Chapter 20 – Off

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“You know,” Pam hinted in a nonchalant tone that was anything but, “You should really consider making an honest man out of my Maker. Quick.” It would certainly solve Pam’s problems, quick.

 

Sookie stared at her in disbelief, “What?”

 

“If you get on it now, no one would ever know those bastards were conceived out of wedlock,” she replied matter of fact. “It’s simply the right thing to do, Sookie.”

 

“Yeah,” Jason added, motivated by a prompt kick below the table from his wife. “It’s the family way, or somethin’.”

 

Sookie became rather disconcerted when both Gran and Godric nodded along in agreement. “Boo!” Claude cried out in protest. “Don’t listen to the old fogies!”

 

“You’re so lucky you’re gay,” Claudine said towards her brother in a reprimanding tone. “You’d make for a terrible father. I can just imagine a whole string of unacknowledged children with a giant ego.”

 

“I can still adopt,” he shrugged with a malicious glint to his eyes. “I can adopt Eric and Sookie’s kittens!”

 

“My babies,” Sookie growled out in annoyance, the wooden seat under her shrieking against the floor with the violence at which she thrust it backwards this time, and leaning over the table, she warned Claude, “You stay away from them!”

 

“I stand corrected,” Claude grinned. “Marry the vampire then. Wait, you already did!”

 

“What?” Sookie stammered in confusion while Claude giggled in delight.

 

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Pam warned lowly. Sookie’s eyes narrowed on the vampiress beside her instantly, demanding confirmation, though the guilty look from her brother spoke volumes, and weakly Pam offered, “Surprise!”

 

It turned out Pam was the surprised one in the end, the words of warning that she was going to be sick never made it out of Sookie’s mouth this time, instead the entire content of her stomach splattered all over the vampiress’ brand new outfit from Chanel. In horror, all Pam could do was stare at the destruction of the expensive fabric, ruined for eternity. With a low warning tone, her gaze firmly attached to the source of Sookie bodily upset, the vampiress taunted, “I hope you get really, really, fat!”

 

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“It’s your own fault really,” Pam pointed out, matter of fact, while studying a scientific model of a foetus in utero with disgust, only managing to clumsily catch the slippery little bugger when she poked too hard at it. “You were constantly begging to become a lady.”

 

“Pam will you shut up?” Eric growled out while nervously bouncing his knee. No wonder humans hated doctors. And Pam. Especially a Pam who delighted in retelling what a sad excuse of a vampire he’d become without his memories and sickening infatuation with Sookie.

 

“Oh it’s you,” Pam spat out when in walked said object of infatuation. “How nice of you to show up,” she rang out sweetly, albeit disingenuously.

 

“Pam,” Eric warned once more, “She asked her to be here. The same can’t be said about you.” Pam sneered in reply, and ignoring her, he turned toward Sookie, greeting her while patting the empty seat beside him. With a nervous smile and a muffled greeting, she sank down next to him.

 

“You okay?” she whispered, causing Pam to huff demonstratively at purposely being left out of the conversation, as if she couldn’t hear, while wondering what she was supposed to be doing with the plastic monstrosity in her hands. She never wanted a baby, and especially not this wrinkly one. Eric nodded in reply to Sookie, though feeling anything but okay and asked her the same. “Okay, I guess,” she smiled with the same vulnerability he was feeling.

 

“Stackhouse, Northman,” Dr Ludwig interrupted, tapping away at her clipboard. “It’s go time.”

 

“Stay here,” Eric warned Pam when they collectively got up, and the warning glare that accompanied it only just managing to shut up her protestations.

 

“Sit,” Ludwig commanded, her hand pointing vaguely in the direction of the two empty seats opposite hers while remaining obscured by the computer monitor. “Still feeling nauseous?”

 

“Yes,” Sookie and Eric both replied in tandem, nervously looking at the other each and every time the doctor queried another symptom they replied identically to.

 

“Interesting,” she noted while scooting out of her chair and towards the examination table. Switching on the sonogram equipment, she demanded, “Who wants to go first then?”

 

“Is it possible we’re both-?” Sookie asked tentatively.

 

“With that witchy friend of yours?” Ludwig countered mockingly. “Yep, she screwed up royally. And you two screwed, royally. You were turned into cats on two separate occasions, cats don’t tend to screw unless one of them is in heat. Now one of you get on this table, time’s a ticking.”

 

“Go on,” Eric encouraged a nervous Sookie, though in any other moment she would have argued that he should go first instead, but without much further thought she was on the examination table with her shirt pulled up slightly to expose her belly. With a scoff Ludwig shoved her pants down further, causing her to shriek out an embarrassed eep.

 

“Seriously?” the doctor reprimanded, squirting out the cool gel over her stomach. “You might be carrying his child, but you’re embarrassed he’ll see your lower stomach?”

 

“We were cats!” Sookie rebutted lamely.

 

“Keep telling yourself that,” she dismissed in return, “I know heat when I see it.” Her eyes remained glued to the small screen while moving the wand over her stomach. Sookie let out another cry when she shoved it in harder. “Clean as a whistle,” she pronounced while thrusting a paper towel at Sookie to clean herself up.

 

“You mean it’s healthy?” Sookie asked with wonder.

 

“Nope,” Ludwig. “Ordinary healthy womb, that’s all. Vampire, you’re up next.”

 

“But if I’m not pregnant,” Sookie countered, a hint of disappointment lacing her voice while Eric seemed to be sighing a breath of relief, “He wouldn’t be either, right? We have the same symptoms, it must be the aftermath of the spell. Pam and her supersonic hearing must just be off.”

 

Eric was liking the sound of that theory, re-buttoning the top buttons of his jeans already, only for an impatient Ludwig to yank them back open again and point him towards the examination table, “Not so fast, Vampire. The Faerie’s hardly a medical expert, now is she?”

 

“What are you thinking?” he demanded while reluctantly positioning himself for examination, loathing the forced position of vulnerability. Ludwig was quick to prep him and started probing him with the wand, not replying to him either way, humming a strangely familiar song, while she continued to scrutinise the imaging with narrowed eyes.

 

“Sympathy pains, very common in Supernatural pregnancies,” Niall chimed in, popping up out of nowhere, his gaze following Ludwig’s on the screen. “We’ll want a DNA test, just to be sure.”

 

“Naturally,” the doctor agreed, suddenly very amenable to the mighty Prince of the Realm in her examination room, pressing the print button on demand.

 

“Great-Granddaddy!” Sookie scolded, for both his intrusion and presumptuousness. He responded to neither, still busying himself with photogenic angles he wanted copies of while Eric bitterly bit his tongue, tempering his rage that sought to destroy every piece of furniture in the room along with the annoying Supernatural duo who had just confirmed him magically pregnant. He’d start with that stupid sonogram equipment first. No, wait, the Faery Prince, surely it was all his fault.

 

A small hammering thud interrupted his thoughts as it filled the room with increasing volume, forcing Sookie to quicken to his side, and collectively they stared at the tiny beating image on the screen they could now both view. Niall and Ludwig were still talking, but neither one of them paid them any attention anymore.

 

“Please?” Sookie whispered, a tear prickling at her eye while his hand sought out hers to tangle his fingers in among. With a small nod he agreed, not exactly sure why, but there was something there moving in among the sea of black and squiggly white lines, and unlike anything else in his long existence it was something he could definitively call, mine.

 

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An impatient and gloating Pam had been distracted with a shiny plastic credit card and orders to find him a suitable wardrobe for the months ahead. Her misdiagnosis of Sookie was quickly passed off as petty revenge for ruining her outfit, yet Pam never was one to admit her wrongs and proving to be the opportunist, she posited all would be square between her and Sookie with another trip to Chanel. Sookie had wanted to protest, but sensing the tire in Eric’s eyes she’d kept quiet while he agreed.

 

They’d left Niall to discuss details with Ludwig. Sookie was determined to have a rather stern conversation about his overbearing ways, but for now, uncharacteristically, she just followed Eric’s lead. Unfortunately, he had little grasp of what to do next as the information was slowly sinking in, his ability to deny the situation lost to him now, so they simply stood waiting on the pavement outside Dr. Ludwig’s medical office until one of them had the wherewithal to hail a cab. Neither one of them could exactly remember who it was. Without much thought, Eric had given his old address to the driver where Sookie now resided, and wordlessly he had followed her up to the top floor when she questioningly beckoned him out of the taxi with a mere glance.

 

“So we’re married now,” Sookie said, breaking the silence while opening her front door.

 

“So I’ve been told,” he replied, it all seemed rather insignificant now, no matter how mad he’d been with Pam for withholding that bit of information from him. “Cataliades is on it.”

 

“I know,” she hummed. “I told him not to rush it.”

 

He looked at her in confusion while she seemed to be gathering her nerves, it was an odd sight. He’d never seen her truly intimidated by him.

 

“I think we should try, you know,” she trailed off.

 

“For the baby?” he finished, his tone harsh.

 

“Yes!” she replied, amending quickly, “I mean not because, but… I don’t know how to explain, Eric.”

 

“Would you be proposing this without the baby?” he scrutinised.

 

“No,” she admitted, wringing her hands, startled by the look on Eric’s face that was indicating he’d heard all he wanted to hear. “Wait,” she urged, reaching for his hand again as if he really was about to walk off and leave mid-conversation. She wouldn’t put it past him at this point, after all they’d been through. “What I’m trying to say is, we were going to go on a date.”

 

“You’re a very strange creature, Sookie Stackhouse,” he replied. “It’s what I like about you, but I’ve stopped following your logic a long time ago.”

 

“We were going to go on a date,” she repeated. “Then, you know, if it went well, maybe another, and then, you know… stuff happens.”

 

“Stuff?”

 

“Stuff that leads to babies,” she huffed. “If we were normal. Anyhow stuff that already happened.”

 

“Sex,” he corrected, a huge grin emerging, the thoughts of sex and Sookie tended to do that. It was after all why he cursed her specific, albeit glorious, breasts on a daily basis, who just happened to haunt him on a daily basis, which wasn’t very helpful when he was trying to forget the possibility that the owner of said breasts had possibly magically impregnated him. Somehow as much as that possibility had terrified him, the odd imagery now printed out and firmly tucked in his wallet wasn’t as scary anymore. If there ever was going to be a vampire to carry a baby to term, he wasn’t the worst of his kind to do so.

 

“Yeah,” she squirmed, cheeks flaming. “Is it really that wrong of me to think that if those things go well that somewhere down the line that leads to marriage? I was raised human after all, well, mostly.”

 

“So,” he began, his tone gravelly while closing the small distance between them, causing her breath to hitch. “What you were trying to say was, why stop something that was already on its course if that’s where we might end up anyway.”

 

“I think you should move in!” she blurted out in response. “I mean come inside me! With me! Cheese and rice, what is wrong with me?”

 

“You’re nervous,” he replied with a laugh, delighting in the reveals of her Freudian slip, his hand coming to caress her cheek. “It’s cute.”

 

“I’m not cute,” she huffed, averting the statement, but making no sign of moving out of their close stance.

 

Eric ignored the renunciation, offering instead, “You’re not wrong either.”

 

“What?” she asked with confusion, finding his lips suddenly very close to hers.

 

“Invite me in, Sookie.”

 

“You already have an invite,” she managed to stammer in confusion while responding to his suddenly probing lips as they moved against hers with familiarity, momentarily forgetting exactly what they were discussing again.

 

“Invite me in,” he repeated while they clumsily moved into the apartment entangled in the other, despite the difference in height and navigating walking backwards while kissing, when she didn’t respond beyond the murmurs and appreciative moans as his hands roamed her body, he simply asked, hoping to settle more than one lingering confusion all at once, “Socks on or off?”

 

Finally catching on, she replied with a knowing glint to her eyes, nervousness and embarrassment long gone, dragging his body towards her bedroom, “Off, definitely off.”

 

   

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A/N: Glad to see you all back again! Hope you enjoyed this little chapter to ease us back in with these two. Thoughts, comments, etc. all very welcome below 😀 Much thanks to msbuffy as ever!