Fic: Deserts of Vast Eternity 1/1 (True Blood, Godric/Eric, NC-17)
Title: Deserts of Vast Eternity
Author: dancinbutterfly
Series: 2nd in the Undead Verses series.
Pairing: Godric/Eric Northman
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 8,000 words
Disclaimer: No one on True Blood is mine. I wish though. The title comes from the Andrew Marvell poem “To His Coy Mistress”. Poems quoted belong to Mr. William Shakespeare and Andrew Marvell and are in no way mine.
Thanks: Thanks to guest_age the encouragement and silviakundera for the handholding and the beta.
Warnings: AU from 2x09 I Will Rise Up on, sex, vampire violence
Summary: Eric returns to Louisiana with Godric in tow, which fixes exactly nothing. Sequel to Do Not Go Gentle.
Pam is less than thrilled with the current situation. She has been for awhile now, ever since Bill dragged his pretty little pet human into her (well Eric’s, but what’s his is hers at least it better be if he expects her to keep cleaning up his messes) club.
Really, she’s been patient. More than. Above and beyond the call of duty of Maker and child in shoes that deserve better than what she’s had to put them through. After the whole Godric incident, things were supposed to level off.
But instead Eric returns from Dallas with his Maker in tow. And Pam can’t do anything but watch them both spiral out.
She’s met Godric before. Eric was still traveling with him when he made her and she remembers the man as too much. Not of anything in particular. Just in general. Too much time. Too much blood. Too much everything. And she’d liked that. Just being in Godric’s presence back then was thrilling and a little terrifying, which is exactly how she likes her fun.
But it is as if whatever was there hundred and forty years ago, the excess of some ineffable quality, has been sucked out. And now he is empty. Hollow on the inside like bird bones. And Eric cannot stop looking at him, his hands unconsciously darting across his shoulder or back or hand like wings.
That is not the problem. Better her master focus on his Maker than the obsessive… whatever he’s been nursing on Sookie. But he doesn't actually look like he’s enjoying himself.
If anything, he looks downright morose which is grinding on her very last nerve. From what she can remember, Eric was always happiest when Godric was there, like some of the tight control which he carried loosened enough for him to relax.
She’s never actually experienced him being like this before, sullen and almost broken. It’s unnerving and it’s grating. Godric’s quiet despair is no better. She wishes that she didn’t owe allegiance to the both of them because the very last thing she wants is two mopey, difficult, erratic ancients for the price of one.
Eric at least stays busy. He has Fangtasia to run and Area 5 to govern. But Godric just…sits. He is static and still and it’s starting to freak her the fuck out.
It’s upsetting Eric too. Godric drives him to a desperation that Pam can’t comprehend or diffuse. He sits before his Maker and speaks to him so softly that Pam cannot hear them and she wants to. She’s really sick of not knowing what’s going on. It’s new and it sucks.
She puts up with the new world order for exactly ten days before she pulls Eric aside. It’s above her to do this but Eric’s always respected her enough to hear her out. Doesn’t mean he’ll listen, hell most of the time he doesn't. But he’s always been willing to hear her. She wonders if that’s not because of the ancient boy trapped within himself.
“Eric, a word?” she says on the eleventh day. She stands outside of the office, watching Eric on his knees before Godric, trying to resist tapping the toe of her Manolo impatiently.
Eric rises to his feet with slow deliberate movements. He presses his forehead to the back of Godric’s hand before walking over to her. He looks tired. She cannot remember the last time Eric ever looked genuinely tired.
“What, Pam?”
She takes a deep breath. She has no problem telling him exactly what she thinks - usually. But this situation is hardly typical.
“I want to know exactly what the fuck is wrong with both of you. And I want you to tell me how to fix it so that I don’t have to look at your sadsack faces anymore. If I wanted to spend time with boring, depressed statues I’d share a nest with Bill Compton.”
It’s her way of worrying about him. She knows he knows that. But he still fixes her with a look that makes her feel like a child.
“I am doing what I must to save my Maker.”
“I’m sorry, what? Eric, what is going on?”
He glares at her. “I do not owe you an explanation.”
“Yes, Maker, you do. You owe me at least that, if nothing else, and I owe you my efforts to fix whatever it is you’ve blown up this time.”
They stare each other down and for the first time in her entire unlife, Eric breaks first. He bows his head and squeezes his eyes shut and when he opens them again, he speaks. His sentences are short and clipped. And when he stops speaking, she knows what happened in Dallas, all of it. Or at least, all of it regarding Godric.
And Eric looks at her with fear in his eyes, yet another thing she has never seen before, and asks, “What would you do if it were me?”
“I probably would’ve dragged you kicking and screaming off the roof and yelled at you for being fucking stupid,” she admits. If she could’ve. Eric is and always will be stronger than her. But she would’ve tried and she would have died before she gave up.
“Then you understand that I cannot leave him to his despair.”
And she does get that. But sitting around being sad is not the answer. “I don’t think you’re helping matters though.”
“What would you have me do?”
“I don’t know, get him a hobby? He seems like a basket weaving kind of guy.”
Eric’s eyebrow heads towards his hairline. “Basket weaving?”
“Well, he doesn't really strike me as the jewelry-maker type.”
Eric smiles, the first smile since he got back from Dallas, and she smiles back. “I think he already knows how.”
“I don’t know, Eric, but this isn’t good. He needs to get out more. You both do.”
“I know. I’m just not sure what to do.” He doesn't say it, but she knows that he’s afraid to leave Godric alone, afraid that if he lets go, Godric will find a way to meet the sun and this time there would be no stubborn human girl there to stop him.
She wants to suggest shipping him to Bon Temps and letting him wallow in depression with Bill but bites her tongue. Eric’s in no mood for that particular brand of humor. “I’ll think about it. You should too.”
“I can think of little else.”
She nods and doesn't stop Eric when he turns to leave. It’s not really her problem to fix. But that doesn't stop her wanting to.
~*~*~
There is a woman yelling. Her voice is high pitched and loud and completely without restraint. It is enough to pull Godric from his place, seated in one of the back offices of Fangtasia, and pad towards the source.
“I just need you to listen to me!” she yells and he hears her stomp her foot. “I don’t know what to do! And I can’t talk to it with Bill because- I just can’t!”
“Jessica…” Eric’s voice, strained and annoyed. Godric feels a twinge of interest as he pushes open the office door.
A girl with long red hair is standing in front of Eric, hands clenched. She is young, an infant by their people’s standards. She is bright, everything about her from her hair to her pink lips to the blue dress that comes to her knees. And she is defiant and desperate. Angry tears make her voice falter as she screams at Eric, raising a hand to point accusingly.
“Don’t you send me away again,” Jessica demands. Her accent is smooth, thicker than Sookie’s or Bill’s and he likes the sound of it, even if it is shrieking and panicked at the moment. “Please, I’m not asking for you to protect me or teach me or put up with me or nothing. I just want you to help with this. You have to be able to do something! You’re supposed to have seen everything, you should know what to do with this. I mean, you’re so old!”
Godric makes a small amused noise in the back of his throat at her explosion. Eric’s eyes dart to him and scan his face. He sees the worry that passes through them. It is enough to draw him into the room.
Jessica whirls around like a top, her dress and hair following her and she stares at him with big eyes. Her face has red streaks from where she’s been crying but she’s stunned out of it by his sudden appearance.
“Is there a problem here?”
“Nothing you need burden yourself with, Godric,” Eric says.
“Yes!” Jessica cries, the tears beginning anew. “I’m a virgin.”
Godric blinks. He was not aware that was a bad thing, though times change and so do standards and he has missed shifts in the collective social consciousness before. They all start to blur together after a few centuries. But she looks so upset, so frustrated by the whole thing. He tilts his head, trying to understand.
“And you want Eric to remove you of that distinction?” She wouldn’t be the first or the last. He wonders if there’s any particular reason his child won’t just oblige the fledge.
But she wrinkles her nose and shakes her head in distaste. “No. It’d be like sleeping with my daddy, the son of a bitch. And ‘sides, I got a boyfriend, Hoyt.” Her face takes on a dreamy quality. “He’s so sweet and amazing in bed but we keep having to stop because I’m stuck in this stupid body with this stupid painful virgin vagina forever.” She ends in a burst of anger and frustration that is almost jarring. And then she blushes and ducks her head. “Oh my god what am I doin’ tell you all this. I don’t even know who you are!”
He smiles at her. He’s never seen someone run through that many emotions that fast. Or if he has, he cannot remember it. It’s rather beautiful to watch actually. “I am Godric.”
“Jessica, hi. Are you a vampire too?”
“I am.”
“That’s so cool. I’ve never met another one as young lookin’ as me,” she declares. Jessica beams at him, her whole face lighting. “I mean, you look like you were my age when you got turned. Seventeen,” she adds, clearly trying to be helpful, in case he can’t tell for himself. “How long ago did you get made? Did they stop treating you like a child all the time because I keep telling Bill and all them that I’m not a baby but they just won’t listen.”
She looks over her shoulder at Eric and glares, as if her entire situation is his fault. Maybe it is. Godric doesn't know.
“You should spend less time talking at your elders and more time listening to them,” Eric growls, his tone a warning that Jessica clearly does not register.
“It is fine, Eric,” Godric returns. He meets Eric gaze and whatever Eric sees there, it makes his whole body relax. It’s like watching a spring uncoil, all the muscles seem to loosen and he looks better than Godric has seen since before that zealot human child obliterated his home.
He turns his attention to Jessica. She asked a question, she should get an answer. “I was turned two thousand years ago. It has been a very long time since anyone treated me like a child.”
Jessica’s jaw actually dropped. “Shut. Up.”
“Jessica,” Eric barks. She snaps her mouth closed and she looked away briefly before returning to stare.
“Eric,” Godric retorts. He does not need his child to defend him. Not against a vampire girl who has been undead less than a year. He could break her in half without a thought if he wanted to. But he does not. Cannot imagine wanting to as he once might have.
“Are you for real?”
That is an interesting turn of phrase. Appropriate. “At the moment.”
Jessica is immediately on him. “I bet you’ve seen some really cool stuff. You meet anybody famous, like Henry VIII or Catherine the Great or the real Dracula?” Her curiosity and excitement makes her bounce on her toes a little. Her energy is refreshing. Invigorating even. He wants that excitement and curiosity. It is another thing he cannot remember.
“Why don’t you accompany me out to the bar and I can tell you a little. Eric has work to attend to and I think we’ve both disturbed him enough.”
“Seriously?” Jessica asks, incredulous."Nobody ever seems to want to talk to me."
Eric is studying him. In one instant, Eric is so many things. He is a father afraid of letting his child out of his sight, a needy boy not wanting to be separated from his parent, a lover worrying because of his near loss. There is so much there that Godric is sorry for. But for now, Eric does not need to fear. He nods at his child once and Eric does not protest.
“Of course. I am, as you say, old. Far older than Eric. Maybe I can be of assistance to you.”
“Cool,” Jessica says again. She is so young and she smiles at him so brightly. It almost hurts to look at her, like the sun on his skin had hurt. But he is almost as drawn to her smile as he is to the sunlight.
“Shall we?” He says, gestures towards the door. She beams at him, nervous but thrilled and nods a little wildly.
“Well, yeah!”
“I believe the custom is ladies first,” Godric said and she blushes. He turns a look back at his child, sitting behind his desk, his fingers pressed flat against the top. He tips his head and Eric nods and does not move to stop them as they go.
~*~*~
Jessica still doesn't like TruBlood. It’s disgusting. It tastes like ass but she’s not really as anxious to gut people like fishes so often so she doesn’t complain so much anymore. Except to Bill. And Bill totally deserves it.
But anyway, she’s got a bottle of B neg rolling back and forth between her palms as she sits across next to Godric. He looks like he could be a classmate of hers, if she’d gotten to go to public school like a normal girl. She feels a little nervous, like she’s going to sound like a stupid little kid.
He’s just so old. He’s, like, so totally and completely ancient in a way that Bill tries to act like but totally isn’t. She can’t really figure out why he’s sitting with her, talking to her. But he is, so she can’t help but take advantage of it.
“So how do you know Eric?” is the question she finally settles on to open the conversation. But then she feels stupid for asking because that could be real personal. So she tries to back track and it just turns into this long ramble that pours out of her like water out a faucet.
“Not to pry or nothing, it’s just you were never here when he was lookin’ after me and he never talked about you. Not that he talked to me about mucha anything. You’re the only vampire I’ve met who’d have a whole conversation with me that didn’t end with do as I say, now, Jessica or as your Maker I command you.” She did her best Bill impression, which was all deep and brooding and way overly dramatic because she’s pretty sure that there’s a diva trapped in the body of Bill Compton.
Godric’s head tilts at her. He’s done a lot of that. Small gestures that she can’t really read. She’s never sure if she’s offending or upsetting him. He’s so blank. At least with Bill she knows when she’s pissed him off.
“I cannot stop talking. It’s a problem of mine, just can’t seem to shut up. Bill hates it. Sorry.”
“Eric is my child,” Godric says and she’s actually stunned. She wasn’t expecting a straightforward answer. She never gets one from anyone else, except Hoyt. But Hoyt’s special and he doesn't really count here what with being human and all.
“So you turned him into a vampire?”
“I did.”
“Wow.” She genuinely cannot imagine Godric acting like Bill, bossy and anal and all OCD about rules. And she can’t imagine Eric getting grounded like she was. But she also can’t imagine anything else but being bounced around “So, do you like him, Eric I mean? Cause sometimes I think Bill hates me and I’m just trying to figure all this out.” She ducks her head down and her hair falls over her face.
“I love him.” Godric says simply. It’s fact, totally true. And he feels it.
For a second he reminds her so strongly of Hoyt that breath she doesn't need actually catches. She lifts her head to look at him, she wants to see what that looks like on someone else. It’s faint but what she can see of it is beautiful.
“You do?”
“Of course.”
“No, it’s not of course. I’m Bill’s punishment. That’s all I am, his penance for…fucking up. What do you mean, of course? Is that how it was for you, that you loved the one who made you? Is that why you got turned so young?“ Jessica blurts and slams her hand over her mouth.
She’s known him all of twenty minutes. Where does she get off asking him that? What is wrong with her? She had sense, contrary to popular (re: Bill’s) belief. She knows better.
“I am so sorry.”
“Do not be sorry.”
“I’m totally prying. I don’t mean to pry. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“No, I want to answer. I just have to recall that life. It has been a very long time, little one.”
“Did you forget?” She feels a little thrill of fear, that in a thousand years she won’t remember her mama or her little sister. It makes her chest ache. “I’m sorry I just-“
“I was a sacrifice,” Godric says and Jessica can relate to that, to being thrown to your death just because of stupid chance. To have the people around you as you’re terrified and dying using you like a means to an end rather than person. “I was born during an eclipse.”
“Why’s that matter? I was born on a Thursday at ten in the morning.”
“My people believed in omens. It marked that I was fated to die to appease the tribe god. That was who I was when I was a human and I always knew it. I had fifteen summers and then my people bound me to a tree and left me there to die of thirst and exposure.”
Jessica can’t stop herself from gasping. “Oh my god. Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago. Millennia.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jessica says, reaching out and taking his hand. He looks at her with that inscrutable air that she’s starting to realize is his default expression. She can’t tell one way or another so she squeezes it tightly. “You must’ve been so scared.”
She looks down at their joined hands. They both have such small hands. Young hands. Neither of them finished growing. They never would. They were be trapped in the in-between of adolescence forever.
“I was.”
“Me too,” Jessica says.
“But I was more angry than anything else. I wanted to live. My whole human life, all I ever wanted was the chance to truly live.” He says that in a tone that implies a joke. But Jessica doesn't know how that’s funny. She’d wanted to live as she was dying herself. She still wants to live. “And my Maker found me dying and gave me my desire.”
“He saved you.”
“That is one way to look at it.”
“Yeah, I know whatcha mean.” Jessica sighs, crossing and uncrossing her legs under the table. She’s still angry about the virgin thing and she wants to ask Godric about it but now just doesn't seem right.
They sit in silence for awhile, hands joined. She feels close to him like she doesn't to Bill or Sookie or anyone really. Except maybe Hoyt but it’s different. Sitting here with Godric, she feels kind of like she used to when she would help her mother cook on days when her daddy was away on business - safe and guided.
“How long ago were you turned, little one?”
She’s surprised when he’s the one who breaks the silence. She’s been so rambly that she forgot that maybe he’d want to know something about the idiot grilling him. She hates that she still has things she wants to know because she’s still learning the whole impulse control and she’s only really good at it on the big things - like not killing people by accident.
“A few months. I’m still trying to keep my fangs from popping out whenever I get turned on. Does that ever stop? Cause I really like being turned on but those things, they’re dangerous and I don’t wanna tear Hoyt up or anything.”
The look Godric gives her is fond and parental without actually being a smile. She wishes she could do that, keep her face blank like that. It’d drive Bill crazy. “Not with any effort that could not be expended better otherwise.”
“Oh. But you can do it. It’s possible.” So maybe the whole magical regenerative hymen thing is changeable too. Maybe there’s something she can do to fix it.
“Did your Maker not explain it to you?”
“No. Bill only tells me what not to do. Don’t drink from humans. Don’t stay up. Don't act on your impulses. Don’t act in a manner unbecoming to a lady. I have to figure out most it for myself. Like the whole virgin thing.” She tries not to pout but she’s not very successful. “At least here I got to have a little fun. Like, sometimes I just want to run, not stop 'til I hit the Pacific Ocean. I want to look up and try and see through the clouds into outer space. There’s so many things I can do now and I want to do it all and Bill’s all about don’t.”
“Had we but world enough, and time,” Godric muses and he’s quoting something. Jessica doesn't recognize it but the way he says it, wistful and quiet, makes her want to know the rest. “You have both, little one. You have world enough and all the time you need and more.”
“I know I do. But it’s all right there. The whole world’s right there. It’s right here,” she waves at the ebb and flow of the club. “I know there’s time but it’s right there, you know?”
“I once did.”
“And I just want it. Cause it’s not always gonna be there. Things changed. I was alive this time last year and now I’m dead. How much more am I gonna miss if I’m just waiting!” How much of Hoyt’s life is she going to miss? How much of her sister’s? Her mother’s? The rest of the world as it spun round and round in space with all these people and places on it that never stood still. She wanted to see it all happen. “I just want to be part of it.”
“You will be.”
“You think?”
He squeezes her hand. “I know.”
“You a psychic too? That part of getting old?” If it is, she’s not looking forward to it. Sookie’s mind reading thing seems like a big enough pain. Although she would like to be able to hear her daddy’s thoughts, just once, find out what the hell he was thinking all those times he beat her. But she’s got no use for the future. Now’s complicated enough.
“No,” he says, amusement clear in his voice. “I’m just old enough to know the way of some things.”
“Not everything?”
“No, Jessica. Not everything.”
“Well, you know what they say,” she says with a smile. “Learn something new every day.”
He squeezes her hand again but says nothing.
~*~*~
Eric is being stalked by passing moments. They’re flying by so fast that he can almost feel them brushing his skin. He’s off kilter and out of sync with the world as it rotates around him and he can’t seem to get his feet back underneath him with time rushing by him like this.
He hasn’t really thought much about time in the last thousand years. He’s had a surplus in front of him and, as he waded through it, behind him. There was always more of it in each direction. It made things blur, run together, and stretch out. There would always be more time. That was a fact of vampire existence.
Only, suddenly he is very aware of the fact that, no, there isn’t necessarily. Eighteen days, twenty hours, and thirty-five minutes ago he’d kneeled on the roof of the Hotel Carmilla and been struck by the reality that he could be out of time with Godric.
And since Sookie had knocked on his hotel door, he’s been so focused on each second that Godric is still with him that things have slide out of focus completely. Everything is sharp and new like he hasn’t experienced since he was newly turned, vampiric hyperawareness honed to the point where it is nearly painful. When his waking hours were filled for the most part with trying to coax his Maker out of his fugue he’d been able to relish that.
But now Godric is improving. He is still distant, fragile, his sadness suffocating. But he’s not in that horrible near-catatonic state anymore and that is a relief so intense that it blindsides Eric. He had not thought that anything could match the relief he felt when he saw his Maker alive but this is a very close second.
Eric knows that part of that is Bill’s child drawing him out and while Eric cannot stand her, her whining and her insolence and her pestering, he saw his Maker smile at her yesterday when she came to Fangtasia with her human. It was barely there but Eric knew him well enough to recognize it. And it made him ache. It has been centuries since he felt jealousy.
She made him smile where Eric could not and it burns him and elates him at the same time. It’s been centuries since he felt so many things that are crashing in on him lately. Everything is more now and Eric is ill equipped.
The emotions, he can cope with. He feels much like he did when he was young, internally unhinged and unpredictable, but he has enough discipline that it’s not interfering. He can and does control it. He has a thousand years of practicing control.
What he can’t deal with is the slipping of time. It lacks sensation but he can feel it disappearing with every second and he wonders how the hell humans cope with this, how he coped with it when he was still a man.
There’s an antique clock on a shelf in his office that Pam insisted they bring when they made the move to the New World a century ago and Eric glares at its open, white face. The minute hand clicks forward and it’s a taunt. See how fast things are moving? See how much time you have wasted when he was so close? Every second, the clock’s ticking says, you’re failing him and you don’t know how much time you have left.
Eric strikes out without thinking, sending the clock flying into the wall, parts breaking off while others are lodged in the wall. It’s not nearly as satisfying as it should be.
It’s moments like this that he resents the Great Revelation. He misses the freedom to tear things apart. The politics and positioning involved in integrating limits the orgiastic violence. And he could use some right now.
“Eric?”
He turns to see Godric standing the doorway, Pam behind him and slightly to the right. The noise of the clock tearing through the dry wall must have drawn them.
He lifts an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“If you had a problem with my taste, you could’ve just said something,” Pam says, eying the destroyed time piece.
“I had a problem with the wall as well.” There could be more holes in it, he supposes. A hand full in the shape of his fist. It will solve nothing but he might feel better. Though it wasn’t likely and he wasn’t about to do it with an audience.
“Well then,” Pam says with a small sigh, “I’ll have to redecorate. Any requests?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“I’ll have Chow call a contractor. You can use my office until we redo the wall.”
Pam walks to him, slides her hand into the pocket of his slacks and removes his wallet. He watches as she removes his Visa and taps her teeth with the edge of the plastic. She’s concerned but she’s not going to say anything. Not in front of his maker. So she just returns his wallet to his pocket and walks out, sliding past Godric without a word.
When she’s gone, Godric steps inside the office and shuts the door behind him. His grey eyes are empty and in turn, Eric feels empty.
But he doesn't move as his Maker walks to him. Godric looks up at him, impassive, and asks, “Are you all right?”
The absurdity of the question pulls a strangled laugh from Eric. All right? He is functioning on a plane of existence where all right isn’t even an abstract concept.
“Of course,” he snaps. He can’t keep the hurt out of his voice, not under that pale gaze. “I’m more than all right. How kind of you to ask.”
A small frown ghosts over Godric’s lips. “I am merely concerned about you, child.“
“No,” Eric shouts, taking a sharp step backwards. Anger burns through him familiar and comforting. Anger he could use. “No, you’re not. You were not. Don’t tell me that, Godric. Do not expect me to believe it when you rebuked me on bended knee to die, when you didn’t care enough to even try.”
“I am trying now.” Godric sighs and he looks so tired. His exhaustion makes Eric want to weep because he knows what it means. “Is that not enough?”
“No. It’s nowhere near enough. What are you thinking? Why didn’t you come to me, six months ago, six decades ago? You must have known I followed you from the Old World. I promised you I would always be here and yet you let yourself fall to this…this…” Eric doesn't even have a word for what this is. “I was here, Godric. I was right here. It’s less than three hundred miles to Dallas. Why didn’t you come to me or call me to you?”
Godric says nothing. There’s no problem there because there is no possible answer he could give that would explain the last hundred years to Eric’s satisfaction. Godric had disappeared on him in the Hauge in 1894 and it had taken Eric twenty years to find him again. And then it had been made clear by children of the then-King that he was not particularly welcome in Texas.
So he had waited. He had bided his time and built his life in Louisiana because there would always be more time. Godric would leave Texas or they would meet somewhere else or Godric would come find him. They always came back to each other. A hundred years was nothing.
Only Godric never came. Never would have come if he’d had his way. He would’ve been dust on the floor of the Fellowship sanctuary.
“It’s clear you gave me no thought when you handed yourself over to the Newlins,” Eric bites. “But did you think about what you’d do to our people when you gave yourself up? You were never that selfish when we traveled together.”
“No, I was far more selfish then,” Godric sighs. “My entire existence has been an exercise in selfishness, Eric, and none more so than making you. I should have known better.”
Eric strikes him, the back of his hand colliding with brutal speed and force across his Maker’s face causing a loud cracking sound that cuts the air like thunder. Godric’s head snaps to the side Eric hits him so hard, blood dripping from his mouth in a bright splash before the wound heals itself.
He hasn’t hit Godric in over five hundred years. And even then, it was only as a prelude to blood-drenched sex in the remains of their freshly killed prey. He has never raised a hand to his Maker in anger before now. He does not like the way it feels, like the world has tilted off its axis yet again.
But how dare he? How fucking dare he? Eric has given Godric everything, his loyalty, his love, his constant companionship and, if called upon, he would give his life. He has given it time and time again.
Eric treasures that. It grounds him to the earth, to know that Godric is there, even if they are parted by oceans or centuries. He cannot regret that and he cannot bear the thought that his Maker does. It infuriates him and it breaks his dead heart.
Godric finally turns his face back towards Eric and he is stunned by the change there. Godric’s eyes are bright, shocked. It’s a reaction, the biggest one he’s gotten out of Godric in more than one hundred years.
The impulse to fall before him is still there, to ask forgiveness. But he has spent enough time bent before Godric. He can only give so much of himself with nothing in return. It was not who he was as a man and it is even less who he is as a vampire.
“Do I really mean so little to you?” Eric asks, the words tripping out of his mouth in the old tongue.
There is a blur of movement, so fast that not even Eric can track it. But an instant later, he is eye to eye with his Maker, as he stands on crate pulled from some stockpile in a corner of the office. And Eric feels like the ground beneath him is firm again for the first time in weeks.
Godric’s small hands slide behind his neck and up into the hair on the back of his head as he presses his forehead to Eric’s. He does not moan as their skin touches but he does press forward. His hands slide under the loose fabric of Godric’s shirt and press against his back as he leans against Godric’s body.
Godric’s thumbs stroke over the bare skin on Eric’s neck and he shudders. He has missed this. Craved it like blood and he has been starving for decades.
Cool lips press against his and Eric parts his lips with a groan. His hands slide down and grip Godric’s hips hard enough to hurt even one as old as Godric. Godric’s hands stay gentle in his hair but his mouth is strong and giving, finally giving.
Eric’s impulse is to lift Godric off his make-shift pedestal and feel him wrap his legs around his waist. He wants to fuck him where they stand, in the middle of his office surrounded by mundane, human things in the unnecessary artificial light. He wants to take control of the kiss and the moment and the mess that Godric has created but he stands still, letting this be enough.
He’s never made Godric come to him before. He’s never had to and when he wanted his Maker, he simply found him, taking the situation into his own hands. Passivity doesn’t sit well with Eric but he has no other choice.
~*~*~
Godric’s face was still tingling as he licked his way into Eric’s mouth. He has not felt real pain in so long, it feels like forever - a shadow of experience. The unexpected impact had been like abruptly waking from deep sleep, startling and overwhelming.
Eric was always overwhelming though. Godric has not forgotten. He had just forgotten what it felt like to be overwhelmed by anything but the vacuum that seemed to grow inside him.
Then Eric had spoken, doubting how very much Godric cherished him. For a brief instant, the only thing he’d been able to feel was love for his child.
It was exhilarating and just as sharp as it had been a thousand years ago. It burns through Godric like sunlight. All he could do was kiss Eric, chasing the emotion as it ran from him.
He expects Eric to take, to demand. His desperation is so intense that Godric could taste it on his tongue and teeth. He expects to feel it in the way Eric reacts. But all he does is tighten his grip on Godric’s hips.
He increases his hold on Eric’s neck and pulls him tighter to him. It doesn't change the speed or intensity of Eric’s movements. It doesn’t move him at all and Godric can’t help but think that this is payback, a small punishment for what he’s done to his child.
A small whimper escapes Godric’s throat, wounded and desperate like an injured animal. This isn’t enough. It’s too little, too shallow, brushing the surface instead of submerging like he needs to be, enveloped and consumed so that the nothingness can’t reach him.
He breaks Eric’s grip, climbing up his child’s body easily so that his legs wrap tight around Eric’s middle. His arms rest on Eric’s shoulders, locked behind his neck, and from this angle he could kiss deeper, hold tighter.
Eric’s arms support him but they don’t hold. They don’t press. They might as well not be there. Eric might as well not be there and it’s not enough.
“Make me feel,” Godric pants against Eric’s mouth. “Make me feel something, Eric.”
Eric moves before he can finish his plea. Godric’s back collides with the shelves so hard that they crash through them and an inch into the dry wall in a mess of dust and crumpled Fangtasia shirts. The impact jars him and ripples of sensation makes him jerk against Eric.
They tear at each other’s clothes. Eric’s fingernails dig deep, bleeding gashes in Godric’s skin as he destroys his shirt. Ribbons of blood drip down his chest for a few seconds before it heals and evaporates back into his body. He groans as Eric catches a few stray drops with his tongue.
“Take,” Godric groans as the last scraps of fabric falls away. He lets his head fall his neck exposed, willing and waiting. He pulls Eric down so that his face is pressed against the skin there. “Take, Eric.”
Eric enters him, thrusting inside without warning or preparation. The dry burn makes Godric spasm, his hands ripping at Eric’s skin. His fingers are slippery for a moment and Eric uses the moment to pull his head back.
“No.”
“Eric-“
Eric thrusts up again, silencing Godric and pushing them both further into the wall until he is sure they will fall through to the next room. But Eric steps back, moving them with all his speed to the desk. He cleared it, pushing his computer and papers carelessly, and laid Godric on the flat surface, still inside him.
They are still for a moment, Eric lying stretched out over him, one knee bent up under him and one foot on the floor. Godric drags his fingertips over Eric’s lips, painting them with blood, and he remembers other moments like this, when there were bodies and death and pain around them and they had reveled in it. But there is only them here now and he thinks that this is better.
“Eric,” he says again.
“You haven’t fed since you arrived,” Eric murmurs, his hips moving slow and steady inside Godric. “You can’t expect me to drink from you now.”
“I do not need much,” Godric sighs, wishing that Eric would stop talking, that he could go back to giving him the blissful satisfaction of the overwhelming. In the relative stillness, he could feel that emptiness opening where Eric should be filling him. “Just take.”
“No.” Eric says again, the edge in his voice saying that only a command could sway him. Godric feels Eric shift inside, folding him as Eric bent down so that his forehead rested on the desk beside Godric. When he turns his head to speak Eric’s lips brush the top of his ear. “Give me the chance to help you. Give me that.”
The column of Eric’s neck was pale and strong and so close. He did not need blood, would not for a week or so. But Eric wants to give it and he cannot say no to him again.
He tears open the soft flesh with a gracelessness that makes Eric groan and buck above him. He drinks deep and it pours down his throat familiar, a whole different type of pleasure than Eric inside and over him but one he knows well. He would know Eric’s taste if he lived another ten thousand years and never had it again.
Blood drips down his face and onto his chest as he feeds. He hears Eric moan in his ear as he fucks him, fast and so hard that in a minute or so the desk breaks beneath them and they fall to the floor.
Godric lets go of Eric’s neck after the last of the items that had not been swept away finish falling, and rolls them until they are clear of the table, knocking over the chairs on their way to clear space. Then there is nothing beneath them but concrete and it offers blessed little give.
Eric grabs his leg and pulls it up, over his shoulder and moves, sliding them across the floor until they reach one of the metal shelves that is still standing. It’s a sorry excuse for a brace but Godric reaches back over his head and grips the bottom so that he can push back. The metal complains with a creak but Godric doesn't hear it, drowning in the crystal moment where there is nothing in and around him but Eric.
Eric’s fangs sinks into the skin of his neck unexpectedly and Godric’s climax comes with the first feel of suction. His body arches like the bow the men of his tribe used to hunt with. His hands twist the metal until the shelves groaned and surrendered, toppling over on top of them.
Bottles in and out of their boxes bounce off Eric’s back and onto the concrete and shatter. Shards of glass and alcohol spray them but Eric doesn’t even stop to push off the boxes still on top of him.
Eric tears flesh free of Godric’s neck as he throws his head back in orgasm, shouting his name. He is still so startling beautiful, as beautiful as the first night Godric had seen him. He lifts his head to lap at the blood on Eric’s chin until the spasms cease and Eric falls on top of him, anchoring him to the floor.
He runs his hand through Eric’s hair, waiting. For what, he’s not sure but he would wait as long as it took, here in the rubble they have created together.
“You never answered my question,” Eric says finally, not lifting his head from where he had planted it on Godric’s chest.
Godric’s hand tightens in Eric’s hair and pulls so that he will look at him. Eric meets his gaze, hurt but determined. It makes Godric smile, just a little.
“Father, brother, son,” he says. It is their promise to each other, spoken in Eric’s language and carrying a millennia of weight. It ties them together as much as blood magic and time. “You mean everything to me.”
Eric lowers his head back to Godric’s shoulder and says nothing. But the same questions are there nonetheless. How could you do that? Why didn’t you try?
Godric sighs. It was so easy to forget this. Not the details, where to touch Eric or how, not the taste or the smell. But the feeling, this feeling of being connected so deeply. And even when Eric found him, it was so easy to just let go. He has spent so long fighting. “I am tired.”
“So rest. No one will disturb us here. They know better.”
He shakes his head. “Eric.”
“No. That’s not a good enough reason. That’s no excuse. Godric, you,” Eric breaks off and Godric’s grip tightened once again. He doesn’t pull, just holds. “I need you.”
“You are an ancient yourself now, my child.”
“I’ll always need you. I need you to stay, to not give up.”
“I am. I am here. I am with you now.” And that was harder than anything Godric had ever done, try. Taking Sookie Stackhouse’s hand had taken everything in him and more. “I am trying.”
“It’s not enough.”
“It’s all I have to give.”
“No,” Eric bit out. “It’s not.”
Godric looks up at the ceiling, though there are no answers there. “What more would you have me give you, Eric?”
“Life. You promised me life. What is that without you?” Eric demands, sitting up, half on top of Godric. He sends boxes and shards of glass falling to the floor. Then he looks away. “You may regret having made me but I don’t regret having you as my Maker.”
“I will never regret turning you, child. My child.” Godric reaches out and caresses Eric’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. He watches Eric’s eyes drift shut at the touch. “I said it was selfish. And it was. I should have let you go. Valhalla would’ve welcomed you with open doors, but I could not. You were too beautiful to lose.”
Eric covers Godric’s with his own, swallowing it. “And you’re not?”
“All things end. You and I have watched civilizations crumble and fade,” Godric says, sitting up himself. “All lovers must consign to thee, and come to dust.”
Eric smiles despite himself. “Did you ever actually tell William what you were?”
“No. It was more interesting that way. He wrote better when perplexed.”
“England was good to us, Godric. The world’s been good to us.”
“And we have taken more than our share.”
“Not yet. We’re not done yet.” Eric rises and holds out a hand.
Godric stares at it. It’s not a simple hand up, that much he knows. Taking it is loaded but there is nothing else for him to do.
He lets Eric pull him to his feet and surveys the carnage. It reminds him of Crete after an earthquake in the third century. He’d been young and chaos made for easy pickings. He closes his eyes against the memory of screaming that had sounded like music to him when he was hungry and wild.
“We’ve destroyed your office.”
“Yes,” Eric sighs and gives a rueful grin. “Pam won’t be happy.”
“Your child has every reason to be,” Godric agrees and Eric’s face goes solemn.
He tugs on their joined hands and brings Godric close against him. His other hand ghosts over the streaks of drying blood on Godric’s face.
“Don’t give up yet. Please. Let me make you feel.”
He runs his hands up Eric’s arms to his shoulders. He has always liked how much larger Eric is than him. There had been countless nights over a thousand years where the embrace of his huge body had been a shield against the things that swam through Godric’s mind like the sea serpents at the edge of the old world. “Nothing makes me feel as much as you, my child.”
Eric dips his head and all Godric can see are those pleading blue eyes. “Then for now, let that be enough. The rest will come.”
Godric rises on his toes and presses his mouth to Eric’s. It’s a dry, chaste kiss that offers a taste of something more. It is intimate and earnest and the only promise that he can give for now. But he hopes his child is right, and that the rest will come.
Author: dancinbutterfly
Series: 2nd in the Undead Verses series.
Pairing: Godric/Eric Northman
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 8,000 words
Disclaimer: No one on True Blood is mine. I wish though. The title comes from the Andrew Marvell poem “To His Coy Mistress”. Poems quoted belong to Mr. William Shakespeare and Andrew Marvell and are in no way mine.
Thanks: Thanks to guest_age the encouragement and silviakundera for the handholding and the beta.
Warnings: AU from 2x09 I Will Rise Up on, sex, vampire violence
Summary: Eric returns to Louisiana with Godric in tow, which fixes exactly nothing. Sequel to Do Not Go Gentle.
Pam is less than thrilled with the current situation. She has been for awhile now, ever since Bill dragged his pretty little pet human into her (well Eric’s, but what’s his is hers at least it better be if he expects her to keep cleaning up his messes) club.
Really, she’s been patient. More than. Above and beyond the call of duty of Maker and child in shoes that deserve better than what she’s had to put them through. After the whole Godric incident, things were supposed to level off.
But instead Eric returns from Dallas with his Maker in tow. And Pam can’t do anything but watch them both spiral out.
She’s met Godric before. Eric was still traveling with him when he made her and she remembers the man as too much. Not of anything in particular. Just in general. Too much time. Too much blood. Too much everything. And she’d liked that. Just being in Godric’s presence back then was thrilling and a little terrifying, which is exactly how she likes her fun.
But it is as if whatever was there hundred and forty years ago, the excess of some ineffable quality, has been sucked out. And now he is empty. Hollow on the inside like bird bones. And Eric cannot stop looking at him, his hands unconsciously darting across his shoulder or back or hand like wings.
That is not the problem. Better her master focus on his Maker than the obsessive… whatever he’s been nursing on Sookie. But he doesn't actually look like he’s enjoying himself.
If anything, he looks downright morose which is grinding on her very last nerve. From what she can remember, Eric was always happiest when Godric was there, like some of the tight control which he carried loosened enough for him to relax.
She’s never actually experienced him being like this before, sullen and almost broken. It’s unnerving and it’s grating. Godric’s quiet despair is no better. She wishes that she didn’t owe allegiance to the both of them because the very last thing she wants is two mopey, difficult, erratic ancients for the price of one.
Eric at least stays busy. He has Fangtasia to run and Area 5 to govern. But Godric just…sits. He is static and still and it’s starting to freak her the fuck out.
It’s upsetting Eric too. Godric drives him to a desperation that Pam can’t comprehend or diffuse. He sits before his Maker and speaks to him so softly that Pam cannot hear them and she wants to. She’s really sick of not knowing what’s going on. It’s new and it sucks.
She puts up with the new world order for exactly ten days before she pulls Eric aside. It’s above her to do this but Eric’s always respected her enough to hear her out. Doesn’t mean he’ll listen, hell most of the time he doesn't. But he’s always been willing to hear her. She wonders if that’s not because of the ancient boy trapped within himself.
“Eric, a word?” she says on the eleventh day. She stands outside of the office, watching Eric on his knees before Godric, trying to resist tapping the toe of her Manolo impatiently.
Eric rises to his feet with slow deliberate movements. He presses his forehead to the back of Godric’s hand before walking over to her. He looks tired. She cannot remember the last time Eric ever looked genuinely tired.
“What, Pam?”
She takes a deep breath. She has no problem telling him exactly what she thinks - usually. But this situation is hardly typical.
“I want to know exactly what the fuck is wrong with both of you. And I want you to tell me how to fix it so that I don’t have to look at your sadsack faces anymore. If I wanted to spend time with boring, depressed statues I’d share a nest with Bill Compton.”
It’s her way of worrying about him. She knows he knows that. But he still fixes her with a look that makes her feel like a child.
“I am doing what I must to save my Maker.”
“I’m sorry, what? Eric, what is going on?”
He glares at her. “I do not owe you an explanation.”
“Yes, Maker, you do. You owe me at least that, if nothing else, and I owe you my efforts to fix whatever it is you’ve blown up this time.”
They stare each other down and for the first time in her entire unlife, Eric breaks first. He bows his head and squeezes his eyes shut and when he opens them again, he speaks. His sentences are short and clipped. And when he stops speaking, she knows what happened in Dallas, all of it. Or at least, all of it regarding Godric.
And Eric looks at her with fear in his eyes, yet another thing she has never seen before, and asks, “What would you do if it were me?”
“I probably would’ve dragged you kicking and screaming off the roof and yelled at you for being fucking stupid,” she admits. If she could’ve. Eric is and always will be stronger than her. But she would’ve tried and she would have died before she gave up.
“Then you understand that I cannot leave him to his despair.”
And she does get that. But sitting around being sad is not the answer. “I don’t think you’re helping matters though.”
“What would you have me do?”
“I don’t know, get him a hobby? He seems like a basket weaving kind of guy.”
Eric’s eyebrow heads towards his hairline. “Basket weaving?”
“Well, he doesn't really strike me as the jewelry-maker type.”
Eric smiles, the first smile since he got back from Dallas, and she smiles back. “I think he already knows how.”
“I don’t know, Eric, but this isn’t good. He needs to get out more. You both do.”
“I know. I’m just not sure what to do.” He doesn't say it, but she knows that he’s afraid to leave Godric alone, afraid that if he lets go, Godric will find a way to meet the sun and this time there would be no stubborn human girl there to stop him.
She wants to suggest shipping him to Bon Temps and letting him wallow in depression with Bill but bites her tongue. Eric’s in no mood for that particular brand of humor. “I’ll think about it. You should too.”
“I can think of little else.”
She nods and doesn't stop Eric when he turns to leave. It’s not really her problem to fix. But that doesn't stop her wanting to.
~*~*~
There is a woman yelling. Her voice is high pitched and loud and completely without restraint. It is enough to pull Godric from his place, seated in one of the back offices of Fangtasia, and pad towards the source.
“I just need you to listen to me!” she yells and he hears her stomp her foot. “I don’t know what to do! And I can’t talk to it with Bill because- I just can’t!”
“Jessica…” Eric’s voice, strained and annoyed. Godric feels a twinge of interest as he pushes open the office door.
A girl with long red hair is standing in front of Eric, hands clenched. She is young, an infant by their people’s standards. She is bright, everything about her from her hair to her pink lips to the blue dress that comes to her knees. And she is defiant and desperate. Angry tears make her voice falter as she screams at Eric, raising a hand to point accusingly.
“Don’t you send me away again,” Jessica demands. Her accent is smooth, thicker than Sookie’s or Bill’s and he likes the sound of it, even if it is shrieking and panicked at the moment. “Please, I’m not asking for you to protect me or teach me or put up with me or nothing. I just want you to help with this. You have to be able to do something! You’re supposed to have seen everything, you should know what to do with this. I mean, you’re so old!”
Godric makes a small amused noise in the back of his throat at her explosion. Eric’s eyes dart to him and scan his face. He sees the worry that passes through them. It is enough to draw him into the room.
Jessica whirls around like a top, her dress and hair following her and she stares at him with big eyes. Her face has red streaks from where she’s been crying but she’s stunned out of it by his sudden appearance.
“Is there a problem here?”
“Nothing you need burden yourself with, Godric,” Eric says.
“Yes!” Jessica cries, the tears beginning anew. “I’m a virgin.”
Godric blinks. He was not aware that was a bad thing, though times change and so do standards and he has missed shifts in the collective social consciousness before. They all start to blur together after a few centuries. But she looks so upset, so frustrated by the whole thing. He tilts his head, trying to understand.
“And you want Eric to remove you of that distinction?” She wouldn’t be the first or the last. He wonders if there’s any particular reason his child won’t just oblige the fledge.
But she wrinkles her nose and shakes her head in distaste. “No. It’d be like sleeping with my daddy, the son of a bitch. And ‘sides, I got a boyfriend, Hoyt.” Her face takes on a dreamy quality. “He’s so sweet and amazing in bed but we keep having to stop because I’m stuck in this stupid body with this stupid painful virgin vagina forever.” She ends in a burst of anger and frustration that is almost jarring. And then she blushes and ducks her head. “Oh my god what am I doin’ tell you all this. I don’t even know who you are!”
He smiles at her. He’s never seen someone run through that many emotions that fast. Or if he has, he cannot remember it. It’s rather beautiful to watch actually. “I am Godric.”
“Jessica, hi. Are you a vampire too?”
“I am.”
“That’s so cool. I’ve never met another one as young lookin’ as me,” she declares. Jessica beams at him, her whole face lighting. “I mean, you look like you were my age when you got turned. Seventeen,” she adds, clearly trying to be helpful, in case he can’t tell for himself. “How long ago did you get made? Did they stop treating you like a child all the time because I keep telling Bill and all them that I’m not a baby but they just won’t listen.”
She looks over her shoulder at Eric and glares, as if her entire situation is his fault. Maybe it is. Godric doesn't know.
“You should spend less time talking at your elders and more time listening to them,” Eric growls, his tone a warning that Jessica clearly does not register.
“It is fine, Eric,” Godric returns. He meets Eric gaze and whatever Eric sees there, it makes his whole body relax. It’s like watching a spring uncoil, all the muscles seem to loosen and he looks better than Godric has seen since before that zealot human child obliterated his home.
He turns his attention to Jessica. She asked a question, she should get an answer. “I was turned two thousand years ago. It has been a very long time since anyone treated me like a child.”
Jessica’s jaw actually dropped. “Shut. Up.”
“Jessica,” Eric barks. She snaps her mouth closed and she looked away briefly before returning to stare.
“Eric,” Godric retorts. He does not need his child to defend him. Not against a vampire girl who has been undead less than a year. He could break her in half without a thought if he wanted to. But he does not. Cannot imagine wanting to as he once might have.
“Are you for real?”
That is an interesting turn of phrase. Appropriate. “At the moment.”
Jessica is immediately on him. “I bet you’ve seen some really cool stuff. You meet anybody famous, like Henry VIII or Catherine the Great or the real Dracula?” Her curiosity and excitement makes her bounce on her toes a little. Her energy is refreshing. Invigorating even. He wants that excitement and curiosity. It is another thing he cannot remember.
“Why don’t you accompany me out to the bar and I can tell you a little. Eric has work to attend to and I think we’ve both disturbed him enough.”
“Seriously?” Jessica asks, incredulous."Nobody ever seems to want to talk to me."
Eric is studying him. In one instant, Eric is so many things. He is a father afraid of letting his child out of his sight, a needy boy not wanting to be separated from his parent, a lover worrying because of his near loss. There is so much there that Godric is sorry for. But for now, Eric does not need to fear. He nods at his child once and Eric does not protest.
“Of course. I am, as you say, old. Far older than Eric. Maybe I can be of assistance to you.”
“Cool,” Jessica says again. She is so young and she smiles at him so brightly. It almost hurts to look at her, like the sun on his skin had hurt. But he is almost as drawn to her smile as he is to the sunlight.
“Shall we?” He says, gestures towards the door. She beams at him, nervous but thrilled and nods a little wildly.
“Well, yeah!”
“I believe the custom is ladies first,” Godric said and she blushes. He turns a look back at his child, sitting behind his desk, his fingers pressed flat against the top. He tips his head and Eric nods and does not move to stop them as they go.
~*~*~
Jessica still doesn't like TruBlood. It’s disgusting. It tastes like ass but she’s not really as anxious to gut people like fishes so often so she doesn’t complain so much anymore. Except to Bill. And Bill totally deserves it.
But anyway, she’s got a bottle of B neg rolling back and forth between her palms as she sits across next to Godric. He looks like he could be a classmate of hers, if she’d gotten to go to public school like a normal girl. She feels a little nervous, like she’s going to sound like a stupid little kid.
He’s just so old. He’s, like, so totally and completely ancient in a way that Bill tries to act like but totally isn’t. She can’t really figure out why he’s sitting with her, talking to her. But he is, so she can’t help but take advantage of it.
“So how do you know Eric?” is the question she finally settles on to open the conversation. But then she feels stupid for asking because that could be real personal. So she tries to back track and it just turns into this long ramble that pours out of her like water out a faucet.
“Not to pry or nothing, it’s just you were never here when he was lookin’ after me and he never talked about you. Not that he talked to me about mucha anything. You’re the only vampire I’ve met who’d have a whole conversation with me that didn’t end with do as I say, now, Jessica or as your Maker I command you.” She did her best Bill impression, which was all deep and brooding and way overly dramatic because she’s pretty sure that there’s a diva trapped in the body of Bill Compton.
Godric’s head tilts at her. He’s done a lot of that. Small gestures that she can’t really read. She’s never sure if she’s offending or upsetting him. He’s so blank. At least with Bill she knows when she’s pissed him off.
“I cannot stop talking. It’s a problem of mine, just can’t seem to shut up. Bill hates it. Sorry.”
“Eric is my child,” Godric says and she’s actually stunned. She wasn’t expecting a straightforward answer. She never gets one from anyone else, except Hoyt. But Hoyt’s special and he doesn't really count here what with being human and all.
“So you turned him into a vampire?”
“I did.”
“Wow.” She genuinely cannot imagine Godric acting like Bill, bossy and anal and all OCD about rules. And she can’t imagine Eric getting grounded like she was. But she also can’t imagine anything else but being bounced around “So, do you like him, Eric I mean? Cause sometimes I think Bill hates me and I’m just trying to figure all this out.” She ducks her head down and her hair falls over her face.
“I love him.” Godric says simply. It’s fact, totally true. And he feels it.
For a second he reminds her so strongly of Hoyt that breath she doesn't need actually catches. She lifts her head to look at him, she wants to see what that looks like on someone else. It’s faint but what she can see of it is beautiful.
“You do?”
“Of course.”
“No, it’s not of course. I’m Bill’s punishment. That’s all I am, his penance for…fucking up. What do you mean, of course? Is that how it was for you, that you loved the one who made you? Is that why you got turned so young?“ Jessica blurts and slams her hand over her mouth.
She’s known him all of twenty minutes. Where does she get off asking him that? What is wrong with her? She had sense, contrary to popular (re: Bill’s) belief. She knows better.
“I am so sorry.”
“Do not be sorry.”
“I’m totally prying. I don’t mean to pry. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“No, I want to answer. I just have to recall that life. It has been a very long time, little one.”
“Did you forget?” She feels a little thrill of fear, that in a thousand years she won’t remember her mama or her little sister. It makes her chest ache. “I’m sorry I just-“
“I was a sacrifice,” Godric says and Jessica can relate to that, to being thrown to your death just because of stupid chance. To have the people around you as you’re terrified and dying using you like a means to an end rather than person. “I was born during an eclipse.”
“Why’s that matter? I was born on a Thursday at ten in the morning.”
“My people believed in omens. It marked that I was fated to die to appease the tribe god. That was who I was when I was a human and I always knew it. I had fifteen summers and then my people bound me to a tree and left me there to die of thirst and exposure.”
Jessica can’t stop herself from gasping. “Oh my god. Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago. Millennia.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jessica says, reaching out and taking his hand. He looks at her with that inscrutable air that she’s starting to realize is his default expression. She can’t tell one way or another so she squeezes it tightly. “You must’ve been so scared.”
She looks down at their joined hands. They both have such small hands. Young hands. Neither of them finished growing. They never would. They were be trapped in the in-between of adolescence forever.
“I was.”
“Me too,” Jessica says.
“But I was more angry than anything else. I wanted to live. My whole human life, all I ever wanted was the chance to truly live.” He says that in a tone that implies a joke. But Jessica doesn't know how that’s funny. She’d wanted to live as she was dying herself. She still wants to live. “And my Maker found me dying and gave me my desire.”
“He saved you.”
“That is one way to look at it.”
“Yeah, I know whatcha mean.” Jessica sighs, crossing and uncrossing her legs under the table. She’s still angry about the virgin thing and she wants to ask Godric about it but now just doesn't seem right.
They sit in silence for awhile, hands joined. She feels close to him like she doesn't to Bill or Sookie or anyone really. Except maybe Hoyt but it’s different. Sitting here with Godric, she feels kind of like she used to when she would help her mother cook on days when her daddy was away on business - safe and guided.
“How long ago were you turned, little one?”
She’s surprised when he’s the one who breaks the silence. She’s been so rambly that she forgot that maybe he’d want to know something about the idiot grilling him. She hates that she still has things she wants to know because she’s still learning the whole impulse control and she’s only really good at it on the big things - like not killing people by accident.
“A few months. I’m still trying to keep my fangs from popping out whenever I get turned on. Does that ever stop? Cause I really like being turned on but those things, they’re dangerous and I don’t wanna tear Hoyt up or anything.”
The look Godric gives her is fond and parental without actually being a smile. She wishes she could do that, keep her face blank like that. It’d drive Bill crazy. “Not with any effort that could not be expended better otherwise.”
“Oh. But you can do it. It’s possible.” So maybe the whole magical regenerative hymen thing is changeable too. Maybe there’s something she can do to fix it.
“Did your Maker not explain it to you?”
“No. Bill only tells me what not to do. Don’t drink from humans. Don’t stay up. Don't act on your impulses. Don’t act in a manner unbecoming to a lady. I have to figure out most it for myself. Like the whole virgin thing.” She tries not to pout but she’s not very successful. “At least here I got to have a little fun. Like, sometimes I just want to run, not stop 'til I hit the Pacific Ocean. I want to look up and try and see through the clouds into outer space. There’s so many things I can do now and I want to do it all and Bill’s all about don’t.”
“Had we but world enough, and time,” Godric muses and he’s quoting something. Jessica doesn't recognize it but the way he says it, wistful and quiet, makes her want to know the rest. “You have both, little one. You have world enough and all the time you need and more.”
“I know I do. But it’s all right there. The whole world’s right there. It’s right here,” she waves at the ebb and flow of the club. “I know there’s time but it’s right there, you know?”
“I once did.”
“And I just want it. Cause it’s not always gonna be there. Things changed. I was alive this time last year and now I’m dead. How much more am I gonna miss if I’m just waiting!” How much of Hoyt’s life is she going to miss? How much of her sister’s? Her mother’s? The rest of the world as it spun round and round in space with all these people and places on it that never stood still. She wanted to see it all happen. “I just want to be part of it.”
“You will be.”
“You think?”
He squeezes her hand. “I know.”
“You a psychic too? That part of getting old?” If it is, she’s not looking forward to it. Sookie’s mind reading thing seems like a big enough pain. Although she would like to be able to hear her daddy’s thoughts, just once, find out what the hell he was thinking all those times he beat her. But she’s got no use for the future. Now’s complicated enough.
“No,” he says, amusement clear in his voice. “I’m just old enough to know the way of some things.”
“Not everything?”
“No, Jessica. Not everything.”
“Well, you know what they say,” she says with a smile. “Learn something new every day.”
He squeezes her hand again but says nothing.
~*~*~
Eric is being stalked by passing moments. They’re flying by so fast that he can almost feel them brushing his skin. He’s off kilter and out of sync with the world as it rotates around him and he can’t seem to get his feet back underneath him with time rushing by him like this.
He hasn’t really thought much about time in the last thousand years. He’s had a surplus in front of him and, as he waded through it, behind him. There was always more of it in each direction. It made things blur, run together, and stretch out. There would always be more time. That was a fact of vampire existence.
Only, suddenly he is very aware of the fact that, no, there isn’t necessarily. Eighteen days, twenty hours, and thirty-five minutes ago he’d kneeled on the roof of the Hotel Carmilla and been struck by the reality that he could be out of time with Godric.
And since Sookie had knocked on his hotel door, he’s been so focused on each second that Godric is still with him that things have slide out of focus completely. Everything is sharp and new like he hasn’t experienced since he was newly turned, vampiric hyperawareness honed to the point where it is nearly painful. When his waking hours were filled for the most part with trying to coax his Maker out of his fugue he’d been able to relish that.
But now Godric is improving. He is still distant, fragile, his sadness suffocating. But he’s not in that horrible near-catatonic state anymore and that is a relief so intense that it blindsides Eric. He had not thought that anything could match the relief he felt when he saw his Maker alive but this is a very close second.
Eric knows that part of that is Bill’s child drawing him out and while Eric cannot stand her, her whining and her insolence and her pestering, he saw his Maker smile at her yesterday when she came to Fangtasia with her human. It was barely there but Eric knew him well enough to recognize it. And it made him ache. It has been centuries since he felt jealousy.
She made him smile where Eric could not and it burns him and elates him at the same time. It’s been centuries since he felt so many things that are crashing in on him lately. Everything is more now and Eric is ill equipped.
The emotions, he can cope with. He feels much like he did when he was young, internally unhinged and unpredictable, but he has enough discipline that it’s not interfering. He can and does control it. He has a thousand years of practicing control.
What he can’t deal with is the slipping of time. It lacks sensation but he can feel it disappearing with every second and he wonders how the hell humans cope with this, how he coped with it when he was still a man.
There’s an antique clock on a shelf in his office that Pam insisted they bring when they made the move to the New World a century ago and Eric glares at its open, white face. The minute hand clicks forward and it’s a taunt. See how fast things are moving? See how much time you have wasted when he was so close? Every second, the clock’s ticking says, you’re failing him and you don’t know how much time you have left.
Eric strikes out without thinking, sending the clock flying into the wall, parts breaking off while others are lodged in the wall. It’s not nearly as satisfying as it should be.
It’s moments like this that he resents the Great Revelation. He misses the freedom to tear things apart. The politics and positioning involved in integrating limits the orgiastic violence. And he could use some right now.
“Eric?”
He turns to see Godric standing the doorway, Pam behind him and slightly to the right. The noise of the clock tearing through the dry wall must have drawn them.
He lifts an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“If you had a problem with my taste, you could’ve just said something,” Pam says, eying the destroyed time piece.
“I had a problem with the wall as well.” There could be more holes in it, he supposes. A hand full in the shape of his fist. It will solve nothing but he might feel better. Though it wasn’t likely and he wasn’t about to do it with an audience.
“Well then,” Pam says with a small sigh, “I’ll have to redecorate. Any requests?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“I’ll have Chow call a contractor. You can use my office until we redo the wall.”
Pam walks to him, slides her hand into the pocket of his slacks and removes his wallet. He watches as she removes his Visa and taps her teeth with the edge of the plastic. She’s concerned but she’s not going to say anything. Not in front of his maker. So she just returns his wallet to his pocket and walks out, sliding past Godric without a word.
When she’s gone, Godric steps inside the office and shuts the door behind him. His grey eyes are empty and in turn, Eric feels empty.
But he doesn't move as his Maker walks to him. Godric looks up at him, impassive, and asks, “Are you all right?”
The absurdity of the question pulls a strangled laugh from Eric. All right? He is functioning on a plane of existence where all right isn’t even an abstract concept.
“Of course,” he snaps. He can’t keep the hurt out of his voice, not under that pale gaze. “I’m more than all right. How kind of you to ask.”
A small frown ghosts over Godric’s lips. “I am merely concerned about you, child.“
“No,” Eric shouts, taking a sharp step backwards. Anger burns through him familiar and comforting. Anger he could use. “No, you’re not. You were not. Don’t tell me that, Godric. Do not expect me to believe it when you rebuked me on bended knee to die, when you didn’t care enough to even try.”
“I am trying now.” Godric sighs and he looks so tired. His exhaustion makes Eric want to weep because he knows what it means. “Is that not enough?”
“No. It’s nowhere near enough. What are you thinking? Why didn’t you come to me, six months ago, six decades ago? You must have known I followed you from the Old World. I promised you I would always be here and yet you let yourself fall to this…this…” Eric doesn't even have a word for what this is. “I was here, Godric. I was right here. It’s less than three hundred miles to Dallas. Why didn’t you come to me or call me to you?”
Godric says nothing. There’s no problem there because there is no possible answer he could give that would explain the last hundred years to Eric’s satisfaction. Godric had disappeared on him in the Hauge in 1894 and it had taken Eric twenty years to find him again. And then it had been made clear by children of the then-King that he was not particularly welcome in Texas.
So he had waited. He had bided his time and built his life in Louisiana because there would always be more time. Godric would leave Texas or they would meet somewhere else or Godric would come find him. They always came back to each other. A hundred years was nothing.
Only Godric never came. Never would have come if he’d had his way. He would’ve been dust on the floor of the Fellowship sanctuary.
“It’s clear you gave me no thought when you handed yourself over to the Newlins,” Eric bites. “But did you think about what you’d do to our people when you gave yourself up? You were never that selfish when we traveled together.”
“No, I was far more selfish then,” Godric sighs. “My entire existence has been an exercise in selfishness, Eric, and none more so than making you. I should have known better.”
Eric strikes him, the back of his hand colliding with brutal speed and force across his Maker’s face causing a loud cracking sound that cuts the air like thunder. Godric’s head snaps to the side Eric hits him so hard, blood dripping from his mouth in a bright splash before the wound heals itself.
He hasn’t hit Godric in over five hundred years. And even then, it was only as a prelude to blood-drenched sex in the remains of their freshly killed prey. He has never raised a hand to his Maker in anger before now. He does not like the way it feels, like the world has tilted off its axis yet again.
But how dare he? How fucking dare he? Eric has given Godric everything, his loyalty, his love, his constant companionship and, if called upon, he would give his life. He has given it time and time again.
Eric treasures that. It grounds him to the earth, to know that Godric is there, even if they are parted by oceans or centuries. He cannot regret that and he cannot bear the thought that his Maker does. It infuriates him and it breaks his dead heart.
Godric finally turns his face back towards Eric and he is stunned by the change there. Godric’s eyes are bright, shocked. It’s a reaction, the biggest one he’s gotten out of Godric in more than one hundred years.
The impulse to fall before him is still there, to ask forgiveness. But he has spent enough time bent before Godric. He can only give so much of himself with nothing in return. It was not who he was as a man and it is even less who he is as a vampire.
“Do I really mean so little to you?” Eric asks, the words tripping out of his mouth in the old tongue.
There is a blur of movement, so fast that not even Eric can track it. But an instant later, he is eye to eye with his Maker, as he stands on crate pulled from some stockpile in a corner of the office. And Eric feels like the ground beneath him is firm again for the first time in weeks.
Godric’s small hands slide behind his neck and up into the hair on the back of his head as he presses his forehead to Eric’s. He does not moan as their skin touches but he does press forward. His hands slide under the loose fabric of Godric’s shirt and press against his back as he leans against Godric’s body.
Godric’s thumbs stroke over the bare skin on Eric’s neck and he shudders. He has missed this. Craved it like blood and he has been starving for decades.
Cool lips press against his and Eric parts his lips with a groan. His hands slide down and grip Godric’s hips hard enough to hurt even one as old as Godric. Godric’s hands stay gentle in his hair but his mouth is strong and giving, finally giving.
Eric’s impulse is to lift Godric off his make-shift pedestal and feel him wrap his legs around his waist. He wants to fuck him where they stand, in the middle of his office surrounded by mundane, human things in the unnecessary artificial light. He wants to take control of the kiss and the moment and the mess that Godric has created but he stands still, letting this be enough.
He’s never made Godric come to him before. He’s never had to and when he wanted his Maker, he simply found him, taking the situation into his own hands. Passivity doesn’t sit well with Eric but he has no other choice.
~*~*~
Godric’s face was still tingling as he licked his way into Eric’s mouth. He has not felt real pain in so long, it feels like forever - a shadow of experience. The unexpected impact had been like abruptly waking from deep sleep, startling and overwhelming.
Eric was always overwhelming though. Godric has not forgotten. He had just forgotten what it felt like to be overwhelmed by anything but the vacuum that seemed to grow inside him.
Then Eric had spoken, doubting how very much Godric cherished him. For a brief instant, the only thing he’d been able to feel was love for his child.
It was exhilarating and just as sharp as it had been a thousand years ago. It burns through Godric like sunlight. All he could do was kiss Eric, chasing the emotion as it ran from him.
He expects Eric to take, to demand. His desperation is so intense that Godric could taste it on his tongue and teeth. He expects to feel it in the way Eric reacts. But all he does is tighten his grip on Godric’s hips.
He increases his hold on Eric’s neck and pulls him tighter to him. It doesn't change the speed or intensity of Eric’s movements. It doesn’t move him at all and Godric can’t help but think that this is payback, a small punishment for what he’s done to his child.
A small whimper escapes Godric’s throat, wounded and desperate like an injured animal. This isn’t enough. It’s too little, too shallow, brushing the surface instead of submerging like he needs to be, enveloped and consumed so that the nothingness can’t reach him.
He breaks Eric’s grip, climbing up his child’s body easily so that his legs wrap tight around Eric’s middle. His arms rest on Eric’s shoulders, locked behind his neck, and from this angle he could kiss deeper, hold tighter.
Eric’s arms support him but they don’t hold. They don’t press. They might as well not be there. Eric might as well not be there and it’s not enough.
“Make me feel,” Godric pants against Eric’s mouth. “Make me feel something, Eric.”
Eric moves before he can finish his plea. Godric’s back collides with the shelves so hard that they crash through them and an inch into the dry wall in a mess of dust and crumpled Fangtasia shirts. The impact jars him and ripples of sensation makes him jerk against Eric.
They tear at each other’s clothes. Eric’s fingernails dig deep, bleeding gashes in Godric’s skin as he destroys his shirt. Ribbons of blood drip down his chest for a few seconds before it heals and evaporates back into his body. He groans as Eric catches a few stray drops with his tongue.
“Take,” Godric groans as the last scraps of fabric falls away. He lets his head fall his neck exposed, willing and waiting. He pulls Eric down so that his face is pressed against the skin there. “Take, Eric.”
Eric enters him, thrusting inside without warning or preparation. The dry burn makes Godric spasm, his hands ripping at Eric’s skin. His fingers are slippery for a moment and Eric uses the moment to pull his head back.
“No.”
“Eric-“
Eric thrusts up again, silencing Godric and pushing them both further into the wall until he is sure they will fall through to the next room. But Eric steps back, moving them with all his speed to the desk. He cleared it, pushing his computer and papers carelessly, and laid Godric on the flat surface, still inside him.
They are still for a moment, Eric lying stretched out over him, one knee bent up under him and one foot on the floor. Godric drags his fingertips over Eric’s lips, painting them with blood, and he remembers other moments like this, when there were bodies and death and pain around them and they had reveled in it. But there is only them here now and he thinks that this is better.
“Eric,” he says again.
“You haven’t fed since you arrived,” Eric murmurs, his hips moving slow and steady inside Godric. “You can’t expect me to drink from you now.”
“I do not need much,” Godric sighs, wishing that Eric would stop talking, that he could go back to giving him the blissful satisfaction of the overwhelming. In the relative stillness, he could feel that emptiness opening where Eric should be filling him. “Just take.”
“No.” Eric says again, the edge in his voice saying that only a command could sway him. Godric feels Eric shift inside, folding him as Eric bent down so that his forehead rested on the desk beside Godric. When he turns his head to speak Eric’s lips brush the top of his ear. “Give me the chance to help you. Give me that.”
The column of Eric’s neck was pale and strong and so close. He did not need blood, would not for a week or so. But Eric wants to give it and he cannot say no to him again.
He tears open the soft flesh with a gracelessness that makes Eric groan and buck above him. He drinks deep and it pours down his throat familiar, a whole different type of pleasure than Eric inside and over him but one he knows well. He would know Eric’s taste if he lived another ten thousand years and never had it again.
Blood drips down his face and onto his chest as he feeds. He hears Eric moan in his ear as he fucks him, fast and so hard that in a minute or so the desk breaks beneath them and they fall to the floor.
Godric lets go of Eric’s neck after the last of the items that had not been swept away finish falling, and rolls them until they are clear of the table, knocking over the chairs on their way to clear space. Then there is nothing beneath them but concrete and it offers blessed little give.
Eric grabs his leg and pulls it up, over his shoulder and moves, sliding them across the floor until they reach one of the metal shelves that is still standing. It’s a sorry excuse for a brace but Godric reaches back over his head and grips the bottom so that he can push back. The metal complains with a creak but Godric doesn't hear it, drowning in the crystal moment where there is nothing in and around him but Eric.
Eric’s fangs sinks into the skin of his neck unexpectedly and Godric’s climax comes with the first feel of suction. His body arches like the bow the men of his tribe used to hunt with. His hands twist the metal until the shelves groaned and surrendered, toppling over on top of them.
Bottles in and out of their boxes bounce off Eric’s back and onto the concrete and shatter. Shards of glass and alcohol spray them but Eric doesn’t even stop to push off the boxes still on top of him.
Eric tears flesh free of Godric’s neck as he throws his head back in orgasm, shouting his name. He is still so startling beautiful, as beautiful as the first night Godric had seen him. He lifts his head to lap at the blood on Eric’s chin until the spasms cease and Eric falls on top of him, anchoring him to the floor.
He runs his hand through Eric’s hair, waiting. For what, he’s not sure but he would wait as long as it took, here in the rubble they have created together.
“You never answered my question,” Eric says finally, not lifting his head from where he had planted it on Godric’s chest.
Godric’s hand tightens in Eric’s hair and pulls so that he will look at him. Eric meets his gaze, hurt but determined. It makes Godric smile, just a little.
“Father, brother, son,” he says. It is their promise to each other, spoken in Eric’s language and carrying a millennia of weight. It ties them together as much as blood magic and time. “You mean everything to me.”
Eric lowers his head back to Godric’s shoulder and says nothing. But the same questions are there nonetheless. How could you do that? Why didn’t you try?
Godric sighs. It was so easy to forget this. Not the details, where to touch Eric or how, not the taste or the smell. But the feeling, this feeling of being connected so deeply. And even when Eric found him, it was so easy to just let go. He has spent so long fighting. “I am tired.”
“So rest. No one will disturb us here. They know better.”
He shakes his head. “Eric.”
“No. That’s not a good enough reason. That’s no excuse. Godric, you,” Eric breaks off and Godric’s grip tightened once again. He doesn’t pull, just holds. “I need you.”
“You are an ancient yourself now, my child.”
“I’ll always need you. I need you to stay, to not give up.”
“I am. I am here. I am with you now.” And that was harder than anything Godric had ever done, try. Taking Sookie Stackhouse’s hand had taken everything in him and more. “I am trying.”
“It’s not enough.”
“It’s all I have to give.”
“No,” Eric bit out. “It’s not.”
Godric looks up at the ceiling, though there are no answers there. “What more would you have me give you, Eric?”
“Life. You promised me life. What is that without you?” Eric demands, sitting up, half on top of Godric. He sends boxes and shards of glass falling to the floor. Then he looks away. “You may regret having made me but I don’t regret having you as my Maker.”
“I will never regret turning you, child. My child.” Godric reaches out and caresses Eric’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. He watches Eric’s eyes drift shut at the touch. “I said it was selfish. And it was. I should have let you go. Valhalla would’ve welcomed you with open doors, but I could not. You were too beautiful to lose.”
Eric covers Godric’s with his own, swallowing it. “And you’re not?”
“All things end. You and I have watched civilizations crumble and fade,” Godric says, sitting up himself. “All lovers must consign to thee, and come to dust.”
Eric smiles despite himself. “Did you ever actually tell William what you were?”
“No. It was more interesting that way. He wrote better when perplexed.”
“England was good to us, Godric. The world’s been good to us.”
“And we have taken more than our share.”
“Not yet. We’re not done yet.” Eric rises and holds out a hand.
Godric stares at it. It’s not a simple hand up, that much he knows. Taking it is loaded but there is nothing else for him to do.
He lets Eric pull him to his feet and surveys the carnage. It reminds him of Crete after an earthquake in the third century. He’d been young and chaos made for easy pickings. He closes his eyes against the memory of screaming that had sounded like music to him when he was hungry and wild.
“We’ve destroyed your office.”
“Yes,” Eric sighs and gives a rueful grin. “Pam won’t be happy.”
“Your child has every reason to be,” Godric agrees and Eric’s face goes solemn.
He tugs on their joined hands and brings Godric close against him. His other hand ghosts over the streaks of drying blood on Godric’s face.
“Don’t give up yet. Please. Let me make you feel.”
He runs his hands up Eric’s arms to his shoulders. He has always liked how much larger Eric is than him. There had been countless nights over a thousand years where the embrace of his huge body had been a shield against the things that swam through Godric’s mind like the sea serpents at the edge of the old world. “Nothing makes me feel as much as you, my child.”
Eric dips his head and all Godric can see are those pleading blue eyes. “Then for now, let that be enough. The rest will come.”
Godric rises on his toes and presses his mouth to Eric’s. It’s a dry, chaste kiss that offers a taste of something more. It is intimate and earnest and the only promise that he can give for now. But he hopes his child is right, and that the rest will come.