the accounts at some other big office. She would see her family on the weekends, take one big trip a year, maybe buy a fixer-upper house to keep her busy. It would be safe, quiet, and normal.

The thought of it was so deeply revolting - it made a life of calm and ignorant happiness sound… So profoundly empty. It's what everyone wanted, and there was nothing inherently wrong with it. But Olivia had never been like everyone else, despite how well she pretended.

Her retirement had always been the light at the end of the tunnel, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that made every risk she had ever taken worth it. A life with no worries - she could live anywhere and do anything, be anything. Be a dance instructor in Costa Rica, or become a scuba diver in Fiji, hike to the ruins of Machu Picchu, learn how to make pasta in Italy, travel all of Europe via high-speed train and watch every summer music festival there was, see the northern lights in Iceland, spend a month in monasteries in Korea, work at an elephant sanctuary in India. Go up to Canada and go skiing in Alberta, dog sledding in Quebec and visit her family up in Newfoundland. Fall down the whore tree and bang every attractive and willing branch on the way down. Life would be an endless adventure, much better than whatever life script society shoved down her throat.

Still, the seed was planted. Was Eric right? Would even that become boring and meaningless? What if she couldn't quit the rush of her current life? What if part of her would always crave chaos and the constant tango with prison or death?

"You make me sound like a damn sociopath."

He gave her an easy smile. "Much to my misfortune, you're not. You care about people. You bailed out the staff at Fangtasia-"

"Because I need them to go back to work."

But Eric insisted. "And you chewed me out for erasing Portia's mind, and kidnapping Willa."

She nodded, feeling a tightness in her stomach. "You did cross the line there."

Another breeze gently brushed against them, and the stars twinkled brighter. She wished she knew anything about constellations, and reading the skies. To know what Gods were looking down on them, and what answers the cosmos showed in the darkness. The knowledge to read the ancient maps of the sky who guided so much of humanity, now seemingly was a lost art. Reading a stupid GPS simply was not the same.

"I simply did what was necessary," Eric said after a while.

"Now who has the twisted sense of morality?" Olivia shook her head. "You start crossing certain lines, Eric, then how far will you go before you hate yourself?"
He finally sat up, facing her at eye level. "Oh, don't tell me my criminal accountant and founder of the biggest online supply of drugs in America has a - conscience."

She rolled her eyes at his mockery. "There's a big difference between sticking to Uncle Sam and hurting people. I like to think there are lines I won't cross."

"What other lines won't you cross?" Eric whispered.

But it sounded louder and clearer than ever. The vampire had insidiously slipped closer. His eyes, his perfect jaw and lips ever so close to hers. It made parts of herself awake, parts she could not allow to take over ever. She gently reached across in the fine space between them and drew a deep line on the sand, from just behind her all the way to her feet. It was her own little alligator trench.

"This one."

He smirked, not taking defeat. It wouldn't be Eric Northman if he didn't try to get in her pants at least once a week. But for whatever reason, he seemed to respect her small, metaphysical line in the sand. He did not get any closer but didn't draw away either.

"What are you so afraid of?" Eric asked, with the irresistible charm only a thousand years on this earth could teach you.

But Olivia knew better. She feared she had a lot more to lose by giving their own desires than the Sheriff who had crossed his own lines. "Why is the lamb afraid of the lion?"

"Oh Olivia," his lips curled in his signature devilish smile. They made a really strong argument in favour of kissing. "You are not a lamb."

A.N:

Okay, straight up: I don't like reading fluff and I don't like writing fluff (clearly), but I enjoy exploring different genres - we had a little horror, suspense, a little smut, hurt/comfort, drama, lots and lots and LOTS of slow-burn sexual tension. So if you enjoy some sweet fluffiness this was the closest to it we're ever gonna get lmao

And as always, thank you all so much for the lovely comments and feedback I've gotten in this story. The number of readers who have made it out this far never ceases to astonish me. So whether you're OG, or new here, leave me some love in the comment section!

xoxo